Besides understanding dirty mods and what to do with them, another essential skillset for getting Morrowind mods to work together is the concept of merging leveled lists and objects. Basically, you’ll be learning how to find plugin conflicts and fix them by creating a merged patch.
Before we go any further, there are a couple more technical aspects to modding Morrowind that you need to know about. Understanding these things will help you build a Morrowind load order that works properly and remains as error-free as possible, regardless of which mods or modding guide you use. The first is the concept of dirty mods, and how to clean them.
21 years since Morrowind’s release, and nine years since I started this guide, and I continue to be amazed by the dedication and creativity of the Morrowind modding community. This guide is now being updated for 2023 and continued beyond where I left off before. Here’s what to expect, and how to keep track of the updates.
You probably all thought I was dead, but I reloaded my last save and here I am.
By the Nine, it feels good to be working on this again. I’ll dispense with the explanations, but not a single day has gone by in which I haven’t thought about this blog and how badly I need to get back to it. I have had Part 13 sitting unfinished in my drafts for over a year. A YEAR! Talos forgive me.
During my hiatus, new mods have been released, others have been updated, problems have surfaced, solutions have been found, and thanks to actually having active readers commenting, I’ve pinpointed some weaknesses in my earlier entries that I now plan to address.
Morrowind’s two expansions are usually covered in separate addons. Our use of Mixed Textures earlier was a bit of a fluke, in that it did include a few textures for the expansions (and you may recall that’s why we started with it), but in most cases Tribunal and Bloodmoon will have discrete texture packs. The following addons will provide excellent boosts in quality while maintaining (or staying as close as possible to) the original look.
In this part of the guide we will explore detailed texture replacers and fine-tune our graphical updates. We’re going to start with large parts of the outdoors, nature, and buildings, and work our way down to smaller elements.
I have added a couple of new mods to the guide, in their respective sections, but I want to mention them here for those who have already passed those steps.
Now that we’ve updated the graphics for characters, clothing, armor, and weapons, it’s time to move on to the rest of the world. As you know (if you’ve been reading!) my preference is to mod Morrowind in such a way that it simply looks like a modern version of the same game, without changing the overall feel. I also like to go for straight replacers first, converting all the original graphics, before I move on to adding things with no preexisting counterpart. So far, I’ve been sticking closely to addons that, above all, fill those requirements, and that has narrowed my selection down greatly.
World textures are a different matter. You wouldn’t expect it, but this is where the hardest choices come in for someone trying for both quality and purity. Consistency is also important, as landscapes and objects need to look like they belong in the same world. Even when sticking as closely as possible to the original look, texture packs exist in abundance, and they aren’t always clear as to what they cover. I am in the process of creating a detailed comparison of available texture packs so you can decide for yourself which you prefer. For this guide, however, we’re going to use my judgment as to what looks the most like Morrowind.
Just a quick note for those reading: the next entry in my Morrowind Modding Guide is nearly ready, and it is gigantic. I’m actually considering splitting it off into two entries, which I think will work well, as it starts out with basic improvements/replacers and moves up to more advanced (and CPU-intensive) ones. My intentions are for everyone to be able to upgrade everything at least to some degree and then stop before their computers become overwhelmed.
Once it’s up, there will probably be frequent minor edits for a few days, but as always, the edits will be catalogued on the main Morrowind page.
We’ve upgraded the graphics for characters, clothing, and armor, and now it’s time for weapons. Upgrading weapons is a little more of a process, which is why they get their own entry.