MORROWIND Modern Morrowind Guide

[DassiD]

Hi, I made a mod guide for MW.

Any feedback is welcome!

https://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:Morrowind

[GrantSP]

Welcome to STEP @DassiD, and you come bearing gifts! Nice work.

I love Morrowind but as you say it is showing it's age.

Perhaps add a section in the beginning describing the system requirements needed for this modded setup, not strictly necessary considering most modern systems will run a game that old, but a nice touch nonetheless.

[DassiD]

Thank you! I will add more on performance. How do you add a page to categories?

[Harpalus]

Thank you for the guide.

 

There's one important issue that I never see any guides covering in much detail: conflict resolution. I'm a little obsessive about fixing small errors and conflicts (including thematic conflicts, which aren't always evident from the descriptions). I wouldn't want to mod Skyrim if I didn't have TESVEdit.

 

Am I correct that there's no such tool for Morrowind apart from the Creation Kit? I've tried to mod Morrowind before, but quickly grew frustrated that I was expected to blindly trust in every non-graphical mod I used and pray to the divines that my load order didn't have any problems. Fortunately, your guide is very light on plugins and heavy on graphics, so it's less of a problem here.

Edited April 24, 2016 by Harpalus

[DassiD]

Load order can be a pain indeed. However, in MW the number of scripts or world edits you can apply are limited before the performance dies. That tends to be an issue before major conflicts appear. In most cases there's a patch also. This guide have planned what overwrites what, so there shouldn't be any problems with missing textures/meshes.

[Guest]

Have not been anywhere near through it all, but seriously...

 

I wouldn't recommend Better Weapons. Look at it. It's just smoothed to heck and the texture placement on the blade has been morphed.

 

Just a friendly heads up to double check the mods a bit more is all.   I mean, that other sword pictured doesn't need to be 4500 triangles (up from 300). That shows it has has nothing more than a linear smoothing. I'm sure your guide would benefit from removing these 'performance hog' mods in the end. I don't think Skyrim even has swords that are near 4500 triangles and they look much better.

 

Edit: Nice guide though. I wish some clever person would have done a modern overhaul of the awful combat system in this game. I never got into it because of that one reason. Mind you Oblivion and Skyrim have very average combat systems, so I guess Bethesda aren't very good in that specific area.

Edited April 24, 2016 by Guest

[Darth_mathias]

I Like the guide but i wont play morrowind again until Skywind comes out.

[DassiD]

@SparrowPrince Absolutely agree that better weapons is overkill with polygons. I did test it however, and it didn't lower the fps. I'll have to see if I can find a better mesh replacer. Thank you for the feedback.

I'm dying while waiting for Skywind aswell.

@SparrowPrince Absolutely agree that better weapons is overkill with polygons. I did test it however, and it didn't lower my fps. I'll have to see if I can find a better mesh replacer. Thank you for the feedback.

I'm dying while waiting for Skywind aswell.

[hejohoo]

I am interested in trying out the STEP guide for Morrowind but I have a few questions. (I am following this: https://wiki.step-pro...Guide:Morrowind )

 

1 - Is there some more info to be found on some of the steps on exactly how to install things? For example in 3.D Shader Library section the links that I am supposed to follow and install just directs me to some place with text? What should I do there? For example this: https://pastebin.com/kPCpcsHe

 

2 - One of the first steps is to Install MGE XE. It also states that: "After install, adjust the resolution to what the system is using(for example 1920 x 1080)"

Is it necessary to play in the resolution of my system? I often actually prefer to play Morrowind in a lower resolution because I think it looks less sharp and more smooth and organic in some way.

 

3 - I see that the STEP page seems to be modified quite frequently. It was actaually modified yesterday as of latest "This page was last modified on October 25, 2017, at 12:41."

Does this mean that things are added or removed etc and improved over time? And if so, is there some easy way to check what has changed or improved so I can update my Step installation with time if superior things are added or removed?

 

4 - Say that I have gone through the whole STEP guide and created my fully modded Morrowind. Is there a way to backup everything so I can restore things in case I buy a new computer or reinstall it etc without having to redo everything from scratch?

[theblackman]

 

<snip>

Out of interest, did you consider going with Open Morrowind rather than vanilla?  There are a lot of mods that work off-the-shelf with OpenMW and some that require a only little tweaking to run.

[hejohoo]

Out of interest, did you consider going with Open Morrowind rather than vanilla?  There are a lot of mods that work off-the-shelf with OpenMW and some that require a only little tweaking to run.

I dont think I want to run open morrowind but rather vanilla morrowind but enchanced graphics.

[zpangwin]

Thanks, DassiD for all your work on this guide; I have been using it for few months and I love it. I see that it is still being updated, even just yesterday :-)

 

I do have a few suggestions though. For the mod suggestions, I don't recall seeing any load errors on startup/new game but haven't done a full play-through with these yet; just a quick COC test to a few different cities.

 

1. You may have already seen this post. I know it is pretty recent and probably not much if anything has been decided yet, but may be worth a quick mention in the guide itself if there is potential that its location may change in the coming months.

 

2. It might be worth a quick one sentence on the Guide whether or not MGE XE functions are supported in newer versions of MWSE or not. This is one thing that has caused quite a bit of confusion for me during modding of MW and I think it would go well here, particularly for the new "2.O MWSE Mods Optional" section which is related to the MWSE v2.1 nightlies. My brother mentioned to me on Monday that the nightlies do not support MGE XE methods because "the MGE XE methods are not listed in its method list". Specifically, he was referencing the assimilationlab wiki page of MGE XE Functions and comparing it against the documented MWSE 2.0 functions. I thought I recalled seeing something about a compatibility layer somewhere and did get some matches when scanning against NullCascade's code directly here but might be worth confirming outright just so folks don't assume incorrectly.

 

3. Note sure if this would be out-of-scope for the guide, but I have wondered for awhile why there was no section on tools for cleaning mods (e.g. TESTool / tescmd / etc) or merging 2 ESPs into one. If it is not out-of-scope, either or both of those would make good additions to the utilities section I think.

 

4. Under the Weapons section, 44563 - Ice Blade of the Monarch PBR 2016-Sep by Flash3113 is listed; however, there is a newer version by the same author here: 45062 - Ice Blade of the Monarch V2 2017-Jul, which is currently not even listed as an alternative.

 

5. There's a few other mods by Flash3113 that would also seem to be good fits and lore-friendly:

 

• Weapons - 45519 - Bow of Shadows Replacer 2018-Mar
• Architecure - 45545 - Raven Rock HD 2018-Mar
• Creatures - 45173 - Clannfear Replacer 2017-Sep

 

6. Under the Creatures section, 44314 - Scamp Replacer by PeterBitt is much newer and IMO appears to be a much better looking than the currently recommended Better Scamps mod

 

7. This one is still sort of a WIP for me but I'll call it out and share my notes anyway as you might have better recommendations... Under the Optional gameplay changes section, the mod Official Add-Ons Patched (file under Patch for Purists) by half11 was actually removed a few days ago which he notes in a sticky here. Since it is actually removed and not merely deprecated, the lack of an available download link makes things tricky.

 

Currently I am not sure on the best option here.

• half11 recommends Official Plugins Fixes by michael163377 as the best purist friendly alternative.
• However, I also see Morrowind Official Plugins by WHReaper lists that it is "Based on Official plugins collection(OPC) and Officials plugins fixes 1.1(OPF)."
• And that 43931 - Unofficial Morrowind Official Plugins Patched by PikachunoTM notes that as of v2.1 "All [WHReaper's] patches are overshadowed by [uMOPP]"
• I also found Siege at Firemoth Fix by Kikaz which has some nice lore-friendly fixes but only for SaF

I have tested Official Add-ons Patched by half11 + Siege at Firemoth Fix by Kikaz (overwriting the SaF esp); that worked well in my testing and fixed the issue with the SaF boat being placed in the same location as the chargen boat, during chargen (by making it appear later). I also tried testing 43931 but I have a LOT of issues with that one (FOMOD is broke - added some notes in the Posts section for fixing that, SaF changes don't show up for me, etc) so I am considering that one as unstable for version 2.1. Haven't tested the others at all yet.

Edited August 29, 2018 by zpangwin

[zpangwin]

7. This one is still sort of a WIP for me but I'll call it out and share my notes anyway as you might have better recommendations... Under the Optional gameplay changes section, the mod Official Add-Ons Patched (file under Patch for Purists) by half11 was actually removed a few days ago which he notes in a sticky here. Since it is actually removed and not merely deprecated, the lack of an available download link makes things tricky.

 

Currently I am not sure on the best option here.

• half11 recommends Official Plugins Fixes by michael163377 as the best purist friendly alternative.
• However, I also see Morrowind Official Plugins by WHReaper lists that it is "Based on Official plugins collection(OPC) and Officials plugins fixes 1.1(OPF)."
• And that 43931 - Unofficial Morrowind Official Plugins Patched by PikachunoTM notes that as of v2.1 "All [WHReaper's] patches are overshadowed by [uMOPP]"
• I also found Siege at Firemoth Fix by Kikaz which has some nice lore-friendly fixes but only for SaF

I have tested Official Add-ons Patched by half11 + Siege at Firemoth Fix by Kikaz (overwriting the SaF esp); that worked well in my testing and fixed the issue with the SaF boat being placed in the same location as the chargen boat, during chargen (by making it appear later). I also tried testing 43931 but I have a LOT of issues with that one (FOMOD is broke - added some notes in the Posts section for fixing that, SaF changes don't show up for me, etc) so I am considering that one as unstable for version 2.1. Haven't tested the others at all yet.

 

Ignore what I said earlier about 43931 (UMOPP) not working. The issue turned out to be on my end due to my having previously encountered the firemoth ship overlap bug in the past and assuming it was something Bethesda screwed up in the official mod rather than being a bug related to mods. After retesting, I found that SaF quest correctly appears in Sellus Gravius's dialog after completing chargen and Silm-Dar appears on the docks (in all 3 mods). However, in 43991 (UMOPP), the other NPCs / firemoth boat spawned below water so I will upgrade my consideration of it from "unstable" to "working but still has some bugs". The "Morrowind Official Plugins by WHReaper" and "Official Plugins Fixes v1.1 by michael163377" versions did not have this last issue with the boat.

 

In all 3, I had an issue with the door to the docks being locked from the inside despite the guard opening it from the outside. I used Locked Doors Fix by qqqbbb to resolve the door's lock status not being synched between cells and that worked great with all 3 of these mods.

 

When I used Siege at Firemoth Fix by Kikaz with these mods (and loaded it last), it caused the firemoth boat overlap issue I described above but it did give the argonian clothes. I think I might just look into making a patch to do that on top of one of the other mods so I get stability and he doesn't look so out of place (to me).

 

At this point, I am personally leaning towards either WHReaper's version or else opening UMOPP in the CK and seeing how hard it'd be to fix the boat position.

Edited August 30, 2018 by zpangwin

[Sleazus]

Hi, I just have a workaround if you really want Morrowind Official Plugins by WHReaper

 

Google/search for ocpreadme morrowind

Right click and save as file (html is fine as we'll change it shortly (the file size should be 8.66 MB))

Open it up in a hex editor

search for rar!

select EVERYHING before rar! (even the . (RAR! is the first thing you want in your edited file)

Save as a .rar file (name it anything you like)

 

Voila

[Valk]

There is also a work around to download "Morrowind Official Plugins" at the link provided in the STEP guide. Worked for me 

 

Just saw this on main downloads page:

As many of you have noticed there has been some issues with downloading mods from Great House Fliggerty Downloads. If you have been following our threads on the subject you'd know that Fliggerty has been trying to complete a server migration in the spare time that he has in RL. and until he gets it finished it is likely that mod downloads will continue to be plagued with issues.

If you need a mod from Great House Fliggerty you can always take the url that appears in your browser's address bar after clicking the download button (the url on the page with all of the errors), and plug it into the Wayback machine. Note this may not work for all mods.

Here is the link to the wayback machine: https://archive.org/web/

Thank you all for your continued support, and patience. 
we at Great House Fliggerty appreciate it.