You're not bothering me. I'm here to help... and to talk about Swedish redheads.



I still use both the Merchant skills plugin and the Crime plugin, both of which I have personally-edited versions of and recommend using along side my mod.



I'll PM you about that one.

So, I'm trying actually *playing* the game again... and I just got ganked by a cliff racer >.<

I used to hate them, but now I consider them an essential part of the experience. Especially at low levels, you must constantly be scanning the sky.

Oh, I feel you. It's supposed to be a love/hate relationship... sort of like my marriage, except with love.

Nobody should be playing this game without a passive cliff racer mod. NOBODY.

Hello BTB, I just installed morrowind along with most of the mods from your mod list along with morrowind sound and graphics overhaul. And I really enjoy the well needed balance that your mod list brings to morrowind. I am having a little problem with the new resting system though. I can't get it to work properly unless I remove the debris cell ( I think thats what you ment in the readme ) from morrowind, using wrye mash. Which would be fine, exept that when I do remove the debris cell it also seems to remove the new lightning settings from TLM ( The lighting mod ). So I was wondering if theres another way to make it work properly?

Anyway, thanks for sharing this great mod list with us. I can only imagine how much time and hard work you've spent doing it.

Edit:

Nevermind the above text, I fixed the problem by simple re-applying the TLM ini edits. And it works like a charm now.

Cheers!

Is there a ranged soul trap spell that can be found anywhere? Such a spell would really make my life easier when I'm trying to acquire souls.

Nope. Just the main one on touch. The scrolls/enchanted items have a ranged effect, though.

Is there a reasoning for this? I more costly ranged version would be wonderful.

Edit: I also found another area where I was able to rest and heal where I shouldn't be. It was ancestral tomb west of Seyda Neen on a small island.

Also, Absorb Fatigue and Absorb Fatigue (Ranged) spells absorb the same amount, but Absorb Health spell only absorbs half of the health as Absorb Health (Ranged).

I've got a suggestion I've been thinking about for a little while - Invisibility is broken.

Its way too cheap, way too plentiful in game, easy to enchant on things, and allows for far too many abuses, hell, who needs sneak when you've got invisibility? Gotta pick up some artifacts for the Temple? Invisibility through 100% of it, recall out, and not a single person killed. At level one.

You would think if this were that awesome you'd either A, see more (or rather not see more) invisible people and see NPCs utilize the spell more often, or B, not see much of it at all because complete and utter consealment is ridiculously hard to pull off.

So I don't know if this falls under alchemy or spells, but I think the cost of invisibility and invis-related things needs to freaking skyrocket.

I agree, Mortimer. It seems to me that it's too easy to just pick up a few low-cost items that grant invisibility and just waltz past any number of enemies.

Short answer:

To keep things easy on my sanity, I only edited the existing pre-made spells in the game - no spells were added or removed. Only one soultrap spell existed in the code originally, so only one exists in my mod.

Long answer:

Because it's an incredibly useful utility effect that even players who aren't proficient in Mysticism will want to use frequently, the cost of the spell needed to remain low. Thus, the spell needed to be more of a pain in the ass to use than enchanted items/scrolls with the soultrap effect, or else there would be no reason to keep them around. I suppose I *could* have added a long-range soultrap spell with a higher cost, but I kind of like the ranged effect being exclusive to magic items and scrolls.



Invisibility is one of the harder things I had the task of balancing, particularly because it ties in rather strongly to the game's incredibly broken stealth system. More importantly, it's also the point of compromise for the incredible (albeit well-deserved) nerfing I gave to the chameleon effect. Nerfing invisibility too much in addition would put a rather nasty dent in one of the more appealing aspects of the Illusion skill, which is that it serves as an alternative to the Sneak skill (just as Alteration is an alternative to Security). Bearing in mind that invisibility is barred from custom enchantments, the only access to it is through the pre-made spells, enchantments, and potions. Nobody seems to contend that it requires at least a decent Illusion skill to use the spells effectively, and the potions are effectively balanced by being a royal [censored] to find good ingredients for. Thus, the argument here seems to be that the pre-made enchanted items with the invisibility effect are still too overpowered. Am I correct?

Do you get rid of restocking invis potions in your mod?

I think that sneaking is an important, if badly implemented, aspect of this game. I think using low-power chameleon spells in CONJUNCTION with sneak seems more balanced to me than just using outright invisibility but I'm not sure how practical this would be. I understand that this might not be preferable for those who want to play a pure mage.

Full invis should remain in the game, but at a much, much higher price than what we see in vanilla so that normally only a high level player can use it to bypass any possibility of combat.

To BTB: Yes, you are correct. The premade potions ARE terribly hard to make, just as one would imagine it to be. The problem exists with both the preplaced potions and the merchants available stores. How incorruptible are the priests who carry 10 invisibility potions? I mean seriously.

But that doesn't even cover the half of it. Invisibility = 100% chameleon. The "sound" magic effect exists ingame, but with what purpose? Is invisible also silent? Why can I jump around enemies without breaking invisibility? Shouldn't I have to remain in sneak AND be good enough at sneaking to not blow my cover? After all, ebony on metal makes quite a racket. But the oafish Nord "guards" to the cavern don't seem to notice that noisy blur, even when its pressed up against them sheathing and unsheathing its weapon over and over and over.

To MrTea: Yes, basically that. A super thorough adjustment would be the alteration of what is known as "invisible" more in line with what it actually is. That requires a full rework of invisibility itself, which goes a bit more beyond game balance and more into game mechanics. The best solution like you said is to make invisibility a very static, rare occurrence. To me, "Cheap Invisibility Potion" is a superb oxymoron if I've ever heard one. Believe me, I can do more with 5 seconds of invisibility than you would care to know. The difference between Cheap and Exclusive should be their abilities to hide, not how long they last. But that's just my take on it.

To anyone with the willpower and dedication to rework invisibility: You will be my new favorite.

@Mortimer

I think it's important to point out that Invisibility is not the same as 100% chameleon. The main difference is that invisibility will be dispelled if you do any action like opening a chest, talking to an NPC or attacking, while chameleon will persist regardless of what you do. Also, the Sound spell effect is meant to disrupt the spellcasting ability of a target by creating a cacophony of sounds/voices in her head. Nothing actually related to stealth.

One thing that I've never bothered to test... does drinking a potion cancel the effects of invisibility?

I've got enough random little updates in my head that I'm putting them together into a new version within the next few days. I'm looking into doing a swap-out with the invisibility and resist paralysis potions - giving the latter a full line, while reducing the former to just a single availability. Only question is what should the duration of the single available invisibility potion be? The answer to the above question will influence the answer to this one, but I'm hovering between 10 and 20 seconds.

10 seconds.

You answered the wrong question, dude >.>

I'm pretty confident that you can't consume a potion and retain invis.

If you're keeping restocking potions, even at 10s duration, I'd advise making them extremely expensive. I mean, if they were even only a few hundred gold each Morrowind would be picked clean by thieves so it doesn't even make sense for them to be cheap. Also, create a specific NPC vendor for them in a hidden, out-of-the-way location who has constant effect invisibility on him or herself.

I have a bit of a problem. I have some expensive glass items that I want to sell, yet I don't know where to go to get the best bang for the buck. Any recommendations?

That's what I thought. Still, potions have a few inherent advantages that spells don't.



Yeah, that's a lot more complex than I want to get into. Are there any restocking vendors of resist paralysis potions in the game? If the answer is "no", then the whole point is moot.

(For the record, I'm at work all this week, so really can't check on any of this myself).



Nope.

Uh... Arrille? The best bang for your buck should be the merchant you have the best disposition with. It certainly helps if they have piles of gold as that would reduce the need to break down the value of expensive items with less expensive items(this leads to reduced profits.)


Resist paralysis? Do you mean invisibility? There are no merchants that carry restocking invis potions but there is at least one merchant who carries restocking l_m_potion's. He is the fabulously wealthy Ashlander merchant Ababael Timsar-Dadisun. I didn't bother checking the rest of the list as it would be pretty mind-numbing work since there are maybe 50 names on that list of people carrying l_m_potion. There is a chance the invis potions will crop up with merchants like this but it doesn't seem like a large one. You could just remove them from that leveled list.

Have you already done anything to curb the more powerful scrolls? Windwalker and Windform stand out the most to me with their 500 pts of levitation and 60 seconds of invis. Their prices are an incredible bargain at 1762 and 311 gold respectively. These two scrolls seem to crop up from the leveled lists that merchants use as restocking items fairly commonly.

To answer your question above BTB: Tested in game, potions break invisibility, however if you are Invisible initially, drink 8 potions and end with an invisibility potion, you flash visible for about five frames, not enough to even get a swing at you at point blank from an enemy.

Nope. I said what I meant - see my above post regarding my intentions.



I hadn't even thought about 'em. I'll have a look when I get home. Thanks for the heads-up.

I can't seem to find a potion of resist paralysis in the game.