Mod status
Help/Discussion
See the Mod Compatibility forum.
Introduction
Once you have played through unmodded Morrowind and its expansions, you probably want to add some spice to your next playthrough: thousands of modifications (mods) are available to enhance the overall gameplay, adjust the game mechanics to your tastes, or simply improve the graphics quality. There also are mods which add new landscapes and quests – and some are proper total conversions (TCs), stand-alone games taking Morrowind's engine as a basis.
The OpenMW project has set one of its main goals to provide compatibility with each and every Morrowind mod which
- is a pure replacer or a modification created with the original Construction Set,
- doesn't rely on third-party software or other engine hacks,
- doesn't contain any severe scripting errors or other crucial design flaws.
Our engine is, of course, not perfect and certain mods may fail to load or may show unexpected behaviour. If you encounter any bugs with a mod, please report them at our bugtracker or at our forums (newbies should check out our Bug Reporting Guidelines). Additionally, we have created this page to keep track of tested Morrowind mods and provide information about issues related to each of these mods.
Mod installation
OpenMW uses a more flexible method for installing mods. Check out our Mod installation Wiki page here.
Mod sources
The OpenMW team does not provide any mods or external mod tools. However, there are a couple of great mod libraries for TES III: Morrowind (this list is not exhaustive):
Open mod libraries and indexes: | Project-specific, or selected contributors: |
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Further information and discussion
Anyone who is a member of the Wiki group can add details of mods they have tested; see the forum's User Control Panel and assign yourself to the group in order to get access.
We also have a Mod Compatibility subforum where any issues can be discussed thoroughly.
If you want to test Morrowind mods in OpenMW but don't know how to start, check out our Mod testing guidelines page. If you already know how to properly test mods in OpenMW, please check this page out too because it also contains information regarding posting your test results.
Working status of existing Morrowind mods
The following list of "tested", "test in progress", "needs re-testing", or "not tested yet" mods makes no claim to be complete. Every Morrowind modification fulfilling the requirements mentioned above should work with OpenMW. The statements made about a mod's working status refer to a clean OpenMW installation, only using the particular mod and its required content files.
Lists of catalogued mods
- Alchemical and Spell Mods
- Armor and Weapon Mods
- Bethesda Softworks Mods
- Companion (follower) mods
- Creature Mods
- Gameplay Mods
- Mesh and Texture Mods
- House Mods
- Item Mods
- NPC Mods
- Quest Mods
- OpenMW Mods
- Overhaul Mods
- Script Fix Mods
- Sound and Voice Mods
- Total Conversion Mods
- User Interface Mods
Fixing mods that use fake bump maps
Bump maps produce a realistic shine on textures. Morrowind Code Patch (MCP) made it possible to use so-called fake bump maps in vanilla Morrowind. Apart from these maps not achieving the quality of real bump maps, our engine has a problem with this approach: The fake-bump-map method imports the normal map into an environment-map block in the .nif file. Both OpenMW and vanilla Morrowind will display such a model with excessively shiny or glowing textures. MCP is used with vanilla Morrowind to "fix" this by darkening all the environment maps. However, OpenMW's engine natively supports real bump maps (specifically the types called normal maps and spectral maps), which renders the hacky MCP version obsolete anyway.
Our member Lysol has created a tutorial on how to get rid of these shiny textures in OpenMW.
To cut a long story short: Mods using fake bump maps will always appear very shiny in OpenMW. This can only be fixed by editing the textures/meshes.
Morrowind Graphics and Sound Overhaul (MGSO) incompatibility
Morrowind Overhaul: Sounds & Graphics a.k.a. MGSO is one of the biggest and best-known Morrowind mod compilations. It consists of around 300 mods and integrates well-known utilities like the Morrowind Code Patch (MCP) and the Morrowind Graphics Extender (MGE). It comes with its own installer which allows players to adjust everything to their tastes.
Unfortunately, OpenMW does not support installer-based modifications like MGSO, rendering it essentially incompatible with OpenMW. However, you may set up MGSO on your vanilla Morrowind installation, then import your data and mod list to OpenMW, and hope for the best.
In any case, we've added many of the corresponding mods to the mod compatibility lists above; check out the full list of mods included in MGSO, on our MGSO Wiki page. (The original list was formerly available at the authors' website but has somehow vanished.)
Utilities software for Morrowind
There are quite a few third-party utilities for Morrowind which allow players to increase the game's graphical quality, tweak its performance, edit content, adjust the load order of content files, and so forth. While most of these programs are not compatible with OpenMW, some of them may be used to "prepare" an existing Morrowind installation and port the results to OpenMW. At your own risk, of course.
List of catalogued utilities
Status indicators: hover over icons to see their meanings.
Mod Info | Test Info | ||||||
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Name | Version | Author | Status [?] | Test Version | Test Date | Tester(s) | Comments |
Animation Kit N | 2.1 | LizTail | ![]() |
OpenMW 0.40.0 | 2016/10/20 | Atahualpa | Works as intended. Just use it with your vanilla installation of Morrowind. |
BSA Unpacker MW N | 1.0 | Timeslip | ![]() |
- | 2016/10/03 | Atahualpa | Works as intended to extract BSA files so you can edit the textures or meshes contained therein. Note: Your installation of OpenMW already includes a command line tool for this same job. |
ESP Cleaner N | ? | Horatio | ![]() |
- | 2016/10/03 | Atahualpa | OpenMW does not alter the .esp format. Accordingly, mod creators and players can use this tool to clean .esp files and use them with OpenMW. OpenMW provides its own file formats .omwaddon and .omwgame which replace .esp and .esm, respectively, for content created with OpenMW-CS. These files do not work with ESP Cleaner. |
GMST Vaccine and GMST Fix A | 0.02 | Wrye (Vaccine) and ManaUser (Fix) | ![]() |
- | n/a | n/a | ESP tools for preventing and curing GMST contamination, respectively. The vaccine should still be usable via vanilla CS, the fix should work directly in OpenMW (but please read documentation first). |
mlox N | 0.61 | JohnMoonsugar | ![]() |
- | 2016/10/03 | Atahualpa | You may use this tool to find the optimal load order for your mods on your original Morrowind installation, then keep your fingers crossed and manually transfer the resulting load order to the OpenMW launcher. |
Mod Organizer Nexus SSE section | 2.1.3 | LePresidente | ![]() |
- | 2018/06/10 | Starsheep | For Windows users. Mod Organizer 2.1.3 is compatible with the original Morrowind out of the box and doesn't touch any of your game files. You can use it to build your loadout while benefitting from all the MO features for files organization and interface with nexusmods. External tools like mlox or nifskope can be run through MO to see the consolidated /data Files folder in the virtual file system. It cannot launch OpenMW which uses its own VFS, but a scriptN made by AnyOldName3 can automatically add to your openmw.cfg all the data= and content= entries related to your MO profile. |
Morrowind Code Patch N | 2.2 | Hrnchamd Psyringe |
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- | 2016/10/03 | Atahualpa | Not compatible with OpenMW; see our MCP Wiki page for further information. |
Morrowind Enhanced A | 1.6 | aerelorn | ![]() |
- | 2017/6/20 | Thunderforge | Not compatible with OpenMW; designed to only work alongside vanilla Morrowind.exe |
Morrowind FPs Optimizer N | 1.0 | Alexander Stasenko | ![]() |
- | 2016/10/03 | Atahualpa | This utility only works with the original Morrowind process which makes it incompatible with OpenMW. The possibility to dynamically adjust the rendering quality depending on the FPS is a nice idea though – and not possible in OpenMW yet. |
Morrowind Graphics Extender (MGE) N | 3.8.0 | LizTail Timeslip |
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- | 2016/10/03 | Atahualpa | Not compatible with OpenMW; see our MGE XE Wiki page for further information. |
Morrowind Graphics Extender XE (MGE XE) N | 0.9.10 | Hrnchamd | ![]() |
- | 2016/10/03 | Atahualpa | Not compatible with OpenMW; see our MGE XE Wiki page for further information. |
Morrowind Interactive Map A | Final | Geronimo, Dave Humphrey, Khabarik | ![]() |
- | n/a | n/a | This is just an interactive map which you can consult to find specific places in Morrowind (especially if you sometimes have no access to UESP due to having no internet, for example). It is an external tool and is used solely outside of the game, so it is always usable regardless of engine. |
Morrowind Mod Manager N | 1.0 | Timeslip | ![]() |
- | 2016/10/03 | Atahualpa | You may use this tool to mess around with your original Morrowind installation. However, launching OpenMW via the "Launch Morrowind" button is not possible (obviously) which drastically decreases the program's usability. |
Morrowind Plugin Manager N | 1.2 | DW | ![]() |
- | 2016/10/03 | Atahualpa | You may use this tool to install mods to your original Morrowind installation and make adjustments to your load order and stuff there, finally setting the exact same load order in the OpenMW launcher. However, OpenMW provides its own way of installing mods making it possible to use as many data folders as you want to, while adjusting the load order at will in our launcher. |
Morrowind Resolution Fixer N | 1.0 | DarkWolfModding | ![]() |
- | 2016/10/03 | Atahualpa | Not compatible with OpenMW but our engine provides support for all common screen resolutions anyway. (To be honest, this software doesn't even work with my original Morrowind installation. And messing around with the registry isn't very user-friendly to say the least.) |
Morrowind Script Extender (MWSE) M | 0.94a | AnthonyG Fliggerty |
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- | 2016/10/03 | Atahualpa | Not compatible with OpenMW; see our MWSE Wiki page for further information. |
OpenMW Leveled List Fixer A | 1.0 | jmelesky | ![]() |
OpenMW 0.43.0 | May 2018 | jmelesky | Requires Python 3.3 or higher. |
TES Plugin Tool (TESTool) M | 1.0 | ghostwheel | ![]() |
- | 2016/10/03 | Atahualpa | You may use this tool to mess around with your original Morrowind installation. Please note that OpenMW does not support merging leveled lists directly (see OpenMW Leveled List Fixer, above). |
TESIniTweaker N | 3.5.2 | Moorindal | ![]() |
- | 2016/10/03 | Atahualpa | You may use this tool to adjust the settings in your Morrowind.ini file and, then import the modified .ini file from within the OpenMW launcher. Please note that doing so may lead to certain settings in your OpenMW settings file getting overwritten. |
TESPCD N | 0.31 | Ely Soto | ![]() |
- | 2016/10/03 | Atahualpa | You may use this tool with unclean or conflicting mods in order to get the issues solved. |
Wrye Mash N | 84 | Wrye | ![]() |
- | 2016/10/03 | Atahualpa | You may use this tool to mess around with your original Morrowind installation. Please note that OpenMW savegames aren't compatible with vanilla ones and, thus, cannot be managed via Wrye Mash. The infamous doubling bug doesn't occur in OpenMW. |
Morrowind Script Extender (MWSE) incompatibility
Mods that require MWSE will not work in OpenMW. This utility expands the scripting capabilities of the original Morrowind engine. It is a stand-alone MS Windows executable and does not work with OpenMW. Some of its features may be added to OpenMW after our 1.0 release (see our MWSE Wiki page for further information), and an OpenMW fork experimenting with Scripting Extension is already in advanced development (requires at least Python 3.3, Lua 5.1, and SWIG 3).
Morrowind Graphics Extender (MGE / MGE XE) incompatibility
Mods that require MGE will not work in OpenMW. These utilities improve Morrowind's overall graphical quality, make it possible to control certain graphics settings via scripts, and add several new features to the original engine, e.g., a variety of shaders. It is a stand-alone MS Windows executable and does not work with OpenMW. Many of their features have already been added to OpenMW with more on the way, and some of OpenMW's feature already surpass some of MGE's and MGE XE's. See our MGE XE Wiki page for more information.
Morrowind Code Patch (MCP) incompatibility
This utility fixes a good amount of buggy or poorly-written game mechanics, and Bethesda engine bugs, and brings a bunch of new (optional) features to vanilla Morrowind. It is a stand-alone MS Windows executable and does not work with OpenMW. Many of its features have already been either added to OpenMW or simply do not apply because the from-scratch nature of OpenMW never produced that particular bug in the first place. See our MCP Wiki page to learn more.
Testers
Credits go to Bethesda for creating an exceptional game – exceptional in every sense – with unusual modding possibilities. Credits also go to the great Morrowind modding community which is still active after all these years. Finally, special thanks go to all the mod testers who made this page feel like a true list of tested mods rather than a small selection of user-created content.
If a tester has chosen to link their talk page below, feel free to ask them for advice or assistance.
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