Osaka 2024-12-05 10:52:18

They served as the foundation for all the more accessible titles that came later on in their respective franchises. They're for sure rough around the edges if you aren't used to earlier mechanics (especially if you started with the more modern games), but if you're patient with them, they both have their fair share of interesting stuff and the time invested can make it a really rewarding experience!

I'd say be patient with them and take time to adapt, but they're certainly not for everyone :)

Yatsufusa 2024-12-05 14:27:48

Some advice for 'Morrowind': Get the 'Tribunal' & 'Bloodmoon' extensions. Not so much because of the content but because of the bugfixes. There's also a giant fan-made patch with bugfixes which you should install as well. (I've forgotten the name, but it "probably" has tens of thousands of upvotes and is on the top of the list.)

I hold 'Morrowind' dear, but the truth about this game is: It's an abusable, buggy mess and those bugs will keep you from ever completing the game.

Oh, and also:
- Even with all those fixes, important questgivers can vanish and quest items can "go missing". "Welcome to Morrowind!" If you already went through a cave twice, make sure you're in the right place, look up where something was "supposed to be", then open the console and spawn it in. It feels wrong, but so does killing a bandit leader and not getting the one piece of loot he should canonically drop.
- Save often!
- You should level 'Luck' every level up. EVERY SINGLE roll in this game factors that stat in - combat, loot from creatures and containers, every other stat roll... It's super unbalanced.
- The 'Endurance' stat will determine the HP you get every level up. Starting out high and raising it early will make a world of difference. And the game will not point this out to you.
- Forget about running. ;) Travel everywhere by jumping - especially early on. It's a bit clunky, but faster and it trains your 'Strength'.
- Don't pick up everything you see. Only what seems valuable or interesting.
- Learning a million spells is great for spell-crafting, but it will make your interface next to unusable. Focus on learning spells you'll actually use.
- Try to learn the following spells early: Almsivi Intervention, Divine Intervention, Mark, Recall. The allow you to fast-travel. (You can find maps for Almsivi Intervention and Divine Intervention online. Just looking at them will make it much clearer how having both is useful.)
- If your chosen species cannot wear helmets and boots, you are playing with a heavy disadvantage.
- Alchemy is designed in a messed up way that allows for players to essentially have infinite stats forever. Some people will recommend it to you, but from what I heard it will make the game rather boring.

Yatsufusa 2024-12-05 22:25:00

@Brewzman Erm... Every quest involving talking to an NPC that's still alive, killing a creature, or taking an item out of a container/corpse.
It's not like in an MMORPG where "Quest X is still bugged" or "Quest X can sometimes bug out". It can happen for the stupidest reasons - even 'with' the patch. The various patches just reduce the chance of stuff going wrong by fixing (known) common causes. The more you go off the beaten track, the more likely it is that a quest wasn't looked into that deeply.

For example: Bethesda was probably testing the starting area like crazy, because it would have been a really bad look if players casually fell through the map 10 steps from the start. ;) But if you accept a side quest that's not connected to the main questline, the guilds or the houses, (or is otherwise "famous" within the community), they were probably not checked that deeply.

Something else I remembered: Consider finding an empty house in a larger city. Caius Cosades' house is convenient and all, but if you like to store items for later use, you'll soon discover how cramped it can get in there. But just 'taking over' 'any' house and putting your items into chest can mark them as stolen in some cases once you take them out again. You can talk/bribe an NPC into liking you enough, so you can sleep in their bed and you can arrange items in shelves. There are a few houses which can be occupied without too much trouble, but identifying such a 'potential home' isn't always easy. The following link is pretty much a spoiler and the descriptions where the houses are located aren't exactly perfect - but I'll include it in case you're feeling anxious about it:
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Houses#Other_Dwellings

There 'are' houses you essentially "get" by doing quests ("Murder whoever lives there...") but those houses aren't particularly 'nice' in my eyes - or the quests are more than 100 hours into the game.