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Elder Scrolls Pure Mage Morrowind playthrough

Shadenuat

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fake news. pick a race and sign with high mana, regen by sleeping, invest in alchemy. done.

mana regen, of course you can easy play wizord with skyrim mana, lol.

Even 4.5x int struggles to keep up with spell costs.
Perfectly equipped you can have more than 1000 magicka or so. Last time I played I had 1200 but I was using Galsiah's Leveling so my Int was a bit higher althought all other stats were lower. With mantle of woe probably can reach 1500+.

I played with some alchemy-nerfing mod by the way. Also no armor, no shield, no weapons. (except the crab helmet. no Telvanni walks around without one.) I beaten main game, all expansions and a mod which adds explanded city of Sota Shill Sil(one with great piano music and Almalexia as final enemy).

Breaking Morrowind with nerfed exploits through pure wizard mastery is an ancient Telvanni art coming from old russian forum you never knew about cause it was a shitty forum and now it is even worse; but once you learn it you cannot go back to playing anything else. The little world of daedric katana wielding nwahs looks so small and dull from your vast mushroom tower.
 
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Shadowfang

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I am avoiding mods that make the game easier. The only mods I am using are better heads and bodies and book rotation.
The only advantage I have is from openmw that makes summons and followers attack hostiles on sight instead of having to wait of being attacked first.

I also have alchemy as a minor skill but I am not going to exploit it. The loop of making and drinking fortify intelligence potions would break the game very quickly and very badly.

Thanks for the tips.
So far I am having a lot of fun.
Defeating opponents by not going for the direct damage route is very satisfying.
 

Shadenuat

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You absolutely must try Rise of House Telvanni and Tel Uvirith reborn if you never used them. The crab helmet path is the only path.

The loop of making and drinking fortify intelligence potions would break the game very quickly and very badly.
Not much of a user of these loops meself.

Alternative leveling mods otoh, as well as alchemy and economy rebalancing mods make game more difficult, not easier.

Defeating opponents by not going for the direct damage route is very satisfying.
Yep. You can also use Invis to just ignore many enemies and still finish most quests.
 

Sykar

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You should never play Morrowind without the essentials - MGE XE, MCP and PfP. They fix so many bugs and offer improved functionality and QoL.

But yeah, Altmer + Atronach is the way to go.

I did fine with Apprentice sign. Much less annoying than Atronach as well which is useless when there are no magic users around.
 

luj1

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There are a few workarounds. Anything but Altmer + Atronach won't have enough magicka for custom spells (high costs). Even that may not be enough.
 

DraQ

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There are a few workarounds. Anything but Altmer + Atronach won't have enough magicka for custom spells (high costs). Even that may not be enough.
Git gud n'wah.

Anyway, playing pure or relatively pure caster relies on spellmaker.
Any race can be effective mage with Atronach or Apprentice, with Mage it might be tricky, without any sort of magicka boosting sign or race it's probably impossible without heavy cheese.

With Atronach alchemy is a useful QoL skill (mana potions), without you should probably get a race with high resistance or immunity to something, then provoke a summon using this damage type when running out. Resistance or immunity is also handy when fighting reflecting enemies, allowing supplementing summons with offensive spells.

Regarding spellmaker, it's almost a scripting engine and should be regarded as such - the effects are applied sequentially and often interact in useful manner. If they are made part of a single spell they usually don't need more than 1s to be useful. Some highlights:
  • Weakness to magicka can amplify subsequent pure magic effects, including weakness to element and (yes) weakness to magicka.
  • Weakness to element can be useful to create resistance piercers.
  • Drain willpower will make paralysis, silence and the like much more effective.
  • Drain agility will make physical attacks (for example from that summoned skeleton with rusty axe or dremora with daedric hammer) much more likely to knock target prone.
  • Drain fatigue can KO target.
  • Drain or damage strength can overburden target.
  • Drain agility, willpower, strength and endurance will decrease max fatigue accordingly. It is possible to make an almost perma KO spell this way spell.
  • (untested) TK might allow ranged on-touch effects.
  • Drain health is cheaper than damage effects and is applied instantly (even 1s damage spell is DOT), it can instakill and can do so silently. If it doesn't kill the target, the target won't suffer any permanent harm, though.
  • Targetted waterwalk may prevent target from pursuing you underwater. It is also handy (along with targeted levitate, invisibility and the like) for escort missions, and yes, some quests specifically account for invisibility on target/touch as an option.
  • Combining on self and on target effects could be useful, but might trigger the soultrap glitch.
  • Combining small area resists/buffs, with large area harmful effects can be useful for supporting summons.
  • (untested) absorbing from multiple summons can be better than straight self-buffing.
  • Incorporeal/supernatural summons make for great tanks against most humanoid opponents as most don't have magical or magical material weapons.
  • (untested) targetted AoE command, small area dispel (or similar) might be good for having a group of enemies gangbang selected member.
  • Dispel is a good thing to weave into your offensive magic when fighting summoners/self-buffers.
  • 1s levitate + 2s (jump + fortify speed + feather) makes for an actually usable Icarian Flight replacement and very fast means of travel (recasting will instantly airbrake) - just mind the casting time or cast from amulet.
  • Fortify int can be great opener before intensive spells.
  • Minimum magnitude levitation can slow targets down (and will crash cliffracers when it runs out) but is glitchy.
Some caveats:
  • Self+target effects can trigger soultrap glitch.
  • Without balancing mod, some effects are effectively broken due to very high cost relative to their effectiveness - feather, burden, disintegrate x.
Also, while enchant skill won't allow you to make artifact grade stuff without serious mechanics abuse, it can allow you to make some very useful trinkets even at level one if taken as major. For example very effective weapons for hybrids or as backup, weak restore everything amulet to counter those bonewalkers, etc.
 

Funposter

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DraQ is forgetting the most important aspect of magic in Morrowind: Absorb effects don't get reflected properly, so you are free to spam them with complete abandon. This makes Absorb Health the safest (by virtue of also healing) and most consistently useful damage effect.
 

Funposter

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DraQ is forgetting the most important aspect of magic in Morrowind: Absorb effects don't get reflected properly, so you are free to spam them with complete abandon. This makes Absorb Health the safest (by virtue of also healing) and most consistently useful damage effect.
True, but I think it has been changed in the MCP at some point?
Yeah, just had a look through and you're right. Shows that I spend more time modding on PC than playing.
 

luj1

You're all shills
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Git gud n'wah.

Any race can be effective mage with Atronach or Apprentice...

Fake news. Sooner or later you will hit a brick wall with spellmaking because custom spells have lower chance to cast + higher costs than premade spells with the same effects. Git gud indeed.
 

DraQ

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Some semi-relevant old stuff:

Krraloth said:
That is so cool.

The only problem is that the AI is not able to counter or use effectively the magic system, right?
Yeah, the AI has very uninspired arsenal of spells at its disposal and doesn't put much thought into what it casts, so there aren't many situations where an enemy caster can inflict horrible rape on a high level character, at best you'll get hit with an ordinary hard hitting spell or dangerous summon.

As for the defences, at least the AI can cast dispel if hit with a lingering effects (Golden Saint daedra like to cast dispel when soultrapped).

Then there problems that some spells that would be really interesting have much too high casting cost, making them completely impractical - what's the point of disintegrating someone's armour or weapon if I can kill him several times over for half the magicka?

Which leads to the question, are there mods that improve AI in Morrowind or wacky spell packs that enemies actually use?
BTB claims to, but since it also pretty much disables all the interesting stuff you can make in spellmaker (because author ended up cutting out everything he suspected to have possible use in a hypothetical exploit), I have never bothered with it. Wakim's Game Improvements (modular) does reasonable job rebalancing effects and some spells.

I don't know much about AI mods, though IIRC WGI seems to restore broken flee AI.

Ah, there is one more thing that is bad for creative spellcasting - AI cannot into countering levitation, which makes it sort of "I win" button as long as you have some room above your head. "I win" buttons are bad for creativity.

Damn, would be awesome to have an enemy thief rob you of the stamina, steal the shit from you and then runs away laughing while you feebly try to get up.

[/pipe dream]
Then he'd be more of a nightblade. ;)

But yeah, casting can be fun if you break the mold. Make yourself a caster, crank the difficulty up to eleven (since the game is easy anyway and you want to compensate for lack of high level challenges) and don't use trainers (probably the most broken feature in the entire game as it allows you to use money to essentially remove build restrictions), especially for non-caster skills.

Also, install MCP. It's necessary, the game, even with all the official patches has lots of broken code, some of which is responsible for spell mechanics.

Some more out of the box ideas:

1.
I have heard about one guy getting certain quest where he had to kill a relatively strong guy (at least at low level when you tend to stumble upon that quest) in tavern, who was accompanied by four buddies. Not an easy job for a low level frail mage, especially that being brained with an axe tends to cramp your spellcasting. So...

He commanded the target outside and drowned him in the river. :smug:

2. When doing another, overlapping quest involving resolving legal matters using extra-legal means,
I had to kill 4 people backed up by some corrupt higherups in a club used by local crime sindicate. At low level taking them on directly would be a suicide, then I'd have the guards coming after me for quadruple murder and with nonexistant stealth and diplomatic skills ninja-ing them or proving the one by one was out of the question - sounds like I was fucked, right?

Wrong. One of the targets was a smith (so presumably a strong, healthy guy), the rest more stealthy types (so presumably easier to kill) I went to the MG and made myself two spells one was 100pt max AoE momentary drain health on target, the other was on touch and had 100pt momentary drain health preceded by as much weakness to magicka as I could afford to cast with reasonable reliability - this was for the smith. Then I went to the club and rented a room, went to a room and closed the door to not be seen regardless of my stealth skills. Following that I cast the AoE spell at the door. AoE magic penetrates material obstacles and drain health kills instantaneously (if it kills that is), so all the occupants of the club (three targets plus bartender - but he was part of the organization too, so I see it as extra, not collateral damage) save for the smith at far end by the door who was outside the AoE suffered instant heart attack (I judged their health right) and expired silently without alerting the smith. Then I got out of my room, walked up to unaware smith, smiled and poked him in the chest with the boosted, on-touch version. No one ever knew what happened except for the quest giver to whom I proceeded unmolested by blissfully oblivious guards.

3. If you feel good underwater you can try escaping into a submerged passage or into the sea by casting waterwalk on your enemy. Then either get out or poke the guy in the balls with a sufficiently long stick (spear or staff) from below.

4. You can combine multiple summons (first) with minimum AoE on target buff of your choice to raise an army of buffed summons (summons appear then they get hit by the buff).

5. You can use the above idea to buff the summons with momentary immunity to some offensive effect, then use this effect larger AoE to either trigger the summons' AI (since they can be a bit dense and ignore enemies until they attack or are attacked by you), or, even better, to debuff the enemy in a manner that will prove most beneficial to your summon (so, for example, if your summons are physical weapon users like skeletons, Dremora or Golden Saints, you can debuff enemy with drain agility and watch your summons hammer the fuck into the ground).

6. You can dispel enemy buffs and summons, drain their willpower for a second, then either silence (to force them into melee) or paralyse them.

7. You can use some disabling effect to allow your direct damage effect to do damage over time rather than instantly without endangering you (over time effects are much more economical and easier to cast, but you'll need to come up with some sufficiently lightweight disabler to make it practical).

8. Travelling is made easier if you combine 1s 1pt levitation with 100pt 2s jump and 2s of as much feather, fortify strength and fortify speed as you can fit into a spell while being still able to cast it at least twice (you'll need to cast it once again for aerobraking if you don't like cratering).

9. Always make yourself an escort suite of spells consisting of levitation, waterwalk, fortify speed, water breathing and invisibility on other. Heal other can also be helpful.

10. I'm thinking about some sort of way to levitate someone and make them flee upwards (then crater when the spell runs out), but I'm still fuzzy on the details. :?
Maybe casting it on touch and weaving a summon into it (appears 6ft in front of the caster, which should be behind the target's back) would help directing enemy flight instinct?


Git gud n'wah.

Any race can be effective mage with Atronach or Apprentice...

Fake news. Sooner or later you will hit a brick wall with spellmaking because custom spells have lower chance to cast + higher costs than premade spells with the same effects. Git gud indeed.
Mad cuz bad.
 

DraQ

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Moar:
If judged by economy alone, making your own spells is useless because they have doubled casting cost. Fortunately the economy is the least important factor provided you have enough magicka to actually cast the spell. More important is that the spell actually does what you want it to do, and sometimes this is only achieved by a combination of effects.

Some examples of interesting combinations:

Surefire paralysis:
drain willpower 100, 1s
paralysis _s.

Knockout:
weakness to magicka 100pt, 1s
drain willpower, strength, agility, endurance 50pt
damage fatigue
drain fatigue

Coma (I'm not the author of this one):
fortify fatigue (must last longer than any of the other effects)
damage willpower, strength, agility, endurance
 

Shadenuat

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Sooner or later you will hit a brick wall with spellmaking because custom spells have lower chance to cast
You need to raise your Willpower, and Luck.

found my old pictur from an ancient playthrough with Galsiah's leveling mod

83297815.jpg


Absorb Health the safest (by virtue of also healing) and most consistently useful damage effect.

True, but I think it has been changed in the MCP at some point?
that would make killing alma + all hands inconvenient i'll admit
 
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MWaser

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Also, while enchant skill won't allow you to make artifact grade stuff without serious mechanics abuse, it can allow you to make some very useful trinkets even at level one if taken as major. For example very effective weapons for hybrids or as backup, weak restore everything amulet to counter those bonewalkers, etc.
It's a shame for pure mage, really. Because enchanting a weakness to element + elemental damage in one effect can create some busted weapons when put on daedric equipment or the ebony scimitar (which I think has the highest enchant value of any weapon)
 

DraQ

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Also, while enchant skill won't allow you to make artifact grade stuff without serious mechanics abuse, it can allow you to make some very useful trinkets even at level one if taken as major. For example very effective weapons for hybrids or as backup, weak restore everything amulet to counter those bonewalkers, etc.
It's a shame for pure mage, really. Because enchanting a weakness to element + elemental damage in one effect can create some busted weapons when put on daedric equipment or the ebony scimitar (which I think has the highest enchant value of any weapon)
The best weapon related things you can enchant, by yourself, early are:
  • Light, cheap (preferably chitin) weapon with then same type of bound weapon on strike (then you can forgo upgrades up until daedric artifacts).
  • Big hammer with drain agility (you knock them down, they get up, you knock them down...)
 

hell bovine

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The best fun with magic is outside of combat anyway. I remember experimenting with fortify spells, only to find out you can talk to ash slaves and such (actually by accident, clicked to attack, but it turned out with high personality they don't go hostile). Quite creepy conversations they have.

There was also this one player who stole the Heart of Lorkhan. Apparently it's coded as a creature, so you can control it with command.
 

Shadenuat

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Well Morrowind allows it but just in a more systemic way. Sure you don't have exact save or die spells, but creatures have vulnerabilities, so you can banish undead by combining particular type of damage, add turn undead effect which makes them flee and add AoE radius to it.
 

Gregz

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Well Morrowind allows it but just in a more systemic way. Sure you don't have exact save or die spells, but creatures have vulnerabilities, so you can banish undead by combining particular type of damage, add turn undead effect which makes them flee and add AoE radius to it.

Could you .zip all of the mod files in your working mage installation and post a download link?
 

Shadenuat

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Don't have it installed atm. But I never used that many aside from fiddling with grafix. Galsiah's Character development, some rebalanced Economy and weakened Alchemy, Rise of House Telvanni and some megapatch, smarter/realisic fauna (less cliff racers and monsters not berzerkering on u)... I think that is it.
 

DraQ

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You only really need WGI or something like that (well, not *really*, but broken spell costs render many interesting effects non-viable).
I also recommend some sort of player made potion value nullifier.

Avoid BTB like a plague, it kills mage gameplay.
 

Shadowfang

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I am level 5 and things are going smoothly now thanks to many of your tips. The biggest change I had to make was to star using Mark and Recall extensively.

Usually I would mark an interior that would serve as my base where I would store my belongings. I used to pick remote locations for this but I had to quit and find another house in an easy to get location and use mark every time I am in a dungeon and need mana so I can recall back to it after refilling at the nearest imperial cult altar for 0gp.

I feel like I am exploiting the game which I guess will always happen no matter what class I play. I expected to restore my magicka with potions but they start to become rare and some ingredients like frost salts or daedra hearts aren't very common either.
 

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