How and Why to Morrowind

looking to assist new players with a game from 2001. it is 19 years old, so you need this chad guide to help you learn to morrowind and don't do a heavy suck and get memed hard by a cliff racer.

i will help you not screech in the forums and have a wild panty-throwing, screamy fanbase as you become a morrowind master.

the guide is somewhat a work in progress. if you wish to add a nugget of knowledge for a noob, or correct the guide, comment it.

What is morrowind?

ok

somehow you thought it was a good idea to buy this game

you start the game and the bethesda logo makes you die inside because you can count the pixels in the image.

you click new game, and you instantly start talking to a green skinned goblin psychopath with a voice that can crush gravel and you think to yourself 'what have i done'.

you're looking at graphics and textures from 19 years ago. some of you reading this won't even be 19 yet. the last 10 years have been hard on morrowind

yes. the graphics are horrendous.

but the good news is, morrowind has enough game behind it to be sweet, and since it has zero graphics it should run on a calculator.

if you have a low framerate with morrowind, you got problems son, problems that this guide wont solve.

feel joy though, ok. you dont have a 30+minute loading time on old consoles for this game.

like tabletop rpg? morrowind is that, without turns.

every time you swing your sword with the disgusting sword swing noise, a dice is rolled. if you win, you hit. if you lose, you lose.

then a dice is rolled for enemy dodge

then enemy block

then finally damage is applied if you win.

so really, you have to win 3 dice each time you swing. if you dont like rng you have made a terrible mistake, and should stop here. call it a day.

if u aren't a casual and lift heavy, and think that maybe you can kill a cliff racer then keep reading.

morrowind is different. celebrate difference.

Ok i made a mistake and started the game before reading this guide

mistakes were made, but u can erase them with this help.

----before you uninstall----

do another new game

go through the character creation. and pick your species. I'm not going to say why, but dont pick your character's species based on 'disease resistance' - this is a waste due to a certain event, and will become evident later in the story. if you still want a species with disease resist, by all means go ahead, just acknowledge there are better picks available to you.

your primary stats are very important. strength and intelligence are the easiest to have. personality and luck are the hardest to have. everything else is somewhere in between.

look, there are meta skills to pick for major and minor. im not going to argue cause theres too much opinion involved (i can make a crap build work, but it takes forever). go google meta morrowind builds if you want the easy life.

major skill gets +10 or 15 or something. minor gets +5 or something. this is mainly unimportant.

what is important is this. remember this - you MUST level up a minor or major skill to increase your overall LEVEL. increasing level increases your stats and many skills are level dependent (IE: level + skill + diceroll)

leave skills you dont think you use much in 'misc'. this will DIRECTLY affect how hard the game is for you.

Example: lets pretend im a super derp. -i hate alchemy-, but pick alchemy as a major skill.

i then proceed to never pick a single plant or eat a single ingredient. now introducing dumbass hammer of evil who never levels up because he hates making potions. then dies to a cliff racer. yay the end. uninstall and get crippling depression.

Dont do that. pick skills you will use, and USE THEM LMAO. level up the misc skills later.

ok i made a character that isn't a total stink and im standing in Seyda Neen. what do??

ok i'll list some random tips


step 1: go to options

set the difficulty all the way to the left. -100 (easy). do this now.

bethesda isn't a fan of having different ai scripts for its monsters. setting the difficulty to 'easy' only changes the raw stats for the enemy creatures, and as a byproduct, your chance to hit them.

They'll still run at you with the fury of the gods because you, as a player character, have already instantly offended every wild rat, mudcrab, bandit, angry golden hater, and netch that ever exists or will exist. (Congrats btw.)

increase the difficulty after you have armor, a higher level, or feel like playing dark souls 19 year old version where you dont have a snowballs chance in a massive blast furnace inside hell.

step1.5: dont buy stuff. seriously don't. at least, at first. being level 1 in this game is a bad thing. being level one means that things like personality (which affects barter prices) will be low. meaning you pay like 800 gold for one potion, and can sell a 1000 gold ruby for just 10. dont do big trades till you have enough mercantile skill/personality first. buy small things in small amounts to train skills.

step 2: travel on the 'beaten path' outside of seyda neen. keep going till some guy screams his life away and falls to the ground. loot his corpse and take his magic sword. if you picked bladed weapons as a skill you'll be happy. (pick it up even if you didnt because its better than whatever you stole from the census office you dirty theif lol)

hint: dont use his scrolls.

step 3: never give back Fargoth's engraved ring of healing, he's a little basterd and doesn't deserve it. give it back to him later when you find something better and feel like robbing him.

hint- hrisskar tells you to steal fargoth's secret stash. do it. then promptly never talk to hrisskar again. who cares what he wants anyway lmao

-I got a reminder from 'A man with a stick'

Първоначално публикувано от A man with a stick:

One tip for Fargoth and Hrisskar: You can give Fargoth the ring back, net the disposition gain with Arielle. Then do the quest for Hrisskar; the ring will be in the tree stump again

so you can befriend fargoth but also stab him in the back. win-win i say!

Also, there is a dead tax collector with 200 septims on his rotting corpse, just a short walk south east or northeast of seyda neen. You've already banked 400g, congrats.

note: there are more quests like this where you get 'item' but don't need to give it back right away. abuse it in the most fun way possible.

step 4: never buy any alchemy equipment, theres free master equipment in caldera at the top of the mage guild tower. just savescum or close the door to steal everything. dont get caught by the guards though or you will lose your alchemy set when they throw you in prison for 5 years.

step 5: get cure disease potions fast if you set the difficulty higher. everything just walking near you will hit you with a disease.

step 19: join the fighter guild or the mage guild. theres a dirty thief guild, and a scary secret police guild.

step 30: be aware there are no waypoints. oh no. no handholding for you. press j. j is your best friend. use reading comprehension and some ????? to figure out where tf to go.

step 56: quest in Vivec? GOOD LUCK. pack a lunch and an extra hour, that city is a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ maze. jumping down into the canal is dangerous but somewhat worthwhile. use the boats in the canal to travel from district to district.

Speaking! of! vivec!

user Kay had this to say:

Първоначално публикувано от Kay:

In Vivec, there are three houses. Redoran, Telvanni and Hlaalu. In each waistworks lower part of building) there are vaults which have ebony armor, gold and all sorts of loot. Taunt guards so you wont be hit with a bounty. (Attempt only when you are a decent level, and have some open spells) Sell to creeper in Caldera for massive amounts of gold. Enjoy!

Първоначално публикувано от Kay:

Somewhere in morrowind there is a talking mudcrab who has 10,000 gold barter. UESP has his info and location. (Sorry, couldn't edit my earlier comment... hated double posting) :(

Don't be sorry, Kay! we are grateful for your contribution. i personally did not even look in the faction waistworks and had no idea this was there. So that's very based and awesome to have some top tier equipment and a mega barter crab early game memes if you so desire.

Some further information on the Mudcrab's mysterious location was shared by Imperatia

Първоначално публикувано от Imperatia:

Here be that talking merchant's (with 10.000 gold) location:

(its broken for me so here's the direct link)

Very cool from Imperatia. Thanks alot! it is quite a run from vivec to get to the crab, but it is very worth it. please remember to restrain your urge for broiled crab leg meat like Imperatia, and note he is right to leave the crab alive with 420k gold septims in his inv.

step 58: spam spacebar to lvl up acrobatics and decrease your fall damage and increase the hilarious escapes from combat.

step 58.0001: spellmaking. if you are looking to cheese magic levels, create stupid spells that only do like 1 pt of damage/shield/resist/etc to self and spam it 10000 times for easy lvls. spells can be deleted permanently from your spellbook(shift+Lclick). so be both careful and wasteful.

step 58.0002: don't like training spells? FINE. go get the DRAIN SKILL spell, go to spellmaking. set it to drain 5 pts <of a skill> for 1min or something on SELF. (just listen jeez, im not a fetcher) Go to a trainer for that skill you wanna train. You see where this is going? Cast the temporary (or permanent, doesn't really matter, you can just go pray your skill back to max again at a temple) skill on yourself to totally nerf your skill into the floor. pay almost 0 gold to train your skill, level up (to get the attribute bonus if you dont ahve mad attribute mod which adds it passively), drain your skill, train your skill for like 15 gold, level up, drain your skill, train your skill for 15 gold, etc. enjoy easy breezy beautiful lvl 100 skills for like 300 gold instead of 3,000,000,000 gold. yeah, i should have posted this three years ago, but i just remembered i could do it yesterday, so ya mb lmao. its ok though, you didn't die anyways because you're a beast and driving n'wahs before you and hearing the lamentations of their s'wits.

step 80: there is no gravity. throwing stars, throwing knives, arrows all travel in straight lines. abuse it. projectile drop is not a thing here.

Morrowind FAQ!

i'll collect questions from the forums and from various people I read asking the same stuff over and over again. i'll list them here. This is non exhaustive and may change often.

1) I have a quest to turn in 5 pillows to Skoinky McGrog'shuab Doinkerton, i bought 5 pillows from a random merchant but he wont take them. wtf is wrong??

-You cant do that. in magical morrowind land you have to get the pillows from the point that was exactly explained. morrowind is fond of making duplicate items that look the same but have a different memory value to them. meaning, not JUST any pillow will work. you have to actually go kill 'Doodles mc doigertoig' and loot his corpse that has 5 pillows on it, or the game wont accept ur answer. press j. j is your friend.

2) Morrowind lacks quality of life. what should i do?

- get a refund.

3) OH MY GOD VIVEC IS SO CONFUSING

-yes

4) Man, my athletics skill isn't increasing what do i do?? =[

-if you want to play normally, stop using Silt-Striders and Mages Guild Teleports or magic (like mark, recall, etc) to move around. run everywhere. If you dont want it to take forever, go into a building, enable running, and auto run into a wall for like 10 hrs while you sleep. this works on oblivion, too.

5) How do i use 'levitate' ? this spell sucks!

-use the spell (make sure it succeeds!) and start running upwards. be careful .. when it wears off, you'll be introduced to the ground at a high velocity. be sure to notify your next of kin.

5.0001) I had a question from a friend about 'Levitate' and figured i'd add it here.

Първоначално публикувано от Mist of Majora:

OH
so random morrowind question for u
i saw in both ur guide and one i read last night, that they were touting getting levitating as a huge bonus - why is that? movespeed seems to be a very different mechanic, so unless theres horrible traps all the time i dont see how thats a benefit

-This is a great question. Levitate is basically one of the most game breaking things ever. its what gives you unlimited power.

Consider the following: hostile alien landscape in morrowind. mountains everywhere. and you just got 'ANOTHER' quest to hoof it out to some podunk ash village that doesn't have a silt strider or mage guild teleport. F in chat....but wait! you have levitate! ✔️

⚠️spellcraft it⚠️ so the duration is much longer, and use it to travel in a straight line directly to your quest target. nice. 'crazy lava pools?' 'jagged mountain scapes?' HAHA LEVITATE GO 'BRR'! just simply <lmfao> right over the top, gg needless detours =)

levitate can be used to navigate difficult dungeons, crap full of traps, and break the game by skipping to the end of cell spawns and loot the chests. Need to get to the top of house telvanni district in vivec? <again>😪? Locked door and huge wall in the way😪? Levitate right up and post trollface.jpg.🤣

levitate should make the game 10,000x easier for you. abuse it! you won't regret it!
Note: save before levitating around a scripted dungeon though, just in case something breaks. =p

6) I have a high level fighters guild quest to kill someone. but when i try talking to them about it, they dont attack me! what do i do?

- some stuff is meant to be solved by yourself. i will enclose this in spoiler tags. mouse over it if you think you dont care anymore.
Use a different way to kill them. Sneak and arrow them from afar. high speechcraft? then walk up to them and click 'persuade' then 'taunt' over and over again until they say 'THATS IT' then you click 'goodbye' - they will then try to murder you in combat, making you the legal winner if the guards are watching. always wait for them to hit you first. some bounty targets will never give you a bounty if you hit them first. but be careful on this. savescum if unsure.

7) HAMMER I CANT HIT ANYTHING WTF AND MY SPELLS FAIL THIS GAME SUCKS

-ya well let your green bar (fatigue) fill back up first. chug fatigue potions. low fatigue means you are tired af and cant do anything right. this is your fault, but the game did a great job of not telling you about it lol. press t to wait for an hour to fill it up again fast if your safe.

7.0001) how do i kill this worm?!

-see above! look, i was a bit ironic with the last answer. by 'you can't do anything right' when the green bar is empty, i mean you get a negative modifier to every action when your fatigue bar is empty. sneaking. casting spell. eating ingredient to get effect. blocking attack. hitting target with bow, hitting target with spear, etc etc. anything with a diceroll gets nerfed pretty hard. so eat your saltrice.

if you're currently paused and in a situation reading this guide, and cant restore fatigue, dont worry. run to the nearest town, stand directly next to one of the patrolling guards that is like ...'KEEP MOVING.' (lol) and the entire town's worth of guards will aggro on the tiny worm baby and murder cut it till it stops chasing you.

this wont work with a cliff racer though. it'll beat you down before you get there, cause its just slightly faster than you at the start. hate those things. and they poop everywhere.

8) Question: What are those things flying around the hills near balmora????????

answer: those are Cliff Racers. they are annoying stupid crazy idiots but they are super dangerous. if you try to move when its attacking you, its attack animation will auto reset, resulting in repeated hits over and over and over again. ----------YOU DIED-----------

so STAND STILL and shoot it, swing at it, whatever. dying to a cliff racer results in 10% crippling depression debuff that last 1593 years

9): Q: why do i keep dying to cliff racers?

A: idk lol

10) Q: im level 800 and still can't level up my unarmored skill. how do i level it?

A: enchant your clothes (NOT ARMOR) with 100 enchanting points 'restore health 4pts self' constant effect. do your shirt, pants, shoes and anything else that doesn't have an armor rating.

then go find some rat somewhere and let it hit you for 10 years i guess

11) Q: How do i get everything to stop attacking me???

A: i told you - everything auto-hates you because you're the main player character and they're just NPC's..but if you want, do a 100 pt enchant on an item for 'invisibility on self' and just equip that item when you feel anti-social. if you lose your invisibility because u tried to steal 5gold off a desk then just re-equip the item ok

12) Q: how do i steal while invis???

A: do 100 or 125 point enchantments on a set of garments or light armor for Chameleon (chest, boots, helmet is probably enough but add more if your enchant is low). add the percentage over 75% and if you sneak as well, you probably get away with it every time.

13) Q: How do i block? tf is this ****!!!!!

A: you dont. just equip a shield and let rngesus take the wheel.

14) Q: Is 'this class' good?

A: any class is fine, just be creative. Morrowind allows you a much greater degree of freedom. use it.

an example is the enchant / alchemy crafting exploit that new players in skyrim thought they were the first to invent. that was created in morrowind. if you have enchant and alchemy in your misc skills, you can be 100% resistant to normal weapons, 100% fire/shock/ice resistant, regeneration 10-15 pts/second, and reflect constant effect on the same suit of armor before you are lvl 5.

15) I think skyrim is better because <BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH>

-ya im not going to enter the big skyrim vs morrowind debate. i will say, morrowind is more difficult to play than skyrim hands down. skyrim is prettier to look at and gains some small quality of life, but loses a ton of the stuff that gave you potential in morrowind.

This doesnt mean skyrim is better or morrowind is better or oblivion is better. they are different games and you should like them for different reasons.

Morrowind FAQ: Part 2, return of the questions.

Section added because of my verbose nonsense in previous one. edits will be made to chop it down to barebones over time.

16) Ive played morrowind a bit now, hammer, and i know how to kill a cliff racer, but I always hate <THING ABOUT THE GAME I HATE> what can i do?

well if you're looking at this question you've had a successful run, and can pound dreaded cliff racer into paste. and you're looking for some new flavor.

i get it.

to start your journey, navigate to nexusmods, and select 'the elderscrolls III: Morrowind' and start browsing for your desired adjustment to the game.

at this point, the benefit of owning an old game is 1) easy to mod 2) theres already a billion mods out there premade, ready to go 3) game never updates and will not invalidate your mods.

read the documentation on mods very carefully, and have fun turning all your trees neon purple, or changing your character's height to 'giant', morrowind is the clay, and you are the hands.

17) How do i find souls for the constant effect u mentioned? wtf dude u liar.

OK seriously, u have to kill stronger stuff. stuff that fits into a grand soul gem ....no, putting a ☢️<rat>☢️ into a grand soul gem is a waste and you should cry if you do this. might wanna get a 'better souls' mod for morrowind srsly. stop having a boring soulgem. stop having a boring life.

save your grand soulgem for 'Golden Saint'

She looks like this:



(image credit: wikia dot elderscrolls dot com - steam tried to make this a link, and i forget how to plaintext this, will sort it later. its the elder scrolls wiki site, good site.)

and shes not known for her good looks. shes basically 'reskinned goblin psychopath's wife' and she hates that you're alive, of course.

They're very strong because they lift heavy, and will start appearing on the normal 'greenish' grassland areas when you're high enough level, and the Molag Mar fortress east of vivec. it's going to take some serious wit if you want to face one of these when you're underleveled and soultrap it. but you're a gangster with the crafting exploits in hand so i dont need to worry about you.

I elect these for my constant effect enchantments because i think the morrow-world is a better place without them.

HINT: like conjuration? still cant find golden saint? get the chad 'conjure golden saint' spell - cast soul trap - hit it till it dies lmao constant effect keks

18) Hammer! How do I delete save files!??!?!?!??! THERES NO DELETE BUTTON WTF

ya, you cant delete. haha. its just like a virus it will grow till your pc is full then u are destroy.

i'm joking.

Go to right click morrowind in your steam library list, select 'properties' then navigate to 'browse local files'

this opens the morrowind folder.

then you go to 'saves' folder.

then you erase the saves you don't want MANUALLY. yes. there is no in-game option. morrowind is that old.

so then you can safely delete the files you named when you were a drunk young year old idiot so you dont live stream the embarrassing file names to everyone on the planet and get banned from twitch and youtube forever.

End

Congratulations on buying morrowind and regretting your purchase. Luckily this guide helped you to become gigachad and kill cliff racer, and brew a cure crippling depression potion. good job.

[DiamondDotZip]

this is going to blow up with the current sale ($3 USD for morrowind game of the year edition)

[Anemoshi]

thanks for the very end part that i just happened to notice before going back into my game to try and delete save files so it'll stop yelling at me. i half expected having to do it manually lol

[Kiliox]

Kinda got me stoked to play again even though I already knew most of this from trial and error as a kid hopped up on dr pepper back in 2003 XD

Fun guide, buddy.

[randomschizo3699]

after a couple dozen hours yes, you understand the limits of the game mechanics and know exactly how to break the game. biggest problem with bethesda games; balancing barely exists past the 1st game area

[beau]

idk this game is kinda easy

[Hammer Of Evil]

I agree

indeed, kings quest was fun, too. i fell in the hole and died though, because i couldn't fight the cliff racer.

[Rodayan]

The graphics are just fine lol. I started playing computer games as a sprog when King's Quest 1, 640x480 in 16 colours, was the norm. 256 colours was new and improved.

[Hammer Of Evil]

@luna - you might try running the program as administrator, or installing to a steamlibrary on a different drive or folderpath. the age of morrowind's program may also require running as compatibility for windows XP.

new security systems in win10 and 11 do not like the old way, the old way is probably considered malware now. you might check your antivirus too, it might be preventing the game from saving changes.

@napsack - happy you enjoyed it and are a gamerlord who lifts heavy and takes a multivitamin and is invincible to cliff racer.

those are notable ways to prepare a kwama egg, and are surely able to prevent me from being an n'wah with crippling depression. i mainly ensure that they do not cause me to have a naive and intoxicating innocence, and add the mushrooms i was supposed to get for Ajira at the mages guild instead, she didnt need them anyways

[Kukunochi]

Nice guide, funny as hell to read. 10/10 way to go. Wish I had this 15 years ago :P
- note how do you like some kwama eggs, scrambled, poached, sunny side up, with a side of scrib jelly on toast?

[Luna]

Why do my keybinds keep resetting every time i get on the game