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Yes, yes, you have permission to laugh at the Horseman. Just this once.

I figured I'd give both games a spin now that I actually have a machine capable of running them. Just haven't gotten around to doing it yet, but I just got heartily sick of nothing but strategy games and I need a bit of variety.

I want to try Morrowind first, partly because I've got the Game of the Year Edition for that and because I like playing games in sequence.

I would appreciate people giving me a few quick pointers on the kind of mods would make the best additions to the games. Namely, I don't particularly fancy the "all opponets scale up as you level up" feature that I afaik both games have. If there are some texture mods for Morrowind that take advatage of the graphics improvements since 2001 and 2002 that don't turn things into a big hassle, those would be appreciated.

Pointers to the best resources and instructions on how to find things later would also be welcome so it'll be easier to find out what I need. Just Googling it will bury me in links whose trustworthiness and relevance I have no way of evaluating.

Other than that, I don't need much, I'll muddle around on my own.

Some musts for Morrowind are the Better Bodies mod, any mods that add new heads, and Morrowind Comes Alive. Also, I'd recommend the Character Maker quickstart, Balmora Expansion and Children of Morrowind. Those mods make things much more interesting. Also, if you're into Vampires, I recommend Vampire Embrace and Vampire Realism II. Most of these can be found easily, I do believe.

As for Oblivion, I'm of no help with mods for that. My computer is incapable of running it, sad to say.

Morrowind is a fun game without any mods, but these mods can make it infinitely more enjoyable.

For reputable places to find and get mods:

Bethesda's Official Forum

Plant Elder Scrolls - requires Fileplanet, but they have the biggest mods.

TES Source - requires free registration, uses its own server.

Dev akm's Texture and Quest Mods guide - no where near as expansive as the top three, but it has the best of the best for textures and quest mods.

For Oblivion gameplay/rebalance mods, check out our very own best mods thread from a while back. I've started using Fran's since that thread, so I can recommend both Fran's, OOO and Mart's mods for gameplay/leveled enemies changes.

Passive healthy wildlife is a must for Morrowind. Bloody cliff racers.

Actually, Morrowind's level-scaling is barely noticable; this makes the game TOO EASY for many after a point.

Better Bodies and Better Heads will save you much annoyance with Morrowind's aging appearance. I also recommend Piratelord's creature-adding mod.

This site has a few pretty good mod lists:
http://www.mwmythicmods.com/

Official Bethsoft plugins for Morrowind:
http://www.elderscrolls.com/downloads/u ... lugins.htm

Another great mod list for Morrowind:
http://www.mwmythicmods.com/realism.htm#96

Thanks, guys!

*looks at list of downloaded mods*

Uh-oh, I'll be spending the next few days reading modreadmes and trying to sort out this pile...

Yeah but it'll be worth it when you do. I just got into Oblivion and it's blowing me away and i've only scratched the surface of the game. It's so good the last of my lingering WoW addiction has been exercised from my system.

You can really lose yourself with mods. I have ~120 installed last time I checked. There is one thing you absolutely must have if you're going to install more than a dozen mods. Seriously, before doing any modding go get the Morrowind Plugin Manager. It makes everything so much easier. You won't even have to uncompress mods. Installing and uninstalling becomes a real breeze.

The absolute and very best mod repository in the entire internet is Planet Elder Scrolls. I assure you there is no place with a higher quantity of mods.

I'm pretty happy with my mod combination, well except for two mods that my computer can't run (well it can at 2 fps) and one that interferes with another . However, since you can run Oblivion you can probably run the two I can't. Seyda Neen Docks makes the town you arrive in look like the real port city it should be. (can't find the other one, it adds shanties in between the gigantic canton structures in Vivec)

Try the Vivec texture replacer, it makes Morrowind's holy city looks less like some drab old shit and more like a real holy city.

Oh, and get Passive Healthy Wildlife. Trust me, you do not want to get attacked by each and every animal you ever encounter. With that mod only sick animals will attack you.

EDIT - I just found something interesting. Navigating the interior of the various Cantons in Vivec is a pain in the ass. This mod attempts to fix this by merging three of the four levels (ie, everything but the sewers) into one gigantic interior. This should make it easier to move around, but I can't vouch for it personally since I'm sure my computer won't run it.

Thanks for all the tips guys.

A questions regarding some of the weapons and armor texture replacer mods:

Which ones of them work together without fucking things up?

I've been looking at the Daedric, Glass and Ebony weapon enhancer mods and thinking about running them with No-Glow Revisited and Improved Magic Shimmer (which combination should not be a problem), but then there's Sharpened Modlels Weapon Replacer and Weapons Compilation 2.0, which is not a replacer but a full on mod.

Do you know of any conflict issues with these? Because I did manage to get my MW install completely fucked up and had to reinstall it anyway and I'm being a lot more careful this time around. Not that I actually even managed to make a character yet, and I've got a couple of backups of my data files too. One of the complete blanks and another one with the base textures replaced by the pure replacers that don't fuck things up.

I'd appreciate help, because sorting all the different mods I do want into the kind of setup I want is going to be a pain in the ass from this point onward. I've gotten my hands on the TESTool and the Leveledlist merger for it, but no idea how to use WryeMash.

I inted to run the various BookRotate and other book enhancer mods, Seyda Neen Docks, Morrowind Comes Alive, MW Children and Balmora Expansion (MW Children compatible version), the Wilderness, Passive Wildlife and one of the sound enhancer packs, perhaps also Morag Mar expansion, plus the official plugins.

Of the sound enhancement mods, which one is the best? Wilderness sounds + Enhanced MW Sounds or the ASE pack and its updates?

And on the body and face modding side, Better Bodies, Better Heads of course, but what of the other packs? Beauty Pack, and the couple of mods that add new Khajits and the lizardmen, are those also needed? And do you know if the Clothiers of Vvardenfell mod cause conflicts with anything in this list in your experience?

There are only two Morrowind weapons mods you need.

1. The Marksman mod, adds in a crap ton of bows, arrows, special arrows, unique hidden bows, the works.

2. Lilarcor the Sword Mod, adds in a talking two handed broadsword which can change to a one handed sword as nesseary. Also can be used as a compaion, levels up as you kill things (Roughly half of Morrowind before you hit the top level) and a few other things. The best part however? He talks, is kind of amusing and you can change a ton of his settings mid-game. Don't like him talking? You can change him to say nothing, or only talk/yell when you first enter combat, or not at all!
And of course Lilarcor is the sword from Balders Gate two, which is always amusing.

This is my current install, with A Lord's Men and Traveling Merchants being my two experimentals. The only one that has problems is the Merchants, and I made a note beside it indicating such. I would also like to mention The Undead v2.2 (I think that is the current one) and Enchanted Renaissance, though I have not tested them with this setup and they may not be compatable. (Especially Enchanted Renaissance, mostly due to how much it changes.)

Adamantium Armor
A Lord's Men
Armor Rotate
At Home Alchemy
Balmora Expansion
Better Bodies
Better Daedric Items
Better Heads
Bloated Morrowind (Adds the "Bloat Spores" ingredient.)
Bloodmoon
Book Rotate
Castle Vianden
Centurion's Stronghold
Telvanni Robes
Daedric Sorcery
Daedric Signposts
Dynamic Magicka Regeneration
Ebony Armor Fixes
EBQ_Artifact
Fast Eddie Fixes
Glass Weapon Enhancer
Horatio Casting Mod (Lowers spell cost with increased skill.)
House of Mannequins (for displaying items)
Imperial Guard Anticlone
Improved Inns
Less Annoying Guards (Stops the chat window in guard fights.)
Leveled Magicka (Magicka increases with level, .1x/level. Vital for a "Mage" PC.)
LichCraft 2
Master Trainer Fixes
Master Prophylon Indexes
Missing Bounds (Pauldrons and the other one, whatever it is.)
Moon's Soulgem Retextures (Oh so amazing, and a must have.)
Morag Tong Writ Fix
Morrowind Crafting + Equipment
Multimark (Essential, Period.)
Na Eelrin Sword
No-Glo Revisited
Nymeria's Mage Guild Fixes
Passive Healthy Wildlife (Thank the gods.)
Reflective Gold
Rethan Manor Expansion
Scripted Spells
Sheikizza's Aedric Armor
Shrine Text
Siege at Firemoth
Sitting NPCs
Traveling Merchants (Adds atmosphere, but I wouldn't install it again... it has complications.)
Tribunal
Unboarable Rieklings
Uupse Fyr Fix
Uvirith Inside
Vanguard's Blue Ymsidril Armor
Vanguard's Emerald Ymsidril Armor
Vanguard's Morkeleb Armor
Vanguard's Ymsidril Armor (What can I say? These armor sets are great.)
Wakim's Game Improvements
Weapon Rotate
White Wolf of Lokken

Edit: While I say all these work together, you will need to clean them before they get along nicely. Some should be cleaned, but some shouldn't be. Make sure you check the readmes first.

I found B.E Griffiths' face replacement mods absolutely vital. Not only do they significantly improve the look of faces, their polycount is actually reduced from that of stock Morrowind.

Hey, I just thought of something. Edi, if you feel your character is too lonely going all over Morrowind with no companionship, I suggest you try a companion mod. Okay, let's be more specific, I suggest you try one of Emma's companion mods
. I highly recommend "Laura Craft Romance and Adventure" it is compatible with both male and female characters, and Laura herself is probably the closest approximation to a real person as you're likely to find in game.

I tried the Witchgirl one too, but she can summon Storm Atronachs and is thus a wee bit high powered. Not to mention it's a pain in the ass to deal with the jealousies of both Laura and the crazy Breton witch (for male characters, anyway, the witchgirl is strictly friends with females). Man, the whole thing will get real complicated when I get around to doing White Wolf of Lokken where you can get yet another girlfriend (or a boyfriend for female characters).

If you have a female character and don't want her to be a lesbian, be advised that the "Boyfriend, Imperial" mod is rather underdeveloped compared to the rest of Emma's work. You could wait until you've levelled enough to do Lokken, since you can marry someone by the end of it.

You might want to take a look at the rest of website, there's interesting stuff there.

Eleas wrote:I found B.E Griffiths' face replacement mods absolutely vital. Not only do they significantly improve the look of faces, their polycount is actually reduced from that of stock Morrowind.

That's one of the big ironies of Morrowind. All the better looking faces actually tax system resources less than the default ones.

but no idea how to use WryeMash.

http://wrye.ufrealms.net/Wrye%20Mash.html


Pretty much all the info one needs on it is there: at least, when I was using it, I found what info I needed there.

Adrian Laguna wrote: That's one of the big ironies of Morrowind. All the better looking faces actually tax system resources less than the default ones.

Apparently, the reason is that the programmers figured modders would address that issue the first time around; thus, not all that much time was spent on faces to begin with.

Eleas wrote:Apparently, the reason is that the programmers figured modders would address that issue the first time around; thus, not all that much time was spent on faces to begin with.

That wouldn't surprise me if it was true. Bethesda seems to leave behind a lot for modders to fix.

Arrow wrote:That wouldn't surprise me if it was true. Bethesda seems to leave behind a lot for modders to fix.

AFAIK, Vvardenfell itself took years to create. Maybe that's the reason the Cyrodiil of Oblivion feels so lackluster in comparison.

I was never of the view that Vvardenfell was somehow better "constructed" than Cyrodiil, IMO.

Eleas wrote:

Arrow wrote:That wouldn't surprise me if it was true. Bethesda seems to leave behind a lot for modders to fix.

AFAIK, Vvardenfell itself took years to create. Maybe that's the reason the Cyrodiil of Oblivion feels so lackluster in comparison.

I was think more along the lines of the "Unofficial Oblivion Patch", which addresses a metric fuckton of bugs Bethesda left in the game. And then we have all the leveling mods, companion mods, and other things like that.

Wow, I don't remember Morrowind's faces being nearly so ugly. When I play Morrowind through again (on the agenda as soon as I'm done playing Shivering Isles) I'll definitely load that one up.

Anyone got the website/link to the Better Bodies mod? The link on UESP appears to be dead.

I recomment the mod that gives your horses storage room where you can put stuff you don´t want to give up. For Oblivion that is.

salm wrote:I recomment the mod that gives your horses storage room where you can put stuff you don´t want to give up. For Oblivion that is.

Meh, Bag of Holding mod for me. I don't have time for encumberance and leaving loot behind and/or making multiple trips and what not. There's only so much realism in a fantasy game I can stand.

Vympel, here, and here is a working UESP link. You probably also want Better Heads and a lot of the other stuff.

The http://mwmythicmods site is great for mod lists and links, so is http://morrowind.ufrealms.net and the Elric Melnibone MW site.

Awesome- I'll get on that as soon as I'm done with Shivering Isles

Vympel wrote:I was never of the view that Vvardenfell was somehow better "constructed" than Cyrodiil, IMO.

Well, it's a matter of opinion. But Vvardenfell has several things going for it that IMO Cyrodiil lacks - the clashing architecture of the different factions, the meticulously crafted geography (you can literally spot where the Imperial invasion went solely through observing the different names and architectural styles), and the sheer originality of the setting as compared to the homogenous 'more Tolkien than Tolkien' - style setting that is Cyrodiil.