Tamriel Rebuilt is less suited as a companion to base Morrowind than as an alternative to base Morrowind for those who have already completed it a dozen times. If Tamriel Rebuilt ever advances far enough, it will offer multiple alternatives, since each House's region is large enough to contain a vast amount of content.
Don't spend too much time exploring it. That's the trap some people fall into. Go pick a starting location, faction and go do it's storylines. Most of them are localized within the general region as the province wide quests are being saved for later. Much later. I'd recommend starting at Old Ebonheart and doing the Thieves Guild questline.
Well, I guess you're right. It's hard not to feel intoxicated by the sense of hugeness and freedom in TR and not running around everywhere from one ruin to another.
Yeah, it burns you out if you do it too long and you'll never finish the game. On the other hand, if you don't care about finishing the game and just wanna do some fun adventuring, then exploring all over the place is exactly what you should do.
That's what I thought at first. But as it turns out, it makes the whole thing feel like a theme park if you simply poke your head from cave to dungeon without getting a sense of how they fit in the world. The lack of really out-of-the-ordinary loot also contributes to that feeling of "exploring for the sake of exploring" and being some sort of glorified tourist. This is particularly obvious when exploring Kemel-Ze ( a dungeon the layout of which I actually had to draw on paper not to get lost ): it's full of wonders, but every adventurer and his aunts have been there looting it before.
Many dungeons have something setting them apart, or have quests connected to them. I remember one where you had bandits that managed to regularly trade with a dreugh by chance, it was pretty cool. But yeah, the loot is a real problem – or rather, the fact that you can swim in money effortlessly, which is an issue vanilla Morrowind has as well. I'm hoping some serious rebalance mods will pop up that will make you actually excited when you spot a diamond among the dungeon loot.
Yes, because TR does have some nice loot here and there. But as I treat it as a late-game expansion when I have nothing else left to do, it's not really a good incentive to exploration.
Indeed they are all quite unique and I'm not complaining on that point. That said they abuse a bit of the "dungeon starting as a regular cave but ending up to be a daedric sanctuary" trope.
March 2023 Art & Assets Update
It has been a few months since we last updated you on the ongoing progress in Tamriel Rebuilt – okay, we did release a major double-expansion in-between, but still. This month, as we last did in September, we will get you up to date on all the progress that our concept and asset artists have made. These are the building blocks of the mod, the first part of its development pipeline, which our level designers and implementers can later use to create the world of Morrowind.
Be mindful that the below concepts and assets are works-in-progress, and may not represent their final form in the mod. Furthermore, while the sources for each piece are linked – either messages on our Discord server or the asset browser – these are often no longer up-to-date with the current progress and planning of the mod.
Now, lets dive back into the nitty-gritty of TR progress – as we haven’t updated you in a while, there is a lot to show!
This will never fucking end.
I'm sure your grandkids would have a grand time seeing it. They've mentioned that Almalexia and Mournhold will be the last things they do.
I found Necrom's design very good, only it felt a bit like an open-air museum and not a very lively city (I didn't quite get the same vibe visiting TR-Necrom as I did when reading Incident in Necrom, for instance). I found a noticeable discrepancy in worldbuilding quality between the first 2 maps (Telvanni and Antedilivuan Secrets) and the Sacred East release.
Oh, they're ditching vanilla Mournhold, I'm pretty sure. They are pretty anal about not touching Vvanderfel, but aren't as reserved with other things. Firemoth is being remade from the ground up right now, for example.
yeah, it's been explicitly stated (iirc) that Mournhold is the last thing being touched not just because Almalexia will be so big, but also because they'll be completely re-locating the expansion content to a new exterior cell and having it play nice with everything else.
I feel the same.
You can head to Vivec straight from the boat, grab a bargain potion of Levitation at the High Fane, donate it to the shrine of Stop-The-Moon and fly away to Old Ebonheart. Of course it means you're going to spend the next half-day happily floating and bobbing around unless you find a bed in which to rest.
In my experience, unless it's been changed with the Embers of Empire release, the frist map is a no-go, even if you stick to the road, because of Roamers. The area south of Tel Branora used to have Durzogs, so also a no-go but I think they're gone with the lateat release. I think you can go to Old Ebonheart and do some quests in the area at level 1.
For me it's the contrary, I keep exploring the island and postpone installing TR until I'm at a high enough level or have nothing better to do in vanilla Morrowind.
Oh, you should just ignore everything on vvanderfel and head over to TR from the very start. Old Ebonheart is suited for game start, and the quests there are doable by even level 1 characters. You can fast travel there via ship - there's a dude in (new) Ebonheart docks offering rides.I feel the same.
It would be great if TR came with alternative starting locations (so you'd ditch the entire ship / Seyda Neen part).
The way I play, I usually end up doing the same stuff for the first few days and lose the interest to keep playing before I really get into any TR stuff
One time I tried to leave right away to some of the new regions, but was woefully underleveled.
I have no idea if there even is a good "starting area" in TR.
No need for this anymore, as stated above. I think they added fast travel options from vvanderfel a couple releases back, one of the very few changes they made in vanilla areas.
The necrom overhaul is too far in the future to plan out such details, as far as I know.
I give them a year at best before autism wins yet again and they'll start overhauling it.
TR also adds some good light armor in the form of daedric hide armor, which iirc is slightly under glass armor in terms of AR.
I only hope they add NPCs and quests as the overall design is alright so far.
I'm pretty positive daedric hide became deprecated and/or was replaced by native ebony armor in the latest TR build.
They'll do as much as possible to push off the Dres lands so it'll happen soon.
Oh well, I always felt it was a bit weird anyway.
