I've played Morrowind without a lot of mods, but now that I'm replaying it I really want to change a couple of things.
I am however playing Morrowind on my "secondary system". Though it has an acceptable dual core engine and sufficient RAM, the graphics card isn't really great. I'm afraid MGE is out of the question. I still want to pretty things up though, so if someone could give me a few pointers, I would really appreciate it. First of I need a head- and hairreplacer. I need one that goes along with BB and stays true to the original Bethesda heads.
I was also thinking about downloading Better Clothes and some high polygon armour replacers, but I'm not sure how much that would stress my graphics card. Anyone who can help me with that?
Basically any high res texture pack that won't blow up my poor little computer and stays true to the originals (I really don't wan't to have pink imperial castles or something else weird) would be nice.

Then there are a few things that always bothered me which I'd like to change/add. I hope someone can help me with this.
-First of, I want darker caves. I really liked it in Bloodmoon where you had to enter a cave which was actually pitch black if you didn't carry a torch. That's how caves are supposed to be after all! Then torches acutally have a use. I would prefer that Dwemer ruins stayed well lit, since they seem to have some pretty good light bulbs in there, still burning after all those years.

-An upgrade for the slaves you can buy in Tel Aruhn. On some playthroughs I just wanted to put them in my home as a nice servant, instead of releasing them, but they kept following me. I found a couple of mods for this, but I'm not sure what the best one is. Does anyone here have some experience with them?

-Anything that will help me decorate a place without using the construction set. I really like the idea of bookrotate, but that only solves the problem for books, not for anything else.

-Is there a mod that expands upon the official entertainers mod? A bard needs to travel from town to town, not stay in the same place every day!

If anyone could help me with any of this, I would be really gratefull!

I'll take a stab at a few of these:


You should be able to get away with Better Bodies, Better Clothes, and a Head Replacer of your choice (there are a couple, so take a peek for the best personal mileage). Probably just don't want to go crazy with textures if you have an older machine - but you can still get away with quite a bit here.


Personally, I like http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=5630 for this aspect - make slaves in the game more dynamic in general.


Yep, Adul made http://adul.net/index.php?p=dl_mwmods_entertainers_expanded and it works a treat - even has little chance of conflict.

MGE: might still be worth a shot. Morrowind is usually CPU-limited, and most MGE functions stress the graphics card more than the CPU. Which means: Usually Morrowind doesn't utilize the graphics card fully, and MGE may be able to tap into that unused power. What are your CPU and graphics card specs?

Regarding the graphics replacers, my info is probably way out of date ... I'm using Visual Pack XT and Tarnsman's THE Head Replacer, but there are lots of good graphics replacers around.

Darker Caves: Check out TLM (The Lighting Mod), it does make the caves darker (among other things). Lights 300 was another popular lighting mod, and also makes the caves very dark, but the coloured lights (red candles emitting red light etc.) aren't everyone's taste. Also, the Morrowind Code Patch has an option to change the lighting - the consensus seems to be that it makes the game look better, but caves may be "too dark" - but that may be exactly what you want.

Slaves: Seen several mods improving them, but have little personal experience. If you want to free them, then Nevena's Twin Lamps is a good choice. If you just want to order them around, then there are several mods which give them companion AI.

Decoration: Check Decorator+ and Improved Positioning (check for dependencies, I recall some MWSE requirements). Otherwise, there are item type-specific solutions like Book rotate, Weapon Rotate, and Happy Plates. You'll probably want to use Book Rotate in any case because it lets you switch between opened and closed books, which none of the other item rotation mods can do.

Entertainers: Entertainers Expanded (by Adul) seems to be what you want.

You should be able to find all of these mods by searching in Google, Fileplanet, or Yacoby's search engine. Keep in mind that I was out of the loop for a while though, so there may be newer mods which fit your descriptions even better, but which I simply don't know yet.

The http://www.gamesas.com/?showtopic=994490&hl= is a good way to make your decision.

Better Clothes (and More Better Clothes) should have no impact on performance at all.
High-poly armour will have a big impact on performance (like Hedgehogs,) but if you just want to improve the textures of the originals you should notice no impact on performance. (Darknut has http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=5882he also did weapons.)

Well, basically no textures will slow your game down... unless they are ridiculously huge, which very, very few mods have done so far.
High-poly count, crowds of NPCs, and heavy scripting is what slows you down, not textures.
Feel free to use any popular texture pack that you like.

Sensei's The Lighting Mod, available in http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=609 or http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=608 forms.
If you don't mind running http://sourceforge.net/projects/mwse/ then Raveren's http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=4256. Otherwise Dave Humphrey & Erstam's http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=2826.

That looks nice, being able to claim any slave as your property. Thank you for the link!



That's exeactly what I was looking for, thanks!


From the dxdiag: Pentium Dual-Core E6300 @ 2.80Ghz
And for my card: an Intel 4 series Express Chipset Family 1592 MB. Basically the build in crap I bought it with.


Then I think I'll go with the Code Patch. That Patch will be usefull anyway. Otherwise I'll check out TLM.


Then I'll download Book Rotate anyway, that will be a nice extra. Is it compatible with mods that add extra books/change bookcovers etc?


Thanks! That's a very useful link.


I had already been watching at Darknut's upgrades. I'll go with them.


Great. I knew my processor should be able to handle texture packs, but my knowledge about graphics cards is limited to say the least.


Thanks for the links!


I'd rather stay away from MWSE, I don't think my computer would handle it very well.


Anyway, thanks a lot everyone! You all gave me some really useful information and links to improve my game.