Ok, so I need to rant a little bit. It looks like one of the reasons that makes Morrowind such a great game is also one of the reasons why it can be darn frustrating sometimes. I don't always like the hand-holding of Oblivion, but Morrowind can be merciless sometimes. So I tried to fire up my Bosmer thief/assassin again. Got a good deal of both Morag Tong and Thieves Guild quests to do. She's level 14 now, just got to level 15 before I closed down the game today. And it seems these are some hard levels for some characters in this game. Up to level 10 you have mostly easy quests, and from level 20-30 and above, your character is getting quite strong. But the levels inbetween...

When I loaded my last save, I had been just outside a dungeon that contained a guy I had to kill. Problem was that the dungeon is, of course, filled with undead. The first one I met, a headless zombie, was impossible for me to kill. I tried once now, and have tried countless times last time I saved. So I, reluctantly, gave up for now, seeing as this is a VERY hard place to get to, right in the middle of nowhere in the Sheogorath region, and I dread to return there later. Anyway, I figured that if I wanted to proceed with this character, I would have to go somewhere else. So I tried a different Morag Tong quest, where I was to go do a Daedric ruin and "convince" a guy to let us be. I thought I had found the ruin, but after having killed a few orcs, and redone it because the game crashed, I realised I was in the wrong ruin. It ended with "...bibi" instead of "...kalal". Or something. And since I knew these Daedric ruins were a bit too strong for me at my level anyway, I didn't bother tracking the correct one down right now.

But right next to where I was, there was a cave. I thought I would try and clean that one out, just to gain some levels and loot. I did manage to kill a skeleton in two blows with my bow, which was awesome, but using a bow is still a bit frustrating. My skill is at 60, yet I still keep missing. Stealth attacks are hard, because I have to waste countless of arrows before I hit. Then, of course, since my bow isn't enchanted, it's useless against quite a few of these dungeons creatures, and so I have to resort to my daggers and short blades. My skill level on Short Blade is 51, so I barely make it every fight. Or so it seems, at least. Not to mention that it takes me ages to travel to these remote places, only to find out I can't manage them.

Well, perhaps a Thieves Guild quest, then? I open my journal and read the one I have accepted - nope, now I remember why I haven't done that one before. It's in - you guessed it - an undead-filled dungeon, and I can't get passed it at my level. Use some potions or spells for chameleon or invisibility, you say? Not really an option, I say. Because the ones I have are so low (Chameleon 10 % for 10 seconds) that they are useless. No use in getting past one zombie if I have to fight all the others anyway. The spell I have that is quite good is way beyond my casting skill, so I have 0 % chance of success.

*sigh*

I know I'm complaining now. Sometimes it's just so frustrating, I feel like I'm banging my head against the wall in every direction. I've had this feeling before in Morrowind, it usually resolves after I've gained a few levels. It's just so annoying right now!

What about trying something else than Thieves Guild or Morag Tong? You could join another faction and do some quests for them... or you could simply just go out exploring.

I am a thief/assassin, and it doesn't really seem to fit my character to join any other guild. Is there any that, rp-wise, could be fitting for such a character? As for exploring, I tried that with the cave. I know there are solutions, of course. There are more caves than one, and various random quests I can do. I just wanted to rant some and show how Morrowind, even being a great game, can also be very frustrating sometimes.

You should join House Hlaalu, it favors characters like yours.

Hm, that is a good point. I have finished that House with another character, but I could join it again with this one. Have no idea why I haven't thought of that myself. Thanks.

Anyway, what guilds I can join wasn't really my point of this thread, but how Morrowind can sometimes be frustrating. And I'm not a new player to the game either, I have finished the main quest, almost finished Tribunal and two of the regular factions with other characters.

Well, that's what I like about Morrowind... you can't just run through a faction at any level. Your character actually have to be powerful in order to advance to the higher ranks within a faction.

I like exploring tombs a lot (especially the expanded ones).
That's why I always pack silver arrows in my quiver. No undead is beyond the reach of silver.

If you're not using mods to fix the game's economy, you should be pretty rich by now.
So you could use all that money to enchant extra powerful items. That could give you the edge you need.

...or, buy some training and gain levels and become more powerful that way.

I find that sometimes there can just be a total jump in difficulty. Take today, i started Telvanni. I finished the amount of quests required to become a mouth and they were absolutely easy as hell, i didn't have to kill a single person to complete them. Then Master Aryon starts giving me quests about venturing to ruins and tombs full of hard undead and Daedra and my char is still level 1! The solution is usually to do some exploring and rack up kills, IMO the beginnings of many of the factions are so easy that when the hard parts come along they really hit you.

I agree to most of OP′s initial post,valid points over all.

Morrowind do have a gap of sort between the first,easy missions and later missions that requires another level of skills,of course that depends a bit if one rp,usually go for mage/battlemage/nightblade or such my self,maybe easier with undeads then since you get some spells to take care of those early on, I dunno.

I solve the issue of too hard enemies early by levelling a bit,even by training,doing other stuff like freelancing,gathering ingredients,exploring "easy" caves,tombs and ruins for loot,those sneaky missions aren′t easy with lower skills,or at least my chars usually end up with using spells which requires decent levels of skills if they are sneaks.
Another workaround is gear,which can have additional challenges early on just to get and live after,obviously

If you're playing a stealth character, then you will always get ruined in one on one combat.

The skills you choose dynamically affect how you play the game. So, if you're a stealthy thief, you need to work on your speed and sneak and get some chameleon spell, like the khajit ring. Because a thief is a non-combat character, which is why the thieves guild usually sends you to swipe something. You're supposed to sneak past the enemies, take what you came to take, then teleport/ run out of there.

If you're used to Oblivion, you're gonna want to battle and defeat everything but that's just not how Morrowind works. Thieves are not suited for combat in Morrowind.

I don't have the issue you do with my characters (I'm very big on Thief/Assassin characters, on both Morrowind and Oblivion. See link in sig). For the most part, all journal entries give you exact directions to your destination (That's when I don't feel like "coc"ing all over the place). Takes a while, but manageable.

Id say that you might need to do some freelancing robberies to get some more gold to buy better equipment, and go to suran and buy dirty cheap a broken glass dagger from the armorer there, and fix it yourself to save money. Now you have a good weapon. Then invest in a jinx blade so you can cheapshot at your hearts delight

Okay, this is actually my realm a bit... some advice:

1. Steal from EVERYBODY. Theft is easy and gits you rich. Start in Balmora, there is easy pickings there. Once you get really good at it tackle the vaults in Vivec.
2. Buy combat training. Short Blade or Marksman probably. Use the money you got from stealing.
3. Still try to level up strength. Damage done, regardless of weapon, is still measured based on strength for some reason (at least for melee, not sure on marksman).

Trust me, I know your pain, though as a masochist (jokingly, of course) I love it.

Edit: I do know you are a fairly older player... its just in my blood to give advice. The key is, if you are struggling with a level range, to get out of it ASAP.

Ah, stealing loads of stuff and then using the money to buy skill raises for Marksman and Short Blade - THAT sounds like something I would love to do. Of course! Thanks.

I appreciate the tips, and I will follow them - at least the one about joining Hlaalu and about stealing to buy skill raises. But, yeah, in general, I do sometimes struggle with Morrowind. Often it is in this mid-levels, no matter what character I have. (Having that said, I don't think I've ever created a pure warrior, using Heavy Armor and Long Blade). I accept a quest, which is often in some ruin or dungeon far away from anything remotely resembling civilization. I spend just as much time just trying to locate this place as I spend on actually doing the quest itself. Not to mention that when I finally find the place, I've spent most of my stocked-up healing and restore potions fighting enemies on my way there. So I have to choose between going in slightly unprepared, or Mark it and return later. Which makes everything so cumbersome.

I do agree that Oblivion is hand-holding too much. I don't want to be able to fast travel everywhere, and I don't want an arrowhead pointing straight to the quest item. And I certainly don't want everything scaled to my level. But sometimes, just sometimes, I feel Morrowind is a tad too much to the right, where Oblivion is too much to the left. I have more than once turned off the game in frustration, because I don't feel like I'm really getting anywhere. Can't do guild quests because the enemies in the dungeons are too strong. Can't spelunk in general, because most dungeons are above my level as well.

Don't get me wrong, I do think Morrowind is a great game. Perhaps the best TES-game ever made. But there seem to be a mid-level problem where I end up banging my head against the wall in every direction, and that is very frustrating.

Reminds me of a friend of mine who sets stringent rules for his character sets.

Since you're doing the assassin/thief thing, you can and should make use of any stealthy things like invisibility/chameleon spells and potions, shooting things while in sneak mode, and if you REALLY want to give your character a "leg up" better than Azura can give you, install the Arimer Race mod. It places a ring on the desk in the character skills beginning called "Cloudy". It is about 75% Chameleon. Definitely good enough to whip a little backside from the shadows. You can just take it...think of it as a gift from the Gods. It isn't all butt-saving either, because some critters and fellows still make you out and go after you, but not as full on as trying to do it heroically.

Yeah, I wrote about the problem with potions and spells earlier - the ones I can use aren't good enough, and the once that are good enough, I can't use.

There are no zombies in Morrowind, less you count Bonewalkers. Even then, they especially aren't headless.

As for your situation, trainers are around for a reason. Keep training until your major skills are well over 75-80. If you don't level up high enough by then, the high skills will make things easier for you.

I rarely spelunk when I play a stealthy character.

Unless I make a guy whose focus is fighting, which is almost never, I don't expect my character to be good at fighting. I spend most of my time in the early levels robbing people and doing the non-combat stuff, which there happens to be a lot of.

The thief character happens to be my favorite because of the fact that I'm not a fan of dungeon crawling and I like the fact that the world outside cities is always overwhelming to me, being a sneaky, shifty scoundrel who pays his way out of trouble.

If I have to go through a dungeon, I bring something enchanted with chameleon to sneak past everything and get to the target (which is almost always an object I can grab), then teleport out.

If I have to fight someone one-on-one, an enchanted weapon usually always evens the odds for me (I can find and steal cheap ones with decent effects early-on, usually).

Basically, I avoid trouble until I've stolen enough to afford enchanted items, which doesn't usually take too long anyway.

The skills you choose drastically change the way you have to play to survive, so if you want to clear out a lot of dungeons, you need to train up the fighting skills or choose fighting-oriented skills in the beginning.

The thing is that Oblivion is evenly-balanced, so that anyone can do anything anyone else can do at any level.

Morrowind recognizes that a guy with a short sword and no upper-body strength and no real training in fighting because his talents lie in remaining unseen instead, is going to be devoured by a pack of khagouti if they see him. The game really does provide many avenues for you to avoid any major combat, most of the time, if you sneak around stuff and collect telvanni bug musk before trying to persuade anyone of everything. And spend that money you make on sneak training instead of fighting training. It's a little more work and you are consciously avoiding combat and slowly sneaking around nix hounds a lot, so it's not everyone's idea of fun.

But, I personally love it, so I wouldn't consider it a flaw in the game mechanics since, conversely, my fighting/magic hybrid happens to destroy wilderness monsters in one or two hits throughout the middle levels.

Plus, this way, it's more realistic.

Useful stuff there. I decided to play my first character in Morrowind the Assassin character i've played in Oblivion (and sort of in Fallout 3 too ), problem is she seemed to be more a mass murderer than an assassin in Oblivion <_<

Also TES's leveling system is good since it doesn' punish for not killing everything you see. Well, a little if your class has combat skills.

And that's pretty much true for all TES games, minus the obnoxious mythic dawn cave.

I snuck my way through pretty much all the main quest dungeons in both Oblivion and Morrowind. My favorite probably being kagoruhn, with that sewer part, reminiscent of Castle Wayrest.

It's pretty intense to inch your way through a lava-lit cavern, with two fire atronachs breathing down you neck. And so rewarding when you swipe all three relics, then divine intervention out of there, without a scratch.

I am quite sure this one is added there by a mod, which maybe makes those quests harder than they are in vanilla-Morrowind.




I absolutely agree with you. That is why I created that type of character, and joined those guilds. I figured I would spend the majority of my quests robbing and killing people in the villlages and towns. But after I raised a few ranks in both guilds, they all seem to want me to send me in to nomansland to kill some hermit surrounded by undead in creepy dungeons. :nope:

It's only hard because you don't train.

I, too, find Morrowind quite frustrating.

Not so much the difficulty, the thought that eventually I will expire and no longer have the ability to play Morrowind.