I really, really want to enjoy Morrowind :( Tips?

solemnwar

New member
Sep 19, 2010
649
0
0
I really, really want to enjoy Morrowind. I really do. The world is gorgeous (even more so with a graphics overhaul) and big (mildly annoying, the lack of fast travel, but I can deal with that) and there's so much lore and things and usually stuff that I like.

But I just. Can't. Get into it. The combat is just so atrocious and the journal so poorly set up that just. Ugghlaskdlfjas.
(And before someone goes "well the journal's realistic blah blah", if I were recording important information involving people's quests, I would write information on the same quest ON THE SAME FUCKING PAGE not a million pages later. And how many of you write down every conversation you have ever? I mean really).

I also have no idea really what I'm doing or where to go for things and just. Argh. I'm not an old school gamer, I didn't start properly gaming until 2009, and before that all I had were LINEAR FIRST PERSON SHOOTERS (good ones, like the original Unreal). So I really don't know what to do with myself here. I'm wandering aimlessly and getting murdered by BUGS (until I ~tgm out of frustration that is!) and generally not having a terribly good time.

Whine about "omg new gamer/casual noobs ruining our games" all you like I don't really give a shit.

I just want to know if you guys, with more old-game experience than I, can give me some tips to enjoy the game. And if not well. I tried. lol Maybe someone else struggling to enjoy the game can get some use out of this thread, if only that they're not alone, hahahaha.
 

Vern5

New member
Mar 3, 2011
1,633
0
0
Journal: You need either the Tribunal or Bloodmoon expansion. Probably Tribunal. One of them adds an option to the Journal that keeps an index of all of your active quests and can directly point you to the pages you need with the click of a mouse.

Direction: Read everything. Read every textbox and every note in your inventory. Then read your journal. Then read a map of Morrowind itself. Read gamefaqs if you must. If you're going to play this game then you're going to have to accept that you must read everything. In fact, read everything out loud.

Combat: Most people who cite Morrowind's combat as bad are usually missing most of their attacks because their skill is not high enough to have any successful hits. This is normal at low levels. You will miss attacks due to skill failure often. You just need to find something simple to bash until you can get that skill up. OR, if you are resourceful, you can pay for better fighting abilities. Or you can find spells and enchantments to improve your abilities.

Best advice I can give: Besides reading everything, which I cannot stress enough, you need to cheat the system to win. Not cheat like triggering god mode. You need to abuse the hell out of the skill system and the magical systems. A few good enchantments can turn you from a chump to a champ in a split second. Magical stat-boosting items are abundant in Morrowind to the point where they are almost vendor trash. Many of them have frail, temporary enchantments. However, when you are level 1 and can't hit the broad side of a mudcrab with a longsword that 20 second boost to Agility (The stat that heavily influences your chance-to-hit) will be a practical godsend.

A BIG FAT TIP: Here's something fun I found a few years ago. Pick your favorite melee weapon type. Now go buy a relatively cheap and light version of that weapon. I usually choose a Chitin weapon for this. Now, save up about 1000-2000 gold. Find a filled Soul gem, any soul will do. Go to an Enchanter.

Enchant your crappy weapon with a Bound-Weapon spell of a similar kind (Ex. Chitin Spear = Bound Spear). Set this enchantment to trigger On Strike and give it a 20-second duration. Now, every time you hit someone with that enchanted weapon, it will magically "change" into its daedric equivalent with a 10 point skill boost. 20 seconds of power and skill will take you far.
 

ShinyCharizard

New member
Oct 24, 2012
2,034
0
0
Yeah unless you played it around the time it came out it is very difficult to enjoy. I'd recommend getting the Morrowind Overhaul 3 to upgrade the graphics massively.
 

Windcaler

New member
Nov 7, 2010
1,332
0
0
Generally the answer is to mod it. If you get the expansions the journal is cleaned up a ton but its not perfect. As for the combat, I have not yet found a mod to make it better but I agree it is pretty awful. The nice thing is while the combats horrible the magic system makes up for it, at least for me.

As for getting around the world, there are some mods that give you fast travel to major locations. That can be nice when youre just going from one side of the map to the other with no intention of exploring. One that I use is called cozyshack which puts a small house in Dagon Fel and inside it can teleport you to and from Gnisis, Balmora, Ald'ruhn, Vivec, and a few other places. You could also just make your own mod that does the same thing.
 

Diablo2000

Tiger Robocop
Aug 29, 2010
1,159
0
0
MOD IT! Use all dem mods, if you think you had enough mods, that's just means you didn't mod it enough...

When creating a character pick you shit wisely, on your first playthrough I recommend trying going for a warrior since magic is kinda tricky in this game, broken, overpowered, but tricky.
Also for a noob, I recommend making the Dead Guy quest and the dude of the ring quest in the inicial city they net you a good amount of gold, after that head to Balmora, follow the instructions that the guy gave you at the beginning of the game (Or get a ride with the giant bug outside of the city, it will cost you though) you should get there, not only you procced a little in the main quest of the game but there's the Warriors Guild and the Mages Guild with net some gold from the start so you can start to upgrade your shit.
Also to evade the Journal confusion I sugest you never get more than one or two quest active at one time, may seen dificult with some much shit going on but you can do it.
And the game does have a fast travel system but it's like skyrim where you can go everywhere as you please as long as you discovered it, it's paid and where you go it's fixed.

Also I always download a mod that takes out the random of fights, make everything much easier...
 

AndrewF022

New member
Jan 23, 2010
378
0
0
If you really hate the random skill failure when it comes to combat, particularly with melee... try this mod: http://morrowind.nexusmods.com/mods/23746

It basically takes away the early game frustration of swinging for ages at enemies and not hitting anything. You can probably remove it once your skills are of a higher level since by then you will miss less anyway. It does make the game considerably easier though so you may want to ramp up the difficulty to compensate.
 

SonOfVoorhees

New member
Aug 3, 2011
3,509
0
0
Now the things you moan about the game are the reasons i like it, i guess its just very dated and it doesnt hold your hand. Although having a paper map will make it easier to find your way as there is no quick travel nor does it put a big cross on the map pointing where you have to go. You have to follow directions given to you. Combat sucks but does get better as you train and use your skills. Dont rush the game, take your time an enjoy it and save often. Search all buildings and do guild quests. If you explore to much to soon you will be killed very easily.Stay to paths, use boats, teleporting (mages guild) and stilt walkers to visit other places atleast until your skills improve.

As for mods? Why bother. If your just going to make it easier by modding, then dont bother playing the game.....although i wouldnt blame you for modding the journal. You have to take your time. You cant rush around and see everything from day one. You will soon get sucked into it and the fighting will get better and you will be soon sucked into the story. Its just, at the start, its very difficult.

If you really want to mod.....no cheats. Just update graphics, journal, map and add more wild life to make the world more living. Thats it. Anything that changes core mechanics is cheating in my book. Should at least play it vanilla once and mod it afterward.
 

Signa

Noisy Lurker
Legacy
Jul 16, 2008
4,749
6
43
Country
USA
First off, character creation is a big deal. I found a Nord with the Steed starsign gives you a lot of great n00b perks because you'll be good with melee, and you will run quite fast.

Finding the special starter weapons help a bit too. Just a short way out of the starting city, there's a guy that has a lightning sword (follow the path to the left). If you search behind the lighthouse, there is an ice axe. The starter dagger is effective if you have skills in short blade. Really, unless your main melee skills are blunt or spear, and ONLY blunt and spear, getting those weapons will cover 3 weapon classes without you spending a single gold.

Combat is a ***** to get use to, but I love it so much. It's like playing a live-action D&D game: Just because you are close enough and declare an attack doesn't mean the foe takes damage. He can still dodge and you can still fumble. The game should do a better job of showing this with a harmless thunk noise instead of a swish. A big thing that is easy to forget when you start out is your fatigue. That green bar needs to be as full as you can make it if you wish to survive. A skilled fighter can be made into a baby if he's too tired to swing. It gets better though, as your fatigue starts to get higher, and your skills increase, you don't need to worry so much about it. You get a true sense of progression from that annoying miss chance becoming almost nothing.

As for getting lost in the world, I think I was playing for 10 or so hours before I found Balmora. I just kept getting turned around or distracted. The world is amazing that way. Just rest when you need to and save often. You will be fine.

The journal does suck. If you don't have Tribunal installed, it's nearly unbearable. I only tolerated it because of playing Baldur's Gate, and even then I got to the point where I didn't want to find more quests. Tribunal pretty much fixed that, but it felt kinda hacked in. It wasn't until in Oblivion that they fixed it.
 

ninjaRiv

New member
Aug 25, 2010
986
0
0
Yeah, besides mods there's not a lot you can do. But, to be fair, I had the same problems when I first played it but, having nothing to play for a while, I played the shit out of it and fell in love. You might just need to get used to it, turn the difficulty down and progress slowly; level up as much and as quick as possible.
 

Verzin

New member
Jan 23, 2012
807
0
0
Morrowind is extremely fun, but it's really hard to get into. it has the best architecture, best designed dungeons, especially the dwemer ruins, and you can do really cool things in it.


The problem that most modern players will experience is that Morrowind requires a few things from the player

1. big time commitment.
2. it is REQUIRED that you don't mind following crazy and vague directions to find locations for quests.
3. Big time commitment. (seriously Morrowind can suck up so much time it's crazy).


I loved the game long ago, but I still have problems getting back into it. my attention span has dwindled. It's worth it though.

you will get absolutely murdered in this game also. inexperienced players can easily die to rats at lvl 1 :D.
 

Fasckira

Dice Tart
Oct 22, 2009
1,678
0
0
Why do you really really want to enjoy it? I mean ultimately its not everyone's cup of tea and if you aren't getting along with it then it could be wiser to try another game to spend time with?
 

Pink Gregory

New member
Jul 30, 2008
2,296
0
0
Don't underestimate the importance of stamina.

Seriously, last time I tried to get into Morrowind I couldn't run for 5 seconds without my stamina bar being completely depleted, and this is not a game in which it's feasible to walk everywhere. It made running away from everything (which is what I was mostly doing) very difficult.

I intend to try again sometime, but I can't really get into it either, I gotta say the Elder Scrolls world has never really enthralled me that much.
 

Echopunk

New member
Jul 6, 2011
126
0
0
You need Mark and Recall.

When you get a quest from someone, cast Mark right there. You can wander over the entire world to find the quest, but as soon as you're done, you can just Recall right back to the quest giver for your reward/story progress.

A water walking enchantment comes in handy, as does a levitation one. If you find yourself getting destroyed by magic casting enemies, an item with a constant dispell enchantment makes a world of difference.

If you can handle the extra weight, carry a few books around. You can use them to make walkways over lava, provided you're not packing any levitation enchantments.

You can make a skill enchantment cheaper by giving it a wide variance. A 50 point skill enchantment is expensive, a 1 to 50 point one is not as bad. You just need to keep equipping, unequipping the item until you get the value you want.

If you're using first person view, jump everywhere. Making quick little hops is much faster than running, and if you have athletics picked as one of your major skills (or minors, I forget), you can get a bunch of level ups just by hopping from place to place.
 

fix-the-spade

New member
Feb 25, 2008
8,639
0
0
solemnwar said:
I just want to know if you guys, with more old-game experience than I, can give me some tips to enjoy the game. And if not well. I tried. lol Maybe someone else struggling to enjoy the game can get some use out of this thread, if only that they're not alone, hahahaha.
Basically, persist at it. It took me about six hours to really get into it, skipping off and doing some quests other than the main line is certainly helpful too.

I ended up completing the entirety of the Thieves Guild before even starting the main quest, stealing stuff in Morrowind is way more interesting than the first few missions of the main line. The main quest doesn't really kick off properly until you're sent to find the tribal Dunmer in the desert.

Also, I believe there is a fast ravel mod kicking about, whilst you can chain Silt Striders, boats and Mages Guild teleporters to get from city to city much faster than walking, you just have to build up some gold first.
 

ohnoitsabear

New member
Feb 15, 2011
1,236
0
0
SirBryghtside said:
Put majors in Athletics, Acrobatics, Armour of choice (I pick heavy), Weapon of choice (I pick Long Blade) and Block or something. And put a minor in Alchemy.
This is a pretty good skill build when starting out. I would recommend that the weapon be one of the strength governed ones, and armor being heavy or medium, because that will let you gain strength and endurance, which are both essential for a warrior type character. I personally, don't like putting athletics and acrobatics as major skills, but they make the early levels a lot more bearable when you're first starting out. Also, I would recommend putting sneak, persuasion, and mercantile as minor skills, because they're probably going to be useful no matter what type of character you're playing.

Also, your first priority after making your character should be getting a weapon and as much armor as you can for your chosen weapon and armor type. This will allow you to start leveling these skills sooner, and reduce the amount of time where you're completely worthless.

Finally, I recommend taking a look at UESP if you get stuck. It's an Elder Scrolls wiki with a lot of great information in it. It's a very useful tool.
 

Fappy

\[T]/
Jan 4, 2010
12,010
0
41
Country
United States
SmashLovesTitanQuest said:
Join Hlaalu for a few easy quests and levels. If you stumble into a cave and get owned by high levels creatures, suck it up. If you go somewhere for a quest and get owned, don't dispair - theres probably some potion or exploit that can help you out. You'll just have to find it. Use the Silt Striders and Boats instead of walking everywhere. Try to learn your way around Vivecs cantons so it doesn't confuse the fuck out of you by the 10th time you visit the city. And use tgm to get past annoying Cliff Racers.
Hlaalu can also net you three pieces of glass armor relatively early on if you complete the option requirements for the Balmora quest-giver. But then... if you know what you're doing you can get a full set of glass armor at level 1. Robbing Ghostgate FTW!