My advice, do what you want, literally. Use common sense though. If the MQ starts by sending you into a major ruin... So what? I think you can evaluate this situation and make your *own* way.

This is another kind of game, a smart one and demands you to be smart too. It is freedom like no other, there are rules but you can break them. Not everything goes according to plan, that's the beauty of it. It doesn't revolve only around you, you are a part of the game world too. Its reactiveness, just amazing. Take the challenge and it will change as you progress and will change you.

I couldn't believe a game could be like this. Morrowind changed my opinion about games. You should treat it as a world, not a game.

Don't worry. When I first played it, this stuff happened to me too. The joke is not the bridge guy, it is the box. You have no idea but then again, everyone doesn't have the same experiences. I am curious about *your* dwemer puzzle box adventure. Mine took weeks and when I was out of that place, I was a badass.

I was not poisoned by Oblivion, fortunately. Morrowind was my first TES, or RPG to be exact. In Morrowind, my relative low power annoyed me and I decided to grind. Only when I looked around, I thought: (I'm citing, exactly, from ten years ago, word by word):

"Why would you grind in this game? It is filled with places to go, quests to do. All different, varying content. No need for grinding, just pursue what you want and let fate carry you. Explore."

And I did. Best gaming experience I have ever had. Common sense helped me a lot. It was really like a real world.

My first instinct was doing some quests for guilds, I think they are not too hard. Yes, my first encounter against rats was fatal but I felt the problem was rather me. After some creative thinking, I managed to deal with them and by the time I was at second quest, I was already getting more powerful than rats. It was how an experience would work. Second encounter with rats, very different from the first one. That's, progression.

Money comes, quests are really rewarding. Loot is also very rewarding when you take the risk. My MQ adventure had lots of sidetracking. It was an epic adventure, as in epic epic. You need to invest in this game, that's how it is. But it will be most rewarding.

It is a sandbox game, you will figure it out. Just treat it a bit more smarter than your average game.

Really, just go back to playing and come here 6 months later. We can talk then.

what I did to level up, was I did not even do any quests i just explored and killed random small creatures with magic (rats, crib, those worm things, etc.) It will level up your skills a lot. and cast waterwalking whenever near water to get across because that levels whatever skill govers that spell (alteration?) Just walk in a directon doing small tasks for people and level up as you go along. I got morrowind last year for Xbox and svcked at it, then I decided to get it this year from Steam and even though im not playing it very often I find it fun. you can also trry to get the boots of blinding speed to run away from melee people and dodge spells easier. If you play a breton you wont be totally blinded by the boots, the screen will just get dimmer.

I'm not poisoned by anything. Morrowind may be a smart game, but I am a smart person. I have no problem reading the text-based conversations. I can follow the in-game directions and I have no problem with not having a compass. I've read most every lore book in TES, even the Morrowind ones, so I am not a dummy when it comes to the lore either. I just wanted to follow the quests. I just wanted to learn Morrowind's story from the source-game. I did join the Mage's Guild and did the first three quests, but someone said after that the quests got tougher and I can't do tougher yet.

I'm having problems with the combat above anything that isn't a rat or a low-level bandit that I can basically one-shot and not take much damage from. I'm having a lot of trouble moving in combat. In Skyrim, I can dodge spells and swords and run backwards throwing fireballs all with ease, but all of the movements feel really clunky and clumsy to me in Morrowind. I just can't dodge or run or cast spells at anything above a snail's pace.

I keep thinking of the first Dragon Age of all things. The combat was also slow and dice-roll based in that game and at first it was a challenge for me because I had never played anything like it before. But at no point did it ever seem insurmountable and I was able to finish the game on my first character (though I did die spectacularly many times in that game until I got to understand how the tactical combat worked, then the game became a breeze). Maybe it was because the story in DA was moving...it was going somewhere and I was enjoying where it was taking me. Honestly, I don't want to kill rats and pick flowers for my first (how many?) levels. If I wanted to do that, then I would pick flowers and kill rats in Skyrim where it looks much prettier while doing these things. But I do understand what you all are telling me. Morrowind just isn't the type of game I am looking to play I guess.

Maybe you're right and the game isn't for you. If you insist on sticking to the rigid belief that the only way you want to experience the gameworld is through questlines you will find this game incredibly difficult and rather unsatisfying.

Everyone here went through the same things you're experiencing when we started. In my case I was incentivised to train and build my character up in order to be able to see and experience more of the game world. I think it's just a difference in opinions and expectations. What annoys you about this game is the opposite of what puts me off the newer games in the series. For instance, I played through Oblivion in it's entirety at level 2 because the oppressive and overbearing level scaling defeats the point of advancing your character. There is no challenge and no reward. In my opinion, returning to that bridge in a few weeks time and engulfing that annoying mage in flames is far more satisfying than returning in few weeks only to find that he has acquired a set of ebony armour and learned a new set of spells.

Because, in Oblivion, you close the first Oblivion Gate and fight hordes of Dremora Lords at FIRST LEVEL and barely get scratched.... Oblivion levels with you, but Morrowind kicks your butt and says come back later - or, better yet, come up with a strategy.

As stated, there are many ways to solve the problems you're having. One possibility is to go to the Mages Guild and have "easier" versions of your spells made that you can cast successfully, or make changes like having a ranged version of a "touch" spell tailored to your needs. It's actually fairly cheap for low-level spells, not like the hundreds of Septims to learn a spell with the base effect.

Enchantments are another way of dealing magical damage, or casting without casting costs to your own magicka. Unlike in Oblivion, enchanted items will very gradually recharge on their own. OB got it half-right, by adding magicaka regen to the player (although too fast for my liking, and with a shallower "pool"), but then took away enchanted item regeneration. Scrolls are "once and done", but you can sometimes pick up a useful enchanted trinket at a merchant shop or from an Enchanter for anywhere from a handful to hundreds of Septims. You don't gain experience in the spell's school by using an enchantment, but non-weapon enchantments raise your Enchanting skill slightly over time. You CAN make your own enchantments, even at low level with minimal skills, but the odds are astronomically high against success unless you keep the enchantment to a small fraction of a point or have at least moderate skill at it.

As pointed out, a pure Mage is about the toughest character to play in Morrowind, and takes a fair amount of knowledge of the game to deal with the character's weaknesses. You're not that knowledgable yet as a player, playing an inexperienced "Mage wannabe", and neither you nor the character know what's required to survive in that role. A pure Mage is a very viable build, but not an easy one, especially for a new player; the starting hurdles are brutal unless you either tough it out while you learn what works and what doesn't, or use cheats and exploits to get around your severe weaknesses.

Personally, I'd restart with a "semi-mage" character: something along the lines of a Spellsword or Battlemage. It'll be a lot easier to learn the game if you can fight decently with a weapon as well as cast spells.

If you are willing to give it one last go, then do this. Start a new character with alchemy and speechcraft as minors. Go straight to Balmora and talk to Cosades. Do the free stuff thing I told you about and then buy a good set of alchemy apparatus. You can purchase cheap ingredients at the Temple in Balmora so that you don’t have to “pick flowers”. Some of the ingredients never run out and can stack if you buy a bunch and sell them back. Then make potions until you can level up. Making potions to increase alchemy is what you would normally do to increase this skill, so this isn’t like spam casting spells to increase a magic skill. Repeat this until you max alchemy which should make you about level eight. Now take the money you make from your potions and go to every NPC in every town and bribe them until their disposition is 100. For “helping people” they will forever after treat you like a rock star. Even the Ordinators will stop calling you scum. Continue this and your level should be in the high teens by the time you max speechcraft.

So, instead of spending two hours dying and reloading you have maxed two minor skills by actually using them, gained around a hundred health points or so and all the people you helped adore you. Get used to hearing the greeting, “You’re almost a legend around here!” Don’t forget though, that your other skills still svck, but you will have lots more health and an income to buy spells and gear with. Do the Mark/Recall potion thing and you should never die, at least I don’t. So just go wherever you want. Jump off a cliff, slap a Golden Saint or sneak into the Red Mountain. When you get in over your head, just take the Recall potion and boom, you’re safe. Good luck!

Please, don't give up too fast, at least not before taking a close look at this: http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Other.Detail&id=125.

Sidonzo, you misunderstood me. I say that we are conditioned to play these games without using our intelligence. So using common sense never comes to our mind. If you try common sense and I guarantee you will be good. Like the major ruin vs level 1 character. Common sense says you will fail. Best way is to try some adventuring and exploration. Just survive, you will be tough enough to kill that bridge guy in time.

You think from Oblivion that there will be no difference. There will be clearly measurable differences. You are not horrible at this game, your character is. I know it is a bit too hard but that shouldn't stop you since you will get better.

This saddens me... More and more gamers are getting to the point where they prefer a linear game and it's destroying the rpg. Not just TES... Remember the final fantasy series? What it used to be vs what it is now? The newer ones are still time consuming but there's no replay value to them.

I hated Snowy...So much. When I first played this game I had no idea what I was doing. Made a mage character and dove right in. He killed my characters more times than I can count. I remember when I finally understood character creation and made my redguard scout with a decent bonus in longblade... I killed Snowy so hard! I think I jumped up and down on his corpse a couple of times. Jerk.

Anyway, that's not exactly your issue. You wanna kill him as a mage. I would suggest joining more than one guild. The mages guild is okay, but if you want to get nice things without spending too much money, I would suggest House Telvanni, you get some nice rewards for some fairly sedate quests. If you have some cash, buy summon scrolls, or an enchanted item that summons something halfway decent (any of the atronachs, scrolls of summon golden saint or dremora, etc.).

But the fact remains, you will have to either practice and rest, buy training or scrolls/enchantments in order to compete at higher levels. But a little training goes a long way. As you get better, you fail less. When you fail less you level faster. The game just gets better and better after that. Then you can kill Snowy and his ilk with ease.

Don't be afraid to run away. This means physically running or using divine intervention or almsivi intervention. He who casts and runs away...

Rewards are really going to be your friend until you can start owning the people you fight. Unlike Oblivion or Skyrim almost all of your enemies are at a fixed level. And when you're low level, you actually level slower in Morrowind than in those games because you MISS more.

I don't want a completely linear game, but I do want SOME direction. I'm not one to just wander around aimlessly in any game. It has nothing to do with modern gaming; it has everything to do with my personality.

There are some good suggestions here and I will consider most everything. I will start again with the Atronach sign and see if there are easy quests to fulfill in Seyda Neen. I will also try to get a bit higher in the Mage's Guild and hopefully it doesn't get too hard. I'd also love to join House Telvanni, but I was under the impression that is a difficult house to join? I will collect some ingredients to make potions with and maybe kill some critters along the way (Do potions really make you a lot of money at first though? I was under the impression that you failed a lot in the beginning with Alchemy.). I won't grind though. I'm sorry, I just hate grinding with a passion. I don't mind buying training though. What training would be the most useful for my low level mage? And I am going to try pure mage again. If I fail, I fail and I'll know that Morrowind is not for me.

As for spells I should try to buy...ranged destruction spells, right? What about summons for a low level? Are they helpful?

I was just really excited about jumping right in. I know the a lot of the Morrowind story from reading and participating in the forums and I really wanted to experience it for myself. For some reason I'm really fascinated with the Ashlander tribes after what I've read and wanted to go check them out.

If that's the case, why not roll a Dunmer with majors in shortblade and marksman, Lady sign, stealth specialty? This will give you very good starting skills and health so you can learn a little about how to play without worrying about magicka conservation which is the biggest problem for new players.

Also, Dunmer is the main race of Morrowind, most of the lore is about them, the GreatHouses are ruled by them; not really my favorite race to play but it's the native race that takes full advantage of the story.

These are incredibly fun characters to play. One of my favorite builds is a stealth mage, kinda nightblade hybrid. Stealth, shortblade, illusion, mysticsm, alteration, light armor. Worked up things like conjuration, enchant and alchemy with training. Loved it. Great for dungeon diving or whatever.

dest for dmg, illusion to silence casters, resto to heal and what not, conj....eh pure mage it can help but the summons are quite a bit of mana butif ur ever running low summon a low summon ghost hit it with ir fist and just absob the mana from its spells. Once u got some decent mana its easier but I dont think its fits ur style because to be decent at it, ur gonna have to lvl it a bit and if ur just summoning that can mean alot of high mana failures until u get the skill up to like 30s.

I forgot restos gonna be beast because of the ddain health spell.

Do what I do, go to wiki and just look up skills and I stay away from spoilers but look over the spells and which class their in and chose the spells that u think ur gonna use and need and go from there.

But like peoe have said, mages are beast but hard starting out and to survive and get beastly, ur gonna have to get those skill levels up. In this game, ur shown how to cast the spell but how well or if ya do is up to you. Just because someone shows ya math equation or lyrics to a song dosent mean u will always remember the formula or words if ya dont practice them.

It gets tougher as you go. But really, the first few missions in ANY guild are, "hey could you get me this widget/plant/book? Hey, thanks! Have a disproportionate amount of gold/cool enchanted item." Which is EXACTLY what you want to do when your character is green.

Buy summon scrolls wherever you find them if you can afford them. I love them. You'll get some as rewards, which is also great. Someone mentioned enchanted items - you can find lots of these. They're wonderful because they don't have a fail chance. You just cast it and it works until it's depleted.

As for training, train what you want to be good at. If you want to be able to rock the destruction, train it. It starts relatively cheap, but gets expensive quickly the better you are. Once you get your skill into the high 30s, low 40s you'll notice a marked improvement in failure rate (lack thereof). Keep an eye on your cast success ratio in your magic menu. When something is at 100 chance (or even in the high 80s), you're golden. I'm in the mid-50s with my mystcism and have 100 cast chance with a lot of decent spells - most notably the ones I need to GTFO, Mark, recall divine and almsivi intervention. But I can cast reflect, soul trap, and absorb spell easily with a small magicka cost.

If you find that some of the quests are looking hairy, join another guild/faction. The Temple or the Imperial Cult are great for magic-ish characters. Thieves guild isn't too shabby depending on your play style.

And you know what, if you don't like the game style, don't sweat it. Games are supposed to be fun. Morrowind is crunchy at low level. It does get better if you can stick with it past the first few levels. But it isn't a character flaw if you don't like it. I swear, it just appeals to some hidden OCD compulsion I have, so spamming doesn't bother me. That doesn't mean I wasn't frustrated when my character was level 3 and I had to run away from lots of things.

also another thing is pure mage max that int out and get will up. In oblivion the higher in skill ya got the lesser it cost, not the same in this game. Just higher chance of successful cast, also make sure to keep ur fatigue up as that comes into play when casting.

When it comes to TES series. You dont really need to be good at them. You just need to treat it like a story, not a FPS. For example in Skyrim ive played a 'non-violence character'. sure ill attack if provoked. But apart from that i dont go out purpousfully to raid dungeons and kill bad guys.
But this is just my opinion

You don't need to buy a ranged destruction spell. Buy an "on Touch" destruction spell (Arille has them in Seyda Neen, or you can buy them at any Mages Guild, several Telvanni settlements, most Dunmer Temples, most Imperial Cult Shrines, and a few other places), then go to the Balmora Mages Guild and have their resident spellmaker tailor a usable ranged version of it for 10-100 Septims (you can get much higher-priced ones made, but your starting character probably won't be able to cast them). That way, you've got both the Touch and the Ranged versions of it for a few drakes more than the cost of the cheaper one. As long as you know the base effect, you can get custom versions of it made. Casting a weaker 2-4 points for 3 seconds will use less magicka and fail less often than one that delivers an instant 6-12 points, because the added duration costs less than the greater magnitude. The same works for a healing spell. Incidentally, you probably want at least 2 different destruction spells, so you're not throwing Fire at Dunmer or Frost at Nords, who will simply shrug off half of the effects.

The more you understand about the system, the easier it is to work within it and get what works best for you, rather than "make do" with what you're handed. To play a Mage, you've got to "play smarter". Standing there tossing fireballs in a head-on confrontation, then finishing the job with an axe when you run out of magicka, is for Battlemages, not pure Mages. Meeting "Snowy" on the bridge is a perfect example: I can think of about 3 or 4 easy tricks you can pull to avoid getting hit, having him hit his own summoned minions, or otherwise render his attacks relatively harmless (without resorting to Reflect, Absorb, or Shield spells that you don't have a hope of casting at your level), but standing there trading attacks with a somewhat higher level opponent will just get you killed.

Alchemy is expensive to level up by practice if your starting skill level is low. The high rates of failure at starting non-Major skill levels means you'll waste 90% of your ingredients at unsuccessful attempts before you start making serious progress. Once you start getting up to a decent success rate in Morrowind, your skills will advance more rapidly, and you start to think about "over-levelling" and the game getting too easy instead. A few skills, like Alchemy and Sneak, are a pain to self-train from a low level, so you've either got to build the character with them already at a passable level (Major skill), "grind" them up with a painful number of failures, or else pay for training. Incidentally, the cost of training a Miscellaneous skill from 5 is fairly cheap. The cost goes up rapidly as your skill does, so it rarely pays to pay for training in your major skills unless you've got Septims to burn (which you eventually will, but by then you won't need the training). I never pay to train Major skills, and rarely pay for minors, but often bring Miscellaneous skills up to a self-trainable level through paid training.

Not sure if it's been mentioned yet, but if you're on PC there are plenty of mods you can use that will make playing a mage easier without eliminating challenge.

The beauty of Morrowind is the sense of accomplishment. You start out being able to hit/kill almost nothing or hardly cast spells. The very first cave near Seyda Neen is almost impossible for level 1 characters. The game can be brutal. But don't worry about quests so much. Just save often, go out and just DO things, and experience will come. When you get to the point where Snowy can't even make a dent in you, and you swat him down with one hit....will make up for all the trials and tribulations getting there. Almost the first five or so quests from each major guild are also very easy and good for low level characters. And in Morrowind, you can level up however you want, and not have to be worried about being gimped by the leveling system later on, like in Oblivion. In Morrowind, the monsters do NOT level up with you. What you see is what you get. It's simple and beautiful.

you keep saying that YOU'RE no good at the game.

that tells me your failing to grasp the primary principle that needs to govern your gaming approach: it's your character that's not good.

you have to build up the characters skills. and, you need to do it against enemies that are low level. you need to make some gold and spend it on training. you're low level character can't just take off into the wilderness and expect to live. have plenty of healing. run away when you must.

in morrowind, you are playing your character. your personal 'gaming skills' are secondary to the characters stats.

I have to ask... Why does it have to be a pure mage? A pure mage is by far the hardest type of character to establish in Morrowind, and it's almost impossible to complete either Tribunal or Bloodmoon with that type of build.

Just as a couple of alternative examples... A Redguard warrior-type with an enchanted longsword and the Lady sign will kick butt. A Dunmer light-armored nightblade-type with the Atronach sign is also a great choice.

Actually after reading more of what people have said about playing a "semi-mage", this is exactly the type of character I have decided to make. I do love playing Dunmer, I just wish that every other Dark Elf didn't treat your character like crap at the beginning, but oh well. That's just the way the Dunmer are, I suppose.

Being treated like crap in the game is one of its greatest charms. Eventually, you earn the respect and adoration of even the most hateful Dunmer in Morrowind. It's a great feeling to be called "clan-friend" of the various tribes.