(Re)installing Morrowind, Pt. 3: Morrowind Graphics Extender (and More) | Morrowind Modding Guide 2023

Last updated May 13, 2023.

Continued from Part 2: Morrowind Code Patch (and More), or start at the beginning with Basic Morrowind Installation.

All right, now that we have the game working and patched, it’s time to set up a few graphical improvements. At the very least, we need to fix our screen resolution. I highly recommend doing this early on, as it may influence your later decisions over which texture upgrades to use, if any. Screen resolution and other basics are what this section of the guide focuses on — more advanced graphics will come later.

Before I go any further, I also want to make mention of the Morrowind Graphics and Sound Overhaul (MGSO). I am not going to use it, and neither should you. For the uninitiated, MGSO is a famous mod compilation that came with its own installer, and to its credit, it was built with true passion and helped get new players excited about Morrowind who might otherwise not have given an old game a chance. However, it has numerous problems that can be summed up as follows: it packs outdated versions of necessary tools (including the Morrowind Code Patch which we already installed), is known to cause errors including making some quests impossible to complete and some areas impossible to access, makes highly subjective choices regarding some of the mods it contains, and makes it harder to customize your setup later. Even the original creator of MGSO says it shouldn’t be used these days, and has gone so far as to take down his website and rename MGSO on the Nexus to label it as outdated.

Even without those problems, I still wouldn’t use MGSO, because the purpose of this guide is to help you understand what all these individual components are, and what they do. I want to turn you into someone who feels confident modding Morrowind a piece at a time until you have it how you want it, even if you make different choices than I do. On a personal note, I’m not fond of some of the specific graphics mods utilized by the Overhaul and it’s definitely not purist-friendly (and as I mentioned earlier, there are some annoyances involved in customizing it to your liking).

With that said, let’s continue! If you’re really scared you’re going to bungle something, make another backup of your Morrowind folder first.

So! What are we going to do today? I am going to introduce you to the Morrowind Graphics Extender. MGE is a program that can improve Morrowind’s graphics in a number of ways, from simply allowing you to play the game in any resolution, to increasing your view distance via its Distant Land feature, to more advanced enhancements like shaders (basically, lighting effects). These options can add an almost unbelievable amount of realism to Morrowind, but depending on your preferences, you’re free to leave almost all of the enhancements turned off (and depending on your computer, certain settings may cause the game to slow down to an unplayable crawl). Later on we’ll dig into the more advanced settings of MGE, but for now we are going to use it only for some very basic changes that will help us get the game up and running.

There are two versions of MGE available: MGE 3.8.0, and the newer, rewritten MGE XE. I used MGE 3.8.0 for many years, but I highly recommend using XE, and only trying the old MGE 3.8.0 if you can’t get XE to work at all for some reason, like if you’re using a very old computer. My reasoning for this is that MGE XE is much newer and has better support, as well as including some features you might otherwise need to install separately if you used MGE 3.8.0. I’ve also noticed better performance with MGE XE — it really seems to be an all-around improvement over the older version, including both quality and performance. MGE XE should be considered the standard for Morrowind modding in 2023.

Because of the above reasons, I’m going to cover MGE XE first, and you should try it before resorting to MGE 3.8.0. I’ll walk you through both to the best of my ability, but with MGE 3.8.0 aging as much as it is, I’m not able to provide much support. If MGE XE works for you, you can skip reading the MGE 3.8.0 part, but reading all of the below may help you better understand what we are doing and why.

If you’re using MO2, the relevant section in my Using Mod Organizer 2 with Morrowind – Tutorial is “Morrowind Graphics Extender XE (MGE XE)” which contains basically the same steps as this page, except clarified for an MO2 installation. Follow those instructions and refer back to the details on this guide entry when instructed.

If you are using OpenMW, you will not be able to use either Morrowind Graphics Extender version because they rely on running Morrowind through its original engine, and OpenMW is an entirely different engine with which to run the game. However, OpenMW already includes some of the graphical features from MGE XE, so this isn’t a problem graphics-wise.

Before we get into MGE XE, though, I want to alert you to a very useful tool that will help it run faster: the 4GB patch.

Patching MGE or MGE XE for 64 Bit Systems

The 4GB patch is a handy little app that will patch an .exe so it can use all 4GB of memory on 64-bit Windows. For Morrowind itself, the 4GB patch is now built in to the Morrowind Code Patch, so you no longer need this 4GB patch for the game, but I recommend downloading it anyway just to patch the Morrowind Graphics Extender (whether you use MGE or MGE XE). You can download it here. However, we can’t use it on MGE XE until we actually have MGE XE installed, so just hang onto it for now. Put it anywhere you like on your computer and just wait till I tell you to run it.

Now let’s get on with MGE XE.

MGE XE

MGE XE requires the Morrowind Code Patch to run, which we installed in the last entry. It also has some other requirements, but the newest versions of MGE XE include all their required software as part of the download. If you want to use an older version for some reason (don’t), you’ll first need to download and install DirectX 9.0c June 2010 from here.

Download the MGE XE Installer version from the Nexus (using Manual Download) and extract the archive to access the installer inside.

Run the installer to install MGE XE in your Morrowind folder (not Data Files — it has to be in the same folder as Morrowind.exe). Keep the following in mind during installation:

• One of the advantages of MGE XE is that it includes an updated version of the Morrowind Script Extender (MWSE) which at the time of this writing is 2.1. MWSE allows for more complicated and interesting mods that can do things impossible in the unmodded game, and is considered another staple of Morrowind modding. Even if you don’t currently intend to use any mods with advanced scripting, it won’t hurt anything to install it, and you never know when you might want to try a mod that just happens to require MWSE. Plus, I’m definitely going to recommend a few mods later on that need MWSE. Make sure the “Required libraries” option is checked as well.
• Your computer may display a message stating that the software you’re installing requires some additional components to run — if it does this, let it install whatever it wants to.

When installation is finished, a window will appear asking you whether you want to open MGE XE Config and the readme. Don’t run MGE XE Config yet, but you can show the readme if you like. (If you jumped the gun and already opened the config, just close it.)

MGE XE also comes with a program called MWSE-Update.exe which will update MGE XE’s built-in version of MWSE. If you try to use a modern MWSE mod and it doesn’t work, the first thing you should do is run this program in case there’s an update you need.

In fact, you should run MWSE-Update.exe as soon as you finish installing MGE XE. Go ahead, do it now!

During installation, MGE XE also places an addon into Morrowind\Data Files called “XE Sky Variations.esp” that, according to MGE XE’s Nexus page, will “randomize the sky colour and sunrise/sunset every day. It requires high quality sky scattering enabled, and MWSE installed.” We actually have plans to use a different mod to handle these types of things for the sky, so you can delete this from Morrowind\Data Files.

A Quick Note About MO2 and MGE XE

If you’re using MO2 and you’re still on this page, you don’t need to install MGE XE through MO2 (which is why we downloaded it manually), but you will need to run MGE XE through it. When you follow the below instructions and it’s time to open MGE XE, run MGE XE from inside MO2 by selecting it from MO2’s dropdown menu instead of running it by opening the .exe as I describe below. This is the only way your Distant Land generation will show up when you run Morrowind from MO2. If you switch to MO2 later, you’ll need to do all MGE XE’s settings again and regenerate Distant Land (and then find the old Distant Land files and delete them to save space). So, if you want to use MO2 but haven’t installed it yet, do so now, run the Morrowind Code Patch again, and click “Apply chosen patches.” Reminder: all my MO2-specific instructions are available at Using Mod Organizer 2 with Morrowind – Tutorial.

Ready? Okay!

MGE XE Initial Setup

Once MGE XE and its built-in MWSE are installed, and you’ve run MWSE-Update.exe, now is the time to use the 4GB patch I had you download before. Unpack it from its archive, run it, and navigate to the .exe you want to patch (for example, for MGE XE you’d select MGEXEgui.exe). This is only for 64-bit Windows.

Now it’s time to set up MGE XE.

Go to your Morrowind folder (or MO2, as the case may be). Open up MGEXEgui.exe and you’ll see a ton of options. Don’t overdo it right now; all we are going to do is set your resolution and your field of view, and set up Distant Land so you can test whether your computer can handle the enhanced view distance. Later on, I’ll give a much more detailed explanation and you can come back and tweak everything to your liking.

Alternately, you can skip Distant Land generation for now since we’re going to have to do it again later anyway, but there are some things that actually require it and I like to do it at the beginning just as a baseline. You may also notice the presence of an “Instructions” tab — this leads you through some other things we’re going to do later, so you can ignore it for now.

1. Click the Graphics tab if you’re not on it. You probably are on it — this should be the default tab MGE XE opens to.
2. In the section on the top labeled “Display,” click “Select screen resolution,” choose your screen resolution from the dropdown menu, and click “OK.” This will also automatically calculate your aspect ratio (as of MGE XE 0.9.10). You can turn VSync on right now, or wait to see if you notice any screen tearing in the game. From now on, only use MGE XE to change your screen resolution if you need to do so — changing it in the game’s option menu will result in a crash.
   • Note that your screen resolution for Morrowind does not have to be as large as your monitor; if you decide to play at 4k and later end up with too much lag, you can lower the resolution here if nothing else works.
3. In the section below labeled “Renderer,” make sure “Auto FOV” is checked (this refers to the field of view, the width of horizontal degrees you can see). You don’t have to worry about shaders right now.
   • Reducing your FOV can also help reduce lag, but some people have problems with a lower FOV (I get tension headaches and motion sickness if it’s too low! Lucky me.) If you do have to lower it (or want to raise it), uncheck “Auto FOV” and find a level that works for you. Raising it too high will start to distort the edges of the screen, though. This FOV calculator may help you find your ideal settings.
4. Optionally, click the boxes in the “Display” section to run Morrowind in a window and to use windowless fullscreen. This can reduce performance in some occasions, but can also let you alt-tab in and out of the game with less potential for error. Like everything else Morrowind, however, it doesn’t work equally well for everyone. My advice is to try it if you’re interested. Personally, the game still acts up for me if I try to alt-tab whether or not I use it.
5. In the “Screenshots” section, you can set up the filename format, image format, and folder locations for screenshots. Just leave these on default settings unless you really prefer to change them. (Make note of the fact that you will now be able to take screenshots using the Print Screen key and that your UI will be hidden in them unless you hold Shift while taking the screenshot.)
6. Click the Distant Land tab.
7. Click the button that says “Distant Land Generator Wizard.” We are setting this up now to help you with adjusting your view distance during your testing process, but we’re going to run it again later as well once you’ve installed everything you want.
8. Click the “Use current load order” button (which will select the required mods for you, in the left pane of the current MGE XE window), and then click the “Continue” button.
9. One of two things will happen now:
   • A popup may appear, with a button labeled “Automatic setup everything.” Just leave everything at default and click that button.
   • If that popup does NOT appear, you will instead be brought to the next Distant Land tab, which is Land Textures. Just leave the settings at default and click the “Create Land Textures” button.
   • Then, proceed through the rest of the tabs that appear in sequence, which will be Land Meshes and Statics. Leave each of these with default settings and click the respective buttons to create them. Those buttons will be greyed out until the previous step is completed; just wait. You can keep an eye on the green progress bar to the left of the buttons to see when you will be able to click the next button. Once you have created the statics, Distant Land creation will be done.
10. When Distant Land creation is done, click Finish.
11. You’re back on the main screen, still in the Distant Land tab. Look for the checkbox in the upper left corner labeled “Use Distant Land” and make sure it’s checked. Leave everything else at default settings for now.
12. Click the In-Game tab if you want an option to skip the opening movies, i.e. the Bethesda loading screen and the animated Morrowind menu. This option is automatically checked, and is good for getting into the game more quickly, especially if you anticipate quitting and restarting a lot (which may happen during your adventures with this guide). If you like the opening movies, we will eventually replace them with higher-resolution versions, so feel free to keep them on or turn them back on later.
    • This tab is also where you find the third-person camera offset, so you can place it over your shoulder if you like — it’s the “Customize 3rd person camera” section as you may expect. I wouldn’t recommend changing it yet though; there’s enough to do right now and you can tinker with it later.
13. In the “Morrowind engine settings” section, you can access some of the same settings you could normally select in the in-game options or by editing Morrowind.ini, but here you can turn them on or off with a simple checkmark. “Allow yes to all load errors” is good to turn on, and “Show subtitles” will subtitle any spoken dialogue in the game. “High detail actor shadows [buggy]” is not recommended; they are just as buggy as promised and they can cause a framerate hit. There’s also an option to show FPS but that’s Morrowind’s built-in option; MGE XE has its own back in the “Renderer” section of the graphics tab.
    • Another note about this tab: leave “Allow screenshots” unchecked. This is for Morrowind’s built-in screenshot functionality; with this box unchecked you can still use MGE XE to take the screenshots with the Print Screen key, and you can configure how MGE XE screenshots work under the Graphics tab. MGE XE’s screenshots are better anyway!
14. Exit MGEXEgui.exe (it shouldn’t be open while Morrowind is running; it’s just the settings. MGE XE itself starts and exits along with Morrowind, including its built-in MWSE). If you’re playing at a high resolution, take note of the below instructions under “Help! My UI is Really Tiny and I Can’t Read Text!” just in case this happens to you. Now check out your freshly updated game.

If everything is working, you’re good to go! If not, you might try troubleshooting on the Nexus Mods page or (as a last resort) downgrading to MGE 3.8.0. Also as a reminder, if you’re using Steam, Evolve, or any other game tracker with an overlay, make sure all those overlays are turned off!

Help! My UI is Really Tiny and I Can’t Read Text!

When increasing Morrowind’s resolution with MGE XE, the UI (health bars, minimap, dialogue windows, etc.) don’t automatically increase in size along with the higher resolution. On my desktop computer, at 1920×1080 resolution, I felt like the UI was still big enough. But on my laptop, at 2560×1600, it was way too small. Fortunately, this is very easy to fix!

MGE XE has a UI scaling feature, which you can adjust in the MGE XE configuration window, but also in-game. I recommend doing it from inside the game so you can see your adjustments in real time without having to guess.

While running Morrowind, you’ll notice a new “Mod Config” option in the main menu. Load up a test character and pause the game with the Escape key, then click “Mod Config,” and you’ll see MGE XE on the left side of the pane that opens. Click it, then click the button to open its settings window. In here, you’ll be able to incrementally adjust the scale of your UI without affecting anything else, and you can see the size change while you’re doing it. (Your entire screen seems to move around a little when you change this setting, but it’ll snap back to normal.)

At 2560×1600, I found 1.8 to be a good size, but this is personal preference. While increasing the UI size you may need to move the MGE XE settings box a little bit to get the entire thing back onto the screen. Make sure you click the “Save” button at the bottom when you’re done, otherwise you’ll need to adjust this again next time you start the game.

You can also access this menu anytime and make further adjustments if you need to, like if you talk to someone and discover the text is still too small for you.

This is where you can stop reading this entry and skip to the next guide step if MGE XE is working how it’s supposed to. Or, you can continue to learn bit about the legacy Morrowind graphics tools that MGE XE made obsolete. Just be aware that if MGE XE is working, you don’t need to install anything else on this page of the guide.

Also, keep in mind that I’m no longer using any of the tools on this page beyond this point, so I can’t help much if you have a problem with them. My first question to you would be whether or not you can use MGE XE instead, and it’ll likely be the same question almost everywhere.

MGE 3.8.0

As I mentioned earlier, you should try MGE XE first, as support for the older MGE 3.8.0 is fading, and related downloads are becoming harder to find — in fact, when I updated this section in 2020, I had to find a new download for the 2005 version of Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable as well as for the FPS Optimizer which I cover next, and then in 2021 I had to find a new download location for the 2008 redistributable. When longstanding tools like these are starting to return 404 Not Found errors (even on Microsoft’s website!), it feels like a death knell, and I think we’re in the age of MGE XE from now on. (However, if you’re a reader of this guide and you’d like to contribute some information or corrections about the old MGE, please feel free to do so in the comments.) These instructions are mainly here in case you really can’t get MGE XE to work for some reason, like if your computer is ancient. Even in my Windows 7 days, though, I was able to use MGE XE.

Also, since I’m using MGE XE now, I can’t really support users of MGE 3.8.0, separate MWSE installations, or the FPS Optimizer, but at least for the latter you can get support on its Nexus page linked soon below.

MGE is available here (release version) and here (including the latest beta version, which is still quite old). Full documentation is available here (in the .zip file). If you have trouble with any of my instructions, those official links may help you solve your problem, but MGE’s old home The Assimilation Lab has been taken down and many of the comments on the Nexus will direct you toward switching to MGE XE instead.

MGE requires some software on your computer in order to run. This includes Microsoft .NET 2.0 (the oldest available for download is 3.5 but that works too) which you can get here. You also need DirectX 9.0c from here.

Last, you need Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable, the 2005 version if you’re using an official release of MGE or the 2008 version if you’re using an MGE beta. I recommend installing both Visual C++ packages in case you decide to change to a different version of MGE, so install this one (2005) and then this one (2008). It is perfectly fine to have them both on your computer; just make sure you install the older one first.

MGE comes as a compressed archive, not an installer. After you’ve installed the prerequisites, open the archive and drag everything into your Morrowind folder. MGE will run by itself when you run Morrowind, but to configure it, you will open MGEgui.exe. Open it now (you are running as admin, right?) and click the “Global graphics” tab at the top. Click “Change screen resolution” at the bottom to choose your resolution.

Unlike MGE XE, MGE 3.8.0 doesn’t have a FOV option (or at least, it didn’t when I used it), so if you’re using a widescreen resolution, there will be some distortion (which we will fix momentarily). Basically, everything is stretched horizontally to accommodate the wider aspect ratio. Mr. Testdunmer doesn’t look so bad, but once you get to the edges of the screen you’ll see a difference. That guard in particular looks like he ate every pot roast in the Empire.

In order to fix this, we need to use an additional program called the Morrowind FPS Optimizer. This program includes several options for further tweaking Morrowind, but for now we are just going to use it to set the field of view. (Please note that this is the tool that the “Better haggling” option from the Morrowind Code Patch is not compatible with, so if you turned that on, you’ll have to run the MCP again to turn it off for compatibility with the FPS Optimizer. On a computer that runs MGE XE, you may not need the FPS Optimizer at all, even for its other tweak functions.)

Also please note that some versions of the old MGE do seem to have an FOV option. However, I can’t personally confirm this. If you do notice such an option in your MGE installation, feel free to use that instead. You may still want the FPS Optimizer for its other features, though.

Install the FPS Optimizer into your Morrowind folder, run it (as admin, every time, or it’ll be partially broken), uncheck “Novice Mode,” and click on the tab called “Misc/2.” Near the bottom you will see the FOV and resolution settings; enter them here, choosing the same resolution you entered into MGE. As for FOV, 95-100 degrees seems to work well for widescreen monitors, but you can also calculate it here (for this calculator, Morrowind’s old aspect ratio is 4:3 and old FOV is 75).

Now everyone has regained their proper proportions. This does emphasize that Dunmer are some pretty gangly bastards, though.

One final thing you should do with this initial use of MGE is set up the screenshot key (this step is not required for MGE XE). Morrowind has its own screenshot function, but MGE 3.8.0 overrides it. You will have to set up a macro in MGE. From what used to be the MGE wiki:

1. Open MGEgui.exe.
2. Click on the Input tab.
3. Click on Launch Macro Editor.
4. In the Macro Editor, click on the key you want to use. Obviously this should be a key that isn’t already used in the game. Also, don’t choose the PrintScreen key (doing so will work, but Morrowind will display an irritating error message every time you take a screenshot).
5. At the bottom left of the Macro Editor, open the upper drop-down menu labeled Macro type and select “Function”.
6. Open the lower drop-down menu labeled Function and select “Take screenshot”.
7. Click “Save”. The key you selected should now be displayed in green.
8. Close MGEgui, start Morrowind, and see if the feature works. Sreenshots will be saved with the name “MGE screenshot” (plus a number) in the Morrowind directory.
Note: You can select the screen shot format in the Render State tab.

Like it says, don’t use Print Screen since this will cause the “Screenshot not enabled blahblah” message to pop up, and if you’re taking a lot of screenshots quickly, that message box will be visible in the subsequent ones.

Don’t worry about things like Distant Land in MGE 3.8.0 at this time. Remember all we’re trying to do is get everything to the right resolution and aspect ratio. Which, I have to say, is a LOT easier if you’re using MGE XE.

MWSE for MGE 3.8.0

One of the benefits of MGE XE is that it includes a built-in, modern version of MWSE. Back in the older days, we used to have to install MWSE separately and launch Morrowind through the provided MWSE launcher, but that stopped being necessary with time. In fact, some versions of the old MGE seem to have MWSE built into them too.

I’m pretty sure that MGE 3.8.0 has a built-in version of MWSE. I say “pretty sure” because all the documentation seems to indicate so, and I didn’t install it separately back on my Windows 7 computer when I first started writing this guide. If you do need the old version of MWSE, I believe you can find it here. If you’re running it separately from old MGE, you’ll need to disable the internal MGE version; instructions for doing so (and some general documentation about old MGE) can be found on this UESP Wiki page.

However, the old versions of MWSE are, well, old. Modern mods are unlikely to work with them, and sadly the newest version of MWSE isn’t compatible with MGE 3.8.0. So if you’re stuck with the old MGE, you’re stuck with an old MWSE as well. Which means no modern MWSE mods either.

Unfortunately, I’m not able to help with this, and I really encourage you to use MGE XE if your computer can handle it. But when it comes to mods that require the newest MWSE, I’ll try to include an alternative whenever possible. Non-MWSE mods also have the benefit of being compatible with OpenMW.

Anyway, let’s move on! Continue to Part 4: Mod Installation Best Practices, in which will learn how to best install and organize our addons.