Any tips for a beginner?

[Drevin]

I've started playing this game and I'm currently on the outskirts of Vizima, but I'm wondering, are there any tips and tricks I should know early in the game, rather than find them much later? For example, is it worth it to loot any single barrel in the game, or enter every house? What should I sell and what should I keep? I'm already running with a full inventory and I don't know what to keep on me and what not to keep. Should I travel both day and night? Should I talk to any single blue named NPC, or only those like 'gambler', etc.? Do random people need tulips, random rings, etc, or everything of importance will go in the quests inventory?

Anyway, if you have any tips you wished you would've known earlier in the game, please share.

Thank you.

[casualPastime]

Hey buddy, i am about to hit you with a wall of text filled with some random stuff:

- Without spoiling the game for you i can write this : always keep food, beer, white gull, grease, stones for +dmg wep. on your person. I suggest about 10 food in total (preferebly 1 stack but hey it can be several), 10 beer ( same as food for the stacks). Food you can use for some NPCs to gain extra information, beer you can use in drinking contests, way better than vodka :D. Now here ill put some examples and they will be spolilers -> NPCs will tell you or hint at you exactly what they want - the poor old woman in act 1 will say that there is hunger going around, gift them food and you will get information about herbs or beasts, npcs that want specific jewellery or specific kind of an item will hint at it. Like the herbalist in Vizima telling you she wont be able to by a new red shawl if she tells you all her secrets etc. All in all, you can keep everythinn else in the bank, npcs will tell you or hint at you what they want. Also keep all the extra beer you have in the bank.

- Being a scavenger is not a bad thing you will save up a lot of coin if you do it, and nobody will be mad at you for going trough their stuff. A lot of books can be found that way!

- If some npc gets mad at you and doesn't want to talk with you, just go out/in a near door and go back out/in the door heading to the npc, the game will count is as a lot of time spend away and the npcs will talk to you once more. There are some exceptions to this rule ofc.

- Once you learn igni, you will need flint for fires just when its not night time.

- you don't need to do quests exactly in the same day if npcs say "come see me tonight at midnight", all they mean is come any day after 1200.

- even on hard you can blaze trough the entire game just with sword skills, aard stun and swallow. Everything else adds flavor to the game, and sure if fun but far from mandatory.

- Spoiler about act 2, not a big one and wont reveal story but still Taking Gramps on a road trip trough the entire swamp will unlock you several potion recepes and give you alot of information if you visit most of the names locations, and not go straight to where he wants you to escort him, just don't enter the hermits hut.

- Fist fighting is fun, make sure to get the upgrade from dexterity from it, it doubles your hits!

- For clearing weaker enemies in dark places, make cat potions with dominant rubedo, instead of using swallow.

- Turn all your alcohol in white gull, its a straight upgrade.

- You can sell books and scrolls you have read.

- You don't need to keep the bounty board notices on you at all times, you can throw them away as soon as you read them, or you can keep them on you and the npc will take them away when you finish the quest.

- Spoiler ACT1 The Beast can be 1 shoted, with aard stun and finisher, despite its description saying you can't knock it out.

- It is deffinetly worth it to speak to every single npc. If they are with blue or green text is of little use to you, it indicates almost nothing. Most npcs have useful information and provide hints how you can use them if they have any use.

- Always upgrade the main talents first, than go for the flavor down the branches. For example when upgrading Strength always get Strength 1, Strength 2 etc. before going down the branches for stuff like regeneration etc. It gives you way more stats that way and makes you a beast, the stuff down the branches is flavor. Except aard stun, aard stun makes you god.

- When upgrading the weapon styles with each new level (1 , 2, 3 ,4 ,5) you will get some new animation added to the sequence, the branches spaning out of each level will upgrade just this exact move. For example if you get +25% dmg to the branch of lvl 1 of steel strong style, this means that the first animation you do, will do + extra dmg, but if you have lvl 2 of the steel strong style the +dmg will not apply to it, unless you get the upgrade from its branch too. Those upgrades don't stack. That is valid only for the weapon styles, upgrades from SIGNS and ATTRIBUTES stack with each other and are not dependant of just the level they span out from, they apply to every level. (for example the +dmg to igni stacks.)

So that's for now, if i think of anything more ill come back again :D

[♥ Barney ♥]

Talk to the innkeeper and store your items with him. If you get a quest where you need an item, just go back to the innkeeper and get it, rather than carrying all the stuff around with you. You only need to carry potions and oils and alchohol, You can keep your stuff in the innkeepers storage all the time to free up inventory space, AND it magically transfers to the next innkeeper in another inn when you go from chapter 1 to 2, and 2 to 3 etc.

Loot everything you can, explore everywhere you can, collect as many ingredients and flowers as you can and store them, buy alchohol whenever you can, talk to everyone you can for misc quests.

Read books and scrolls, sell them straight back as they are now useless.

Sell your other weapons like torch, daggers, axes etc to the blacksmiths, as you hardly use them, and it frees up 2 slots so you can collect some more toches, daggers and axes and sell them, and collect some more and sell them and so on. kha-ching!

[Drevin]

Thank you guys for the help. A few more things to add: is money an issue along the line? Since you're advising to store stuff at the innkeeper, I'm only confident to sell the books I've read. Do quest rewards add up in such a way that at some point I won't ever be low on cash?

Also, loot inside houses respawn after a while, or not? I noticed that plants respawn when I come back later, or (I think) if I enter and exit a house. Because, to be frank, I'd rather know that once I loot a house it stays looted, rather than going back into the same area and wondering should I spend time entering houses again and looting them again. As much as I loved the overall feeling of Morrowind, I loathed the amount of time you could've spent in that game just looting.

Also, is it a good idea to just travel during night time? During the day in the outskirts of Vizima, the NPC's keep moving around, and I'm not sure if I interact with all of them, whereas at night they retire to their houses and I can be more methodical in speaking with them. Or some of them enter locked houses, so at night I might not find all NPC's who might say something interesting?

[♥ Barney ♥]

Originally posted by Drevin:

Thank you guys for the help. A few more things to add: is money an issue along the line? Since you're advising to store stuff at the innkeeper, I'm only confident to sell the books I've read. Do quest rewards add up in such a way that at some point I won't ever be low on cash?

Also, loot inside houses respawn after a while, or not? I noticed that plants respawn when I come back later, or (I think) if I enter and exit a house. Because, to be frank, I'd rather know that once I loot a house it stays looted, rather than going back into the same area and wondering should I spend time entering houses again and looting them again. As much as I loved the overall feeling of Morrowind, I loathed the amount of time you could've spent in that game just looting.

Also, is it a good idea to just travel during night time? During the day in the outskirts of Vizima, the NPC's keep moving around, and I'm not sure if I interact with all of them, whereas at night they retire to their houses and I can be more methodical in speaking with them. Or some of them enter locked houses, so at night I might not find all NPC's who might say something interesting?

Money is pretty hard to come by all through the game, unless you grind it out by fist-fighting, gathering flowers to sell, killing monsters for ingredients, selling misc weapons to blacksmiths etc. All the way through the game you are always in need of abit more gold to buy this or that. It took me until the end of Chapter 3 for example just to get together 5,000 coins to buy a new set of armor and a new sword.

Looted houses remain looted until you start another chapter. For example you can visit the same house in chapter 2 and 3, if you loot it in chapter 2 it will remain looted the rest of the chapter, but come back in chapter 3 to the same house and stuff has respawned. Flowers and monsters in the open world respawn all the time.

There are certain quests that are only available at certain times of the day and night. You have to be in the right place and the right time for the unmarked quest to be available. From what I remember there is one in chapter 1 that only appears at a certain time and certain place, and quite a few in chapter 2. None of them involve going inside peoples houses at night for quests (apart from the inn) its always quests that occur in the outside world. There is only one i can remember that is a bit hard to spot in chapter 2, but the rest are pretty easy to stumble upon. Having the npc's 'character name' always shown above their heads, helps alot in spotting unique quest npcs at certain times of the day or night.