I picked up Morrowind this weekend

[Mercule]

Yeah, I'm behind the time, I know. I finally picked up Morrowind this weekend and got a chance to play for a couple of hours last night. My thoughts:

• Cool game. The story looks to be a bit more coherent and accessible than Daggerfall was. This is good because, while I enjoyed Daggerfall, it was pure happenstance for me to ever do something involved in the main plot, even when I tried.
• Great graphics. The two big "wows" were the water and the night sky. The water still looked very unreal, but cool.
• The "region" loading is a bit slow. Is there a way to speed this up? Settings I can change? Patches/hacks/etc?
• There are way too many alchemical ingredients to keep track of. This is good and bad. Pretty cool, overall, though.
• Very cool how much you can interact with objects lying around. I was surprised at the amount of random "loot" (okay, if it's worthless, maybe loot isn't the right word) that is just laying around to manipulate. Hopefully, that's put to good use with puzzles later in the game.
• Some of the interface is rather arcane. I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed with the merchant screen and whether (and how much) I should be yutzing with the "offer price", etc.

That's pretty much all I got out of it during my first two hours. I just finished the caves. I don't think I like the character I created (Bard), so I'll be starting over and doing it again (probably with a custom class).

Any veteran players have some tips? Nothing too spoilerish, but if there's something that will increase the fun, like tips on using the interface or what skills royally suck or other learning-curve type things, that'd be great.

 

[Zappo]

First: install the latest patch. A good habit in general, a must for anything by Bethesda.

Second: you don't really need tips, because the game is going to get very easy, very quickly, unless you make a very suboptimal character. Luckily, it is also very moddable; a number of people have made difficulty mods, and I strongly suggest you to pick up one. Most people I know have stopped playing Morrowind out of boredom. A real pity, because it is otherwise one of the best single player games bar none. You even get used to the interface after a while.

 

[Mercule]

Ugh! That's unfortunate that it's so easy. I'll give it a shot "as-is" before grabbing the mods. Thanks for the heads-up, though.

 

[MythosaAkira]

Not sure what people mean by Morrowind being too "easy", though I do recall that combats weren't all that tough after a little while. Some things are nasty later on...

One thing I would recommend is picking up the "strategy guide" or whatever it's called, primarily for the maps. I don't usually get the guidebooks for games (generally don't need them), but there is a LOT of stuff just scattered around - monster lairs, mini-quests, tombs, lost treasure, etc. I wouldn't have known about most of it if I hadn't used the guidebook maps that touch on pretty much everything of interest.

 

[Shard O'Glase]

I think the thing with the game is its as easy or hard as you make it. There are a otn of loopholes you can use to make the game really easy. My favorite it alchemy in general, its easy tyo get your skill to 100 at which point you make incredible powerful potions which you can make tons of money off of which allows you to train any skill up, and heck are useful in themselves. A healing potion can heal enough per second for a long enough amount of time to get you through any fight. But if you don't abuse the loopholes the game can remain challenging for many hours until your a high level.

 

[Mercule]

Argh!!!! It keeps crashing. About every 20 minutes or less. Sometimes, it even reboots my machine.

Does anyone know how to fix it?

 

[jonesy]

Argh!!!! It keeps crashing. About every 20 minutes or less. Sometimes, it even reboots my machine.

Does anyone know how to fix it?

Try asking at http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/ at the Hardware and Software Issues forum.


Here's a very good tip: don't look at strategy guides. Learn the world by yourself. The game isn't too easy as long as you don't go for the exploits that the game system allows (and the system has some major loopholes for godly power).