GameBanshee Forums

Alright, so I just recently snagged Morrowind off of Steam for a lovely four or five bucks, as I always knew it was superior to Oblivion and wanted to see how it would play with as many mods for it as I have for Oblivion (Which in my opinion make the mediocre Oblivion game fantastic, so with Morrowind would likely make a fantastic game phenomenal) but have hit an unexpected snag as I eagerly downloaded several mods and installed a couple to test them out.

It seems that the mods are not working at all, at first it was just some hi-res texture mods that I thought I simply wasn't noticing. Though to make sure I downloaded and installed something obvious, a race mod, to my surprise, it did not work. I am at least marginally familiar with how mod installation and implementation works from my Oblivion antics, so I'm very confused. The problem is that nothing is even showing up when I go to Data Files in the startup, it doesn't seem to even recognize there are any mods to activate...

Is the mod installation process for Morrowind different then Oblivion? What might I be doing wrong? As far as I know all the files are in their proper places in the Data Files folder, but the game doesn't seem to see them, or something like that. Does it have something to do with it being a Steam game?

I always install mods manually, moving folders or groups of folders myself, rather than doing so automatically. That's because there's a lot of divergence among modders about how many subdirectories to nest a mod inside an archive. I've seen a few that go so far as to include Morrowind, while a good many start with Data, but there are quite a lot that just begin with various Data subdirectories such as Textures and Meshes. If you try to dearchive all of these from the same level, you're going to end up with mods that don't work.

This is a very good FAQ on installing Morrowind mods. Give it a look.

For myself, I just open the archive, and open a subdirectory window with the top level at Data. Then I'll drag and drop the Texture, Meshes, Menus, etc, folders from the archive onto Data. You're then asked if you want to overwrite; you click yes; and the new mod files are slotted properly into place. It works. I've got about 180 mods running together smoothly.

I also recommend two utilities: Wrye Mash, which is kind of hard to learn, but extremely useful, and mlox. Once you get all your mods installed, mlox can tell you if they're in the proper order, and if you have the latest version--much of the time. At least it catches a lot of problems. Look 'em both up; you won't regret it.

And be sure to check out our mod sticky thread for recommendations.