Wednesday 25 February 2004

Pic of the day: Pointus Particulate, here as a fairly inexperienced warrior in bonemold armor.

Morrowind again

Yes, something entirely different. I created another newbie character and started playing Morrowind again, with one more mod installed. This is the Particle Weapon mod. No, we're not talking the good old Particle Cannon from the original (and best) Wing Commander. Rather these are weapons with particle effects. Particle effects are a special kind of graphics that emulate flame, halo, aura and similar glows. In Dark Age of Camelot people generally refer to them as "glowies". Well, they do on the server where I used to hang out. In that game, "glowie" weapons are magical, and special. Despite promises to that effect, alchemists cannot add particle effects to the weapons they imbue, nor can spellcrafters or any other crafter. The weapons are all high-end and magic, usually given as a quest reward or found in hard-to-reach places.

A little known fact is that Morrowind uses the same basic game engine as DAoC, although they are of course heavily modified. (It is not for nothing that people refer to Morrowind as a "massive single-player off-line role playing game", a word play on the more common MMORPG, "massively multi-player online role playing game" such as DAoC, EverQuest, Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies, Anarchy Online and City of Heroes.)

Now particle effects come to Morrowind in the form of a mod, although I understand you can also get them on the XboX in the Game of the Year version of Morrowind. I haven't seen them anywhere else. (Notice that still pictures really don't do justice to particle effects. It is their movement that set them apart.) Anyway, the mod requires the Tribunal official expansion pack, as the shop is located in Mournhold, the capital city added in that expansion.

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I still kept the few user-made mods I have on my machine: Legible road signs, Morrowind Girlfriend Laura Craft, Lilarcor the Talking Sword, and Dynamic Magicka Regeneration. I consider magicka regeneration crucial to game balance, as direct casting magic has been powered down rather too much compared to fighting skills as well as alchemy. A girlfriend is good to have in the beginning of the game, when you are poor and weak and have a hard time surviving the Dark Brotherhood assassins that come with the Tribunal expansion. Later she kinda gets in the way, but you can always tell her to stand back from the fighting or even wait for you somewhere. The romance part is strictly optional, of course. ^_^

And speaking of relationships, my relationship with the game itself is not like with Daggerfall, the previous game in the Elder Scrolls series. DAoC has taken over that position. Daggerfall was the game I was going steady with, playing not quite every day but certainly several times a week. Morrowind is not like that. It is more like the way I have it with Master of Magic or the Civilization series: I can go months without thinking of it, and then something gets me to start it up and I play day and night for a week or two or three. And then it kinda fades. Well, now it has started again.

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I seem to have forgotten how long time it takes to advance in this game. Of course, I have a job and such that keeps me from playing it through as fast as a student would. But even so. I am not even close to affording particle weapons or most other cool things in the game. I am still fighting nix hounds and cliff racers. And Kagouti, lots of Kagouti these days. That's OK, because the scraps of Kagouti hide can be used in a Night Eye potion. Very nice if you spend some time in dungeons, or even outdoors at night. They can also be used in Fortify Speed potions. Anyway, there seems to be a lot of them at this point of the game, and while they cannot kill me, they do make me stronger as I have to stop and fight them.

The game will pick up when I can start going to the Daedric shrines and trap the souls of various Daedra. These souls sell for quite a nice lump of money. It takes some time to get the money, since even the enchanter in Mournhold only has 6000 gold a day (if I remember correctly). The trick is to have a good selection of other cheaper stuff, either cheaper soul gems or weapons or armor or scrolls. These are the things enchanters trade in. So if you sell a soul gem worth 60 000 gold, you can only get 6000 in cash and take the rest in various stuff, which you sell back over the next few days. A somewhat tedious procedure, but patience is rewarded with a pile of cash. I've done this with the last few characters. It is kinda like going to work each day, only more exciting.

One thing I have learned since last time is to start with medium armor and spear. As a newbie you are likely to find heavy armor too heavy, even if you carry next to nothing else. But medium armor should be acceptable – I use bonemold myself – and using it will improve the endurance attribute. So will spear, the only weapon which uses that stat. Since endurance gives a bonus to health point each time you level up, it is profitable to get it as early in the game as possible, if you want it at all. (This will depend on the role you play; this is a role playing game, after all.) Anyway, Ra'virr (the cat guy trader just beside Balmora Mages Guild) will sell a spear that not only is a decent weapon in itself, but also has the spell "bound spear" added to it. So several times a day you can use it to summon a Daedric spear that fortifies spear skill. This goes a long way to mitigate the problem of not being able to use a shield, always a worry when you are young and vulnerable.

Since you can't get credit for more than 10 skill increases in the same attribute (equals five bonus points) you would have to have both spear and medium armor as chosen skills. I have spear, but medium armor is a misc, so I cannot level up only on those. Well, I could, but then I would waste the training potential of the medium armor. So I do some alchemy (a primary skill for my character) as well, and raise intelligence. This increases the spell power pool and also the rate of magicka recovery.

I know I could do even more to get the perfect mix of skills and stats from the start, but the game is supposed to be fun as well. I am steadily looking for rings of Hoptoad, a spell that lets you jump as if you were much stronger or less heavy than you actually are. It is my favorite mode of travel in Morrowind. With a really good jump skill and an item of Hoptoad, I can travel really fast and it is fun, fun, fun all the way. Jumping was kinda broken in Daggerfall, but here it really shines. And in City of Heroes super leaps will be even more powerful. I look forward to that game, which should be out in America this spring. (Late April, if they keep the schedule.) But it probably won't be available in Norway for many months yet. And until then, I have to "toady" to Morrowind for all my super jumping needs. ^_^

Running is also good, especially late in the game with a maxed athleticism (running) skill and maxed speed, perhaps topped with a potion of speed. Add Hoptoad, Fortify Strength potion and a maxed acrobatics (jump) skill for the complete Naruto experience.