Have any other Lurkers played Morrowind?

[Drasca]

Several merchants with 3-5K? I'll need to explore more. I've only found the one, who is handily on the guild teleport route.

There's actually a talking mudcrab merchant with ~10k. He buys/sells weapons, armor and potions. So sell him all that ordinator stuff. Or should I not encourage "Ordinator hunting/farming?"

I can tell you where he is, or you could stop slaughtering mudcrabs and start trying to talk to them. Either or. Just imagine that, your character stooping down to talk to mudcrabs-- seriously hilarious. Unless your PC essentially has the personality of a child, i.e. anime character, then this is extremely silly. Fortunately, the talking mudcrab merchant isn't hostile (until you attack it)... but if you have some Peaceful Wildnerness, that may be of no help. One clue though, its a little bit north of Bal Fell. How far is "little"? Two cells on your map. One of those yellow city squares is a "cell." So go look!

Anyhow, there are many ways to make a lot of money. That's a good thing IMO. You have your options and flexibility to spend your time money-making or dungeon hopping and questing (or whatever else you wish to dream and conjure up). I spend my time home-decorating, and picking outfits for my gf's character-- after having done everything else, most all things adventuring... some time "home" has been taken. Just remember, you don't *have to* make and spend money. You can always find another way. Money's just the "spend now" option available to the monetarily wealthy. Those endowed with a personality or ass-ets ;) Crassius Curio certainly likes a certain kind of morally loose rogue . . . have that option-- having spent time developing social skills and personal looks.

[shavenlunatic]

was there a multiplayer MW? sorry i only played it for a day or 2 a few years ago, quite liked it but cant remember if u could play online

i'd probably re-install it if there was a decent online environment to play on

[WarLocke]

LOL ... I'm tempted to call you newbie

Well, what the heck was I supposed to think? I walk into the room and hear a roar/growl from my right, look over and there's this BIG FRICKIN CROCODILE-HEADED GUY looking straight at me.

...

OK, so I panicked. <_<

Actually. Don't bother saving.

Hrmm, I guess so. It's not like I'll ever use any dwemer armor (going Unarmored so far, but if I ever did use armor, it'd probably be something light like Glass). It just annoys me the way the merchants put on whatever you sell them. Bob the Quickie-Mart counterguy shouldn't be wearing a dwemer cuirass, dangit.

Eh, I have Trillian, but I don't use it very much. :(

[[wcip]Angel]

There's also an armorer in Tribunal who has 10.000. She's in a house on the Plaza.

[WarLocke]

Flame Atronarchs are cool.

Linel's level 12 now, which is apparently high enough to start running into tougher critters. I took a break from questing to just spelunk some ancestral tombs, and instead of fighting bonewalkers and ghosts, I had to blast through skeleton champions, clannfear, bonelords, you name it. I'm now the proud owner of a grand soulgem with a skeleton champion's soul trapped inside (worth 40k). Not that I'll ever find anyone who'll buy it...

I hit 4 or 5 tombs and Nimawia Grotto, and came out with about 8 magical rings and amulets and a couple weapons. I kept the Ring of Lightning Bolts and Ghost Charm amulet (Ancestral Ghost for 60 secs) and made a ton of dough by selling the rest. I also found Mentor's Ring, which added 30+ more magicka to my pool. B)

I've run into a couple druegh too, but I keep forgetting to soultrap one.

I made a Damage Strength spell which came in real handy when I was jumped by 5 skeleton champions in one tomb. I can only reliably cast a 20-point version at this point though, so it took 3 casts to stop each skelly. Then I pulled out my Bound Longbow and went to town. I ran out of arrows before I killed them all though. :angry: I need to start carrying more than 20 around.

Most of my spells are custom-made now, but I think I'll need to redo them. I tried to keep the magicka cost down, but a 30-point fireball doesn't phase a bonelord much. My new Burning Blood spell does 80 damage over 10 seconds though, can't wait to try that one out. :D

I think I may have to armor up. I'm only wearing boots at the moment (high-heeled domina style, lol) to get my Unarmed skill to work, but even with it being near 40 and getting the crap beaten out of me regularly, my armor rating is only 9 (it's 10 or 11 without the boots, but then Unarmored gets 'broken' again). When a cliff racer can knock you to your knees, something needs to be done...

More random ramblings to come. :blink:

[kandrathe]

Either or. Just imagine that, your character stooping down to talk to mudcrabs-- seriously hilarious. Unless your PC essentially has the personality of a child, i.e. anime character, then this is extremely silly.

I'd read about the mud crab. But it seems silly at best, and he seems to be off the beaten track such that it may just not be worth the bother of hiking out into the middle of nowhere to trade with a Mud Crab. :) Also, my character is becoming a bit pretentious, so I'm not sure it he would want to deal with "Sea Food".

Anyhow, there are many ways to make a lot of money...developing social skills and personal looks.

Yes, I agree with you. Morrowind is a very good role playing vehicle, more so than many of the similiar games in this genre. If anything is lacking it is the lack of appropriate social consequences to reprehensible acts. Case in point; I was visiting the Dwemer museum in Tel Vos, when I was attacked by the dremora tower guardian. I was running low on health so I ran away, but he followed me down the stairs and into the museum. As a last resort I read my Inferno scroll, which did 30-50 fire damage for 50' radius over 40 seconds. Needless to say I obliterated all life in the tower. I think there were 10 dead. A massacre really. No witnesses, no bounty, no investigation, no consequences. So, Master Aryon has lost his Dwemer museum. It's moved to my tower now. But, then he is Telvanni, so if he wants it back he can come try and persuade me the Telvanni way. :)

[WarLocke]

LOL... I found a way to crash Morrowind, each and every time.

Just outside of Tel Branora, there's a group of mercenaries 'laying siege' to it (I'm dubious because they don't seem to care about the player coming and going). Well, one of Therana's guards offered me 1,000 septims to take care of them.

The leader is a mage, and knowing how spellcasters love big DOTs with WGI installed, I walk right into the middle of their group and drop a fireball on one (your own AE spells don't hurt you, it's kind of odd but comes in handy sometimes). Well, turns out 3 or 4 of the group can cast spells, and the resulting lightshow crashes me straight to desktop everytime. LOL.

I guess I'll leave them alone for now and mebbe come back later.


I've taken to exploring ancestral tombs as I come across them (still not entering egg mines, doesn't seem to ever be anything in them besides kwama) and am finally starting to make some money. I still spend it as fast as I earn it (there are a drekload of spells in this game...) but I'm starting to find 'keeper' loot. I found a glass longsword that's enchanted with poison damage under Tel Branora (Beran tomb, I think?), which is nice 'cuz my short blades skill is approaching my speed stat, so I may need to start working on other weapon skills.

I found a nice bonemould cuirass in Therana's dungeon (hey, it was lying around down there with some flame atronachs, I don't call that stealing) that gives 30% magicka resistance for 10 seconds, so I may take to using it, since robes seem to cover all types of cuirasses. I may start wearing more armor in general if I can find pieces that'll give me better protection than going unarmored can. Doesn't really fit the 'pure spellcaster' paradigm, but combat gets brutal (ran into a couple dremora lords in one tomb; that was not fun).

Killed my first golden saint too. :D I didn't actually know it was one until I went to loot it ('cuz, you know, I assumed it'd be golden or something). I saw this female-looking dremora come running, so I drained its' strength away and filled it full of arrows. I have a pic of me looting it, but I haven't uploaded it yet.

I still can't believe how drekking huge Morrowind is. Some say Arena and/or Daggerfall was even larger, and that just boggles my mind. :blink:

[[wcip]Angel]

Warlocke.. for valuable loot, make sure to check out the Vaults of each House (Redoran, Hlaalu, Telvanni) in Vivec. They should be in their respective cantons.

Just make sure your sneak skill is quite high or prepare to kill off a dozen or so ordinators.

[Drasca]

I still can't believe how drekking huge Morrowind is. Some say Arena and/or Daggerfall was even larger, and that just boggles my mind.

Daggerfall is larger, but the towns and people are more reptitive--with some exceptions. Townsfolk NPCs weren't very varied, one peasant was as useful or useless as another, with all clones around. There were some very cool random quests (seriously random) that made the spice of Daggerfall, so no experience is quite the same every time (even discluding character class/skill and race changes).

Dungeons were . . . HUGE, simply by being large and a literal 3D maze / puzzle (automap was of very limited help) it became lengthy and tedious to dungeon crawl. You get lost. Several times. Only a cheat or a spell of recall (You did mark at the front door, didn't you?) will save you from it. Just finding the right path to the quest objective was a challenge and quest in itself. So it was HUGE, and realistic, but realism can bite my ass on this one. I'd rather not have tedium. Finding the path to succeeding your quest is part of all this, but Daggerfall did it in overkill. Miles of dungeons every time. You could waste several hours alone on the first dungeon you start in, privateer's hold, and not accomplish anything signifigant in the game--plus you'd be greatly underpowered and underequipped to handle the situation. Newbies did that a lot. Best not to. You can easily get lost and go in circles, figure 8's, and explore vast unnecessary dungeon if you've made the wrong turn-- and there are hundreds of thousands of wrong turns in Daggerfall.

A bit like Diablo, that it used a random seed to generate most dungeons and towns, but 3d dungeons-- dealing with up and down stairs, doors, trap doors, pits and elevators that fall down into lower levels. If you ever buy a copy, a windows xp patch was released to intall the thing without extra tricks involved.

Sure, you're almost guaranteed to get a lot of practice with your skills-- but to explore a giant dungeon just to kill an apprentice's poor daedra summoning? Ugh.

Daggerfall was much bigger than Morrowind. Only natural, since its a continent with many provinces, which then have many towns/dungeons/houses/temple--holy places. Morrowind is only one province, one kingdom.

Its difficult to find special NPCs, because it is simply impossible to explore every dungeon within a reasonable human lifespan. That part is realistic, so huge that you cannot explore everything-- but that's a problem I'd rather not face in an RPG. Even Morrowind suffers this to a point, though definitely not as much. Not all dungeons are original or unique, but not all have to be. It just makes one reluctant to go through "yet another ancestral tomb." But sometimes it surprises you-- Oh this one is filled with vampires. The vampires are of clan Andue? This is their headquarters? Real vampires, not ash vampires. Oh this is the Heran Ancestral tomb I read about in "Chance's Folly." The door really is propped with a rock just like the story-book goes... and... gasp Chance is *spoiler censor*

I like the unique dungeons, but its hard to actually explore everything when so many are repetitive.

[WarLocke]

Warlocke.. for valuable loot, make sure to check out the Vaults of each House (Redoran, Hlaalu, Telvanni) in Vivec.

That's a bit too over-the-line for me. Looting ancestral tombs and dungeons is one thing (after all, the loot doesn't "belong" to anyone but the monsters...), but lifting someone else's possessions is just flat-out stealing, and Linel's no thief.

That's part of the reason I'm always having monetary difficulties. Oh, and refusing to use the scamp or mudcrab doesn't help either, I imagine. :P

[Roland]

Armor Rebalance

Enjoy. Work was being done on one for Weapons, but it never got past the design phase. Considering that there's about 3x as many weapon types as there are armor types, it was going to be a boatload of work that I just couldn't / didn't want to dedicate my time to, so the project got shelved for the future. Someday... :)

Enjoy! And tell me what you think! This is the first release of it online, public or otherwise. Personally, I love it, but I'm a tad biased. ;)

[WarLocke]

Cool! I didn't know you were a Morrowind modder, Roland. :huh:

I'm turning in for the night, but I'll give it a try tomorrow (after backing up all my saves just in case; definitely don't want to have to start over again...). Question: Will it effect armor already in the game world (such as what I'm wearing)? Or will I need to go find/buy new pieces?

Oh, just looked in the archive. The readme says to use the 'ImperialSmiths.esp' file, but there isn't one in there. There's an 'ArmorRebalance.esp' and 'ArmorRebalance_Adamantium.esp' in there. I'm going to take a wild guess and say the first is for vanilla MW and the second is for MW plus the official armor plugin?

[Roland]

Readme must be outdated then. ;) Imperial Smiths was another little plugin that I was working on, although I forget exactly what it did. At any rate, it's not needed. The only ESM needed for Armor Rebalance is vanilla Morrowind. Armor Rebalance Adamantium adds in the official Adamantium armor plugin from Bethesda, so as to cut down on the need to load multiple ESPs at startup.

As for whether it affects existing armor, I'm not entirely sure. I am pretty sure that any armor NOT found, bought, etc. will be automatically transformed. Any armor that you're currently wearing and/or carrying in your inventory, however, I cannot say for certain. My guess would be that it, too, would be updated once the plugin was loaded, but I'm not 100% sure. In any case, I haven't noted any save game problems. Obviously, if you load a saved game without the plugin, you may get an error message - not 100% positive, as it's been a LONG time since I played Morrowind (WAY too addictive). However, it almost certainly won't affect your game in any way (that I've noticed, anyway - yes, I playtested these to some extent, both with new characters, and existing characters). What WILL happen, though, is when you save your character AFTER loading the plugin, and try to load that character later WITHOUT the plugin, you will get an error. It shouldn't affect your game at all, since I didn't make any massive changes (tweaking armor values in Morrowind is like tweaking armor values in Diablo II - it won't hurt anything; OTOH, changing NPCs, places, etc. WILL cause issues, but that's a LOT further modding than I was willing / able to go at the time), but it's always best to play it safe.

Bottom line: the plugin should be safe for any character, be it new or old, and even if you load a a character affected by the plugin without the plugin being loaded as well, you should be fine.

Give it a shot, if you like. I took a fair amount of time in drawing it up, first (as you'll note by the inclusion of a spreadsheet document, openable with OpenOffice 1.1), before actually building it up. All you Light Armor types (Thieves, Scouts, etc.) will certainly feel a pinch (I know I did, since I LOVE thievery in this game, but it wasn't unbearable by any means), but those who opt for Medium armor (Barbarians, Rangers, etc.) will feel a great boon. There's MUCH better spread of armor values among Medium Armor now, making it a much more viable choice. Heavy Armor, obviously, will afford the most protection, but you'll need some pretty high Strength to be able to utilize it properly. ;) And of course, the Armor tree overall got more streamlined (a common thing in my modding, wouldn't you say? ;)), so it's much more progressive than it used to be - not nearly as jerky and bouncy. Imperial Armor is actually fairly decent now, so you can feel good about not having to swap armors after you join the Imperial Legion (Imperial Armor used to suck, so you'd commonly have to swap armors while adventuring, and swap back when you wanted to talk to the Imperial NPCs), as well as staying in-character for the role, and actually be able to SURVIVE. :D

I don't remember all the changes off-hand, in terms of weight adjustments, enchanting, etc., but I summed it up nicely in the ReadMe. Specific changes, however, are vague, hence why I kept a data record, and provided it for download with the plugin. I believe that Light Armor may have had some minor reductions in weight here and there, and I'm almost positive that Heavy Armor got some adjustments (most likely made heavier, but not necessarily). Medium Armor probably got some tweaks, too. All in all, I feel it's much more balanced - not just in terms of Armor Rating, but also in terms of Enchanting, Weight, and Cost. It may have an adverse effect on some Merchants, however. ;) Dwemer Armor on an NPC who lacks the strength to wear it properly might prove amusing, if you feel like plinking away with arrows or spells from a distance, while he stands there helpless. ;)

Enjoy the plugin, and let me know what you think. :) Maybe someday I'll resurrect my Weapon Rebalance mod, which was going to completely overhaul weapons (as well as potentially add in some new ones for Archer-type characters, as they most certainly got the short end of the stick).

[WarLocke]

Well, I played a bit, and it did seem to work retroactively (at least, I don't remember my domina boots having a rating of 7 beforehand). I definitely felt the weight pinch too, as I like to clean up bodies after me (disposing of them and then dropping any gear not valuable enough to keep/sell in a nearby crate) and some of the NPCs I've run into have so much crap that just picking it all up over-encumbers me (with all my miscellaneous crap I'm usually at 83/210 or so when I leave town).

Killed a flame atronach with a single application of my Freezing Touch spell earlier. Guess they only have 50hp after all. That felt good. B) Also looted a daedric shortsword from a dremora lord, which is heavy as hell but does awesome damage and (I hear, at least) has good enchantment potential. That's good, 'cuz I have 10+ grand soulgems and at least 20 greater ones burning holes in my chest at home.

I think my problem is my total health. I'm level 19 with 120hp. It seems that if you take more than a certain percent of your total health in damage from one blow, you go into the stagger and/or fall animation. I'm running into things (NPCs with claymores, Winged Twilights, Dremora Lords) who can consistently stagger-lock me, which is no fun. Not sure exactly what I can do about it, since my armor skills are all low and I can't yet cast a really powerful shield spell (I have a 15-point one now, but it doesn't seem to help too much). I could try the sanctuary effect (which I think would stack with the 14 points I get from unarmored), but my illusion skill is pitifully low (20, IIRC).

Ah, well. C'est la vie.

[Drasca]

A few experiences:

Armor is virtually useless. Cosmetic at best, slows you down heavily at worst. Its only good against commoners, not dark brotherhood, not any difficult melee'er. Only good for raising endurance (from medium/heavy armor) However...

Shields can be up to 50% effective blocking from 100% skill.

Shield spell only raises your armor rating, again useless.

Sanctuary makes physical attacks miss x% of the time. VERY useful.

Chameleon works great, but is costly.

Invisibility is a nice cheap sneak up, but disappates with any action unfortunately.

[Roland]

As a mage, I'm surprised you didn't know this already: Alchemy. My "Assassin" (custom-built, to be the best there is - boy howdy was he ever! :D Although he never used spells, as that's "evil ju-ju" ;)) is a VERY fine Alchemist, and he pulls in cash hand over fist! I blow through littler tens of thousands of gold in just a matter of minutes. How? As I progressed through the game (I have yet to get anywhere near the end of this game, and that was before I quit playing :P), I made a note of EVERY merchant that carried Alchemy supplies. With very high Mercantile skills (from buying / selling things SO often), I'm able to amass 50+ units of each type I need in order to make a potion. That amounts to about 50 potions, roughly (since, by now, I rarely ever miss). Some of those potions sell for a couple hundred APIECE. Multiply that by about 100+. Starting to get the big picture? ;) And they say Alchemy is broken. :D Not only because of the POWERS it grants you, but also due to the ENDLESS economy it provides you. I actually find potion-brewing a fun pasttime, so "taping down the Jump key", as it has been coined, is actually fun for me. Besides, I like hunting for my reagents, too. Now if only I could become a Netch farmer... ;) Ah, my lovely, lovely arrows...

Just a wee tip. Enjoy the world that is Morrowind!

[WarLocke]

Actually Roland, that's exactly why I avoided Alchemy. I don't even want to tempt myself with the "assembly-line merchant" moneymaking scheme or the "compound Fortify Intelligence" exploit. Plus, IMO searching every fern in the wilderness is just tedious.

That being said, I'm coming into a fairly comfortable area cash-wise now. I have several filled soulgems worth 3-4k that are worth good amounts, when I can find merchants with enough cash to afford them. I even have a few 40K grand gems (although I'll probably use them for enchanting down the line). I explored a cave earlier today that had a mad mage in it, and the loot included 6k in alchemy apparatus (grandmaster's mortar & pestle, and other things). And I still have a 17k glass longsword, and a couple other pricy weapons.

My problem now is that after returning to Balmora base from an outing I have to visit all the merchants in the mage's guild, Ra'Virr, the pawnshop owner, and sometimes the general outfitter to sell everything. :o

Also, randon note: I acquired the Boots of Blinding Speed today (actually yesterday, but I didn't figure out a way to effectively use them until this afternoon). Hot dayum is a 250 Speed fast. I walk faster than I used to run. Arriba, arriba! Andale! Andale! B)

[Skandranon]

Unarmored's sole benefit, if you choose to use it, is the way it grows with Fortify Skill enchantments. While every other armour skill calculates value by skill*BaseArmourClass, Unarmored calculates it as skill^2*0.0068.

So at 100 Unarmored you get 68 armour, whereas Heavy would get you an optimized suit of something like 280 (Lord's Mail, Fists of Randagulf, etc.). But throw on some Fortify Skill 1-max enchantments, taking them off and on to get close to the max, and you can bring Unarmored up to 300 or even 400 if you use a daedric towershield. This results in about 1100 armour, which isn't better than heavy @ 400 (~1150) but does give you comparable armour without the weight.

Then again, people who enchant exquisites tend to go with the abusive 100 chameleon. All invisible, all of the time.

[WarLocke]

I thought there were no Fortify Skill spells? Or were they added in one of the expansions?

And I can think of a ton of effects to enchant before chameleon... water walking, water breathing, swift swim, light and/or night eye, fortify intelligence, restore stamina, sanctuary, resist X, yada yada yada...

So at 100 Unarmored you get 68 armour

Hmm. With a skill of 46 or so I get 13 armor. <_< Compared to that, 68 is like fullplate.

[Skandranon]

Right. Fortify Skill exists only in Tribunal/Bloodmoon, or if you complete the Threads of the Webspinner quest in unpatched Morrowind. I forgot.

The two abusive constant effect enchantments are Sanctuary and Chameleon. They have equal enchant costs, so you can get 100 of either one on a fully enchanted setup. With Bloodmoon, 100 Sanctuary is less effective, having monsters that ignore some or all of it (things in Tribunal or Morrowind will still miss you 100% of the time, though). 100 Chameleon makes you completely invisible and due to Morrowind's poor monster AI, you'll never be threatened by anything again.

Water walking - you can make a cheap water walking spell. Same for water breathing and swift swim. Night eye you can put on something charged, fortify intelligence is too expensive (the same as chameleon and sanctuary, and each of those is better than equal points of Int), and resists (other than a single point in Tribunal) aren't universally applicable enough to bother with.

By the way, are you running any casting mods at all? Playing a spellcaster's bloody frustrating without at least one.