Morrowind: 2010 Edition... I mean, 2011!

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While I don't have my desktop and running yet, I reinstalled Morrowind on my laptop yesterday. As I get back into it, I'll link here to mods and mod lists and such.

I'll start off by linking to Morrowind 2009 which just had all of the broken links fixed this month, so that's a good starting point.

After that, Morrowind Mythic Mods has several lists and intros to modding Morrowind, although I don't know how up-to-date the links are.

For newbies to Morrowind, I'll note Gluby's Guide to a Modded Morrowind, which while incomplete, is also a good place to start in addition to Morrowind 2009.

If I reference a mod, patch, or anything else without explaining it, it will be because it's one of the mods or patches that the above newbie guides reference and/or discuss that are considered essential for any game, even if you're not running any other mods.

Of course, if you have any questions about anything, feel free to ask.

And finally, the reason I created this thread: Shelter from Magnus' Blaze, a tech demo for real-time shadows.

While just a tech demo, this is still impressive.

EDIT: I'd be remiss to post this without linking to Morrowind on Steam.

The Morrowind community amazes me.

(I do wish, though, that I could get Distant Land to work on my current rig. MGE works flawlessly otherwise, just not that one feature.)

I will not start playing the Morrowind mod game again.
I will not start playing the Morrowind mod game again.
I will not start playing the Morrowind mod game again.

Now I want to install it all over again. Even though I know I probably will only play it for a night or two after all the trouble. But it sure is tempting.

Dont worry, completing Morrowind takes only 4m 19s, which is way shorter than the 15m something run I saw a few years ago.

I love this game so hard.

I ruined Morrowind for myself. I got frustrated with it so I started taking lots of buff potions but eventually that just became a way to make the game arbitrarily easy since you essentially get god mode and 1-shot everything.

Tagging this thread, since I'll be going back to Morrowind again after I finish my current run in Oblivion.

kyrieee wrote:

I ruined Morrowind for myself. I got frustrated with it so I started taking lots of buff potions but eventually that just became a way to make the game arbitrarily easy since you essentially get god mode and 1-shot everything.

Check out the Morrowind Patch Project and the Morrowind Code Patch.

MyBrainHz wrote:

Tagging this thread, since I'll be going back to Morrowind again after I finish my current run in Oblivion.

Oblivion? Bad Brainz, bad! Don't pee on the carpet!

A deductive argument:

1. I have spend more time playing Morrowind than I have playing TF2.
2. I have spent over 300 hours playing TF2.
3. Therefore, I probably shouldn't look at this thread.

...too late!

I've had the GOTY edition of morrowind for Xbox for like 2 years now. I really should give it a go. Subbed.

Well, I asked Goodjer about it and he said Morrowind is "teh suck" so...

Scratched wrote:

Dont worry, completing Morrowind takes only 4m 19s, which is way shorter than the 15m something run I saw a few years ago.

How many zeroes do you have to add on to that number to get the time it takes to install the game and mods?!

Oh for a single big zip file to just extract into a fresh install of Morrowind. Ditto for Oblivion mods.

Minarchist wrote:

Oblivion? Bad Brainz, bad! Don't pee on the carpet!

Oh c'mon , it's not terrible. Besides, I'm playing with Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul this time.

But yeah, Morrowind is much more immersive. I'm running through both again for the first time since I picked them up in the Steam sale. Yay for no physical disks anymore!

Radical Ans wrote:

I've had the GOTY edition of morrowind for Xbox for like 2 years now. I really should give it a go. Subbed.

I played the crap out of that game, bugs and all. I never played it on the PC. Oblivion was nowhere as engaging, although I loved it too. Morrowind's world is so alluring, not cliched fantasy at all.

Tagged. Bought this on steam when it first went on sale there, but haven't really played it. I'll have to look into these.

Morrowind was a better game than Oblivion in many ways. Any game where the "fast travel system" is a gigantic bug with a hollowed out carapace gets my vote. The "bonemold" armor was both disgusting and awesome-looking. You could also make a ring that CONSTANTLY SHOT FIREBALLS when you equipped it, which was hilarious and fun but seriously cheesed off the local guards.

In short, it was a freaking original setting that wasn't just "Tolkien except also there are furries."

Unfortunately, the characters looked even worse than in Oblivion and the game ran like hell even on power-houses of the day. But hey, compared to Daggerfall?

IMAGE(http://www.oldgames.sk/images/oldgames/rpg/TES.Daggerfall/daggerfall-015.png)

(Look out! A bat!)

Of course Daggerfall had some redeeming qualities too, despite being pre-Morrowind BethSoft and therefore unplayably glitchy at release. You could buy houses and a boat (which you could teleport to at any time, and which actually existed on the game map so you could then swim to the nearest continent if you liked), become a werewolf (or wereboar, if that's more your style), or a vampire. You could even take out a huge loan in one country and then jump the border and never look back. Also: boobs EVERYWHERE. Like seriously, the game was made out of naked boobs. Your character didn't wear underwear, dress code for temple nuns was limited to "nothing," and even some of the monsters were happy to see you.

They don't make games like they used to, my friends.

I have tried Morrowind once after playing Oblivion... and couldn't adjust to that interface anymore.
But, really cool that there is still an active community that comes up with great things

LobsterMobster wrote:

Morrowind was a better game than Oblivion in many ways. Any game where the "fast travel system" is a gigantic bug with a hollowed out carapace gets my vote. The "bonemold" armor was both disgusting and awesome-looking. You could also make a ring that CONSTANTLY SHOT FIREBALLS when you equipped it, which was hilarious and fun but seriously cheesed off the local guards.

I spent so much time trading with creeper to afford the constant effect enchants.

One other thing about the fast travel system was that it used routes, you couldn't simply go to any discovered point of interest closest to your next objective (which wasn't marked on your map IIRC), you could go to a reasonably close town and had to walk the rest of the way. I think many games suffer from taking the gameplay away from the player in the name of convenience in how oblivion does it, Morrorwind as I remember it was a good balance between not having to walk everywhere and needing to travel by yourself, and it rewarded people who found how to work all the teleports.

Scratched wrote:
LobsterMobster wrote:

Morrowind was a better game than Oblivion in many ways. Any game where the "fast travel system" is a gigantic bug with a hollowed out carapace gets my vote. The "bonemold" armor was both disgusting and awesome-looking. You could also make a ring that CONSTANTLY SHOT FIREBALLS when you equipped it, which was hilarious and fun but seriously cheesed off the local guards.

I spent so much time trading with creeper to afford the constant effect enchants.

One other thing about the fast travel system was that it used routes, you couldn't simply go to any discovered point of interest closest to your next objective (which wasn't marked on your map IIRC), you could go to a reasonably close town and had to walk the rest of the way. I think many games suffer from taking the gameplay away from the player in the name of convenience in how oblivion does it, Morrorwind as I remember it was a good balance between not having to walk everywhere and needing to travel by yourself, and it rewarded people who found how to work all the teleports.

I will admit that beginning with my...fourth? I think fourth playthrough, I started using the console to quick-travel to locations that I'd already been to. It was nice.

Morrowind is easily in my top 3 games of all time; I've played through it at least three or four times plus bounced around it probably a dozen more. The thing I love about it is that it is an exploration game done right. For someone who loves exploring in games (like I do) the sheer amount of detail scattered across the world (most of which you would never find if you simply followed the main plot) fits directly with my play style. I'm sure that there are still places in that game I have never seen.

And yeah, you can get overpowered in the game but considering that at the end of the main plot you have to essentially kill a god, is that really unexpected?

Minarchist wrote:

I will admit that beginning with my...fourth? I think fourth playthrough, I started using the console to quick-travel to locations that I'd already been to. It was nice. :-)

I don't understand that philosophy but isn't it awesome that you have the option to do that? If you're interested there's even mods that attempt to be lore-appropriate and add quests or quest lines rewarding you with a ring or a scroll that lets you travel to practically all named locations.

Morrowind Comes Alive v6.0 (forum thread w/ readme) is here. There's some bugs but Neo says he's planning on patching it very soon here. This is one of my favorite mods for adding more NPCs to Morrowind without breaking anything (at least with the collection of mods I use) while still adding a huge amount of visual variety. The one thing I don't really like about this mod is that all NPCs it adds have generic names (eg Priest, Knight, etc.)

There is an add-on for an older version of MCA that gives all NPCs added lore-appropriate randomized names, which I loved, but it doesn't work with 6.0 without some work. If you don't mind running an older version of MCA, you can get MCA v5.2 Lore Correct Names. I'm not sure what the difference is between that mod and MCA Names 5.2 also listed on that page, but MCA LCN is the one I've used. (MCA v5.2 d/l)

Unrelated, but one neat little feature of the Morrowind Patch Project is that it enables NPCs to use many greetings, taunts, and other voiceovers that were recorded but for one reason or another, never heard in the vanilla games. NPCs will now address you by name or faction rank, among other things.

EDIT: Regarding the Morrowind Patch Project, a few posts down in that thread are some complimentary mods that address things outside the scope of the MPP but are still bug fixes of a sort.

EDIT2: Added the following to the OP:

If I reference a mod, patch, or anything else without explaining it, it will be because it's one of the mods or patches that the above newbie guides reference and/or discuss that are considered essential for any game, even if you're not running any other mods.

Of course, if you have any questions about anything, feel free to ask. :)

One of my best gaming memories came from playing Morrowind, and it was totally EMERGENT! :O

While traveling through the wastelands, my character contracted that Blight disease thing, the plague that was spreading across the land spreading pain and plot points. With no way to cure it in the field and no way to fast-travel while sick, my poor character had to stumble through the blinding dust storms and desolated wasteland, looking for civilization. It was a long walk.

My favourite part about Morrowind was always putting ridiculous enchantments on clothing and then stacking as many articles of clothing as possible, e.g. robe + skirt + pants. Running around enchanted with super-jump + slowfall or permanent invisibility was pretty entertaining, and it was possible to put enough health regen on your clothes that you could walk around in broad daylight as a Vampire and actually gain health.

That mudcrab vendor was pretty great too.

muttonchop wrote:

My favourite part about Morrowind was always putting ridiculous enchantments on clothing and then stacking as many articles of clothing as possible, e.g. robe + skirt + pants. Running around enchanted with super-jump + slowfall or permanent invisibility was pretty entertaining, and it was possible to put enough health regen on your clothes that you could walk around in broad daylight as a Vampire and actually gain health.

That mudcrab vendor was pretty great too.

Heh. I remember running around the Grazelands with Azura's Star and Sunder and just whacking Golden Saints left and right to create crazy enchantments.

I think my favorite part is that the lore just works. It isn't your typical cookie-cutter Tolkien-esque fantasy setting. It's deep and very thought-out. It stands alone in modern Bethesda games of having a plot that works with their style of gameplay — i.e., you can take as long as you like setting up the story because it's a slow burn, building-up-over-centuries-and-not-done-yet sort of plot. Oblivion was horrible in this regard, opening a bunch of portals directly to hell and then saying, "It's okay, you don't need to worry about them just yet. Go gather calipers and tongs for some poor bastard in Crucible. We'll be here, not attacking with our overwhelming forces until you reach a certain plot point. No biggie." Fallout, not much better. "Hey, go find Dad! Oh, you're looking for nuka-colas. That's cool too." And alone among Bethesda games, it actually has a legitimate plot reason for you becoming insanely powerful (and as mentioned above, good incentive for doing so).

I also really enjoyed taking on Almalexia's Hands in Tribunal. Even with basically max stats, Sunder, and the other Hand's armor (the crazy one you have to fight) that I'd further enchanted, those guys hit hard. I think I had to recall out of there 3-4 times during the fight just to repair my armor, which had completely disintegrated.

Check out the readme for the Morrowind Code Patch. At the time of this post the current version is 1.8 and there's a lot of good stuff it does.

Tagging this thread, because someday (probably when my daughter is a teenager, at this rate) I'll have time to play Morrowind properly.

Crespin as always, you are full of awesome Morrowind mod knowledge. What I'd really dig (and wish many other older games had), was a well-tested and stable-ish mod-pack release that rolls together the best stuff into an Awesome Edition that I can just play. I do often love playing the game-mod metagame, but I just don't have the time that I used to for it. That would also be pretty great for my wife, who's been itching to play Morrowind forever but has zero interest in playing the mod-the-game game.

Anytime goodjer-nation brings Morrowind to the table my productivity takes a dive as I begin watching youtube videos and playing the music in the background. You guys are Vivec-evil.

LobsterMobster wrote:

Of course Daggerfall had some redeeming qualities too, despite being pre-Morrowind BethSoft and therefore unplayably glitchy at release. You could . . . become a werewolf (or wereboar, if that's more your style), or a vampire.

You can become a werewolf in the Morrowind expansion Bloodmoon, and a vampire in the Morrowind expansion Tribunal. Check and mate, Daggerfall!

feeank wrote:

Anytime goodjer-nation brings Morrowind to the table my productivity takes a dive as I begin watching youtube videos and playing the music in the background. You guys are Vivec-evil.

Morrowind is the Deus Ex of old video games.

Gravey wrote:
LobsterMobster wrote:

Of course Daggerfall had some redeeming qualities too, despite being pre-Morrowind BethSoft and therefore unplayably glitchy at release. You could . . . become a werewolf (or wereboar, if that's more your style), or a vampire.

You can become a werewolf in the Morrowind expansion Bloodmoon, and a vampire in the Morrowind expansion Tribunal. Check and mate, Daggerfall!

I can't remember for sure, but I think you could even become both at the same time.

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