Hello. I have many questions about Morrowind, which I recently got the GOTY edition of(all DLC). Firstly: are there any very important things one should do at the very start of the game? Such as a very important skill you should make major, a very useless skill you should not make major? I'd hate to discover this 40 hrs into the game as I did with Oblivion...

Second: should I wait until I'm a higher level to do the DLC? With Skyrim I regret doing the Dragonborn DLC so early.

Third: this is more lore related - the architecture of Vvardenfell, what is it supposed to be? It doesn't seem like regular stone buildings, doesn't seem elven either...are all the cities supposed to be covered in ash? It's original, which is cool, but I've never seen anything like it in any other game, is it some building style unique to Dunmer or something?

Lastly: how much depth is there to the magic system? Such as spell making? Should I invest in playing a full time mage?

1: You can major in any skills, but it's recommended that you have some combat ones in there. You should use weapons (or spell types) that you have leveled high or have majored or minored, because you'll miss most shots with other weapons. You should stay in the starting town and the surrounding coast for as long as you can, but you don't have to.

2: Absolutely. The recommended starting levels for Triburnal and Bloodmoon are 20 and 25, respectively.

3: The buildings aren't covered in ash. The Dunmer architecture is very unique, which is one of the reasons I love this game.

As for your last question I've never played as a full time mage, but the magic system is a lot more deep than Skyrim and Oblivion, from what I've seen.

You'll "discover" Tribunal and Bloodmoon pretty quickly. NPCs will tell you about Solstheim (that's Bloodmoon), but just ignore it for now. Tribunal is a bit trickier, because you'll be randomly attacked in your sleep (good idea to save before sleeping). Just talk to a guard about the attack, and then go see the person they tell you about in Ebonheart, and talk to him. That stops the attacks (you can then forget about going to the Mainland until later.)

Magic is very deep in the game, with more effects and more ways of using it. It's a trickier learning curve, because you don't regenerate magicka over time in Morrowind, and you can't cast while holding a weapon. On the other hand, there are "cast on use" enchanted items, which do regenerate, and which can be used to cast spells that would otherwise be too difficult for your character.

I'd recommend starting with more of a fighter character, giving him/her a major weapon skill, and a major armor skill. Then use that type of weapon and armor. Always watch your fatigue; if you go into a fight exhausted, you won't be able to hit anything. Long Blade is an excellent choice. You can pretty quickly acquire a weakly enchanted sword if you explore around the starting village, and there's a guy upstairs in the inn who can sell you more training in the skill if you need it.

Don't be in a rush to leave Seeda Neen. There are some quests you can stumble onto, which will help to give you a head start with cash and some experience.

The architecture varies greatly within vvanderfell too. If you go to ald-ruhn, a typical redoran town, you encounter homes made out of shells of ancient crabs. Caldera, an imperial town consist of stone houses. If you go to Tel Mora, a telvanni city, you see only mushrooms. Each town has different architecture based on its political control. Same is true for trees too. You see different types of trees in BitterCoast compared to WestGash or even Ascandian Isles.

Mages have tough time surviving at the start, but once you become competent in magic skills, the game becomes too easy, unless you go to Solstheim, where even normal critters have reflect, which is a diadvantage to mages.

Spellmaking is very flexible. You can create custom spells which paralyze, damage health, absorb attributes and burn your opponents with single spell. But you may have to have high willpower to successfully cast spells.

Thanks for the replies. Yes, I noticed that my magicka doesn't regenerate and died a bit inside. Very cool about the architecture. It seems I underestimated the depth of a 11 year old game.

So I guess if magic is weak at the start I could make a Breton with magic majors except sacrifice one slot for long blade?

Most TES fans consider Morrowind to have more depth and Lore than the newer games.
This is mainly for two reasons:
- With written dialog instead of voice acting, a huge amount of history and information can be fit into the game.
- Morrowind is much more of an exotic land than Cyrodiil and Skyrim.

http://morrowind.inventivegamer.com/tools/chargen/ is great for helping create a character. It lets you customize and see your build, before you go in-game.
It seems to be down at the moment, but that should be temporary.

Alchemy is a very useful skill to have as a major. As in Oblivion, you can turn cheap ingredients into potions that sell for a considerable markup. One of these potions restores magicka, so you won't be missing the regenerating magicka of Oblivion. Enchanted items are much more powerful than in Oblivion, so this also makes a great major skill. Conjuration and illusion are as useful for a mage in Morrowind as in Oblivion. A good weapon skill would fill out your majors.

Morrowind has a lot of content that should keep you busy, so don't rush into the expansions.

Morrowinf architecture is a mixture. The Dunmer have everything from yurts to giant mushrooms. In addition, the Empire has some stone outposts and a Nord village also exists.

Good luck!

As long as you pick a melee weapon (and then use that weapon type), an armor class (Light, Medium, or Heavy), and then some sort of ranged attack (either Marksman or a school of magic with a damaging effect), you're probably good to go. A fighter is a lot easier to play at the start, until you learn more of the various options and details. Mages can be incredibly powerful, but are difficult to play for a beginner, particularly at low character levels.

Be aware that you can only advance an Attribute by a single point per level unless you increase one or more skills associated with that Attribute, giving you a "multiplier". That means, if you don't use either Medium or Heavy armor, or fight with a Spear, you can't increase your Endurance by any respectable amount, and will end up shy on hitpoints much later in the game. Morrowind's far more relaxed leveling and near-total absence of scaling makes it easier than in the later games to play at your own pace and simply ignore the whole level-up multiplier thing, but it can be powergamed, which means that many players can't help but fixate on it. The GCD mod (or other alternatives like MADD) can make it all happen a lot more naturally, invisibly in the background as you play.

Speechcraft is somewhere between "useful" and "vital" in a number of places, but a bottle of Telvanni Bug Musk (to increase your Personality attribute temporarily) or other magical/alchemical fortification of skills or attributes can often bypass the issue.

Alchemy or Soultrapping/Enchanting can be easily abused, but I consider that "cheating", since they can make money essentially meaningless right from the start. Unless you want a walkover with no real challenge, I'd be careful with some of the advice about them. In moderation, they can make for a fun game, though.

Some skills, like Marksman or Sneak, can be difficult at first to succeed at, making it extremely difficult to self-train unless you know how to use the system. At high levels, they're frighteningly effective, especially in combination. I'd recommend either taking them as Majors or not at all, because there's little point to anything in the middle.

The lack of restoration of magicka is a problem, although I think they went to the opposite extreme in the later games. Morrowind gives you a reasonably deep "pool" compared to the later games, but it only refills when you sleep, use potions to restore it, or absorb spells (if you have a particular birthsign or certain spell effect active at the time). The deeper pool at least allows you to cast a reasonable number of spells in a situation before you run out. Spellmaker NPCs at any Mages Guild or a few other places can create VERY inexpensive custom versions of any spell you already know (often for under 20 Septims), so you can have easier to cast "novice" spells tailored for you. Those will burn considerably less magicka, in general, yet can be quite useful. For instance, the "standard" healing spell will restore about as many points as you have of health, and chew up close half your magicka to cast (or more likely fail to cast). Most of the time, you'll only need 5-10 points of healing, so a "novice" spell that only burns a single point of magicka to gradually restore 1 point per second for 3 or 4 seconds is a lot more efficient, because duration is generally "cheaper" than magnitude. You may have to cast it two or three times, so you'll get two or three times the training, compared to successfully casting an overpowered and difficult spell once, and STILL use far less magicka to do so. 10-15 seconds of Waterwalk will get you across most rivers and streams, etc., so why pay the casting cost for 60 seconds worth?

Morrowind gives you several answers to almost any situation, but it rarely tells you how to handle it. For a new player who doesn't know the available options, it can be frustratingly difficult, but an experienced player can walk into the same situation and generally know how to deal with the problem using the available resources. The deeper you dig into the game, the more you keep finding and learning. I'm still learning and finding new things after close to a decade of fairly heavy play, and there are still a couple of factions I haven't even joined yet.

1. Obviously, you're going to want to the skills you use most in the Major and Minor skillset (NOT Misc skills), because these are the ones that level you up as you improve those skills. You'll want to have one or two weapon types in there for offense, an armor type (heavy, medium or light) for defense, either security or alteration or both (for the many locked containers you'll run into).

2. If you have the DLC installed and intend to put it off until later, don't worry. DLC content will likely find you VERY early in the game. Beef up your attack and defense early. If you don't follow the trail of this attacker, this will continue happening occasionally.

3. The architecture, depending on the ruin, is either daedric or dwemer. Daedric is dark stone with cryptic angles and symmetry. Dwemer ruins are kind of tan or orange in color and you may see domes or spires among the ruin. Many of the House dunmer building styles are... yes, dunmer building styles, unique to the volcanic island of Vvardenfell and parts of mainland Morrowind. Then there's the nomadic ashlanders, who live in tents called yurts.

4. The magic system is the deepest of any of the modern TES games, although it's less graphical, of course. Unlike Oblivion and Skyrim however, your magicka recovers very slowly. If anything you have to sleep or rest to even get it to recover noticeably.

The only quibble I have with your post is here. Magicka does not recover at all unless you rest, or replenish it either by absorbing magic (via enchantment, birthsign, or spell effect), or by restoring it (generally via alchemy.)

I wonder if he was thinking of enchantments?

Could be. Also, I know that some mods change magicka so that it restores as in Oblivion. I sometimes forget the changes that my mods make; it's easy to do.

He must be using a mod for I know GCD allows magicka regeneration.

From the GCD readme,"Magicka regenerates by default in GCD (rate based on magic skills and willpower)".

If you want to be able to be a jack of all trades then having a skill that effects each attribute in your majors and minors will allow your character to increase all their statistics... aside from luck. Don't be too afraid of having a more difficult time and then having to find ways to work with those limitations. Using the GCD character mod may give you an easier experience if you plan on playing a "pure" archetype though. Play for a little while to get the hang of the game would likely be your best bet.

Are you talking about the addons or the dlc? Tribunal and Bloodmoon were addons. Wait a while before going into them. There were a set of smaller dlc inclusions also:

Adamantium Armor
Area Effect Arrows
Bitter Coast Sounds
Entertainers
Helm of Tohan
LeFemm Armor
Master Index
Siege at Firemoth

There's a mixture of different building materials and styles. Explore and enjoy!

Magic can be a really rough ride if you play without a regen mod. It's still an interesting experience but depending on your preferences the hassle can make the rewards negligible. Spellmaking, enchantment and the variety or spells are all good. It is usually worth having one backup weapon skill to use alongside them though. Play for a little while to get a feel for the game. Then start on your main playthrough.

Best of luck!

I put a good few hours into the game yesterday. I did make a mage character with longblade as one non-mage major skill. Like you guys said, the large magicka pool tends to be fine and then I just have to rest to get it back so it's not all that bad. The quests however, ugh. They reek of fetchedness. The first few in Seyda Neen were good, the one regarding the murder of the tax man and the one with the guy who stores his cash, but then I went to join the mages' guild and essentially 3 blatant fetch quests back to back. I'll have to put more hours into it before I make a solid opinion on it, though.

And yeah, the custom spells are dirt cheap. I got a 30-60 damage fire spell for like 20 gold

Well, look at it that way - an outlander, probably wearing some rags, would not receive "save the world, gain fame" quests right form the start, instead will be given some easy jobs. Most factions start slow, you build your reputation, gradually advance in ranks, and later quests become harder, longer and more rewarding.

Tip - you need to actually be good in faction's favoured skills to advance to higher ranks. There's now way for non-magic character to easily become Archmage like in Oblibion and Skyrim. Also, you usually don't have to complete all quests in a certain faction to advance further, and there are multiple questgivers per each faction.

Have fun and don't hesitate to ask more questions!

1: It depends on your class. For example, if you're being a mage, there is no reason to level security or sneak, because you will have spells for both of those (Open and Chameleon, respectively). Medium armor is generally regarded as being really pointless, regardless of class, as the best light armor is both lighter, and offers a higher defense rating than the best medium armor. Mysticism also has very limited usefulness (though it does come in handy on occasion). Alchemy is extremely useful to have, regardless of class, as well.

2. Bloodmoon can be done whenever. Tribunal is meant to be done after the completion of the Morrowind main quest.

3. Depends on where you're talking. Morrowind is dominated by "Great Houses," three of which are prominant in the game: the Hlaalu, Redoran, and Telvanni (House Indoril also makes an appearance). Each of these houses has a style of architecture associated with them, it's an easy way to tell which house controls the city you are in. The first major city you'll probably see is Balmora, which is Hlaalu's capitol. I think the buildings are supposed to be made of like mud bricks, or something, most of Hlaau's holdings are near water, so that would make sense. You can see house Redoran's architecture in their capitol, Ald Ruhn. Their buildings are made from the carapaces of large arthropods (also what Chitin armor is made from). Telvanni structures are grown, rather than built, so their buildings resemble large plants or mushrooms, their capitol and largest city is Sadrith Mora. Also to be found on Morrowind are several towns/cities controlled by the Empire, and feature their standard gray stone brick motif. Vivec, the largest city on the island, seems to most closely resemble Hlaalu style architecture, but he guards in the city are of House Indoril.

4. The spell making system is awesome. Being a mage can be pretty rough early on, though. The magic bar doesn't restore itself, so you need to either be sleeping after every fight (in which case you'll be getting killed by assassins constantly) or be carrying a butt-load of potions with you all the time (leaving little room for loot). It's also worth noting that the maximum mana you can have naturally is 400(?) as an Altimer, born under the Apprentice, with 100 intelligence. This can be increased dramatically with the use of potions, but just keep that in mind when making spells, it's really disappointing to make a awesome spell, and then realize you can only cast it once per fight because you made the AoE a little too big and it costs too much mana.

Yeah, the early quest from the Balmora Mages Guild hall are rather bland in and of themselves but if you look beyond the quests and into the motives of the quest givers you'll find that the hall is a buzzing hive of conniving back-stabbing honeybees. Not only are they sending you on basic delivery and strong arm jobs they are testing your moral fiber. Are you straight forward, upright and honest in your dealings or are you simply a knife in the dark willing to get what you want the fast and dirty way?

How Marayn Dren manages to put up with them I'll never know.

The initial Mages Guild quests are 100% simple "fetch", given by an alchemist-in-training who simply needs ingredients. They prompt you to visit certain areas, and to learn your way around the relatively safe starting region, but not much more. Many of the guilds have one or two of these at the beginning, but the MG has a lot more of them. You'll probably run into a few "modified" fetch quests somewhere in the game, where you're told to do something OR kill the person indicated. You can simply nuke them to complete the quest, or use Speechcraft, Bribery, or other means to get what you were primarily sent to do, for a better reward. There are also some far more complex and/or moral-dilemma type quests, most with more than one way to complete them and more than one possible end result, with deeper implications down the road. Meanwhile, you're just some random guy off the street doing a simple job for spare change, not some "save the world" hero. The "epic" parts come later.

Yeah, a few later quests weren't so bad. Plus I installed the morrowind Overhaul so it's looking a lot better now.

A question about speechcraft though: I take it it's not like Oblivion where one of the 3 options (taunt, intimidate, admire) will work on them? Whenever I try any of those or all of those it just results in them getting mad and the disposition going down. Nor will they take my money as bribes

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Speechcraft some info about Speechcraft and Persuasion options. The higher you Speechcraft skill, your current Fatigue (and probably Luck, to some extent) the higher your chance to success at Persuasion.

Master Index is really useful even apart from travelling, to find decent stuff at some of the locations you are pointed to. If I remember right there was daedric gear in the same place as one of the propylon keys.

I see now. That's odd how fatigue affects these things. Is this their way of forcing you to walk? If I'm tired I can't talk well or barter well?

It's not about forcing you to walk, it's about managing how you spend your fatigue in combat.
Keeping your fatigue up is how you stay prepared for anything.

Low fatigue doesn't affect bartering, but it does affect your chance of successful Speachcraft.

Nope. Fatigue does affect bartering. I just checked it. Bartering with only Half fatigue and bartering with full fatigue. There was substantial difference in prices.