Gaming diaries: all the rage, eh? Buoyed by the splendidosity of the likes of Roburky’s Sims 3 chronicles and Tom Francis’ Galactic Civilizations II bible, I’m embarking on something I’ve had brewing for a while – a diary of my (mis)adventures in Morrowind. I’ve always maintained it’s a far better game than its sequel Oblivion (which was also pretty good), and now’s my chance to prove it. I’ll commence with the diaries proper in a few days, but ahead of that I thought I’d share the setup.
I’m running the Morrowind: Game of the Year edition, which includes the two expansions Tribunal and Bloodmoon. This means I should bump into a werewolf at some point, excitingly. On top of that, I’ve installed a bunch of mods, mostly for the sake of prettiness – I don’t want to change the eventual experience too much, but I have zero problems with messing with the lore.
They are:
Better Bodies – which, primarily, adds joints to the game’s otherwise rigid torsos, and some nicer textures for people whose clothes you’ve nicked. There’s a choice of whether to leave them totally nude or with some tasteful underwear. I’ve gone for the latter, because I’m afraid of sex.
Better Heads – Those blurry porridge-faces get a bit of sprucing up. Also applies to the player models, not that you get to see your own face outside of the tutorial (I don’t think?)
Morrowind Comes Alive – This is a good’un. It throws in a crapton of wandering NPCs into the world, so it’s not the underpopulated robo-land it is out of the box.
The Wilderness Mod – Similar to the above, but with angry animals. This means I’m probably going to get attacked by a tiger eventually.
Giants Ultimate – Introduces a load of mythic-esque foes to Morrowind, including dragons, golems and, er, mechanical wasps. More stuff to hit, basically.
Real Signposts – Crisp signpost textures get me hard.
And the Morrowind Visual Pack, an omni-mod of high resolution textures that smarten things up no end. I remember trying this (or something like it) a few years ago, and my poor PC fell over in panic. It’s entirely untroubled now, bless it.
So, before I get going on this in earnest, any others you lot reckon are a must-have?
Oh, and my character is a Water Nymph (a new race one of the mods seems to have thrown in) with, for some reason, the face of a flea. He is called Loaf, and is stabby and a bit thiefy. He can also walk on water.
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Hey Alec,
IIRC you’re running Windows 7. Are you playing Morrowind on it? Cause for me it started hitching like mad ever since installing it on that OS…
Looking forward to the gaming diary, I think I know this game by heart, enjoyment is assured!
“Kinsley, that’s a great point about the missions getting dorked at the beginning of the game. It’s a good word of warning to people starting the GOTY edition: just follow the basic game path for a few hours, until you meet your contact Caius. If you go exploring too far you’ll trigger events that you can’t handle. I somehow triggered the Assassin attack right at the start of the game, when I had no health or skill.”
The assassin attacking you in the night is the introduction to the Tribunal expansion. What sucks way more than getting killed is the way those guys completely break the game balance. When you reload and kill the guy, you discover he’s wearing a lot of expensive armour that’s better than anything else you can find early in the game.
The next time an assassin turns up, you’ll greet him with open arms, like a sudden windfall in the night. Pretty soon, you’ll be a low level character with 10s of thousands of gold pieces, and all the merchants in Vvardenfell kind of look a bit like assassins. That’s the point where you say, “this blows donkeys” and delete your save game.
So yeah, deactivate Tribunal and Bloodmoon until you actually want to play them.
http://www.hiredgoons.net/MWFiles/IlluminatedOrder/index2.htm
Is one of my personal favorite mods: They do a great job of adding to the lore, the quests are fun (though the rewards can be a bit overbalanced) and there’s some fun tricks they do that I’d prefer to see again.
Plus, you know, you can become a lich.
“So yeah, deactivate Tribunal and Bloodmoon until you actually want to play them.”
Do you need either of those enabled to run Morrowind Graphics Extender?
Fuck. Yes. I must have GOTY.
Thanks for the suggestions. I’ve been playing Fallout 3 this year. I played Oblivion during 2006. I haven’t played Morrowind since 2003…I’ve been curious to try it again, so I installed the game along with your suggested mods. It’s a completely better game from what I remember, which is quite a feat. Bethesda and people who play the games have much to thank for the modding community.
I have Windows 7 and am level 65 in Morrowind. I just smashed the heart and am ready to start playing Tribunal. However, I cannot get an assassin to appear. I’ve slept around a lot but cannot get him to appear. I’ve gotten tons of scribs to appear, enough to start a scrib zoo with, but no assassins. I’m wondering if there is a glitch with Windows 7 that is stopping me from getting an assassin to appear. (There was another glitch that kept causing the alchemy process not to work and my AldRuhn silt strider host vanished about 10 levels ago, so wondering if this is another glitch.) Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!