I'm practically invincible as it is, sans potions. My full set of daedric armor enchanted with constant restore heath (about 10/s total) and fortify strength (about an extra 50, which lets me carry A LOT) do quite nicely.

I'll have to explore alchemy a bit, perhaps with the next character I make (if I ever make another) -- the one I have right now is too concerned with kicking absolutely everything's ass to worry about gathering mushrooms.

I'm a bit confused. I like what I'm hearing about the game. Is there a difference between the computer Morrowwind and the Xbox? Same game diff consoles?

I'd like to get it for Xbox if its the same but if its a pain to run or not the same as compu version I'd go with comp version instead.

The Morrowind Game of the Year Edition for XBOX comes with the two expansions they released -- completely the same as the computer version with one exception -- you can't download mods for the XBOX (unless you have a modded xbox). I'd go with the PC version for mods alone, as they really spice the game up when you're getting a little tired of it (or maybe just because cliffracers annoy the hell out of you and you want to get rid of them).

I'd go with the PC version if you have a good computer (Morrowind can be quite demanding at times) simply for how many mods there are out there (and the ability to make your own quite easily).

The game is very demanding on the PC. They recommend a 500 MHz PII, 128MB RAM, and a 32MB Vid card. I would like to see how it actually runs on that system because I have an AMD 2600, 1 GB RAM, and a 9600 AIW Pro and I still get bad framerates at times. I do usually leave several things running in windows while playing like mIRC, Kazaa, IE, etc., but that shouldn't change it that much (I think).

I haven't explored enchanting yet, other than making some cast when used night vision goggles from a glass helmet. I was stupid and chose it as a major skill. I have made other enchanted items, but never saved with them. I heard a lot about how hard it is to do CE enchanting, but I've never failed at it, even with an enchant skill under 40. To supplement, I got downed a buttload of fort int and fort luck potions to get both stats above 3000. I guess it is cheating in a way... I just don't know what I should enchant things with so that I don't unbalance the game too much. I should probably bump the difficulty slider up.

I have found that enchant is much more useful for recharging items than for creating enchanted ones. Besides, once you get to the point of being able to kill golden saints regularly, you should have enough cash to pay to enchant things. Then you can just barter with the enchanter and sell them the saint's weapon or shield to get your gold back. Ta Da, free CE enchantments.

I (tried) playing it with the minimum specs. I is practically unplayable- you get .5 frames/second at times, average at about 1-2 fps. Loading new areas takes 5 minutes, and you need the fog so close you can't appreciate the game at all. I loved the game once I got my new computer though.

Ok, here comes a real noob of a question for you guys:
How do you level up? Is it experience based or is it based on upping your skills? I probably need to level a few times seeing as how when I try to get a quest item, I get attacked by these three guys and just get slaughtered.

You level up by increasing any combination of your major and minor skills 10 levels. Once you do, you will get a message saying you should rest and medititate. Once you rest, you choose which skills to increase.

Here's where it gets very interesting. When you level up, next to each attribute there will be a number from 1-5. It says how many points you will add to that attrribute and is based on how much you raised your skills that depend on that attribute. By training misc skills enough you can increase that number to 5 and get the max advancement. Here is a link to a page that explains it a hell of a lot better than I just did:
http://www.gamespot.com/gamespot/gam...rrowind/7.html

This is an excellent guide. It tells you almost everything about how the game works. The first 33 pages are devoted to helping you understand the game, since it's very complex. That section is pretty much spoiler free so you can use it pretty risk free. There is also a pretty basic walkthrough for just about every quest in the game.

I just have a ring with Restore health +2pts constant effect + the necromancer's amulet which seems to keep me pretty safe from most things... also the main spell I use does Absorb Health 100pts so I heal myself while using it... although it's only good for fighting one enemy at a time because it costs so much magicka (somewhere inthe vicinity of 90) to cast and the higher level monsters often absorb / reflect it (reflect doesnt do anything though because you cant absorb your own health). Had a hairy run in with a dremora lord and some winged twilights.

Unfortunately I only use quicksave and I overwrote it by accident (was trying out some new mods with a new char) and hadn't done any proper saves for a few hours so i started a Dunmer Fighter/Mage although this seems to have been a bad choice because Dunmer seem to have fairly low hit points...

Just a question, does morrowind run really slow for everyone else?

Here are my specs:
AMD XP1700+ (1.47ghz)
Geforce FX5900
512meg DDR RAM (not sure of the speed)
Windows XP Pro
40gig hard drive
700meg virtual memory
DX 9.0b
latest Nvidia drivers (56.72 I think)

I tried all the tweak guides and I still get about 15-20FPS in most areas. In fact, as far as I can see there has been NO increase in FPS whatsoever. I can run at 1280x960 with 4xFSAA and 4x aniso and pixel shaders on and I get the same FPS as 800x600 with everything disabled.

Because of this, I believe it is my CPU, however I am told it runs fine on a P4 1.5...
Any suggestions?

Not sure, but there's a FPS optimizer program out there for somewhere that people swear by. Might want to look into that.

I got the Deadric Crescent last night (actually I got two of them!). I haven't tested it out yet but the stats for it blow away the ebony longsword I've been using for quite some time.

this may be a stupid question, but how do you test your fps rate?

I use a program called "Fraps 2.0" It shows fps in any game, takes screenshots, movies, or benchmark stats.

Is the trial version of that good enough or should I buy it?

the game should run beautifully on your comp....dunno what the prob may be

Ah yes, the Crescent is a nice addition to any collection, although it's definitly not as good as many of the other swords in the game. Looks very cool though. I prefer the Umbra sword, Chrysamere, goldbrand, or a daedric dai-katana over the crescent. What pisses me off about the crescent is its paralyze enchantment -- no fun when you're battling an enemy with strong reflect and you end up being on the recieving end of that paralyzation. Right now I'm favoring an ebony scimitar that I enchanted with lots of absorb health, using Almalexia's sould (gives a 1500 charge).

All this talk about MOrrowind is now making me want to play it again. I don't think I want to start all over again because it cost me hours and hours and HOURS of practicing and running around and sleeping and spell casting to get my stuff up to par and I don't know if I have the patience to start over again. Perhaps...i'll see if I can get into where my character is now. hehehehe

Gjefflin, You could always just use the fortify attribute/soultrap spell cheat to get your guy up to snuff right away.

To show your FPS on the screen go to your morrowind.ini and change the following:

Show FPS=0
change to
Show FPS = 1

or just add it if it's not in there at all.

I got this game 2 days ago. I just got to Carralies Corsades in the town. The game seems really cool, but I don't have a clue whats going on. How exactly do you level up? I still don't understand, there is a bar above my character portrait in the menu, and there is a level number, neither of which I know how to up. Does the character speed increase as you level up, or is there a run toggle, because I'm walking everwhere, and it takes forever. Other than that, it looks like a pretty cool game, if a bit complicated. Anyone have any tips for me? Im still level 1, and have restarted 3 times.

Well it is 30$, so unless you have money to burn, make sure its what you want. I'm sure theres other FPS only programs out there, that dont cost money.

I am just simply a movie freak, and love the feature of taking any in-game movie w/excellent quality. :)

Yes, eventually you get much faster and much more powerful. By level 40 (which won't take as long as you think it would), you'll practically be a god.

Pressing caps lock or holding shift makes you run, but your fatigue bar goes down when you do this. You can keep running with an empty fatigue bar (at first I thought you couldn't and never ran for more than 30 seconds or so at a time, slowed me down a lot). The fatigue bar determines your effectiveness in combat, basically.

To level up, you have to increase 10 of your skills and then rest. When you've increased 10 skills, you'll get a message saying "You need to rest and meditate on what you've learned." To increase a skill, you simply have to use it -- ie: jumping a lot increases acrobatics, using a longsword will increase your longsword ability, using magic will increase certain magic skills, etc.

As far as walking everywhere, there is a faster way, besides running, althought it costs a little gold. At every major town, there is usually an "instant" way of travel to another town -- silt strider ports (the really big bugs), teleportation in towns with a mage guild, and boats in coastal towns. Knowing how to use these will make travelling from place to place a LOT faster and more efficient (no getting lost from using the sign posts, which are not very good indicators of where things really are).

For more information that will help you out, go to this link: http://www.gamespot.com/gamespot/gam...all/morrowind/

They have a guide on just about everything the starting morrowind player could ask for.

Another note, to level up, the skills that you increase must be Major or Minor skills... Misc. skills give a maximum of 0.5 towards your level (I believe) whereas leveling up a mjaor or minor skill will increase it by 1 and you can keep leveling up that skill to get another one.

Read some guides on leveling up though, so you know how the multipliers work.

Thanks, walking/jumping everywhere was getting a bit annoying. I've got to level 4, got a bunch of armour and stuff. I also have a quick question, sorry for not looking on gamespot, but that thing is just too big to look at right now. How do you get additional spells(not from items), or can you? I started the game with firebite, summon ghost, conjure dagger, and hearthheal, do you have to read books or is it every so many levels?

Buy them from any mage guilde, or trainer that happens to sell stuff.

This is only true on X-Box I believe. All skills count equally on the PC version.

Misc skills count evenly towards the multipliers in the PC version, but do not count towards leveling.

Early in the game, I'd try to run a lot. You encounter nice low level creatures to get your fighting skills up and start raising your athletics. It also helps to start getting to know the terrain.

I need to find one of those ebony scimitars. Its an enchanters dream. I think it has the highest enchant capacity of all weapons in the game.

Indeed it does! You can find some in Mournhold (if you have Tribunal) on the high ordinators.

I just got orders from the head of the fighters guild to kill the heads of the theives guild. But at the same time, I got told by the fighter's guild head at Ald-Rhun that I should kill two of the other heads and Hard heart and he would support me as guild master.

As I am also in the thieve's guild, I think I'll just kill Hard Heart.

I went there last night and killed a high ordinator (tough SOB) but the weapon was already enchanted. I was so pissed off. The must have high personality and speechcraft because it took a long time to taunt him into attacking me. It was quite a long battle. I've been able to whip the asses of multiple regular ordinators at the same time but this one guy was giving me a run for my money. I'll have to go back and try it again.

Are you sure it wasn't one of the Her Hands guards that you killed? Was the armor enchanted too? Usually High Ordinators carry unenchanted scimitars.

He looked like an Ordinator, had the name High Ordinator, but the stuff he had was as you described. The scimitar was pretty badass; it had a damage strength 5pts plus a lot of other enchantments. The armor was nice too but it's heavy as fuck. The full set probably weighs over 300.

Strange... try killing another one! Yeah the HO armor is pretty damn heavy, but not quite as heavy as Daedric. If you're going to wear armor, heavy is the only kind that's really worth it.

Due to the open-endedness of this game, I'm probably going to have to start over... I became addicted to pickpocketing, which led to people attacking me, which led to me killing them. That happened to the majority of the people in Balmora.

Any suggestions as to fun classes/skills to take up in the beginning? Enchanting or Alchemy sounded nifty. I was an assassin this last game.

Enchanting is a VERY hard skill to level up, and you probably won't use it until your character is quite strong. I wouldn't suggest picking this as a major skill. Alchemy, on the other hand, I have heard is a great source of income (as well as free potions). I've only played warrior type classes before who dabble in magic a little, never really attempted a pure mage or alchemist before. If you like pick-pocketing people, I would suggest joining the theives guild (if you haven't already) -- they can take care of the bounty on your head, which is the cause of people attacking you on sight.

I was dumb enough to make enchanting a major skill. I should have chosen alchemy instead. The thing about alchemy is that you need to have a minimum about of skill to be sucessfull, say about 30. Descent equipment can be found for free too. It can be a huge source of income. Buy 100 ash yam and 100 bloat. Make five fort strength and drink them. Repeat till you've used all of it. Each time your int raises, the potion effects get better and the duration gets longer. By the time you go through all those ingredients you can make poitions at a 100% success rate that will be worth 5-30k each. I made some restore magika and fort int that that restores or fortifies 4500 pts for 7500 seconds. Those are worth over 20k. If I had made that a fort strenght potion, you could probably kill anyone with 1 punch.

My next character will have:
Major
Destruction (willpower)
Alchemy (intelligence)
Long Blade (strength)
Spear (endurance)
Marksman (agility)

Minor
Athletics (speed)
Acrobatics (strength)
Alteration (willpower)
Sneak (agility)
Security (intelligence)

Notice none of the skills will raise personality. I think personality is useless. I have low personality (40 at level 24) and I can always bribe and taut people, it just costs more and you have nothing else to do with your money. The skills are all things that you will use on a regular basis so it will.

I chose spear because it's governed by endurance. You want to get the max hp so you need to max endurance as quick as possible. If you fight with spears a lot, you can raise it naturally and then buy training in heavy and med armor when its time to level so that you can get a +5 multiplier without adding up points that go towards the next level. Armor skills take too long to raise naturally so they aren't great things to put in as major/minor skills. It's best to raise those by training.

If you want to be able to use magic, you should take the Atronach sign. It fortifies magika by 2*int. In return you can't regain magicka by resting, but you also get absorb 50%. To regain magicka you can summon ancestor ghosts and let them pound away or use potions. It makes it diffcult at first but the long term benefits outweigh the negative.

My dark elf who can no longer quest as having killed way too many people has become a wandering thief. And so, I had to share the joy in his bounty:

<img src=http://img12.photobucket.com/albums/v36/BobaClark/ScreenShot_0.jpg>

Not bad for being level 5 I imagine.

I'm at level 31 now (orc barbarian). I took over Hlaalu Manor in Balmora and used the four dining tables as armor and weapons storage and the three shelves on the other side of the room to store books and potions and misc. good stuff (bug lamps, ash statues, etc.) the tables are overflowing because I never take the time to sell my high priced stuff to the Creeper or Mudcrab. (they are way out of the price range of anyone else) Until I want to make a super-funky encanted item that is.

I was at full (100) strength, but it just didn't seem to be enough, so I enchanted a deadric gauntlet with constant fortify strength 10 - 20 points. I am thinking of doing the same to the other, or enchant it with constant feather.

No one can do much more than scratch me now.

Once I finish all the quests, I plan on killing every NPC in the game execpt for the Creeper.