Hello,

Morrowind has always intrigued me, but somehow I never played it. I played oblivion and really enjoyed it for about 20hours. The sense of exploration and adventure was great but the levelling system killed it for me. When I realized that the world was levelling with me, I was completely turned off - there was no sense of accomplishment. I want the game to have places and enemies that are too dangerous, and you need to level up to tackle them. I was also somewhat annoyed by the use based levelling system where casting pointless spells all the time was necessary.

I also did not like animals constantly attacking and the boring characters/dialogue.

I have never played skyrim.

I don't mind old graphics. The screenshots of morrowind look technically fine, but more importantly, it looks interesting! Generic fantasy land oblivion was boring. The only thing that concerns me about the graphics is the fog/draw distance. Is this distracting in game? If so, is there a stable mod to improve it? I am not much of a mod user, but if there is a simple mod that I should install with the game and then never think about again, I would consider it.

Overall I'm hoping that morrowind has great exploration, a decent levelling system, and a good story.

Thanks for the help!

In my opinion, Morrowind is the best game of the TES series. You find the information you are looking for in the Morrowind section of UESP.NET.
A few quick notes:
- The level of most enemies is fixed. Advantage: There are places you can't access before you are strong enough (or can run fast :-). Disadvantage: Sooner or later you have out-levelled all enemies (somewhere in the twenties for the base game, but the two expansions are a lot harder).
- Levelling is usage-based. But I don't agree with your point that you have to cast pointless spells or do pointless things (unless you want to). I myself never do it, and never felt handicapped. Rather the opposite: To use spells and skills in a natural way (i.e. when required), increases the game immersion and slows down levelling. I have also never felt the need or desire to use a trainer, by the way. But then I'm a role-player, and not a power- or speed-gamer.
- There are animals attacking frequently, like rats and cliff-racers (flying dinosaur-like carnivores). Some people feel annoyed by the cliff-racers (for those, there is a mod preventing them from attacking), I myself find them a nice addition to the game world - especially when they attack you from behind while you are fighting a powerful monster. Most enemies are skeletons, undeads and fantasy monsters like those in Oblivion. Among the most powerful ones are the Golden Saints (which don't appear in Oblivion) and various atronachs, but there are others, too.
- Boring characters and dialogues: Not so much different from Oblivion.
- Exploration: A lot! The main quest leads you around the whole island, and there are lots of racial / political / religious and other groups to join and get promoted to the top by completing quests (not all compatible with each other). Morrowind is an exotic island with a huge central volcano and noticeable weather effects, among them dust storms which reduce visibility to almost zero (but don't prevent you from being attacked). A haunted place.
- One of the main observations is that you can adjust the game to your liking in very many ways, with the help of mods. This GOG forum contains many threads discussing Morrowind and its mods. I leave the discussion of graphical mods to others (because I'm still happy with the graphics of the base game).
- Finally, my personal playing time for Morrowind including all expansions and total conversions (full games created by users using the Morrowind Construction Set since the release of the game is 100's of hours, and it has been on the hard disk of all my computers from the beginning till today. Even today, I find new and interesting things when travelling through Morrowind, and I have not yet played a werewolf or a vampire. I keep playing Morrowind in many different ways, for example by assuming different roles (not limited to fighter, mage, thief), or by imposing special rules (like not using weapons or armour or spells, or not fighting at all, depending on my role).

Have fun!

The leveling system in Morrowind is basically the same as that in Oblivion. (I don't mind the use based leveling system; what I do mind, however, is how stat growth is handled.)

Enemies do not level with you, though in some areas, stronger enemies may appear if you are higher level, though not to the same extent as other TES games. To my understanding, there are areas where a low level character, barring exploits, will not stand a chance.

Combat is very different, and is more like older TES games; when you attack, the game generates a random number (the equivalent of rolling dice) to determine whether the attack hits. Weapon skills do not affect damage (except Unarmed); instead, they affect the chance of hitting.

Spell points do not regenerate without rest in Morrowind (though there's still potions and Spell Absorption), and leveling up your magic skills will not reduce the cost; instead, leveling up magic skills will reduce the chance of spells failing when cast. Enchantments are extremely powerful and flexible, as you can avoid the limitations of spell casting (including the 2 seconds to cast a spell).

Playing Oblivion, you might have noticed some mechanics meant to keep things sane (like skills above 100 not providing further benefits in some cases) and some intended to prevent exploits (like temporary bonuses not affecting Alchemy); in Morrowind, these mechanics are not present. Drinking Fortify Intelligence potions will make your Alchemy stronger, allowing you to make exponentially stronger Fortify Intelligence potions (and hence break the game); this is just one of the many exploits in Morrowind.

Morrowind also has levelled enemies, but it is not as drastic as in Oblivion. Visit most areas while you're low level and you'll encounter low level enemies, level up some and more dangerous enemies appear. But there are still fixed encounters that will wreck the unprepared (or unlucky) explorer along with areas where the "low level" enemies are still more dangerous than what you'll encounter elsewhere. You'll likely hate the wiki-dialogue system of Morrowind. I absolutely love Morrowind (one of my Top 3 Games Ever), but the dialogue system is the major downfall of the game. Though talking to scouts and explorers will let you learn a lot about the island.

There is peaceful animal life in Morrowind, but much of it is agressive and almost any diseased animal will attack.

Also, a sound you will grow to hate while exploring the wilderness after a couple of levels: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xn_h9L4l2Rg Skyrim is basically Oblivion gameplay wise, but simpler and with more voice acting. The Morrowind Overhaul lets you improve the visuals fairly easily along with offering a bunch of potentially working fixes for various unpatched bugs.

There exists a joke mod called something like Racer Recursion out there. You probably do *not* want to install this mod, at least not for serious play. (It makes it so that, when you kill a cliff racer, 2 more spawn.)

A video featuring it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4rXsrZRchQ
TL;DW: After the player killed scores of cliff racers (and getting "lolmoreracers" each time), the video ends with "and then my computer crashed". XD

I must say I haven't seen this happening in Morrowind. All regions have animals / monsters of varying levels, including low ones, so you may be able to travel for a while without encountering really dangerous enemies more or less everywhere, but I would, for example, strongly advise against travelling through the Grazelands al level 1, while you'll hardly find anything more dangerous than, say, a nix-hound, in the Bitter Coast Region (dungeons, caves, temples, etc excluded). Of course, you can survive the Grazelands at level 1, but then you have to be very careful not to stumble over a Golden Saint or other daedra, and you have to be fast enough to escape from them, should they spot and attack you.

The enemies don't level but the type of enemy can change by leveled list spawns. In other words, an NPC never levels up and a rat is always the same rat but at certain points (the biggest changes are at levels 11 and 20 IIRC) a higher level creature may replace the rat. So, a tomb with an ancestor ghost at level 2 might have a skeleton champion at level 15.

Here's my perspective.

I would say this: Even with nostalgia, how well can you handle this type of game?
It's different even from most RPGs. Keep in mind there is NO quicktravel from the map screen. The only way to "quicktravel" is to go the the giant "bug-bus" stations in the major cities, that go to the other major cities. Otherwise, you walk/run everywhere, and that's it. Good chance to look at things, if you like that sort of thing.

Also combat is pitifully boring. You basically walk up to stuff and both sides wildly flail at each other until one side is dead. Spellcasting is a bit better, and you can make custom spells and enchant objects. That makes the mindless hacking more bearable. Also, you suck at combat at first.

The cities are very big and pretty realistic. I'd say bigger than Skyrim cities. And they're alien. It's neat, but at the same time confusing. Since there's no arrow that points you to your quest goal, (indeed, you'll often get long instructions of how to walk to the right place), trying to hunt down a single NPC in one of the many multi-story cantons in Vivec city can really wear on you. But then again, it's more realistic that way, not having a giant arrow leading you by the hand. Again, if someone says to go to part of the city that's a long ways away, get ready to walk the whole city!

Also, the NPCs talk too much. Each one of them will blither on for hours, thanks to the wonky conversation system. It's the same in later Elder Scroll games, but toned WAY down. You can ignore a lot of dialog, since it's literally the same, (the system basically lets the same type of people talk about the same topics, summoning the same dialog file). But you might miss a unique dialog if you're fast-clicking. Those times when you go "Oh, that guy might have just offered a quest, I think."

But it is beautiful, simply for being alien. Where most Elder Scrolls have more traditional fantasy themes, you can't help but smile while passing a flying jellyfish-cow. Or going into a house made from a giant crab shell. Some things are just neat. The thing you WILL get to hate are Cliff Racers. Mini-pterodactyls that just show up out of nowhere and start pecking you to death. Really irritating.

So if you can tolerate the things I suggest, maybe you'd like it. Obviously, with no quick-travel, you're looking at a time commitment just for having to walk/run everywhere, (except bug-bus travel). I beat it, and I don't really intend to again. I'm happy with once.

You're forgetting a couple of options:
Mage's Guild Guides - These people will instantaneously teleport you to any other Mage's Guild on the island. The only requirement is that Mage's Guild members must be willing to talk to you.

Boats - These will travel to various predetermined locations for a price. Not available in Seyda Neen, but most other costal villages and cities have at least one.

Mark & Recall - A paired set of spells. Mark sets a location and Recall gets you back to it.

Divine and Almsivi Intervention - Will take you to the nearest Imperial or Dunmer temple respectively, some places the difference is going to a different building in the same town, other places it will be the difference between two fairly distant towns. Available as scrolls and as learnable spells.

There are a few other methods of travel. Namely:

Almsivi/Divine Intervention: These two spell effects will teleport you to the nearest temple of the appropriate type.

Mark/Recall: Recall teleports you to the last place you cast Mark. (Much like Lloyd's Beacon in Might and Magic, Set/Return to Portal in Wizardry 8, or even Farore's Wind in Zelda: Ocarina of Time (though that last example can only (normally) be used in dungeons). Note that, after casting Recall, you will always be on the ground, even if you cast Mark in mid-air.

Icarian Flight and similar effects: You can now jump really high and go really far while in the sky. Surviving the landing is an exercise for the reader.

... and there are the propylon indexes which take you to 10 different places across all of Morrowind (you have to find them first - no pain, no gain :-)). I never found the travelling time to be an issue in Morrowind.

The cliff racers don't come out of nowhere, by the way. If you look around regularly, you will see them approaching. That said, they have the habit to sneak on you from behind while you are fighting some other monster. Clever guys, aren't they :-)? A great contribution to the alien and creepy atmosphere of Morrowind!

In my opinion, quest markers are an indication of lazy designers. Try to play, say, Oblivion without quest markers (there is an add-on taking them away). I have - for about 30 minutes or so, then I disabled that add-on again, because the game became unplayable. I don't mind them as a spoiler tool, which I can switch on or off if I want, but not as a necessity, a requirement. But, of course, it's a lot easier to place a marker on a map than to invent a hint system built into dialogues or symbols on rocks or what-have-you. And it would be even easier for the players to associate the marker with a quick-travel function: double-clicking the quest marker takes you straight to the destination, Why explore the map and search for objects?

Another cliff racer tip: never ever use "dispose of corpse."

The dispose of corpse button was added in a patch after the game's release, and the game behaves a little strangely when you use it. Functionally, it's the "take all" button but then it actually destroys the reference of the creature. Therefore, when you enter the area again, anything that you've disposed of will respawn. This is particularly noticeable if you fight 3-4 enemies right in front of an ancestral tomb, then enter and immediately exit. Chances are, you'll get attacked by at least 2 more enemies, though not necessarily the same type you killed before.

If you leave their corpses on the ground, the game will realize that a particular spawn point has already spawned a creature and it won't spawn any more until the cell resets. Simply avoiding the dispose button unless the corpse is physically preventing you from looting something else can have a huge effect on the number of creatures you face throughout the game.


Additionally, watch the skies. In the words of one of the Ashlanders, there's nothing more enjoyable than dropping a cliff racer at range with a single arrow. Combat will also feel a lot more interesting and fluid if you disable "always use best attack," since the game's definition of "best" isn't always really the best, and it adds a lot more variety. If you're using lots of short blades or spears, though, you might want to leave it on.

What if I actually *want* to fight more enemies?

By the way, if I leave a Cliff Racer alive, will it ever despawn? (I am wondering because I want to know if a "normal" playthrough with the Racer Recursion mod is feasible.)

1) Just dispose of everything, then. Alternatively, spawn them with the console, that'd probably be more efficient.

2) When the cell resets, all the actors in it reset, unless they're persistent. Generally, if something has a name, it's persistent, if not, it isn't. As long as the various cliff racer creatures weren't changed to be persistent by the mod, they'd get cleaned up with everything else.