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Yet Another Morrowind Thread

SimTrY

Literate
Joined
May 19, 2023
Messages
41
Of Tamriel Rebuilt ? It is good, in line with the vanilla game in terms of pretty much everything and even better in some areas, particularly some exteriors (Boethian Mountains and Lan Orethan forest for instance). It is also huge. In terms of quests content, most people would recommend starting in Old Ebonheart and while I haven't really touched this part myself I'd agree, even if you do it with an already high-ish level character.
That said I don't think it is for everyone (myself included) but it is definitely a must-try mod.

As for level-scaling in Morrowind....it is there, but it's not as noticeable as in, say, Oblivion. You might have noticed though, that you tend to encounter more Dremora Lords with daedric weapons and Golden Saints now that at the start. But at the same time you still get low level creatures like scamps and clannfears so the level-scaling doesn't feel weird in the end.
Similarly, containers in smugglers' hideouts tend to have more grand soul gems, dwemer gear and scrolls of Ekash Lock Splitter around level 20 than they do at level 5.
We have to distinguish between level scaling and levelled lists. Level scaling (I would say it's generally agreed) is when the enemies in the world scale to your level. This doesn't mean new enemies spawning, necessarily, but that NPCs for instance have their own health, skills, equipment etc. increase alongside the player. This is the cardinal sin of Oblivion, leading to the Bandits in Glass armour meme, as well as Ogres that take 40 hits to kill as you progress past Level 20. Level scaling is not present in Morrowind, since all of the NPC and creature stats are entirely static. Levelled lists are present, and used extensively in Morrowind. They're also used even more in Oblivion, and much more aggressively. A quick break down, just so we all understand what's going on and how it actually works in Morrowind, using Oblivion as a point of reference and comparison:

Levelled lists in Morrowind: Overworld and dungeon spawns can be static, such as the Daedroth, two Dremora Lords and Golden Saint in Ibar-Dad. Those enemies are there at Level 1 or Level 25. Alternatively, spawns can be a Levelled Creature, represented by a Ninja Monkey in the Construction Set. The in_dae_all lists tell us which Daedra are supposed to spawn inside interior cells using them (such as Ibar-Dad). At Level 1, only Scamps can spawn. At Level 7, Flame Atronachs and Clannfear now have the ability to spawn. Extra spawns are added until this particular list caps out at Level 16, when Golden Saints and Winged Twilights spawn. Each additional spawn has an equal chance to spawn, meaning that at Level 7, there's a 33% chance for each enemy to spawn. At Level 16, you're looking at 9% for each type of enemy. Even at Level 50, Golden Saints and Scamps still have an equal chance to spawn. Weapon and Armour levelled lists work similarly. A Dremora uses the random_excellent_melee_weapon list, which means even at Level 1, it will spawn with a Dwarven weapon. Once you hit Level 14, a few Ebony weapons show up, and then through 15, 16, 17 and finally 18, you have all of the different Ebony and Daedric weapons fill the list. So you have an equal chance to find a Dremora Lord with a Dwarven Claymore or a Daedric Claymore, even at Level 50. If it feels like they spawn with a lot of high level gear, it's because the combined Ebony and Daedric weapons outnumber Dwarven weapons 2:1 on this list. All human-type NPCs have static gear, as far as I know. There are also lists like "random daedric weapon" that always spawn a Daedric weapon, even at Level 1.

Levelled lists in Oblivion: Probably 90% of the game is levelled lists. This includes NPCs in towns, so you'll find some of them running around in Ebony, Daedric and Glass at Level 20 which, tbh, is even goofier than the Bandits and Marauders. The number of enemies who actually have static gear is very short (Azani Blackheart and Umbra off the top of my head). The biggest difference, though, is actually that the vanilla levelled lists for both equipment and creatures, stop spawning something once it is 8 Levels below the player. This is why certain enemies entirely disappear from the game once the player becomes strong enough. A great example is the Boar, which starts spawning at Level 7 and will stop as soon as you hit Level 16, since it doesn't appear in any "nuisance" creature lists (like Mudcrabs, Rats, Wolves etc.) and doesn't have any static spawn points. Flame Atronachs suffer a similar fate. This is why, once the player hits Level 25+, they start to only see a few creatures from each enemy category and why mid tier equipment all but disappears from the world.

Levelled NPCs in Oblivion: This is where the true insanity lies. You get formulas for creature HP like 26*(lvl-3) which means that at Level 20, they'll have 442 HP, and at Level 30 they'll have 702 HP. Melee damage will be determined by a formula like 22*(lvl-3)/2. There's no cap on this and player damage and armour values do eventually cap out. Morrowind doesn't have anything like this, although Tribunal and Bloodmoon have their fair share of degenerate health sponge enemies with HP stats in the thousands, when the strongest vanilla enemies cap out at like 350-400.


Aside from rambling about the levelled list/scaling pedantry, I think that Tamriel Rebuilt is well worth playing for anybody who enjoys Morrowind, but is in no way "essential" to enhance the experience. It's for people who enjoy the world enough to basically LARP. I don't mean that in a negative way, but rather that they enable you to ignore main quest content because you now have two or three times as much Mages Guild content as the base game, meaning that it can easily fill up 30 hours and basically comprise an entire playthrough where the player reaches Level 20+ on their own. I actually made the mistake of doing Main Quest content on my last playthrough, and ended up outpacing TR content, not realising just how much of it there was and how good it was after the Ashes of Empire updated all of that old Firewatch and Helnim stuff. I'd normally say that for a Morrowind playthrough to feel complete, you need to do a faction + MQ or two faction questlines. That's usually enough to give you enough gear and enough levels to feel satisfied with the playthrough, and arrive at the point where you're too strong for anything to challenge you, which is the real endpoint. Using the Mages Guild as an example, again, Vvardenfell houses 33 quests according to the UESP. Tamriel Rebuilt now has 34 quests for this faction. Combine it with the various miscellaneous quests that you inevitably end up getting sidetracked with, and those almost comprise a game in their own right.

Not every faction is currently up to this level. Redoran hasn't been touched, and the Telvanni stuff is outdated and doesn't represent the current design philosophy. Other factions like the Imperial Legion and Cult are not expanded quite as much, which is too bad since their vanilla questlines are bad (IL) or too short (IC), but the extra content is still welcome. In the case of the Imperial Legion, the quest design is also a massive upgrade over the rushed product present in vanilla. The actual world design is arguably better too (prop density and placement, etc.) but there are mods such as BCOM and OAAB which bring the vanilla Vvardenfell up to par in that regard, and just about every enthusiast will have these installed unless they're a true vanilla purist.
Interesting information about the levelled lists in morrowind andd all the fuckery in oblivion lol. i just tried out TR, haven't done any of the new quests just taking in the enviroment at the moment and i have to agree with what you said. it feels vanila while still being a much higher quality. old ebonheart feels massive, and is massive. the new enviroments feel as though they shipped with the original.

regarding the BCOM and OAAB, i think im part of the vanilla purist camp lol. i mean yeah in comparison to the newer content they feel "outdated" but theres a certain charm and nostalgia they bring about after running quests in them for the 35+ hours i spent playing.
 

Funposter

Arcane
Joined
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Messages
1,779
Location
Australia
Well thanks for pretty much the definite answer about levelled lists/scaling.

As for TR, I don't think it is "essential" (no mod is essential to enjoy Morrowind). By "must-try mod" I meant that it is one of those things that pretty much everyone is going to install just to see that the fuss is all about. It does indeed provide an RP (or LARP) reason to avoid the MQ, because in vanilla it seems rather unlikely that your character can ignore the Blades' order, join a few factions and rise to some prominent position without getting the attention of ol' Caius.
To be fair, your ability to ignore the Main Quest isn't really from a character perspective but more gameplay. Even on characters where I intend to ignore it, I still usually just go to Caius to drop off the package and get the free gold + beginner goodies from Blades Trainers. It's just so easy, unlike later games where you're REALLY pushed towards the Main Quest throughout the massive intro sequences.
 

Funposter

Arcane
Joined
Oct 19, 2018
Messages
1,779
Location
Australia
Have you guys ever wanted to roleplay a feminist Nerevarine ? Yea me neither but now we can, thanks to talented modders. :negative:
It's kind of a dumb name, but there's no issue with the actual content. The mod description itself alludes to the fact that the Libertarian, Communist, etc. Nerevarine mods also exists. The modder is a total drama queen though and also a troon iirc.
 

Cryomancer

Arcane
Glory to Ukraine
Joined
Jul 11, 2019
Messages
14,825
Location
Frostfell
Any mod suggestion to make Telvanni even better? And a good vampire mod which allows me to talk as an vampire? The mods which I tried dint worked and broke some quests.
 

Funposter

Arcane
Joined
Oct 19, 2018
Messages
1,779
Location
Australia
Any mod suggestion to make Telvanni even better? And a good vampire mod which allows me to talk as an vampire? The mods which I tried dint worked and broke some quests.
Tamriel Rebuilt has some extra Telvanni content, but it's a bit lame and outdated. IIRC, a little bit of it was touched up in the Dominions of Dust release and they are planning to fix up even more in the next big update, at least to tide players over until the real Telvanni rework is released way down the track. OAAB, therefore, probably has the best Telvanni stuff that is in keeping with the "feel" of the vanilla game, along with the Tel Aruhn Chronicles plugin included with BCOM. Take your pick of Tel Uvirith overhauls or addons, since they're all pretty similar and player homes really only exist as convenient places to dump loot. Rise of House Telvanni is supposed to be a pretty bombastic mod, but it's one of those fanfiction-y, lore unfriendly mods that I tend to avoid, so I can't properly vouch for it.

For vampires, I did a playthrough with Vampiric Embrace or whatever it's called a few years ago and while I enjoyed it, it definitely broke some quests, including the finale to the Telvanni questline in TR. It's also very script-heavy due to being a pre-MWSE mod, which is an invitation for lots of game crashes. The idea of "embracing" followers is a lot of fun, but it's also a lot of dumb LARPing stuff that isn't really satisfying at the end of the day and interferes with you actually completing game content. I haven't played it, but the recent Devilish Vampire Overhaul has both MWSE and OpenMW versions and functions similarly to the vampirism in the later TES games. Maybe not ideal given the lore surrounding vampires in Morrowind, but looks to make them way more playable.
 

Cryomancer

Arcane
Glory to Ukraine
Joined
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Messages
14,825
Location
Frostfell
Thanks a lot. When I said about vampirism, my greatest problem with vampirism in Morrowind is that, even if you have over 100 personality, over 100 speechcraft, and uses spells to buff mobs dispostition, they don't even TALK to you. Did this Devilish vampire broke some quests for you? I honestly don't like OBlivion style vampires. IMO the best vampire in a TES game is from Daggerfall. It has heavy sun and holy places damage. But also allows you to talk with people and complete quests. In Oblivion, the sun damage is negligible, mainly if you have access to custom spells. You can easily make a very long restoration effect and even in later stages, walk in the sun.

8eu0SYE.png



Other question. After doing the corpus cure quest, what is the best way to lower my resist disease and be infected with vampirism?
 
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Funposter

Arcane
Joined
Oct 19, 2018
Messages
1,779
Location
Australia
Thanks a lot. When I said about vampirism, my greatest problem with vampirism in Morrowind is that, even if you have over 100 personality, over 100 speechcraft, and uses spells to buff mobs dispostition, they don't even TALK to you. Did this Devilish vampire broke some quests for you? I honestly don't like OBlivion style vampires. IMO the best vampire in a TES game is from Daggerfall. It has heavy sun and holy places damage. But also allows you to talk with people and complete quests. In Oblivion, the sun damage is negligible, mainly if you have access to custom spells. You can easily make a very long restoration effect and even in later stages, walk in the sun.
Like I said, I haven't used the Devilish overhaul personally, but my guess is that since it's relying more heavily on MWSE scripting that it's less likely to break things than older mods using the editor's in-built MWScript. The mod's description would indicate that it's more like Oblivion where you take more sun damage the less you feed, and suffer losses to the Personality stat. However, it would also seem that even at the highest level of Vampirism, you can still talk to NPCs if wearing a closed helmet. Download and try it for yourself. Would be interesting if it had an MCM menu that allowed you to change some of the variables.
 

Jarmaro

Liturgist
Joined
Dec 31, 2016
Messages
1,468
Location
Lair of Despair
Stumbled upon this custom music made for Morrowind, available as a mod adding to the game's music list. Thoughts? I don't think it quite fits Morrowind's composition, but it's better than I thought it'd be.
 

VerSacrum

Educated
Joined
Aug 19, 2023
Messages
264
Location
Switzerland
Any mod suggestion to make Telvanni even better? And a good vampire mod which allows me to talk as an vampire? The mods which I tried dint worked and broke some quests.
Uvirith's Legacy is pretty cool. Expands the Stronghold and allows you to give small missions to your mouth.
I found Rise of House Telvanni to be overkill and contradictory to Tamriel Rebuilt content, so best avoid if you care about that.
 

Akachi

Educated
Joined
Jul 16, 2020
Messages
142
Location
The First Gloom
Be warned that from what I remember, Uvirith's Legacy has some quest content of questionable quality, although it's been so long since I played it I can't recall much other than it mostly involving some NPCs it adds in quests that feel like the author's OCs. But the improvements to the tower itself are handy, it adds a lot of storage and you can get a treasury and library that are good if you like to collect stuff (the only real use for a player home in Morrowind), with some features like being able to automatically add one of each book to the library shelves. I believe you can ignore the questionable content (at least for the most part, don't remember) and just enjoy the tower improvements.

I liked Building Up Uvirith's Grave/Building Up Uvirith's Legacy pretty well out of popular Telvanni mods I remember, since it fits into the base game and unless I have repressed memories, it doesn't do anything crazy like most quest mods liked to do at least somewhere in some way. It lets you spend gold to build up a town around your tower and you get to choose what buildings to construct, but it's also what it says on the tin and doesn't have an epic questline to go with that or anything like that, so it may not be particularly useful or interesting if having a town around your tower isn't appealing to you by itself.

The only problem with it I had was that it was a pain to make it work with distant land with MGE/MGEXE since you had to have some modding experience and set up an object override list and regenerate it after you built anything if you didn't want it to pop in, which was the same problem Raven Rock from Bloodmoon had. Maybe modders fixed that since I played and it's automatic now or something though.

A lot of people recommend against Rise of House Telvanni and for a lot of good reasons, although I hear there's a newer fan version nowadays that improves some of the dumbest stuff in it by a little bit. But if you're bored and really want some more Telvanni quests, don't care if it contradicts anything in TR as the above poster said, and can enjoy the better parts of something rather flawed and amateur, it may be worth giving a try and playing through at least once. There were a few quests and areas in it I remember being kind of cool. Then again, my positivity toward it is probably in part coloured by how bad other quest mods I played at the time were, like even the dumbest parts of Rise of House Telvanni at least couldn't compare to one of the most praised quest mods of the time, The Illuminated Order, where the guild leader explains the epic plot twist at the end of the quest line of how he's this dimensionally travelling bloke from a place called the United Kingdom (that he of course tells you all about) who ended up in Tamriel.
 

Fargus

Arcane
Joined
Apr 2, 2012
Messages
2,589
Location
Mosqueow
I recommend LGNPC Tel Uvirith and LGNPC series in general because it breathes a lot of life into otherwise generic loiterers of Morrowind, adds new lore friendly quests too. LGNPC Tel Uvirith can be used alongside RotH and Uvirith Legacy, but i think some compatiblity patches are required. There are few versions of it, one had some content that the authors considered questionable (one of your dunmer subordinates in Tel Uvirith would whore herself to you for promotion lol) so they removed it in later versions.
 

Fargus

Arcane
Joined
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2,589
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Mosqueow
Last LGNPC update was something two years ago with Suran. But overall the most of the work in LGNPC was done for House Redoran.

There are offshoots like Less Generic Nerevarine, Bloodmoon and Tribunal on nexus too. But Tribunal one is pretty buggy.

PS. Unrelated. I like this mod for adding "apocalyptic" feeling the more you progress in main quest.
 

wwsd

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
Jun 16, 2011
Messages
7,680
Be warned that from what I remember, Uvirith's Legacy has some quest content of questionable quality, although it's been so long since I played it I can't recall much other than it mostly involving some NPCs it adds in quests that feel like the author's OCs. But the improvements to the tower itself are handy, it adds a lot of storage and you can get a treasury and library that are good if you like to collect stuff (the only real use for a player home in Morrowind), with some features like being able to automatically add one of each book to the library shelves. I believe you can ignore the questionable content (at least for the most part, don't remember) and just enjoy the tower improvements.

I liked Building Up Uvirith's Grave/Building Up Uvirith's Legacy pretty well out of popular Telvanni mods I remember, since it fits into the base game and unless I have repressed memories, it doesn't do anything crazy like most quest mods liked to do at least somewhere in some way. It lets you spend gold to build up a town around your tower and you get to choose what buildings to construct, but it's also what it says on the tin and doesn't have an epic questline to go with that or anything like that, so it may not be particularly useful or interesting if having a town around your tower isn't appealing to you by itself.

The only problem with it I had was that it was a pain to make it work with distant land with MGE/MGEXE since you had to have some modding experience and set up an object override list and regenerate it after you built anything if you didn't want it to pop in, which was the same problem Raven Rock from Bloodmoon had. Maybe modders fixed that since I played and it's automatic now or something though.

A lot of people recommend against Rise of House Telvanni and for a lot of good reasons, although I hear there's a newer fan version nowadays that improves some of the dumbest stuff in it by a little bit. But if you're bored and really want some more Telvanni quests, don't care if it contradicts anything in TR as the above poster said, and can enjoy the better parts of something rather flawed and amateur, it may be worth giving a try and playing through at least once. There were a few quests and areas in it I remember being kind of cool. Then again, my positivity toward it is probably in part coloured by how bad other quest mods I played at the time were, like even the dumbest parts of Rise of House Telvanni at least couldn't compare to one of the most praised quest mods of the time, The Illuminated Order, where the guild leader explains the epic plot twist at the end of the quest line of how he's this dimensionally travelling bloke from a place called the United Kingdom (that he of course tells you all about) who ended up in Tamriel.

In my next playthrough I will try the newest Rise of House Telvanni, to once and for all settle the question of whether it sufficiently removes the cringe stuff. So watch this space in about a year's time. :lol:

I must admit that if you look past the nonsense, even the previous version was a lot of fun as a post-game. It has so much content, you could go on for hours and hours. As far as post-game/archmaster content goes, I consider it as good as or better than LGNPC Redoran.
 

luj1

You're all shills
Vatnik
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Eastern block
regarding the BCOM and OAAB, i think im part of the vanilla purist camp lol. i mean yeah in comparison to the newer content they feel "outdated" but theres a certain charm and nostalgia they bring about after running quests in them for the 35+ hours i spent playing.

definitely get BCOM

BCOM is the best vanilla+ mod ever created
 

luj1

You're all shills
Vatnik
Joined
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Eastern block
I recommend LGNPC Tel Uvirith and LGNPC series in general

the problem is that LGNPC mods vary greatly in quality

very few of them are good, most are dogshit

and besides, a successor to LGNPC is being made, it will have dialogue choices like the mod I did for Morag Tong
 

wwsd

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
Jun 16, 2011
Messages
7,680
I recommend LGNPC Tel Uvirith and LGNPC series in general

the problem is that LGNPC mods vary greatly in quality

very few of them are good, most are dogshit

and besides, a successor to LGNPC is being made, it will have dialogue choices like the mod I did for Morag Tong

I wouldn't mind it if they used some of the better dialogue and quests from LGNPC, although I'm guessing the old team would not appreciate that.

I was actually surprised when Suran and Ebonheart came out a couple of years ago. The last mod before those was what, 7, 10 years before? They were like the OG of long development cycles before Tamriel Rebuilt became famous for that. Haven't had much time to play either yet, but the Ebonheart one was pretty good.
 

luj1

You're all shills
Vatnik
Joined
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Messages
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Eastern block
a successor to LGNPC is being made, it will have dialogue choices like the mod I did for Morag Tong

Whats the name of it?

And Morag Tong mod also.

The series is called Better Dialogue Choices. Enclavekiller1 is doing it, but only Seyda Neen is finished. Inspired by mine and Caeris' mod we did for Hlaalu.

https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/51133

The original proof of concept mod

https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/45208

Morag Tong one

https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/47041

Our mods for hlaalu/morag tong have skillchecks in dialogue (see pictures), BDC doesn't have them I think. But the idea generally was that Morrowind lacks dialogue choices. Ideally the whole game should be redone like this but its a huge piece of work

Morag Tong Polished also does a lot of other things, proud of that one cuz we really researched lore a lot and added stuff like bonuses for completing writs undetected (which was supposed to be there in vanilla) and added Gray Writs mentioned in game dialogue (like Larrius Varro's dirty quest)
 
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