Is there a complete/modern Morrowind Mod Guide?

[GamerPoets]

While working on current projects I've found myself watching let's Plays of Morrowind. I own the game. I have never played it other than just turning it on maybe an hour ago. 

 

Are there any full length modding guides for it that are mostly up to date?

 

I found this https://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:Morrowind . Is that up to date and recommended as of now? I feel like I'm modding for the first time lol and I don't know where to start.  Looking for suggestions. 

[hishutup]

I've actually been keeping my eye on this page for a couple months now.

Development has stopped for w/e reason. The last edit was on Dec. 18.

After glancing through it I didnt notice anything that would be an issue as it seems simple enough.

 

I like looking at the base game's hardware recommendations, I don't know if I'll be able to run it.

[GamerPoets]

=) 

I'll give it a go. My free time for "fun" is so limited that I didn't want to start off on the wrong foot.

[Genius384]

That guide is pretty good.  There is also a good guide here (https://pastebin.com/7gF2VLaf) but in the end it is really up to personal taste.

 

I personally am waiting for OpenMW to hit 1.0 and hopefully get distant land/statics/shaders and other features from MGE-XE.  Morrowind is a great game, but it has not aged well mechanically or fidelity wise.

[GamerPoets]

when is OpenMW coming out? I'll check the link out later today as well = )

 

 

Edit: Eventually I'll do all kinds of my own takes on a guide but I want to be able to establish a proper mod manager, the community "must have mods" for a proper foundation other important info that simply installing mods and reading descriptions wont tell me. The link looks pretty good. Going over it now. 

[GamerPoets]

Mod Manager or manual? I'm reading all kinds of different takes on it but it appears that manual modding and mlox is the way to go.  Wrye Mash? thoughts?

[Satur9]

I've always modded Morrowind manually, but Wrye Mash does have a small following as a mod manager. Adding the installer functionality to Wrye Mash was one of the last things Wrye did before his retirement level reached critical.

 

Some modders have made Morrowind mods that are NMM compatible, but there are relatively few of those. Mlox is still getting masterlist updates, courtesy of Dragon32. john.moonsugar, who created mlox, tes3cmd and many other indispensable utilities, was active fairly recently working on an update to tes3cmd. Possible new features included merged objects functionality, which is vital for Morrowind modding, but which is difficult to accomplish with large load orders using TES Tool.

[GamerPoets]

I feel like manual modding may be the way to go. Being that I want to create tutorials for this eventually it might be nice to have something manual on the channel. I'll be using WryeBash for Oblivion so I might as well give manual a shot = ) Perhaps it will help some others appreciate managers for newer games when they use them (or not lol). 

 

What is TES3CMD? I've read about it throughout my internet travels today but now I can't find what I read and completely forgot what it was. I found the 4gb patch, mlox (thank god), MCP and MPP. 

[akeley]

Manual modding is a noble endeavour, however  if you find yourself short on time  I recommend Morrowind Overhaul. It seems fairly comprehensive, including the majority of essential mods/tweaks and also gives you total control over the install process.

[Satur9]

Tes3cmd is a utility that cleans plugins, makes leveled lists and does some rudimentary conflict resolution among many other things. It has a wealth of accessory features for modders and mod users, but it's command line only interface has kept it from gaining widespread adoption.

 

https://wiki.theassimilationlab.com/mmw/TES3cmd

 

https://code.google.com/archive/p/mlox/downloads

 

tes3cmd-0.37v-2013.10.06 at the second link is the newest mature version, but if you want to try the newest developer version look at john.moonsugar's Github page:

 

https://github.com/john-moonsugar/tes3cmd

 

A good practical example of what else can be done with tes3cmd is a utility by abot which gets around the buffer limitations of TES Tool's merged objects function, MMOG (Morrowind Merged Objects Generator)

can be found here:

 

https://abitoftaste.altervista.org/morrowind/index.php?option=downloads&task=info&id=53&Itemid=50&-MMOG-Morrowind-Merged-Objects-Generator

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Genius384]

Mod Manager or manual? I'm reading all kinds of different takes on it but it appears that manual modding and mlox is the way to go.  Wrye Mash? thoughts?

Manual is pretty much your only option, and it kind of sucks because you have to be super diligent about what you're overwriting and so on.  Wrye Mash is OK but I have run into major issues with it losing track of installed files, or having to restart it after installing mods so that it picks up the data changes correctly.

[GamerPoets]

Thank you all for the info on this. Sorry about not responding earlier. I tend to jump all over the place. I will have lots to learn as I go = )

[madhartigan]

Would love to see your presentation for modding Morrowind, GP. Your videos are indispensable references when it comes to modding Bethesda products.

 

Thank you for everything you have contributed.

 

Best of luck in this pursuit. I'll be very interested in how this turns out.

[evmiller]

Didn't know STEP had a guide for Morrowind...very interesting. Can anybody comment on how the end product from this guide compares to that of the guide that is out to update MGSO 3.0. https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/43479/?

 

...of which I assumed was currently the defacto STEP-style Morrowind experience.

Edited February 17, 2017 by evmiller

[TechAngel85]

Just to clear this up, it's not a "STEP" guide. It's a guide created by one or two users. Nothing that is officially STEP content.

[bakunomatic]

Late to the party, but I want to chime in with an endorsement for Wrye Mash as a mod manager for non-OpenMW setups. Wrye Mash Standalone is a bit limited compared to later iterations since you can't drag and drop mods to change load order--you have to manually enter the LO number. Minor grievance!

 

I've logged ~130 hours into my current (very heavily modded) Morrowind playthrough, which is based off the guide here on STEP. There are some minor compatibility issues with the guide (mostly armor/better bodies related), but nothing major. It's a pretty light-weight guide and everything works great.

 

I used the STEP forum guide as a base, but integrated mods from these mod lists/guides here:
 

An Alternative to MGSO: This guide bills itself as a comprehensive overhaul guide that does everything MGSO does and better. Lists all the original mods, or better alternatives. I highly recommend it. It also includes a few optional fixes for Vurt's grass overhauls (floating grass, grass on roads). Lots of overlap with the STEP guide, but lots more texture/mesh replacers and

 

GeeTee's Guide: A Steam community guide that uses MGSO as a base. I don't recommend MGSO, but there are some great mods to pick and choose from.

 

Tomorrowind: A hybrid list/guide that includes a lot of the classic Morrowind mods that live on MW Modding History or Fliggerty's.

 

So far the only issues I've had with my build are some minor typos. Everything works smoothly. Other mods I highly recommend: Weapon Rotate, the White Wolf of Lokken, Julan Ashlander Companion. Kateri's and Emma's mods use Westley's heads, so there are neck/body issues when playing with MacKom's heads. Lastly, I recommend using the lean version of Galsiah's Character Development. I've played with the original, and the lean version throws up far fewer errors--almost never. If you don't adjust your LO too much after starting a game, you won't have any problems.

 

The biggest issue is actually MacKom's Races Redone and missing neck textures with full-face helmets. The list of affected helmets is pretty small, but I'm a Blender/NifSkope newbie so it's taking me a while to get around to making a personal patch.

 

I think there would be real value in updating the STEP forum guide or creating a new one based off Neovalen's Skyrim template. There are a lot of poorly-packaged Morrowind mods, and without an xEdit tool it felt like going back to square one.