Morrowind nostalgia thread/TES Argonia

[Jarold]

Anybody know any good mods for this game? I don't want any overhaul mods, I want to keep it the same with general improvements. So, any out there?

[Angantyr]

Many people like to use some of the community patches, but I've honestly never had any problems without them.

Only mod I'm using right now is an armor mod for my Redoran warrior-monk character.

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[SeQuel]

Zzz

Downloaded it on steam and got the Graphics/Sound Overhaul mod and tried playing. Running speed is insanely low, shits pretty rough. I never know if my spear is in range of a enemy or just missing and whenever I crash (due to minimizing the game) I get a audio loop bug and am forced to restart my computer.

[Taser]

That's one of the things that blows my mind going from morrowind to oblivion/skyrim.

Less variety of weapons (let alone spells). You had spears in morrowind but no spears in oblivion or skyrim. That's crazy.

[Angantyr]

Zzz

Downloaded it on steam and got the Graphics/Sound Overhaul mod and tried playing. Running speed is insanely low, shits pretty rough. I never know if my spear is in range of a enemy or just missing and whenever I crash (due to minimizing the game) I get a audio loop bug and am forced to restart my computer.

Take athletics as major skill and train it and the speed attribute, you'll have insane running speeds as it gets higher (swimming is the fastest way to train this besides trainers). Also bear in mind that running speed is tied to armor choice and how much gear you're carrying (even if not overburdened, it's tied to proportion between carried weight and maximum carry weight), another reason why I prefer light armor (remember Unarmored is also a skill in Morrowind, and quite efficient, my current character has higher armor rating with just clothing than with most mundane armors).

I usually start my new characters by finding the Boots of Blinding Speed (very easy to get a hold of), make a resist magic spell (eventually combined with the Cuirass of the Saviour's Hide which gives 60% spell res (also incredibly easy to get a hold of and the best light armor chest piece throughout the entire game) and you'll be faster than you've probably been in any game you've played (while not suffering from the blindness curse on the boots).

As for hitting enemies, it's tied to your Agility attribute, so get that up as fast as possible (I recommend focusing on it at character creation). It's supposed to represent enemies and yourself doing dodge moves. I usually don't leave Balmora before I've made enough gold to pay trainers to train me in Agility-bound skills getting it beyond the threshold where I'll hit anything. It's a classic new player grievance but it actually doesn't need to get very high before you start connecting most of your attacks. Plenty of trainers around Balmora btw.

It doesn't matter which skills you tag as major and minor, you can max them all, but a good advice for efficient levelling is taking the ones that will make your early game easier (such as athletics, acrobatics, main weapon and main armor type), and to be sure to have all the attributes (strength, endurance, personality, will, intelligence etc) covered.

If you're not afraid of a bit of crafting and breaking the game's economy early on, you can also take Alchemy and Mercantile, it may be a good way for new players to buy the skills they want from trainers before heading out and exploring the world (can be a bit boring though unless you think it's fun to play a city merchant type character for a while). With Mercantile you can sell items for more than you give for them, and already in Balmora you can earn gold on alchemical ingredients which you can then make potions of and earn as much gold as you want. This is not necessary at all though, if you build your character decently you can go on adventure instantly, good places to start for quests is the various guilds and factions in Balmora.

One of the community patches should fix your CTD on exit problem, think it's the 'code patch'.

[SeQuel]

Take athletics as major skill and train it and the speed attribute, you'll have insane running speeds as it gets higher (swimming is the fastest way to train this besides trainers). Also bear in mind that running speed is tied to armor choice and how much gear you're carrying (even if not overburdened, it's tied to proportion between carried weight and maximum carry weight), another reason why I prefer light armor (remember Unarmored is also a skill in Morrowind, and quite efficient, my current character has higher armor rating with just clothing than with most mundane armors).

I usually start my new characters by finding the Boots of Blinding Speed (very easy to get a hold of), make a resist magic spell (eventually combined with the Cuirass of the Saviour's Hide which gives 60% spell res (also incredibly easy to get a hold of and the best light armor chest piece throughout the entire game) and you'll be faster than you've probably been in any game you've played (while not suffering from the blindness curse on the boots).

As for hitting enemies, it's tied to your Agility attribute, so get that up as fast as possible (I recommend focusing on it at character creation). It's supposed to represent enemies and yourself doing dodge moves. I usually don't leave Balmora before I've made enough gold to pay trainers to train me in Agility-bound skills getting it beyond the threshold where I'll hit anything. It's a classic new player grievance but it actually doesn't need to get very high before you start connecting most of your attacks. Plenty of trainers around Balmora btw.

It doesn't matter which skills you tag as major and minor, you can max them all, but a good advice for efficient levelling is taking the ones that will make your early game easier (such as athletics, acrobatics, main weapon and main armor type), and to be sure to have all the attributes (strength, endurance, personality, will, intelligence etc) covered.

If you're not afraid of a bit of crafting and breaking the game's economy early on, you can also take Alchemy and Mercantile, it may be a good way for new players to buy the skills they want from trainers before heading out and exploring the world (can be a bit boring though unless you think it's fun to play a city merchant type character for a while). With Mercantile you can sell items for more than you give for them, and already in Balmora you can earn gold on alchemical ingredients which you can then make potions of and earn as much gold as you want. This is not necessary at all though, if you build your character decently you can go on adventure instantly, good places to start for quests is the various guilds and factions in Balmora.

One of the community patches should fix your CTD on exit problem, think it's the 'code patch'.

Could you explain to me a bit more in detail how trainers work and where you get the gold for them?

How do I level my Main attributes? Maybe I should re-do my character with speed in mind but I also don't know where to get these boots/chest you speak of from or even how to create spells lol.

The mod I had came with Code mod within it. I just updated my sound card drivers though so maybe that fixed em.

[Voncrow]

There are multiple ways to gain money, but the simplest is dungeon running and selling your loot to the nearest shop  keep that can take it. Although some loot is worth more than any shop keep will have so you'll have to game the system. Any Shop Keeper max gold will be restored in 24 hours. So what you do is sell max gold, wait 24 hours, sell max again. After you have enough items in the shop keepers inventory, you can sell the high price item and buy enough stuff until you actually get the max profit. Then you slowly sell all the other stuff back. The easiest way to gain money even though it's kind of gamy is to steal from the Vivec House Vaults. Each great house has some vaults in Vivec full of ridiculously good gear that you can sell. The first Redoran Vault is amazing easy to access too since you can get it by committing petty thievery. Which means you can steal the key, run out of the house, drop it and talk to the nearest guard to get rid of your bounty and then pick up again without any penalty. The Vaults often have an ordinator in them, but you can wait an hour at a time and eventually the shifts will change when none are in there. When this happens the doors won't be opened and you can freely steal from the vault without getting caught.

Trainers can be find just about anywhere, the best place to look for them is the guilds though, although they often require membership for low rank trainers and higher rank for the better ones. Great Houses and taverns often have trainers as well and it's just a matter of looking around for it. Spell Creation is similar to trainers except instead of any place, just think magic users. You can find spell makers in all Mage Guilds and Telvanni towns. In most Tribunal Temples and Imperial Shrines. There are other select places you find them, but it's easier just to go to the local guild. Don't need to redo your character, because by really you can easily max all attributes by yourself anyway.

The best way to level attributes is to train non primary skills with trainers. That is because attribute increase is affect by the number of skills you level under the attribute. I believe I found that increasing any skill 10 times will give the related attribute the +5 max when you level up. Obviously with the max rank being 100, doing this becomes inefficient at a point with a single skill. Luckily each attribute has plenty of skills to level. The point of doing this with non primary skills is because. Once you level up, all attribute bonus don't apply. So say you increase armorer a strength related class skill 20 times. On the first level up you'll get +5 to str if you choose it, but on the second level you won't because the increase only applies to the first level up. So if you are trying to not waste points, you can measure this and use it to level all your attributes.

Lastly the boots he's talking about are likely the boots of blinding speed. These boots give you 300 speed increase (the attribute) and make your character 100% blind when worn. Fortunately you can simply cast a spell of 100% magic resist for 1-2 seconds by making a custom spell and then put them on which reduces the blindness. (Yet doesn't completely negate it for some reason. I usually wear a ring that gives me night eye because of this) These boots are arguably the best item in the game if you can get a way around the blindness, moving at super speeds is awful nice.

[SeQuel]

Alright so if I'm going for base attributes I train non-primary/secondary skills then level up?

I remade my character and playing in Windowed mode so my game doesn't crash anymore.

[Voncrow]

Alright so if I'm going for base attributes I train non-primary/secondary skills then level up?

I remade my character and playing in Windowed mode so my game doesn't crash anymore.

That is the best way to level attributes. Remember of course leveling your class skills also count towards this bonus. So you can level 10 in class skills and then 20 non class skills to get the +5 in the three available picks. Of course attribute leveling isn't anymore important than skill leveling or equipment improvement. So to make a good character make sure to balance this out. After all great attributes are nice and all, but it's also good to have decent in other stuff. This is especially relevant as starting out is about the only time I'm strapped on gold. Money is cheap in Morrowind and easy to gain after level 20. I usually just focus on leveling my primary skills, attribute and getting decent equipment at the beginning.

Also might as well tell you about the starting area. First off give the magic Ring to Fargoth, he's friend with Arille the local trader and he will get you better prices. Next you to the lighthouse, there should be a stump next to the boardwalk with 25 gold and a silver cup in it, and then in the swamp pool next to it is a magic axe if you jump from the rocks next to the lighthouse. Following this is some guy on the road north of town will fall from the sky with good clothes a magic sword and 3 high priced scrolls you can sell.

[Umbra]

I always make the mistake of downloading too many mods, not even the mod organizer can handle it 

[Angantyr]

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Level

Be careful not to ruin your own fun of levelling organically, though. Most main game enemies aren't very tough, but if you like that sort of stuff it's a great game to powergame in as there's really few limits to how powerful you can get, including crafting items infused with the souls of gods.

Besides the Vivec Vaults voncrow mentioned Ghostgate is also a good place to steal for a low level, which among other things has glass armors just laying on display.

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The Daedric artifact I talked about (60% spell res and highest light armor rating in game) can be found in the Telvanni settlement of Tel Fyr on the east coast, only need to open a locked closet and levitation to get there. To get the Boots of Blinding Speed talk to an NPC called Pemenie on the road northwest of Caldera. I would also advice caution against using these too much as they change the game experience considerably, but they are great for long distance travel.

As for travelling around, besides running and using boats and Silt striders portals in the Mage Guild can be used to great advantage, they go to most of the major settlements. Otherwise, craft some spells or enchantments for jumping very high to traverse mountains, some levitation, and use the recall and mark spells, preferably in your home. I recommend putting a little '1' in the beginning of the name of your custom spells, it puts them at the top of your spellbook, like I've done in the pictures I posted above.
You can take over any home you want, and just throw stuff on the ground (containers cannot contain unlimited stuff but things won't clip through the ground either like in later TES games), or find a permament corpse to store on (contrary to containers these can actually hold unlimited stuff), there's a house with one such in Balmora. From the treasury of my old Telvanni mage who took over Neloth's tower in Sadrith Mora:

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You can also do quests for Thieves Guild, Fighters Guild, Mage Guild, the Imperial Cult, the Morag Tong and the Temple, but be mindful that you can only work for one of the Great Houses, so you have to choose (I'd recommend the Telvanni wizard-lords for a first playthrough). I also think playing a Dunmer gives the best experience in regards to the main story.

@voncrow, you can completely nullify the blindness effect of the Boots of Blinding Speed if you have 100% spell res.

[Kafein]

Wow stop it, I want to play Morrowind now.

[Leshma]

Go learn some engineering, Kafein. You're our only hope against hordes of unwashed geniuses emerging from ze Gang.

Train athletics? Yeah, proper rp'er would find a teacher and pay him. Proper Russian tho, he'll find a wall, make sure he's going forward (isn't it same like warband, with t?) and go afk...

Edit: Also there's a way to reach level 200 or maybe even 1000 in abilities and skills. Unless they patched it since I played TESIII last time. It's an exploit. When that Telvanni dude infuse you with God powers or something, you can repeat that forever. Game has a switch to deal with that issue and will gradually over time lower your skills to max acceptable levels (100 points). This can break the save!

Similar thing can be done in Deus Ex but it will definitely break the game unless you calculate how many XP you'll earn until you finish the game and buff yourself so combined it comes to max. If it exceeds maximum levels, game will break and save g ame won't be usable anymore. These are just exploits, not trainers or external cheats.

[Xant]

Another great thing about Morrowind is that you can find really cool gear.

I mean, wow, just the fact that's a cool thing shows how much RPGs have changed. It should be a given in every RPG, but instead every modern game has level limitations and carefully crafted areas where you'll only ever stumble across items that are level-appropriate, if not level-restricted.

Morrowind just feels like a real fantasy world, oxymoron as that may be. Modern RPGs feel like games.

[Kafein]

Well that's part of the design that was changed in a completely intentional way. The people who put unbalanced loot in easily reachable places in Morrowind did it with little concern for balance and a lot of concern for the coherency and richness of the world they were building. What was important wasn't the specific strength of the item when used by the player but rather that something truly powerful existed in the world. In modern RPGs, balance is not paramount but it is way more important than world design. I also think it's a terrible development, as nobody should give a shit about balance in a RPG with weak gameplay (and yes, Skyrim's gameplay is weak).