Considering to blow the dust off Morrowind.

[GawainBS]

Since I never really finished Morrowind or its expansions, I'm planning to tackle it once more.
My biggest problem always has been that I got distracted by the various sidequests & factions, so that by the time I'm halfway through those, I've lost my intrest.
My character will be a Male Orc (or maybe Bretonian) with Medium Armour, Security Alteration, Mysticism, Speechcraft as majors and Alchemy, Illusion, Restoration, Spear and Smithing as secundaries. As for Starsigns, I'm doubting between The Mage & The Apprentice. The mods I'll use will be a Magicka-regen mod, and Sill's/Syph's Alchemy. (The one which makes healing & magicka restoration potions more frequent.)

• This time, I'll focus on three factions + The Mage's Guild, no more. Which ones do you suggest?
• Also, are there any decent Spears in the game? Is Medium Armour a decent choice, or does it pale compared to Heavy? Any other skill suggestions? (As for Enchanting, I'll just pay for it.)

Thanks in advance!

[Benk]

The spear of bitter mercy is my favourite spear. The spear of the hunter (bloodmoon) is probably better in stats, but I think the spear of b.m. looks better.
As for factions, personally I'd chose Mages' Guild, House Telvanni, Morag Tong and the East Empire Trading company (joinable in bloodmoon) because you get to build your own house with them.
As for medium armour, the Ebony Mail is medium, and that is one of my favourite cuirasses of the game.

[GawainBS]

Who are the Morag Tong again?

[galraen]

The Morag Tong is a joinable Assassin faction, they can be fpound by searching the lower reaches of the Vivec Foreign quarter. Look for a trapdoor.

Very strange choice of major and minor skills; you include Alchemy, definitely a no-no in my book, and exclude destruction, which for a mage character is weird.

[GawainBS]

I have an aversion for Assassin-types in RPGs, probably due to some players in my group, so no Morag Thong.

I find Destruction next to useless: no auto-targeting with spells, mana cost, low damage and things die quicker with some weaponwhacking. Moreover, the character I have in mind wouldn't cast offensive spells.

Alchemy kind of feels like a necessity from before the time I discovered mana-regen mods. I can be convinced to drop it. (In favour for Mercantile?)

[lifeishell91]

The Morag Tong are actually in the basement of the Arena.

Those are strange skills for an orc, and using a spear with one?

Mana-regen mods are a must have, I can't play without them. But I would keep Alchemy nonetheless, mercantile as a skill is useless anyway; it's far more fun to collect ingredients and make potions than to make a few extra coins each time you trade. It feels like a much more authentic role-playing experience, if that's what you're going for.

[GawainBS]

It will be either Orc or Bretonian. I have a thing for spears/poleweapons, hence the reason I take it.

[galraen]

Unless you're using the unnoficial patch Mercantile would be a very bad choice, it's broken.

I find Destruction next to useless: no auto-targeting with spells, mana cost, low damage and things die quicker with some weaponwhacking.

I'm beginning to wonder if we're talking about the same game here, apart from the reference to auto targetting, whatever that means, the rest of that makes no sense at all to me. The only reason I can think of for not using destruction is that it can make the game too easy. Destruction is definitely not useless, it is in fact the most powerful 'weapon' in the game.

The point about not taking alchemy is that you need to use it an awful lot, levelling isn't a problem with this game, but I still don't like levelling too fast.

[GawainBS]

Unless you're using the unnoficial patch Mercantile would be a very bad choice, it's broken.



I'm beginning to wonder if we're talking about the same game here, apart from the reference to auto targetting, whatever that means, the rest of that makes no sense at all to me. The only reason I can think of for not using destruction is that it can make the game too easy. Destruction is definitely not useless, it is in fact the most powerful 'weapon' in the game.

The point about not taking alchemy is that you need to use it an awful lot, levelling isn't a problem with this game, but I still don't like levelling too fast.

Not the last time I used it. It was hard to hit anything beyond a few yards, the spells costed a lot of magicka, and when they hit, the result weren't good. It was a lot faster/efficient to just run up and hit the enemy with a sword. I suppose it's a bit better with a magicka-regen mod.
Anyway, this character won't use Desctruction, so the discussion is moot.

Any suggestions for other skills/factions to join? Care to elaborate on what's broken with Mercantile?

[splashing.cat]

i don't think mercantile is broken its just that by a very little bit into the game i always have more gold than i know what to do with. i agree about destruction...i don't use it. its silly. but i'm a fan of illusion because of invisibility and paralysis spells and conjuration because then you can paralyze your enemy, summon something scary at your leisure and then turn invisible while it does your dirty work. as for factions you may want to avoid telvanni if your mage's guild because they're enemies. i tried it once and everyone hated me in both factions.

[GawainBS]

Thanks.
How about the Imperial Legion, House Rhodani (no idea about the spelling) and the Fighter's Guild? (Besides the Mage's Guild.)

[galraen]

Presumably you mean House Redoran Gawain, there's no serious conflict other than the rivalry they have with House Hlalu that I can recall.

The conflict between House Telvanni and the Mages guild isn't a problem, anyone's disposition can be altered by greasing palms (bribery).

The only serious conflict in the game is between the Fighter's Guild and the Thieves Guild as I recall; and even that can be avoided by stopping takking quests from Feydis Fire-Eyes (sp? the quest giver in the Balmora Fighter's Guild) when you get to the Code Book quest and not accepting quests from the Orc in the Vivec Fighter's guild.

As for Destruction, I really can't understand the problems you're having with it, for me it's always the most effective offensive option. I guess if you're used to the auto hit that comes with other games, as opposed to the skill based system in Morrowind it is more difficult.

The problem with Mercantile is that as you progress the price of things you buy can actually go up instead of down. Better that than the glitch in Dungeon Lords I guess; but it's a bad skill to have as anything but a misc skill, as apart from the glitch, it accelerates levelling up too much early in the game.

[GawainBS]

Yes, indeed, I meant Rhedoran.
That's exactly my problem with Destruction: no auto-hit, so I don't see the need to expend a precious resource (magick) on something that can be accomplished as well by using weapons.

[dragon wench]

The [url="http://www.fliggerty.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=1008"]Morrowind Code Patch[/url] solves the mercantile bug, as well as numerous other issues the devs never bothered fixing, it's *well* worth the download.

You may also want to check out the many other mods listed in the sticky thread here, there are some excellent fan-made plug-ins available.

On your topic, if you don't want to use destruction, might I suggest marksman?
That will give you ranged attacks without needing to use magic.
Like Galraen, I'm not precisely sure what you mean by the "auto-hit," unless you are suggesting that it doesn't automatically hit a target? If that's the case, you'll find the same is true in most combat, you'll swing your weapon, but you won't necessarily hit, even if you connect.
I realise you don't plan to use Destruction, and it's your game of course, but do know that when you increase your Willpower, your spells will become far more powerful.

Regarding Alchemy: I always make it a minor skill. I spend the initial part of the game gathering ingredients as I explore, and once I have a decent amount I start practicing potion-making. Restore fatigue potions are the best to practice, I find, because the ingredients are plentiful and unless you are using a mod that makes diminished fatigue a problem (i.e Necessities of Morrowind), it doesn't matter when you fail lots.

Hope I'm understanding you properly, I have a splitting headache, so apologies if I haven't

[GawainBS]

Thanks for the fanpatch. I'll use it.
I don't understand what's so hard to understand about not being too fond of Destruction. I know weapons don't auto-hit, but swinging a weapon doesn't cost you anything. Magicka can be used for a lot of other things, which aren't possible/a lot harder without magicka. Moreover, I find spells hard to aim. So, coupled with the lack of "autohit/autotargeting" and the cost in resources, I find it quite useless.
BTW, thanks for seeing that with this character I won't be using Destruction because of the concept.

[Tricky]

I took about three days to get the entire installation properly modded and patched. I haven't touched it since, I'm purely saving it for a rainy day.

I can hook you up with my modlist if you wish. It is pretty updated and optimized for lower end PCs. Best framerate I could push out of my system, while still looking good. I would also definitely use the advanced tools to figure out proper load order and stuff. It weighs a lot more heavy on Morrowind than it ever did on Oblivion.

[GawainBS]

Yeah, I'm intrested in your modlist. Thanks!

[Tricky]

Great. It's largely based on a stripped-down version of Fable's modlist, plus what I was able to update/find on my own. Read the attached .gif with my own commentary, below:

• The load order itself is, as you can see, all in the greens. I didn't play through the entire game with it, but I ran a LOT of test runs through the entire island. All in all I am 95% sure this is the most mod-updated, most optimized load order you can find. Can be used in comparison with your own if you run into trouble. I cleaned up a few mods as well, but I don't remember which. Today though it's extremely easy to do that, what with all the tools that are available.
• Elfheight.esp isn't one you can find on the internet as I made it myself. It makes the Wood elf males and females sort of the same, smallest height, plus it makes the High elves slightly shorter, putting them more on par with Imperials rather than the Nords, but they are still slightly taller than the dark elves. There are also some weight tweaks here and there that just made sense. It's solely my personal taste, but you can have it if you want it.
• As you can see there are quite a lot of unchecked Facepak mods. That's only because I had trouble understanding its instruction manual, so installed more than I needed and ended up getting conflicts with other totally different mods. Unselecting these is the best way to get the entire Facepak mods selection to work with the other stuff.
  
• Children of Morrowind is a very attractive mod, but for some reason it nearly halved my FPS in towns. It's the only reason I unchecked it.
• Atmospheric Sound Effects was disabled in favour of Sound Enhancements. I am of the conviction that Sound Enhancements generally sounds better while using less transmission points.
  !: Unlike ASE, Sound Enhancements didn't include indoor weather sounds, which is why I added K_weather_louder and K_in_tents. Don't add them to ASE, if you prefer it above SE. Regular K_weather turned out to be too soft. Indoor weather sounds is actually one of the best additions to the game I ever encountered. It adds so much depth to the game when you actually have to take cover from a storm, and then still hear it rage on outside while you take a nap.. *goose bumps*
  !!: After (re)installing these and other mods that I later removed, something went wrong and I ended up with an awkward, clunky impact sound (the sound you hear after landing from a jump or fall), that sounded especially weird while being unarmored. I was able to fix it, but I can't precisely recall how. I probably renamed some files and changed something in the editor. I can look into it again if you end up with the same problem, but it's up to you. I think mine may have been unique.
• I left one of the Economy Adjustment mods out, as you can see. I felt it didn't change enough actual, practical gameplay, so I decided not to waste CPU sources on it.
• I think k_howareyou was a banter mod for extra dialogue with non quest NPCs. I wasn't impressed with it, or it turned out to already be included in another mod. I think it was the former though.
• I removed a bunch of other, tiny mods that turned out to be included in the unofficial patch. They're not on the list. It's generally worth looking into some of the smaller mods, by the way. They may turn up in some of the bigger mods or patches.
• Some of the texture replacers don't show up, as they aren't mods so much as 'overwrites'. [url="http://etherealsoftware.com.au/textpacks/index2.htm"]This site[/url] compares some of the best landscape retextures still available.

Feel free to ask any questions about the mods I used.

[GawainBS]

Thanks, I'm going to peer over this some more.

[BlueSky]

Thanks Tricky
was considering blowing the dust off my game also....