User:Agiletek/First Time Players

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As Morrowind:Starting Out has primarily become a list of exploits and spoilers, this is my attempt to make a list of advice for first time players of Morrowind. Feel free to suggest additions (via the discussion page for this). You can make spelling/grammer/markup fixes on this page or add appropriate article links to existing text here without my permission.

Description for Morrowind:Morrowind listing: "A spoiler-free explanation of the game's mechanics, and considerations for character creation." Add some mention of spoilers to the description for Starting Out (if it's even kept).

Morrowind is often needlessly opaque in describing its game mechanics. The manual and in-game descriptions are quite vague on what particular parts of the game mechanics actually do. This makes it impossible to properly weigh the comparative value of things and makes it quite likely a new player will create a very weak character without realizing it, leading to frustration. This article seeks to explain, without spoilers, parts of the game which aren't made clear in the game itself in order to avoid needlessly frustrating new players.

General

• PC players are advised to download and install OpenMW, Patch for Purist, Expansion Delay, and Morrowind Optimization Patch. These are the only mods (and new engine) you actually need for your first playthrough.
  • If you take no other advice from this guide, do this. It will vastly improve the experience at no cost.
    • OpenMW allows for Morrowind to be played more stably (less crashes), and with better performance, while fixing a few bugs inherent to the original engine, utilizing a new format for save games that is significantly less prone to corruption (preventing loss of saves), and adding some optional user interface improvements. It also supports modern display resolutions (without external programs, the original engine only supports a maximum resolution of 1280x960 without using .ini edits that breaks the field of view), full controller input, and running the game natively on non-Windows operating systems.
    • Patch for Purist is nothing more than a patch for Morrowind made by fans, fixing several bugs left in the game after the final official patch.
    • Expansion Delay fixes two issues with content for Morrowind's expansions being forced onto new characters repeatedly. It is effectively an optional, but recommended, component of Patch for Purist. A conceptually similar fix is included in the Xbox's version of the Game of the Year Edition release of Morrrowind, but is not in the PC version for unclear reasons.
    • Morrowind Optimization Patch is another unofficial patch for Morrowind. Where Patch for Purist fixes errors by Bethesda that resulted in bugs, Morrowind Optimization Patch fixes errors by Bethesda that reduced the game's performance. These optimizations have no disadvantage for the player and are essential to running Morrowind at a reasonable framerate.
  • It is recommended you not enable the official plugins (included with modern digital distribution releases of Morrowind) immediately for your first playthrough and leave them disabled as they are by default. Firstly, several of these are poorly balanced for new characters. Secondly the unofficial patch for these, Unofficial Morrowind Official Plugins Patched, depends on using an alternate .esp file, which is easier to install if you haven't used the original version on your save file.
• Holding the Ctrl key when clicking an item in an inventory menu (including looting or bartering) will take a single item from the stack without needing to deal with the quantity menu. Holding Shift will move the entire stack.
• Provided you have at least one of the two expansions or the Game of the Year Edition release, your journal records not just your quest stage updates, but also active quests, and NPC responses to topics you have asked them about (which often include useful information not in journal entries themselves).
• The menu UI is surprisingly configurable. The windows can be dragged around (click the top bar of a menu and hold it), resized (click and hold an edge or corner of a window), disabled (double click the bar or click the corresponding UI element), re-enabled (click the corresponding UI element), and kept on during gameplay (click the small box in the upper right corner of the window).
• Your mini-map (in the bottom-right of the UI by default) doubles as a compass, indicating your current facing direction.
• Pressing the F1 key lets you set up quick keys for favorite items or spells. This lets you quickly equip commonly used spells or magic items without digging through the menu for them.
• You can pick up items while the game is paused by clicking on them while the menus are open. This is primarily useful for items you can only reach while jumping (common for a female Breton or male Bosmer trying to take something from a high shelf) or exceptionally small items it is difficult to align the crosshair with.
• While the menus are open, you can hover your mouse over each effect your character is under (the small icons left of the mini-map) to view their name, source, and duration. These include temporary effects, those granted by magic items, and those inherent to your character's race or birthsign.
• To delete a spell from your spells known, hold shift and click on it. Beware that if you delete the only spell you know with a particular effect, you will be unable to use that effect for spellmaking or item enchanting until you learn it again.

General Gameplay

• Most random mechanics in Morrowind work by comparing a random number between 1 and 100 to your chance of success. When this guide mentions percentile increases, it is referring to adding to percentile success chance, not increasing your success chance by that percentage (a 50% chance increased by 1% means a resulting 51% chance, not 50.5% chance).
• Your current Fatigue to maximum fatigue ratio matters for almost everything random you do in Morrowind, including bartering, multiplying success chance by a number ranging from 0.75 (zero fatigue) and 1.25 (maximum fatigue). Keep it high if you want to accomplish any task with a random element. Magic jewelry that restores fatigue can be used to recover fatigue quickly with minimal weight or monetary cost, and it recharges on its own.
  • Fatigue is also factored into a few non-random things, such as jump height.
  • Enemies are also impacted by fatigue, just like you. A tired enemy will be less accurate so it pays to force an enemy to run to you.
• Don’t bother picking up everything to sell unless you’re very close to merchants or will soon be teleporting to town anyways. Common equipment has almost no value for its weight, merchants generally don't have enough gold to buy all the garbage you haul to them, and the effects of high carry weight are debilitating on your speed and stamina expenditure. If high-end equipment isn't present (and it rarely is), focus on small items like potions, quality alcohol, gems and scrolls that have excellent value for their weight instead of encumbering yourself with every cheap cuirass.
• Raw coinage in MW will rarely buy you fancy items directly while consumables and spells generally don't cost significant amounts. Instead your septims will primarily be spent on trainers. Using trainers to boost your miscellaneous skills before leveling up will ensure you get good attribute multipliers every time.
• Trainers and other merchants that like you offer training at a lower rate. People you’ve done quests for and/or members of your guilds tend to like you by default.
  • If a trainer is also a merchant, trade with them (even just trading a septim for a septim is sufficient) before training, and they will add the money you spent on training to their barter pool. This lets you trade expensive items (of a type they'll trade in) with them to get your raw coinage back.
• Morrowind only has 4 or 5 tiers of gear and you can get a full set of the second tier of gear at the first shop after your first dungeon, with the first mainly used to equip enemy rabble without giving you anything of value when you loot them. Expect to keep the same gear for a long time, but when you replace an item the new one will be a huge improvement you might just keep forever. Don't worry that you haven't found superior gear recently.
• Your attributes can be damaged by some enemies, with Bonewalkers and certain end-game bosses being the main offenders. This causes an attribute's value to be marked in red on your stats screen. This is distinct from a drained attribute (which is more common) which returns to normal when the time on the effect expires or the disease behind it is cured, which are indicated on the effects bar in the lower right of the screen (a description, duration and cause of these effects can been seen by hovering your mouse over them for a tooltip).
• Always have some way to Restore Strength, Cure Common Disease and Cure Blight Disease with you. Other attributes can wait till you're back at town to restore, but lowered strength will hurt your carry weight and render you unable to move without tossing important items.
• Shrines of the Imperial Cult and Tribunal are an efficient and low cost method of curing disease and restoring your attributes. They’re cheap for most people, and free for mid-ranks or higher in those factions.
  • Shrines also offer blessings that increase your stats for a full in-game day. Most of these effects are minor, and thus only something to grab if convenient, but of particular note is the relatively rare Vivec’s Fury (increases attack accuracy by 5%) and several unique shrines you’ll be introduced to by Temple quests, which have powerful effects and can be reused.
• You can slowly drag items by dropping them, stepping away, picking them up, and dropping them at your feet again. The sheer time this takes means its normally useless, but it can be helpful if you want to gather multiple very heavy items from a single dungeon before teleporting out with everything.
• Increasing a skill in Morrowind is largely a matter of quantity, not quality. Lots of easy uses of a skill will nearly always lead to faster skill increases than fewer harder uses.

Character Creation

Since character creation choices are permanent, a new player will have little context for the value of some choice, and mistakes will stick with you the entire playthrough, this section will be heavier than the rest.

• By mid-game, your race's special properties will be more important than their default skills and attributes. A Breton's bonus Magicka and Resist Magicka will remain useful at any level, but a Khajiit's ability to see in the dark can easily be duplicated (and is rarely needed in the first place) while the equipment restrictions on beast races can be quite crippling.
• The default classes tend to be built rather poorly (for example: Archer selects Combat as its specialization, making its Marksman skill level up slower than the best possible and rendering it an inferior option for an archery focused character) and can easily be outclassed by a custom class. Consider the following points when selecting your major and minor skills.
  • Since raising low level skills through use is just as hard, if not harder, than raising mid-level ones (as most skills require successful use to raise) and class skill status doesn't lower training costs (but do raise starting level, which makes it cost more if you’re raising a skill purely for more attribute gains on level up instead of using it directly), it’s wise to avoid taking redundant skills one won't use often. While a mage will want to use every school of magic, your custom class should avoid taking more than one weapon (except, perhaps, a melee backup for a Marksman based character) or more than one of the four types of armor.
  • Besides its obvious use of making enchanted items in the first place, Enchant makes enchanted items (including weapons) cost less charge to use and recharge faster. There’s enough utility jewelry capable of casting situationally useful spells around it’s a great skill for an otherwise pure warrior even if you don't count how it makes magic weapons more effective or lets you make your own.
  • Armourer, Speechcraft, Mercantile, and, to a somewhat lesser degree, Security (if you buy good quality picks) raise plenty fast on their own and you don’t need particularly high levels to use them well (25+, easily obtained with training, will be more than sufficient for most applications) so shouldn’t be major skills. Hand-to-hand (which is exceptionally weak), and unarmored (which provides minimal protection and doesn't even work if you are playing without OpenMW) aren’t particularly good skills in general.
  • Light Armor starts with low armor rating, but its best set, which is more common than the best sets of the other two classes, gives exceptionally high armor rating while remaining lightweight. Since encumbrance plays a part in your movement speed, light armor can make it possible to avoid attacks instead relying on armor, something which is particularly useful against magic as armor doesn't protect against it and magic projectiles are relatively slow. This does however result in slow leveling of the armor skill, as armor skills only increase when you are hit by an attack.
  • Medium Armor lacks end-game armor (aside from the cuirass slot, which has a potent artifact obtainable near the end of one faction quest line) unless you do expansion content (which is aimed at very high level characters). It is however effective early and mid game, with easily obtainable sets boasting higher armor rating equal to or higher than all but the best Heavy Armor sets, and lower weight than any of it.
  • Heavy Armor gives poor armor for its weight early game (only being equal to Medium Armor) but is the only one of the three armor classes to truly have a separate full set of "middle game" armor superior to normal gear without being artifact quality/rarity, and has far and away the best end-game sets. These end-game sets however, are finite in number and hard to obtain, with the absolute best having only two or three examples of each piece in the entire game world.
  • The bonus damage multiplier gained by hitting an unaware target while in Sneak mode is always 4x for melee weapons and 1.5x for ranged ones. This means that sneaky characters, strangely enough, get relatively little benefit from sneak attacks with Short Blades and get more out of using a weapon with long reach (Spears) to avoid the penalty to Sneak for being near an enemy, and/or high max damage (Axes) to get the most burst damage possible for a silent takedown.
  • Alchemy is a virtual necessity for mages due to them needing many potions that restore Magicka when default (store bought or found) potions suffer from high weight, slow restoration, relative rarity, and moderate cost compared to custom potions. Even beyond that, its effects are quite potent by moderate skill levels, especially if you splurge for a high quality mortar.
  • Information about each weapon type can be found in the combat section of this page.
• Specialization raises all skills of that category by 5 points and makes them quicker to raise. Favored Attribute raises the selected attribute by 10. Specialization has a permanent effect for virtually your character's entire existence, while your choice of Favored Attribute primarily impacts the early game (with two small exceptions for Endurance and Luck and an even smaller one for Strength).
  • Agility determines hit chance, with the +10 bonus of a favored attribute adding 2.5% (assuming max stamina) to your hit chance, and many other combat related things such as how likely it is you will be staggered when hit. Since the three "warrior" races start with pretty terrible agility and must depend on training to get high multipliers (as few Agility based skills are relevant to a warrior) it's a good choice for anyone who will hit people with weapons.
  • Endurance as a favored attribute increases your starting max Health by 5, and 10% of your Endurance is added to your health at every level (partial points are saved and add up between levels), making Endurance a priority for raising as its effects aren’t retroactive. Getting the absolute max possible Health isn’t massively important, but the difference is noticeable and useful to know ahead of time, making Endurance a solid primary attribute choice if you can't otherwise decide.
  • Willpower determines chance to successfully cast a spell, as well as chance to resist a few types of spell while Intelligence determines your Magicka supply and nothing else besides a small impact on a very small number of quests. Increasing the chance of casting a spell by by 3% will save more Magicka than you gain from a high intelligence, especially if you favor fewer, more powerful spells or will use restore magicka potions (which restore a flat number of points rather than a percentage), so Willpower is likely the better of the two if you can't decide between them for a mage.
  • Luck is an ideal favored attribute for a mage or mixed character, as it will add ~1% (exact rate varies by formula and your fatigue percent, but generally somewhat higher than that at full fatigue) to the success rate of everything you do with a random component, but a questionable one to raise on level up for non-mages if you have attribute multipliers on three stats, as spending a level up point on it will only ever add a mere 0.1% to success rate. Mages have finite ways to raise the chance of successfully casting difficult spells (only increasing skill level and Willpower, both of which cap at 100, can otherwise increase it without resorting to temporary effects or difficult to create magic items), but their target numbers can be effectively infinite, so they will want high luck for every possible chance to cast a spell. Since Luck can never acquire a multiplier at level up, making Luck a Favored Attribute at character creation is required to max the stat as early as possible.
  • Personality slightly raises starting deposition and makes Speechcraft/Mercantile slightly easier. Due to its low impact, is not recommended as a favored attribute.
  • Speed only impacts your speed and jump distance, and isn't even the only factor in those things. Speed is good to raise, but not so much a priority to merit spending a favored attribute on.
  • Strength boosts damage, improves carry weight, determines starting health (but not increases to it), and one of the four attributes to determine max stamina. It's a fair choice for favored attribute, but a warrior's issues in Morrowind tend to lay more with hitting an opponent than dealing enough damage.
• Birthsigns are not equal, and are far from it. Those that give daily powers will quickly turn useless as all of them are easily duplicated by spells and magic items, while those that boost attributes aren’t particularly impressive either. The most useful, by far, are those that raise your magicka pool as the only other way to raise your pool permanently beyond Intelligence and racial modifier requires potent enchanting skills and/or hard to obtain artifacts. Next best, but far behind those three, are those that raise your to hit chance (Warrior) and dodge (Thief).
• Without a racial and birthsign modifier in your favor your magicka pool will be very small, only equal to your Intelligence. This can make it completely impossible to cast potent spells (which can easily cost more than 100 magicka), and render it extremely difficult to play a character that focuses primarily on magic that is not a Altmer or Breton with a birthsign increasing their maximum pool. Even with the proper race and birthsign combo, one should expect to carry plenty of potions to restore their magicka.

Travel

• Get familiar with the network of boats, silt striders, and Mages’ Guild guild guides. Almost every true settlement can be reached by combining these techniques.
• Divine Intervention and Almsivi Intervention aren’t just fast exit tools, but efficient transport methods.
  • In particular, the town of Pelagiad is not on the normal fast travel network, but can be reached with Divine Intervention from Seyda Neen or Suran, while an Almsivi Intervention from there will take you to Balmora or Vivec (depending on if you’re on the north or south end of town) both of which provide access to other fast travel options.
  • Note these spells work based on your region, not what is actually the nearest location.
• Mark and Recall spells let you quickly return to a single area of your choice. Some of the best uses for your mark are in front of quest givers you want to return to, your stash of loot, and in off-network locations you’ll want to return to frequently. Using a Mark and Intervention to quickly go back and forth from a location is also a viable option.
• Items left on the ground will remain there forever, even valuable items left in the middle of town. The same is true for items you put in most containers, but putting items in an owned container (which display a red crosshair when hovered over if you enable Show Owned in OpenMW under interface in the launcher) will forever mark them as stolen. Virtually every area in the game (the exceptions all having nothing to loot or are part of the end of the main quest for the original game or an expansion) can be revisited freely, so don't worry too much about leaving anything behind as long as you remember where you left it. Most bodies and the items on them however, will not remain, and will disappear after several in-game days.

Combat

• Your Hit Rate is equal to your Weapon Skill, increased by 1% for every 5 points of Agility or 10 points of Luck you have. This is then multiplied by somewhere between .75 to 1.25, depending on how much Fatigue you have left. Having full Fatigue will increase your accuracy by 25%, and being depleted of fatigue will decrease your accuracy by 25%. Finally, your hit chance is increased by a flat amount (not multiplied by fatigue modifier) from Fortify Attack effects (such as from the Warrior Birthsign) which add 1% to your hit chance for every 1 point of value.
• The damage range for weapons isn't a random roll for you. Rather, it is determined by how long you hold your swing for. Fast clicks will deal minimum damage, but holding a swing until the animation stops changing will deal max damage.
  • This is not true for enemies, as they do roll randomly. This can make users of non-staff two handed weapons particularly dangerous.
• Many enemies, including ghosts, vampires, and most daedra, are immune to "normal weapons". A "normal weapon" is one made of bonemold, chitin, iron, steel (including "imperial" and "nordic" weapons), wood, or (strangely) adamantium that is not enchanted. What property a weapon is enchanted with does not matter for this purpose. Obtaining a non-normal weapon of a character's preferred weapon skill should be a priority.
• The different weapon types all have different properties that makes each feel unique.
  • Axe: One handed axes have a high max damage, but have a minimum damage of 1, meaning only full power swings are useful. Two handed axes are slow but have massive damage.
  • Blunt: One handed are, strangely enough, a fast weapon with extant minimum damage values but relatively low max damage. Two handed are like their axe counterpart, but have longer reach and lower damage. Staves have high reach, and high speed but low damage, which is often mitigated by their tendency to carry powerful enchantments. If intending to use staves regularly, Enchant should also be a major skill.
  • Short Blade: High speed and only weapon with substantial minimum damage. This makes them well suited to rapid swings.
  • Long Blade: Long Blades are above average at everything, having good attack speed, relatively high min damage and relatively low (but not bad) max damage. Two handed long blade weapons deviate from this by being the fastest non-staff two handed weapons in the game, with relatively light damage compared to Blunt/Axe to match.
  • Spear: Spears have long reach and are slow, but their damage is enough that with high strength and speed you can often stun enemies and move away, preventing them from ever reaching you. Strangely enough, spears pair well with Sneak as distance is a major factor in determining enemy detection range and they still get the full 4x damage modifier for hitting with a sneak attack.
  • Marksman: Ranged weapons behave much as how you'd expect when compared to melee weapons, requiring ammo to function but being able to hit at great distances. The main thing of note is that their damage increase from sneak attacks is only 1.5x instead of the 4x of a melee weapon in exchange for being much easier to activate.
  • Destruction: Destruction spells have range and never miss, but can never stagger foes, are very costly in terms of Magicka, and can be resisted.
  • Enchant: Enchanted items with damaging spells are like Destruction magic, but cast instantly, cost no magicka, and recharge on their own (the cheapest within a few minutes of real time) but scale poorly, use your equipment slots, take a lot of micro-mangement, and depend on being able to find potent examples. Despite these issues, its utility and improvement to magic weapons still make it a potent skill, even if it's not used as a combat skill unto itself.

Magic

• Fire Damage is cheap and unresisted by undead while a few enemies are even weak to it, but Dunmer (very common) and Fire Atronachs resist it.
• Frost Damage is equally cheap, but resisted by undead, Nords, and Frost Atronachs.
• Shock Damage is more expensive, but only Nords (less than frost) and Storm Atronachs resist it without resisting all magic.
• Poison is just useless as it’s very costly, and quite a lot of things are outright immune to it.
• Thus you should have a fire spell and a frost spell as an offensive mage, and a shock spell if you’re getting it on an enchanted item. Indeed, many pre-enchanted items with Shock Damage have no cost premium on it.
• High level daedra often have a chance to reflect spells cast on them, so a mage seeking to fight them should use summons, weapon combat after buff, and/or absorb spells (which simply do nothing if reflected) on them.
• Most summoned creatures (skeleton, bonewalker, clannfear and some special spells from the expansions being the exceptions) are immune to “normal” weapons, meaning relatively few enemies can damage them.
• Water Breathing, and Levitate are important to any character and some source should be obtained ASAP. Morrowind features several underwater labyrinths, while Levitate is mandatory for completing the main quest, and is needed to access several areas in dungeons. World geometry can result in some softlocks, trapping the player in inescapable gaps between rocks, if a player does not have some source of it or teleportation at all times.
• As Levitate has limitations like being unable to sneak or sleep when it is active, and is slower than running if you have very high athletics, one should keep a short duration of the spell to use indoors in addition to any long duration versions you use for overland travel.
• Only 1 point of Slowfall is needed to stop falling damage, further points just decrease your fall speed, which can lead to the spell expiring mid-air and still suffering falling damage.
• Increasing strength is cheaper per extra point of carry weight than Feather with extra effects in addition to carry weight increases, but the negative effects of encumbrance are based on total units of weight carried not percentage of carry weight occupied by encumbrance.