Junior Adventurer's Guild: February - The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

[Tweed]

I don't even know where to find weapons. I chose all weapon skills during CC.

visit Arrille's tradehouse, it's one of the first buildings you see after finishing the character creation and exiting Census and Excise Office.

But I have no money

Install sex mods and hump a bull netch for money, you ******.

[stormvermin]

I don't even know where to find weapons. I chose all weapon skills during CC.

visit Arrille's tradehouse, it's one of the first buildings you see after finishing the character creation and exiting Census and Excise Office.

But I have no money

There are a couple of quests in Seyda Neen that'll net you enough money to buy just about whatever you like from Arrille. Only one of them requires fighting.

[Maledict]

visit Arrille's tradehouse, it's one of the first buildings you see after finishing the character creation and exiting Census and Excise Office.

But I have no money

There are a couple of quests in Seyda Neen that'll net you enough money to buy just about whatever you like from Arrille. Only one of them requires fighting.

I admire people until they hate me and they won't interact with me.

[Manny V]

But I have no money

There are a couple of quests in Seyda Neen that'll net you enough money to buy just about whatever you like from Arrille. Only one of them requires fighting.

I admire people until they hate me and they won't interact with me.

yeah don't do that

you can get that ring for Fargoth from the barrel on the way to the census and excise building as you're about to leave, give it to him, then the nord in Arrille's tradehouse gives you a quest to find Fargoths hidden stash and you get to steal back the ring again. this ring will tide you over for healing early game, and you get a decent bit of money to start off with


also stop being empty on stamina, that completely fucks over everything you do

i advise getting an enchanted item with restore stamina, i've been using an amulet with that all the time as i travel

[SpellSword]

Victory!

► Screenshots and Ending Spoilers

► Beyond the ghostfence, the assault on Red Mountain begins...

This is actually a rather steep incline. Not sure if there is a way to get higher without the Levitate spell.

This is actually a steep incline.webp

Right into the burning depths of the mountain!

Right into the burning depths of the mountain.webp

► Haven't seen a cave with walls like these before.

I think this is the first time I've encountered a cave with this sandy quality to it.

Haven't seen a cave with walls like these before.webp

► The tools are in hand, the final battle draws near

The tools are in hand, the final battle draws near.webp

► End of the line!

The man himself!

The man himself.webp

"To you goes the first blow."

To you goes the first blow.webp

Instantly Dagoth Ur goes for a sucker punch.

To you goes the first blow - Instantly sucker punches.webp

Now we get to the heart of the matter.

Now we get to the heart of the matter.webp

This is how you honor the Sixth House, and the tribe unmourned!

This is how you honor the Sixth House, and the tribe unmourned.webp

Just oversized rubble now...

Just oversized rubble now.webp

Now it is time to flee, before the whole place collapses!

Now to flee, before the place explodes or something.webp

Azura stopped by to say hi, and with that the day is won!

Azura stopped by to say hi.webp

► The danger has passed, Dagoth Ur is no more

The Red Mountain's fury has subsided.

The danger has passed, Dagoth Ur is no more.webp

► A Few Random Thoughts

I had a great time revisiting the island of Morrowind.

Exploring without a quest marker pulling you in the right direction was fun. Made listening closely to NPCs worth it.

Combat isn't the greatest. Not horrible though. Just more of a dice roll than an active system.

Endless Cliff Racers! I don't think they'd be that bad if they didn't stay hovering above you for a while before finally coming into melee range.

Far too easy to get the best equipment, wish I'd have been stuck with iron and steel longer.

Enchantment, Alchemy and spell casting all were kind of lackluster and share too much overlap.

Escort missions, as always, are a pain.

Storage crates have a limit!

More than a few bugs left... (I wasn't using community patches, otherwise I think most of them would have been squashed.)

But despite all of the negatives, it's a really solid RPG.

Overall Game Rating For The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind:

(I had more fun with this than Skyrim.)

I'd been dabbling with Skyrim before switching to Morrowind, the combat may be a bit better in Skyrim but I'd say Morrowind does a better job on most of the rest. For example being able to drop quest items was a very welcome change.

The game is a lot more stable than when I originally ran it out of the box, only crashed 3 or 4 times over the course of the entire campaign. I wasn't using OpenMW or any of the community patches so even those few crashes could probably have been avoided.

The combat is a bit clunky, and the skills and spells aren't the most engaging. But overall Morrowind is definitely a game that lives up to its hype.


@Oyster Sauce

---

There are a couple of quests in Seyda Neen that'll net you enough money to buy just about whatever you like from Arrille. Only one of them requires fighting.

I admire people until they hate me and they won't interact with me.

yeah don't do that

you can get that ring for Fargoth from the barrel on the way to the census and excise building as you're about to leave, give it to him, then the nord in Arrille's tradehouse gives you a quest to find Fargoths hidden stash and you get to steal back the ring again. this ring will tide you over for healing early game, and you get a decent bit of money to start off with


also stop being empty on stamina, that completely fucks over everything you do

i advise getting an enchanted item with restore stamina, i've been using an amulet with that all the time as i travel

As @Manny V pointed out, try to keep your stamina high. Especially at the start when you don't have much in your weapon skills. Low stamina drastically increases your chances of missing with your weapon. To the point that with zero stamina you just won't land a blow. Running and jumping can deplete your stamina quickly, so it may be better to walk towards an enemy if see a fight coming.

I think you start with a bit of gold, you may be able to acquire some better weapons and armor in Seyda Neen from a trader there. An iron spear or halberd provides some extra reach that could be helpful while you're starting out. Plus the attribute for spears is endurance, which is always nice to have more of since it will effect how much health you gain every level.

The building you first came into when you got off the ship has a bed in the cellar that you can sleep on to regain your health. Makes a great base of operations to launch those first assaults on nearby dungeons.

Don't be afraid to drop equipment you can't carry on the floor or store it in crates. It won't, usually, despawn. However anything left on a corpse may vanish as that body will despawn over time. So if you can't carry loot you find on a bandit, grab it all off the corpse then toss the heavy items right back down on the ground and come back for it later.

[Tadeusz]

So the badges are here. @Oyster Sauce Can I get mine? viewtopic.php?p=339341-junior-adventure ... nd#p339341
There are some others probably, there's DemoGraph at least: viewtopic.php?p=339487-junior-adventure ... nd#p339487

[TKVNC]

The game looks beautiful but IDK how to play. 1% of the hits I take land. IDK how to heal.




I'm afraid I have to leave the game to professionals.

It's based on dice rolls, which you don't see, and with no dodge animations it's not particularly obvious.

Hit chance is based on a few things:
Weapon Skill
Agility
Luck
Your current fatigue (green bar)

While your opponents dodge chance is based on:
Agility
Luck
Their current fatigue

In order to maximise your hit chance you should choose Combat as primary, with major attributes of Luck and Agility, then pick a major that aligns with your class racial bonus such as Long Blade if you're a Redguard.

I forgot to mention, take the Warrior birth sign, it's not meta by any metric, but a flat 10 points to attack is effectively 10% hit chance.

As for weapons... I've heard folk say one of the Hlaalu guards in Suran has an enchanted ebony blade... they say he's named it 'White Woe'. Apparently he puts it under his bunk, or so they say. Sounds like a tall tale to me though.

[Tweed]

@Oyster Sauce

GIVE

BADGE!!

ME

[J1M]

Morrowind is a walking simulator. That may not have been a genre when Morrowind was made and Morrowind may not stack up very well against a modern Unity solo project as a walking simulator, but in my experience the two are substantially similar.

The interface was high friction and the combat felt like if there was any depth it was in outfitting yourself in town. The nicest thing I could say about Morrowind is that it is huge. If that's your thing, there is a lot of land mass and a high word count.

It seems like the goal was to make an expansive world for the player to get lost in. The problem is that the world is dour and empty. Arcanum did a much better job of implementing that concept and making the world feel like a place that characters inhabit with varied locations that exist for a reason. Technically the continent has different biomes, but they are basically all the same with a different shade of brown or green on the ground. If you thought Dagon Fel might be full of dragons or demons you would be wrong! It's just some more islands with ugly elves. Everyone is an ugly elf. On top of that, the proper nouns suffer from Sawyerism. I would often forget these jumbles of letters going between my journal and the map to find where I was headed.

I also felt like it wasn't well established why anyone would be in Morrowind. It appears to just be a place with ****** weather where mushrooms grow. There wasn't really any economy regarding mining or farming. I suppose one is to infer that picking over the relics there is valuable? There doesn't seem to be much related industry though. The one mine I was in was farming ant eggs and they explicitly tell you they aren't worth much.

The time one spends walking back and forth getting others to believe you are the chosen one was very repetitive. The time one spends walking back and forth getting others to believe you are the chosen one was very repetitive.

Don't really understand why people put so much effort into modding this, but it is clear why it needed it. In fact, I found the Starwind total conversion mod that was selected for AGC to actually be a better overall game than the Morrowind base game.

► Show Spoiler

@Oyster Sauce

For next month, I nominate the JRPG from Texas: Anachronox (2001). Never played it, but I remember seeing my friend play parts of it that looked cool.

[stormvermin]

Don't be afraid to drop equipment you can't carry on the floor or store it in crates. It won't, usually, despawn. However anything left on a corpse may vanish as that body will despawn over time. So if you can't carry loot you find on a bandit, grab it all off the corpse then toss the heavy items right back down on the ground and come back for it later.

Something else to note about about looting, not so much for you but @Maledict primarily is that

• containers have finite storage capacity (it's based on weight)

• corpses have infinite capacity and there's a house in Balmora that has a corpse already there for the using. I'll let him find it

• mark/recall, divine intervention, and almsivi intervention spells are all easy to acquire, the latter two are easy to case even with low mysticism and limited magicka, and come in both scroll and amulet form. I think there's a merchant in Caldera that sells one of the amulets and the spells and scrolls can be acquired from temple spell merchants. Go shopping and find em, they're not expensive.

• putting all of that information together, what I like to do is dump an entire dungeon's worth of loot into a corpse like the loot goblin I am while in the dungeon and teleport out completely over capacity after. I've personally found it's easier to pick through dumped items while in flat floored well lit areas

[Tangerine]

Bloodmoon feels very phoned in.

[DemoGraph]

I am definitely rustled now.

Morrowind is a walking simulator.

Being killed by a rat if your build is brainless, is a sure sign of the walking sim.

The interface was high friction and the combat felt like if there was any depth it was in outfitting yourself in town.

A need for preparation, and dependence on chosen build, is actually a sign of a quality system.
(I agree that Morrowind combat is bad, but your argument is self-defeating.)

It seems like the goal was to make an expansive world for the player to get lost in. The problem is that the world is dour and empty. Arcanum did a much better job of implementing that concept

Arcanum literally has empty space between POI settlements.

If you thought Dagon Fel might be full of dragons or demons you would be wrong!

Because it was not supposed to be Dragon Hell or any other Phyre-derivative.

It's just some more islands with ugly elves. Everyone is an ugly elf.

IIRC, Dunmer are about 50% of all named NPCs. Morrowind is actually the only TES game that tried to represent homogenous medieval-style population (and failed, because Dunmer are only 50% of all NPCs; but it's kinda explained in the plot and the chosen simulationist approach).

I also felt like it wasn't well established why anyone would be in Morrowind. It appears to just be a place with ****** weather where mushrooms grow. There wasn't really any economy regarding mining or farming.

It's actually well established if you bothered to read the goddamn fluff. Vvardenfell was largely abandoned and made into Temple preserve, so there's literally almost no economy left on the island (bar a few exceptions).
When I tried to explain to myself the setting in my young adult years, I've discovered that an explanation of economy for most cities actually exists. And every major city has an egg mine in its vicinity, so even if it doesn't have a fertile land or sea access nearby, you know what the locals are supposed to eat. And silt strider routes have internal logic to them.
I'd actually argue that Morr has one of the best thought out and internally consistent simulationist backgrounds hidden in the game (much better than contemporary F, F2, BG, BG2, IWD and probably some others I forgot).
You've failed to see that background, but it's on you.

[Tangerine]

Morrowind also has ebony and glass mines, which are of strategic interest to the Empire.

[J1M]

Glass is melted sand. Ebony is volcano glass.

Seems like any wizard could easily turn a beach into a glass factory.

[stormvermin]

Morrowind also has ebony and glass mines, which are of strategic interest to the Empire.

This is correct; it was one of the primary reasons the Empire invaded in the first place. On that note, it's odd that there aren't units of elite Imperial troops decked out in ebony gear.

[Tangerine]

Completed

► Show Spoiler

tes3_01.png

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This was the first playthrough I did Bloodmoon and it sucks. Solstheim isn't interesting to traverse since it's much easier to navigate than Vvardenfell, there's no real rhyme or reason to enemy placement and they'd chain aggro across huge distances, the Nord quests don't do a particularly good job of worldbuilding, and the East Empire Trading Company quest line boils down to "bad man sabotage colony for profit... somehow." Tribunal was a much better expansion, even with its sewer sections.

A minor nitpick is I wish journal entries would say where the quest giver was located. I'd find myself completing quests many hours later and not being able to figure out where the quest giver was, whether in the quest log or the topic log.

[DemoGraph]

Glass is melted sand. Ebony is volcano glass.

Seems like any wizard could easily turn a beach into a glass factory.

Ebony is the blood of the earth - literal clotted blood of chtonic gods - that can be easily enchanted and used in thaumaturgical crafting.
IIRC, glass is a form of ebony. That's why it could be used in armor without breaking after a loud fart like common glass does.
IIRC, glass is somewhat available for mining throughout the empire, but ebony comes exclusively from the Red Mountain.

You have either read nothing or are trolling by this point.

[Manny V]

It's really lame how Chameleon/Invisibility bugs out AI in combat. Playing as a Nightblade, so i want to use it to disengage/buff up/heal/reposition etc but it just makes the enemy flee, even after i reveal again. To the point that if I punch their fatigue down while theyre fleeing and they get KO'd, they don't get up. Just flat out lying on the ground letting me smack them to death. It's funny, but kinda lame. I fuckin did it to a Dremora Lord ffs lol

[J1M]

Glass is melted sand. Ebony is volcano glass.

Seems like any wizard could easily turn a beach into a glass factory.

Ebony is the blood of the earth - literal clotted blood of chtonic gods - that can be easily enchanted and used in thaumaturgical crafting.
IIRC, glass is a form of ebony. That's why it could be used in armor without breaking after a loud fart like common glass does.
IIRC, glass is somewhat available for mining throughout the empire, but ebony comes exclusively from the Red Mountain.

You have either read nothing or are trolling by this point.

It can be both.

[Finarfin]

Yagrum! You Son of a *****!

Got a nice set of ebony armor when I killed Bolvyn Venim

[Tweed]

Yagrum! You Son of a *****!

Got a nice set of ebony armor when I killed Bolvyn Venim

You're not supposed to fight him there, you silly boy. How can you ever be the ***** tater now?

[Finarfin]

Wasn't the horchata thing at the same time as becoming the archmaster of house redoran?

[Tinky Winky]

Finished the main quest which is quite short (can be finished in 15 hours I believe, if you know where to go of course). Will be doing the DLCs next, but tbh there isn't much incentive to do most of the side quests since you can be both rich and powerful easily by just following the MQ.

Almost forget this one, but where's my badge? @Oyster Sauce

[TKVNC]

Wasn't the horchata thing at the same time as becoming the archmaster of house redoran?

Yes. If you're Redoran, you have to kill him to become Hortator.

Unless you want to do the fall back option.

[stormvermin]

Got a nice set of ebony armor when I killed Bolvyn Venim

Speaking of ebony armor, despite my efforts to not break the game in half by robbing the a vault early or accepting a Daedric weapon from the Hlaalu ebony mine guy, I flubbed my way into an early set of ebony. There's a battlemage in a Daedric ruin up by Ald Velothi wearing an almost complete set. I think he's part of a Redoran quest or maybe it was a Morag Tong quest, I can't remember. Regardless, I went in there probably around level 10 or 12 and there was a lot of money to be made in the ruin so he had to go. He summons greater bonewalkers and I wasn't ready to deal with those head on so I had to levitate to an inaccessible part and pelt him with frostballs. Combined with the ebony helm from the Urshilaku burial cavern dungeon, that was a full set.

Also did anyone get themselves an extra comfy pillow? My sleep has been very restful.

[Tweed]

Wasn't the horchata thing at the same time as becoming the archmaster of house redoran?

Yes. If you're Redoran, you have to kill him to become Hortator.

Unless you want to do the fall back option.

You have to kill him, but in a duel at the arena.

[Manny V]

Got a nice set of ebony armor when I killed Bolvyn Venim

Speaking of ebony armor, despite my efforts to not break the game in half by robbing the a vault early or accepting a Daedric weapon from the Hlaalu ebony mine guy, I flubbed my way into an early set of ebony. There's a battlemage in a Daedric ruin up by Ald Velothi wearing an almost complete set. I think he's part of a Redoran quest or maybe it was a Morag Tong quest, I can't remember. Regardless, I went in there probably around level 10 or 12 and there was a lot of money to be made in the ruin so he had to go. He summons greater bonewalkers and I wasn't ready to deal with those head on so I had to levitate to an inaccessible part and pelt him with frostballs. Combined with the ebony helm from the Urshilaku burial cavern dungeon, that was a full set.

Also did anyone get themselves an extra comfy pillow? My sleep has been very restful.

lmao same, i just went into that ruin the other day to rescue that Redguard ******'s wife. when i went down into the lower area, the moment i heard the combat music i posted up and tried to figure out where he was. then when i realised neither he nor his summon were able to reach me i just took him down with ranged (which felt cheesy)

now the age old issue of hauling his armour away

[stormvermin]

now the age old issue of hauling his armour away

dr livesey im recaaaaaalling.png

[Finarfin]

► Show Spoiler

By Azura!

Guess getting bullied by the entire population of the US made him flee realities and wind up as some living god for the dunmer

Welcome Moon and Star, welcome.

[Finarfin]

► Show Spoiler

@Oyster Sauce Badge please.

**** it, nominating Oblivion (Original and Remastered)