Ronin49's Mod Lists n'Links
Finding and Using Mods

Updated August 23, 2006 - ongoing

 

 

 
Mythic Mods >> Finding and Using Mods   |   Mod Forum

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
This guide is a collection of mod related lists, sites and links to useful mod information at the Elder Scrolls Morrowind Mod Forum (ES Forum) and elsewhere. It is intended principally for the mod user.

If you are new to Morrowind or new to mods, you should first read and thoroughly understand the information provided in Starting Out With Mods and its supporting links.

If your interest is in making mods, you should start with the pinned threads at the top of the General TES Construction Set Forum that provide essential introductory information and links to modding tutorials and tools. There are also some mod maker's resources toward the end of this list.


SEARCH TOOLS
You will eventually want to find a specific mod or type of mod that is not listed. Here are some basic search tools:
  • Search function- All forums and download sites have a search feature.
    On the ES Forums, at the top right and bottom left of every page: top right works best for me. Search on key words. See Searching for Mods and Mod Information for instant expertise in the art of stalking mods.

  • Advanced Search at the Planet - not as good as the Mod Control Panel that was at Morrowind Summit but it is better than most. sometimes you have to run it twice to get a result.

  • Google – Google’s advanced search options allow you to progressively refine and narrow your search for mods and modders' web sites.

REVIEW SITES
These are sites with quality analysis by experienced reviewers. They can aid you in your selection of plugins.
  • Aldrien's Chalice - with Raptormeat, GhanBuriGhan and company.

  • Gamers' Roam Forums - are now closed and the reviews by Baphomet and the Mod Review Team hosted there are currently unavailable.

  • Morrowind Mod Reviews by Zenogias - at HiredGoons Morrowind Gateway.

INSTALLATION TUTORIALS
Four excellent and straightforward guides that provide step-by-step instructions on how to get the mods you want into your game with a minimum of fuss. Those new to mods or to Morrowind for PC should first see Starting Out With Mods .
MOD LISTS
  • Evil Mod List - by Rogue_Shadow

  • Jara's Plugins n'Links - a user-friendly and comprehensive list of plugins and links.

  • Ranger and Rangeresque Modlist - by Illtempered

  • Theme Mod Lists – looking for a new house or weapons, a different playable race or mods for your mage, monk, vampire, Khajiit, necromancer, thief or tomb raider character? Mods grouped on a theme or subject basis are listed here.

  • Telesphoros' List o'Mods - the legendary and comprehensive list of many popular mods, developed with suggestions from the mod community, selected and play-tested by the author and updated regularly.


DOWNLOADS AND MOD HOSTING
Sites where you can download from a general collection of plugins or find hosting for your own mod. Before you download anything, see this thread about viruses for some sound advice on how to protect yourself - Firewalls, Anti-Virus Programs, Spyware .
  • Elder Scrolls Files - a TES addition in December 2005 to an existing site. Contact ?.

  • Elric Melnibone in Morrowind - expanded to offer general mod hosting, including plugins previously at TESMods and Gamers' Roam. Contact Monica21.

  • Euro-RPG/Euro-Morrowind - has been unavailable since late 2004 and now probably defunct. Mod makers are meanwhile requested to upload plugins that were at Euro to other sites so they are not lost to the community. Contact DragonLegacy. We have managed to recover many of the Euro mods - see Morrowind-Mods.org.

  • Gamers Roam – closed in late-2004 and most of its contents were transferred to TESMod.Net and now ElricM.com.

  • Morrowind-Mods.org – - a new site started Summer 2005. Contact Cryonaut. Also hosting many mods recovered from Euro-Morrowind, thanks to Static_Nation and others: 20020525_1127 - 20030902_0738 and ID1057 - ID3214 and room for more if you have them.

  • Oblivion Source – - another site opened in 2004. Contact ?.

  • Planet Elder Scrolls – previously Morrowind Summit, probably the largest download site with over three thousand mods, related forums etcetera. Contact APY or Bryss Phoenix.

  • TES4: Total Oblivion - closed 30 June 2005.

  • TESMods.Net - closed in late-April 2005.

  • TES Realm – a new site with an expanding mod collection. Contact Aea.

  • TES Source – previously Morrowind Chronicles and Morrowind Source, now renamed The Elder Scrolls Source and hosting some mods that cannot be found elsewhere. Includes forums, tutorials, FTP accounts and a user-friendly Mod Site Creator for mod makers. Contact DarkOne.

  • Unforgotten Realms – ceased operating as a download site June 2005 but continues to host mods via subdomains. Contact Silmarillion.

DOWNLOADS - SELECTED SITES
  • Aldrien's Chalice - The Back Room – Raptormeat's site hosts a number of mods that can be hard to find elsewhere, many of them classics. Includes forums and a reference section.

  • The Elder Scrolls Downloads - Bethesda's official site for games, patches, the official plugins, utilities, wallpapers and movies.

  • Endhome.com - a smaller site hosting some quality mods and utilities.

  • HG Morrowind Gateway - the Hired Goons' site of selected high quality mods.

  • Khalazza Productions - download site for a number of international and French mod makers.

  • Pseron Wyrd's Index - a small personal site, hosting Farrp's and Dark Rebis' mods, now difficult to find elsewhere, as well as a number of clean 'fixes' that resolve conflicts between several very desirable mods.


DOWNLOADS - COMPANIONS
Vorwoda the Black's excellent Unofficial History of Companions is the place to start. Meanwhile, here are a select few sources:
  • Cutthroat Mods - previously home to Blackie's innovative Partner's Mod. Closed mid-2006; mods hosted at TES Nexus and elsewhere.

  • Emma's Quest and Companion Mods - companions with Emma's distinctively rich storylines and notable performance attributes based on the scripting of The Other Felix, also VTA Travel Agency for companion travel. See also, other contributors to this excellent site. Mod support on Emma's Forum

  • Grumpy's Morrowind Mods - R.I.P, Dennis. Grumpy's mods are now hosted on Emma's site and supported on Emma's Forums. Grumpy's warping scripts are the basis for most recent companion mods and he makes, pound-for-pound, the very best fighting companions going. He wrote about how best to make use of their particular fighting characteristics here - Companion Usage by Grumpy, definitely worth a read.

  • Sakaki Manor 1.28 by Neko: an excellent vanilla Morrowind companion mod. Now includes a Companion Share console addition for those who do run Tribunal.

  • RPG Mods by Baratheon79 - a full stable of mercenary and other companion mods. Also offering some general mod hosting.

  • Vorwoda the Black's - Companions Hippolyta and Decius - the classic companion mod for vanilla Morrowind.

DOWNLOADS - LISTS
Websites and Forum lists that provide links to a number of download sites and mod makers’ home pages. Some lists overlap and not all of their links are current: please contact the author of the original list directly about their broken links.
DOWNLOADS - INTERNATIONAL
Major sites in languages other than English. Others listed at International Sites.
MOD COMPATIBILITY
Getting mods to play nicely together is partly a matter of realistic expectations about which mods can do that and some skill in identifying and resolving conflicts. Places to find out about known conflicts:
  • The mod release thread and readme, reviews and conflict reports on the major forums, usually found with a Search on the name of the mod.

  • Telesphoros List o'Mods at Mythic Mods may include some known conflicts in the mod descriptions.

  • Links to Compatible List and More - by Iamhere and previously at the CON2 Forum, was the most comprehensive list of compatible mods, now somewhat dated.

MOD FORUMS
First, see - Morrowind fan sites and forums announced here - the pinned thread at the top of the ES Morrowind General Forum, for an extensive and updated list.
TOOLS FOR MOD USERS
Most desired changes to mods can be made in the Construction Set (CS) that comes bundled with your game. Utility programs generally make it easier or faster to make these changes. Directions for using the more popular utilities to perform most common tasks are found in the Techniques section.

Extracting Compressed Files. WinZip is normally included with Windows OS but will not open all types of compressed files. Other useful decompression utilities include:
  • WinAce Download Site - available for trial use

  • Win RAR Download Site - available for trial use

  • 7-Zip Download Site - better compression ratios than other zip-compatible archivers, free and supports the 7z, ZIP, CAB, RAR, ARJ, GZIP, BZIP2, TAR, CPIO, RPM and DEB formats.

  • ZipGenius at ZipGenius.It or at Download.com - a favourite of some experienced mod users: 'works every time, handles every compression format you need, integrates with a virus scanner, can detect and repair damaged files, free to download, contains no ad-ware or spy ware, more flexible in file handling, skinnable, and easy to use.'

  • PowerArchiver - preferred by others, this utility provides support for most compressed and encoded files and is designed to integrate with Windows Explorer.
Gameplay Utilities. Tools that are intended to directly improve your in-game experience in some way.
  • exe.optimizer 1.7 - by Timeslip. Originally intended to be an FPS increaser this programme turned out to have a large CTD reducing effect for many users.


  • Morrowind FPS Optimizer - by Alexander Stasenko. This programme runs behind Morrowind and improves game performance by dynamically changing render quality to maintain a stable FPS(frames per second) rate.
Mod Editors. A family of utilities used to modify plugins and savegames.
  • TESTool 1.3 - by ghostwheel, also at most major sites. This is a powerful and easy-to-use editor suitable for use by a novice or experienced player. Functions: remove unnecessary data including GMST entries, merge levelled lists for all active plugins [sic], merge changes to TES objects and dialog entries, generate detailed conflict report, manage list of active files - update ESP file header (version and master file sizes) and change loading order and a one-click “JUST FIX IT” button that automatically executes a set of tasks to reduce conflicts.
    Some users have reported errors from using the Merge Dialog function - you may choose to unselect this task.

    The Merge Leveled Lists function was found to append rather than resequence levelled list entries. This has been resolved with aerelorn's Leveled List Resequencer v1.0 for TESTool which should be used in conjunction with TESTool. Basically, run TESTool and then run the Leveled List Resequencer - detailed directions are in the readme file.
    TESTool produces three additional .esp files if you run Merge Dialog, two if you do not. These should appear last in the load order in your Data Files window on startup. This can be manipulated in the CS, with TESTool or with a number of the other utilities listed below.
    See below: Wrye Mash now also includes a levelled list merge and resequencing function.

  • TES Advanced Mod Editor (TESAME) 1.2 - by Scarabus. Also available for download at PES and at UESP, TESAME is another powerful editing tool. Preferred by some users, it is somewhat less friendly to novices. Edit mods, clean unwanted items including GMSTs, merge mods and export and import specific objects as modules or.ESD.

  • The Enchanted Editor - by Farren Hayden. The most powerful of the Morrowind editors, the Enchanted Editor is designed to do things that cannot be done in the CS or are difficult to do there. It is NOT recommended for novice users.
    The Enchanted Editor Manual, also by Farren Hayden, is now available with detailed instructions and examples for completing a wide range of operations using the editor. See the release thread for details - Comprehensive Manual for Enchanted Editor and [RE-REL] Enchanted Editor Manual, In a Single Windows Help File(.CHM)

  • TES Dependency Tool Kit - by Argent. A special-purpose editor that adds/removes parent master dependencies, quickly updates old mods to the current version of Morrowind,converts TESAME modules to plug-in files, reverts ESM files to ESP and converts ESP files to ESM. Requires a Java Runtime Environment, included.

  • Wrye Mash - initially a plugin manager developed to prevent doubling, Wrye Mash includes some editing and repair capabilities. Manage mods and savegames, add and remove mods without doubling and deletion problems, fix most broken reference problems, merge and resequence levelled lists, change load order and a number of other useful functions for managing mods. Requires python and wxPython : links are in the readme.
Load Order. The order in which your plugins load can be critical to their successful operation. Load order is influenced by changing the time stamps on mods and can be manipulated in a mod editor, including the CS and Wrye Mash. Several other utilities also change file dates:
  • ReorderPlugins by Bingo the Clown, also at the Summit and Endhome. Although it requires a Java applet be downloaded to run, this little utility is intuitive and effective and it provides positive control of load order.

  • FileDate Changer v1.1 - by Nir Sofer. Allows file dates to be changed easily, another tool to influence the load order of mods.
Detecting Mod Conflicts. Conflicts between your plugins can be detected using any of the mod editors, including the CS, or with this utility:
  • TES Plugin Conflict Detector (TESPCD) 0.31 - by Ely VanReen Soto. Detects conflicts between plugins and gives you the option to delete or merge them. Excellent directions and source code available. A useful and powerful utility - 'TESPCD is a lot stronger tool than at first appears: it has elements of Enchanted Editor in it as well as elements of TesTool.'
Leveled Lists. Leveled lists are used to allow creatures and items to appear only at certain levels. If more than one mod changes leveled lists, the game engine uses only the changes from the last loaded mod and you will miss changes intended by mods loaded earlier.
  • Morrowind Leveled List Merger 1.14 - by Horatio, was the first utility to combine the levelled list data from all loaded mods into a single plugin. It made some errors in calculating a few probabilities, however. For most users, TESTool 1.3 used in conjunction with the Leveled List Resequencer 1.0 would be a better option.
Mod Managers. These utilities help in installing, registering and uninstalling plugins neatly and efficiently.
  • TES Mod Utility 2.01 (TESMU) - by Macgyver, acts as a registry for your installed mods, allowing you to keep track of which files belong to which mod, and to remove them quickly and easily. Includes source code.

  • Morrowind Plugin Manager 1.2 - by DW. Installs all files found in a Zip or Rar archive to your chosen Morrowind installation path and associates them with the plugin entry in the plugin management display. Uninstalling a plugin removes all files associated with the plugin except files shared with any other plugin and removes empty directories that are no longer needed. Timestamp update and an advanced mode 'Clean Up' are supported. See the readme at the Morrowind Plugin Manager Homepage for more information.

  • TESFILES (Tribunal ∓ Bloodmoon) 1.08 - by MentalElf. A tool for packaging all files in a Morrowind Mod or uninstalling a mod, it automates the tracking of what files belong to a mod.
Various. Utilities and tools that do not neatly fit into other categories.
  • ieSpell - A Spell Checker for Internet Explorer - a free utility that provides quick and reliable internet spell checking. Used on forum dialogue boxes, it can be a boon to effective communication.

  • Morrowind Construction Kit Commands - at UESP. This is a table of all CS commands. The console is an in-game scripting device so this table lists the possible console commands.

  • Morrowind Savegame Editor - by Jorge 'DeliriumT' Ossorio, lets you edit a number of variables stored on Morrowind savegames.

  • TESFaith 0.95 - by Paul Halliday is a command-line utility to copy, move or delete entire cells, including landmass and its associated objects, NPCs, interior doors and script and dialogue references.
Multiple Setup. These utilities make it easier to operate multiple installations or the various savegames by different players on a single installation. They may be of limited use unless you are extremely short of HD space, as pointed out here - Feedback - Multiple Setup Utilities for Mods.
  • Morrowind INI Switcher v0.9b - by Aridale, is a small program made to switch out the Morrowind.ini file as quickly as possible with other copies of it with different settings. Anything thats done through the Morrowind.ini file can be made into a INI Profile and switched as needed with MIS.

  • Morrowind Profiler 1.0 alpha - by Cheek, allows you to select multiple profiles for computers that have more than one user playing. It moves the save files associated with each profile in and out of the saves directory.

  • MWSwitcher 2.0 - by MentalElf, enables the quick switching between Morrowind copies, which allows quickly switching between sets of "Data Files" selections, meshes, textures, etc.

  • Savegame Manager - by Tylius. A savegame manager that will manage the different savegames of multiple users or multiple characters. [The .NET framework 1.1 is required to run this, and is available at Microsoft


TECHNIQUES AND INFORMATION

Morrowind Tweaks. Setup and Gameplay. Tool Use. Some instructions for the various tasks that a mod user will need to perform and the utilities that can do the job. GMSTs . Game Setting records or GMSTs provide information required by Morrowind. GMST contamination and the "evil" GMSTS from Tribunal and Bloodmoon can cause difficulties when creating or editing a mod, or loading one that has not been properly cleaned.
  • Cleaning mods? - includes a list of the "evil" GMSTs.

  • GMST Cleaner - by Argent. A special-purpose editor to clean mods of the 'evil' GMST entries: it will not remove other intentional GMST entries.

  • GMSTs, Unavoidable? Wrong! - Toccatta's clear description of a simple way to avoid and clean GMST contamination.

  • GMST Vaccine - Wrye's explanation of contamination, prevention and solutions. Download available that includes Wrye's GMST Vaccine and ManaUser's GMST Fix, also available at Morrowind Summit.

  • What the Hell is a GMST? - by Argent at Morrowind Tech - what they are and how to avoid and remove them.

Doubling. What causes those extra sets of doors and NPCs and what to do about it. Tips and Fixes. Mod Conflicts. World Map.
CREDITS, PERMISSIONS AND CONTACTS
My thanks to the many hundreds of talented and generous folk who have produced all the excellent work that is merely sign posted here. To Bethesda, for the greatest game ever. To all those who have answered my PMs looking for a dead thread or an explanation of how-something-works and especially Grumpy - R.I.P. Dennis, Emma and Vorwoda The Black. And to Iudas, DoomedMarauder, Telesphoros, OldeCow69 and DinkumThinkum for many and various kindnesses of technical review, material additions, proof reading or support. Any shortfalls in the material presented are mine, not theirs.

This page itself may be reproduced, copied, linked etcetera in whole or in part, preferably a current version, without further request or permission. This permission does not apply equally to the linked pages, reproduction of which should be discussed with the original authors, though, for the life of me I cannot see why anyone would object to the distribution of useful mod information.

Feedback is welcome. Contact Ronin49 on the ES Forums


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