Morrowind help

[Geoffrey S]

I found Morrowind together with two of it's expansion packs today for 7 euros, and it looks set to be a great bargain. Unfortunately there was a distinct lack of a manual, both of the paper and of the online variety. Anyone who has played this game, could you please give me some pointers, particularly about the combat system (how stats work and the like) and how to use a shield. Any help would be much appreciated, so I have some idea of what I'm doing.

[Sjakihata]

The best advice is to use the morrowind forum and search around, however, I'd like to help as well.

To make it easier for everyone, list your question with numbers in a list, ex:

1) paesggsrghsh?

2 aw etå e tjpjet et etoj?

etc.

Please ask the questions in a simple manner and I promise you I'll be able to answer (almost) every one

to answer the first questions.

The combat system is very simple. Basically things like block, dodges and other such things are done automatically. The only thing you have to do, is attack. There are three kinds of attacks: slash, thrust and chop, I think that's their proper name.
Each type of weapon will have higher damage for each kind of attack (although all weapons (except bows and xbows) possess all type of attacks), for example an axe will have higher chop damage than thrust, while a spear will have higher thrust damage than slash and a katana will have higher slash, you get the picture. To perform a different attack, you can move forward while attacking, backwards and left or right. However, under options you can tick 'always use best attack' so you will always use the highest damage attack per default when you press the mouse button, this is easier.
When you are engaged it can be favourable to physically dodge the enemy's attack simply by moving backward or sideways.

About the stats. It's not that tricky. Depending on what kind of skill you use, you will develop more experienced (represented mathmatically by numbers 1-100). For example, you have 35 skill points in destructive magic. In that number there is another division, displayed as a bar with the numbers 0-100. When you use a skill succesfully you'll gain some points in the bar, and when it hits 100 you get a point in the skill, eg. it rises to 36. I hope this is clear enough.

Also, when you succesfully have raised 10 skills (must be major or minor i believe) you should 'rest and meditate on what you have learned' means you'll have to sleep. When you wake up you can allocate 3 dots to stats (physical and mental abilities). Place them in the ones where it says x3 or x2. It will double or tripple the points you get in the stat. Depending on what skills you raise you will get the multipliers. For example, some skills are governed by different stats, and raising a skill (under major or minor) governed by a certain stat will raise that multiplier.

To use a shield, drag it onto you body in the invitory and it will show when you draw weapons.

Good luck

[Geoffrey S]

Thank you very much! This help certainly solves part of the confusion over the stats system and promises to make exporing Vvardengell that much more enjoyable.
So the shield doesn't need to be manually activated by a particular key then, it basically adds to the defense total?

[Lehesu]

Shields add to your overall defensive total and, when you are reasonably skilled with shields, will automatically block a certain percentage of attacks completely.

[Sjakihata]

yes, shields will automatically add to the total defense plus depending on you block skill, it will block a certain amount of attacks, as lehesu already said.

[lars573]

Another thing about Morrowinds combat is that there is no damage roll. You don't get a ramdom attack value between the lowest and highest values. If you hold down the attack key/button (I have the xbox version) for enough time you will do the maximum damage. But if you hold it down then you might miss and the enemy doesn't wait around not attacking either.

[Sjakihata]

You mean you can charge you attack? That's true, for example that's what you do when you backstab someone, eg. sneaking up to them and attack them without the enemy know you are there, the first hit deals x2 or x3 (cant remember) the amount of damage.

[econ21]

The thing about Morrowind I found most quirky was the relation between skills, levelling up and bonus points for your attributes. It's been a while, so I may have forgotten some of the detail, but I ended up keeping a tally of how much each of my skills had increased between levels. The ideal was to get three skills up by 10 points and to choose three skills associated with different stats. That way you would get the maximum bonus points for three attributes at each level up. So, for example, I might choose to raise athletics by 10 for a speed boost, sword by 10 for a strength boost and heavy armour by 10 for an endurance boost.

The danger is that if you get your primary skills up to 10, you level up so there was a risk that you would level up quickly without having enough time to raise three skills to 10 and get the maximum bonus points. Often I would prioritise three skills that were not my primary skills to avoid that - e.g. wear medium armour, when heavy armour was my primary skill; wield a club when a sword was my primary etc. I understand with a patch you can train up skills 10 points and still have that count for the bonus attribute, but it still requires some micromanagement. To be honest knowing all this sucked my enjoyment out of the game (I spent hours running and jumping, getting beaten up by mud crabs etc to milk the maximum bonus points). So I am not sure why I am telling you this.

Some other useful pointers:

(1) Unlike say DnD Morrowind really allows a mixed class character - e.g. a fighter-mage. It's best not to choose a pre-made class, but choose major and minor skills etc as you wish. One way of thinking about it is to choose those major skills that you want to be using during the game - e.g. if you want to fight with a sword, pick a sword and then you will be rewarded in game by using it (because it will lead to you levelling up). Minor skills might be those support skills you will find necessary - eg restoration for healing - but don't want to emphasise so much.

(2) For some reason, the default movement speed is painfully slow. For that reason, I prioritised speed as one of the attributes to raise early. You'll walk (or run) a lot in Morrowind.

(3) Endurance is also an attribute to raise early, as it gives you more HPs per level but they are not retrospective.

(4) I found the limited inventory a real problem, especially if you wear heavy armour. So raising strength helps. In the longer term, you want the mark and recall spells to teleport back to a shop (overload yourself, teleport to the shop, sell, then you are unencumbered). I tried a Breton fighter type, but found it hopeless simply due to the initial low carry weight. I settled on a Dark Elf as a pretty balanced race, and also quite in character given the setting.

It's quite an evocative game - seeing a sand storm in a Daedric ruins was awe-inspiring - but ultimately, I found it lack any soul. To me the huge world ended up feeling lifeless, the characters were all ciphers and the story telling was non-existent (unless you get your kicks reading dull in game books). Playing a game like Vampires or the Kotor's really brings Morrowind's deficiencies to home. I wonder if Oblivion will be better in this respect? (There is some hope knowing that Patrick Stewart and Sean Bean will be doing some of the voice work).

[Shambles]

You gain levels and skills by learning, Either by being taught or by repetedly preforming an action
you can learn what you like but You can only gain levels by increasing the skills on your 2 main Skill Sections (you chose these in the begining)

Its best to teach your self 3 of your skills at 1ce,

Ie
You have
Long blade
block and
Light armour,
in your main skill's if you teach yorself these 3 similtaniously, You will get Extra bonus points for there base atributes,

You will see the sign x3 or similar next to the atribute that Gains Bonus points,
You must add a token to these atributes as they will then gain you 3 points not 1,

Where as if you only tought yourself long blade You would gain extra points only on its base atribute, and other skills would only be able to gain 1 skill point,
Remember You chose which Will gain a point.


if you teach your self other skills you will find your atirbutes increase slowly,
So make shure the skills you need are in your major and minor skills sections,

And avoid learning other skills as it will only slow down the progress of your more inportaint sklills,





Blocking comes with the skill,
Its a % thing , The better your skill the higher the % that you will block an attack.

Combat is the same.
the better your skill the more likley you are to hit your opponent,

Personaly i love morrowind,
And I doubt you will ever finish the game :)

But I wish you all the best of luck in trying :)

ShambleS

[econ21]

And avoid learning other skills as it will only slow down the progress of your more inportaint sklills,

I would not agree with that recommendation. It's true that learning miscellaneous skills won't raise your level. But raising your miscellaneous skills is the way to make sure you get 3 stats raised by the maximum 5 points on level up, making each level more rewarding. For that reason, I'd recommend that a new character makes sure that each attribute - strength etc - has an associated skill in their miscellaneous skills.

[Sjakihata]

also, be sure when ever you have to travel long distance (or always) on foot, always run and jump as you will learn athletics/acrobatics. I saw a movie once, with a guy who placed the character facing a wall, and enabled auto run and placed an item on the jump button. All he had to do was drink an occasional stamina potion.

And also, you want to max your constitution stat (the one governing you Hit Points) since it will give you more HP in the end. (Higher con stat gives more hp pr level, so the sooner the con is maxed the more HP you will get)


Another note, Morrowind tends to get boring when you disect it like this - so my advice is really, go with the flow, take the skills you would like and focus on the RPG element.

[Lehesu]

Just level naturally. If you munch the stats, you will be fully developed in your primary attributes before level 20. The Morrowind Level System is really prone to abuse if you want to powergame.

[Shambles]

I would not agree with that recommendation. It's true that learning miscellaneous skills won't raise your level. But raising your miscellaneous skills is the way to make sure you get 3 stats raised by the maximum 5 points on level up, making each level more rewarding. For that reason, I'd recommend that a new character makes sure that each attribute - strength etc - has an associated skill in their miscellaneous skills.

Not exactly true,

You dont haft to learn Misk skills to gain 5 points,

You just need to learn a skill that is governd by an atribute.
So aslong as the 3 skills you learn are governd by difrent atributes,
and are all in your Main or secondary skills,
You will gain levels and gain bonus points on those base atributes,

And as you only have 3 tokens to add on to base atributes learning more than 3 skills that are governd by difrent atributes. At the same time is a good way to drain bonus point from the atributes you need to increase,

(atributes govern the level you can learn. Levels Gain you atribute points, Primary and secondary Skill gain you levels)


now i havent played properly for a while but here is an example.


For example lets pretend that

long blade is governd by strength,

Block is governd by endurance.

and Light armor is governd by Agility

If these 3 are in your main or secondary skills,
And you learn only those 3 untill you level,

You will have Bonus points available for those 3 atributes.

Although to agree with you learning Misk skills Which are also governd by those 3 atributes Would increase the bonus points available for them,

But for the most part You gain levels by Paying some 1 to teach you.
And that Is Very expensive if your also learning misk skills along the way.
But you would gain the same by learning more primary or secondary skills that use the same atributes.


Also if you learn many skills at 1ce You May find that 4 of your atributes can be given Extra bonus points,
But you only have 3 tokens, (and thats a waste of money)



And he says he has both the addons, blood moon i think "lost my cd a while ago" and tribunal,

Now tribual Is gonna send A whole bunch of assasins after him.
And they whoop ass, Becous i played morrowid for ages before instlling tribunal So my guy "shambleS" was pretty tough already, And those assasins are just nasty Skin of your teeth survival stuff.
So he will need to level quickly.
But a good thing is assasin clothes are Good armour,
And there worth a few £.





ShambleS

[Lehesu]

If you play Morrowind, invest some time in finding quality mods. There are many that are better than the original content itself, and there are mods out that fix nearly every problem people have found with vanilla Morrowind. The only reason why I'm not playing now is that all my mods were lost and it would take too long to hunt them down to make the game playable for me.

[Shambles]

If you play Morrowind, invest some time in finding quality mods. There are many that are better than the original content itself, and there are mods out that fix nearly every problem people have found with vanilla Morrowind. The only reason why I'm not playing now is that all my mods were lost and it would take too long to hunt them down to make the game playable for me.

Id say play the game 1st lol,
befor you downoad some mod Where you get all the Best wepons and stupid amounts of gold that make the game so boring you could cry,

[Fragony]

Morrowinds combast system, such a missed chance! There is absolutely no reason to uncheck 'always use best attack', they could have added different effects like armour piercing for a direct axe attack and blunt for just pushing. Still a great game, can't wait for the next.

[Lehesu]

Shambles, there is a difference between a "cheat" and a tastefully produced mod that seamlessly integrates with the game.

[Steppe Merc]

I used to use a shield, but now that I've got Chrysa something (that Legandary two handed sword you get by killing the top knight), I don't use them. However, I feel like I'm wasting it, since I already have my longsword up to a hundred, and I'm not gaining any skills by killing people. But I'm not good enough at spear or blunt or short sword. I am good at bow, and have the best one in game (some unique bow that I found in a tomb...)
And I do feel that I sort of wasted my time building up my medium armor skill, since I have all heavy armor on.

However, I am a bit worried because I don't quite understand if my sword will hurt Dagoth...

[Geoffrey S]

If you play Morrowind, invest some time in finding quality mods. There are many that are better than the original content itself, and there are mods out that fix nearly every problem people have found with vanilla Morrowind. The only reason why I'm not playing now is that all my mods were lost and it would take too long to hunt them down to make the game playable for me.

Right now I'm running an improved humanoid character mod; really makes the game much more convincing. One mod I'm looking for is one to improve the dialogue (basically giving individual replies), but that's probably too much to hope for.

I'm enjoying immersing myself in the game right now, aside from the dodgy NPCs it feels like actually walking around a fantasy island. It's still slightly confusing, but the posts here have clarified the combat system somewhat.