How to Make a Good Character in Morrowind | 20th Anniversary Edition

morrowind character creation it can be intimidating having so many options and bad character creation is without a doubt the leading filter for new players in my eight hour morrowind video i provided three template characters that were positively received so i decided to do a full guide on character creation for the 20th anniversary i'll try to cover all ranges of experience here whether you just saw one of my elder scrolls videos and you want to get into the game or if you're friends with someone who wants to play test 3 and p with you and they sent you this video to help you make a character it's actually pretty easy first you have to get the game gog is offering to discount the game 70 percent the day this video releases plus they generally list the game for cheaper than steam i do get a cut if you use my link but it's going to the skyrim video if you're trying to get your friends to play test 3 and p telling them that it is cheap is a pretty good selling point especially since there aren't really any advantages offered by steam integration for morrowind plus the gog version comes with the master index plugin already downloaded once you have the game you have two choices patch the base game or use openmw p uses openmw so you don't need to make a choice there honestly for playing the game for the very first time just use openmw it's a source port that rebuilds the engine you get a lot of features in a single install where you might have to install a dozen different things with the base game i wouldn't go too crazy with mods or overhauls or anything like that the main thing is making sure the game runs comfortably on your system since it doesn't natively support widescreen resolutions you can also get a mod like expansion delay to make the expansion's tribunal and blood moon less aggressive or you can hit tilda target the assassin and use the command disable whenever you get attacked or you just kill them and sell their gear a lot of people do that if you have any issues beyond that you can use the pc gaming wiki to resolve system specific problems setting up test 3mp is pretty straightforward and mostly just a little extra effort for the person hosting the server which is honestly the price for trying to convince people to play morrowind with you as for starting the game nothing in character creation actually matters until this screen this screen is your character sheet and allows you to change your prior decisions so when you make your character just enter a funny name pick a cool looking guy fill out the class questionnaire and accept whatever it gives you pick a random birth sign and get to this screen or you could just use something like the morrowind character planner the main thing is getting to see directly how your choices impact your stats now you need to pick in order of importance your class your race and your birth sign all three of those are going to hinge on the play style you wish to use in morrowind which are roughly fighters mages and rogues combat is the easiest and friendliest to beginners magic is the most powerful but also complex and stealth is the odd one out it can be powerful but it's better suited to more experienced players classes are then created in this fashion you pick a specialization which is a choice between combat magic and stealth you pick two favorite attributes you pick five major skills and five minor skills major skills will increase the skill by 25 levels minor skills increase a skill by 10 levels skills generally operate by these rules 5 is unusable this represents your character flat out not knowing how to do something 20 is where your character will actually start to be able to do things with that skill 40 is something your character will be good at 50 is the max you can get out of a skill at character creation your character also has attributes all ranging from 30 to 50. these absolutely make a difference at the start and hinge on your choice of race and gender racial differences tend to play into fantasy tropes if you've played a later elder scrolls game you can guess which races will be good at which playstyles gender differences are trade-offs for instance argonian women are better at magic but slower and less agile than argonian men you can consult this chart on the uesp for more details i'll start with combat i still recommend you give all the parts a listen even if it isn't your planned play style because you might want to play a hybrid class and know about certain skills that belong to other specializations but let's talk about the honest sport of bashing dudes with a club pick a melee weapon you have long swords short swords axes maces spears and fists of those long swords axes and mesas can either be one-handed or two-handed but that's not as important in morrowind as it is in oblivion or skyrim mechanically there isn't a world of difference between long swords axes and mesas long swords are the most common weapon type you'll find so best for new players short swords are much faster much lighter but tend to break quicker the idea is to either carry multiple short swords or use them as backup weapons for your main weapon spears are always two-handed but have more reach than the other weapon types finally hand-to-hand is the art of not having a weapon but is what i would consider to be a melee skill for more experienced players due to how it works with fatigue oh and there's no need for exclusivity there's nothing wrong with wanting to use multiple weapon types you could be a battle master playstyle that can use literally any weapon and just use whatever you find out in the field but it is important that you make a commitment here blank slate characters have a default skill level of 5 in everything and level 5 in a skill means you're going to miss practically every single swing you take between 30 and 40 is common for selected major skills which is also around where weapons become usable you can walk out a character creation with a skill of 40 to 50 if you synergize if i'm making your character then put long blade in the major skill slot and be sure to actually buy a sword labeled as long blade from a merchant next up is going to be a choice in armor you have unarmored light armor medium armor and heavy armor the difference is obviously the weight but how does that translate to the experience basically what you're choosing is how much of your total carry weight you wish to designate to your armor you could wear an entire set of heavy armor boasting a high defense but not be able to carry as much spare equipment or loot you could lose a few pieces or use a lighter armor set but the trade-off is obviously in defense medium armor is a lot rarer in morrowind than the other types but if you plan on using a combat playstyle then you'll want to pick heavy or medium armor so that you receive points in endurance thereby raising your maximum potential health there's nothing wrong in picking two armor types and mixing your gear up to suit your play style there's also nothing dictating that you use full sets of armor if you're walking slowly then maybe your gear is too heavy for your current level daedric armor has a nice armor rating but it's also too heavy for low strength characters to actually wear next up is specializations which is fairly obvious which ones are for which playstyles specializations give all the skills under it five extra points i would pick the specialization for the weapon skill you choose because that is where it'll make the biggest difference long blades blunt weapons axes and spears are under combat magic is magic short blade hand hand and marksman are stealth for your attributes i would highly recommend picking endurance which governs the rate at which you gain health at every level favoring endurance will give that attribute 10 extra points which will result in one extra hit point every level health is universally useful in single player morrowind making endurance very important although if you're playing cooperatively and know that you won't be taking the bulk of the damage you could actually go without it some people also prefer speed utilizing their speed in combat to dodge attacks at this juncture combat has two meaningful attribute choices strength or agility strength will affect how much damage you do your max carry weight and your starting health and fatigue agility on the other hand will increase both the rate at which you land hits as well as dodge or block them your maximum fatigue and your resistance to getting staggered an easy way to think about this choice is simply to imagine whether your character is going to be a strong warrior or a skilled fighter it's not a permanent decision you won't suffer terribly for this choice and there are birth signs that will offset whatever you don't choose personally if you can't choose i would go with agility being able to land hits more often is much more valuable to new players than being able to hit things really hard especially since the difficulty affects how much health enemies have not how often you can hit them finally you have the skills put your preferred weapon and armor types in the major skill slots if you want to use a shield which requires a one-handed weapon add block to the major skills block is not an active ability but happens passively based on skill value and agility so consider that you cannot dump block as a skill and expect shields to still be useful in morrowind like you can in the later games there's a philosophy out there practiced by some players to not put their preferred weapons in the major skills in fact they don't pick it as a skill at all this is really bad advice for new players and should only be done if you understand what you're doing and why you're doing it it will make the game extremely miserable and the benefits are negligible especially for new players put your weapon skill in the major category alright so what about the rest of the slots well here you have to make a few choices but it's not hard at all athletics people sleep on this skill having high athletics will make you run faster and use less fatigue while doing it it's basically a numerical score that dictates how in shape your character is so if you find the movement speed slow this would be a good major skill choice it does come with a downside that being that athletics levels from running which you obviously do a lot of this is a double-edged sword leveling quickly seems nice but leveling too quickly using a wide variety of skills will result in you getting less attribute points when you level up this is called dirty leveling but if you're new then you should not let it bother you while you can raise attributes by a total of 15 points per level there's nothing wrong with a dirty level as long as you're usually raising the primary attribute of your chosen weapon type by 5 points per level which is either strength for long swords axes and maces endurance for spears and speed for short blades and hand to hand as long as you're using the same weapon type over the course of a level it won't be a big deal to have athletics occasionally level up the next skill for consideration is armorer this is your ability to repair equipment usually while out in the field in towns you can pay blacksmiths to repair items combat playstyles should plan on carrying a repair hammer with them morrowind is not as bad as oblivion when it comes to the rate your gear breaks if you repair every single time when you return to town then what will typically end your adventures in the world will more likely be a full inventory than broken equipment you could also elect to bring a backup weapon or skill instead at this point i want to bring up fatigue management because this is super important in morrowind if you play a nerd who spend his jail time learning about magic then you best believe your character is going to be wheezing like one after running half a mile fatigue affects almost everything you do from hit chance to spell chance to unlock chance to persuasion and sales prices makes sense try doing literally anything when you're out of breath mitigating this can be done in a few ways firstly take regular breaks that's what the weight functions for you could also use alchemically made or store-bought potions restoration magic is well trained by quick fatigue regeneration spells mysticism magic could be used to steal back fatigue from enemies which is actually really powerful with hand-to-hand builds fatigue is also a flat combination of your strength willpower agility and endurance so the simple way to improve your fatigue management would be to simply level those attributes another thing for combat playstyles to consider are locks which combat has no direct answer for you have three options to this problem scrolls and enchanted items lock picking and alteration spells otherwise you just won't have access to locked chests and doors which there are a lot of in morrowind the first isn't a skill but rather a routine gold expenditure typically picking up some open scrolls at the mages guild before heading out on adventures the second is a stealth skill called security which will also require you to have some lockpicks and probes the third is a magic skill called alteration which will cost you magicka i'll detail those in their relevant sections so stick around if you think you might want to use skills instead of scrolls if you're playing cooperatively then only one person really needs to be able to break locks allowing you to specialize your characters next are skills related to dealing with npcs mercantile is a skill that affects the value of sold and bought items while speech craft is a skill related to affecting the dispositions of npcs disposition is a big factor in item values and some quest progression which can also be affected by illusion magic a big gold expenditure though is training training allows you to convert all that gold you're making into levels instead of just having it sit in your inventory the price of trading however is dictated by mercantile skills and disposition so if you play a rude barbarian that refuses even basic decorum expect prices to be high combat again has no direct answer to these situations so it may be prudent to pick these as skills even as just minor skills another option is personality is an attribute which will raise dispositions but honestly if you're a new player then your primary focus should be on combat attributes now let's talk about your choice in race this is far more than a choice in appearance each race and even the genders of those races affect your skill and attribute values while you can certainly do well playing a race that isn't traditionally associated with combat you'll do better in the early game with a combat play style if you pick a combat race it's all about the problems you want to solve a good example are imperials which suffer somewhat with thief attributes but do really well with personalities so they do better with the aforementioned npc problems imperials also get a power called voice of the emperor which charms npcs by 25 to 50 points daily which raises their disposition by that value and can absorb fatigue 200 points every day as well which is really good for combat playstyles nords are really strong but not as suited to magic or stealth orcs are strong and have high endurance and magic resistance meaning more health but are the worst at stealth magic and personality orcs can also go berserk daily which turns them into melee glass cannons red guards are also bad at magic but strong and enduring and can do a daily adrenaline rush that's very powerful in combat it's basically the equivalent of being 10 levels stronger for one minute the final choice to consider for combat is dunmer which are pretty average but actually receive a movement speed benefit as well as the fact that all races receive disposition boosts with fellow members of their race and since morrow wins the dunmer province you'll get the most benefit from that by playing a dunmer however while powers and attribute bonuses are nice the big thing with your choice in race are the skills each race gets various buffs to skills which can actually be pretty significant when synergized with your choice in weapon red guards for instance get 15 extra points to their longblade skill which is why you should play around with your racial choices on the character sheet to see how much they affect your class picking redguard and using long blades means you'll have a much easier time in combat in fact it's pretty much my go-to suggestion for first time morrowind players you could also go with what looks cool i guess that's an option just understand that that comes at a premium in morrow end finally you have the birth signs some of these give you powers but many of them are passive benefits the warrior for instance fortifies attack by 10 points this will increase your chance to hit by 10 for the entire game while that's definitely very powerful in the early game by the mid game as long as you stick to your chosen weapon skill you usually land 100 of attacks anyways another sign to consider is the lover which fortifies agility passively by 25 points resulting in a five percent increased hit chance but also a five percent increased dodge chance you'll also block more often do better with lock picking have more fatigue and have a higher resistance to staggers which is why the lover is usually chosen over the warrior since it will last far longer throughout your playthrough in addition to all that you also get the power lover's kiss which can paralyze the target for 60 seconds if they don't resist it at the cost of 200 points of fatigue which is still very powerful as long as the paralysis isn't resisted but that holds for most of the early game those are mainly if you decide to pick a non-traditional combat race if you're playing a combat playstyle with a combat race then you may want to shore up your weaknesses and your character the steed for instance will fortify your speed by 25 points causing you to move significantly faster which is a big deal if you pick a slow race like orc or use heavy armor the steed also stays useful for the entire game since speed continues to scale past level 100 the lady meanwhile will fortify your personality by 25 points as well as your endurance normally fortify endurance does not affect health gains per level but the lady is the one exception to that rule if you want an insanely high health pool in addition to doing better with npcs this is a strong contender the shadow will provide a minute of invisibility daily invisibility is broken by interaction with objects so it's highly situational for instance you might want to use it to avoid fighting a particularly tough enemy the tower will provide you with a daily power to open a 50 point lock which is the middle of lock difficulties while a decent way to offset a lack of any security options you'll still need some ways to open lock levels higher than 50. you're also basically giving up a potentially huge combat advantage for something that you can pay like 200 gold to offset the lord gives you a daily healing power but it's only two points every second for 30 seconds at the cost of 100 weakness to fire which is one of the most common spell types enemies have the ritual gives a daily power to restore 100 health instantly with zero downsides so if you're looking for a daily healing power the ritual is flat out better than the lord finally you have the atronach which at face value appears to be a magic focused birth sign however 50 magic absorption is extremely powerful for defense against spell casters which you can either compound with something like orcs natural 25 magic resistance or used to buff up imperials who have no magic resistances at all the downside is a lack of natural magica regeneration but if you weren't planning on using magic anyways then it isn't really a downside if you're planning on using a hybrid class with magic however then you might want to wait for when i talk about it in regards to magical skills so now you should have a pretty good idea of what kind of fighter you might want to build great let's talk about hybrid combat playstyles you may for instance be interested in using ranged weapons with marksman which involves a variety of ranged weapons from bows to throwing knives to crossbows in oblivion and skyrim there's no reason not to carry a bow around but in morrowind there is if you want to do it you'll either need to put it in your class or train it up later because ranged weapons are very reliant on having sufficient skills to be useful the main thing you'll probably be interested in having hybrid skills in however is magic so we'll build a magic focused character and all you have to do is if a school sounds cool to use just add it to your class preferably in the major skill category for instance if you want to heal just put restoration in there and now you'll be better at casting healing spells so you've heard the rumors about magic being powerful in morrowind and want to pick up the art again the same logic applies class race birth sign magic specialization intelligence and willpower intelligence is important because it gives you more magicka which means more spells before you need to rest willpower is important because it increases your success rate at casting those spells so where's the hard choice well mages are fragile and unlike traditional tabletop you probably don't have a party to back you up magic playstyles all come down to offsetting the inherent weakness of a guy getting close to you and beating you to death so you might want something to help with that more endurance for health or speed for speed if you want to run away etc but you'll be worse at the magic part of your class that's why magic isn't suitable for beginners because there's a lot of trade-offs to consider that require some knowledge about the game your skill choices are going to be pretty straightforward you'll need some measure of offensive magic which is either going to be destruction mysticism or conjuration you'll then need defense magic which will either be restoration alteration or illusion destruction is straightforward you can do damage you can make people weaker or you can break their equipment destruction makes a good hybrid skill because what else are you going to use your magicka for restoration is also straightforward you can restore your attributes or build up your resistances restoration is a good hybrid skill think of it like doing a little prayer before battle to increase your potency in combat or to heal yourself afterwards mysticism is more abstract you can absorb stats instead of damaging them but at greater magicka costs absorbing a stat means that you decrease the enemy's value but increase yours so if you absorb 100 points of fatigue you will restore 100 points of fatigue to yourself you can also do cool stuff like teleport and manipulate objects at a distance you don't need to probe a trap if you can use telekinesis to set it off from across the room and teleportation is its own reward coming in either a fast travel to the nearest temple or to a point of your choosing with mark and recall alteration is a robust skill packing its own cool perks you can shield yourself which will increase your armor rating simulate the feeling of wearing heavy armor or stack it on top of your existing heavy armor you can also unlock stuff magically increase your carry weight decrease the target's carry weight to freeze them in place or use it to move around with jump spells water walking fast swimming and water breathing or you know the power to fly conjuration is the ability to summon stuff one of my favorite builds is a normal red guard warrior but with conjuration as a major skill and learning to summon swords not only will the sword be powerful and actually make you better at using it it also means you don't have to carry a sword around or worry about ever having to repair it you can also summon armor or creatures to fight alongside you finally you have illusion magic which allows you to affect people this gives you the power to calm npcs and then you can use speechcraft to intimidate them which will lower their fightiness and make them scared of you so when the spell wears off they still won't fight you or you can make a friendly npc more likely to attack you or you can turn invisible or you can paralyze your enemies something you have to bear in mind is that at level 1 you'll likely need to head to the mages guild and make some custom spells spell chance with default spells is a bit rough early on it's more than just magicka that stops you from casting in game magic the spellcrafting menu and your magic menu will tell you the chance you have of successfully casting the spell but with spellcrafting you can tone the spell power down to increase that spell chance also since you can name the spells i recommend naming every spell with a letter and a dash before the name to help organize your spell menu you can do the letters based on their schools of magic or in the order of importance you could decide to pick multiple or all the schools of magic that only comes with the downside of being lacking in other skills that makes magic strong for hybrid playstyles an extra edge to consider of course you need magicka but there are birth signs and race choices for that we'll talk about in a bit for now there's a couple more skills to consider alchemy is the skill related to potion crafting alchemy is pretty powerful in morrowind because you get easy access to ingredients unlike skyrim having alchemy as a skill means you know some of the ingredient effects without needing to eat them alchemists need to find equipment which comes in levels but this can be a handy way around needing to spend all your magicka on healing spells next is enchant enchanted objects are very powerful in morrowind and enchant makes you better at using them the thing about enchant is that it's for more experienced players it's not a good skill pick at all for new people making enchanted items is really expensive so it's something to get into in the late game when you have lots of money to just train the skill up anyways i suppose the next question is can mages wear armor and the answer is yes absolutely in fact you can wear any armor type without restriction as long as you're skilled at it however what you need to consider is that mages typically don't have the strength to spare for heavy gear nor the speed to get around quickly while wearing it so unarmored in light armor is more suitable for the play style than medium and heavy armor alright now let's talk about magic races basically bretons and high elves any race can of course do magic but bretons and high elves get a magika multiplier bonus which means that they'll always be at a significant advantage when it comes to the number of spells they can cast since magicka does not passively regenerate this advantage does not go away either bretons and high elves will always be magically superior high elves get more magicka but come with all these spell weaknesses bretons get less magicka than high elves but still more than the other races and they get a passive 50 resistance to magic plus an active power that provides 50 points of shield for 60 seconds to summarize high elves are offensive focus while bretons are more defensive and that comes across in their skill bonuses as well but what if you want to play literally any other race well not to worry it's all about the trade-offs you'll have less magicka but you can make up for it in other ways like not being physically made of glass argonians imperials what else khajiit and dark elves are decent picks nords orcs and red guards are going to be the worst picks again this is in regards to the early game obviously you can make an orc wizard happen it all comes together with the birth signs the mage the apprentice and the atronach are all birth signs which will provide you with more magicka with increasing downsides the mage has no downside the apprentice will make you weaker to magic and the atronach will give you the most magicka but take away your magic of regeneration from resting meaning that you'll have to either absorb spells or use potions if you are a new magic player i would honestly avoid the atronach until you're prepared for the lifestyle of not being able to rest and getting all your blue juice back as for the other two it depends on your race choices and honestly you don't encounter too many spellcasters until the mid game like if you're an orc you can get magicka comparable to a high elf with less weaknesses just by using the apprentice your other choices in birth signs is super easy with magic because most of them now don't apply or are superfluous like what's the point of having a daily unlock power when you could just have a spell that unlocks stuff you could also use the lady to boost your endurance and personality lose some magicka in exchange for more health the steed allows you to get around quicker and you could bob and weave using touch spells in combat but personally i would consider looking into magically augmenting your speed instead of picking this birth sign alright now let's talk about stealth play styles and round this video out again stealth is the weakest in morrowind and not something i recommend for new players not because it's complex it's actually super straightforward it's just weak compared to how strong it became in oblivion and skyrim and i think that throws new players off plus there is the element of how you are playing the game playing unpatched morrowind for stealth is very painful because some of the formulas are outright broken i highly recommend not picking this playstyle as a first character it's the same logic as a combat build pick a weapon type there's no such thing as stealth weapons so you can play a sneaky guy who uses a sledgehammer marksman is popular for its ranged advantages plus it's an agility skill shortblade is also popular because it's a speed skill armor also doesn't matter as much to stealth although light armor is preferred because it is an agility skill the main thing is that you're obviously going to need the sneak skill and i highly recommend also bringing illusion as a major skill because stealth and morrowind relies on magic to actually function but what about attributes you need agility because it buffs your ability to sneak and land hits with bows honestly outside of agility it's a free market basically consider all of the aforementioned problems and pick whatever you might be weakest at especially in regards to your race like if you pick wood elf then you might want to pick endurance for health buffs wood elf is definitely the best for a stealth playstyle focused around combat while khajiit do better at the social side of stealth as for birth signs the lover is pretty big with 25 points in agility honestly i would avoid the shadow for a stealth playstyle it sounds intuitive to be able to go invisible but it really is a waste compared to the advantages given by the lover now you might be thinking wait is that seriously it just stack agility as high as you can and yeah it really is agility is a big chunk of hit chance in morrowind if you want to do a lot of bobbing and weaving in and out of attack range then you can stack speed with red guards if you want i feel that really is a combat crutch compared to trying to max your agility personality is technically a stealth skill but obviously it's going to favor your time in town more than it will the world like yeah you could intimidate a bunch of npcs using illusion magic to play a terrifying presence pacifist but really personality should be used to navigate the early game town world to then train your character into the mid game which is something not really conducive for a first time playthrough and that's pretty much everything morrowind is one of those games where your first character is basically a trial run while you dial in the mechanics so that you can understand what you actually enjoy and should prioritize that's why i recommend people not invest themselves too heavily into any of the major questlines until they know they have a character they really like you could also look into the dark arts of exploits to make your character extremely powerful although honestly i would not you only get to enjoy morrowind for the first time once i suggest you do it authentically in summary ignore the iron dagger and pick skills you plan on using thanks to the patrons for allowing me to make this video alongside my skyrim video they get early access to my work as well as a place in the credit sequences of my videos i also want to thank gog for offering a deal for the 20th anniversary i've been getting a lot of sponsorship offers lately but most of them seem pretty difficult to naturally integrate into my style of video nor do they seem particularly to offer anything useful to my viewers at the end at the three-way intersection with five rocks turn left oh we're coming up on another dunmer stronghold i think i think this one is cover run it's gotta be there's none further east of here

Channel: PatricianTV

Views: 345,600

Keywords: Patrician, openMW, open mw

Id: SFxt_29uu6s

Length: 30min 0sec (1800 seconds)

Published: Sun May 01 2022