Morrowind Mods (or: How do I get through this game without breaking my save?)

LoneIgadzra

I always kind of wanted to get through some of the Morrowind quests and see more than 1/10 of the island, but never really managed it due to a number of factors.

Factor 1: Skill selection. The game has so many I get like 10 minutes in and feel like all my choices were wrong and want to start over.

Factor 2: I am a mod-o-holic. I keep seeing room for improvement all over this damn game, and I eventually killed my main save due to over-use of mods (I love how loading a save with mods in actually affects the save file before you even actually click "save"). And because I keep seeing room for change in game balance, this just brings us right back to factor 1 after I've gotten a few balance mods in.

Factor 3: Every time I try to start a new game now I am taken aback by (a) how much worse the graphics are compared to Oblivion which I played a shitton of because it was pretty and a lot more approachable/immediately fun, and (b) how much I can't do a damn thing compared to my old save, which just completely frustrates me and I ragequit after getting killed by a rat.

So I am looking for a list of just a few must-have mods that concretely improve the game that I can be happy with, as well as maybe playing tips for getting past the first hour.

Also feel free to discuss how much you love this game, but I am not making an elaborate informational OP.

IceBurner

Grab one of the complete retexture packs (someone will invariably post the link to the site which compares them), get The Morrowind Graphics Extender and follow its readme, get the Morrowind Script Extender, get the Morrowind Mod Manager, and then install Combat enhanced, Blocking enhanced, Better Bodies, and Better Clothing. Anything else from thereon is icing on the cake. These mods bring the game more on par with Oblivion visually and in terms of the combat mechanics, while leaving the rest of Vvardenfell intact.

Note that whenever you change mods you should always save to a new file after loading your last game. Can't stress this enough.

I'm not sure what you mean with your point 2; the save files themselves are not changed unless you save over them. Trying to load a file without its mods present usually doesn't result in any issues (well aside from the stuff you turned off disappearing), but wouldn't that be expected?

Lork

I made a list of good mods in an older thread; I'll just copy/paste it in here. Also, I'm almost completely sure you can install all of these without having to start a new game.

Gameplay/Balance Changes:

The Unofficial Morrowind Patch
Fixes a ton of bugs.

Galsiah's Character Development
Completely overhauls the broken levelling system. Now you don't have to worry about getting 5x multipliers, or getting your endurance up early, or any of the annoying crap that the vanilla system puts you through. You don't even have to pay attention to your stats if you don't want to. As an added bonus, it makes mana regenerate Oblivion style, so mages are now playable.

Economy Adjuster
Overhauls the economy so that money actually matters, and you can't become a billionaire half an hour into the game. Just don't use the daedric drops module, because it conflicts with Morrowind Advance and Armor Hunters.

Delayed Dark Brotherhood Attack
Stops the dark brotherhood attacks until you're a ways into the main quest. This is because they're a gigantic pain in the ass when you're trying to get other stuff done, and the unbalance the game by giving you access to an infinitely renewable source of expensive armour at the beginning of the game. Don't use this if you plan on doing Tribunal early, obviously.

NPC Move Command
If some jackass decides to stand in a doorway, you can tell them to move with this. It has a really annoying spelling error, but it's worth it anyway.

Graphical Enhancements:

Morrowind Graphics Extender
Among other things, allows you to have unlimited view distance. Yes, really.

Better Bodies
Fixes the character models so they don't look like horrible segmented abominations. Doesn't fix the hilariously bad animations though, unfortunately.

Better Heads
Replaces all of the face models in the game with much better ones. Now the women don't look like cross-dressing men.

Morrowind Visual Pack
This is the highest quality and most extensive texture pack that I know of. It replaces almost all of the landscape textures in the game with better ones.

Bloodmoon Landscape Overhaul
Visual Pack doesn't cover Bloodmoon, so we have this.

Texture Fix
When you install a high resolution texture replacer, you'll notice a lot of really bad looking seams on the ground where the textures don't merge properly. These were actually in the original game, but the textures were so blurry and indistinct that it was hard to notice them. This mod fixes almost all of them.

Weathered Signs
Replaces all of the road signs in the game with legible ones so you can see what they say without having to walk right up to them.

Added Content:

Morrowind Advanced
Adds a bunch of creatures, items and dungeons to the game. Everybody uses this.

Morrowind Comes Alive
Adds a shitton of random NPCs to the towns and wilderness. They randomly appear and disappear when you leave the cell they were in, so you'll see different people every time you visit a town. The new NPCs use a lot of content from the MW modding community, so you'll see new faces, clothes, weapons and armour on them.

Less Generic NPCs
Gives unique dialogue to most of the NPCs in certain towns, so they're not just walking signposts anymore.

Weapon Compilation
Adds a ton of weapons to the game so there's a little variety in what you can pick up.

Armor Hunters
Adds a few new types of armour to the game.

Creature mods - All of these add creatures to the random spawn levelled lists, so you're not fighting the same 12 or so creatures all the time, and so you'll find things that can actually put up a fight when you're at a high level.
Creatures X
Mephisto's Creature Pack
Creature Additions
Some other guy's creatures

Mod Care: I just spent half an hour making this list and I'm getting tired, so I won't go into too much detail here. The gist of it is that you should use Wrye Mash to create a merged levelled list file. Also make sure you read the readmes for every mod you install, including the ones I listed here. That last one should be obvious, but you never know.

IceBurner

Please be advised that the Morrowind Comes Alive mod slaughters frame rates. Otherwise, an excellent listing. I use most or all of them the "Added Content" list.

Lork

IceBurner wrote: »

Please be advised that the Morrowind Comes Alive mod slaughters frame rates. Otherwise, an excellent listing. I use most or all of them the "Added Content" list.

You'd have to have an ancient computer for a Morrowind mod other than MGE to make a noticeable difference to your framerate. I think it's pretty safe to assume that he can run it.

Dr Snofeld

There's a mod that links all ports together, and another that links all Silt Strider ports together. I forget the names at the moment.

Get them. You'll thank me for it.

LoneIgadzra

Lork wrote: »

IceBurner wrote: »

Please be advised that the Morrowind Comes Alive mod slaughters frame rates. Otherwise, an excellent listing. I use most or all of them the "Added Content" list.

You'd have to have an ancient computer for a Morrowind mod other than MGE to make a noticeable difference to your framerate. I think it's pretty safe to assume that he can run it.

Athlon XP 1.8 GHz, Radeon 9800 Pro. I have often been infuriated by poor framerates in Morrowind. Oblivion was sometimes smoother on the same hardware. o_0

As for the save thing, I don't remember any more, but I don't think I overwrote anything. Just one day I loaded in a mod that clearly caused problems, said "okay not saving" took out the mod, and loaded my save and it was still fucked.

Anyway, thanks for the suggestions! I have no idea what a "merged leveled lists file" is though.

IceBurner

Lork wrote: »

IceBurner wrote: »

Please be advised that the Morrowind Comes Alive mod slaughters frame rates. Otherwise, an excellent listing. I use most or all of them the "Added Content" list.

You'd have to have an ancient computer for a Morrowind mod other than MGE to make a noticeable difference to your framerate. I think it's pretty safe to assume that he can run it.

Actually thanks to Morrowind's really bad optimization, heavy AI, and CPU-based rendering, MCA is able to knock 20 fps off a Quad-Core. Obviously this is mostly in cities, and FPS pops back up to silky smooth in the wilderness.

I spent a week troubleshooting someone's Morrowind performance on a monster rig only to realize it was this bringing their fps down from the heavens.

Xtarath

Check out the elder scrolls thread, I had a great site I always used for morrowind mods in the OP.

Shoegaze99

MERGED MEGA MORROWIND MODPACK!

<insert link I can't recall here>

Of course, it's kind of like a big, 1.2 gig potluck mystery meat gift bag. But the meat is so good.

LoneIgadzra

Xtarath wrote: »

Check out the elder scrolls thread, I had a great site I always used for morrowind mods in the OP.

I have this link. It is the reason I kept clogging up my game with absurd amounts of mods.

Sorry to resurrect this, finally got around to actually trying to set up Morrowind again, going through Lork's list. Not using Morrowind Comes Alive right off the bat due to performance concerns, and I am convinced that the author(s) of Less Generic NPC's did not have English as a first language because the readmes are utterly incomprehensible. I have no idea what "NoLore" does, or if I should check both secret masters & secret masters MCA compatibility or just one if I am using MCA.

Also, official mods: worth using?

Edit: Haha my outdoor framerate is complete shit after putting all that in. Definitely not going with Morrowind Comes alive. And I am getting like an animal squealing noise every few seconds outdoors, constantly, from all directions. It is driving me crazy and prompting me to murder all wildlife. And I'm not sure I like this texture replacement (stone buildings look like bone-white legos), but fuck me if it isn't impossible to remove.

Edit 2: Okay, I wrote a Python script to remove the replaced textures, and yes indeed the originals are a lot better. God that stonework was terrible. Also hey look a framerate