Newbie here going into Morrowind for the first time, any suggestions/advice/ whatever else for me?

[Sol33t303]

I just recently got Morrowind for free thanks to Bethesdas 25th anniversary celebration.
I have only played Skyrim and Oblivion in the past and enjoyed them a lot. From what I have heard many people also like Morrowind. What advice and/or suggestions would you give to a newcomer? Things like mods, what to do/what not to do, etc.
Thanks in advance

[raevol]

Everyone's going to have their own take on what's best for a newbie! Here's mine:

Get the official mods, and then just play the game! Once you've gotten a taste for how it was originally designed, then you can start adding content or changing this around if you feel like. Personally, I play with a bare minimum of mods and still haven't "finished" the game. I've completed the main quest, but I haven't been everywhere or done everything in the game, it's always there waiting for me to do a little more.

[wareya]

Fill your inventory with health and fatigue potions.

Save constantly and make lots of backup saves.

Fatigue affects almost every diceroll in the game, and also random stuff like bartering.

Expect to have your attacks miss and spells fail to cast pretty often until you're high level.

Don't play a "pure" character on a first playthrough. You want to explore the game's mechanics.

If you get attacked by assassins in your sleep, just kill them. The game autosaves before you sleep anyway, so don't freak out or worry about dying.

[lysol]

I'd recommend two mods though, just for the quality of life...

Delayed Dark Brotherhood (you'll miss understanding a few memes, but that's all)
Solstheim Rumor Fix

[silentthief]

Save constantly and make lots of backup saves.

This. The game can be difficult when you first start out, so save regularly. While there is a certain amount of satisfaction from making a deep run and getting back safe to town, it's still a good idea to make multiple saves and kind of rotate between them (so to have more than one choice when restarting) - especially because it is not uncommon to die in the middle of nowhere and realize you lost the gameplay for the past two hours, or managing to get to an area that is tough to get out of.

As for character type, the one recommendation I would make is not to use the Atronach sign for first play through. It makes it so you have a 1 in 2 chance to absorb magicka on incoming spells, but also makes it so your magicka doesn't replenish by resting.

ST

[werdanith]

Try keeping the fatigue bar close to full at all times, it affects your chance of success for many things, including hit chance and spell success. Use weapons and spells that you are skilled with, skills increase with usage or by paying trainers. Talk to everyone, especially about rumours, advice and secrets. There are no quest markers so you need to pay attention to what people tell you, and study the journal. If a task is to hard for you leave it for later, some quests/dungeons are too hard for low level players. There are spells and magic items that restore health and stamina, and you can find them cheap. You can join all guilds and there are benefits for each. The exception is Great Houses, Hlaalu, Redoran and Telvanni, you can only pick one, so choose wisely.

See this video that came out yesterday, it's pretty good and covers the same things:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JR3E4Z3fqxw

I also recommend at the very least Delayed DB Attack for mods, as well as patch for purists.

[Jemolk]

My tips would be -- agility is well known to increase hit chance with weapons, but keep in mind also that willpower increases your chance of successfully casting spells. I second the advice to save, save, save. Patch for Purists is highly recommended, since it only fixes bugs, unlike previous patch mods, and some of the bugs can be pretty annoying. The exception, of course, being the expansion implementation plugin. I recommend using that one as well, though, because dealing with assassins at first level is going to be a massive pain, and you don't really want to go to the expansion areas too early anyway, since they're much higher level than the base game. Other than PfP, I'd recommend cleaned versions of the official plugins, and that's about it for a first run. Once you've decided what you like and don't like, then you can start fiddling around adding/removing mods to set up the game how you like it.

Graphics mods, however, may be a necessity, especially if, like me, you can't stand those segmented vanilla bodies. In that case, I recommend staying as close to vanilla as possible at first, such as with the upscaled vanilla texture packs, and Better Bodies makes a pretty significant difference as well. For heads, I'm not sure what I'd recommend to stay close to vanilla but decent-looking.

Oh, one more thing -- if you want to cast spells a lot, make sure to get a race or birthsign that will give you Fortify Maximum Magicka. You can get a decent amount of magicka later on even without it, but it'd probably involve Fortify Magicka enchantments, which are a massive pain, or Fortify Intelligence enchantments, which are fairly rare unless you make them yourself. On the other hand, if magic would just be a support role for you, then not having fortifications is fine, especially with all the cast on use enchantments running around that can fill the role of spells quite nicely. It can be less important with mods as well, since you can get the effect other ways then, but unless you really, really want a specific race and sign, and neither has fortify max magicka, and you want to cast spells a lot, I recommend keeping a fairly minimal loadout for your first run. All of which is to say, you probably don't want to attempt a pure mage on your first run.

[1Mac]

Patch for Purists now includes delayers for Solstheim rumors and Dark Brotherhood attack, fyi.

I’m a newbie myself and am inclined to go all out on modding for my first go. But if you’re inclined to take the other posters’ more reasonable advice and stick to an initial vanilla experience, I think Patch for Purists and Morrowind Optimization Project are probably still must-haves.

You could also take a look at the Morrowind Graphics Guide and install the first ten mods* in section 1.2, for a “vanilla plus” experience. Then install VanillaPlus Textures for normal maps, the full version and the armor, weapons, and clothes pack. Make sure to enable normal maps etc. in your config file (and experiment with other graphic settings while you’re at it: https://openmw.readthedocs.io/en/stable ... index.html).

*VFX Restoration isn’t needed for OpenMW. Ozzy’s Grass and other grass mods work, but because OpenMW can’t generate meshes for grass, it’s a big performance hit. If you want to try a grass mod anyway, try this one: https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/46377

[Jemolk]

I’m a newbie myself and am inclined to go all out on modding for my first go.

Oh yeah, if anyone doesn't want to moderate thiings for a first run, that's totally fair. I mean, I just gave the advice of not making a pure mage for a first run, but you know what I did on mine? High Elf with Apprentice birthsign pure mage. Massively vulnerable to magic, massively powerful. Total glass cannon. Either I or my opponents were going to get run over by a truck, basically. I thought it was a ton of fun. But what I'd do and what I'd recommend to someone else whose inclinations and playstyle I'm not sure of are two very different things. But anyone to whom disregarding a bit of advice sounds like fun should do so.

[silentthief]

Kind of a bump to this topic, which I assume is now a little late but in case there are any other new people looking for information on where to start on Morrowind, here is a good video from one of our project fans on youtube, Zaric Zhakaron, with a comprehensive beginner's guide to Morrowind for new players:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JR3E4Z3fqxw

ST