Find the story so far here.
It’s an unfortunate reality of Vvardenfell that very few traders can afford to pay anywhere near the worth of the kind of loot that seasoned adventurers bring to them. Stands to reason, really – after all, if they did have several hundred thousand gold to spare, they probably wouldn’t spend their days running grotty shops on a cursed island. It is, however, a source of great annoyance to me. Here I am, pockets laden with brutally effective Daedric weaponry from a hell dimension and lavish Indoril armour worth tens of thousands apiece, but I can only get a couple of thousand gold maximum for anything, if I’m lucky. The traders quickly grew to love me, much as I suspect they were all talking behind my back about how gullible I was. I suppose I’m helping to support local businesses, but frankly I’d never intended to be a philanthropic master thief.
Still, that’s largely what I end up doing, as five lots of 2k is still more than enough to fund a few skill upgrades or a whopping great enchant – but sometimes, I just can’t bear to part with something fancy-lookin’ for small change. Sometimes too, I just want to hoard stuff – whether it’s because it looks rare and interesting, even if it isn’t matched to one of my combat disciplines, or because it’s a now-inferior weapon or armour piece that served me well, and I want to keep it as a memento.
The trouble is where to put all this stuff. My strength is growing all the time, but unless I want to spend every other second casting Feather spells on myself, I just can’t carry that much stuff. I need a base. I need a home.
It isn’t possible to buy a house in Vvardenfell. Perhaps the market’s too unstable due to the looming threat of the dark god Dagoth Ur – a nasty piece of work currently imprisoned inside a volcano and who, rather worryingly, has begun visiting me in my dreams, and sending religious looneys to tell me he wants a chat with me – and so mortgage lenders are avoiding making any deals at the moment. Maybe the five ruling houses passed a law forbidding anyone from ever moving house. Maybe the entire continent just plum doesn’t like me.
Whatever the cause, it’s annoying me. I am, growing rumour now has it, potentially of divine origin. If the prophecies that the topless drug addict who’s been giving me orders on behalf of the Emperor’s spy clique, the Blades, hold any truth, I might even be a god incarnate. Whatever. Sounds like so much poppycock to me – hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a hat that makes me turn invisible. But if they must persist in this nonsense, can’t they at least let me own a bed of my own? Just one cupboard? Maybe a barrel to keep all my hats in? I’m a god, you idiots claim: well, gods shouldn’t have to sleep rough on the streets, dammit.
The only way, it seems, to obtain a house of my own is to murder its owner and simply take up residency. Now, I might be a dirty little thief and an occasional vagrant, but I’m no murderer. Not unless they started it, anyway. How could I make this work? Was there some way to teleport a hapless home owner to the other side of the world? To lock ‘em in a cupboard? Alas not – magic has its limits.
Then I remembered Ralen Hlaalo. Raiding his mansion in Balmora was one of my earliest jobs for the Thieves Guild (which I was, by now, fairly high ranking in), and while wandering around its hallways and startling his poor, frightened lady servant, I’d been surprised to find the man’s corpse lying on the floor of his dining room. What if…
Using my newly-acquired Recall spell, one of many magical fruits of my shameless larceny, I zapped back to Balmora, the little town I still considered home, despite my many adventures in far-flung lands. I crept through the darkness, back to Hlaalo Manor. Surely, by now, someone else would have moved in, or there would be investigating guards swarming around it. In fact, the lock remained picked from my previous visit. The upstairs bedroom was still a state, presumably trashed by whoever had killed Hlaalo.
And downstairs, there he was. Ralen Hlaalo’s body hadn’t moved an inch, nor did it seem to be decomposing. This was deeply sinister – but promising. I returned upstairs, to that devastated bedroom, and took the ultimate risk – a nice little sleep in a stranger’s bed.
When I awoke, there was no bounty on my head, no stern Hlaalu guard threatening me with arrest or a fine for illegal sleeping. Granted, there was yet another one of those bloody Dark Brotherhood chaps trying to stab me in the heart, but that was pretty much par for the course whenever I had a kip. Assassins? More like ineffectual mosquitoes. He was no match for the mighty blade Optimus Slice. Oh, and hey, his swift demised yielded another set of Dark Brotherhood armour to flog for a pretty penny. Unfortunately, taking it did leave me with a naked dead man on the floor of what, it increasingly seemed, might be my very own bedroom, but it should disappear soon enough. Which reminded me…
Downstairs again, and there’s Ralen Hlaalo still. Huh. Whatever killed him did something odd – his body seemed mystically resistant to rot. An idea struck me. If I couldn’t get rid of him, I could at least turn him into a display piece in my lovely new mansion. Seconds later, the corpse was dressed in all manner of finery – some of my most lavish loot clad around his cold flesh.
Yes, very nice. Not only he was now a talking point at dinner parties, but I could change his outfit whenever I wished: corpse-decoration to suit my mood. This was so much better than a bearskin rug or a nice bunch of seasonal flowers. Even better, it seemed I could pile as many items as I wanted into poor Ralen’s pockets. Well, it’s not as if he needed to walk anywhere these days, so the weight of all my looted trinkets was scarcely an issue. I vaguely remembered someone asking me to look into the poor chap’s murderer, but elected to let that one drop – I don’t want to risk ruining a good thing.
I had a home at last. Mine, all mine! Except, as I went to leave from the upstairs door – hop, skips and jumps across Balmora’s rooftops was my preferred means of navigating the town – I saw something move in the second bedroom. Uh-oh. Powerhat was promptly donned, and I peered around the corner. I looked right into the unaware eyes of… Ralen Hlaalo’s female servant.
She’d been here all this time, hiding from either Hlaalo’s murderer, Hlaalo’s corpse or Hlaalo’s wrath should she dare to leave. I removed Powerhat. She stared at me. She didn’t do anything else. Didn’t speak, didn’t run, didn’t attack. I circled her nervously, wondering if this spelled the end of my tenure in this mansion. Still nothing. I backed out slowly, paused a moment, then closed the bedroom door on her. Still nothing. Well, if she was happy in there, I guess I was happy too. Sure, my idea of an ideal home wouldn’t include a creepy silent girl locked in the guest bedroom, but at least I also had a corpse to store infinite swords in.
All these Dark Brotherhood attacks were getting tiresome, mind. The loot they left sure was good, but what to do with all these naked blokes piling up on my floor?
Next: about that god business…
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Describing fights is boring, that’s why. And my random approach to stuff meant I wasn’t remotely godlike until a good 15 or 20 hours in.
I build my tree-castle through quests of a House, it was fun to see it build up from scratch. But then I used the editor to improve it, with a lot of racks and displayers for armors and stuff… I was in fact collectioning Ash Statues and probably had one hundred of them well aligned. I added an underground complete with torture chambers, useful when my evil lord was bored :-)
The editor was quite powerful and easy to use, I added a disco at the back of a pub and filled it with avatars of friends, and you could ask the DJ to change the music (and that was quite tricky to do)
Im about 12 hours in. I’ve only managed to level up once, and every time I step into a cave, I get absolutely belted.
Strangely enough, im enjoying the feeling of being weak and lost, just scraping by.
Corpses are premier among Vvardenfell’s many storage contaniers. Hlaalo is tied with the body at the bottom of Tel Uvirith for the TES:III title of “most convenient bottomless permanent non-respawning bulk storage option/dead body”.
I always used an abandoned shack way out in the middle of the swamp on the west coast that seemed to have no in-game purpose as my home. Does that make me an anti-social weirdo? Don’t answer that.
Alec, a little tip for getting the full price of items, there is a little imp called Creeper who lives with some posh Orcs in the Ghorak manor in Caldera who pays well.
If Creeper doesn’t have enough money (it has 5000) to pay for your item then try the ever helpful talking Mudcrab on the island east-southeast of the Mzahnch ruin (who has 10000).
Oh and if you wait a day then magically they have all their money back to buy more, they must do a roaring trade!
I usually leave my stuff in the ald-ruhn mages guild. It has 2 rooms where you can sleep and a storage room which you can unlock. I leave all my powerfull weapons on the bed for display though.
Alec’s work on this is cool, but I still don’t get why I would try the game. Maybe I should just try it…
I played a lot of Daggerfall in my youth, hated Battlespire and didn’t even try Redguard (because of Diablo), I left the license aside up until Oblivion. In fact, I didn’t even know that Morrowind existed until after I bought Oblivion!
Yes, I’m old.
@Serondal
Yeah, I actually did that. I added a grotty basement to the Balmora Mage’s Guild with a table, empty shelves, and 4 max-capacity storage crates. And some empty skooma bottles for effect. Job done.
I don’t remember all the camp decor. Looks like the Brighton version of Morrowind.
Yeah, like most people have suggested, doing the Stronghold quests for one of the three main houses is a good way of getting your own space. Since you’ve already gained a foothold in Balmora, and the Telvanni tower, whilst spectacular, is miles from anywhere (also, the quests require a lot of mage related abilities like Levitate), might i recommend the Redoran stronghold? It’s not too far out from Ald’Ruhn, which can be handy for trips to Ghostgate etc. Also, I seem to recall there being a home you can get in Solstheim as part of the Bloodmoon storyline, but that’s a bit out of the way…
Loving the journal Alec, keep it up! A similar thing, but Oblivion themed, can be found here: http://livinginoblivion.wordpress.com/
The author is the same chap who created the wonderful “Concerned: The Half-life and death of Gordon Frohman” comic.
I’m really enjoying these Alec, keep it up! And of course it’s more fun to have a heap of corpses in your bedroom than to have “disposed” of them :)
And thanks for that link matte_k, I loved Concerned and hadn’t seen his Oblivion blog, it’s great!
Be careful what you sell. I more than once sold an item that ended up being a quest requirement later on. And with all the shops, I couldn’t remember where I sold them.
Man, you reminded me of how great this game was. Keep it up. Thx..
Garg – thanks for the links. I got MGE up and running with Vista finally.
Will now spend countless hours tinkering with the mods no doubt.
Cheers!
You should use a mod called “Complete Morrowind”. It makes you able to create and place your own furniture. And let’s don’t forget cooking, sewing, woodcutting, smithing etc.
About Dark Brotherhood attacks – try DB Attack Mod (made by Avenger, modified by Hellwolve). It removes this annoyance until you’ve gained some popularity, like, becoming a Hortaror or a Nerevarine. Or, you can just go to Mournhold and tell them to fuck off.
Dark Brotherhood attacks early in the game are just part of the fun!
Creeper was my best mate in Morrowind, what a trooper.
Star Wars reference, yay!
Haw!
My home base was the second floor of the ogre house in Caldera where the Scamp was. He buys all armor, weapons, magic and Dwemer items for 1% above face value (and he has 5000 gold a day). I had a recall point permanently set right in front of him. I just left my stuff all over the floor where the ogres could walk all over it.
Last game I was playing I had a huge light collection set up in the room of all the lamps and torches that I found during my travels. It was blazingly bright in there.
I love how the shopkeepers actually put on the higher quality clothes that you sell them. Totally unexpected the first time I noticed it, and totally hilarious (especially guys in skirts)!
@Debi
Yeah I remember the first time that happened to me, I was selling Dark Brotherhood armour and when I finished the sale, the shopkeep had put on the Dark Brotherhood helmet, it took all my self control not to pull out my sword and smite him for his insolence!
You do know that if you do the tax man quest in Seyda Neen, you get to kill someone in their house and use it as a base?
@Schaden: The spots marked X on the map are, if memory serves, shipwrecks.
As for merchants, there is a way to get full value for your goods, but it takes a fairly large investment of time. Choose a specific merchant as your favorite (I like Creeper, upstairs in Ghorak Manor, Caldera). Unload your cheap stuff first, cleaning out their money and loitering around until their funds refresh. Then, when you start to unload the nicer stuff, for each item you sell, take back several less-valuable items you sold him before until the balance is equal to the merchant’s max. Now, sell back all the lesser trinkets you bought, and repeat with your next big-ticket item.
As your merchant develops a backlog of Sixth House bell hammers, glass daggers, and other sundries, you’ll be able to swap out value-for-value more quickly.
There’s also an exploit in Creeper’s and Mudcrab Merchant’s booze–buy the jugs from them as part of your exchange, then sell them back after their inventories refresh. Rinse and repeat a few times, and they’ll have over 100 jugs of each, which provides another quick way to get your loot’s value.
@Matte_k: You can get two houses in Solstheim. One in Skaal Village, if you do the main quest and don’t go all furry (maybe also if you do, I don’t know), the other in Raven Rock after you’ve built the place up enough.
I initially kept most of my stuff in the Blademaster’s place. Then, when I became head of the Fighter’s Guild, I kept it all in the Guild Hall in Ald’ruhn. Although once I accidentally picked up a guild item and they attacked me and kicked me out of the guild– what, I’m leader?!
But as far as I was concerned, the whole world was mine. And nobody ever stole your stuff, so as long as you remembered where you put it, you were all right.
My secret to getting rich in Morrowind was using Dwemer Coins for barter. Sell a lot of those to Creeper, and then a day later, trade him a 10K item for 5K in gold and 5K in Dwemer coins, and then some even more expensive ones, and finally trade him a 120,000G Daedric sword, and then trade back the Dwemer coins. After a few weeks in-game, you’ve got piles of cash. I never found the talking mud crab or I could have doubled my earnings rate. Just make sure to visit him every day!
I notice in Fallout they avoid the ridiculously over-priced items. Much harder to pwn the economy.
@Brent: I’m not sure if the talking mudcrab (on the marked island here) takes Dwemer coins. He deals in fewer things, although he will buy skooma.