There are many ways to
approach combat in Morrowind. You can poke things with Spear, Bruce Lee things
with Hand-to-Hand, and do ethically questionable things with Mysticism. With a total of 27
skills to choose from, it’s easy to define your character's strengths, weaknesses, and overall
playstyle. But what if you were only allowed to use Restoration? A school of magic dedicated
entirely to healing and fortification. How would you deal damage? Would you be able to beat the
final boss? Ladies and gentlemen in this video, I will be answering one simple question: Can
You Beat Morrowind with Only Restoration Spells? So, I started a new game and was violently
awoken by a half-naked elf with laryngitis. After he was finished whispering sweet
nothings in my ear, I told him my name, then beat the guard in the race to the deck.
For my race, I chose a Breton because they’re the only race that gets a bonus to Restoration.
Went inside, selected my skills and picked the Apprentice starsign for the extra magicka.
As tradition dictates, whenever you finish character creation, you must steal
the limeware platter. So, I did just that, took Fargoth’s ring and picked up the
package for Caius. Under Imperial Law, I was made a free man, so I entered into
Seyda Neen, where the fog is dense, and the air thicker than the lusty Argonian maid. Now i'm not going to be super strict about the
rules of this challenge, but for clarification: the only spells I’m allowed to cast
are from the restoration school I can’t attack anything using
melee or marksman skills and the only potions I can use are
store-bought potions or looted potions So, with those ground rules
out of the way, let’s begin. Near Seyda Neen there lies an
ancestral tomb with a powerful item. The first thing I do is head
to the Tomb to the northwest Avoiding the undead inside, I run to the
back where there is an urn containing the Mentor's Ring. Slipping my finger into
the mentor’s ring gives me a permanent +10 to intelligence and willpower. This’ll
increase my magicka and spell success chance. Now the next thing I need to do is level up
my Restoration, I don't have the patience to spam heals for the next 2 and a half hours, so
I'll get some gold and use the trainers instead. Tarhiel unaliving himself exemplifies
just how fun, creative and downright broken the magic is in this game.
One of the easier methods of getting gold early on is to raid one of the vaults
in Vivec, so I head towards the silt strider. I arrive in Vivec, the city where getting
lost is a feature, not a bug and make my way towards the Redoran Plaza.
I level Acrobatics so effectively; I give myself repetitive strain injury.
And no, using acrobatics and athletics doesn’t break the rules. But if you do
have a problem with that then you’ll definitely enjoy the next video I’m cooking.
Inside the plaza, to the dismay of everyone around me, I take the vault key from these drawers
I stroll over to the Redoran vault, it's not breaking and entering
if you have the key, apparently. I have a stare off with the guard and win.
With the guard out of the way, I take as much stuff from the vault as I can carry.
It was a heist so daring, even the 9 divines were left checking their pockets.
Using the Mages guild, I teleport to Caldera In Caldera I go to Ghorak Manor, where I can
sell my loot to a scamp with lots of gold. I end up with around 32k gold, which should
be enough to complete the challenge, I think. Now that gold isn’t an issue, I head back
to Balmora and use the trainers to level my restoration skill. I was trying
to level efficiently so that I could maximise my intelligence gain on level up.
At this point you might be wondering: how am I going to damage anything when the only
spells I can use are restoration spells? Well unlike in Skyrim, Morrowind doesn’t actually
have any restoration spells that do damage. So, I’m gonna need to find some help.
I return to Vivec, proceed to get lost, then I start a quest to escort a merchant called
Tarvyn to an imperial town known as Pelagiad. Tarvyn's in for a real treat though, and it’s not
the sunny vacation he expected in Pelagiad. Nope, we're taking a detour straight to Red
Mountain, where the scenery is to die for. For the rest of the challenge, Tarvyn
will be my trusty sidekick, as long as I can keep him alive with restoration that is.
The first thing I do with Tarvyn is give him some of the weapons and armour I took
from the vault earlier this’ll give him a decent boost to his survivability and damage.
Unfortunately, he’s only got a blunt weapon skill of 36, which might be fine for killing Rats
and Guars but it’s going to be hit or miss when it comes to the creatures of red mountain.
So, to reduce the amount of time he spends in combat, and therefore the amount of healing
I need to do to keep him alive, I’ll need to find a way to boost his attributes and skills.
Luckily for me, this is exactly what restoration does. But to keep it simple, I’ll only be buffing
his blunt weapon skill, because I have an even better idea for boosting his agility and strength.
I to travel to Khuul, and then I take a boat over to this little Shrek swamp where
we head north towards a cave on the coast Arriving at the cave entrance I leave
Tarvyn outside because let's be honest, the pathfinding in this game is God awful. And if
he gets stuck, the challenge will be over already. In the cave I encounter an angry naked dark elf
Then I find even more angry naked dark elves I honestly feel like I’ve walked
in on some weird Dunmer orgy I find some glass boots, then I find the
loot I’m after, the fists of Randagulf God knows what the fists of Gandalf
were doing in a cave full of angry naked dark elves, I’m not sure I want to know.
I exit the cave and give Tarvyn the fists. The fists of Radagast will give Tarvyn
and extra 20 points to both his agility and strength, this means that both his
hit chance and damage will increase. Combine this with the buff that I’ll be casting
on him and he’ll be a much more capable fighter. I return to balmora to
abuse the trainers some more And this happens as I try to level up.
I guess that just confirms that the fists of flabbergast do infact work on npcs.
I head to the mages guild to make a restoration spell to heal Tarvyn.
Then I realise I haven’t got a Fortify Skill spell, so I’ll have to go
to Mournhold then I’ll be able to make a blunt weapon buff to improve his hit chance.
As I go to rest, Tarvyn kills another assassin which gives me a full set of dark brotherhood
gear. I'm not planning on getting hit anyway so it doesn't really make a difference, it
just looks better than the default potato sack I’m wearing at the moment.
But for obvious reasons, I choose not to wear the helmet.
I ambush the ambushers, so that they don’t ambush me anymore, by verbally ambushing this
guy about my dark brotherhood ambusher problem In Mournhould, I make Tarvyn’s hit
chance buff, and some spells to restore Tarvyn's attributes if they get damaged
Now that I have buffs, heals and restore attribute spells, and now that Tarvyn has good
gear and stats, we can head towards Red Mountain. So, using the silt strider, we go to
Ald-Ruhn, and make our way towards Ghostgate. To nobody’s surprise, we get
stopped by cliff racers on the way More Cliff racers
even more cliff racers trust me this isn’t the last of the cliff racers,
this is just your average Morrowind experience Inside Ghostgate we snoop around
looking for anything useful we can take. I tell this buoyant armiger that
tonight my good friend Tarvyn will be laying the smackdown on Dagoth-Ur and
that she’s going to have to find a new job As is the normal reaction to anything
in Morrowind, she tries to kill us again
and again and again
But she bugs out when I stand on this table, for some reason,
she seems to be hyper fixated on my character, maybe it’s the outfit, or the hairstyle, I don't know, a win is a win at the end of the day Eventually she dies and we take her loot After that we leave for Red Mountain
We get ambushed by these ****suckers again, I told you they'd be back
To absolutely no one’s surprise, the local wildlife of red mountain isn’t too friendly
I try resting and an ash slave spawns, no big deal However, I try resting again,
and this time a zombie spawns But with combined power of mercantile
and a receding hairline, we defeat them our first objective at red mountain is
to collect the tools Sunder and Keening, they’re kept in separate citadels around the
mountain and are guarded by some pretty strong enemies. This wouldn’t usually be a problem
for someone who’s 40 hours into the game, but because this is Tarvyn we’re talking about, I
might not have enough magicka to keep him alive. after surviving the onslaught of undead,
cliff races, scamps and ash creatures we arrive at the first citadel where
the tool Sunder is being kept Upon entering, we deal with
more of the usual suspects Then we encounter this fleshy creature who
looks like he’s cosplaying as Imhotep from The Mummy. Anyway, these guys can be pretty annoying
because they damage your strength and endurance, but fortunately this is a restoration challenge,
so that’s not much of an issue for me. In previous playthroughs though, I’ve had my strength
damaged so much that I can’t actually carry the armor and weapons that I have equipped,
so I just end up getting stuck on the spot. Tarvyn deals with the bonewalker, but
through the door is an ascended sleeper, these are dangerous if you’ve only got like 40hp
like me. Because we were in such a confined space, every time either me or Tarvyn got hit by his
magic, it would catch both of us in the radius, and 9 times out of 10, this would lead to at
least one of us dying. So, I found that the best way to deal with him was to get Tarvyn to
wait in the other room, then I’d use my instant transmission skills to dodge his attacks, until he
runs out of magicka. After that, I brought Tarvyn through and we were able to beat him in melee.
Around the corner we kill one of Dagon’s boys. Down the stairs we kill phallus face.
Before fighting the boss, we encountered this unique skeleton that gave us some trouble.
He kept casting a spell that would absorb over 100hp on average. There was no way we could beat
him face to face. Instead, I had to force him to use up all of the charge on his enchanted shield
by baiting his spells. When he ran out of charge, I brought him before the mighty Tarvyn,
and we beat him the old-fashioned way. Then we fight the miniboss who’s guarding the tool
sunder. He wasn’t too difficult; he was certainly easier than the skeleton we just fought. He’s
level 30 and has 300hp, so beating him made me feel confident about our fight with Dagoth Ur.
I take sunder and exit the citadel. It turns out, the easiest path to the next
citadel is around the perimeter of the ghostfence which means a lot more fighting.
Tarvyn takes multiple lightning blasts to the face and things get a bit sketchy
However, just like Tsunade, I have two huge assets, those being, my healing hands.
Tarvyns block skill is only 31, so it’s surprising to see just how much he’s
been blocking. He’s now onto his 2nd shield, hopefully it has enough durability to
make it through the rest of the challenge. Entering the citadel, I almost get killed by
a golden saint after she knocks me down. I had to pray to the rng gods that she didn't deliver
the killing blow, luckily, I manage to evade her attack and Tarvyn sends her back to Sheogorath.
Things get a bit spicy with this flame atronach that almost 1 shots me, it turns out
that fire hurts when you're on fire Tarvyn then starts tripping balls and I somehow
get wish.com Dagoth ur stuck when I open the door. I told you Morrowind had some ****ty pathfinding
Tarvyn comes to his senses and begins to understand why Pinatas are a thing
While Dagoth Doofus is busy entering the pearly gates, I take his key and
enter the tower where I retrieve Keening Now that we have both of the tools, we can begin
our assault on Dagoth ur, and in case you were wondering, at this point I had convinced
myself that I didn’t need the third tool, Wraithguard, and that I could simply use
restoration to heal the damage of the tools. To get to Dagoth Ur, I need to backtrack
all the way around the perimeter of the ghostfence again. Which is fine, but it turns
out that all of the enemies had respawned. It’s what I get for resting in Red Mountain I guess.
Running the gauntlet once more. We face zombies, cliff racers, more f*****g cliff racers and ash
slaves, but eventually we arrive at Dagoth-Ur’s facility, nestled in the heart of Red Mountain.
Entering inside, you guessed it, we find more ghouls, tenacle monsters and ash vampires
It seems I was too hopeful about Tarvyn’s shield, as it eventually breaks
But fortune favours the bold, because after dealing with the tentacle monster
in the tower, we find another glass shield Theres also an almost full set of glass armor here
so I take that just in case Tarvyn’s gear breaks After dealing with the rest of the enemies,
we prepare to fight the penultimate boss This guy casts a pretty stinky spell that damages
your intelligence, I had to reload a few times because that spell really messed up my magicka
reserves, this time however, I let Tarvyn tank the spells instead and we beat him easily.
We rest before entering the facility cavern and are greeted by the one, the only, Dagoth Ur
It took me this long to notice that he hasn’t been doing his usual “Come Nerevar Friend or
Traitor Come”, I think this is because its one of the few times where I’ve come straight
here instead of going through the main quest. Now at this point I just expected him to be
aggressive, but something my small noodle didn’t comprehend when planning this was
that he actually gives you, the player “the courtesy of the first blow”
So, I was stuck. Tarvyn couldn’t attack him, even if I positioned Dagoth ur between the both of us.
And pickpocketing? Well, that just opens the normal dialogue menu, so
that’s not very useful either. The door to the heart chamber was
sealed as well, so without cheats, there was no way I was skipping this encounter.
I’m sorry Dagoth Ur, it looks like you won’t be receiving the first blow any time soon.
So, I had to think of something else, unless I was willing to accept that I just wasted
the past 5 hours trying to do this challenge. I thought that if I could bring an npc all the
way back up here, then get them to cast an area spell of command that hits Dagoth Ur, then that
might make him aggressive. The logic behind that being that when you use a command spell, it
adds that creature or humanoid to your party, and therefore makes them hostile to the same
things. So if the npc is hostile to me, and they add Dagoth ur to their party with the command
spell, then he should start attacking me right? And that's the only thing I
could think of that might actually work. Now how would I get an npc to cast a
specific spell? Well, in Morrowind, merchants will generally equip the most expensive
item that they’re carrying that isn’t part of their normal stock. So, if I go to an enchanter,
create an amulet with a command spell on it, then trade that amulet to a merchant, they should equip
it automatically. Then, when they enter combat, they should cast the spell if its offensive
value is greater than their melee attack value. And with a new plan of
action, we leave the citadel. I tell Tarvyn to wait here by the door because I
don’t want him killing the merchant while they’re chasing me back to Red Mountain.
I get past the ghost gate I pick up a few friends on the way
I launch a raid on this legion fort accidentally on purpose
my guy is looking rather pleased with himself about the whole ordeal
In Ald-Ruhn, I bought some spells from this mage and stocked up on more potions at the mage’s guild
I get myself expelled just so I can move this mage away from her table.
I find the nearest guard, and pay my fine, to calm the mages down
and then I go back inside and steal her soul gems but due to the sound of my
cheeks clapping, I almost get caught I buy some amulets
and then set off for Tel Branora I buy a command creature spell from a
shiny wizard in a giant mushroom tower then I get an enchanter to make two amulets:
This amulet will hopefully allow me to make Dagoth ur aggressive
This amulet will allow me to add any humanoid npc to my party temporarily,
allowing me to move them through doors I find this merchant, and give
him the command creature amulet then I stick my grubby little fingers in
his pockets, just enough to piss him off and we begin our journey to
red mountain all over again this guy has seen some s**t
I almost get lost on the way but luckily, I find some signs
and as you can see, it seems to be a quiet day here in Morrowind
when we get to Ald-Ruhn, the guards are more than delighted to kill the creatures, but they seem to be quite
selective in their interpretation of breaching the peace when it comes to the ashlanders
I carry on towards ghost gate anyway And when I get there, not only are the ash landers
still following me, but surprise surprise, the cliff racers have joined in on the fun, now begins
the arduous task of trying to isolate the merchant If I don't do this, then it will
be difficult to try to target the correct npc with the enchanted amulet
here I demonstrate a masterclass in patience as I repeatedly get knocked down and
pummelled into oblivion, although thanks to my restoration magic, I just heal the damage anyway
20 minutes later, in a miraculous turn of events, as I’m knocked to the ground, I manage to separate
them using the gate, and thus we begin the climb Ahh Cliff Racers, I was
wondering when they’d show up It’s fair to expect 3 or 4 but
this is becoming a joke now I end up in a very sticky situation on this
bridge with a small handful of cliff racers and a couple of ash slaves thrown in for good measure
my ass is torn asunder by their magic, but with the secrets of restoration at my fingertips,
i'm the world’s best colorectal surgeon. The merchant somehow falls off the bridge,
which funnily enough corrects his pathfinding like a filthy Khajit n'wah with my
tail between my legs, I make it back to Tarvyn and I give him the amulet
I then get tarvyn to follow me, and this will allow him to cast the
enchantment on the merchant after he hits me then we move the merchant
inside and the spell wears off because the command spell ends, we
can exit the citadel and the merchant stays inside while we deal with what's out here
Tarvyn gets reminded that he's still in Morrowind seriously, look at how many
f*****g cliff racers there are Tarvyn is an absolute Chad though,
so has no problem dealing with it In a slow, but satisfying process,
he takes them down, one by one Surely this is worse than Bloodmoon right? I
mean yeah you cant go 10 feet without fighting a spriggan or bear or wolf or riekling.
But there's at least 15 cliff racers here. just an average day in Vvardenfel I guess
I level up, and we head back into the citadel Playing a magical game of hopscotch, I try to
avoid the enemies, this is to prevent Tarvyn from wasting the charge on his amulet.
Once I’m in the correct position though, then he can use the amulet
and once again, we move the merchant to the next area
Tarvyn finishes off the enemies in here so we can rest and recharge the amulet
I repeat this process a few more times until we get back to the room with Dagoth ur
I get Tarvyn to wait, then I head in and position myself next to Dagoth Ur.
The merchant uses the amulet, it adds Dagoth Ur to his party, and he starts to attack.
I bring Tarvyn back in and he kills the merchant. Now because Tarvyn wasn’t in the room
when the merchant used the amulet, he won’t attack Dagoth Ur until he hits me
first, so I need to tank a hit from him. and while I technically used light amor here
to mitigate some damage, before you scream at me in the comments, his weakest attack before
mitigation is still less than my max health, it just would have taken me longer to get a good roll
If I wanted to avoid this altogether, I would have just made sure that Tarvyn was in the room
when the merchant cast the command spell So, enjoy the Dagoth-Ur
making me his bitch montage I have to spam my healing here because his damage
is so high, I just about have enough time to buff Tarvyn’s blunt weapon, but sometimes he would just
straight up just die from close to full hp because I decide to buff him instead of healing him.
It was an intricate balance between trying to keep Tarvyn’s damage as high as
possible, whilst keeping him alive. I think if Tarvyn didn’t have a shield for
this fight, then it would have become much, much harder, the only way that I
could get ahead of the damage with my healing was when he blocked an attack
I end up using all of my magicka potions, and we just about manage to kill him, I
only had enough magicka for one more heal, so those shield blocks came in pretty clutch
Now its on to the heart chamber, I decide to leave Tarvyn in the cave because
I want to make sure that the room is safe enough before bringing him in.
I try to dodge these great balls of fire I jump down and give Dagoth Ur a tightrope
performance, it’s not much, but it’s enough to force him to do his best Tarhiel impression.
Then I break every single bone in my body by jumping down to the bridge. Nothing
a bit of restoration can’t fix. Dagoth Ur returns from Yardrat,
with the accuracy of a stormtrooper. I take a leap of faith and
drink a levitation potion. Dagoth Ur tries the same thing, except he left
his levitation potions at home this morning. now that Dagoth-Ur has been dealt with I
Go back to Tarvyn, and get him to follow we run back down to the heart of lorkhan, I was
hoping that this was the end of the challenge I cross the bridge with
Tarvyn and approach the heart It's at this point I realise, how am I going to
destroy the heart without breaking the rules, if I attack the heart with keening, that will be
using short blade, and if I attack it with sunder, that will count as blunt weapon.
And just like before, Tarvyn can’t hit the heart when he’s trying to attack me,
even if I position the heart between us. So, I’m out of ideas again
I actually contemplate ending the run here, and don't come back to it for a few days
But I can’t abandon the challenge. For Tarvyn’s sake. It's a moral obligation to the companion who
has stood by my side, literally and figuratively. But then I realise something, just as I used
the command spell to aggro Dagoth Ur, could I use that on the heart? I mean, probably,
according to the UESP wiki it’s listed as a special creature just like Dagoth Ur. But
what then? How would I damage it? Before, Dagoth Ur became aggressive because he was
under the command of a merchant who at the time was hostile towards me. But what If I
add the heart to my party while let’s say, 2 merchants wielding sunder and keening
are hostile towards me? Would that make the merchants hostile towards the heart? I
don’t know, but it’s all I’ve got for now. So, I leave the facility... again
With a renewed sense of purpose, we retrace our steps to Ghostgate, where
I once again run into the 2 ash landers This time though, I have Tarvyn
with me, and he isn’t too happy about missing round 2 with Daddy Dagoth.
While at Ghostgate, Tarvyn does what he does best, which is, when he's not killing assassins or
cliff racers, pissing off the buoyant armigers We end up with some nice glass armour upgrades
and looking the part, we head for ald-ruhn In aldruhn, I go to the enchanter and make
the final amulet, this should allow the heart to be added to my party
I take a moment and restore my attributes at the local temple
And then I head to balmora, where I visit the first of the two merchants
I steal from him to start combat, and Tarvyn uses the amulet.
I run to the guard and turn myself in, now the merchant will drop combat
I repeat this process with the other merchant Now that they’re both outside, I give
one Sunder and the other I give Keening I aggro one of the merchants and then run to
the silt strider where I have Tarvyn waiting, when the merchant hits me, Tarvyn uses the
amulet, and I’m able to briefly use the silt strider to transport them to Ald-Ruhn.
I pay the fine in ald-ruhn to drop combat I do the same thing with the remaining
merchant until they're both in Ald-Ruhn then I pickpocket them again for the
final time and we head for the mountain I have to avoid getting attacked by
the merchants until we get to the citadel otherwise Tarvyn will try to kill them
I get a nice reminder of Tarvyn’s capabilities as I see a trail of cliff racer corpses
I’ll be honest, this was by far the most frustrating thing I’ve had to do in
Morrowind, I was constantly jumping around, avoiding the merchants’ attacks, and at the
same time trying to heal Tarvyn as he deals with the enemies. In hindsight I probably should
have got my restoration skill higher before starting. I definitely felt that the Mentor’s
Ring was making a big difference here though. You can see that even with 0 fatigue, my
spell chance is not 100%, but eventually, with a lot of reloading, I was able to brute
force my way up the mountain with the merchants crossing the bridge, I got
a strong feeling of deja vu miraculously, there seems to be only
1 cliff racer chasing us this time Finally, we arrive at the top of the mountain and
we begin moving the merchants using the amulet Unfortunately, I discover that
in the time that I’ve been gone, some of the sleepers have respawned in the
heart chamber, so using a levitation potion, I put them under a the same genjutsu as Dagoth Ur
Now that they’ve been dealt with, I go back out and get Tarvyn and the merchants
We gaze upon Akulakhan one last time as we run down to the heart of Lorkhan
Cross the bridge and I quickly trade the new amulet to Tarvyn
and after a bit of awkward positioning He casts the spell, the heart gets added to my
party, and much to my surprise, the merchants start to attack it with the tools.
The heart gets destroyed And Tarvyn, in a display of dominance, asserts
that he is the number one companion by killing the two merchants
and now, as I go to collect my reward from Azura...
Tarvyn falls to a fiery death, offering the ultimate price to complete our challenge
I watched on as Akulakhan crumbled, and even though I was glad that the challenge had
been completed, I realised something: I’ll have to live with the regret that I can never take
Tarvyn back to Pelagiad. He completed my quest, but I couldn’t complete his.
So, I left the heart chamber, claimed my reward from Azura and got the
ending cinematic and that is how you complete Morrowind using only restoration spells.
Ladies and gentlemen, I've been Mehrunes Mike thanks for watching, I’ll
see you in the next challenge.
