Morrowind Mods
 

So now that the holidays are in place I have a lot of free time on my hands and what better way for a gamer to use that time than playing Morrowind ?

So before I start my epic journey with my epic thief, I want to know what are the "must have" mods when starting a fresh game. I played this game several times and the only mod I only used is "A good place to stay". I am not interested in mods that enhance visuals (maybe just body/face replaces) because I like the world and atmosphere of the game.

I agree about the visuals, but I used to have a texture pack that didn't radically change anything, just made everything in the original game sharper and better looking. It put pond weed in the swamp area and made all the foliage, walls, floor etc. look much, much better. I'd say definitely look into that kind of thing.

As for faces, many of the mods I saw for that were horrible, creating stupid looking plastic Japanese doll style characters that looked completely out of place.

Better Bodies is a good mod.

Most of the popular add-on stuff I've seen is competently executed, but absolutely horrible at the same time, completely breaking the style and character of the game.

search these forums, there's quite a few really good threads on the subject. Check my posts for the most minimalist approach to it - just improvement to models and graphics, and killing the sheen on magic items basically. Topic's been beaten to death.

Indeed.

Here´s some more beating though :):

Unofficial Morrowind Patch
Better Bodies
Best face replacers are Better Heads and Vvardenfell Visages. Better Heads is the most lore friendly, Visages is pluginless and the faces look generally a bit better, but few characters get somewhat modern haircuts (no anime hairs fortunately). Look here for comparisons.
Illuminated Windows - great boost in atmosphere and best of its kind imo, needs a bit of ini tweaking for the best result
Pluginless NoGlow - most elegant solution of the magic plastic wrap effect issue

Ok, that´s it for visual mods.

Wakim´s Game Improvements - Modular - rebalances almost everything in a sensible manner, note that if you install the Factions component, advancement in guilds will be more difficult (that´s imo a very good thing as it enforces specialization)

Linora´s Leveling Mod - there are other, more complex mods addressing leveling, but personally I´ve found this sufficient and it´s hassle-free, it´s only effect is you don´t have to hunt for attribute multipliers anymore

Graphic Herbalism - lets you pick plants by activating them instead of opening them like containers

LGNPC (Less Generic NPCs) - as its name says, makes dialogue of a lot of NPCs less generic, plus it adds some quests, should make playing for House Redoran more interesting, mostly fits with the game well

Starfire NPC Additions - adds NPCs in settlements and wilderness, by far the best mod of this kind, lightweight, lore friendly and bug-free, makes places feel much more lively

Haunted Tombs - a little mod that very effectively enhances atmosphere in tombs

Expanded Sounds - imo the best sound mod, a good atmosphere enhancer

Creatures X - most "comprehensive" enemy additions, adds passive and aggressive wildlife, more daedra/dremora variety, high level enemies, etc, mostly lore friendly, its only flaw is that it adds some vermin into cities, screenshots are here, get a fix for one small, but annoying bug from here (CreaturesX-jms_patch-0.2)

A Flock of Seagulls - adds a bit more life to skies in coastal regions, unlike other similar mods this doesn´t venture out of purist territory imo

Darknut´s Greater Dwemer Ruins - significantly overhauls the whole endgame, it´s quite epic and can fuck you running, trailer here

If you want a solid dungeon romp, check out Abandoned Well at Dagon Fel and The Haunted Tavern of the West Gash.

All of the above together should keep the original game´s feel well intact, just enhance it in various ways and make the playthrough feel sufficiently different.

If you´d play a Telvanni character, I´d also recommend Rise of House Telvanni which continues House´s storyline once you get to the top, and Uvirith´s Legacy which greatly expands everything around Telvanni stronghold. Both are well done.

This should be easy to setup, but read the install notes carefully.
Just to make sure your install order is ok, use Mlox.

I'm surprised nobody suggested a mod to fix the economy, although I'm guessing 'Wakim's Game Improvements' probably does something to adjust it.

The economy was the only thing that was truly broken in Morrowind, imo.

Started playing today. Level 4 thief with Linora´s Leveling Mod.

Not really, actually. At least not directly.
The reason I haven´t mentioned any mod directly affecting economy is that I don´t know which I´d recommend since I´m not aware of any which is hassle-free, doesn´t make the game way too harsh or isn´t bundled with other changes I don´t like :).

Two small mods I found quite nice (not much, but not bad, too) by forummember Sorcha Ravenlock :

Adventurer Shop : http://homepage.eircom.net/~cotnfan/…adventurer.htm
Alchemy Merchant : http://homepage.eircom.net/~cotnfan/…y_merchant.htm

I don't know whether the download links still work, though. I had problems the last time I tried to download them, but Sorcha was so kind to put them into an uploading service.

She did a few more Mods, too.

Pegas horse ranch. Breed and buy your own horses that have their own characteristics (stats like speed and stamina). Changes the whole game when you can gallop through those long mountain passes instead of endless slow jogging. You can also fight while horsepack. And there is somthing special too but I wont spoil it.

It doesn't require anything complex, just something that increases the amount of gold kept by shopkeepers. It's annoying that you have to sell valuable artifacts for much less than they're worth because no one seems to have enough money.

Ah, I misunderstood then. The mods I had in mind rebalance the economy in the way to make the game harder - significantly lower item prices, make merchants "better businessmen", raise training costs, etc.

There is Morrowind Riches mod that seems to be doing exactly what you have in mind.

As a side note, the best mod setup ever.

LoL at the video. Very nice.

I am coming back to this thread with a question : has anyone played a character based on spears ? I was discussing this earlier with a friend and he says they are simply awesome just for their long range.

Any thoughts on this one and particular builds?

I used swords and spears when I played. My favorite weapon was an Ebony Spear that I had found and enchanted with 'Drain Health', so everytime I struck an enemy I also gained hit points. I was pretty much invincible with that thing.

You don't need to specialize in one weapon type though. Morrowind is long enough that you'll probably max out 3 or 4 weapon skills by the time you're finished.

Also, don't choose any of the weapon skills as one of your Primary skills. They increase much too quickly imo.

Another bump from me : is there a mod that boosts the economy a little ? I just made a gem that is worth 39.000 gold 10 minutes ago and I don;t want to sell it for a shitty amount…

Just read a few posts above. :)

I did but idk why Morrowind Riches missed to increase the maximum gold for the creep >.>

You might try this instead:

For graphics:
Morrowind Graphics Overhaul is drama-free and judging by the readme easy to install as well.
Personally I wouldn´t recommend installing patch 1.3, because it introduces Atmospheric Sound Effects which I found to be overkill and not quite fitting.
Previous versions use Piratelord´s Expanded Sounds which are a lot better imo.
At any rate, don´t install the included voice-addons since these are likely incompatible with one mod I´m going to recommend later (GDR).
Since I haven´t tried it myself I can´t vouch for this setup 100%, but if you want to upgrade Morrowind´s visuals and end up with reasonably consistent look, this package is by far the fastest way to go and is customizable when it comes to some controversial stuff (trees, animated grass).

Additionally/"optionally", few mods it doesn´t include which I think are better than the ones included are Plangkye´s Hi-Res Telvanni Textures and Green Marble Mournhold which are imo the best for the respective areas.
Another not-included set of textures is Connary´s stuff, which is likely a permission issue because some of these rule. The textures are no longer available on the usual sites, but there´s an all inclusive package someone uploaded on Megaupload. The link is here:
I´d recommend replacing MSGO´s textures with these: 6th House, Caves, Great House Redoran, Dunmer Strongholds, Bitter Coast, Grazelands, Molag Amur, West Gash, Miscellanea - Daedric Shrines, Sewers.

When it comes to the other stuff, somehow I ended up putting a small list in one of the Witcher threads (which is also a variation of the list I posted in this very thread, haha), so here´s more-or-less a repost:

I like Wakim's Game Improvements - Modular - leaves the fundamentals of the system intact, but brings better balance of effects, improves enemy spellcasters a bit or makes attribute/skill requirements for joining and especially for advancement in the guilds harsher (minor C&C here!).
As an alternative, there´s newer and more comprehensive BTB´s Game Imrpovements, but these are imo too restrictive to the extent I suspect its author hasn´t played the game much.

Creatures X (+CreaturesX-jms_patch-0.2) - the most lore friendly extensive monster addition, also adds some wildlife and diversifies some of the existing enemy factions
Starfires NPC Additions - the most lore friendly extensive NPC addition
A Flock of Seagulls - low-key aerial addition to coastal towns
Fireflies Invade Morrowind - low-key again, but adds nice bits of "atmosphere" here and there
And my personal obscure favorite just for the heck of it, Haunted Tombs, which adds more "life" into tombs.

You might also consider Water Life and Where Are All Birds Going?.
These may not be 100% lore friendly, but imo the environments benefit greatly from them.

There are also LGNPC mods which diversify NPCs´ dialogues and add some quests. For the main quest dialogues, there´s Less Generic Nerevarine.

Speaking of quests, mage-y characters can benefit from Rise of House Telvanni and Uvirith´s Legacy. The first one adds quite extensive quest chain available once you get to the top of the Telvanni faction, the second one adds shitload of content related to the Telvanni stronghold.
I don´t know about any comparable quests for the other houses.

Greater Dwemer Ruins turns the end of the main quest into quite massive and sometimes rather evil dungeon crawl, making the ending more memorable and a lot more difficult, but without really distorting the original storyline.

Can´t say much about basic gameplay/rule changers since I haven´t used much, only the already mentioned Wakim´s Improvements and also Linora´s Leveling Mod set on hard to deal with the skill -> attribute mechanics. Unfortunately there´s nothing in the vein of Oblivion Xp.

After installing these, re-run BOSS to sort the load order and the game should be ready to go. I don´t think that Wrye Mash is needed in this case.

That's a nice list there but honestly once I start going down that rabbit hole of 'Maybe I should get this mod, and ooh this one looks good…I wonder if that one is better than the one I have…Hey that one does something different' etc it just goes further and further down until I end up spending more time searching for, gathering and fussing with files.

I'm using the Morrowind Graphics Overhaul (v1.3) and I love it. That said I wouldn't call the install "drama-free" by any stretch. Assuming a fresh GOTY install its a good solid 1.5 hours soup to nuts with 25+ steps. After 20 hours I've crashed 3-4 times and crash on exit occasionally. My world map is pretty messed up - the graphic blob of an island no longer lines up with the markers. Gameplay wise though, the effects are well worth it. I have a short shader list in place - basically godrays, HDR and water related effects. Combined with the crisp textures its a great experience.

Could someone upload the Morrowind Graphics Overhaul 1.3 exe to a single mirror so we don;t have to wait for rapidshare and other crap in order to download all 4 archives separately?

Isn't version 2.0 available now?

yep yep! It's the primary reason I didn't jump on Skyrim at @$40 a couple days back.

Yeah sry, I was thinking of something else ^_^.

I just installed it now and it works just fine. I still have some tweaking to do but overall it looks great.

Anyone managed to find a compatible house mod with Morrowind Graphics Overhaul 2.0? I installed A good place to stay but I have huge freezes when I enter so it's unusable.

Tamriel Rebuilt - Sacred East 1.0 has finally been released :clap:

This is a massive amount of new content and it looks fantastic.

wow! The TR team has made some great stuff.

Impressive…

Beat me to it, CC. This tempts me to reinstall Morrowind!

Really interesting mod; if I only had days of 72 hours to play…

This looks amazing. Any idea what PC specs might one need in order to run it?

Also, what city is in this pic?

http://morrowind.nexusmods.com/mods/…1338969413.jpg

That's Necrom, I believe!

Nice, except I would have to restart the game when Im now 75% finished with the mods I started it with three years ago. And in future they release better mods for it so I would have restart it again and again. They should just stop and say its ready.

i just went round and round trying to figure out why my MW wasnt looking right, transferring all my mods from one to another. No matter what I did, the faces all looked the same.

The problem was that I wasnt transferring the BSA/ESM files as well, i thought all that I had to do was transfer the textures and esp files. Totally aggravating. I patched/tweaked all this like 2 years ago, so i didnt remember all that went into it.

THe moral of this story is this - when you get a good solid mod configuration for MW that youre happy with, consider burn/backup/store the ENTIRE data folder (did i mention the entire thing?) and just fully install/copy over that one when you do a fresh MW install. Trying to re-figure everything out and do it piecemeal years later will only lead to aggravation!

Meanwhile, I still cannot figure out why all my screenshots are so dark. Ive never had this problem, and it doesnt matter how much i tweak around the gamma and all that, they all come out so dark… wtf.

Version 3.0 of the Morrowind Sound and Graphics Overhaul has been released.

http://www.ggmania.com/?smsid=33797

Cool! The video is kind of choppy though. Is that how it plays for people?

I haven't tried it, but version 2.0 ran fine for most people, and 3.0 is supposed to include some performance Improvements.

The requirements are quite average by today's standards.

http://www.ornitocopter.net/mo_wiki/…re_Suggestions

I've been playing with it today and I find it amazing what they have done with it. Damn worth it just to watch the sunset :) In the Seyda area the performance is great with distance terrain around 35 on my system.

The installer is almost perfect, I had a problem with the last config bit cogging the wheel with telling me something about old graphic save but seems to have worked anyway.