That's an odd and probably painful way to collect arrows.

Fetching archers gives a whole new meaning to the term ‘Bowgirl’.

Aww, a rainbow over January – how appropriate!

A storm is coming in and her name is Crow!

macole: It is similar to the way making yourself magnetic helps in attracting bullets...


Acadian: January is a rainbow crow. A RainCrow.


Fetching Archers Again!

Jan's got her night vision goggles on

Storm vs. Blizzard

January flies in from out of town

Read any good books lately?

I like January's doo. The arrows don't add much though.

NVGs and the ability to fly - pretty handy, I'd say.

A very nice night sky with the moon twins on display.

January just finished the entire Imperial Cult questline in Morroblivion. Like a lot of faction questlines, there was a lot of fetch quests early on, mostly for alchemical ingredients. But also for donations, which was interesting. But by the time I started it January was richer than Croesus, so she just instantly paid for it all herself. The later quests were fun though. A lot of rescue missions and smiting evildoers. The sort of thing January can really sink her wings into.

Now she is level 17, has a fame of 28, and is about to visit Caius Cosades to get started on the main quest. Only 46 hours and 40 minutes into the game!

I might do most of the Imperial Legion quests with her as well. She is not much of an army girl. But the idea of doing the Legion + Imperial Cult sort of creates a paladin gameplay, which is definitely up her alley. I skimmed over the Legion quests, and did not like some. Those distasteful ones are all from a single questgiver, so I might just never do those. I am sure that means she can never finish the questline. But it ends with you fighting the current head of the Morrowind Legion in a duel to the death. Which January would never do anyhow. So that is not really a problem.

January has a new outfit

Having the high ground won't save him

Shocking

Hi fellow Nord girl

Skellapocalypse

Skellapocalypse 2: Too skelly, Too furious

Having the high ground won’t save him from the Storm below.

Skeletons, skeletons and more skeletons!

You know, it always makes me wonder where the skellies keep their loot. I mean, when you kill some, they often turn out to have additional weapons, gems or money on them, but for the life of me I can't figure out where they're hiding them. Jewellery still makes sense somewhat, but everything else... it's just odd.

Good job tackling those skellies, January! Although Lena prefers a mace on such occasions even though her skill with blunt weapons is rather low. But it seems you don't need much skill for that - a heavy blunt object colliding with a pile of bones... Boom! (Or am I confusing it with a mod or another game? I don't remember! In some games/mods it makes more of a difference than in others.)

Acadian: Everyone has a bone to pick with January...

Lena Wolf: Maybe skeletons keep their gold coins slotted between each of their vertebrae?

I don't think the Elder Scrolls games care about what you attack skeletons with. D&D had bladed weapons do half damage, and I think piercing ones do none.


Sunset on the Bitter Coast

Crystal power

Dreaming of Anvil

The ion cannon will fire several shots to make sure any enemy ships will be out of your flight path.

Party Time!

On the lookout for danger

A little eye of newt... A little tongue of bat...

I visited the Dwemer ruins and all I got was this stupid postcard

The armor kit January has is really nice. I was going to ask where your got it from then I remembered you're playing MorroBlivion.

Beautiful sunset. And Jan’s pose is great as well – must be part of your Ob stable of mods as I’ve seen it before in your Ob shots from the past.

Oh, and Jan’s cooking!

A postcard? Gosh, not even a Dwemer t-shirt?

Skelepocaypse 3, Morrowind Drift

Up close and personal

This looks bad

Dagoth Ur

Powering up

By Azura!

Jan is getting off to a rocky start with this one

I visited Dwemerland and all I got was this lousy t shirt



I just finished the Morroblivion main quest. It was difficult, because of the quest structure itself. Apparently I missed a dialogue option with the Urshilaku Wise Woman, and because of that it did not advance the main quest. I did not realize this, because the way the quests have been working, when you finish one, it does not automatically start the next quest in the line. You have to remember where you have to go to start the next quest.

So I just did that. And it did not start the next quests. So I started them with the console. By the time I realized I may have missed some dialogue with the Wise Woman, I had finished the next couple of rounds. Then I went back and talked to her, and found the dialogue options I had missed. That pushed things forward.

So that got me to the point where I have to talk to the Arch Canon to talk to Vivec. She told me to come back when I had become the Hortator. Which I had already done. I had to go back to the Wise Woman, go through some more dialogue, and go back to the Arch Canon. She told me the same thing. Then I found another dialogue option for her, where she acknowledged I was the Hortator, and finally sent me on. Grrr.

So January finally met Vivec, and he gave January Wraithguard. I was not sure what I was going to do next, vis a vis Vivec. My last character to do Morrowind was Persephone, and she is not the forgiving sort. She did not hesitate to kill him. But January is a nice person. She does not expect people to be perfect. But even she could not forgive Vivec for living. So she killed him. It was a great fight. The hardest in the game.

Afterward she found what was listed as a Unique Dwemer Artifact in Vivec's chamber. So she picked it up. From there I learned it was part of an optional quest where you could kill Vivec and go to Yagrum Bagarn and have him turn the artifact into Wraithguard. But I already had Wraithguard. I did try talking to Yagrum, and that started his quest. That is when I found out that the Wraithguard that Vivec had given me before I killed him was working fine. So in the end I used the console to force that quest to end.

Then I was off to Dagoth Ur. But the door was sealed off. I could not see anyway to open it. There were no more quests to do. So I had to use the noclip command to get to the door and go inside. After doing my business and destroying the giant robot, I found the way out was likewise blocked off. Again I had to noclip to get out. Oi!

Yowser, that's a lot of skellies!

A rock astronaut?

Hey, we recognize that moon and star lady in the distance.

I was wondering if the backpath was included in Morroblivion. Glad to see that it was.

Hot or not?

Dagoth Something or another and his crew

Dagoth Ur and his fancy hat

Dagoth and his magic mecha

Numidium 2.0

January gets to the heart of the matter

Time to escape!

Meeting Azura

Blue skies again

*Cue strands of Jimi Hendrix* 'Let me stand next to your fire!'

Oh be still your beating heart. . . .

Azura looks quite a bit like the last time Buffy saw her.

*Cue more music* 'Blue skies, nothing but blue skies do I see.'

I finished Tribunal yesterday. It is my first time ever doing it. It was kind of blah. The writing really makes no sense. You are prompted to go there when Dark Brotherhood assassins start coming after you. There you find that it was King Helseth who sent them. So then the game expects you to A - Kill Helseth or B- do a bunch of quests to protect him and his rule.

Naturally the game goes with option B. Riiight.

Then it is the same with Almalexia. The only way to advance through the main quest of Tribunal is to work for her. Nevermind that she and the other members of the Tribunal murdered you in a past life in order to steal the power of Lorkhan and make themselves false gods. I didn't kill Vivec and Dagoth Ur just to give Almalexia and Sotha Sill a free pass. I only went there to kill them both and finish the job.



I have not done Bloodmoon, but I don't think I will. I have done it a couple of times in Morrowind already. Instead I think it is time to move to regular Oblivion with a new character.

It's off to Mournhold we go

What do the google reviews say about this place?

Fabricants attack!

One of Her Hands

Battle Royale

This is a silly sword

Adding a straight flame to the curved sword... priceless

January is a millionaire!

The Pit and the Fabricant

Clockwork City

Someone got to Sotha Sil before January could

Poke the corpse

In the end, there could be only one

Lopov Shot

Azura, again

Maybe it is not the gods you slay, but the friends you make along the way?

That wraps up this version of January, at 100+ game hours

Tribunal’s downfall was that it came after Morrowind; hard to beat that story.
I too felt the same about Tribunal plot line. Save let Vivec live only to execute Almlexia; made no sense at all. That’s why I went back to Vivec City and killed Vivec. Now the two stories have balance.

In my latest play through of Morrowind/Tribunal I used Antares' Tribunal Main Quest mod (good mod btw), which poses the opposite dilemma. Why kill Vivec and let Almalexia live? Well there was a reason but it felt odd.

‘Fabricants attack!’ is very cool. Crazy looking critter.

Google? Heck, what does her PipGirl say about getting around in there? Oh. . . nvm.

Sotha Sil has seen better days, methinks.

In the end there could be only one. Pretty good, considering Jan’s a pale-skinned, round-eared outlander.

Something I forgot to mention which I really liked about Tribunal, is that in a couple places is fortells the Oblivion Crisis. More than one character prophecies a coming apocalypse when the gates of Oblivion would be thrust open, and armies of the deadra would spill forth to bring an end to the world. So clearly at the point where they were writing Tribunal, they had the basic plot of Oblivion figured out.

Now I finally found the right thread for these pics. Sorry folks! It's not a bird, it's not a plane... yep.

First Hauk went to Vivec. Vivec is vast!

Also from the upper level.

Also at night (this is a bit scary, but Hauk is brave, although he's not fond of big cities).

This is positively weird (he had to rub his eyes a few times, but no, it isn't a trick of light).

Business in Vivec completed, he continued on to Suran. Nice and leafy!

With lovely views of the mountains.

Set on a riverbank.

Lovely views inside as well.

Notes for Caius. (There is absolutely NO skooma in Suran! Never mind what's behind me.)

The next morning it's time to go home, passing by the Ules Manor.

A shortcut to Balmora through the fringe of Molag Amur.

Clouds gathering over Fort Moonmoth.

This is just creepy.

Got the notes that Caius wanted... But should he wake him up?

Sheesh, what happened here? Caius says to keep a lid on those disturbing dreams... Perhaps Hauk isn't the only one having them.

Fighting undead is not without consequences. Let's hope a good night's sleep will cure it, or else... Hmm...

Your Morrowind looks great, all 'Blivioned' up. Buffy's only visited in the 2nd Era, but it looks very familiar.

Morroblivion is looking great, chest tats and all!

Morrowwind is looking pretty good. Ever wonder what do they feed those creepy long-legged bugs?

Unsuspecting travellers?


Thanks! What Hauk lacks in youth, he makes up for in experience. They say that every line of his tattoo stands for a dead enemy... And he's got a similar one also on his back!

Yet another naked Nord?

Ald'ruhn looks different than what Hauk remembered...

Impressive buildings though

Ah, now it's like he remembered it!

Into the ashlands

What just happened?

Quick, hide in a cave... Quickash?

It seems that Nords and clothing do not mix!

More cool pics of Morroland.

Blood Raven has stepped off the boat and into Morroblivion

Local color

Ascadian sunset

Archers are the same everywhere

Keep watching the skies!

Okay, got a nice Lopov to start things off. Golly look at that sunset.

Yikes, so the Morroblivion team managed to make arrows stick into us just like in Oblivion. That used to freak me out. Sometimes we can go into our character's inventory and remove whatever arrows have shown in there. Exit the inventory, and now the arrow falls harmlessly from their body to the ground. Doesn't always work, though.

Oh no, it's a cliffie.

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?

Don'cha know it.

Does ES Online also have cliffies?

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

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

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!

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!

Because no one else wanted the job?


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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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

Hanging around in Gnisis (remember to look up)

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

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