Thursday 2 September 2004

Pic of the day: Lilarcor's ghost, a helpful protector for mages and other sissies.

Morrowind mod madness

So I'm back in Morrowind. It could well be the first time since Cryptic invited me to beta-test City of Heroes. Other computer games have got a lot less time since then, and role playing games in particular. CoH is simply the best I have seen, almost no matter how you look at it. There are however a couple small weaknesses.

One, all the other people running around. For the most part that's a good thing, but there are some character concepts that are better suited for soloing, and sometimes you just want to be alone. You can solo in CoH, but it gets less and less rewarding as the game goes on.

Two, you can select from a lot of different options, but you cannot change the game mechanics or add new features or locations. In Morrowind you can. Actually that's a lot of boring work, but luckily others have done a lot of the things I'd like to see. These "mods" vary in size from a small change in how magic power is regenerated, to a landmass almost of the same size as the original game.

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It is so long since I played Morrowind, it wasn't even installed on my living room PC. I installed Morrowind, played a little, installed the Tribunal expansion pack, and downloaded a heap of modification files. I haven't installed the Bloodmoon expansion on this machine yet, though I still may. It's a high level area anyway.

Before the mods, the game ran fast and smooth. This is the strongest machine I have played it on yet. It was rather slow on the first machine I played it on, but that is typical of the Elder Scrolls games. They were always cutting edge, but they were not always good at guessing what direction the future would take. Arena utilized the 640K memory of DOS expertly, but failed to use a smaller core and rely on extended or expanded memory, so you had to boot from a floppy without resident programs such as mappable keyboards. Daggerfall was quite a marvel of a MS-DOS game, and came just before Windows 95 dispensed with DOS and swept in the Windows era of gaming. But Morrowind hit it pretty good. By now, standard gaming PCs (and Xbox) will run the game just fine. Now, of course, it is the mods that bog it down.

Then again, it depends on the mods. It is natural that NPC companions will put some strain on the machine. They have grown pretty advanced. I decided against going with the Laura Craft romance mod this time, although she is improved yet again. She will now increase her skills by use like a player character (but you can still buy textbooks for her to make her skills go up, and she still can't train at a NPC trainer). A new marks(wo)man tactic is implemented, by which she will provide "artillery support". General improvements abound, but ... she was already too realistic as it was, getting jealous at catgirls and suddenly wanting me to know why today was a special day. And, in the unlikely case that I guessed right, to provide a suitable present. Too realistic for my tastes.

On the other hand, Lilarcor the talking sword has benefited greatly from his upgrade to version 4. You can now control how much he's going to talk, and he now has three equipment modes: The old two-handed for maximum damage, a one-handed mode that allows shields, and a ghost mode. This is a life-saver for green characters. In this mode, Lilarcor is wielded by a ghostly apparition with a flaming skull. His skill depends on Lilarcor's level (yes, Lilarcor does level up, although he only has 8 levels but each of these makes quite a bit of difference). But with some quick thinking, you can usually get Lilarcor between you and your enemy, and he does enough damage right out of the shop to distract pretty much anything. The ghost is quite resilient, and besides he will just materialize again if defeated. Best of all, Lilarcor gains experience even in ghost mode, so you could theoretically leave most of the fighting to him and he would eventually be a totally kick-@$$ bodyguard. Of course, that's not a very fulfilling life for an adventurer, now is it?

A fulfilling life for a catboy or -girl is to rip monsters to shreds with your bare hands. In order to accommodate this, I've downloaded a mod that includes a hand-to-hand trainer for safe sparring sessions, and who also sells combat spells tailored for hand-to-hand use. They are easy to cast (success rate 100%), cost moderate amounts of magicka, and have a duration of 60 seconds real time. One spell adds damage to your attacks (and a nifty spell effect sometimes when you hit), one raises hand-to-hand skill, one adds speed, and one improves your unarmored defense.

Speaking of which, I downloaded a mod that improves unarmored combat. It is rather weak in the original game, providing less protection than any of the armor types, and of course you can't enchant the armor when it isn't there, while all other types of armor can have some spell effect or other. This mod adds a constant sanctuary spell effect based on your unarmored skill. Basically it adds dodging, making you harder to hit at all rather than just reducing damage taken. Even at 100 skill it will only be a 50% chance of dodging, but that's quite an improvement as it stacks with your normal unarmored skill. Finally the path of a monk becomes viable! And although it is a different mod from the hand-to-hand one, you still benefit from your sparring sessions.

One feature from Daggerfall that has been missed was the lower cost of spells as your skill grew in each particular school of magicka. I have added a mod that emulates this by returning part of the magicka immediately. It may not affect your maximum spell size, but it lets you cast the spells more times before you run out of power, and also reduces the effects of magicka drain attacks.

Another boon for spellcasters (who were kinda shortchanged in this game) is Dynamic Magicka Regeneration. I downloaded that from a different location than most of the rest. It lets you regain magicka without having to sleep, although it will regenerate slowly if you are wounded and exhausted. Also your skill and the depth of your magicka pool will influence how fast you regain power. Morrowind now works more like Ultima when it comes to regaining mana, which is fitting since the game plays as a crossbreed between the first Elder Scrolls games and the last Ultima games.

For those unfortunates who are born without claws and furry ears, there is a werewolf mod that only requires Tribunal, not Bloodmoon. I've said that Bloodmoon was the only way to become a werewolf in Morrowind, but not anymore. This mod is closer to the original Daggerfall werewolf concept. It is also free, not that Bethsoft don't deserve the money they can get for making such a great series of games. If you go with the werewolf mod, I recommend you also get the Dwemer Clock that lets you follow the moon phases even if you can't see the sky. You really don't want to transform in the middle of a city.

And of course, if you get too familiar with the island of Vvardenfell, there are mods that add anything from more characters to an entire new landmass. I haven't traveled to the new lands yet, but I have met some new NPCs from the Companion mod. These are people who you can befriend and make a party of adventurers. They require some positive attention, but they are not as realistic as Laura. Supposedly you can also have carnal relations with companions of the opposite gender, but I really don't think this is the ideal game for such things. And I probably am not the ideal player for such things either, believe it or not.

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Sources for mods:
Thelys Mod Index is a fairly large collection of high quality mods. If you look for mods that are genuinely useful, well written and documented and that don't totally unbalance the game, this should be your first stop.

Morrowind Summit has tons and tons of mods, but the quality varies wildly and some of them lie on registration-based servers.

Morrowind Werewolves is a mod that changes life in Morrowind. You won't automatically become a werewolf, but fighting them causes a risk (or opportunity...) to become one. And you're going to see more and more of them, starting at level 15. Don't use this mod if you don't mean it, it is a lifestyle change!

Tamriel Rebuilt! OK, not really. At the current speed it will take decades to cover the whole continent. But it's an ambitious project, and the first area is out in public beta test now. I haven't tested it yet, as I need some levels first. Requires both expansion packs, Tribunal and Bloodmoon. (You can buy Morrowind with both expansions included if you don't already have it.)

Atmospheric Sound Effects (big) and the warmly recommended Dynamic Magicka Regeneration, as well as the well-written "Sleep or Suffer" plugin for those who think people shouldn't be able to stay awake for weeks. But more likely you will notice this particular suffering in your real life instead, if you get too hooked on Morrowind mods...