Please help me to enjoy Morrowind (tips, tweaks or mods)

Hi all,

I am just after a few suggestions as to which mods I should use, any
tweaks to settings or any other help I can get to get the best out of
Morrowind. I have started new games several times after hearing
people always saying how good it is but inevitably get frustrated and
give up. The first time I tried it was maybe a year ago. I liked the
idea of the game just not the way it worked so I bought Oblivion and
loved it. For me, the biggest problems in Morrowind are as follows:

- Combat. Now I know it's probably just a skill level thing, but its
terrible trying to fight something pitiful like a mudcrab and getting
decimated all the while my sword is apparently going through the enemy
without actually hitting it! Also, waking up in the wilderness and
getting destroyed by an assassin is not fun.

- Slow pace. My favourite thing about these games is just running
around in the wilderness and exploring. However in Morrowind it feels
like I'm crawling around with two broken legs. Maybe I'm just spoiled
by my very athletic Oblivion character.

- Tiny text. There is a ton of text in this game, far more than
Oblivion but at the resolution I play at it is very hard to read. A
mod that increases text size would be great, if at all possible. Or
maybe even a mod that removes unnecessary text, can't think of
specific examples at present but the kind of stuff you see repeated
hundreds of time. Something to help with the eyestrain!

- The inventory interface. I don't know how you do it but I find the
Morrowind interface very clunky and not intuitive. The hot keys are
poorly implemented and half the time I don't know what I'm doing or
even what I'm trying to use. Again this suffers from the resolution
thing. The higher the resolution, the harder it is to see anything.
But I have to use a high resolution because of...

- Ugly, ugly graphics. Probably the biggest turn off for me was the
drab, boring and plain ugly graphics. Scenery was just so unappealing
and the characters looked awful. I was actually surprised that the
game wasn't a lot older going by the dated look of the graphics. Now
I'm no graphics whore, but for some reason I find this game almost
depressing because of the visuals.

Sorry if I come off as a bit of a whiner, but I know there is a great
game in here under all of these issues I have with it and I just want
to get down to enjoying it. Any and all suggestions will be greatly
appreciated.

Cheers,

Adam T. Smith

Adam T. Smith wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I am just after a few suggestions as to which mods I should use, any
> tweaks to settings or any other help I can get to get the best out of
> Morrowind. I have started new games several times after hearing
> people always saying how good it is but inevitably get frustrated and
> give up. The first time I tried it was maybe a year ago. I liked the
> idea of the game just not the way it worked so I bought Oblivion and
> loved it. For me, the biggest problems in Morrowind are as follows:
>
> - Combat. Now I know it's probably just a skill level thing, but its
> terrible trying to fight something pitiful like a mudcrab and getting
> decimated all the while my sword is apparently going through the enemy
> without actually hitting it! Also, waking up in the wilderness and
> getting destroyed by an assassin is not fun.
>

Combat is a problem until you get some experience as a character. The
more you hit things the easier it is to get the next hit. The only
thing to do is to pick your fights when you can. As far as the
assassins the best trick is to go to sleep with your back to a wall or
cliff and only way to come at you. Once you kill the guy loot him for
the very good armor and either sell it or wear it yourself. There will
then be a journal entry for stopping the attacks, if you don't want to
keep killing and looting them.


> - Slow pace. My favourite thing about these games is just running
> around in the wilderness and exploring. However in Morrowind it feels
> like I'm crawling around with two broken legs. Maybe I'm just spoiled
> by my very athletic Oblivion character.
>

Are you running everywhere or just walking? If running, the more you do
the better your running will get. Or you could get the Boots of
Blinding Speed as a quest item. Just be aware they have a disadvantage
to using them.


> - Tiny text. There is a ton of text in this game, far more than
> Oblivion but at the resolution I play at it is very hard to read. A
> mod that increases text size would be great, if at all possible. Or
> maybe even a mod that removes unnecessary text, can't think of
> specific examples at present but the kind of stuff you see repeated
> hundreds of time. Something to help with the eyestrain!
>
> - The inventory interface. I don't know how you do it but I find the
> Morrowind interface very clunky and not intuitive. The hot keys are
> poorly implemented and half the time I don't know what I'm doing or
> even what I'm trying to use. Again this suffers from the resolution
> thing. The higher the resolution, the harder it is to see anything.
> But I have to use a high resolution because of...
>
> - Ugly, ugly graphics. Probably the biggest turn off for me was the
> drab, boring and plain ugly graphics. Scenery was just so unappealing
> and the characters looked awful. I was actually surprised that the
> game wasn't a lot older going by the dated look of the graphics. Now
> I'm no graphics whore, but for some reason I find this game almost
> depressing because of the visuals.
>

What graphics card are you using? Also do you have "shiny" water or
muddy? If the later and your card supports it, which it sounds like,
there is a check box to turn on the shiny affects. While the graphics
are not up to some games such as Dungeon Quest, they are better than
others such as NeverWinter Nights. They are also a great improvement
over the earlier Elder Scrolls games.

> Sorry if I come off as a bit of a whiner, but I know there is a great
> game in here under all of these issues I have with it and I just want
> to get down to enjoying it. Any and all suggestions will be greatly
> appreciated.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Adam T. Smith