Alright, I'm trying to get into Morrowind, but all parties seem to agree that mods improve the experience. I, however, am completely inept, and even the long, detailed tutorials aren't of much use to me here. I have the Steam version of Morrowind installed, and I've gotten as far as disabling Steam Community In-Game. Other than that, I feel like I'm trying to perform brain surgery. I've checked out the pinned Recommendations for New Players thread at the top of this board, and I'm currently stuck trying to install the standalone version of Wyre Mash, whatever it is. Apparently I need it, but the instructions say that I need to extract it to Morrowind's data files...which I cannot find. I know, it's really stupid, but I can't seem to find the directory anywhere in my damn system. The most I can get is the menu that has the data files option, but that doesn't help me. To be perfectly honest, I don't think I've ever even extracted something into something else, so this is quite new to me. I'd appreciate any little bit of insight, because actually putting mod files into the game seems a lot easier than the step I'm currently stuck on, and I'd like to get there.

I seem to have found the data files.

Edit: Okay, Wrye Mash seems to be working, it's in the Morrowind directory where it looks like it should be.

Well, why do you need Wrye Mash? You can get by without using it. If you're wanting to keep things really organised then it'll be useful. If you don't mind things getting a bit cluttered you'll be ok. I've got over 270 mods running and all I'm using Wrye Mash to do is redate .esp's which can be done in other ways and occasionally reassign master files.

Steam is a nuisance for many reasons. The directory structure is only one of them. One thing that can be really handy to do when installing mods is to have a shortcut to the Morrowind directory on your desktop. I know it sounds like a pretty obvious thing but it can make things so much easier.

Installing mods is generally pretty easy. The only thing that might trip you up a little is registering .bsa files which will contain the data for a mod and its resources as opposed to them being extracted into the Data Files folder. In a lot of cases the mod comes bundled with a bsa registering utility.

What kind of things are you wanting to install and run? In quite a few cases you can skip a number of things.

Well, as of now I have better faces, better bodies, better clothes, and I'm going for better weapons. I also have the code patch. I'm generally just trying to tidy up the game and give it a bit of a face lift; I don't want to replace the way it looks and feels, just enhance it. My laptop can just barely handle it as it is, so I don't want to tax it with huge mods.

I am very confused as to why certain aspects of the mods aren't working, though. Better faces works fine, but the additions for Bloodmoon and Tribunal better faces won't function; the game won't start with them on, it says pretty much ever sound file isn't found when I try to run it. It's the same with a couple of other patch mods I have, when I click them on, the game won't start.

I'm not half as confused as I was, though. Wrye Mash isn't exactly doing anything to help, I might ditch it. My OP seems silly now.

EDIT: Okay, I got rid of Wrye Mash and turned on all the mods I had off from the data files screen, and it's all cheeky. Working fine. I don't think WM was the problem, Idk what was up, but it's fine now apparently.

May be permissions problem. Try running the game as admin.