The Arch-Mage's Handbook: A Practical Guide to Morrowind's Magic System

[The Flying Rodent]

Years ago in the midst of 'getting back into Morrowind' for the nth time, I wanted to restart as a Pure Mage character. I have a tendency to try and learn/plan as much as I can in advance, and after visiting the billionth uesp wiki page, I realised that there wasn't really anything around that necessarily 'compared' all of Morrowind's magical effects, or that offered practical information on how to use them, at least in the one resource.

This lead me to writing a 'Morrowind Magic System' guide, that I occasionally chipped away at as it sat in a Google Doc folder. Recently I've been blessed with a spot of free time, and decided to push on through and finish the damn thing.

And here it finally is!

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

It's ... over 45,000 words, so in tribute to u/TedTheViking and the kind soul who saved his guide before the account disappeared, I've uploaded 'The Arch-Mage's Hand Book' to Pastebin, linked below, where it can be downloaded as a text file.
https://pastebin.com/gESy9SXp


As a primer, here's the contents page:

Part 1: Magic and Magic Skills
Chapter 1: Spellcasting & Magicka Overview
1.1: Chance of Casting Success
1.2 Damage Formula
1.3 Spell Cost for Custom Spells

Chapter 2: Spellmaking & Base Spells vs Custom Spells
2.1 Spellmaking Introduction
2.2 Base Spells vs Custom Spells

Chapter 3: Magicka Management – General Tips
3.1 Finding Restore Magicka Potions
3.2 Buying Restore Magicka Potions
3.3 Making Restore Magicka Potions
3.4 The Atronach Sign & Spell Absorption

Chapter 4: Alchemy – A Short Guide
4.1 Having ‘enough skill to make a potion’ (yes, this is a thing in Morrowind)
4.2 Alchemy Equipment
4.3 Ingredients
4.4 Putting it all together

Part 2: Spell Effects
Chapter 5: Spell Effects By School – Introduction
Chapter 6: Alteration Custom Spell Effects
Chapter 7: Conjuration Custom Spell Effects
Chapter 8: Destruction Custom Spell Effects
Chapter 9: Illusion Custom Spell Effects
Chapter 10: Mysticism Custom Spell Effects
Chapter 11: Restoration Custom Spell Effects
Chapter 12: Unavailable Custom Spell Effects.

Part 3: Gameplay Tips and Strategies
Chapter 13: Planning Ahead
13.1 A Smooth Progression
13.2 Mage Character Building Overview
13.3 Mage Character Build Examples
13.4 Overview of Chapters 14-16

Chapter 14: The Early Game (Levels 1-10)
14.1 Useful Spell Purchases
14.2 Early Game Spell Effects
14.3 Useful Custom Spells
14.4 General Early Game Mage Tips: Items, Magicka Management and Alchemy

Chapter 15: The Mid Game (Levels 10+, Base Game only)
15.1 Useful Spell Purchases
15.2 Mid-Game Spell Effects
15.3 Useful Custom Spells
15.4 General Mid Game Mage Tips: Spellbook Management, Constant Effect Items & Dealing with Reflect

Chapter 16: The Late Game (Tribunal & Bloodmoon)
16.1 Useful Spell Purchases & Introduction to Prep Spells
16.2 Master Trainers
16.3 Late Game Custom Spells
16.4 Boss Killing Strategies & Enchanting Overview
16.5 Optimised Enchanted Item Sets
16.6 Example Item Set 1: Vvardenfell Arch Mage Set (Base Game items only)
16.7 Example Item Set 2: The ‘Can’t Touch This’ Mage Set (Expansion items included)

Conclusion & Thanks

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If you have any questions/queries, I'll be happy to answer them. Hopefully the guide is straight forward enough.

Enjoy!

[Playstation 1 enjoyer]

What a fantastic resource! It's interesting to get an insight into this game's mechanics.

Thanks for the dedicating the time to this. I'll be coming back to it every so often.

[bad_fur_day1]

We'll stick it on the shelf in the Telvanni library.

[The Flying Rodent]

Originally posted by bad_fur_day1:

We'll stick it on the shelf in the Telvanni library.

Just watch that Therana doesn’t smudge Ash Yams all over it, please.

[Innocent]

Originally posted by bad_fur_day1:

We'll stick it on the shelf in the Telvanni library.

But only in the horizontal position!

[WingedKagouti]

Technical mistake:

- The only two ingredients from the above list with ‘Restore Magicka’ as their first effect, are Void Salts and Heartwood. All other ingredients have it as their second effect, meaning that 30 Alchemy is required to use them for Potion making.

You only need Alchemy skill to see the effect, not to make potions with the effect.

[The Flying Rodent]

Originally posted by WingedKagouti:

Technical mistake:

- The only two ingredients from the above list with ‘Restore Magicka’ as their first effect, are Void Salts and Heartwood. All other ingredients have it as their second effect, meaning that 30 Alchemy is required to use them for Potion making.

You only need Alchemy skill to see the effect, not to make potions with the effect.

Well there you go. Turns out you can.

Ran a couple of quick tests to investigate further:

- A character with 15 Alchemy skill is indeed able to make a Restore Magicka potion using Comberry & Frost Salts. Despite neither ingredient displaying the 'Restore Magicka' effect, the effect for the potion being created by them in the Alchemy screen shows up as 'Restore Magicka'.

- A character with 10 Alchemy skill is also able to make a potion, though this time, the potion in the Alchemy creation screen comes up as a '?'. This is most likely because at 10 Alchemy skill, all potions display as '?', as the 15 Alchemy threshold is required to see the first effect of any ingredient or potion.

Will make the appropriate amendments. Cheers WingedKagouti for the quick response!

Edit: corrections made to Chapters 3, 4 & 14, little note added at the end in thanks. :)

[Archo]

May be its only in openmw, but wrong about elemental shields, its not 1 dmg per 10 point mag, its very complicated formula and real dmg can be very high, very useful againts fast attacking stunlockers.

Spellcast chance overexplained\switched when you describing major and minor chance bonus. Just say that 1 skill point is 2% and major gives +25 skill points.

You can add that levitation is nice substitution for fast swiming.(cause succethda doesnt like fast swim for some reason)

Damage and drain magicka spell. Fortify too. Why intellegence is 1:5 ratio? Int = 1 magick without modifiers. Isnt enemies have practically the same stats as you? So it will differ from 1:1 to 1:x, depends.

Absorb attribute its not a little value, its great value for warrior - gather all enemies, suck them dry all together, get +100+agi +100str+ etc. Works well with summons. Also seems like you are judging from perspective of having all schools of magic and have high lvl too. Add something like value within school and when you have all of them.

Fortify fatigue: since it affects almost everything - same great use for burst as other short fortify spells. Efficiency is reducing as you get more and more max fatigue. Also cool breaking game by reducing max fatigue to 1 and then cast fortify +100, 1shot everything, succes at everything, etc.

Add info for managing magicka, that if your increase you int by 2 times with spell, youll will cast spells for 50% of the cost until effects is wears off. Because its scaling 100%->200% and 150%->75% back. Works well with absorb.

Add info about very usefull mod for spellbook(only vanilla) with sorting by school, icons for effects and other usefull features. Cant remember the name.

[The Flying Rodent]

Originally posted by Archo:

May be its only in openmw, but wrong about elemental shields, its not 1 dmg per 10 point mag, its very complicated formula and real dmg can be very high, very useful againts fast attacking stunlockers.

Spellcast chance overexplained\switched when you describing major and minor chance bonus. Just say that 1 skill point is 2% and major gives +25 skill points.

You can add that levitation is nice substitution for fast swiming.(cause succethda doesnt like fast swim for some reason)

Damage and drain magicka spell. Fortify too. Why intellegence is 1:5 ratio? Int = 1 magick without modifiers. Isnt enemies have practically the same stats as you? So it will differ from 1:1 to 1:x, depends.

Absorb attribute its not a little value, its great value for warrior - gather all enemies, suck them dry all together, get +100+agi +100str+ etc. Works well with summons. Also seems like you are judging from perspective of having all schools of magic and have high lvl too. Add something like value within school and when you have all of them.

Fortify fatigue: since it affects almost everything - same great use for burst as other short fortify spells. Efficiency is reducing as you get more and more max fatigue. Also cool breaking game by reducing max fatigue to 1 and then cast fortify +100, 1shot everything, succes at everything, etc.

Add info for managing magicka, that if your increase you int by 2 times with spell, youll will cast spells for 50% of the cost until effects is wears off. Because its scaling 100%->200% and 150%->75% back. Works well with absorb.

Add info about very usefull mod for spellbook(only vanilla) with sorting by school, icons for effects and other usefull features. Cant remember the name.

Thankyou so much for the detailed response, archo!

I'll try and answer point by point.

May be its only in openmw, but wrong about elemental shields, its not 1 dmg per 10 point mag, its very complicated formula and real dmg can be very high, very useful againts fast attacking stunlockers.

I just tested a '1pt Fire + Frost + Lightning' Shield and a '100 Pts Fire Shield' spell (which cost ~ 500 Magicka for 30ish seconds), against 3 kwama foragers roaming around just outside Balmora.

The 1pt shields did absolutely nothing. No damage at all. I'm going to assume that 10 pts minimum is required to deal at least 1 damage, which fits it with all other calculations rounding 'down' to the nearest integer (which would be '0' unless magnitude is 10).

The 100pt shield was weird. It dealt 10 damage, as per the spell's description ... but to only 1 of the 3 kwama foragers. The rest remained undamaged.

So yeah. It could well be an OpenMW thing (I use OpenMW 0.45 on an old mac), but as far as I can tell, the elemental shield formulae are what they say they are in the wiki, and that kinda makes them hot garbage. I might at least make a mention that in 'non-OpenMW' versions of the game, results may vary.

Spellcast chance overexplained\switched when you describing major and minor chance bonus. Just say that 1 skill point is 2% and major gives +25 skill points.

I could tidy up this explanation a bit, yes. The idea was to show that it's worth taking Major over minor/miscellaneous as a pure magic character, because of the % increases chances that the skill receives. I'll find another way to word this (I like the inclusion of the 30% and 50% numbers though, just gives an easy figure for those who'd rather not do head math the whole time).

You can add that levitation is nice substitution for fast swiming.(cause succethda doesnt like fast swim for some reason)

Is it? Levitate forces the user to 'breaststroke', which is slower than 'freestyle' swimming. It also has a higher base cost than swift swim (3 vs 2). Would just be easier in both cases to , you know, fortify speed or athletics if you wanted to swim faster (which is what's said in the guide).

Succethda did bork the base cost on Swift Swim; it should be 0.2 instead of 2 or something like that. But in the same stroke, they also added in Jump. Which is amazingly fun, and broken.

'Inexperience' cuts both ways, I guess.

Damage and drain magicka spell. Fortify too. Why intellegence is 1:5 ratio? Int = 1 magick without modifiers. Isnt enemies have practically the same stats as you? So it will differ from 1:1 to 1:x, depends.

It's not; my brain farted and related 'damage strength and encumberance in a 5:1 ratio' to 'damage magicka'. Which is obviously wrong. Damage Magicka could be combined with Damage Intelligence for 'spellcaster crippling spells' in theory, and they'd both operate in a 1:1 ratio except against Bretons/High Elves/Mantle of Woe guy. I'll fix the Drain/Damage Magicka sections up.

Absorb attribute its not a little value, its great value for warrior - gather all enemies, suck them dry all together, get +100+agi +100str+ etc. Works well with summons. Also seems like you are judging from perspective of having all schools of magic and have high lvl too. Add something like value within school and when you have all of them.

AoE Absorb Strength and Agility, heh. Could be a fun novelty use of the spell, sure. I didn't really test many 'melee boosting' type custom spells as I was mainly focused on using spellcasting over everything else. I guess you could come up with some clever uses for those. Will mention that somewhere.

I was indeed judging from the perspective of having all schools of magic at a high level: The guide is targeted at PURE MAGES, not spellswords, or Cast When Used item enthusiasts.

Fortify fatigue: since it affects almost everything - same great use for burst as other short fortify spells. Efficiency is reducing as you get more and more max fatigue. Also cool breaking game by reducing max fatigue to 1 and then cast fortify +100, 1shot everything, success at everything, etc.

You would need to purposefully damage all other attributes to near 0 for this to work, no? Including Strength (which would be 0 encumberance?) Sounds pretty risky and in 'drain a skill to get cheap training' exploit territory ... but I guess worth mentioning. As a gimmick. May as well just Fortify skills/Strength if you're not going to be able to move whilst making use of this...

Add info for managing magicka, that if your increase you int by 2 times with spell, youll will cast spells for 50% of the cost until effects is wears off. Because its scaling 100%->200% and 150%->75% back. Works well with absorb.

I could indeed expand the Fortify Intelligence section to mention this: Some of the higher end custom spells make use of this mechanic. And I guess some sort of gimmicky 'magicka saving' could be done when combining it with absorb.

Add info about very usefull mod for spellbook(only vanilla) with sorting by school, icons for effects and other usefull features. Cant remember the name.

I don't use mods, but if you can find the name, I'll chuck it into the guide in the spellbook management section.


Oook. That's a nice set of changes to make then. Thanks again for that mate, will get around to editing everything when I can! =)

[Archo]

Levitation\fast swim. Levitation gives more speed underwater than fastswim, so to not have extra spells in spellbook you can just have levitation. Ofcourse fort speed\athl is better but not everybody have restoration. In Oblivion its succs too )

Its ok to focus on mages, but when you just describing spells it shouldnt focus only on mages i think. Cheers.

[The Flying Rodent]

Originally posted by Archo:

Levitation\fast swim. Levitation gives more speed underwater than fastswim, so to not have extra spells in spellbook you can just have levitation. Ofcourse fort speed\athl is better but not everybody have restoration. In Oblivion its succs too )

Its ok to focus on mages, but when you just describing spells it shouldnt focus only on mages i think. Cheers.

Just ran a little test:

Set up a 'swim route' along the Odai river through Balmora, and timed how long it took to swim between from the northern bridge to the southern bridge in a straight line (hit Q & a timer and then 'stopped the timer' when the character hit the shallows and started walking at the southern end).

Without Levitation 1pt: 11.3ish seconds on average.

With Levitation 1pt: 12.2ish seconds on average.

Ergo, using Levitate 1pt in water is 'slower' than doing nothing.

Whilst I have no doubt that 'Levitation is more efficient than Swift Swim' at high magnitudes ... there's little point using Levitate 'at' high magnitudes to begin with. The spell effect for 'spellcasting purposes' is a 1 point wonder basically, save for certain shrine buffs/scrolls that don't have a Magicka cost/spell chance attached.

Anyway. I'll at least add a note in that 'Levitation is perhaps superior to Swift Swim at high magnitudes', but that it is a hindrance at low magnitudes in comparison to 'sprint swimming'.

---

As for 'only focusing on mages':

The perspective of the guide is taken from a character skilled in 'all' the spell schools, and the spell effects are rated based on their usefulness for spellcasting purposes (not Enchant/Scroll/potion purposes).

In the event that there is a spell effect, with an alternative in another school that is more efficient, then the initial spell effect's 'rating' will be Medium or Low by default. That said, it 'is' still mentioned that for those 'without' the skill in said alternative school, the effect can still be useful.

Shield is a good example. Inferior at low levels to Bound Armour (Conjuraion), inferior at higher levels to Fortify Skill (Restoration). As such can only receive a Medium Rating, BUT it is still mentioned that Shield is an option for those not skilled in the other schools.

I had to 'choose a perspective' going into the guide, in order to make the 'usefulness rating' more direct and simple (which was indeed mentioned as a 'subjective' rating system). I didn't want to get bogged down in a clusterf*ck of tier lists from the perspective of Spellswords, Nightblades, etc. that are all partial magic users, which would view 'usefulness' from multiple perspectives.

If there are alternative uses for spell effects for 'not pure mage' characters then I'm happy to add them in as niche use cases ... but at the end of the day, this is a guide for Pure Mages. It says 'Arch Mage' on the title. Physical weapons are for backup purposes. Cast When Used items are treated as essentally 'cheating for pretenders'.

Take it or leave it. =P

[The Flying Rodent]

Alrighty!

Updated the following sections: Spell Chance, Elemental Shields, Levitate, Swift Swim, Damage Intelligence, Damage/Drain Magicka, Absorb Attribute, Fortify Fatigue, and Fortify Intelligence sections.

Also added a 'version + update notice' in the Introduction (given that we're a few major edits in at this point).

Thanks again for taking the time to read & critique the guide Archo, I know there's a lot to read. The feedback is much appreciated!

[Archo]

About 1pt levitation(game considering it like =1 athl and remove real athl temporary, also levitation is not slowed down by water), with low athl levitation is much better and as athl gets higher it will become worse. While swift swim seems like +flat for athl, but only for water.

[The Flying Rodent]

Originally posted by Archo:

About 1pt levitation(game considering it like =1 athl and remove real athl temporary, also levitation is not slowed down by water), with low athl levitation is much better and as athl gets higher it will become worse. While swift swim seems like +flat for athl, but only for water.

Aaah so it may have benefits at low Athletics. That's interesting.

I'll give it another test later and see what I can do with it. Thanks for the tip & the rest of the help mate.

[Archo]

Another kind of exploit: you can use a drain intelligence for one second spell on yourself to reduce your intellicence to 1, leaving you with 1/1 magicka(depends), what translates to full magicka, when the effect wears off or at least higher or lower than it was. Not working for me. But intrestingly enough drain int to 0 will not restore magicka back, so op.

Not working for me, idk about base game: telekenesis and then use touch spell?

Dont remember, was it in your guide putting 100% resistance 1sec in spell on self to kill reflecting enemy?

Heard somewhere that touch can bypass reflect or some other defense.

Fort int 100-700 3 sec can be inserted in all spells for making next cast 2-8 times cheaper.

[The Flying Rodent]

Originally posted by Archo:

Another kind of exploit: you can use a drain intelligence for one second spell on yourself to reduce your intellicence to 1, leaving you with 1/1 magicka(depends), what translates to full magicka, when the effect wears off or at least higher or lower than it was. Not working for me. But intrestingly enough drain int to 0 will not restore magicka back, so op.

Not working for me, idk about base game: telekenesis and then use touch spell?

Dont remember, was it in your guide putting 100% resistance 1sec in spell on self to kill reflecting enemy?

Heard somewhere that touch can bypass reflect or some other defense.

Fort int 100-700 3 sec can be inserted in all spells for making next cast 2-8 times cheaper.

I mentioned the Drain Intelligence exploit; that one only works with unpatched versions of the vanilla game.

Telekinesis effects the distance at which you can interact with world objects, but 'not' with creatures/NPC's. So you can use Telekinesis to open a door with a lockpick or spell from 25ft away, but you can't use it to increase the range of, say, the Fire Bite spell on a creature.

Fortify Intelligence spells are often inserted into some of the 'prep' spells, for basically this reason (well, moreso to be able to cast the spells that are being prepped). It's a bit of a balancing act though, as casting Fortify Intelligence 'itself' costs a significant amount of Magicka, so if you go overboard with it initially you can end up worse off.

I've never heard of 'Reflecting enemies' dying due to self resistances, that's interesting. I'll have to test that one. I wouldn't be surprised if there was some bug that caused this to happen, similar to the 'kill enemies in 1 shot with a lockpick' bug.

Speaking of tests: I tested Levitate 1pt on a low athletics character (5 athletics) using the 'Balmora river race' setup mentioned in an earlier comment.

- Without 1pt Levitate: around 27s to complete the route.
- With 1pt Levitate: around 24.5s to complete the route.

So there is a 'mild' increase in swim speed, but an increase none the less! I'll note that in the Levitate section. Thanks for that!