Morroblivion Options

[Acadian]

Welcome to Morrowland! Enjoying another Acadian sunset. Nice to see Blood Raven's got her ponytail going. Uh-oh, I guess that's a cliff racer?

[Renee]

Uh-oh, I guess that's a cliff racer?

Don'cha know it.

Does ES Online also have cliffies?

[Acadian]

Yes. Cliff racers are seen in the sky in some areas but there's no interaction between them and players. Cliff striders, however, attack quite readily.

Cliff racer in ESO
Cliff strider in ESO

[SubRosa]

Renee: Morroblivion is essentially just a mod for Oblivion. It is the Oblivion game, plus plugins that add Vvardenfell. So it plays exactly the same as regular Oblivion. Arrows and all.

All I have ever had to do is go in my inventory and select the arrows, then deselect them. That makes them disappear from where they are sticking out of your body.


Acadian: Those Acadian sunsets are the best ones in Morrolandia.

It is cool to see that they have cliff-racers in ESO. Do they fly? It looks like they are ground-based creatures. I am guessing the ones that you see high in the sky are essentially the same as the hawks you see in Skyrim. Not real monsters the game expects you to fight, just there to look at it.





Look who's a good wittle boy!

Two Undead, Too Furious

Strolling into town

Why is it always rats?

Balmora

[Acadian]

Cliff racers are simply aerial decoration. Cliff striders though, do engage. They lurk on the ground but when they attack, they fly into you as a 'gap closer' which includes a knockdown/stun. Though I've never played MW, there clearly is lotsa carryover into ESO. Guars are common in many areas - even as pack guars or mounts. Silt striders can be seen in the province of Vvardenfel. And Balmora is also in ESO.

Nice to see Blood Raven using one of your 'go to' hairstyles and armors - she looks great.

Aww, good guar!

Rats!

[Renee]

Acadian: No kidding (about passive Cliff Racers). In my Morrowind I changed the leveled lists so that only 1 out of 9 are hostile... so it's rather neat to see all of them are non-hostile in ESO. Maybe it's because in the 2nd Era they weren't mean yet.

Guars are awesome.

Those bonewalkers are some Doublemint Twins who won't ever be appearing in a gum commercial.

It's always rats because... hey! Why is it always rats?

Whoa look at her armor. WHOA look at Balmora!

[Lena Wolf]

It's always rats because... hey! Why is it always rats?

Because no one else wanted the job?

WHOA look at Balmora!

Is it better or worse than in native Morrowind? I thought it was pretty empty out of the box, so mine is a lot bigger and busier.

Not every cliff racer is hostile in Morroblivion. However, after a while they start choking the game, so you have to kill them anyway... It gets especially bad if they get caught between buildings, poor things.

[Renee]

I wouldn't say Balmora is better or worse in MOB... it's just different. The way the mod author set up the town though is really eye-catching. The way the hills & cliffs surround the town are a bit more stunning, in my opinion.

Regarding cliffies: in the base game those things are horrid because ALL of them are hostile!

[ghastley]

I wouldn't say Balmora is better or worse in MOB... it's just different. The way the mod author set up the town though is really eye-catching. The way the hills & cliffs surround the town are a bit more stunning, in my opinion.

Regarding cliffies: in the base game those things are horrid because ALL of them are hostile!

The worst part of original cliffracers was the way they stacked on you. You could only attack the nearest, because all the others were behind it, and more would queue up to get a turn at you as you fought. Not difficult, but demoralizing, as it promised to be unending. Never quite that bad, but you couldn’t be sure.

And talking of demotivation, does Morrowblivion alter the “can’t hit with the weapon, because low skill” mechanism? I was always finding myself in that catch-22 of not getting experience because I didn’t already have any.

This post has been edited by ghastley: Jul 14 2022, 08:55 PM

[Lena Wolf]

And talking of demotivation, does Morrowblivion alter the “can’t hit with the weapon, because low skill” mechanism? I was always finding myself in that catch-22 of not getting experience because I didn’t already have any.

Morroblivion is Oblivion. So there's none of that Morrowind nonsense here. It's all normal Oblivion game mechanics.

Also you don't have to sleep to get your magicka up. It regenerates.

[Renee]

The base game isn't so bad, come on now!

Here are some of the things I heard about Morrowind for years and years: "That first mudcrab we meet in Seyda Neen always destroys us. Because this game is so much harder than Oblivion!" ... and also... "Everything is dice-rolls, Renee, it's not really you who is hitting the enemies, it's your characters, and you'll die over and over and over as you miss and miss and miss!!"

So I believed this. When I began playing MW in 2018, I expected the first crab would mop the floor with my character, and it would only get worse from there! But it's not really that bad at all.

1). Choose Major skills which coincide with the weapons my character will use, and

2). Go into battle with plenty of Fatigue, (really important)

3). Go headstrong into battle. Do not back down, especially with melee-based characters. Get those hits in early, before the enemy does. Make sure to dodge. When the enemy takes a bite or makes a swing, try to stay out of its range.

Following those three rules, I was surprised to find the startgame can actually be easier than I thought. Fatigue makes a huge difference when it comes to combat. Those others who warned me had characters which missed all the time probably because they were low on Fatigue, probably due to too much running around. Since my characters tend to walk a lot, they've always got plenty of Fatigue.

And this goes both ways. Enemies who attack and miss attack and miss over and over... it's a slippery slope down for them, too. Because they're using up their Fatigue.

Regarding magic: Yes, magic doesn't regenerate in the base Morrowind game, but this is also true for magic-using NPCs as well. They cast and they cast, while we dodge and avoid. Pretty soon they can't cast anymore. They break out whatever weapon they've got (usually something spindly). They make a rush at my character. From that point, I've usually got them.

And the thing nobody ever mentions: Magicka doesn't regenerate in real-time, but the magic in items does. Therefore, if we're wearing a ring which heals us, that ring is going to regenerate the magic our characters cannot.

Not that I'm trying to convince anybody here. It's just that so many times I've heard how impossibly hard MW is, and yes, it is challenging, it is difficult. But my experience is, it's also not as impossible as so many gamers told me in the past.

This post has been edited by Renee: Jul 15 2022, 01:40 AM

[macole]

The base game isn't so bad, come on now!

Not that I'm trying to convince anybody here. It's just that so many times I've heard how impossibly hard MW is, and yes, it is challenging, it is difficult. But my experience is, it's also not as impossible as so many gamers told me in the past.

You don't have to work too hard to sell me on Morrowind. The extreme difficulty at the beginning adds to the excitement. There were a couple of things that disappointed me in Morrowind. the biggest was... no not the combat, I rather like the combat. No it was the horrid segmented bodies, ugh. The other was that it didn't include all of Morrowind.
Now if only it looked like Oblivion. But then that's what Morrobilvion is for.

This post has been edited by macole: Jul 15 2022, 06:09 AM

[Lena Wolf]

Sorry Renee, my comment was tong-in-cheek - I didn't seriously mean it. Although I do prefer Oblivion, it isn't because of the game mechanics. Like Macole, I find aesthetic aspects insufficient to really bind me to it. And that is because they didn't have good enough computers back then! So it's nobody's fault.

[Renee]

I'm sorry too, I guess. I keep thinking I went a little too far up above, like maybe I'm coming across as preaching. I hemmed and hawed a bit whether I should post that. But I am glad I did in a way. Just because I want to spur some discussion.

And it's also true, or at least it was back in the days of Beth's old forums. "If you think Oblivion is hard, DON'T try Morrowind, Renee!" I was told a lot of mistruths or at least half-truths. I wish I could go back, just to set the record straight. Morrowind is mostly hard if we approach it in the wrong ways.

Same is true of Oblivion as well, especially as the game levels up into the teens. Agreed? Disagree? -- Somebody like me who doesn't like touching the difficulty slider, quickly found herself getting into 10-minute fights with goblin warlords and all sorts of creatures which literally weren't in the game a week ago. There are ways to avoid this (and without mods), but it wasn't until after a few months of play that I learned what these ways were.

As my game leveled upwards, I quickly lost interest in Oblivion, which was awful because it was my favorite game at the time. But as the game leveled up, there was too much challenge, and not enough fun.

For me, the solution was not using all 7 Major skills. Seems counterproductive, but that was the answer in my Playstation-at-the-time game. Suddenly, I could play all I wanted, hundreds of hours*, while keeping the slider in the middle. The game became more enjoyable for me.

Ah lunch time! Sorry if I'm rambling.


*--- Err, until the A-bomb struck, that is.

This post has been edited by Renee: Jul 18 2022, 04:21 PM

[Lena Wolf]

Yeah, the teens are probably the hardest levels to play, especially if you level up quickly and don't have all the nice gear yet. But whether the fight is hard or not, depends on the way you approach your enemy and whether you are playing to your character's strength. Ever played Dark Souls? Now that is hard.

I am not a strong gamer by any stretch of imagination, yet Lena Wolf is an assassin mage, which is a rather weak build. She has little strength and only moderate agility, having chosen to invest into magic instead, but she isn't an expert mage either because she invested into non-magical skills as well. I never get +5 of anything on levelling up, +3 is the highest I ever get, so you can imagine what she's like.

And yet my difficulty slider sits at 75% and I can even send her out there alone (although having a battlemage like Hauk along does help ). She can't take on a goblin warlord head on, she'd be rammed into extinction within seconds. She should stay away from shamans as well, because born under the Apprentice, she has a 50% weakness to magic. So what to do? Play to your strengths. Stealth. Poison. They never see it coming.

This is of course just an example, but you see the idea. And if the battle is too hard, run away!

[SubRosa]

I tried playing Morrowind again about a year ago, when I decided to take January there. After a while I just gave up. The deal-breaker for me was alchemy. I hate how picking ingredients work, and then how brewing potions works. Plants are basically containers like chests or barrels, and the ingredient is an item inside that you have to pick up. It did not take long at all before my wrist was literally aching from repetitive strain.

That is not the only thing I do not like about Morrowind (the horrific animations - even for the time the game was made, magicka not regenerating, hitting monsters and being told that you missed because you failed your invisible die roll, or just the way combat became just a matter of standing in one spot and mashing buttons until either I or the monster was dead). Among other things. But that was the final straw.

So from here on out it is Morroblivion all the way for me. Oblivion is far from a perfect game engine. But I vastly prefer it over Morrowind's.

What you'se guys are talking about with leveling is one of those things I don't like about Oblivion. You have to play games with the Majors/Minors in order to build a character who does not get creamed as they level up, because they are leveling up too weak compared to the monsters, who are also leveling up, but stronger. Bethesda makes the only games where you go out of you way to not level up.

My standard trick is to take one weapon skill as a Major, one defense skill (like an armor), and Restoration. Then make the rest of the Majors skills I will never use. Sometimes I will add in a fourth major that I will sometimes use, like Block. When I get training, I only do it for the Minor Skills that I regularly use, because otherwise it will make you level up too fast.

Because I got so sick of the worrying about what skills I am using and will I get a decent bonus, I just made a mod that gives you a +5 in everything every time you level up. It made the game much more enjoyable, because I didn't sweat that stuff anymore.

One thing I really like about Skyrim is how they abolished the whole Major/Minor business, and with it the need to play this silly game with leveling. You just play the game, get better at the things you do, and the monsters don't in general get more powerful than you are as you level up. At least I have never had that problem.

[Lena Wolf]

It is interesting how perceptions differ. In most games I find my character to become overpowered rather quickly, using standard game mechanics. At least in Oblivion there is some control there, and when I level up, I always select the attributes with a low bonus, preferring +1 or +2 at most. I find that in Skyrim leveling up is way too fast, and I really hate it how you upgrade three swords and suddenly you've leveled up...

Well, I'm exaggerating, but you catch my drift. I actually made a personal mod for Skyrim to stop this ridiculously fast leveling every time you cook a pot of stew.

So I actually select a weak build on purpose. It keeps some challenge in the game without going crazy on the difficulty sliders, and it allows to bring companions along who don't immediately get killed off and also don't make your own combat too easy. I don't want to be able to defeat every enemy every time. Sometimes it's too hard, you have to retreat and rethink, to me that's an advantage.

[Lena Wolf]

Hanging around is a thing, apparently. What else are soldiers supposed to do in peace times?

Hanging around in Gnisis (remember to look up)

[macole]

the guards been chewing on netch leather again, I see.

[SubRosa]

Spider-Man, Spider-Man, does whatever a Spider-Man can!