Here are some quick tips for playing The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.
Free House in Balmora
If you are playing a warrior, it is very easy to get a free house in Balmora very early in the game. Join the Fighters Guild and start taking missions from Eydis Fire-Eye. After 5 relatively straightforward quests you will get one named Orc Dura gra-Bol Bounty. Dura gra-Bol lives in a big, multi lever house on the other side of the river. The easiest way to find it is to start at the Stilt Strider and head towards the river and take the first bridge. The house is the last one on your right.
Once you find it you simply need to kill the Orc and collect the bounty. There is no way to pass this quest without killing him so don’t worry about it. Just do your thing, and dispose of the body. The house is now vacant.
Sure the house is not technically yours, but you can squat in it as long as you please (ie. until you get your mansion constructed). You can legally sleep in the bed, and use the chests to store your loot.
The Creeper
The Creeper is a non hostile Scamp which has 5,000 gold, and will buy booze, weapons and armor for their full listed price. You can’t even haggle with him – he always gives you the exact price that is on the label – unless the item is damaged. He is also very easy to find, as opposed to the Talking Mudcrab Merchant. Here is his UESPWiki Entry.
Take the guild teleport to Caledra. Exit the guild house, and head straight till the small intersection. The house in front and to the right of you of you should have a small balcony. That’s the Ghorak Manor. Find the door, go inside. He is on the second floor.
Creepers cash regenerates every 24 hours. So if you have bunch of items to sell, just sleep for a day, and trade with him again.
Here is a video of how to locate him:
The Talking Mudcrab Merchant
This little critter is another easter egg just like the Creeper. He looks like an ordinary Mudcrab, but he will talk to you, and he has 10,000 gold. He also buys items at their full price and doesn’t haggle. You can read more about him in the UESPWiki Entry for Mudcrab Merchant.
Finding him however is notoriously difficult. The best guide I found is probably here. The way I find him is this:
- Start in Suran
- Head South/South East until you reach Mzahnch – some Dwemer ruins located on an island (see the linked map)
- Mudcrab is on the smaller island East of Mzahnch. You can see it’s location here.
Here is a video showing you how to find it starting in Balmora:
You can kite him to a more accessible location using Command Creature and Water Walking spells.
Using the Boots of Blinding Speed
At some point in the game you might meet Pemenie. She will ask you to escort her to Gnaar Mok and will give you Boots of Blinding Speed. These boots will literally blind you when you put them on but greatly increase your speed at the same time.
There is a way to counteract the blindness though. There are actually quite a few ways, but I will mention the simplest ones. The idea is to raise your resistance to Magicka to a high enough level. This will dispel the blindness and let you use the boots freely.
Method 1: Using a Spell
Probably the easiest way to use the boots comfortably is to make a 100% Resist Magicka spell that lasts 1-2 seconds and cast it just before you put the boots on. The Blindness effect is applied only when you put them on, which means the effect will last until you take them off.
You can buy Resist Magicka spell from Sharn gra-Muzgob in the Balmora Mages Guild. Then go to Estirdalin and pay her to make the appropriate spell for you. If you keep the duration short, it should not be very expensive.
Method 2: Using Items
Another obvious method is to find or enchant few items with the same spell. Or, you could find magical items that give you
high constant effect Magica resistance. There are few such items in the game. For example there is an excellent Light Armor called Cuirass of the Savior’s Hide located in a closet on the same level as Divayth Fyr in the tower of Tel Fyr which will give you a 60% resistance. It is easy to find, but you will need some sort of levitation spell and/or potion to get there.
If you also find the Ring of Phynaster and obtain Wraithguard from Vivec as part of the main quest you will be up to 90% resistance using only 3 items.
Never Take Falling Damage
Enchant one of your items with Constant Effect Slowfall of 0 or 1. You will fall at normal speed, but you will never take falling damage taking risk out of levitation, or powerful Jump based spells. The enchantment takes very few points and may fit on low enchant value piece of clothing such as pants or a shirt.
Console Based Teleportation
If you have been wandering around for ages to find some stinking cave, or tomb that is not on the map, you will appreciate this. Note that this trick uses the developer console which makes it a “cheat” of sorts. Purists, stay away.
I will use Shallit as an example here because I remember spending countless hours looking for that stupid cave. At some point this stops being fun, and starts being frustrating. Shallit’s entrance is purposefully hidden, at the water level so it’s almost impossible to find unless you accidentally fall off a cliff and land right in front of it. Fortunately some helpful walkthroughs list these locations via coordinates. For example Shallit is at (68000, 157900, 230). How do you transport yourself to that location?
Hit ~ (tilde) to open the console, and then type:
player->Position 68000, 157900, 230, North
This will send you directly to the door facing North. How do you find these coordinates? You use another command called GetPos:
player->GetPos X
player->GetPos Y
player->GetPos Z
player->GetAngle Z
These commands will give you the 4 coordinates you need for the Position command. Just write them down and use them when needed.
Here is some more information about the Position command.
Take me to the Mudcrab
Selling expensive items to Mudcrab merchant is a great way to make a quick buck. Unfortunately getting to the crab is quite a trip. If you want to visit Mr. Mudcrab immediately you can use the following console script:
player->Position 75284.47,-77137.13,157.14,-170
This will transport you to the Mudcrab island facing the little guy.
Also check out these posts:
Free beginner loot.
Go into the Redoran compound in Vivec and enter the large mansion. At the top of the stairs is a room. In the room is a Dunmer woman. Wait for her to leave, close the door and grab the key from the dresser. Exit the mansion and cross the street to the Redoran treasury, go all the way downstairs to the last vault. Open the vault door using the key, wait till the guard leaves, close the door, and loot to your heart’s content. Ideally get a spell to open lev 100 locks for the chests, but you only need 50.
Bonzohazard – I’m on xbox live.
Nice! I actually didn’t know about that one. Thanks for the tip. :)
Hey Lukasz,
This is Marinos (from Cyprus)
You guys still playing Morrowind? i finished already Oblivion *with all main quests completed and most subquests done 70%*
Now i just started Gothic 3, (which is similar in graphics quality as oblivion) but not much time recently to finish it off.
Hey, how is it going? I haven’t talked to you in ages!
Yeah. You know, some people claim that Morrowing is better, deeper and more involved than Oblivion in many aspects. I cant say for sure because I haven’t played Oblivion. It just won’t run on my computer. ;P It’s on my list of games to buy when I get a new gaming rig – and so is Gothic.
Morrowind is pretty awesome, especially if you mod it to get rid of the ugly shit. If you apply all the mods I listed on the linked post, you will get a very pretty RPG with elves that are actually attractive instead of scarry, Redguards that actually look like actual black people, and lot’s of new faces for all the other races, plus new textures for almost everything.
Oh, and I recently lost all my saved Morrowing games in an unexpected HD death, combined with some very nicely corrupted backups. So yeah – I haven’t finished it yet, and now it seems like I’m going to have to start over. Sigh…
You are right on how good Morrowind was and is. Oblivion can be heavily modded as well, there are thousands of mods out there and around 100 of them are really top notch, One of the most famous ones is the one that changes the difficulty and levelling Rules of the game to make it more traditional rather than the silly Default settings. So in other words Oblivion cannot be Reviewed today with the same score as it had at the day of its launch. By the time you start playing Oblivion its gonna be even better!
i dont believe that you lost the saves for Morrowind, i think i still keep mine somewhere in one of my Pcs! i hope you didnt lost many hours of gameplay!!
Ah you can try playing Gothic 2 and Gothic 1 as well, very interesting games and have graphics card requirements that are between Morrowind and Oblivion *GOthic 2 runs perfectly with all settings to high using a an old ATI 9700 PRO* i finished GOthic 2 only didnt try gothic 1 but its similar in graphics.
My character was actually pretty kick ass. I think I finished all the quests for the Legion, the Fighters Guild and was in the process of getting a mansion built. :(
I will have to check the hardware requirements on Gothic games. Perhaps they will run on my machine.
okay guys, were the heck do i get a mansion? I have only gotten to level 12 and i don’t know much but i always read about building a mansion and i have no idea were how or what i do. im sure if i had help it will get built.
omg i love my guy!!!! he has like 50 acrobatics, 50 shortblade and marksman and destruction. i just need to get like axe or something really high then ill be unbeatable.
Go and do some quests for one of the great houses. For example House Hulalu manor is located in Balamora – it’s close to the Alchemist shop. It’s a huge building so you can easily find it. There are other ones out there – just look for them. Go inside, and talk to people. If you do some missions for them, and get appropriate rank, they will give you the “land deed” quest. Just keep doing quests for them and eventually you will get the mansion.
Each house has a mansion building quest, but you can only build one mansion (unfortunately).
Hey Luke whats up, i just finished GOTHIC 3, it took me ages to finish it. For the following year i plan not to play any games (Although i doubt if i can succesfully do this :) Instead i will concentrate to make better my new Site that is dealing with Synthesizers. My mission (not a game mission!) is to post Reviews, News from the synthesizer world, and Hint’s and Tips for various synths. There are lots of things pending so far. Like the Forum, Download Section, and a way to Alphabetize the reviews. If you wanna contribute to the reviews section just le me know (or if anybody from your readers are musically inclined), ill post their review and they get the credit for it.
You can check it out at http://www.synthworld.org and let me know what you think about it.
Peace
okay i have grown to like house cousin in the hlaal or whatever its called and still no land deed quests. i will continue to work on it but are you positive about this house having a manson for me?
@seklumsedath – yeah, you just need to join the house, and do some quests to get your rank up. Check this site for very detailed walkthrough.
Actually, there is a bug in the game that could potentially let you build two strongholds. Check that site I linked for more details. :)
@Marinos – site looks nice. It’s Joomla based, no?
Btw, no one says you can’t do both: play games and maintain the site. ;) Unfortunately I know next to nothing about synthesizers.
Yes indeed its Joomla Based (of course it could have been MAMBO based as well)
Not much time since i work too much lately (over 10 hours per day) so i have to choose between playing a bit of games or update a bit the website. if i try to do both then in the end ill do only a liiiiiitle bit of each and in the end is gonna take forever to finish a game post quality content on the site! :)
Morrowind? If you want hardcore, try and beat the snot out of Vivec and Amalexia without any cheats. You better have some mighty levels! The expansions were cool btw.
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I liked these hints and tips. At first I thought that ‘booooriiing, can’t we get to the REAL part’ and then the Creeper thing came and i was just like ‘wtf?’ Very nice, very nice.