After months of being absolutely enthralled by Guild Wars 2, I’ve finally decided to take another dive into a very long and expansive game that I absolutely should have played by now: The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. Bethesda is celebrating 25 years of Elder Scrolls in 2019, and I thought this would be the perfect time to check a title off my list that I’ve been both interested in, and avoiding.
This is not the first time I’ve booted up ye olde Morrowind, but my last foray lasted just under two hours. Why? Vanilla Morrowind shows it’s age in a few really hard-to-get-over ways. I experienced terrible screen tearing, troubles with resolution that would throw off my hit box areas, and a few other bugs that were rather game-breaking (read saves and loads not working correctly.) So this time, I did my research. Rock Paper Shotgun published a really nice little article about modding Morrowind into something really beautiful. My interest piqued, I cruised on over to the suggestions, did a little modding work, and TA-DAA! A really beautiful version of Morrowind that eased all my bug troubles (besides wanting to own a silt strider, but that’s a whole other… thing… I mean, look at it’s cute little arms!). Also, it erased the fog that swallows everything … that horrible, horrible fog.
I landed my happy Dunmer (wood elf) butt in Sedya Neen (the starting area), immediately stole things from the Excise Office (I mean, nobody was even watching that bread), and off I went!
My happy explorations took me through the first couple of quests quite happily – however things started to turn when I encountered my first kill mission given out by the Fighter’s Guild. It’s your very traditional “kill the rats in the cellar” sort of quest, but those rats handed me my ass. I was not unarmored. I had a rather nice bow and arrows along with a nice little dagger. However, while attacking said rats, I only hit them once out of every 30 attacks.
I fully understand being a baby adventurer would have a hard time with her first few quests until she got a few levels under her (stolen) belt, but come on. I thought ok – I’ll run around and kill wildlife until I get a few more levels in my weapon skills and level up. After doing so, and aggravatingly dying to the grubs I was attempting to attack and missing several times, I came back to my rats. With a bow and arrow skill of 42 (!!) I was still missing the majority of my attacks. I tried moving on to a few other quests, but had the same issues encountering enemies. So, I did what any annoyed little octopus would do – I looked up the cheat codes.
Enter one shiny little command – ToggleGodMode – and my life in Morrowind is now much happier. Sure, I’m a cheating cheater, but I honestly believe the entry point difficulty is too damn high.
Stay tuned for updates as I wander through Morrowind!
Tiny Octopus Gaming 