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Morrowind Restrictions List

The purpose of this list is to encourage roleplay and come up with interesting and entertaining character ideas for a 100% Difficulty Playthrough. Morrowind can become a very easy experience if you allow yourself to obtain the most powerful items early in the game and this list is an attempt to play the game differently. Some points may be removed/altered for different playthrough, it is entirely up to the player.

1 - Read attentively all the topics provided by NPC’s: This will allow you to understand the lore of Morrowind and Tamrielic History much better but it will also add location markers to your map and unlock certain topics that can lead you to interesting discoveries. Do not overlook what the NPC’s have to say.

2 – Close all doors behind you: The way Morrowind is scripted makes it so it remembers what happens to static items that are placed in the world. Leaving doors opened everywhere can later on become a source of crash for your game.

3 – Avoid picking up static items: For the same reason mentioned above, taking intentionally placed items leaves a coding trace. It is much better to store items in crates and to avoid picking up items that are placed in the world. To be clear here, take good loot while exploring caves but do not steal every item from every house in Balmora.

4 – Try to fill every journal entries: Some entries are just bad to obtain (killing an Ashlander during the main quest being one of them) but some entries are so subtle that if you do not read everything NPC’s tell you, you will miss them. A good example of this is taking supplies at Fort Moonmoth during the ‘Meet Sul Matuul’ quest or talking with Raesa Pullia during the ‘Sixth House Base’ Quest. As a completionist, I love trying to get every journal entries for each quests.

5 – Always Sell & Buy with Maxed Fatigue: This provides better prices either way so there are no reasons not to do it.

6 – Walk in Interiors: This is more of a Roleplay rule but running around everywhere is not realistic at all.

7 – Avoid godly items early on: Boots of Blinding Speed, Amulet of Shadows, Dragonbone Cuirass or Fist of Rangadulf are good examples and it does not make any sense whatsoever for your character to head there right away and obtain these.

8 – Proceed with the quests in Order: Morrowind Main Quest, Tribunal Main Quest, Bloodmoon Main Quest, Factions Quests, Misc Quests.
Note: The main reason to do this is to keep your journal properly ordered if you aim to complete as many quests as possible. Some Misc quests are sometimes entwined with the Main quest. Good examples are the quests ‘Mystery of the Dwarves’ & ‘Nchuleftingth Expedition’. Those two are Mages Guild quests that you can participate in via the ‘Antabolis Informant’ quest and while this can be extremely fun to do, I try to avoid it.

9 – No Creeper & No Mudcrab Merchant: This does not make any sense whatsoever from a lore perspective. Making money is a difficult element of the game early on and becomes increasingly easy over time. Bartering with an Animal & a Creature from Oblivion is just nonsensical. Also, Ababael Timsar-Dadisun is a Merchant with 9000Gold in Zainab Camp & the Master of Mercantile Training. He is a perfect alternative to the Creeper & the Mudcrab.

10 – Dwemer Collection: During the Mages Guild questline or earlier, it is very fun to start a Dwemer collection and try to obtain a certain number of every Dwemer items. I also like to obtain a full set of armor, the two Dwemer Pneuma-Trap, 50 Dwemer coins & all the Keys from every Ruins I visited. Add to this the schematics & Books.

11 – Sixth House Collection: Many of the Sixth House Bases/Caves are optional and I bet 90% of players never explored them at all. I always aim to explore all of these and kill every ‘Dagoth’ unique monsters in the game. This allows you to collect every Ash statues, every Bell Hammers & every Sixth House Amulets.

12 – Do not steal anything unless it is quest given: For Roleplay reasons or for challenge.

13 – Do not kill anyone unless it is necessary for quests or unless it is for completionist purposes: A good example of this would be killing all the ‘Dagoth’ Unique monsters or the Wraith of Sul- Senipul during the Main Quest.

14 – Read Documents, Guides & Papers: If you Roleplay, your character is new to Vvardenfell and knows nothing of the culture or territory there. It simply makes sense to study a little bit those things.

15 – When you look in a crate you must take what is there: It is too easy to abuse crates and wait for a good item or scroll to appear early-on in the game.

16 – No Alchemy Abuse: When you finished the game, this exploit can be fun but before that, it breaks the game entirely.

17 – No Bittercup early on: I do not have a problem with it specifically but it does not make sense for the player to head there just to get the cup.

18 – No Corpus Abuse: This one is trickier because it follows the proper questline and happens to you as part of the Main Quest. It can be an interesting way to boost your Strength & Endurance quite early and even sometimes at level 1 if you know what you are doing. I do not mind a few bonus points when you complete the quest (5-25) which is an efficient way to Max Endurance & Strength Naturally rather than abusing trainers (Naturally boosting Armors at Max Difficulty is borderline impossible). If you sleep 100 days in a row to get your strength & Endurance to crazy amount, that is an exploit and should be avoided at all cost. My advice would be to play through the quest naturally and benefit from the points you get when you complete it or occupy yourself with the ‘Sleepers Awake’ Quest where you have to attack certain Shrines to free certain Sleepers. This will take you a few days to accomplish and it is suggested to attack such bases right after the Cultist attacked you while you slept (which is right after the ‘Sixth House base’ Quest which is during the ‘Corpus Cure’ Quest so the timing is perfect. That way, you do not simply wait 30 days in a row to get more stats points.

19 – Cartography: Through the course of your gameplay, explore the entire Map from cover to cover and same for Solstheim.
Note: When you are done with the game and you allow yourself some Overpowered functions, doing this with a massively potent levitation spell is much much easier.

20 – Constant Effects Enchantments: Some people see enchants such as 100pts Sanctuary or 100pts Chameleons or 50+pts Drain Strength as exploits but I disagree. Creating such enchants requires the player to have very potent soul gems with captured creatures, suitable items such as Exquisite Clothes or a Daedric Towershield & a large sum of money. At max difficulty and following my previous points, this is quite hard to achieve. For this reason, I see those enchanted items as perfectly reasonable and well-deserved if the player manages to obtain the necessary apparatus.

21 – Capture the souls of Unique Monsters: Dagoth Ur, Vivec, Wraith of Sul-Senipul, Dagoth Gares, Ash Vampies (…)

22 – Join Factions that make sense with your Roleplaying Character & his Race: An Altmer joining the Tribunal Temple makes absolutely no sense at all.

23 – Ebony & Dwemer Items: Depending on what you Roleplay, Dwemer artifacts & Ebony Mines are property of the Empire and are Illegal to sell. If you are a thief, go for it and make a profit, if you play a Legion soldier, avoid it.

24 – No Trip to Solstheim & Tribunal Early on: In terms of Roleplay, this does not make sense & the items you can find there are just simply too strong.

25 – No Skill books reading: Keep those for when your character is maxed so you will gain extra levels.

That's a very good list. I can't really argue with any of these items.

Item 25 seems counterintuitive when it comes to a role play aspect. A character wouldn’t know if a book taught them something new beforehand, and certainly wouldn’t turn down the opportunity to get a little help in the unforgiving land of Vvardenfell, especially as an outlander. Perhaps not purposefully seeking out only Skillbooks would be a better way to outline that stipulation. Otherwise a fun list though.

Good list.

Number 8. When you first meet Caius, his first order is to you to go off and get experience. Join a guild or the Legion. After you do the first two info gathering quests, he says the same thing. It's pretty unavoidable to not do most if not all of the faction quests before advancing in the main story. If you wanted to be totally strict about role-playing, then after you get off the boat, the first reaction would be to dump the package and try and find your way back home. After all, you were kidnapped, held in a prison and shipped off to an inhospitable island under embargo for no reason.

Number 15 - when I look into a crate, I am not going to take a redware cup, a glass goblet and a pewter plate.

Number 7/17 - Well, I do happen to know the location of every godly item in the game. I personally don't go and look for them unless there is a reason. If someone early on tells me a fisherman saw a sunken city off the coast of Hla Oad, I'd bear that in the back of my mind, but I'm not going to do anything about it until my alteration is high enough to cast a reliable water walking/breathing. I'm generally quite sparing in my use of potions except for restore heath/magicka. But as soon as I'm capable of doing so, I'm off to have a look around. (I really like Goldbrand.) I think doing that is acceptable, since I have a reason to go looking.

Some times you do run into things naturally early on. Being sent to Caldera to deal with some agents, you may well run into one of the infamous naked barbarians. If you help him out and go the wrong way, you very shortly run into another traveller that wants an escort. Sort out Wine-Sot, aid the other traveller & get your reward. (I actually don't like that reward at all.) And I don't see why anyone who has played through the game would want the bitter cup for themselves, knowing how important it can be for someone else. Going through the mages guild quests can get you sent to near Ald Velothi fairly early on as well. Help out a dancer by a pond, and there's anther item you mentioned.

This ties in with completing quests and journal entries. Rescuing a pilgrim from small Ashlander camp gets you a an active quest entry from a faction you haven't joined, the same when gaining some of the more powerful items in the game. Going to every cave can also screw you up if you haven't been sent there. An amulet you take from a bandit corpse is vital to advance a Cult quest. Too bad if you killed the guy a few weeks ago and didn't grab it then.

Number 24 - certainly agree with that, just because a horde of Rickling Raiders is going to make very short work of anyone under 20th level or so. First time I ran into those critters I damn near killed myself before I realised they had spell reflection.

Number 18 - Yes, I'd be panicking if I got corpus. First instinct is to get it cured ASAP.

Number 11 - after dreamers awake, you do look for 6th house bases, if just to get the rep boost from the people you've "cured" by killing the local Dagoth. And I like to collect as many amulets as I can, too.

Overall, thoughtful list.

Hi - I didn't mean any criticism, we all play the way we prefer. With some stuff, what I think of as the "tedious" parts of it, I take shortcuts. I'm going to use my knowledge of the game so later on I don't have to go schlepping all over the place to get stuff. You can bet I will be picking some mushrooms in Seyda Neen and some flowers on the walk to Balmora. (and bittergreen leaves, a black and red shirt, 4 pieces of raw ebony, a skull, scrib jelly, netch leather etc.) Time the quests so you don't have to go to the same place 2 or 3 times.

I don't like having too many outstanding things, but I prefer to have the journal grow organically. I just found it a bit of a let down when I first played through when Morrowind came out. I concentrated on the main quest but it just seems weird doing the others after that. You get "I have killed Dagoth Ur! Stopped the blight! I am the Nereverine! The Chosen One! Pawn of Prophecy! Slayer of Gods! All shall love me and despair!" and then "a shopkeeper wants me to kill some rats."

I have the LGnpc mods added so that expands things, especially with Redoran. Those add quite a bit more content.
One of your other points: 10, the Dwemer collection is good. Collecting anything really. I keep one of every helmet in the game and try to build up a library (book rotate & jackets essential!) I does mean I read the skill books though. Getting all the Lessons, or the 2920 books or all of the set books can be challenging. It does mean you have to look through houses and occasionally steal from people. And in keeping with your points 12, I prefer not to steal from houses - although here it's all for the greater good, of course.

Hmmmm, how about ADDING this one: "No Dark Brotherhood armor."

Why, you may ask? Why... Because it makes no sense for you to be running about fully clad in the Dark Brotherhood Uniform if you arent, yourself, a member! ESPECIALLY not, in the middle of town, where... Well, "Is there a reason why the guards dont try to attack this guy dressed up like a assassin?" Of course, since Dark Brotherhood Armor is the secound best set of non-magical light armor in the game and the first set, the Glass Armor, is EXTREMELY hard to find while DBA is something you are guaranteed to come across quite early on, it can be crippling to some builds.

And, debateably: "If you are currently doing a Imperial Legion quest, wear your uniform through it.". Not necesserially when you are doing other unrelated quests, but. You know. Show some professionalism.