There’s been a growing demand for mods that enhance the difficulty of the game. Playing a low-powered, cash-poor game is a welcome change of pace from the standard vanilla Morrowind, where the words “PC” and “god” very quickly become synonymous.

I thought that I’d share my own personal set up, and describe how it affects the way the game is played. This is not an attempt to compile a comprehensive list of mods that follow this theme. This is an attempt to provide a specific and elaborated example of how to create such a gaming environment. I am hoping that, through the window of my own experience, other people can see why I enjoy this style of play so much.

I break the necessary modifications into three categories. Game play mods alter the base rules of the game to create a more fair and consistent set of game mechanics. Difficulty mods increase the danger level of the game by either powering up the monsters or powering down the player. Economic mods create a more balanced economy by either decreasing the amount of money available (supply-oriented), or by increasing the cost of goods and services (demand-oriented).

Note that my own personal mods are somewhat over-represented in this list. This is because my own mods are written specifically to suit my tastes. By no means do I mean to imply that my mods are superior to other, similar mods. Additionally, the absence of any mods from this list should be not be taken to imply that those mods are not as good as the ones that I do list. Remember, I’m trying to describe a specific game setup, not create a comprehensive list of suitable mods.

Game play
Madd Leveler- by Madd_Mugsy: Drastically alters the way that character advancement works… for the better.
Galsiah’s Character Development- by Galsiah: Also alters character development.

ML is a more “conservative” mod, in that it still retains many of the old aspects of advancement (in particular, it still uses the level-up screen and calculates HP based on level). GCD is a more “invasive” mod, in that it changes almost everything. You should definitely use one of these (both obviously not both).

For this game, I used Madd Leveler, but I will probably try out GCD next time that I play.

Madd Health –by Madd_Mugsy Removes the annoying level-dependence from your hit points. Health is now entirely determined by your Endurance.
State-based Hit Points- by HotFusion Uses the old Bethesda formula for hit-points, but converts the formula from a path function to a state function. Hitpoints are based on what your Strength and Endurance are now, not what they were several levels ago.

I strongly recommend using at least one health-formula mod. State-based is a more conservative approach, Madd Health is more radical. You can’t use Madd Health unless you are also running Madd Leveler. If you are using GCD, you don’t need either of these (and shouldn’t use them).

I used State-based Hit Points for my game.

Wakim’s Game Improvements The classic GMST tweaker. I don’t usually recommend GMST mods, as it’s best to tweak your game based on your own personal tastes, but Wakim put an enormous amount of research and thought into this mod. Every change made was done for a reason. Get the modular version so that you only have to use the changes that you agree with. For maximum difficulty, don’t use the AI component. This causes the AI to flee when injured. While perhaps more realistic, this makes fight easier (the CPU isn’t smart enough to actually get away or heal itself, so the flee mechanic basically means that you kill your opponents by stabbing them in the back as they run).

Horatio Casting –by Horatio Decreases the magicka cost of spells based on your skill level, just like in Daggerfall. Makes magic useful again. One of the few player-pumping mods that I recommend.

Spell cast reduction –by Aragorn A revised version of Horatio’s Casting mod. Makes the cost reduction effect less powerful, resulting in a more challenging endgame.

Clearly, you shouldn’t use both of these mods… but you should use one of them.

Difficulty: Monster Pumping
Morrowind Advanced –by WormGod, revised by Stromgarde The original monster pumper. Adds lots of new monsters, and manually increases the power of almost every NPC in the game. Not for the faint of heart.

Giants Ultimate –by Pumaman Adds lots of new monsters to Vvardenfell. Ensures a constantly increasing level of challenge throughout the whole game. Also introduces nocturnal monsters… a simple idea that has a profound impact on how the game is played.

[Wilderness Mod –by Pumaman Adds tons of new animals to the game, many of which are fairly powerful. Great of the ambience alone.

All three of these mods can by used together. Giants and Wilderness will probably have to be altered somewhat to fit your own personal tastes. Some people hate certain monsters, or think that others are too strong/weak. Many of the new monsters will be too powerful if you make all of the changes that I suggest. In particular, you should tweak down the damage and combat skills of the following creatures:

Bats
Pack Nix-hounds
Snakes (all kinds)
Zombies

Look at the original Bethesda monsters to gauge how powerful a monster should be of a given level and tweak accordingly. You can vastly decrease the performance hit by deleting the “cosmetic” creatures (e. g. the tropical fish, sea nymphs, etc), although you should experience them at least once.

I used Wilderness and Giants in this game.

Taddeus’ Balanced Weapons –by Taddeus Among other things, this mod increases the power of the lower end weapons. Since the majority of the hostile NPCs use the weaker weapons, this has the effect of increasing their offensive potential.

Taddeus’ Balanced Armor –by Taddeus Same deal as above, but with armor instead of weapons.

Spell Target Speed Mod –by Fredrik Edberg Increases the speed of spell projectiles so that they are somewhat faster than arrows. The player is smart enough to dodge ranged spell attacks. The computer is not. Faster spell attacks favor the enemy.

Difficulty: Player De-buffing

Alchemy Balance –by Beancounter A well-researched GMST mod that makes player-made potion more on par with store-bought potions. Makes alchemy a lot less uber.

Taddeus’ Balanced Armor/Weapons –by Taddeus These mods also decrease the power of the high-end weapons, flattening out the power curve. Daedric weapons, instead of being about 5 times as good as iron, are now about 150% as good. You still gain an advantage by upgrading your gear, but the game no longer becomes a cakewalk after finding your first good weapon. Since most NPCs lack good equipment, this change effectively penalizes the player.

Economy: Supply-Oriented

EcoAdjusterBeta: Ingredients –by HotFusion Alters the price of the alchemy ingredients via a mathematical formula. Makes plant harvesting less profitable. It also makes hunting a viable means of income.

EcoAdjusterBeta: Monster Drops –by HotFusion Decreases the frequency with which Dremora and Golden Saints drop high-end gear. Includes special scripts to ensure that these same monsters don’t set stuck using crappy weapons.

EcoAdjusterBeta: Misc –by HotFusion Plugs several free money holes in the game.

Taddeus’ Balanced Armor/Weapons –by Taddeus Decreases the price of the high-end weapons and armor, bringing them within reason.

Taddeus’ Balanced Armor/Weapons Remix –by HotFusion Taddeus’s mods make game play much more balanced, but they also increase the price of the most common weapons by about a factor of ten. Taddeus wanted to control the economy from the demand side (i.e. make it harder for the player to purchase equipment), and he succeeds. However, I found that I was getting far more money due to the price increase than I was losing. When a cache of iron weapons is worth several thousand septims, you can quickly out strip MW’s fragile economy.
This remix alters the price of items of steel quality and below back down to their original price. This is NOT a “patch” or a “fix!” There is nothing wrong with Taddeus’s mods. They work exactly as designed. They are great. I just have a different game philosophy than him, and remixed his mods to suit my tastes.
This mod has not been released to the public, and I am unsure if I will release it.

Herbalism –by Balur, revised by Shanjaq and Andoreth Requires you to develop a special “herbalism” skill before you can harvest plants. Decreases the amount of free goods in the game. Also makes plant collecting far more convenient. Don’t play without it.

Economy: Demand-Oriented

EcoAdjusterBeta2: Merchant Skills –by HotFusion Alters the Speechcraft and Mercantile skills of every merchant in the game. This is done in a “clean,” non-intrusive manner. This also has the effect of fixing the infamous “Mercantile bug” (wherein a higher mercantile means that you actually sell at a lower price when your mercantile skill gets high). See this thread for my original research notes.
This mod is not yet released to the public. The old version has several bugs that this one fixes. Expect to see this one available for public consumption soon.

Sim-Manor –by HotFusion Still in development, but in playable form and on my hard drive. Build your own estate, one room at a time. Hire workers, upgrade facilities, and pay maintenance. Puts a continuous financial burden on the player and makes time a resource that you can no longer afford to waster.
This mod is not yet released, but is coming soon.

Miscellaneous
Crank the difficulty slider all the way up to 100%. You’ll be glad you did.

I play with a pseudo-ironman rules set. I am only allowed to save after sleeping, and only when in town. I may make quicksaves to protect against crashes, but I must never use them to recover from death. If I do die, I must immediately subtract one from every stat as a penalty (I wrote a script to do this for me). This drastically changes the way that you play the game. Try it some time… it’s really fun!

Just Over the Horizon

Here are a few other mods that I am working on that are in a similar vein:

EcoAdjusterTreasure: Randomizes the locations of all Ebony, Glass, Daedric, and artifact gear so that not even I know where they are. Re-live the experience of actually having to look for treasure!

MagickaBasedSkillProgession: Makes magic skill progression based on the amount of magicka consumed, not the number of spells cast. Rewards you for casting hard spells and eliminates the need for “practice spells.” Uses the Madd Leveler framework. I will probably make a GCD version at some point. I might be able to make a universal version if the next version of MWSE includes functions for the skill progression bars.
Coming soon!

This post has been edited by HotFusion4: Apr 21 2005, 06:03 PM

This is an superb compilation of mods, HotFusion4. A list this well thought-out is going to be very valuable for many, many people.

You should be warned, though: Ronin49 is going to propose that you convert this to HTML so he can put it on his website. Just a heads-up.

Having done two of these list compilations myself I know how much work went into this. An excellent job. Thank you very much.

This post has been edited by Pseron Wyrd: Apr 14 2005, 06:30 PM

Nice list.


Interesting. The same version might well work for Madd leveler and GCD though - at least I can't see why it wouldn't. Using player -> modskill, 1 should trigger both systems correctly (note that GCD doesn't directly change how skill points are gained, just how gains are reacted to). I guess you can stop normal magic skill increases using the game settings, and then use modskill 1 for the increases. If you want clarification on any GCD stuff, just ask.
A very good idea - I'd definitely use this.

This sounds really slick.


You could beat Ronin to the punch and add this list to TheLys Wiki

Then updates are simple and other people can add to the list.

This post has been edited by halo112358: Apr 17 2005, 10:58 PM

Very nice list! I would reccomend Galsiahs Char development for sure, it makes it so ALL your skills are usefull, not only the major and minor.

This post has been edited by Eragon9992004: Apr 14 2005, 08:21 PM

Excellent list. Already using most of them. Do you think you could point me in the direction of Aragorn's Spellcasting Mod? I can't seem to find it and I'm too lazy to tweak the values of my spellcasting mod ( which I will fully admit leads to overpowered characters at high skill levels ).

Cheers

h

http://www.xs4all.nl/~dleijen/morrowind.html

I had another slow day at work, so here's the second installment in this thread:

Combat is extremely lethal under these conditions. Between the new monsters from Giants\Wilderness\MWAdvanced, the stronger basic weapons from _Taddeus’ Balanced Weapons, and the extra kick given to enemies from the 100% difficulty setting, most monsters can kill an unarmored beginning character in 1-3 hits. You will not be able to play the traditional hack-and-slash warrior from day one under such conditions. Such a character is entirely viable, but it is something that you have to grow into.

Until you have a full set of armor (or a reliable means of casting reasonably powerful shield and/or sanctuary spells), you will want to avoid any serious melee combat. Summonings, missile weapons, and ranged spells are all excellent ideas. A spear weapon can work as well, if your character is at least as fast as your opponent. You should only engage in close combat with creatures that are much slower than you, and only if the monster has a relatively weak attack. A character with a good starting health score can probably go mano-a-mano with a mudcrab, but should refrain from fightingama Foragers (too fast), Slaughterfish (too fast AND too strong), Scrib beetles (paralysis)… and pretty much anything else. Even against mudcrabs, you will not be able to win a straight fight. A single hit will leave you badly injured and in danger of immediate death. You need to be able to quickly withdraw from melee range and heal yourself before returning to the fray. This is why you shouldn’t fight foragers… you won’t be able to put enough distance between you and them before they get to make a second attack.

This style takes some getting used to. Some things will not be obvious at first. For example, if you meet a Nix-Hound on the open road, and you do not have a magical means of evasion, you are guaranteed to die. The hound is too fast to run away from, and can completely overpower a first level character (seeing as how a Nix-Hound is supposed to be a level three monster, this is entirely proper). Remember that death doesn’t mean that you simply revert to a nearby quicksave and make a different set of choices. It means that you go back to the last in-town save and suffer a permanent stat loss. Death has consequences, and your play style must reflect this. Take the oft-given advice of various NPCs and always have an Almsivi/Divine Intervention scroll on you (spells like invisibility, levitate, and even jump can work as well). Do not rely on spells! Spells can fail. Even if you are an expert in the necessary school of magic, spells often take too long to cast. If you are suddenly attacked by an Alit from a blind angle, that extra half second will be the difference between life and death.

If you are using Giants (and you really should), night travel will be extremely hazardous. The creatures that come out at night are much stronger and more dangerous than the diurnal animals. If you are traveling the wilderness and the sun falls, you’re going to die. A bat, or a night sprite, or a vampire, or so other out-of-depth creature will find you and bite your head off in one blow. Sometimes it will happen so fast that you won’t even see your attacker (this is especially common with the flying critters). You’ll find yourself constantly checking the location of the sun as you travel, getting more and more nervous as the daylight runs out. Doesn’t that sound fun and exciting?

In this game environment, life and death is dictated by your decisions and level of preparedness. Make good decisions, and you will survive. Make impulsive and brash decisions, and you’ll die.

Money will also be an issue. EcoAdjuster: Merchant Skills (remind me to release this!) gives all merchants a mercantile skill appropriate to their level. This simple change drastically alters the way that commerce works. Successful, high level merchants like Arrille will just demolish most starting PCs, offering pennies on the dollar for your loot and demanding nearly double the market value for their own goods. Unless you are playing a character that has a great mercantile score straight out of the box, you must restrict your trade to lower level merchants like Ra ‘Virr, or the various people in the Vivec Upper Waistworks. Look for crappy merchants! You actually need them!

Expect to have trouble admiring merchants into submission as well. Merchants now have Speechcraft scores based on their level. You know those quests that give you a Disposition bump as their only reward? Those are actually pretty good now! Speechcraft is still useful (if anything, it’s better than ever), but you have to actually be good at it to be useful things with it.

The traditional sources of free money are mostly dried up. Plant ingredient are given more reasonable (i. e. lower) prices under EcoAdjuster: Ingreidients. Worse, because of Herbalsim Advanced, you can’t even collect plant ingredients until you invest several hundred septims in herbalism training. EcoAdjuster: Misc prevents you from simply joining the Fighter’s/Mage’s guild and then plundering their supply chests (you can still use the equipment, but you can’t sell it anymore). Dungeon looting will be beyond your abilities for a while, so don’t even try. Pearl diving is way too dangerous (slaughterfish), and has been toned down, anyway. You can still exploit the ludicrous over-pricing of captive souls selling captured rats, mubcrabs, and other soft targets, but I don’t recommend this (why install a set of mods that makes things hard, and then look for exploits?).

You can still do the easier quests for money. Vivec is an especially good place for a newbie to earn some cash. You will find that most guild quests are beyond you. This is proper. If any first level nobody could handle those cave rats, the lady wouldn’t have had to hire a mercenary, would she?

A new source of income for the new character is hunting. While the loot isn’t incredible, EcoAdjuster: Ingredients gives animal ingredients a price based on the level of the animal that it comes from. Mudcrab meat, kwama cuttle, and rat meat are all good ways for a newbie to make ends meet (providing that you now a small, inexperienced merchant to sell to, of course).

Of course, there’s always brazen theft. Unfortunately, it is all too easy to go into a shop, wander upstairs and clean out the owner’s personal effects at absolutely zero risk. You’d think that the merchant would notice! I really wish that Crime Enhanced was still under active development. Until such a happy day arrives, I recommend not stealing unguarded items from homes. It just isn’t fair.

For this game, I chose to play a Conjuror/Illusionist, something a bit off the beaten path. The idea is to use summoned monsters to block incoming monsters, and then support my impromptu army with missile fire and destruction spells. Spells like Demoralize Creature/Humanoid can be used to quickly and reliably remove troublesome creatures from the battle. Later on, Command spells can be used against large groups to break up attackers. If I am hard pressed, I can fall back on a timely Invisibility spell to facilitate an escape (be warned: Invisibility doesn’t work if a hostile monster is already in melee range with you!). Illusion also provides the oft-overlooked Charm effect, which can act as a partial substitute for persuasion (at least until I train up my Speechcraft).

Since most of my spells are very expensive and are not cast very often, this would usually condemn me to an almost non-existant rate of advancement in my to titular skills. However, Magicka Based Skill Progression saves the day and makes the game fun again!

This character concept, while fun and unusual, would be laughably pointless in a vanilla game. Under these conditions, however, it’s actually a pretty good approach. I choose my skills as following;

Major
Conjuration
Illusion
Destruction
Marksman
Medium Armor

Minor
Spear
Longblade
Block
Mercantile
Speechcraft

I normally hate having non-combat skills like Mercantile and Speechcraft tied to my level, but GCD (and to a lesser extent, Madd Leveler) make this more bearable. I choose medium armor because I want good protection, but high mobility. Medium armor is ludicrously underpowered in the normal game, but plenty of mods add balanced, competitive medium armors. Longblade and Block are included for later in the game, when I intend to branch out and develop a standard warrior type style in addition to the conjuror style. I almost took Restoration, but I am hoping to avoid direct combat enough that I won’t need a very high score.

I choose to be a High Elf under the Apprentice. This is a very fun and interesting combination. It makes you a master of magic, but also makes you extremely vulnerable to the same forces that you wield (especially dangerous because of Spell Target Speed Mod). Characters with pronounced advantages and vulnerabilities tend to be more interesting than more average, rounded designs.

I determine that I will need the following gear to make the concept work:

Full set of medium armor
Crossbow + bolts
Halberd
Almsivi/Divine Intervention Scrolls
Ranged Destruction Spell
Charm Spell
Command Spell (both versions)
Demoralize Spell (both version)
Invisibility (very important!)
Various Summonings (very important!)
In addition, I will need the standard gear:
All four teleport spells
Healing Spell
Alchemy Gear
Herbalist Training (very expensive!)
Various potions (obtainable through guilds)
Levitate
Water Breathing

That’s a heck of a list! It’s going to be even harder, because I plan on taking out a loan right away so that I can start building Sim-Manor. Between all of the gear I need, the difficulty of getting cash on fast notice, and the burden of an interest-bearing debt, I expect to have a difficult and interesting time managing my funds.

I’ll let you know how it goes. Doesn’t this sound fun and interesting? You should try this style at least once.

Thanks HotFusion for this excellent guide.I have or am using most of these on a regular rotation whenever starting a new game.Its good to see so many of these great works all together in one list.

geez you're crazy lol. great list though thanx

Looking forward to EcoAdjuster and Sim Manor sound interesting. Having completed the main, Trib and BM quest at least twice, one of those that wants the game to kick me in the pootie. Keep up the good work.


Here are some more mods to add to your list (from the Difficulty Enhancement list at Empirical Morrowind).

Puma Man’s Advanced Guards v4.0
Upgrades all of the generic guards in Vvardenfell to be the equals of the guards in Mournhold. Using leveled lists, as the player levels up, so do the guards. You will learn to respect the law!

Lancelot’s Hard Patch 2004
Adds a “continuously increasing level of difficulty” system to the game to match the player’s progression through the game, providing for a more challenging game.

Mephisto’s Rogues v1.51
Adds Rogues and Assassins that will attack the player at random places in the game. Balanced by increased guard activity.

TrevorDemented’s Hostile Attackers v1.0
Adds NPCs to the level lists that are scripted to match the level of player and set to fight on sight. Hostiles are rare at early level, but begin to appear with more frequency at levels 8 and higher. Expect a greater challenge.

Blind Eye’s Bribery v1.0
Makes it difficult for the player to bribe the NPCs unless the player has a high Speechcraft skill.

Blind Eye’s Non-profit Alchemy
All player-made potions now have zero value, eliminating this “cash cow” for the player.

Granarinth’s Tribunal Fix v1.0
Makes a trip to Mournhold more challenging for higher level characters. Changes the toughness of some creatures, and placed more of them so they can work in groups.

Endrek’s Weather Effects v1.2
Adds negative effects to the player when traveling in areas with harsh weather conditions. Nothing drastic, but now you'll have an incentive to find a safe place to hide out when a storm hits.

SiNNeR’s Sixth House Advanced v2.1
Makes creatures and NPCs of the Sixth House far more formidable. Fixes and balances the creatures/NPCs of the Sixth House so that Dagoths are no longer weaker than their non-Dagoth counterparts. Makes the final confrontation with Dagoth Ur to be a more difficult battle.

P. Vaira’s Unleveled Creatures v2.0
Makes all creatures appear from the start. This is much more realistic than seeing creatures "magically appear" when you reach a certain level. Now you really do run for your life, or fight to the death.

Tarnsman’s Hungers 1.1
Makes Hungers a more formidable opponent, changing the manner in which they conduct their attack and increasing their attributes. Also changes Hungers so that they are nocturnal creatures, appearing outdoors only at night.

Tarnsman’s No thieving start
Eliminates the “thieving start” at the beginning of the game. Places ownership on all items inside the Census and Excise office as well as all the outside containers in the cities, thereby eliminating an easy source of gold and items for the player.

Hyzmarca’s Traps (+ Thief-Class Realism)
Increases the difficult to disarm traps. Some traps will be impossible to avoid.

VenomByte's Economy fix – Item Lists
Alters most of the leveled item lists in the game. Notably, rare gemstones and high end equipment are now MUCH rarer

Jaxalot’s Artifact Level Requirements v2.0
Balances the game by preventing a low-level player from obtaining a powerful item and using it as a replacement for developing their skills. Instead, the player must level up and become mentally and physically strong enough to use the item, so that it will augment their stats and skills, and not replace them.

Some others from the lists at EM:

Shoujo’s Wound Effects & Penalties v1.0
Makes it so that a player near death will fight less effectively than at full health by applying penalties as the PC's health decrease. Once the player's health hits 30%, he will start to suffer from blood loss, and lose health progressively unless his health level is restored.

Aerelorn’s Less Annoying Guards
Stops the dialogue menu from popping up in the middle of combat with Guards. If your weapon is drawn or a spell is readied, the guards will simply attack. If you want to pay the fine, go to jail, or present writs just sheath your weapon or unready your spell and the guards will initiate dialogue and give you that option. You can do this before or after they attack you.
Note: This can be tough on lower level characters. If you don't notice the guards coming towards you and you have your weapon out, they may kill you with just a few strikes. Be warned, and be aware of your surroundings when committing crimes.

Talonhoff’s Extended Spell Effects
Modifies many of the offensive spells to make them last longer while reducing amount of damage they inflict. Makes fighting with magic more challenging because the effects take a little longer to work.

Fredrik Edberg’s Spell Target Speed Mod
Increases the speed of targeted spells to slightly above that of arrows and bolts, making it much more difficult to evade spells

Sendai45's Blight Infections
Makes you no longer immune to blight storms. If you are out in a blight storm you risk infection from all of the same nasty varieties of the blight that you can receive from diseased creatures.

Snakejawz’s Get Diseases
Makes the player contract a wider variety of the game’s diseases from the diseased and blighted animals, rather than a few as it is in the default game.

Vanhike's Service Requirements v1.41
Membership and ranks in the guilds and factions now mean something as they affect what services you can use.

Taddeus & Nymeria’s Necessities of Morrowind v2.02
Adds to the game the need to eat, drink and sleep for your character. If you don’t take care of life’s necessities, your character will have increasing penalties the longer that his/her basic needs are not met. Obviously, eating and drinking will eliminate the penalties. Adds many features including cooking and building fires. Adds optional features to get drunk by drinking alcoholic beverages.



This post has been edited by _Tarnsman_: Apr 20 2005, 11:14 AM

Excellent compilation. I have my own that I prefer to use, but I can definetly see some things I will change. Thank you for your time on this

Nice list, thanks.

I personally found a totally new gameplay experience by using GCD, which seriously limits the characters development to one class. No more warrior-thief-mages who cast like the Telvanni Archmagister, steal like the Masterthief and fight like the Imperial Dragon Knight - and probably hold all these positions anyways themselves.
I've experimented a little with different GCD characters, and finally settled for my preferred class, the Nightblade. She went Aundae vamp at level 2. With GCD enabled the Aundae boni are a *real* boost, nothing to laugh at like in the vanilla game, as the highly increased skills mean a real boost to your specialized class. To balance the vampire boost, there is Vampiric Hunger, which introduces a totally new vampire unlife experience.
Going vamp so early probably made the game way easier because of casting high-level spells at low level, but the price for the power is high.
Difficulty slider was set to 100% right from the start.

I ended up with a currently level 11 Nightblade Aundae who has a ridiculous health of 52 points and dies as soon as she gets into any melee. She also has a ridiculous high magicka pool of 460 points, but the requirement to cast high-level spells makes that absolutely necessary. Thanks to GCD, her combat strategy is severly limited, and avoiding critters (like a Nightblade should do) is a more interesting approach than killing them. Against high-level mages she has no chance, unless the stupid AI which cannot handle NPC mages properly saves the day.

For economy fixes I use PirateLords Complete Trade Fix, which drastically raises traders skills. Wakims Game Improvements is a must, and improved by the SkillRequirements mod, so you actually know why you should join a guild.

I use the complete Taddeus Balance pack. Weapons, armors, alchemy, settings, objects, enchanting etc. This is a nice all-round pack for the lazy user.

The biggest danger to game balance are other mods. For example, Taddeus Armor tunes down the cost of high-end armor significantly, so you can forget gaining three levels by selling one piece of ebony armor. But now when running Morrowind Comes Alive, you might stumble over the occasional MCA ebony armor which is prized like the vanilla ebony armor, that is around 20.000 septims per piece. It takes a lot of willpower to just leave that thing whereever you found it.
Another problem are mods that add new weapons and armors. If you tune down all the high-end armor using Taddeus pack, then install something like Carnithus Armamentarium to equip your leech with some fitting outfit, all the balance goes down the toilet unless you take the significant time to manually balance the new items yourself. Worth the time, though. Fortunately Taddeus offers a couple of balanced-mod patches, but of course one cannot expect to find all and every mod covered.

Well, sometimes the quest for a balanced game is more entertaining than playing that balanced game itself. :*)

may I suggest using my MCA Taddeus compatibility patch?
http://clan3v.free.fr/tad_mca4.1.zip

I m playing a bit like you do, except that I dont set the difficulty to 100, because I don t feel it s needed with taddeus balance mods, and morrowind advanced.

However, I m looking for a mod which would only allow saving in some places. I ve found one which did that, but it was a bit weird (it deactivated hotkeys, and required items to save, which were consumed during the save process). Would you happen to know one mod which restricts save without those drawbacks?

This post has been edited by StanRex: Apr 20 2005, 12:14 PM

Just so happens that I am working on this right now. Haven't done any extensive testing yet, but hopeful that it doesn't do the deactivate hot key thingy. Uses scripting that doesn't require items to save. Called Alternative Save System this is what it does (sorry HotFusion4 for temporary diverting this thread):



Have to place the sanctuary chambers in the barrows and dwemer ruins (the sanctuary chambers differ in appearance for each of the areas they are found), and then test this puppy out.

Okay, back on topic.

This post has been edited by _Tarnsman_: Apr 20 2005, 12:34 PM

Excellent! Thanks for the tip.


I've actually never tried this. Possible to add to an ongoing game? Don't feel like starting over again after starting over twice already last week (for Wizards Island and then again without WI after seeing the performance drop).


I only know of the one you mention, listed on the Empirical modlist. Never seen another mod which limits saving.
The idea is nice, but - at least on my box - it's the wrong game for it, as I hardly ever manage to run Morrowind longer than 30 minutes without crashing. Even without any mods installed. Would be an interesting feature if Morrowind ran stable for me, but alas...

Time to upgrade your box. Easy to do and cheaper than buying new. Upgraded mine with new processor, video card (only a 5700 Nvidia ) and sound card. What a difference! Still have the occasional crash, but runs like a charm most of the time with a boatload of mods onboard. The big bonus was that the graphics have been turned up a few notches on the WOW factor. Find myself in the game spending alot of time just looking around and taking in the scenery. Highly recommend the investment.

Nah, current hardware is just 8 months old, not yet time for an update. Also spent all my cash on a nice Apple G5 recently.

I suspect it's my soundcard. Game mostly crashes when there are many sounds, like three NPCs giving greetings at the same time. Switching to software mode helps but seriously lags the game. Soundcard manufacturer claims the card is compatible with DirectX 9 (but who knows?), and no problems with other games. No idea. Stopped buying Windows games in favour of Mac games meanwhile.

Well, baaaack on topic: Anyone not yet tried GCD? Try it now!

A quick bump for an awsome idea. If I get some free time this weekend I'm going to try it out. Well...maybe not with the Ironman rules, fear of CTD's keeps me saving pretty often.

Quick bump for the night shift, then I'll leave this be till it's resurrected with some actual content.

Wow. You're really, really hardcore. I play with most of the balancing/difficulty mods you mention and set the difficulty slider to 50. I don't steal or use exploits. But I draw the line at limiting savegames or adding stat penalties for death. Too hardcore for me. Although maybe I should start cutting back on savegames...maybe only in towns or outside dungeons.

Anyway, that was a really entertaining read. You should post continuing updates of your progress and call it "A Masochists Guide to Morrowind".

I'm assuming you play with enchant recharge disabled? If not, you should.

I also have a personal mod that expands on Wakim's NPC spell changes by altering or removing some of the more ridiculous NPC spells and increasing area of effect and spell speed. No more "weakness to blight disease" or "drain personality". Although they'll still occasionally cast totally pointless spells, it's much rarer. They tend to be much more dangerous than fighter types as a result. Maybe I'll clean it up and release it.

I also have a mod that caps all resistances at 99% - so that AIs will not repeatedly cast spells or use powers that you're immune to.

cheers

h

YES!!! After all these hours and hours of searching I finally found it, just when I was ready to give up.

Thank you very much HotFusion, this info is EXACTLY what I have been looking for!

<Bumps all the way to the top>

Excellent discussion and suggestions! As a purist and having initially been disappointed with some aspects of the game, I eventually turned to the CS for something to do. After reading through this thread, though, the playing itch is back. Thanks to all!

In this case you might want to take a look at this discussion also:
http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.p...ST&f=12&t=95818