The Elder Scrolls

[Berrakh]

I want to buy skyrim on switch just for fun, my comp's graphics card is broken so I can't run it. But I refuse to.

What are good mods to make the game more rewarding combat wise, survival/exploration wise, and in particularly magically-wise? Kinda wanna be a high elf who has gone native and electrocutes people a lot.


Thanks if you can help. I'd love to turn Skyrim combat into more like Dark Souls, in terms of how it plays (third person, lock on, dodging) moreso than difficulty. Uber-difficult open world games are a bad mix imo.

 

[Sug Benis]

I feel like the lore of this world is very underutulized. Especially after the success of relatively low fantasy like Skyrim.

I'm still actually kind of salty about the changes to Skyrim's lore post-Oblivion crisis. Yeah, guys, a bunch of peasants who hold magic in contempt is so much better than a land fucking full of cool-ass wind and frost magic as or more advanced than a lot of elven nations, and shouting being the realm of a literal handful of dudes and a bunch of undead is way cooler than it being a common art.

I know Tsun mentions it's a recent development, but goddamnit, acknowledging you made the setting shittier doesn't excuse having done so in the first place!

I like that idea too, then you actually read Kirkbride's vision of futuristic Tamriel. But still, as cool as that idea is, why can't Pelinal just be a Shezzarine driven mad by the gods, to the point that he can see snippets of the future? Why can't the rest of the literature about him, like the beams of light he fired or claims that he massacred thousands and thousands of elves to the point the land got fucked up, be embellishment? Why does every fun over-exaggerated story in the lore need to have an actual cosmic explanation?

Literally the only good thing about Kirk's vision of the sixth and seventh eras is the Nerevarine coming back piloting Ankulakhan like a fucking Metal Gear.

 

[BroccoliBrain]

What difficulty are you playing on? I always used to play on the lower difficulties just to have a fun time

Difficulty settings in skyrim just reduce your damage and increase the enemy's in x0.25 increments (but yeah it is better with mods).

The problem is that they don't care about the lore, Todd even said this himself, in a way. He wants his game to make you feel like when you win a round of Peggle, a big epic spectacle without much substance, and I think it shows.

...Maybe Todd is the problem. Memeing aside, I remember watching a Making Of video for Skyrim and some key people who shaped the tone of TES have all left by the time of Skyrim. I'm not sure what Todd's mark on the series is, since Le Fay's the father of TES and Kirkbride's regarded for the batshit crazy lore. Everyone knows Todd tells those sweet little lies, to which I ask: and what else?

 

[GethN7]

Just something to share with all of you in case you want to try this on Linux.

I've been replaying Morrowind via OpenMW, which is a modern day engine that is way less garbage than the 2002 code of the original engine. On Windows, it runs beautifully, especially if you stick to the latest nightly builds.

On Linux (Mint 19.3 was what I was using), I encountered a TON of frustration.

For starters, nightlies are broken in recent builds due to some weird issue they need a few days to clear up, so the only reliable way to get the latest stable build is via Flathub, which is an overbloated install that works but installs an older version OpenMW (0.45)

Once you get that started, any Morrowind install (Steam, GoG, original discs) you can get on Linux in a manner it can read the original game files works fine. The game will even run fine.

However, second painful hurdle came when trying to install mods. Mod managers for Linux are basically nonexistent, and trying to run Vortex/MO2 on Linux is a painful torment that runs like ass in Wine and has a shit time reading Linux links and tends to sputter and die downloading from Nexus Mods half the time.

Worse, the only OpenMW specific mod managers I could find were some CLI tool that only support their custom mod format, not classic esp/esms, and some spit and pencil source code built in Qt I had a pain in the ass trying to get compiled from source and it was still broken.

You could just be a lazy asshole and core dump all your mods into the Data Files folder area, but that makes uninstallation a bitch.

tl;dr: Unless you plan to play a totally vanilla Morrowind game, stick to Windows for using OpenMW.

 

[Neo-Holstien]

Just something to share with all of you in case you want to try this on Linux.

I've been replaying Morrowind via OpenMW, which is a modern day engine that is way less garbage than the 2002 code of the original engine. On Windows, it runs beautifully, especially if you stick to the latest nightly builds.

On Linux (Mint 19.3 was what I was using), I encountered a TON of frustration.

For starters, nightlies are broken in recent builds due to some weird issue they need a few days to clear up, so the only reliable way to get the latest stable build is via Flathub, which is an overbloated install that works but installs an older version OpenMW (0.45)

Once you get that started, any Morrowind install (Steam, GoG, original discs) you can get on Linux in a manner it can read the original game files works fine. The game will even run fine.

However, second painful hurdle came when trying to install mods. Mod managers for Linux are basically nonexistent, and trying to run Vortex/MO2 on Linux is a painful torment that runs like ass in Wine and has a shit time reading Linux links and tends to sputter and die downloading from Nexus Mods half the time.

Worse, the only OpenMW specific mod managers I could find were some CLI tool that only support their custom mod format, not classic esp/esms, and some spit and pencil source code built in Qt I had a pain in the ass trying to get compiled from source and it was still broken.

You could just be a lazy asshole and core dump all your mods into the Data Files folder area, but that makes uninstallation a bitch.

tl;dr: Unless you plan to play a totally vanilla Morrowind game, stick to Windows for using OpenMW.

man i am not autistic enough for fucking linux

 

[Shield Breaker]

Is there a mod for Morrowind to mark which items count as stealing? It's annoying to not be able to tell if grabbing some alchemy ingredients will get a guard on your ass.

 

[GethN7]

Is there a mod for Morrowind to mark which items count as stealing? It's annoying to not be able to tell if grabbing some alchemy ingredients will get a guard on your ass.

If you play stock Morrowind, get MWSE, it has a mod for showing that.

If playing OpenMW (I recommend this option), this is a built in feature you can enable in the launcher.

 

[Rakdos92]

How do I install OpenMW with the steam version?

 

[GethN7]

How do I install OpenMW with the steam version?

It's is own program, it simply reads the files out of the directory you installed Morrowind in, wherever it might be. OpenMW does not have to be installed in the same directory, and I recommend against it anyway.

You can even use it with mod managers like Vortex or Mod Organizer 2, all it's launcher does is read the files installed in the Morrowind Steam directory and has it's own ESP/ESP/OMW (OpenMW specific mod format) editor where you can rearrange the load order for OpenMW's use.

 

[Rakdos92]

It's is own program, it simply reads the files out of the directory you installed Morrowind in, wherever it might be. OpenMW does not have to be installed in the same directory, and I recommend against it anyway.

You can even use it with mod managers like Vortex or Mod Organizer 2, all it's launcher does is read the files installed in the Morrowind Steam directory and has it's own ESP/ESP/OMW (OpenMW specific mod format) editor where you can rearrange the load order for OpenMW's use.

That, that sounds good. Too good. Have there ever been any problems?

 

[GethN7]

That, that sounds good. Too good. Have there ever been any problems?

OpenMW is a for scratch engine remake done without any knowledge of the original source code. While the current version (going by the latest nightly builds) is perfectly playable from start to finish for all known official Morrowind content, there are still some bugs to be worked out, but nothing showstopping to my knowledge.

The OpenMW engine is also free of many limits that kneecapped OG Morrowind, such as being a 32-bit Windows only program. It is cross platform, has a such a high cap on installable mods you can go nuts with that, includes support for several features found in later game engines like normal maps, modern day shader techniques, and has several built in quality of life features, like a stolen items detector, lots of key bugfixes you needed the Morrowind Code Patch for on the original engine, and even comes with it own game editor (keep the original around for now, the OpenMW version is not feature complete at this time).

Worth noting that while it works with a lot of mods out of the box, it will screw up for some older ones that relied on features that worked on OG Morrowind's janky engine or the imperfect features implemented by the MCP. For example, MCP added support for a fake version of bump mapping for textures that looks overly shiny in OpenMW, as OpenMW supports the real deal, for which you should search for texture mods made specifically for OpenMW (lots are on Nexus Mods)

Note: OpenMW may one day be able to render and play other TES and even Fallout 3 and later Fallout games, as it does have experimental support for their game files, but for now the engine is specialized to focus on Morrowind for now.

 

[Festivus]

 

[Rakdos92]

OpenMW is a for scratch engine remake done without any knowledge of the original source code. While the current version (going by the latest nightly builds) is perfectly playable from start to finish for all known official Morrowind content, there are still some bugs to worked out, but nothing showstopping to my knowledge.

The OpenMW engine is also free of many limits that kneecapped OG Morrowind, such as being a 32-bit Windows only program. It is cross platform, has a such a high cap on installable mods you can go nuts with that, includes support for several features found in later game engines like normal maps, modern day shader techniques, and has several built in quality of life features, like a stolen items detector, lots of key bugfixes you needed the Morrowind Code Patch for on the original engine, and even comes with it own game editor (keep the original around for now, the OpenMW version is not feature complete at this time).

Worth noting that while it works with a lot of mods out of the box, it will screw up for some older ones that relied on features that worked on OG Morrowind's janky engine or the imperfect features implemented by the MCP. For example, MCP added support for a fake version of bump mapping for textures that looks overly shiny in OpenMW, as OpenMW supports the real deal, for which you should search for texture mods made specifically for OpenMW (lots are on Nexus Mods)

Note: OpenMW may one day be able to render and play other TES and even Fallout 3 and later Fallout games, as it does have experimental support for their game files, but for now the engine is specialized to focus on Morrowind for now.

That probably explains why the game was behaving so weird overall. Random green over the place, the game crashed when I tried to exit, and when I forced it to shutdown the monitor had a black quadrat that persisted until I restarted my computer...

 

[BALLZ-BROKEN]

man i am not autistic enough for fucking linux

Hey, to be fair it's not all that bad with Steam Proton. Not to say you have to do some fiddly fucking in Linux, but it's not really worse than with Windows 10. Only in Linux, when I google a problem and and try a solution, it actually fixes the problem unlike Windows! And you get the smug sense of satisfaction not having to take Billy Gates' lil Micro$haft in the pooper and receive his mandatory vaccines monthly updates.

And I was able to get Fallout 4 to run under Linux, with mods, and it does run faster and more stable than it did under Windows 10.

 

[Crustyguy]

I really hope ES 6 is set in Hammerfell instead of High Rock. I'm sure high rock plenty potential, but I would really prefer to see a moorish/arabian nights inspired setting for a chance. It would kind of be like how Morrowind felt more alien, but slightly more grounded. Who am I kidding, though, they'll probably just make it as generic as possible like they did with oblivion and (to a degree) skyrim. It'll be like skyrim with sand and scimitars.

 

[Neo-Holstien]

I really hope ES 6 is set in Hammerfell instead of High Rock. I'm sure high rock plenty potential, but I would really prefer to see a moorish/arabian nights inspired setting for a chance. It would kind of be like how Morrowind felt more alien, but slightly more grounded. Who am I kidding, though, they'll probably just make it as generic as possible like they did with oblivion and (to a degree) skyrim. It'll be like skyrim with sand and scimitars.

i hate human countries, they are all shit. i one set in Alinor

 

[Shield Breaker]

I just want them to bring back spears so I don't have to mod them in. Also, bring back jump magic, because playing Morrowind as a dragoon is really fun.

 

[Snekposter]

Scimitars? No no. These are special swords. Curved. Swords. Also, no damn way do I want the return of the broken-as-all-fuck Acrobatics skill in any form that doesn't have the game engine designed to handle that level of physics-defying from the start. We all had fun leaping over the Imperial City like Superman until the game engine died.

 

[AnaV]

I'll never forget being level 30 in Oblivion after doing all the side shit and saving Kvatch, my poor PS3 could not handle the many high powered late game enemies and I got single digit frames each cell until it was over, what a fucking trip.

 

[Burned Man]

I'll never forget being level 30 in Oblivion after doing all the side shit and saving Kvatch, my poor PS3 could not handle the many high powered late game enemies and I got single digit frames each cell until it was over, what a fucking trip.

I remember I got a brand new copy for the 360 and was still just a dumb kid and had my 360 standing vertical on the living room floor while playing. My little sister was doing something I don't remember and came by and knocked it over onto its front and just completely destroyed the disk. I had to get a used copy after that. I think I blamed all of Oblivion's messes on the fact it was a used copy and not that it was Oblivion at the time.