A Question on Modding Morrowind

I'm sorry if I'm posting on the wrong part of the forum, but I have a mod called "Great House Dagoth" that I wanted to try out, but the problem is that I don't know at all on how to get it to work or Morrowind to work.

Ack, if it helps, I have the Steam version and am currently on Windows 7. Any help is appreciated D:

Modding Morrowind, eh? *cracks knuckles* I know a thing or two about that stuff.

First, check if there is a readme included in the mod. There is? Great, follow the instructions in there to the letter, and come back if you have any problems. They are very often extremely detailed (because back when the modding scene first started almost nobody except the modders knew how to do this stuff, and it is a nightmare to manage mods if you don't know what you're doing) and very helpful if you're just getting started.
Pay attention to the required mods. With Morrowind, there can be a lot of those, and get them installed (and pay attention to the loading order, see below for a tool to help with that, this is important).

Personal recommendation? Get Wrye Mash. It is a godsend, if you can get it to work and want to use more than one mod (and trust me, you will, Morrowind without mods is a torture). You can manage mods, load order, screenshots, and save games (including cleaning them up if you want to remove a mod but need to keep using an older save). I have been using this for years, and while there may be better and more up-to-date stuff out by now, this thing has yet to fail me.
In addition to that, take a look at this helpful page with some general info on modding the game.
Also, get the Morrowind Code Patch, at the very least, it fixes so many bugs. So many. This game is a buggy mess, you wouldn't believe it (even if you have played Bloodlines).

(If you don't have the GOTY edition, please look into getting it. For many mods, you need both expansions - and you should install both expansions whether you plan on playing them/modding the game or not, because they include a ton of bugfixes in addition to new content.)

Now, as for the steam version, I can't help with any specific problems with that one, seeing as how I have it on CD, but I can verify that the game runs under Win7, because I use that, too. (My version of the game is modded to hell and back, though, so ... uh ... you might not want to go to that extreme. Still runs stable! For Morrowind's standards, at least.)
Oh, and get used to crashes. Frequent and unprompted ones, at that. The game is a buggy mess (have I mentioned that it is a buggy mess often enough yet? No? Let's get the quota up, then), so save frequently, don't rely on auto-/quicksaves and use a lot of different slots, because save game corruption exists and is nasty if it eradicates 50+ hours of progress, just like an unexpected crash can do. I've been there - save yourself from that frustration, get good saving habits.

Alrighties, I got it to work, thank you Eliza.

Glad to hear, then have fun. If there's anything else, don't hesitate to ask, modding TES games can be a bit of a hassle. (Also, let me know if that mod is any good, I haven't played it yet, and I need new content for the game...)

Eliza wrote:

Glad to hear, then have fun. If there's anything else, don't hesitate to ask, modding TES games can be a bit of a hassle. (Also, let me know if that mod is any good, I haven't played it yet, and I need new content for the game...)

As far as I've read, the mod adds in joining Dagoth as an option, makes his storyline be as ambiguous (not black and white, pretty much grey) as the main one when going with the Tribunal, and finally that it's gotten good reviews all around.

Morrowind and Mod Plot spoiler:

Eliza wrote:

... modding TES games can be a bit of a hassle...

I know. Who has ever heard of a scripting language where OR preceeds AND?
So if you type a AND b OR c AND d it is processed as a AND (b OR c) AND d instead of the correct (a AND b) OR (c AND d).
But playing is worse. I just can't get the hang of the fighting. Even a bloody mudcrab can kill me if I let it come close...

Childe of Malkav wrote:

But playing is worse. I just can't get the hang of the fighting. Even a bloody mudcrab can kill me if I let it come close...

That's why I said that Morrowind without mods is a torture. I know the game by heart now, and this year was the first time I started to really level a character the way you're supposed to, without cheats and exploits. Even then, I wouldn't bother to do so without the Morrowind Code Patch, since that thing fixes a lot of problems with the leveling system (esp the problem which forces you to invest in Endurance until you max it out, otherwise you don't get nearly enough health to actually finish the main quest). And you don't know what slow leveling is until you tried to get up your enchanting skill.

Of course, if you don't have the game for PC, you're pretty much screwed - no modding, no console to cheat with -, but since we've moved on at least one console generation (I think Morrowind released on the original Xbox, so that would be two generations), that is largely not a problem anymore in the community. Still, the frankly ridiculous amount of mods for the game justifies spending a few bucks on it even in 2015, since they can add hundreds of hours of gameplay with really good storytelling, and even the vanilla main quest (plus expansion main quests) can keep you busy for just as long.

I've only played Oblivion so far, and for me it's not hundreds of hours of gameplay but hundreds of hours of bloody annoying combat mechanics. Archery takes too long, especially when two or more enemies shoot back and melee means I get hacked to pieces before I can land a single blow...
And magic sucks because spell selection is frankly bullshit and you never have enough mana for the interesting spells. If you can find and afford them.
But the worst of it all is the barter system. If I could find a mod for automatic haggling, I might give it a shot sometime.

Yeah, I never got into Oblivion because for a long time, I didn't have a PC to run it, and that removed the possibility of nostalgia goggles (if you think it's shit the first time you play it because it runs and looks like arse at 5 fps, that makes it hard to start liking it), so I completely empathize with that.

What I would recommend to you is Skyrim, which has an actually humane leveling system - stuff still only improves with use, but it is much faster and they got rid of attributes (Dumbing down? Maybe. More fun? Definitely.) so you don't need to minmax to survive. You still need to install fanmade patches because we're talking about a Bethesda game, after all, but it's a great sandbox RPG. Plus, it doesn't look like arse, even without HD texture packs.

I'm actually playing Skyrim right now with the Requiem 1.8.2 overhaul. It's been a blast to play but very difficult. One thing that I love about it is that I get to experience an overhaul mod that I didn't write and so I get to see it from the players viewpoint instead of the modders. This has taught me many valuable things, one of which is how important communication, feedback, but most importantly documentation of the changes and the reason for the changes. This brings me to another point on how critical it is that I finish the player's handbook for TFN before releasing 1.4. Besides the change logs, I really haven't documented much for TFN and need to do that before another version is released.

It's wonderful taking a break from TFN to enjoy other modder's work but the more I play Requiem, the more it makes me want to return to TFN to enhance it, much in the way Requiem enhanced Skyrim.

I can only play Skyrim with Requiem now, it gives the game an appropriate sense of challenge and reward that it didn't had before

While I haven't looked into Requiem, I have seen a few Let's Plays that use SkyRe. Not sure if they are comparable, but I don't think I'd use SkyRe at all. The only technically similar mod I've been using is SPERG, which doesn't change too much about the base game, mostly just the perk trees and things that are related to it.

Otherwise, I use things like Better Vampires/Royal Bloodline and Moonlight Tales/Bloodmoon Rising for Vampires and Werewolves respectively. I would not play a Vampire in this game without Better Vampires. Probably not a Werewolf either, since Bloodmoon Rising allows them to get strong enough to take on dragons. MT covers appearances(I want my female character to stay looking that way), and the transformations based on Moon Phases. One of those transformations started during the scene were you arrive in Raven Rock.

Since I don't like challenging games (I love steamrolling enemies and I just like storytelling more than gameplay), I like the difficulty of vanilla Skyrim, but I use the unofficial patches for bug fixes, the Better Vampires mod that Maxus Corvin mentioned (because if I can play as a vampire in a game, you bet your butt I'm gonna), Dynamic Vampire Appearance (which is really cool, you get blood on your face after feeding and a whole host of other stuff, A+ for roleplay) and a whole lot of other smaller modifications for convenience. But I can't recommend SkyUI enough, you don't know how console-y the UI is (especially the inventory screen) until you change it. Also, SkyTweak lets you adjust a lot of stuff ingame that is otherwise inaccessible, so if you want to fiddle with game mechanics, this is very good.
(Plus, A Matter Of Time, an ingame clock, is so good for RP because it eliminates the need to constantly use the resting screen if you just want to know what time it is.)

Eliza wrote:

I like the difficulty of vanilla Skyrim

You mean none?

SkyUI is required for Requiem so I know what'chu talking about.

I used SkyRe once. It's just meeeh. One of Requiem's many changes it is that it makes the world completly unleveled in relation to you: You can find a lvl 30 mob and a lvl 3 one in the same dungeon, at whatever level you are. You won't be killing Dragons, dragon priests or vampire lords at level 5. There's one dude in YouTube who made a video for every aspect of the game that Requiem changes, so if you're looking to check Requiem up, search for it.

I use MT and Bloodmoon Rising too

Has anyone made a mod that takes out the shouts yet?

ThePhilosopher wrote:

Eliza wrote:

I like the difficulty of vanilla Skyrim

You mean none?

Actually, yes. As I said, I like steamrolling things, and for when I get "twue arr-peh-geh GAMER" feelings (aka masochistic tendencies) I play Morrowind without the difficulty slider set all the way to easy, that's enough challenge and frustration for me. Actually, scratch that, just playing Morrowind eanestly is an exercise in frustration, difficulty slider or no.

Jad.3 wrote:

Has anyone made a mod that takes out the shouts yet?

You can just play without doing the main quest you gigantic praguean.

Mods for Skyrim seem to be like Tremere Rituals - there is one for everything. While I don't know of any that remove the shouts, there might be one where you simply are not Dragonborn, thus the Word Walls don't work, and you can only go so far with the main quest(i.e becoming a Thane of Whiterun is still possible, but you do not get the Way Of The Voice quest). I have no idea what it might be called, though.

Though if the problem is that the shouts aren't powerful enough(which I can certainly see), there are a few mods to fix that. I've just started using this one: Improved Dragon Shouts.

I'm late to the party, but I recommend using Mod Organizer to manage your mods for all the Bethesda games from Morrowind onward. It's up on the Skyrim Nexus, but can be used to handle Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas as well.

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/1334/?



What MO does that Wrye Mash doesn't is it keeps all the mods in their own folders instead of installing them into the game's directory and then applies the mods to the game in RAM. This means that installing a new mod will never overwrite a file from the vanilla game or a different mod and it makes resolving mod conflicts much easier and less stressful.

I remember back in my Oblivion days I spent an entire afternoon downloading and installing mods only to mess up and install two mods in the wrong order. I then had to uninstall the game and deleted all mods and start all over. With MO you don't have to worry about that sort of thing. You can easily switch the load order of both archives and plugins and if you ever install a bad mod, it won't affect any of your other ones and you can get rid of it without having to reinstall the whole bloody mess all over again.

Childe of Malkav wrote:

I've only played Oblivion so far, and for me it's not hundreds of hours of gameplay but hundreds of hours of bloody annoying combat mechanics. Archery takes too long, especially when two or more enemies shoot back and melee means I get hacked to pieces before I can land a single blow...
And magic sucks because spell selection is frankly bullshit and you never have enough mana for the interesting spells. If you can find and afford them.
But the worst of it all is the barter system. If I could find a mod for automatic haggling, I might give it a shot sometime.

http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/25078/?

The mods does a lot more than just make haggling automatic, but that's one of it's features.

Didn't know MO could be used for Morrowind, but I am using it for Skyrim.

It does make it easy to deal with conflicts, mostly because it will specifically tell you not only that one mod conflicts with another, but which mod does.

An example: Better Vampire Fangs & Eyes, and High Quality Eyes

BVFE edits both Vampire eye textures, and overwrites the base game's eye texture, and the one added by Dawnguard.

High Quality Eyes includes a texture for the base Vampire eyes. Placed after BVFE, means that you get the texture from this mod, and not BVFE. However, if the two textures from BVFE are wanted, and only the other eye textures from this mod, but not the vampire one? Then there is an option to "hide" the vamp texture from this mod, so there is no conflict, and the game uses the two from BVFE. This does not delete the file, so it can be restored at any time, without having to reinstall the mod.

The same would apply for other mods that edit eye textures, and of course other retexture mods - along with other filetypes used by the game.

But in the case of one file that will overwrite another, it only means that it will do so when the game accesses the file, not when the mod is installed. So the game will use the last overwritten file, in the case of several mods that might contain the same file.

ThePhilosopher wrote:

Jad.3 wrote:

Has anyone made a mod that takes out the shouts yet?

You can just play without doing the main quest you gigantic praguean.

How do you know I'm gigantic?!?

Jad.3 wrote:

ThePhilosopher wrote:

Jad.3 wrote:

Has anyone made a mod that takes out the shouts yet?

You can just play without doing the main quest you gigantic praguean.

How do you know I'm gigantic?!?

You know, Wrocław is not that far from Prague... Maybe, well...




Sorry! I couldn't resist, bro.

Dragatus wrote:

I'm late to the party, but I recommend using Mod Organizer to manage your mods for all the Bethesda games from Morrowind onward. It's up on the Skyrim Nexus, but can be used to handle Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas as well.

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/1334/?



What MO does that Wrye Mash doesn't is it keeps all the mods in their own folders instead of installing them into the game's directory and then applies the mods to the game in RAM. This means that installing a new mod will never overwrite a file from the vanilla game or a different mod and it makes resolving mod conflicts much easier and less stressful.

Thanks for letting us know! Once I get a new PC (hopefully sometime this year) I'll have to give this a try, sounds a lot better than what I'm doing right now, even though it works for me. If this really does what it says on the tin, then I'm going to save myself a whole lot of hassle in the future.

You might have some extra hassle getting certain Morrowind mods installed in the first place. Depends on the folder structure of the zip/rar file with the mod.

MO expect archives to directly contain the files that are supposed to go into the game's Data folder, but in the case of many old Morrowind mods the rar/zip file you download contains a folder called Data and all the mod files are in it (because that way the mod author was able to instruct people to simply unzip the archive into their Morrowind directory). If that is  so, MO fails to recognize the file structure and doesn't install the mod properly. What you'd have to do to solve the issue is unzip/unrar the mod to a working directory and then manually zip/rar the contents of the Data folder and then get MO to install that archive.

To give you an example, say a mod is just a .esp plugin and nothing else. MO expects the mod's archive to contain the .esp file, but the archvies of many old MW mods would contain a folder called Data and the .esp file would be inside that folder. This confuses MO so you'd have to unpack the archive and zip/rar the .esp file and then use your new archive to install the mod in MO. Of course for such a simple mod you wouldn't need MO in the first place, but hopefully this helped illustrate the problem and solution.

And while this is a bit of extra work, it's something you do once per mod and if you mess something up you'll just have to fix that one mod instead of having to reinstall everything.

Dragatus wrote:

You might have some extra hassle getting certain Morrowind mods installed in the first place. Depends on the folder structure of the zip/rar file with the mod.

MO expect archives to directly contain the files that are supposed to go into the game's Data folder, but in the case of many old Morrowind mods the rar/zip file you download contains a folder called Data and all the mod files are in it (because that way the mod author was able to instruct people to simply unzip the archive into their Morrowind directory). If that is  so, MO fails to recognize the file structure and doesn't install the mod properly. What you'd have to do to solve the issue is unzip/unrar the mod to a working directory and then manually zip/rar the contents of the Data folder and then get MO to install that archive.

But it's something you do once per mod and if you mess something up you'll just have to fix that one mod instead of having to reinstall everything.

I've had MO not recognize some Skyrim mods, or at least the structure in the archive. In which case, it will offer the option of selecting a folder to consider the "Data" folder, which should work, provided the meshes/textures/etc folders are correct, or other files in the data folder are those it will recognize(.bsa, .esm, .esp, etc). Although in this case, if there is a readme file outside the "data" folder, then MO isn't going to keep it once the mod is installed. If you move it into the data folder, than it will be kept, and can be seen by right-clicking the mod, selecting Information, and it should open upon the "Textfiles" tab.

No idea if MO functions exactly the same for Morrowind, but I might try it.