Wake up. We’re here. Why are you shaking? Are you okay?
Wake up!
21 years since Morrowind’s release, and nine years since I launched this guide, and I continue to be amazed by the dedication and creativity of the Morrowind modding community. Dozens of brilliant, imaginative people have contributed to the lifespan of this groundbreaking RPG, with both long-term and new modders alike bringing their skills and ideas to the troubled island of Vvardenfell (and beyond). Despite my inactivity on this blog (for reasons I’d rather not get into — real life has been somewhat unkind, even in addition to the COVID situation which was partially responsible for wrecking my plans to finish this in 2020), I’ve been watching, tracking tons of mods on the Nexus, lurking Discord channels, and taking copious notes.
If you don’t want to read a long post, it’s enough to tell you I’m back now, Life in Ink and Pixels is back, and (Re)installing Morrowind is back. The rest of this article is about my vision for the guide, the challenges I’ve faced in trying to build it, the new solutions that have emerged and how they’re making that vision much more within reach, what’s already been updated for 2023, what remains to be done, and what the next new posts will be. Here’s a link to the first step of the guide and here’s my main Morrowind page where the steps are indexed and updates are documented.
In the past few years, I’ve seen numerous problems get solved that make it much easier to fulfill my vision for this guide. The modding community has made new advancements that make the entire process much smoother, expand the capabilities of Morrowind, and offer new options to players. I’ve also noticed an increasing trend toward purism, as long-term players seek to recapture the nostalgia with fewer of its inherent drawbacks, and new players look to experience Morrowind as closely as possible to how it was originally intended — at least, before they try any significant overhauls. This is a far cry from how it used to be, when the mods that changed or modernized more things were the most popular. People used to hate the old graphics. Some still do, but now, a significant portion of the playerbase loves them.
(Funny enough, I’ve always tended toward purism, at least to a point — my original guide entries were built around finding mods that were as close to vanilla as possible, only digressing when no other options were available, partially in service to providing a more purist setup than the prevalent-at-the-time MGSO. This is most evident in my deep dives into texture mods where I was trying to find higher-resolution options that stuck close to vanilla. But the emergence of the purism trend means more purist solutions are available now, leading to less digression on my part, and also to a redefinition of what “purist” really is and what it isn’t, and the varying places some people draw that line. E.g. things like body replacers and smoothed meshes were once considered a staple part of Morrowind modding, purist or not, but some people do prefer the originals nowadays. This honestly makes it easier for me to fulfill my original vision for this guide, which was “vanilla-first” with bigger changes saved for later, rather than feeling like I should meld them together to match prevailing views as they were in 2014.)
Another huge change is that Mod Organizer 2 came out with support for Morrowind, which vastly simplifies the process for me as I install, uninstall, reorder, and otherwise tinker with mods to get them into the ideal installation order. When I started this guide in 2014, I was doing all this manually, and I can’t even express how much easier it is now that I have MO2 — but for those who don’t want to use it, the guide will still be perfectly valid for a manual installation.
What does this mean for this guide, and for you? It means I can vastly reduce the load order and make new recommendations for enhancing your Morrowind experience. It means I can reorganize the guide into a format that’s easier to follow and can get you playing sooner. It means I can be more confident in my mod selections, and that means there has never been a better time for an update. The closure of the original Bethesda Forums (why??) has also necessitated a change, even if nothing else had. The potential (and hopefully temporary) loss of Morrowind Modding History is another factor that means I at least need to change a bunch of links I’d included if not fully replace those mods with new ones.
I also got laid off from my job, so yeah, that’s a thing. Not cool, but it’s a lot easier to write a blog when I’m not already spending over 40 hours a week on a computer.
So, all of the above means I can finally finish this guide. I still can’t believe how much Real Life got in the way back when I was originally writing this (and it still persists in its efforts), and while I got through almost all of the process, I never fully completed it. It wasn’t just that I was busy with obligations, either, it was that my modding quest got deeper and wider and I began to drown in self-made complexity. There were so many ambiguous solutions and alternatives for the mods I wanted to include, so many hundreds of meshes to compare in Nifskope, so many textures to look at side by side… combined with work and other real-life stuff, it was just overwhelming.
(Not that I’m not still comparing meshes in Nifskope, and in-game as well. I am.)
Part of it is my own fault, of course, because I decided to cover everything in the most convenient possible order for the end user, which is what led to me digging through thousands of meshes and textures to compare them manually (and without MO2, I needed to restore from an intricate series of backups at least 50 times), and as you can imagine, this took tons of effort. The time required to explain everything was intensive too, but I felt there was a need — when I started writing this, everything else I could find was at least somewhat outdated and it was a lot harder to find detailed instructions in one place, and MGSO was still popular enough (despite its problems) that it was hard to find guides that offered an alternative to it (or didn’t center on it as a core part of the installation). My goal has always been to make this process easy to understand regardless of how complicated it can get, and to provide instructions that would aid understanding of Morrowind modding well enough to help my readers use any guide, not just mine, or even get a firm enough start to write their own. The more guides and modlists out there, the richer the community is!
And according to various comments I’ve found on Reddit and other places, I actually succeeded in some people’s eyes, even though I never completed the guide and basically went radio silent. Oh, I tried — I have a lot of draft posts for the updated steps, and even the initial draft of this post was over two years old, dating to my 2020 continuation attempt — but it didn’t happen.
Well. Let this serve as notice to anyone reading, whether you’re new, or one of my beloved readers who have stuck with me in a holding pattern for all this time. (Re)installing Morrowind will be fully updated and completed in 2023, and I will continue to update and expand on it as long as I’m alive. The existing steps one through six are already done.
Here’s a summary of the revisions so far, none of which would be possible without the modders who make this game their passion:
- I’ve switched the order of the Morrowind Code Patch and MGE XE to reflect that the latter now requires the former (it didn’t before, and the old MGE is actually older than the MCP, so their previous order was an artifact of that), and redated the entries so the “next” and “previous” breadcrumb links bring you to the right place.
- I’ve switched to Patch for Purists rather than the Morrowind Patch Project.
- I’ve vastly simplified the instructions for fixing weird meshes throughout the world, thanks to Patch for Purists incorporating many fixes and to the continued development of the Morrowind Optimization Patch (the latter of which will be included in a soon-to-be posted entry devoted to mesh fixes, which is almost completely written).
- I’ve added (optional) optimizations such as Project Atlas (which will also be covered in the new mesh-fixing post).
- I’ve completely restructured initial texture replacement with upscaled vanilla textures rather than needing to cobble together dozens of texture packs simply to get the game into higher resolution while keeping it close to vanilla. This will be in an upcoming new post which will come soon after the mesh fixes. Also, I plan to create an at-least-somewhat-detailed comparison between Morrowind Enhanced Textures and Intelligent Textures, the two most popular upscaling options, but I may not be able to fit it into the texture replacement post itself. Although I’m certainly going to touch on the differences between the two, a full comparison may need to wait until later, simply to prevent the texture replacement entry from getting too lengthy and taking too long to complete. Rest assured I do plan on taking this deep dive and I’ll bring you with me when I do it.
- I’ve been able to remove dozens of downloads and much of the “install this, but not that, delete this file, let everything overwrite except this, this, and this” types of instructions, which were effective but honestly not ideal.
- I’ve removed a few other mods that actually hurt more than they helped, or at least introduced potential problems (hey, it seemed like a good idea at the time).
- I’ve added more information to help you expand your mod loadout on your own and make your own decisions to customize your visuals and playstyle as you prefer.
What revisions still need to be done?
- I need to switch up the installation order for certain things to simplify the addition of certain replacers (for example, if you choose to use Robert’s Bodies, Westly’s Pluginless Head Replacer needs to be installed before it, not after. Heck, I need to restructure the whole body replacement post anyway).
- I need to integrate a few more replacers for those who prefer further advancements over vanilla graphics.
- I need to take a lot more screenshots to reflect the changes. Since I’m also going to redesign the entire site, I’m also going to need to make new banner/featured images for each post, so I may not bother adding those to new entries just yet since I’m soon going to need to redo them anyway.
- The entire website needs a redesign, both to bring it up to modern standards and to make it friendlier to anyone reading on a mobile device (and to support further additions I plan to make). I already have a plan for this. I want to update the actual guide first, but they may end up happening simultaneously since the new design will require new screenshots to better fit the format in some places.
- Even though I originally planned to direct readers offsite to learn how to set up and use MO2, I want to include more instructions in the guide (and I’ve already added some, but their placement may not be ideal), while still supporting manual installation, of course. The simple fact is that some people prefer to read instructions rather than watch videos, and written instructions are my forte. However, this guide will NEVER require MO2, that’s part of the entire point.
- I want to include some more detailed instructions about Wrye Mash and other Morrowind tools such as TES3Merge, but my original plan was to not have you download them before you need them, so they’ll probably still be in that type of order.
- However, there are some tools and concepts that should be introduced early, such as cleaning plugins, because players should know those things before they’ve installed a ton of things — especially in a guide like this, that’s supposed to allow you to stop modding when you feel you’ve done enough. You shouldn’t have to page through several entries to get to the end of the guide or hunt through other entries to find the mod cleaning instructions, so I’m putting that in a new Part 6. If I have the space for it, I’ll include merging objects in there as well, otherwise that will be in a different soon-to-come entry.
- I need to add some additional “purist” patches such as Under Construction, and provide instructions for installing fixed versions of the Official Plugins based on Unofficial Morrowind Official Plugins Patched (UMOPP). These should technically go right after Patch for Purists (or at least before any optional graphics changes), which necessitates another new entry that would become a new Part 7 or 8 and possibly the next one as well, if it gets too long.
- I am probably going to move the QoL improvements from the existing Part 6 to a point later in the guide once more entries are finished, but I haven’t done this yet because I want those QoL improvements to be live on the guide even as I rework other things, since I still consider them important even for purist players — I’ll likely end up placing them after the graphics improvements but with notes on other guide pages that you can skip to the QoL if you don’t want to change the graphics. I may also split the QoL improvements into multiple posts to reflect which ones simply add features (such as improved decorating controls) and which actually change gameplay (such as leveling changes and retroactive health calculation) in order to more clearly divide purist and non-purist mods. The existing post will probably be temporarily renamed “Part 6.5” or something to avoid repeated renumbering hassles; once it arrives at its final place it’ll have a whole number again.
- I’m also in the process of making a “short version” of the guide with basic instructions and installation order only, for those that don’t need deeper instructions or don’t want to read my walls of text (yes, I see you, I love you, and I appreciate you too). I’ll post this on a dedicated page of this site (not a blog post) as soon as I have enough of the new guide straightened out to have a fully playable “purist-first” list ready to go.
While many of the above revisions mean changing existing entries, some necessitate entire new ones. This is mostly because I can combine a few steps now, but in some cases (mainly world textures) I want to keep my old process available for those who prefer it. While some existing entries have changed, and others will too, any that have been completely replaced are staying online in a “legacy” section of the guide. If you prefer the old mix of Mixed Textures, Connary’s work, and others, installation instructions for those will still be available and easy to find. When the changes are big but not so expansive they require a whole new post, I’ve saved the old version on the Wayback Machine instead, and linked to it within the text where relevant.
Other guide steps are being moved to a different order as they’re edited (for example, we should do world textures before weapons and such now). I originally made the mistake of numbering each step not just in its title but also in its URL, so the URLs are being changed too, so I can preserve the replaced entries and allow for easier reordering should it be needed again. Redirects are active, so all old links will still work.
What has been changed, versus reorganized?
- Steps one through six have been rewritten.
- Everything after the existing Step 6 (QoL Improvements) is being rewritten and/or reorganized. The existing Step 6 is going to be pushed to a later number.
- The new Step 6 is going to be about dirty mods and how to clean them, plus merging objects/lists etc. if I have space for it (otherwise that would be Step 7).
- The next step after that will be about additional early patches (bug fixes that didn’t make it into PfP or are otherwise out of its scope, missing content restoration, etc.). If I have space for fixed versions of the Official Plugins here, I’ll include them in this step as well, although they might fit better if given their own entry since there are a few options to talk about.
- Mesh fixes will come soon after, and before we get into other graphics (like body replacers which used to be Part 7). Basic world textures will follow. Next after that will most likely be additional world graphics enhancements that are still close to purist but technically not vanilla, like grass and glowing windows. World textures that go beyond vanilla upscales (like Tyddy’s Arkitektora series) and modernized meshes will be moved to later steps (to allow you to stop modding without them if you’d rather keep lower-polygon models) and may be combined.
- Clothing, robes, armor, and weapons will be addressed after body replacers, and either combined or split up sensibly to prevent any one entry from getting too long while still addressing everything it needs to.
Now, part of the problem inherent in updating and reorganizing this thing is the blog format itself, because the guide steps are all blog posts and their order is dependent on the date of publication. I did already change the order of two of them without significant issues other than giving myself a minor headache. Since I manually add a link to the previous step to the beginning of each entry, and a link to the next step at the end, the flow is still correct if you’re using those to navigate, but WordPress also has its own “next” and “previous” breadcrumb links that depend on order of publication, which is why I need to redate some entries. This also ensures they show up in the proper order if you’re scrolling through the main page. But it may lead to problems if you’re awaiting a notification of a new post and I then publish something backdated, because you might not get a notification.
And of course, if I’m revising a live entry rather than making a new one, there won’t be a notification about it because it’s technically not a new post — which is why I’ll make “meta” posts to inform you if a “new” old post needs to be added with an older date. I was already posting “Updates and Revisions” entries whenever I changed live guide steps, so it’ll be along those same lines. The new mesh fixes and HD textures will be new posts, with mesh fixes coming soon after the upcoming bug fixing post, but as for the rest, I’m still deciding how many I need to completely rewrite from scratch. (If all the information changes, we’ll also run into the issue of existing comments no longer relating to the post content, which could confuse new readers. So that’s something I’m considering too, although not the only factor — so some “now irrelevant” comments may remain. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.)
I’m actually not sure if WordPress gives you an option by default to subscribe for post updates. That’s something I’ll look into, so you’ll be able to get emails about new posts if you don’t already. But basically, my goal here is to keep you apprised of my progress without spamming you about it.
This blog is also connected to my social media, though, so you can check my Twitter @Cavanoskus. I barely use it beyond the rare retweet and occasionally posting a dumb joke, so the tweets will almost all be related to this blog. I also have a completely hideous Tumblr that I was planning to use for more than just this, but I hate Tumblr’s formatting so I rarely use it. Blog updates are automatically pushed there too, though, so that’s another option for following.
All updates, entries, and other progress on this guide are also catalogued on my main Morrowind page, so that’s the best reference on this site itself. You could actually just bookmark that page and refresh it every day if you don’t want to follow my social media or subscribe to posts. The short version of the guide will be updated to reflect new posts as well (once it’s up).
Side note — not every upcoming post will be a new step in the guide, because there may be more interim posts like this one and the previously mentioned status updates. And once the guide is done, I’ll be looking at more mods that didn’t directly fit into it, writing other posts about Morrowind, and eventually expanding into other games and media like I originally planned for this blog’s concept. But all the Morrowind content will be listed on the aforementioned Morrowind page. So let that influence your decision as to whether to follow my social media or otherwise subscribe.
One more thing in regards to the current state of this blog — at the moment, I can’t see any comments on the entries themselves. I can only see them and respond to them from within the dashboard. I think this is because of the outdated theme I’m using, so this problem should go away when I implement the redesign. Please feel free to comment even if you can’t see it; I’ll still see it and I will reply to you. You should be able to see it in your email or something if it’s not visible here. Comments will come back eventually.
To all of you who’ve been reading, and waiting, thank you. I appreciate you more than you could ever know. I’ve found my guide linked and recommended in the most surprising places and it makes me happy that we can share this game together. I’ve read comments on Reddit and elsewhere (Elsweyr?) describing my guide as in-depth and helpful, and that is exactly what I aimed for. Some of you even found my unfinished and horribly unoptimized texture comparison gallery, which was an experiment that I didn’t publicize anywhere, but is apparently useful enough that it should probably remain available and see expansion. I’ll keep that on the table.
In the meantime, expect a new post within a few days, followed by additional updates. And expect the look of the site to fluctuate a bit too during the redesign process, although I’ll do my best to make sure it isn’t disruptive.
Anyway, here’s to the rest of 2023. And here’s to Morrowind. And most importantly, here’s to you.
See you soon.
