Well, as I'm sure you've surmised from my title... I am Marukhati and I am a cheater.

It's been a slippery slope ever since I first learned that video games had cheat codes. I was too young to handle such a groundbreaking trade secret. Fantasies of being able to play unhassled by the once-great terrors that were traps, pits, henchmen, and bosses paraded through my dreams, a fantastical invention that would soon lead to my inevitable doom.. When I got Morrowind so very long ago, I was glad that there was a set of codes for the Xbox that did not grant godmode, but discreetly supplied a constantly regenerating stream of health, mana, or fatigue as this semi-godmode eased my conscience, I could still be killed. However, after giving away my xbox and getting Morrowind for the PC, I have decided to break the nasty habit cold turkey, as I did with Oblivion, once.

The thing is, Oblivion is much easier to play without cheats, and I have no idea how to go about playing Morrowind without my self-destructive set of friendly codes. I just want to know basics, how many health potions should I keep? What kinds of fights should I avoid? As a cheater, I could get away with making ridiculous classes and still succeeding, what are some fun and usefully-playable class types? If you have any more gems of wisdom to contribute, please do so as I am all ears.

With love from an addict
-Maruhkati.

Oblivion is often criticized as having fewer armor and weapon skills compared to Morrowind - it's a fair criticism but it does make TES IV more balanced. With Morrowind you can take a single armor skill and a single weapon skill (say, heavy armor and longblade) and be a very successful warrior. Granted you'll lack versatility but you've got your meat and potatoes with just two skills out of the ten you can take. (And since you're focusing on two skills instead of four or five you'll advance much faster than the more general warrior too boot.)

My suggestion is to put a lot of thought in to making your class realistic. When in comes to combat I usually take two related armor skills (heavy/medium, medium/light, light/unarmored) and two related weapon skills (like long blade and short blade). I usually find I prefer the breadth of options which keeps me from maxing out too quickly - and if I don't the unused class skill will slow my leveling down.

I'd suggest not taking both Acrobatics and Athletics as class skills, one is fine but when combined you'll level far too quickly.

This is the easiest starting routine ever and takes me about 6 hours of real time to get going.
Choose whatever you like for a character, just make sure that you have alchemy, mercantile and speechcraft as minor skills. Go straight to Balmora on the strider after you leave the Census and Excise Office. Join the Mages’ and Fighters’ Guilds. Each of these guilds has a chest of free items for new members that you can take and sell. More chests are located in these guilds at Ald’ruhn, Sadrith Mora and Vivec’s Foreign Quarter. Use the Guild Guide to get around. This should get you about 5k drakes to start out with if you sell most of the stuff to the Creeper in Caldera. While you’re in Caldera, buy the Amulet of Recall from Verick Gemain. Then buy an apprentice mortar and pestle, a recall potion and a mark potion from Nalcarya in Balmora.
Next go to the Mages’ Guild in Balmora and stand between the Guild Guide Masalinie Merian and Ajira so that you could activate either one without moving. Then drink the mark potion. This is your rally point. In an emergency, you can use the amulet or potion to recall here and use the Guild Guide to flee.
Now go to Dralval Andrano in the Temple in Balmora. Overstock his supply of marshmerrow and wickwheat until he has hundreds of each on hand. Buy all that you can afford and use the amulet of recall to return to the Mages’ Guild. Make potions until you can level up. (If your character’s menu gets filled with hundreds of single potions, just activate Ajira and they will combine into groups.) Drop whatever you must to be able to walk and rest in one of the beds there for one hour. Then repeat this until you max alchemy. You can gain up to eight and a half levels this way in one game day. Trade some of these potions to Ra’Virr in Balmora for Fiend Tantos. Sell potions and FT’s all around Vvardenfell using the Guild Guide. You can make 10k in Balmora alone each day if you visit all of the trader types. Recall to the Mages’ guild and use speechcraft on Ajira by bribing him over and over with 10 drakes. Again increase one level and then rest for an hour. Do this until you max speechcraft for up to another eight and a half levels. Finally, use the mercantile skill on Ajira by buying and then reselling one item for a few drakes profit over and over until you can level up. Rest and repeat this until you max this skill.
This should take your character to 26th level with 200-300 health. You have a steady source of income from alchemy and you can use the Amulet of Recall to escape any bad situation. If you take one weapon, one armor and block as majors, then you should have a decent character.

When playing, I'd recommend identifying the hardest to upgrade skills and not put them as major/minor ones. These include athletics/acrobatics, Enchant (if you don't plan on making/recharging enchantments, using pre-enchanted items only would take forever), Armorer, Ect. I tried with several skills like these, and was a month's time in gametime to only about level 4. Plus most of your misc skills level quickly so you may lose plenty of stat points later you could have kept.

Although you can carefully plan your skill progression, it can be annoying. I've gone to a mod that is 'causal leveling', even if i get a few less points during leveling, i am much more relieved on playing it, and not avoiding gaining skills outside of my target.

Surviving early on, if you happen to have enchant at 25+, then it is your friend. Although you'll fail quite a lot, get a dozen something petty soulgems, and try capturing souls, get a few pieces of your clothing as 'restore health's' (1-2 enchantment points (11--20 healing no variance) is all you'll likely be able to enchant. Ever. Unless you push your enchant up with training or lots of recharging/ect). This will minimize requiring large amounts of healing potions outside of battle, and even during battle can be used as a fast temporary healing method. Having an entire set of clothing with healing (10-20 charge points each) can keep you alive during battles where you really need a health boost, but can't be used in certain scenarios. Also highly recommended, 1-2 points of bound weapon-of-your-choice, either on-strike or 'on use', your choice, gives you quick access to a temporary weapon (19 seconds i think?) that gives you a boost to your skill for a bit. Doesn't weigh anything, and don't need to repair it. (can't sell, drop, or unsummon it for it's duration).

Also suggested, if you can, enchant clothing with 'feather' (if you have a mod that makes it worth it, if not use 'fortify strength instead'), set it to about 5-10 seconds, and get the ability as high as you can before maxing the item's points out. This will help you if your just around the corner and need to get somewhere to repair/sell/drop off your stuff and don't want to drop a whole lot and make trips. Also helps avoid using your strength boosting alcoholic drinks till you really need them.

Several towers in balmora, peligad, have areas that have very poor security, you can steal weapons/armor and go sell them for quick cash. Don't steal from a merchant, unless you never intend to sell item X to them. This helps avoid being caught as a thief. Remember, items that are negative (automatically restocks) if you steal them all, then they never restock, ever. And if you steal 100 arrows down to 99, then if you want to buy them later on, buy them 1 at a time, since you can't sell them back to boost it. Although you could hide and put arrows back in, but it becomes tedious after a while, losing money over and over again.

BTW: If you take from the chests at the fighter/mage guilds, don't take all of them. If you do they don't re-spawn.

Healing potions, i say try to have 10 on hand. 3-4 cheap/bargain, and 4-6 standard healing. If you cast spells (with no magicka restore mod) probably 4-8 of those as well. You may do a lot of sleeping to restore magicka. If you got the alchemy skills and equipment, and happen to have the ingredients (expensive) you can make your own that can be halfway useful. I think i've gotten 25+ for like 15 seconds before. Try and have a 'restore strength' potion on you, and if you can, a scroll of 'divine intervention' and 'Alimexia intervention', these can pull you out of battle if you need it real quick.

For quests, i suggest taking up 2-4 guilds, and doing the jobs until it gets too hard or you can't complete it, then go to the next one. Cycling through them you'll get skills trained, and some coin too. And later on, you'll be able to access certain services (spells for example) when you reach certain ranks. Several quests tend to go in the same direction so you can do them all together when you head out.

In vanilla morrowind, i never worried about my fatigue, sure it made my hits/spells failure a bit higher, but it wasn't a huge deciding factor. If you do alchemy, restore fatigue potions are the easiest/cheapest things to make. Cost 5-10 drakes for both ingredients and a little time.

If you use 'Area Effect arrows' official mod (or was it MCA?), be careful about entering tombs till your level 4+, a skeleton archer can kill you fast with a random type of magical arrow.

I guess from there, learn as you go and be careful.

Well, playing for six years with cheats helped me a tad more than I expected, my first PC character is not as great a failure as I had predicted. I made a medium armor short blade/marksman scoutlike character with just a hint of restoration, alteration, and alchemy (which I have never used, could someone explain it to me?)

Despite the alchemy hitch, I'm doing fairly well. The one thing I'm not used to is having enemies that beat me. It dents the pride at first, a bandit with a warhammer pounding the ever-loving [censored] out of you, but I'm learning and having fun. Thanks for the helpful tips.

The way alchemy works (that i understand) is once you have the equipment, you can have up to 4 ingredients for your potions. If two ingredients share an effect (feather, restore fatigue Ect) then that becomes an effect the potion finally becomes. This includes both good and bad effects. You can make a restore health damage intelligence potion if you use the wrong ingredients.

You can't tell what all the effects are on all 4 levels until you level it up a bit. Sometimes you'll only know the first 3 or less. The rest of it is, try making the potions, and you will fail quite a bit before you get successes. Most potions you will make will be mediocre, but slightly better than you could buy for standard level. Due to the price of most ingredients and the failure rate, alchemy would be best for cheap ingredients/potion combination, or if you have a high alchemy (60+).

Alchemy:

First of, your potions will be better the better your gear, the higher your intelligence, and the higher your alchemy skill is. But even a novice at alchemy can make quite valuable potions with master or grandmaster gear.

To use alchemy, you collect a lot of ingredients. Use "The Alchemist's Formulary" for the first couple of basic recipes, if you want to; but feel free to make "useless, but valuable" junk potions as well. They also level your alchemy skill, and you can sell them afterwards to a merchant whom you don't like on a personal level. Myself, I like to sell my Drain Fatigue, Drain Speed and Drain Personality junk potions to the barkeep of Balmora's Council Club (or whatever the name of the Camonna Tong pub is.)

In Morrowind, contrary to Oblivion, your ingredients have all 4 effects unlocked, no matter what your alchemical skill is. So, even if you don't know it yet by hovering the mouse over it, a Saltrice will do Restore Health and a Comberry will Restore Magicka.

So, what you need to figure out are combinations of ingredients that share the same effect: Saltrice + Marshmerrow = Restore Health potion, for instance.

You see that there is a common effect by looking at the output screen of the alchemy screen. If it tells you that you are about to create a "Potion of Restore Health", then you're all good. If it, on the other hand, tells you to "Please insert a name for your potion", then the ingredients don't share a common effect and you would only waste the ingredients by brewing the potion. So, don't do that.


What you probably really want to have are Restore Health potions, Restore Magicka and Restore Fatigue potions perhaps as well.

Restore Health: Wickwheat, Saltrice, Marshmerrow, Corkbulb
Restore Magicka: Comberry, Void Salts, Frost Salts(?), Daedra Hearts
Restore Fatigue: Saltrice, Crab Meat, Hound Meat, Eggs

The UESP Wiki does have all the ingredients and all their effects, if you don't feel like doing your own research.

MGE has the option to disable the console. That way you will not be able to cheat even when tempted. (except for in-game cheats, like abusing Alchemy)

Hey, I remember using that cheat when I played on the Xbox back then.

I wouldn't disable the console though, sometimes NPCs get stuck or you encounter bugs that cannot be fixed without it.