By request I’m once again posting a list of Morrowind mods which I’m currently using. Before you start installing mods however, a quick caveat emptor. If you install a mod, then play for few days, decide you hate it and remove it, your saved games will probably become broken. Not all mods will break your save, but most will. So be careful and make sure you can live with a given mod before you invest to much time into a new character.
That said, here is the list. First off, the mods which will make all the characters in the game look healthy and anatomically correct rather than as sickly looking polygonal zombies of the original.
- Better Bodies – is a must have. It replaces body meshes and textures and removes the silly permanent underwear thing – so you can go streaking if you want to. The amount of nudity is configurable though, so if you are prudish, you can switch the underwear back on, and have nicely looking body models too.
- Better Heads – fixes the heads, so that they fit nicely with the Better Bodies mod. It also adds some better looking faces to the game. Another must have.
- World of Faces – adds even more face textures to the mix. All of them are playable. I highly recommend it.
- Westly’s Hedpacks – this dude Westly has very nice collections of faces and hair textures and meshes for various specific races. If you are planning to play a Redguard or an Orc I highly recommend grabbing an appropriate headpack.
- The Facepack Compilation – another great collection of faces. Since my current character is a wood elf, I actually applied the Elven Facepack and I was impressed with the sheer amount of different playable faces. Some were awful, but most were actually pretty decent.
- Better Beasts – better bodies, but for the beast races. It also gives you an option of using alternative humanoid meshes for the beasts (ie. normal legs).
Note the effects of headpacks/facepacks and World of Faces/Better Heads may overlap. So if you apply multiple of them, some of the NPC faces and playable faces may get overwritten more than once. Keep that in mind, if you can’t locate that really cool face you saw on the screenshot.
Next up I have couple of re-texturing mods. Actually it’s one big one and two small ones which may or may not be already bundled in the big one.
- Ultimate Textures Complete v2.0 – this is a huge bundle that replaces a lot of textures in the game with higher resolution copies. It really makes weapons and armors look prettier and gives the game a more polished look. I can’t recommend it enough.
- Real Stars and Real Moons – for the life of me, I can’t figure out whether or not these two are bundled with the Ultimate pack above. They might be. But if not, make sure you grab them. They make the night sky look absolutely breathtaking with very colorful stars, galaxies and big detailed multiple moons. Awesome stuff.
Last but not least are the misc mods. These really add some nice touches to the game. Be warned though, some of these may slow down the game, or be a bit unbalancing.
- Sabergirl’s Ecology Mod – very awesome mod which “corrects” the behavior of wild animals. Most of them will now peacefully graze and ignore you or decide to run away. It also adds few minor critters to the game such as deer, rabbits and etc. Best part – Cliffracers are no longer annoying. They now majestically float about the landscape and look cool instead of chasing after you. Some people thing this sort of mod unbalances the game – since it requires much less combat while traveling on foot. But I like it.
- Where are All Birds Going – another very cool, but minor touch. This mod adds small birds to the game. You can usually spot them high in the sky, or just swooping around. I don’t think you can actually harm them in any way (or at least I was unable to because they were to fast for me) but they really look cool.
- Cait’s Critters Unleashed – similarly to the birds mod, it adds domestic livestock to the game. So you will encounter chickens, pigs, goats, cows and other animals of this type wandering around inhabited settlements. The animation for these critters can sometimes be very resource intensive – I noticed small, but noticeable drops in frame rate when looking at bunch of chickens for example.
As a bonus, I’m posting a pic of my current character – a Bosmer Thief:
click on the image for original size
Feel free to add your favorite mods in the comments. Screenshots of your favorite characters are also appreciated. :)
Urm.. Hope it wasn’t me! I’d hate to trouble and impose on you. :P
But thanks for this! :D :D
Heh, actually it was you. :mrgreen: But not problem. It was actually a nice Friday topic and it helps me to document the stuff that I’m using so that I can find them back later when I decide to re-install the game once again.
So thanks for giving me an idea for a post. :)
Hey fella,
thanks for the taking the time to produce the list of the best MODS, that work together.
I have the PC TES3 Morrowind GOTY version, will these MODS work ok with this?
I havent seen a version for Bloodmoon yet.. does there need to be one?
Bloodmoon patched the previous “Morrowind and Tribunial” to the latest version i believe ? v1.6.1820
I tested them with Tribunal + Bloodmoon buy I believe that none of these mods actually require it. :)
I had recently bought the GOTY edition of morrowind PC. Yup, all the mods here are working fine!
All except real moons, because I can’t seem to find it anywhere. I’m also using a mod called “Oblivion Interface”. Nothing much, but it gives the UI panels a lighter background, making it easier for me to read all those text.
This game sure is very much different from Oblivion, which I am used to. I must admit that all those sites which say that Oblivion is “dumbed down”, are all so very true. Morrowind is definitely not for a lazy, spoon-fed RPG-er.
Yehhaaaa. Why didn’t I look your site during week-end?… grr.
Anyway, I’ll complete my list when I am back home, but here are a couple of mine:
– because I don’t like Cait’s mod (too unbalancing), I replaced it with a couple of minor ones (Where are all birds going indeed, plus Water life, which has the hilarious fishing game in it), including peaceful guars and black guars. So, in my game, only normal birds and fish are peaceful, as well as guars. Everything else is a potential predator. The guar mods and the fish mod add also a couple of nice little missions which are funny and don’t break the game.
– Obviously, I do have better bodies and better faces (with the beast men extension).
– I have the Ambiance mod which adds all kinds of music and sounds to the game and all the official Bethesda mods (except the island with the undead which systematically conflicts with other mods and bugs all the time).
– I added a couple of texture mods for katanas and other oriental weapons in the game (which used to be ugly and unrealistically wielded).
– I added the mods which makes the window lights glow at night and people lock their doors during night (excellent to increase the difficulty and forces to train lock picking).
– Levelling Guards makes guards level with you and improves guards in general so that you really always fear the law. Guards are not that much harder to kill, but at least they are not ridiculous and you think twice before killing any.
– No Assassin is making the Dark Brotherhood less broken by making the number of assassination attempts against you lower (so you can’t cash in too much on their armor).
– I have a mod which makes it possible to sneak behind an NPC and kill him in one strike (neck snapping trick). It is really hard to do and trains like a skill, so it does not break the game too much.
– I added Suran Underworld (an absolute must have!!!).
– I added the Twin Lamps (pro/anti-slavery mod).
All these mods sound great! I just wish I enjoyed this style of action/RPG more. I much prefer the party-based-type, with my all-time favorite being Wizardry 8 (I am not a fan of the D&D system, in any of it’s forms, which drops the Baldur’s Gate games down a notch). Too bad W8 didn’t have this kind of community support. :(
@Alphast – oh, post a link to the mod which makes the windows light up at night. That sounds cool!
I usually don’t mess with guards as a rule – when I’m in town, I pretend to be a perfectly law abiding citizen. If I need to kill someone I usually try to taunt them and make them attack me first rather than deal with the bounty on my head and etc..
Oh, and btw – I just noticed a bug in the bird mod the other day. I was walking by the Ghostfence and I saw like 20 birds trying to fly right past through it. It was kinda funny actually.
@Teague – did you ever try Morrowind though? You might like it. ;)
Personally I find it very immersive. The character is just an empty shell, and you can fill it with personality, and essentially write your own story.
Yeah, I played Morrowind for 10-20 hours, and there’s no doubt of the immersiveness. I still own it, and may give it another go sometime.
My biggest issue, I think, is that the combat feels like button-mashing, which is not what I enjoy. It means that, no matter how skilled my character becomes, he’s still dependant on me to move the mouse or push buttons. The computer still generates random numbers as though dice were being rolled, but that is mitigated by modifiers for the character’s skills. Add my klutziness to that, and my character’s combat skills can be seriously and “unrealistically” eroded. ;)
Next would be that it may be TOO big for me. I am compulsive about talking to everyone and checking out everything, which leads to many side quests, which I am then compulsive about completing.
Finally, I feel like playing a single character is more like tabletop RPGs, but I really enjoy the aspect of team management in party/squad-based games like Wizardry 8, Baldur’s Gate, X-Com, Jagged Alliance, etc, and I feel like it’s “unrealistic” to have a single character be able to defeat the kind of menace these games usually contain.
As an addition to my previous post, I want to note that I played both of the 2 previous Elder Scrolls games in their times, with the same issues.
Well, a lot of NPC’s in Morrowind have nothing interesting to say. Or at least not until you take a specific quest, or trigger some event. There are so many side quests that it’s impossible to take them all. But they are all targeted at different types of characters.
So you really want to pick 2-4 factions you want to be associated with, and knock out their missions and advance through their ranks. As a thief I’m currently running missions for the Thieves Guild and the House Hlaalu which is really into shady business. Most of them are really theft, assassination and “persuasion” missions where you need to sweet talk or bribe some official.
As a warrior you probably want to join the Legion, the Fighters Guild and House Redoran as they have dangerous combat oriented missions and etc…
A lot of these are exclusive paths. Once you join one of the great houses, your missions usually revolve around screwing over the other houses. Also the Thieves Guild and Fighters Guild have conflicting missions which may require you to kill important quest givers of the other faction.
So there is really if you want to experience every facet of this game, you ought to play it through 3 or 4 times trying different character classes: combat based, stealth based and magic based at the minimum.
I sort of love this feeling of immense open ended world. I know that even once I’m done with my Thief character, I can start the game once again in a year or two, roll up a Mage and have a totally different experience taking completely different sets of side quess than my previous runs as a Warrior and a Thief.
Oh, and I actually never really even started the main quest. I kinda ignore it for now, and leave it for later, because it is just fun playing a rogue adventurer slowly gaining fame and fortune. ;)
Attention spoiler:
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Actually, to be able to fill in the main quest, you will have to follow a lot more faction paths… The main quest makes you follow various prophecies. When you reach a certain level, you are sent to the Ashland and you get another prophecy. That one says that to become the big messiah bad ass, you need to become the boss of most of the original factions.
Yeah, but not all of them. For example, the Fighters Guild and Thieves Guild paths are contradictory. So are House Redorand and House Hlaalu I believe. So while you might reach the high rank, you will reach it differently. :)
By the way, you asked for links, so here they are (sorry I couldn’t find the assassin fix, but it should be somewhere there: http://gmml.pbwiki.com/).
All the excellent Guar related mods are here:
http://www.buttersky.com/morrowind/guars/plugins/index.html
All absolutely excellent Abot mods (such as Water Life or Tempus Fugit) are here:
http://abot.silgrad.com/guppy/articles.php?lng=en&pg=43
LDones has its night locked buildings here:
http://www.hiredgoons.net/MWFiles/NighttimeDoorLocks_LD1.1a_6-23-03.zi p
Advanced Guards IV and its related mods (GUARDS and GUARDS remover):
http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=141 9
Suran Underworld:
http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=mods.detail&id=177 7
Nevena’s Twin Lamps:
http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=190
DrkAngel’s illuminated windows at night:
http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=113 1
That’s about it.
Thanks! The planetelderscolls links seem to be b0rken though. :(
Is there a mod to make combat turn-based, or at least less dependant on player dexterity? ;)
I was sold on the rpg elements from Arena, and it’s only gotten better. The modability is what is truly unusual and shows quite a bit of savvy on the designers’ parts. They focus on the “meat” of the system, and release the editing tools to let the community flesh it out post-release. This way, all the people who would normally complain about little things like NPC face variety or lighted windows at night can shut the hell up and easily make a mod. :mrgreen:
[quote comment=”9222″]Thanks! The planetelderscolls links seem to be b0rken though. :([/quote]
Well, it works with me. Though you have to pass a very annoying publicity animation to get in… Maybe that’s what screws up.
As for the Guild paths, I have to check again, but I am afraid the seer mentions all Great Houses and the Temple cult (but maybe not all guilds, I don’t remember). And as far as I know, but maybe I am not far enough in the game, there is always a way of getting a mission done without screwing up an allegiance. Like in the Warrior Guild first missions, you have to kill Thief Guild members. But you can do it even if you are in the Thief Guild…
[quote post=”2483″]Is there a mod to make combat turn-based, or at least less dependant on player dexterity?[/quote]
It really isn’t that dependent though. It does require some button mashing but it is totally stats based and you can pause the game at any time using RMB to quench some potions or change weapons/armor.
But yeah, I’m guessing that a mod like this would be pretty difficult to make.
[quote post=”2483″]Well, it works with me. Though you have to pass a very annoying publicity animation to get in… Maybe that’s what screws up.[/quote]
Hmmm… Now they started working. Weird.
[quote post=”2483″]As for the Guild paths, I have to check again, but I am afraid the seer mentions all Great Houses and the Temple cult (but maybe not all guilds, I don’t remember).[/quote]
I think it is a different path though. I actually never really went that far, but my brother once beat the game straight through on sort of a speed run, and from what I remember he didn’t have to actually advance through ranks of each house – there are missions that let you take over the required position in the house without the need to climb your way up the normal way.
But I’m kinda leaving that part of the game for later. :)
Damn, now I have to play it again… My girlfriend is going to hate you for this. ;-)
Thanks man… One question though, will the new mods work well with the TES3 Morrowind GOTY version? Because, that is what I’m using right now… I’d like to try your mods but, I fear that my character or the game version wont support the mods… I’m afraid that the game may crash…
@ Biggamer the mods are always automatically checked against the installed game version. If it is not compatible, it will give you a message when you click in the square to activate the mod.
@Biggamer – I suggest backing up your Data Files directory before applying any patch – just in case. Some of the mods overwrite textures, meshes and other data which may become an issue if you no longer want to use a mod. This way you can then just go back to using the original files.
Morrowind is designed to be moddable, so I don’t suspect there would be major conflicts between different versions. Some mods may require Blodmoon or Tribunal to work, as they use features they added but in most cases they spell out what you need in the README files.
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