Morrowind++ (best mods collection)

Games
1

So. This thread is a placeholder as I slowly start to explore and check what the community has done along these years.

After all the recent discussions I want to play this game once again, but only after having collected an “ultimate” list of mods to make it as good as it can be.

The idea is to build a list of the best mods out there, without stretching too much what the game is. A selected choice based on quality.

I don’t want mods that completely change the game or add parts that have nothing to do with it. I want to include a mod only if it makes the original game objectively better. Just an improved Morrowind more than a different game. I’ve seen lists of mods with all kind of crap in them, but I want just the same game with mods that improve it. So I’d like to keep a shorter, high quality list, more than one that includes every kind of stuff like a huge patchwork without a sense.

I’ve seen also lots of patches that mod the graphic. Even here I’d add only what doesn’t mess with the original mood and only absolutely professional mods.

The biggest problem with the mods in every game is that is frigging hard to orient yourself and tell what’s good and what’s crap. So this is the purpose of the thread.

Gather suggestions. And review the various mods that seem worthwhile.

I just finished to install the two custom CD I made back then. I RARed the directory of the game directly with the two expansion, latest official patch, exe crack and a list of mods I selected back them. Now I’m looking again through them and see if there are updated versions.

As I start testing things I’ll begin to update a list, explaining briefly what a mod does and why I consider it a worthwhile addition to the game.

Finally I’ll try to pack everything together into a huge mod and host it on my site. So that you could choose to install everything individually or just use the big pack.

Basically a (subjectively) approved list of mods. Tested and reviewed. a way to put some order in the chaos that is the mod community.

Not everyone has infinite time to go through millions of mods and see what is valuable.

2

You gotta go dredge through the archives in Games, but there’s a MW thread where somebody (Stormbinder) does just that.

3

Thanks for the link, I’m digging it :)
Consider this thread as a further review, update and final all-in-one package as I’m done collecting everything :)

Btw, the proper link is this.

4

I found an interesting website.

ThePal’s big project, for which he has put out an open request for assistance. The idea is to provide a single ESM which completely replaces Bethesda’s three official ones. This would provide a superior “vanilla” game as well as a stable platform and standardized architecture for other modders. Game balance issues will be addressed as well as bugfixes and general visual enhancements.

5

I’ve just spent the last four days doing exactly what you’ve planned. There’s some great mods out there. (And a few ‘meh’ ones as well.)
My current list (in no particular order) of mods that work is:
better heads 2 - much better heads
better bodies - and much better bodies
any other body replacement with the word ‘better’ in it
bank_v24- just in case I want to buy a house. Really, there’s no point to getting it unless you use a gold weight mod
giants -a load of new monsters, the vast majority of whom I haven’t met yet.
KP visual packs -very nice ground textures, chugs the computer a bit
marksman enhanced -not sure about this one- bows now do a pile of damage
Morrowind children + all related mods -no real game purpose but it adds a great atmosphere to each city
nymeria’s mage guild fixes- simple things like adding ‘restore magic’ potions to chests and increasing chest respawn times
shadowsAndlight parts1-4 -can’t really tell what it’s done
sir Luthors tools -pretty hammers
Tadeus’ balanced armour/weapons/objects -because the game needed some balancing
the Regulars -just adds more people drinking in taverns
vibrant trees -adds flowering trees. Not sure about this one.
barabus fireplaces -pretty fireplaces
blood and gore -adds a splash of blood when you hit, and a dodgy puddle when you kill them.
chalk -allows you to write on the ground and leave messages or symbols (e.g. ‘explored’ or ‘exit’). Well it should- I only got it to work in the middle of Caldera and all I could think of was a few obscene messages.
complete trade fix -because trade needed fixing.
farmer mod -the John Deer simulator of Morrowind. Still haven’t found the bloody farm that’s for sale. The concept of running a slave plantation might be a bit off-putting to some.
glow-away -because that magic glow looks awful.
LCV schedules -NPCs now have a schedule, houses are locked at night time.
lock bash -for when your schedule doesn’t mix with their schedule.
morrowind comes alive- adds more NPCs who wander from city to city, as well as adventurers that you can recruit.
passivehealthywildlife- you are no longer enemy #1 of everything that lives and breaths in Vvardenfell
real signposts -why did Bethesda think it a good idea to include signposts that you can’t read?
rich scamp -because I use him, and I realised that I spent too much time being gamey with my selling for it to be fun. So now he has 1000 000 gold to buy from you.
silent character generation -it skips all the talking at the beginning and lets you start quickly so that you can find out if the mods are going to crash you to desktop again.
tombs expanded -adds several new levels to each tomb. These were created randomly so don’t expect anything too cool.
the undead -more undead types to go with the new levels.
travelling merchants -another flavour enhancer because I never see them sell anything useful.
ald redaynia extended -got it, but I haven’t been there yet.
thirsk extended -likewise

Mods that I tried and got rid of:
Combat enhanced and blocking enhanced -an attempt to add weapon combos and manual blocking. I kept on crashing with both installed. It worked okay with just combat enhanced but after a while i felt silly doing the same slash-slash-thrust dance with every fight.
Balmora enhanced -too much lag for too little gain to the game.
Disturb the dead -it adds a greater chance of undead spawning when you look in an urn. I already had my hands full with the other tomb mods.

6

Okay, I passed a few hours testing all sort of stuff and ditching it all. I’ve tried plenty of mods that update the textures. All very nice and well done, but still not good as the original ones. Too clean and polished and not in harmony. The original ones still fit together better and have a more dirty, imperfect look that is better overall. So I put everything aside.

BetterBodies is ugly. If I have to choose between player-created ugly and Bethesda ugly I choose the latter even if the bodies are awful.

About the heads I’m still testing. I use an old mod (NEW NPC REPLACER 3.5) which still seems to be the less awful and slightly more faithful out there.

About the sounds:
I’m still using a pack that I find really well done and that adds many environmental effects. They aren’t disturbing, they fit very well with the mood and do a very good work to make feel the place more alive and vibrant. So this will probably be included on my list. The package I have was divided in four parts. It seems now there’s one that includes them all. To install them you’ll also need to change a few entries in the .ini file. Link here

About the gameplay:
I still use all of the LDones. The site still exists. These are old mods but still the better out there from what I’ve seen.

  • Thief Experience Overhaul 1.3b (Tribunal) (Combined).esp - This mod is divided in four parts. Improved Lockpicking (the skill scales more naturally, better balanced), Improved Trap Settings (adds realistic difficiulty variance for traps), Improved Open Spell Balance (balance/nerf spells to be not too overpowered compared to thieving), Stealth Enhancements (weather and time of the day giving cumulative bonuses to stealth in exteriors).

  • Armor Effects-LD v2.0-WD - This mod gives penalties to stealth and agility based on armor. Heavy armor will affect negatively agility and stealth, for example.

  • Armor Effects - Armor Balance Companion - 1.0 - Rebalances all the armors (Armor Rating, Weight, Health/Durability, and Gold Value). Trying to make them more balanced and desirable.

  • Dodge Mod (Enhanced) 1.2-WD - Makes the “unarmored” skill more valuable, giving the player a dodge bonus that increases with the skill. The heavier the armor you wear, the less is the dodge bonus you have. So the bonus is useful in every situation, in particular if you have high unarmored skill and have a medium or light armor (or nothing). This affect how you avoid damage, not damage absorption.

  • Nighttime Door Locks-LD 1.1a - Pretty much obvious. The shops are closed at night. Inns and other buildings will remain open.

  • Wakim’s Game Improvements (R9) - This one is divided into a few parts. Character (skill increase rates balance, and racial stats balance), items (various balance tweaks to weapons + fixes to inconsistences), Magic Effects (a bunch of balance tweaks to magic), NPC Spellcasting (let NPCs select spells in a smarter way), Spells (works together with the previous two), Dialogue (smaller dialogue tweaks, fixes and intelligent addition), Faction (adjusted house requirements to join, guilds will refuse services to non-members, houses will not serve rival houses), Game Settings (NPCs and monsters now flee more efficiently, other minor fixes, nerf to bunny hopping by increasing fatigue).

Content:
As I said I don’t really want content added to not mess with the original game and keep as faithful as possibile. I would include only absolutely awesome mods without flaws. The only one I added to my mods is Illuminated Order, another mod by LDones. It looks very good, but I still need to try it and “approve” it.

Other mods I’m using:

  • Vgreetings - Enables Tribunal’s new faction/rank greetings for characters in original areas; also includes many related fixes and previously unused voice samples in all sections (again on LDones page)

  • Tribunal Integration - Again tweaks and smaller additions. They seem to make all sense. (again on LDones page)

  • Expanded Museum of Artifacts - Tweaks to Tribunal again. (again on LDones page)

  • Visible Pets - Makes Rerlas Mon’s creatures visible (and edible) in Mournhold’s Great Bazaar, rather than materializing only when purchased. (again on LDones page)

  • Helm Experiment - Adds negative effects to elms (positive for vampires). You hear less sounds, see less and suffer pensonality penalty when talking with NPCs. It makes sense for realism. (again on LDones page)

  • Bloodmoon Extras - Add minor things using unused meshed in the exp. (again on LDones page)

  • Bloodmoon Female Armor Fix - Fixes clipping issue in a armor. (again on LDones page)

  • Experimental Weapon Adjustments - Includes new Reach values derived from individual weapon models, weight-based Speeds, a few fixes and three previously unused models. (again on LDones page)

Plus a bunch of mods with other fixes that I’ll have to sort out later.

There’s an INSANE amount of stuff here. I don’t know where to begin.

More later.

7

I’ve also digged the best graphic for the signposts. I found one mod that looks really good and fits with the game, but it’s a bit too colorful.

So I loaded the textures and dimmed them manually. Now it really looks nice.

link to the mod

Example here

At least this is done.

8

I’ve found that Wakim’s is a good mod, but you need to disable the NPC spellcasting in my opinion. It seems to let just about anyone, including the random brigands you run into on the road, cast grandmaster-level murder spells.

Also: the tombs expanded mod is terrible. Randomly-generated dungeons with a set number of monsters always placed a rigid distance from each other turns out to be bad. Who knew? (I once got into the second level of one of the family burial tombs, and it had randomly generated no large rooms, just a long, winding corridor. It was pretty funny how the monsters were just all lined up about 20 feet from each other, shambling back and forth in their little patrol routes. It was sorta like a mummy parade.)

Finally, get the cliff racer extinction mod. This will allow you to hunt the cliff racers to extinction, which basically means they’ll stop showing up after you kill a certain amount.

Although not having to fight cliff racers every fourteen steps will likely reduce your gametime by about 40 hours, it’s hard to overemphasize just how much better the game becomes instantly, merely by installing this bitch.

9

Just my opinion but I didn’t like the GIANTS mod at all. The monsters in Morrowind all feel unique (well, except for the rats) and like they belong on the island. The GIANTS mod just throws in every kind of fantasy and non-fantasy monster you can think of and then some. I found it jarring and immersion breaking. Other people might not.

10

Better bodies is ugly? We’ll have to disagree on that one. I much prefer the way that elbows and knees are smoothed out.

Finally, get the cliff racer extinction mod.

I use the passive wild animals mod- it wasn’t till I was a few hours into the game that I remembered how awful those creatures used to be in the vanilla version. So I started to hunt a few passive ones as payback.

Just my opinion but I didn’t like the GIANTS mod at all. The monsters in Morrowind all feel unique (well, except for the rats) and like they belong on the island. The GIANTS mod just throws in every kind of fantasy and non-fantasy monster you can think of and then some. I found it jarring and immersion breaking. Other people might not.

I never really liked the original creatures- aggressive jumping maggots, insectile hounds, dinosaurs and pterodactyls seemed to contrast too much with the otherwise straight fantasy appearance of the characters, weapons and settings. If I’m going to pretend that I’m in armour whacking things with a sword, I’d rather not be set in a Mesozaic era.
Horses for courses, of course.
You know, what I’d really like to see is a mod that introduces Mount and Blade style horses and combat into the game. Sigh.

Lastly, is there an easier way on these new boards to put in quotes, images and links or do I have to rely on my fading memory to put in the commands?

11

I’d like to see Bethesda hire the Mount and Blade team. Sigh, if only…

12

Better bodies is great just because it adds skinned characters, rather than the horrid part based ones. Funny thing though, by default it installs the nude version. I was just clicking through to install it and then I realized after I’d hit apply.

It’s funny, though, when you loot a body and take all their stuff, to see the person lying there with all their parts in full view. I left it for the humor value.

13

The BBCode extension for Firefox still works perfectly.

14

I know this probably goes without saying, but that picture is not especially representative of what characters look like in Morrowind – they look much, much better when clothed.

15

With that in mind, I was disappointed that better bodies only replaces naked ones. I was hoping, when I grabbed it, that it would turn all the characters in to skinned versions. Part based is so gross.

16

Bah- I went to download it and the page said that I’d have to upgrade Firefox to 1.5 to download the file. So I after upgrade to 1.5 and try to install it, I get a message that says it will only work with versions 1.4 or less. Christ.

17

I replayed MW plus both expansions last month, and had the following addons installed. Also I used the hell out of the coc console command as well as player->setfatigue(10000) until I got some nice fatigue regeneration constant effect enchanted items. Constantly teleporting around with the coc command knocks like 60 hours of tedious travel off your playtime, and the fatigue mechanic just plain sucks.

07/24/2002 05:29 PM 6,464 adamantiumarmor.esp
03/16/2004 06:43 PM 70,076 Almalexia_Voicev1.esp
07/24/2002 05:20 PM 29,635 AreaEffectArrows.esp
03/23/2004 11:36 PM 2,693 barilzar_voice.esp
07/24/2002 05:23 PM 30,634 bcsounds.esp
05/17/2004 01:49 AM 19,394 Better Bodies.esp
12/09/2004 12:38 PM 5,240 BetterBooks_AlchFormfix.esp
12/07/2002 09:16 PM 1,455 CliffRacersV1.esp
07/25/2003 02:09 PM 57,864 Dagoth Ur Voice Addon v1.0.esp
07/26/2002 01:48 PM 29,311 EBQ_Artifact.esp
07/24/2002 05:18 PM 131,705 entertainers.esp
12/09/2004 04:11 PM 46,182 K_Potion_Upgrade_1.2.esp
11/26/2004 05:22 PM 20,450 K_Scroll_Upgrade_BMoon.esp
11/27/2004 11:19 PM 123,940 K_Scroll_Upgrade_MW.esp
11/27/2004 11:20 PM 145,752 K_Scroll_Upgrade_MW_Trib_Bmoon.esp
11/27/2004 10:43 PM 6,238 K_Scroll_Upgrade_Trib.esp
07/24/2002 05:27 PM 13,469 LeFemmArmor.esp
07/24/2002 05:25 PM 51,830 master_index.esp
07/31/2004 11:03 PM 2,476 moons_soulgems.esp
06/13/2002 05:21 PM 4,733 RealSignposts.esp
11/01/2004 08:43 PM 1,328 Reflective Gold.esp
09/17/2002 05:08 PM 837,873 Siege at Firemoth.esp
04/11/2003 09:53 PM 64,587 Vivec_Voice_addon TRIBUNAL.esp

18

Come on! The game hasn’t changed since I paid my ten bucks as an early adopter.

Frankly, I really liked the mod that added Siegfried in his stage from Soul Blade with the Soul Blade as dropable loot. It even blinks. He was absurdly tough though.

I don’t know if the Assassins mod included the gore mod that has been mentioned before or not, but I liked the dismemberment featured in that.

19

Is it possible to edit a mod in the construction set and turn off or edit out the creatures you do not want?

20

I’m digging the toolset. You can find all sort of crazy stuff (like the magic axe in the dead tree just behind the lighthouse as you start the game).

Or this.

Btw, is there a way to actually change the ruleset?

For example I know that you can easily increase/decrease the skill up success, but it seems you cannot touch the mechanics (for example speeding up if the skill is very low and slow it down when it is high, which would made so much sense and make the game so much more enjoyable).

Or changing the combat mechanics so that a low skill would deal very low damage instead of just ALWAYS MISS, which is just stupid and unfun (and one of the biggest problem of the game, imho).

Someone knows if there are workarounds for this?