Help with Morrowind!

Cafe Society
1

More particularly, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind® Game of the Year Edition for the X-Box.
I am an RPG novice. Having played through KOTR I, I thought I had some idea of what platform RPGs were all about. I was wrong. I feel like I have no background in this type of game and I need some help getting centered. First of all, I am completely aware that I’m about three years behind the curve here, but that’s what happens when you only shop the used racks at Game Stop.

Second, my character is a Nord Spellsword. I had no intelligent input on this, as I just picked things randomly. At this point, I’m at level 2, and my primary weapon ability, longsword, is at I think 49. This is the only skill I’ve been able to consistently improve, as the concept of using a longsword to hunt rats, squibs and mudcrabs is pretty simple.

Now my questions: first, given my skill rating at longsword, why am I completely inept at hitting anything with my sword? My combat experience involves equipping my sword and shield, approaching the enemy, and then madly mashing the right trigger button to wildly swing my sword, making contact about 1/5 attempts. If I’m this pathetic at 49, what’s the max rating you can get? 1,000? Also, how high can you level a character overall?

Second, at my level, is it expected that I should be able to enter one of the caverns, crypts, whatever and survive? So far, the only thing I can consistently defeat is the random creatures running about topside. The aforementioned rats, squibs and mudcrabs are my favorite targets, but I also dabble in slaughterfish and those pterodactyl-like birds. Anything bi-pedal is right out. I conquered one crypt, but that was only because I had agreed to escort some merchant to the next town over, and she turned out to be a better fighter than me. I let her do all the heavy combat work while I just danced around the edges occasionally flailing around with my sword. By the way, I need to find her again and introduce her to the business end of my flail sword. My payment for “escorting” her was a pair of Boots of Blinding Speed. They give you great speed, but at the cost of being 100% blind. Ha ha, very funny. I now have heard that there is a bounty on her head, which I intend to collect once I can get this combat thing straightened out. She’d easily hand me my ass on a platter at this point.

I’ve got a bunch more, but I’ll leave it at that. It’s a very cool game, much cooler once I figured out the basics. For example, the first few hours I played, I had been using an axe on the theory that any Nord character should automatically be good with an axe. It wasn’t until I finally studied the stats page that I realized I should be using a longsword (major ability) rather than the axe (minor ability). My domination of mudcrabs went up significantly at that point.

One final thing, if one more non-player character backs me into a corner in such a way that I can’t get out and have to re-boot, this game is headed right back to the used rack at the neighborhood merchant.

2

Go to www.gamebanshee.com, and check out their Morrowind section, they have a forum in that section devoted to Morrowind. A few hours spent on this page should answer all your Morrowind questions.

3

An excellent resource would be GameFAQ’s section on Morrowind:
http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/xbox/game/480241.html

In particular, the beginner’s guide:
http://db.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/file/morrowind_beginner.txt

And character creation guides:
http://db.gamefaqs.com/console/xbox/file/morrowind_character_creation_a.txt
http://db.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/file/morrowind_character_creation.txt

Sorry, I wish I could give you more but it’s been so many years since I played that I don’t remember anything.

4

Hold on to those boots of blinding speed! Once you get enough gold, you’ll be able to get someone to make a resist magicka 100% spell for you. If you cast it on yourself, then equip the boots when the spell is in effect you’ll get the speed without being blinded.

Make sure you’re always thrusting with your longsword, rather than chopping or slashing.

Your character configuration may be a little crappy, but there’s no harm in just getting to know the game with him and making a new one when you get serious about beating it.

If you’re a spellsword, augment your fighting with some spells, rather than relying on only on your sword.

Never rest with full magicka, if you need to rest to recover stamina and health, practice as many spells as you can first.

5

First off, my assumption here is that the XBox version plays just like the PC version, which is what I know. If they’re radically different, this could make no sense at all.

How well-equipped are you? You’ve figured out that you need to swing a weapon that you have a major skill in; are you also wearing armor you’re skilled in? If not, you’ll need to upgrade your armor, which will take money.

Some tips on getting money:

  1. In the first building of the game, you pass through a common room with silver uns and plates and stuff. Steal anything that isn’t nailed down.

  2. If you’re killing slaughterfish, once you’ve killed all the slaughterfish in an area, swim down to the bottom and look for big seashells. They sometimes have pearls in them.

  3. Moon sugar isn’t bought by most merchants, because it’s a drug. However, Khajiit like the stuff, so you can sell it to the alchemist in the mage’s guild in Balmora. Also, join the mage’s guild. Cheap transport is good. Join the temple, too. Cheap healing is good.

  4. If the map is the same, if you go from Seyda Neen to Balmora by running along the west coast, you’ll pass by a shipwreck that has both diamonds and moon sugar in it. Sell those to the above-mentioned Khajit.

On combat: It matters how you move when you attack. If you move forward, you thrust. If you move sideways, you either slash or chop. If you move diagonally, you either chop or slash. Check the weapon ratings to see what it’s good at, then try to do that a lot.

Once you’ve joined the Mage’s guild and the temple, learn the spells Mark, Recall, Detect Animals, Almsivi Intervention, and a healing spell. Get a spellcrafter to make spells that do Detec Animals for 1 second and that heal 1 point of damage. These will be easy to cast. Cast them over and over again to increase your skill with Mysticism (Mark, Recall, Intervention) and Restoration (Healing). You might also want to pick up some alteration spells (Levitate, water walking, water breathing) and a similar wimpy little trainer spell for Alteration.

6

I wonder if I have the difficulty slider set too high. I’ll have to check when I get home, but I THINK I’ve got it at 50 (on a scale of -100 <-> 100). Gamebanshee recommends leaving the slider at 0 until you attain level 5, and not going up to 50 until you reach level 25.

If it’s set where I think it is, (and it probably is, I usually go for medium/hard difficulty right out of the box) that would explain a lot.

7

Also, when you fight, remember to alternate between thrusting, chopping, and slashing based on the type of weapon. As said before thrusting should be best with a longsword.

8

Morrowind has a different level-up system than most other games. Each individual skill only increases if you use it. No matter how much you use your sword, it’ll NEVER make you better at jumping (oh, yeah, feel free to jump everywhere you go. Get that jumping skill up early).

Yeah, you’re gonna be pretty inept at combat until level 4 or so. You’ll just have to be patient.

Getting to Balmorra is a pretty important step. I’d suggest you join the Fighter’s Guild first… their first few quests are really, really simple, and are a great way to earn money/equipment early in the game.

Oh, and sneak a lot. Walk through Balmorra a couple times, turning on your Sneak skill. Y’know, 'cuz it’ll only go up if you use it, and sneaking is pretty damned powerful in the game.

9

I’d recommend just turning on the “best use” option, which will use the best technique for the particular weapon. Much easier.

The biggest learning curve you’ll have to overcome is the levelling system. Figure that out, and you’ve figured out the most important mechanic in the game. And it’s important to figure it out ASAP, as it has a major impact on your character’s stats.

10

I second the making of “cantrips”- spells that are built at the absolute minimum level, and which are used to practice that particular school of magic. They’re cheap, and you’ll always succeed, and as a result you’ll rapidly increase your skill.

A kinda cheesy spell I came up with was a Levitate Other spell. You see, flight is a “beneficial” spell- so if you cast it on someone else, they don’t get a saving throw- it always succeeds. And flight always overrides any other movement, even if it’s slower than the other movement mode… So, make a flight spell, make it affect others, with a long duration… and the absolute minimum speed. The end result is a very effective immobilization spell. If the thing you cast it on can’t inherently fly, it’ll be effectively frozen in place, so you can blast it from a distance at your leisure. A word of warning, however- don’t cast this underground. Flying creatures, when they die, will almost always fall through the ground if underground, so you won’t be able to loot them.

Another good idea is to enchant your weapon with the soul trapping effect on hit, with a near-minimum duration… makes it very easy to fill up your soulstones.

Speaking of soulstones… if you find an item that allows you to summon those saints, don’t let them fight for you. Instead, use them to power up a big soulstone- summon the saint, and then kill it. Their soul, if placed into a big enough soulstone, will allow permanent enchantments.

It’s a lot of fun to make a permanent enchantment onto some object of clothing… I like the jump spell. It’s tremendous fun, jumping over buildings.

11

Major point here: Up until you get your skill up into the 70’s and 80’s, you can expect to fail a lot in combat. This is annoying, but it is very easy to get your skill up with thsoe weapons anyway.

Steal everything not nailed down (and at least has a half-way reasonable weight to price ratio) and sell it. You’ll be swimming in gold.

12

Thanks everyone. I’ve made great strides in the last few days. I’d like to think that some is due to an increase in skill, but it is mostly from me lowering the difficulty meter to about 25.

I’m still going up like crazy in long blade which is good. But trying to improve spell casting too. Right out of the box I had fireball and firetouch spells, so I’m using them frequently to improve my skill in Destruction (major skill). My only other magic major skill is Alteration, and I’m using that less. I have minor skills in Enchanting and potion making and I’d like to use those, first for the point towards the overall level up, and also because those seem to be two of the very few skills that are tied to Intellegence (security is also, but I suck at that). As I understand it, by using these skills a bunch, I’d be able to add 2 or 3 points to Intellegence upon leveling up rather than the standard 1. (this game is amazing in the way it forces you to use specific skills to improve specific attributes) As it is, I’ve been adding a lot of points to Strength bercause I’ve been using long blade so much in combat.

Anyway, I tried to enchant my pants (with a shield spell), sort of per Lightnin’s suggestion. It failed, but it was only my first attempt, so well see. If you use an item enchanted by someone else, does that improve your Enchanting score, or do you only get points if you do the enchanting yourself. Also, does the source of the soul used for the enchantment have any effect on the resulting enchanted item? Yes, I’m checking the earlier posted guides, but I like asking questions too.

In case anyone is curious, I’m trying to improve Intellegence because I got mixed up in the Blades group and I need a few Intellegence points in order to advance.

13

The best perma-enchant to make is a Constant Regeneration Ring… a ring that’ll heal 5 hit points or so each second. It may not sound like much, but this ring will essentially make you invincible, so much so that when I made mine, I named it the “Invincibilitator”.

Then imbue your armor with percentages of invisibility. Each piece can only take maybe 5%-15%, but get enough of 'em and you’re mostly transparent. Combine this with a high Sneak skill, and monsters will lose track of you when you’re right in front of them.

14

Even at very low levels, you can find some extremely valuable items that are relatively easy to take. The problem is getting your money’s worth for them, as few vendors have more than a thousand or so to spend.

There’s an imp (or goblin or something, I haven’t played the game since a few months after it came out) that has 5000 to spend on items every day. Supposedly there is a mudcrab that has 10,000, but I never could find him. Anyway, you’ll spend months hanging out with that imp, because this is the best way to make lots of money.

First, you have to have a variety of somewhat valuable items (5,000-10,000). Let’s say you have a sword worth 5000, some armor worth 10,000, and a soul stone worth 20,000.

First, you sell things to the imp to rid him of nearly all his money. Wait a day. Then, when he has 5,000 again, offer him the armor for 5,000 + the 5,000 worth of stuff you sold him yesterday. He now has 10,000 worth of goods and you have back the 5,000 sword, 10,000 coins, and you still have the soul stone. The next day, when he gets another 5,000, sell him the sword. You now have 15,000 coins and the soul stone, and he has 15,000 worth of merchandise. The next day, trade him the 20,000 stone for the 15,000 worth of merchandise and 5000 coins. You should have the gist of it by now…I sometimes spent virtual months clicking ‘Next Day’ so I could get my full money’s worth for some Daedric Armor or some other extreme high value item, but it only takes a few minutes realtime.

15

If memory serves, the imp is somewhere in Caldera. House full of orcs, up on the second floor. The mudcrab is on an island south of one of the ruins east and maybe a bit south from Vivec. I’m sure there are spoiler sites with more detailed info. I rarely put much effort into getting full value from anything, though. Money just isn’t that valuable. I’d usually just nip in to the nearest merchant, take 1000 or whatever, and be on my way. The really pricy stuff I always stashed in my house.

One of the things I often enchanted was constant levitation plus as much speed as possible. You can fly across the entirely map in just a few minutes of realtime. Very handy for getting places far from siltstrider routes or ports.

16

I found him. It’s a much greater walk than most Hint sites imply. It’s pretty much halfway between Vivec City and the East Coast of the whole island (where the coast line starts going way north into the Grasslands or whatever that area was called).

17

Just looked at my map, and I think it’s close to Mzahnch. I don’t have the game loaded up, so I can’t check. I don’t remembering it being terribly out of the way. Siltstrider to Suran, and down the coast a bit to the SE.

18

Since you have the GOTY edition, you have the expansions, which means that you have the merchants in Mournhold, who have even more money. Unlike the Creeper (the imp in Caldera), they actually have some bargaining skill and will not just buy everything for full value, but after a certain point, money becomes meaningless since you have so much of it.

Couple of pieces of advice…

  • Your chance of success with any skill goes down when you are tired. If you are running all the time and your fatigue is low, you’ll miss a lot in combat. The Fighter’s Guild is free to join and has a chest full of Restore Fatigue and Restore Health potions (as well as Armorer’s Hammers for repairing your gear). Use those if you are about to get into a fight and are low on fatigue.

  • Speaking of repair… damaged weapons/armor sell for less. When selling valuable items, make sure they are fully repaired before selling them. Since the best place to sell weapons/armor is usually a smith (like Wayn in the Fighter’s Guild in Balmora), the best bet is usually to buy some Armorer’s Hammers (and get some training from the smith if you suck at Armorer), fix your stuff (improving your skill) and then sell it.

  • Good Mercantile skill makes a big difference. Always barter the price up when selling and down when buying, and always sell things one at a time (assuming they’re valuable enough – worth more than say 20). Each barter success gets you closer to leveling the skill and getting better prices. Bear in mind that each unsuccessful offer will lower the merchant’s opinion of you by one, and each successful transaction will increase it by one. These effects are temporary, and there is a randomizer in the equation, so you can try an offer a few times and sometimes the merchant will take it on the 4th or 5th offer. If you lower his opinion too much, just exit and restart, and he’ll like you again.

You’re probably about to start getting ambushed as part of the secondary storyline (from Tribunal). Make sure you’re set to autosave when resting, since the ambushes are hard… but the rewards are sweet – the second-best light armor in the game and potentially some Ebony weapons (second-best weapon material).

I heartily recommend The Morrowind Prophecies, which is the hintbook. It’s set up the way a hintbook should be, as a guidebook to the game engine and the world itself, with additional details about the various quests and maps of the island.

19

As great as enchantment is, getting it to work best is a bit of a drag. My third character was a friggin’ demigod because of enchantment, though. Alchemy and Enchantment are, IMO, the best paths to take. Restore Fatigue potions are brilliant early on and raise the skill heavily.

It is important to understand what affects the skills. In the case of Alchemy, the major skill is Intelligence. So to properly make potions, you need good intelligence and good alchemy… or, if you think about it, excellent alchemy and so-so intelligence, or great intelligence and so-so alchemy. As your alchemy goes up you’ll be able to see relatively easy-to-find ingredients for… a fortify intelligence potion! Which you make five of, then drink, then make some more, then drink, then make the rest of your batch up and get monster intelligence.

Nice thing about intelligence? It is also used for… Enchanting! The mind boggles.

It was the only way I’ve found to make good enchantments barring the ridiculous price you’d pay for an enchanter (but since I stole all the soul gems I could I couldn’t use them anyway). My favorite was a sword which had tons of charges and was drain on strike (restore health) and a pendant that restored fatigue. With that combination I was a pretty deadly fighter. And for the occaissional tough battle you’ve got plenty of other fortify potions to help things out. I wouldn’t recommend this until you get the very best equipment as fortify intelligence ingredients are not especially common like restore health and fatigue, and good souls for enchanting won’t be available until you are pretty high-level anyway. Save the ingredients. Make potions and sell them–even if they are harmful you can still get money from them. This also helps increase mercantile.

Alchemy is, IMO, bar none, the best skill to learn. Finding ingredients for the best potions, and of course raising your skills up enough to know them, is a pretty time-consuming adventure, though. The money you raise is very, very worth it. Generally you will end up with more potions than you can carry, store, and even sell by the end of the game. Be sure to have a good house. There’s a mission in Balmora which could net you a decent place to live with a big chest, that’s what I used to store all my alchemy ingredients.

You can only enchant spells you know. Until you find a drain spell, you can’t enchant anything with drain.

Favorite spell: bound bow. I had a 10-second version for one or two hits and then I switched over to a weapon, and a 60-second version later in the game when I could reliably fight entirely with it (tough skill to raise but totally worth it). In fact, bound weapons are really excellent in general because it means you’re not carrying heavy equipment. The bound weapons also fortify their skill by 10 points I think while equipped, making it a little easier to hit guys early on. I would very much recommend summoning weapons rather than carrying them around. Once the corresponding magic skills are up you can create a custom spell that will give you bound armor+weapon meaning you don’t have to carry squat (except what you’ve enchanted, of course).

Man what a good game. So much to do!