I tried playing MW several years ago, never got passed level 2 or out of the beginning town. Also had lots of problems trying to get mods to work without constant crashing. Fast forward to today, After playing Oblivion extensively and gaining a fair amount of competency at installing and setting up mods correctly I've reloaded MW and am going to make a second try at it.

What I've done so far is I've pretty much followed the Morrowind 2009 guide. I've installed pretty much all of the recommended mods in that guide. Most of them do not affect the actual game play with the exception of MCA and TR if I understand what those mods actually do.

I've been playing for a couple of days now and I haven't had a single crash so I'm assuming that I've managed to get a stable setup. I've got my character up to level 3 and I've explored the starter town area quite a bit and found some hidden stuff like a nice 2H axe.

Now this is what gave me pause. I went into the cave that is just outside the town and in the first room there were 2 bandits. 1 had a name and the other one was just called "thug". If I understand what MCA actually does, I think that MCA added the "thug". Now being new to MW it took me a couple of reloads to be able to beat those 2 bandits. So here's my simple question:

As a first time player attempting to play through MW should I be using MCA? Is it going to make the game to difficult for a first timer?

MCA is going to make it a bit more difficult yes. You're right about those thugs being added by MCA.

It's a nice mod, but far from essential for a first playthrough. You can always get it later. Or you can get http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=7749, which is like MCA but without the hostile enemies, custom clothing or companions, but with some other features like mages teleporting in and out as you walk through a town.

mca is fun. but does make it a little more difficult. however there are patches out there to lower the combatant encounters. and give all the characters names. so you just don't see 'thug'.

Mostly I have heard that it makes it difficult to solve quest′s in moraq tong or other quest′s where you are supposed to kill npc′s,where mca npc′s kind of stand in the way.
One solution is to add other mods which gives you the opportunity to order npc′s around,or be very skilled in sneak and/or illusion .

Dunno if I would recommend playing through the Moraq Tong with it for new players since it makes it a whole lot harder,I kind of like it,have to find alternatives,thinking out of the box a little

Thanks for the replies.

I do think I just want to experience MW in a more vanilla type of way. I think I'll end up getting to frustrated with the difficulty. If I end up getting hooked on MW and I do a second playthrough I can always try MCA then. I think I'll try the Starfire mod mentioned above just to give a little more life to MW but without the extra baddies.

So the big question is. Can I just deactivate MCA? or do I have to use Wyre Mash.

Wrye Mash is your best friend, trust me. It can be a pain to set up at times but it is worth it.

i usually play morag tong. don't find mca a problem. i would like to see more challenging quests for them anyway's. like the poisoning quest. or the moose head one from oblivion. those were more fun than find guy, kill guy.

Simply deactivating MCA probably wouldn't be a good idea, since it uses an .esm file as it's base, and unchecking these doesn't completely remove them from your savegames. I'm not even sure Wrye Mash would be able to get rid of it to be honest (for that reason).

If not, there are quite a few mods around which will significantly reduce the number of MCA spawning NPCs (either just the bandit/ enemy NPCs, or all types of MCA NPCs), if you don't want to have to start again and lose your current character/ savegames.

Wrye Mash absolutely is able to get rid of orphaned content. After deactivating unwanted mods you just have to perform the following with your save(s) :

- Sync to loadlist
- Repair all

MCA can be a MASSIVE difficulty enhancer, depending on what spawns where and when. I'd recommend not adding it until you've played the vanilla game at least most of the way through, and want to start a fresh game with a higher degree of challenge. A few of the added hostiles can have "uber" equipment, and I had a number of experiences where, if I did manage to beat them and take the equipment, the regular vanilla NPCs were no longer enough of a threat to even consider. There are several reasons why I don't go hunting for Daedric and Glass equipment right off the boat, but with MCA it comes to you, whether you like it or not. I quickly learned to pick out the MCA opponents by their obviously better equipment and take them out first, and just ignore the feeble efforts of the vanilla baddies in the mean time. I finally switched back to the older 4.1 version, which has a few quirks and spoilers of its own, but isn't nearly as "over the top" as the later 5.x releases.

TR is an incredible addition to the game, especially the first map with the side quests. As long as you don't actually go there, it has no effect on the basic game (aside from one little quest hiccup that slipped past), so you can add it right away and just ignore it until you and your character are more familiar with things.

What I ended up doing was uninstalling MCA and installing the Starfire NPC mod. Instead of trying to worry about using Mash I just went ahead and started a new game.

I have noticed that MW is much more difficult than Oblivion, which I'm rather enjoying. Something funny I noticed(I'm sure old news to you guys) I did my first quest for the Fighters Guild and I see where they got the idea in Oblivion for the "rats" quest. I believe even the last name of the lady was the same.

Thank you again for all the helpful comments, it's stuff like this that makes this community great. I'm off to more adventure in MW, It's nice to be playing with the sense of discovery and not having a clue about where anything is in MW.