What to expect coming from Daggerfall

[Elthrael]

I want to play as pure a spellcaster as possible. In Daggerfall, I played a straight-up unarmored Mage with just an Axe for some basic melee and solved all my other problems through Magic use (Shield spells and resistances/immunity spells to keep me alive, boosting my Magicka pool to crazy amounts wiht Enchants and so on).

My plan in Morrowind is the same as Arena/Daggerfall: avoid the main quest as long as possible, reach max rank in the Mages Guild, get a nice pile of gold and my character to a crazy high level, create some ridiculous spells and then breeze through the main quest.
Put another way - if you're familiar with Warhammer, I basically want to become like the Teclis and give Vvardenfell a hand in it's time of need.

What can I expect going into this game? Is my plan still viable?
I'm looking for some "avoid doing this" tips or general "X will feel familiar to you whereas Y is totally different". For starters, I just ran the game to see if it works and made a quick character, and by lord am I confused about the menus and how they work. Took me 2 minutes to figure out how to bring up my spells menu, lol.

Some background, if you're interested:
A few years ago, I wanted to experience the Elder Scrolls series from scratch, so I played Arena and finished the main quest and a few side things (with no small help from the wiki in terms of how to build your character), and I'm currently in the final stages of Daggerfall (well, the main quest that is, I intend to mess around some when I'm done). Again, I did a lot of research on the wiki on how to build my character in Daggerfall and I became stupidly OP fairly fast, which I liked. I didn't care that combat got trivial, the combat was never the interesting part of these games for me. I'm more into the world, the dungeons, the story, the quests, the lore, the rising up the ranks in the Mages Guild etc.

[Cortes]

You want to roleplay a dirty elgi? That goes to the book :D
Jokes aside, I have never played Daggerfall myself but if you know the mechanics of Morrowind, everything can be viable.

That said, there are some ways a pure mage can be made more viable and for a first try, I would go for choosing Breton as race and The Mage as birthsign.

Bretons keep their resistance towards magic and they also gain a bonus towards their magicka. Mage does also grant a bonus on magicka.
Also, Bretons get big bonuses towards Conjuration for summoning creatures, Restoration for healing.

The only other race with a bonus towards magicka are the High Elves. They even get a much bigger one but they also get lots of weaknesses. Though they also get big bonuses towards Alchemy and Enchant.

The Apprentice birthsign is to The Mage what are High Elves to Bretons, though with only a weakness towards Magicka.

The Atronarch birthsign is a beast on its own. Even more magicka and you can absorb spells but you do not regenerate magicka through resting.

So, Breton + Mage for first try I'd say and the other combination when you have more experience.

[Elthrael]

Originally posted by Cortes:

You want to roleplay a dirty elgi? That goes to the book :D

Eheheheh. Knew I'd find some kindred spirits here. Go with Grimnir, dawi

Those sound like great options. The more digging I do on the wiki, the more I find that Morrowind is a lot more balanced in the basics, but way more broken in the more intricate mechanics like Alchemy and Enchanting. For example, in Daggerfall, you could create a character that had crazy advantages like general 100% Spell Absorption and then give him some weird disadvantage like "no magic in Sunlight" that for some reason never really triggers, and doesn't apply to any dungeon since they're all underground. Here it seems like the basic creation is a lot less exploitable (i.e. Races have tangible pros and cons, and you can't just shove pros onto your character and then "negate" them with bogus cons), but the Alchemy and Enchantment systems and the way leveling works is way MORE exploitable.

A follow-up question on Races/Birthsigns:

Wouldn't it make more sense to take the middle road: Breton + Apprentice? Do Resist Magicka 50% and Weakness to Magicka 50% cancel themselves out, leaving you with a 2.0x (0.5 racial and 1.5 birthsign) increase to max Magicka and basically no additional (dis)advantage?

[psychotron666]

Mages are the most powerful in morrowind than any other elder scrolls game to date.

You'll be completely fine with Breton+ apprentice (hell I do high Elf+ apprentice all the time and that's even more weakness).

I'd recommend staying away from atronach for first play through, simply because you need to know the game mechanics and alternative ways to regain Magicka, and it can be a real chore for a new player. Do that in a later play through, besides atronach is more tailored for martial who use magic as well, not pure mages.

Also there's two mage guilds. The mages guild and great house telvanni (you can only join 1 of 3 great houses). Great house telvanni are thousands year old mages who use slavery and basically don't give a ♥♥♥♥ about imperial laws/openly flaunt breaking imperial law with no repercussions. Their entire mantra is if you get in an argument with a guild member and kill them, your argument has more merit - so you basically can't get expelled from them (you can technically, but a councilor will reinstate you if you simply ask).

You can join both, though they do oppose eachother in some ways. As you gain rank in one, you get minor disposition loss with the other, but if you gain rank in both the penalties cancel eachother out while giving you the advantages still.

Also it's recommended to join a great house because they build you strongholds later in their quests, and telvanni stronghold is badass (they have giant mushroom towers that require levitation to navigate - if you can't levitate you aren't worthy of speaking to them).

[Cortes]

Originally posted by Elthrael:

Originally posted by Cortes:

You want to roleplay a dirty elgi? That goes to the book :D

Eheheheh. Knew I'd find some kindred spirits here. Go with Grimnir, dawi :empirecross:

A follow-up question:

Wouldn't it make more sense to take the middle road: Breton + Apprentice? Do Resist Magicka 50% and Weakness to Magicka 50% cancel themselves out, leaving you with a 2.0x (0.5 racial and 1.5 birthsign) increase to max Magicka and basically no additional (dis)advantage?

They would cancel each other out, true.

[Elthrael]

Originally posted by psychotron666:

Mages are the most powerful in morrowind than any other elder scrolls game to date.

That...! ...that tickles my wizard power fantasy a lot.

Originally posted by psychotron666:

You'll be completely fine with Breton+ apprentice (hell I do high Elf+ apprentice all the time and that's even more weakness).

My inner min-maxing ♥♥♥♥♥ wants to go full blast and just take High-Elf+Atronarch, but...

Originally posted by psychotron666:

I'd recommend staying away from atronach for first play through, simply because you need to know the game mechanics and alternative ways to regain Magicka, and it can be a real chore for a new player. Do that in a later play through, besides atronach is more tailored for martial who use magic as well, not pure mages.

...that seems sensible. I could get 50% Spell Absorption (100% was broken) and some other disadvantage (maybe outright 100% weakness to magicka or innate higher spell cost), but no Magic regen when resting seems brutal. I'm guessing you can basically run out of magicka permanently early on unless you have potions or an NPC service or something?

Originally posted by psychotron666:

(awesome info about Mage factions shortened for brevity)

That sounds like the most pointy-eared, Teclis-like wizard doucheness I've ever heard. Marvelous. Why yes, I will do precisely that. Let them squabble while I ascend to godhood.

[theo]

Morrowind is heaven for mage characters

[The Flying Rodent]

Originally posted by Elthrael:

I want to play as pure a spellcaster as possible. [/spoiler]

Enjoy this magic handbook.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2834812759

[Elthrael]

Originally posted by theo:

Morrowind is heaven for mage characters

I really hope I'll have half as much fun as Mage as I did in Daggerfall (the system in Morrowind seems a lot harder to dupe), but since everyone seems to reiterate, I'm sure I'll have a blast!

Originally posted by The Flying Rodent:

Originally posted by Elthrael:

I want to play as pure a spellcaster as possible. [/spoiler]

Enjoy this magic handbook.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2834812759

Mamma Mia, that's some prime "got some time to kill" reading material. Thanks!!!