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About this mod
For experienced players, Morrowind can get to be way too easy. If you want to up your game and enjoy a new Morrowind experience that is very challenging, yet fun, fair, rewarding, and free of exploits, then this mod is for you. Check out my "Before & After" video for a preview of the hardcore combat. Read all the details!
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
For experienced players, Morrowind can get to be way too easy. If you want to up your game and enjoy a new Morrowind experience that is very challenging, yet fun, fair, rewarding, and free of exploits, then this mod is for you. New saves required. Check out my Before And After video for a preview of the hardcore combat.
Many exploits (if not all of them) are no longer possible. If you like using the console to circumvent any challenge in the game, then this mod is NOT for you. You no longer have to start the game at 100% difficulty to have any challenge. You will need all your expertise to survive in this mod. You will need every tool at your disposal as your limits are tested. That sense of danger around every corner will be through the whole game, even after your character gets very strong. Thats my goal. I have also fully overhauled the economy. Mercantile and speechcraft now have a real purpose. I have done what every other economy balance mod has failed to do in the past by fixing it completely without cutting corners or using buggy scripts.
Rebirth Compatibility:
It is compatible, however, if you use rebirths game settings esp, you will have to decide which mods game setting changes take priority by placing the one you prefer last in the load order. You may notice that (some) fights are even harder with rebirth and hardcore installed together, which is... fine really.
OPENMW Compatibility: If you use openmw you will notice that haggling and speechcraft do not work the same with this mod installed. This is because openmw has their own economy fix that is incompatible with this mod. Recommend that you just dont use openmw with this mod and instead I refer you to my recommended modlist at the bottom of the page.
Update 3.6.6 Changes:
1. Removed a few duplicate npc's and items that mysteriously showed up in the last update. CS glitches...
2. Changed soul trap scrolls from target to touch. This is to hopefully allow you to soul trap underwater creatures. If it doesnt work let me know in comments.
Hardcore Changes:
1. All weapons in the game have been overhauled and fine tuned to fit in the new hardcore world.
2. All armors have been overhauled and fine tuned to fit into the new hardcore world.
3. All creatures are now more of a challenge.
4. Many higher level and important NPCs have been made significantly more powerful, especially guards.
5. Where appropriate, several creatures have had their souls values increased to match their new power levels.
6. Several spells/enchantments have been modified to help magic using creatures and npcs have a slightly bigger bite.
7. Summons have been boosted accordingly, but are still weaker than non summoned, and have less soul value than normals so they cant be exploited.
8. Traps are now more deadly or have long lasting potent effects.
9. Slightly higher chance of catching diseases. Always make sure to carry potions/scrolls with you.
10. All fortify/drain attribute spells and effects have been removed from the game since they are highly exploitable.
11. Self made potion values have been cut in half. This change plus the changes to merchants and prices should make the infinite gold exploits impossible. At least until you go well beyond the 100 point caps... theoretically.
12. Deadric/ebony/dwemer weapons will no longer fall like water from daedra that spawn them. Such creatures now use bound weapons instead, but still have a 5% chance of spawning with those weapons. Other treasures have been added to their drops instead. These changes are meant to prevent the player from becoming stupidly rich but also because such weapons are supposed to be very rare. Many daedric/ebony weapons exist around the world in static locations already and can be found by exploring, as you should.
13. Leveled lists for many random loots have been altered so as to make them more rare by 30%. You shouldnt be finding as many stacks of dwemer armor or soul gems in random boxes/barrels.
14. You now need 500 soul to make constant effect enchants. 400 was default. Not to worry, there are planty of 500 soul enemies in the game.(and higher) Whether or not you can defeat them is another matter.
15. Bribing has been made slightly more difficult. Npcs in general will have a higher chance to reject your bribes, unless you have good speechcraft skill or personality.. It is harder to bribe merchants but still easy to raise speechcraft by practicing on plain old commoners.
16. Quick travel costs have been increased.
17. Training costs have been increased. You are meant to be playing the game, not sitting at a trainer gaining 30 levels with your millions of gold. You will need to get out and actually adventure, building up your character naturally. (Recommend the optional mod below to make this easier)
18. A few creatures in the game have some new/modified abilities/spells. Be afraid. Or excited! There may be more in future updates.
19. Many enchanted items like rings and amulets that have "cast on use" spells are now actually worth keeping and using.
20. Enchantment charges on items will now regen more slowly, at about 30% of the vanilla rate.(Vanilla regen rate is very fast) You will need to raise enchant skill to increase regen rate. You will now slowly gain Enchant Skill by using enchanted items and weapons.
21. You take slightly more damage from falling, and the distance you can fall before taking damage has been reduced. Acrobat Skill Affects this.
22. You take more damage from drowning.
23. All of the cheap alchemy ingredients have had gold values increased to help stop the infinite gold exploit.
24. Merchants and the economy have been fixed/re-balanced and is nearly impossible to exploit now. (Its still possible at very high skill levels. Its up to you)
25. Spell/projectile speeds have been increased to make it harder to dodge them.
26. Traps and locks now have a higher difficulty to pick/disarm. Traps used to have ZERO difficulty, but now they are equal to locks in difficulty.
27. Over time, Magic has basically been overhauled. Nearly every spell and magic spell value and ability has been reworked to help make the game more balanced for hardcore.
28. Many leveled lists have been altered for items and creature spawns.
29. Many gameplay settings have been looked at and changed in subtle ways to make the game more hardcore.
30. You can no longer trade with the creeper and mudcrab. But now they have a significant soul value and are a challenge to kill.
31. Master Trainers will only train up to 95.
32. Reworked how strength modifies damage. I did this so that enemies you face will do more damage at higher levels. The player also will notice
stronger melee strikes, but it really benefits strong enemies more than the player. Before this, strong enemies would do very little melee damage against well armored players. Now they should do enough melee damage to do more than tickle high level players.
33. I have rescaled armor ratings to be less effective until you reach higher armor skill. In vanilla you reach the base armor rating at a skill of 30. I have raised it to 50. Unarmored skill has also been nerfed in the same way. These changes may or may not make much difference at high levels... we'll see.
34. Fatigue costs has been increased slightly for several actions. It doesnt take long for fatigue to become a non issue. Now it will take
longer.
35. Ashlanders have been overhauled. All Ashlander melee type NPCs have been grouped into a new Ashlander class, where their combat skills now
synergize with their typical ashlander equipment. They have also had their levels slightly increased to make them a little stronger.
36. Alchemy Ingredients on merchants are no longer restocking. Their stocks have been increased, but once they are gone, they are gone.
37. Charm is now 2 premade spells and no longer available in spellmaker or enchanting.
38. Bloodmoon werewolves rebalanced to account for various hardcore changes to make sure they dont always 1 hit kill you. They are still quite powerful, but doable for high lvl characters.
General Balancing Changes
1. All weapons have had their weight reduced a bit, and also their gold values reduced significantly.
2. Most Armors have had their gold values reduced.
3. All alchemy ingredients and potions are lighter now, with a few exceptions. Ingredient values have been increased to stop one of the alchemy exploits.
4. All barter gold capacities have been doubled.
5. Soul gem capacities have been increased. This allowed me to have more flexibility on assigning soul values. For example Grand soul gem can now
fit 1000 soul, 600 was default. Azuras Star can fit 25,000, Default was 15,000.
6. Since I removed fortify spells, I modified many enchanted items to be constant effects instead of cast on use if they were fortify spells. Since they are stackable, most of them are only +5. If you use MCP and/or Madd leveler or my compiled mod version with MCP, then you will have +100 stats available so you will be able to go above 100 on your attributes AND skills anyway just from leveling, so creating your own fortify constant effects becomes a moot point.
7. Modified most racial abilities and star signs to something that makes more sense. Argonians water breathing has been changed to last much longer and adds swiftswim. Khajjits night eye is a permanent ability. Wood elves "Beast Tongue" is now more powerful.
8. I have increased the base hold breath time from 20 seconds to 23 seconds. This was done to balance out swimming with other changes.
9. Common Enchanted weapons are now worth more than normal weapons.
10. A few of my own bug fixes. (That other patch mods do not address)
11. Reduced the gold costs of enchanting at an NPC by 40%. The prices just seemed way too high in consideration of the player having far less wealth potential. This makes it fair. It takes awhile to build up enough gold to make powerful chants.
12. The Madd Leveler version in my compilation esp has an added bonus to health per endurance point gained of +2. Youll need it.(Just FYI, the ML has no mod conflicts any more like it used to years ago, so dont be afraid to use it)
13. Reduced the weight of many items. Potions, papers/scrolls/books, jewelry, clothing and other misc items.
14. Reworked or tweaked all races and birthsigns.(And a few classes, for NPC's) Every birthsign is now a meaningful choice. My goal is to have
the player sit and look at each birthsign and think, 'Hey, these are all good, I dont know which one I want.' And then spend the next 10 minutes trying to decide. Ive added a +5 fortify attack to all races. Everyone hates missing constantly, even when every variable is already in your favor. This will help with that, but also the enemy npcs will also benefit. You will only see the effects of the new racial bonuses and birthsigns by starting a new game. They do not retroactively effect existing characters, but they will affect enemies you face.
15. Some skills level up very slowly and its no fun to grind them. People tend to use exploits to grind them. Or cheaty mods. This mod is about fun, while being a challenge. I have made tiny adjustments to a few of those skill so players wont feel the need to have to do exploitive grinding methods, but instead just enjoy having those skills increase through normal play at a reasonable, balanced rate.. Acrobatics, Athletics, Enchanting to name a few.
16. Significantly Increased chance of recovering ammo from a downed enemy.
17. Overhauled Hand to Hand combat. At higher skill, fatigue damage was OP, but at the same time, health damage after KO was really low, and it takes years to kill a powerful enemy with lots of health. Now, h2h doesnt do OP fatigue damage at high skill, and now does significant KO damage. This change is for vanilla and you should not activate the strength based checkbox in MCP. Also, werewolves and vampires have been adjusted in regards to h2h as well, reducing their buffs to h2h skill and potential damage. With this change, a player wanting to have a monk type character will now find hand to hand a viable skill comparable to using weapons. The fatigue and damage of h2h is entirely based on the h2h skill. Strength only matters for melee bonus damage.
18. Beast races have been given a +10 racial bonus to their h2h skill. They have claws after all...
19. Changed encumbrance modifier back to x6 from vanilla. I just find the vanilla encumbrance modifier x5 too restrictive and unfun.
==========================================================================================================================
Important Information!
DO use the Morrowind Code Patch Mod
DO activate the **Soul Gem Balance** option in the code patch.
DO activate the **Enchanted Item Rebalance** option in the code patch.
DO NOT activate the **Container Respawn Timescale** option in the code patch.
DO NOT activate the **Strength Based Hand 2 hand Damage** option in the code patch.
==========================================================================================================================
Mod File Info And How To Install
The file named Morrowind Hardcore Mode has everything mentioned above, and should be last in the load order or else you might have issues with other mods that change game settings. Place in your data folder and check the box in the launcher.
The second file (ML GH FMR) is optional but highly recommended. Its a small compilation of my favorite convenience mods, In a single esp file + some meshes and textures for graphic herbalism. And it does require a new game to start the scripts.(or console commands to start the scripts may work too) To install just drop into the morrowind/data folder (replace files if there are any) and check the box in the launcher. It includes:
Madd Leveler with my own tweaks. This no longer requires disabling of any MCP check boxes to be compatible.
Fair Magicka Regen
Graphic herbalism (The MWSE version that is updated to be compatible with Morrowind Rebirth)
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Recommended Mods: These are not required, but for the best hardcore vanilla game play experience you should get them.)
1. Morrowind Code patch (MCP) - https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/19510
2. Morrowind Graphics Extender (MGExe) - https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/41102
3. Patch For Purists (PFP) - https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/45096 (Dont use the 'semi purist' esp with hardcore mode)
Suggested Mods:
1. No Taunting - https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/48889 - This mod removes the taunt option. Some people consider taunt to be exploitive, so here is an alternative. Warning, this mod may make completing some quests that rely on taunt to be more difficult (but not impossible) to complete. Use at your own risk.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
CREDITS:
Madd Mugsy and the madd leveler team for making the Madd Leveler mod
Smoke, the creator of Fair magicka Regen
ManaUser, creator of Graphic Herbalism mod
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Many exploits (if not all of them) are no longer possible. If you like using the console to circumvent any challenge in the game, then this mod is NOT for you. You no longer have to start the game at 100% difficulty to have any challenge. You will need all your expertise to survive in this mod. You will need every tool at your disposal as your limits are tested. That sense of danger around every corner will be through the whole game, even after your character gets very strong. Thats my goal. I have also fully overhauled the economy. Mercantile and speechcraft now have a real purpose. I have done what every other economy balance mod has failed to do in the past by fixing it completely without cutting corners or using buggy scripts.
Rebirth Compatibility:
It is compatible, however, if you use rebirths game settings esp, you will have to decide which mods game setting changes take priority by placing the one you prefer last in the load order. You may notice that (some) fights are even harder with rebirth and hardcore installed together, which is... fine really.
OPENMW Compatibility: If you use openmw you will notice that haggling and speechcraft do not work the same with this mod installed. This is because openmw has their own economy fix that is incompatible with this mod. Recommend that you just dont use openmw with this mod and instead I refer you to my recommended modlist at the bottom of the page.
Update 3.6.6 Changes:
1. Removed a few duplicate npc's and items that mysteriously showed up in the last update. CS glitches...
2. Changed soul trap scrolls from target to touch. This is to hopefully allow you to soul trap underwater creatures. If it doesnt work let me know in comments.
Hardcore Changes:
1. All weapons in the game have been overhauled and fine tuned to fit in the new hardcore world.
2. All armors have been overhauled and fine tuned to fit into the new hardcore world.
3. All creatures are now more of a challenge.
4. Many higher level and important NPCs have been made significantly more powerful, especially guards.
5. Where appropriate, several creatures have had their souls values increased to match their new power levels.
6. Several spells/enchantments have been modified to help magic using creatures and npcs have a slightly bigger bite.
7. Summons have been boosted accordingly, but are still weaker than non summoned, and have less soul value than normals so they cant be exploited.
8. Traps are now more deadly or have long lasting potent effects.
9. Slightly higher chance of catching diseases. Always make sure to carry potions/scrolls with you.
10. All fortify/drain attribute spells and effects have been removed from the game since they are highly exploitable.
11. Self made potion values have been cut in half. This change plus the changes to merchants and prices should make the infinite gold exploits impossible. At least until you go well beyond the 100 point caps... theoretically.
12. Deadric/ebony/dwemer weapons will no longer fall like water from daedra that spawn them. Such creatures now use bound weapons instead, but still have a 5% chance of spawning with those weapons. Other treasures have been added to their drops instead. These changes are meant to prevent the player from becoming stupidly rich but also because such weapons are supposed to be very rare. Many daedric/ebony weapons exist around the world in static locations already and can be found by exploring, as you should.
13. Leveled lists for many random loots have been altered so as to make them more rare by 30%. You shouldnt be finding as many stacks of dwemer armor or soul gems in random boxes/barrels.
14. You now need 500 soul to make constant effect enchants. 400 was default. Not to worry, there are planty of 500 soul enemies in the game.(and higher) Whether or not you can defeat them is another matter.
15. Bribing has been made slightly more difficult. Npcs in general will have a higher chance to reject your bribes, unless you have good speechcraft skill or personality.. It is harder to bribe merchants but still easy to raise speechcraft by practicing on plain old commoners.
16. Quick travel costs have been increased.
17. Training costs have been increased. You are meant to be playing the game, not sitting at a trainer gaining 30 levels with your millions of gold. You will need to get out and actually adventure, building up your character naturally. (Recommend the optional mod below to make this easier)
18. A few creatures in the game have some new/modified abilities/spells. Be afraid. Or excited! There may be more in future updates.
19. Many enchanted items like rings and amulets that have "cast on use" spells are now actually worth keeping and using.
20. Enchantment charges on items will now regen more slowly, at about 30% of the vanilla rate.(Vanilla regen rate is very fast) You will need to raise enchant skill to increase regen rate. You will now slowly gain Enchant Skill by using enchanted items and weapons.
21. You take slightly more damage from falling, and the distance you can fall before taking damage has been reduced. Acrobat Skill Affects this.
22. You take more damage from drowning.
23. All of the cheap alchemy ingredients have had gold values increased to help stop the infinite gold exploit.
24. Merchants and the economy have been fixed/re-balanced and is nearly impossible to exploit now. (Its still possible at very high skill levels. Its up to you)
25. Spell/projectile speeds have been increased to make it harder to dodge them.
26. Traps and locks now have a higher difficulty to pick/disarm. Traps used to have ZERO difficulty, but now they are equal to locks in difficulty.
27. Over time, Magic has basically been overhauled. Nearly every spell and magic spell value and ability has been reworked to help make the game more balanced for hardcore.
28. Many leveled lists have been altered for items and creature spawns.
29. Many gameplay settings have been looked at and changed in subtle ways to make the game more hardcore.
30. You can no longer trade with the creeper and mudcrab. But now they have a significant soul value and are a challenge to kill.
31. Master Trainers will only train up to 95.
32. Reworked how strength modifies damage. I did this so that enemies you face will do more damage at higher levels. The player also will notice
stronger melee strikes, but it really benefits strong enemies more than the player. Before this, strong enemies would do very little melee damage against well armored players. Now they should do enough melee damage to do more than tickle high level players.
33. I have rescaled armor ratings to be less effective until you reach higher armor skill. In vanilla you reach the base armor rating at a skill of 30. I have raised it to 50. Unarmored skill has also been nerfed in the same way. These changes may or may not make much difference at high levels... we'll see.
34. Fatigue costs has been increased slightly for several actions. It doesnt take long for fatigue to become a non issue. Now it will take
longer.
35. Ashlanders have been overhauled. All Ashlander melee type NPCs have been grouped into a new Ashlander class, where their combat skills now
synergize with their typical ashlander equipment. They have also had their levels slightly increased to make them a little stronger.
36. Alchemy Ingredients on merchants are no longer restocking. Their stocks have been increased, but once they are gone, they are gone.
37. Charm is now 2 premade spells and no longer available in spellmaker or enchanting.
38. Bloodmoon werewolves rebalanced to account for various hardcore changes to make sure they dont always 1 hit kill you. They are still quite powerful, but doable for high lvl characters.
General Balancing Changes
1. All weapons have had their weight reduced a bit, and also their gold values reduced significantly.
2. Most Armors have had their gold values reduced.
3. All alchemy ingredients and potions are lighter now, with a few exceptions. Ingredient values have been increased to stop one of the alchemy exploits.
4. All barter gold capacities have been doubled.
5. Soul gem capacities have been increased. This allowed me to have more flexibility on assigning soul values. For example Grand soul gem can now
fit 1000 soul, 600 was default. Azuras Star can fit 25,000, Default was 15,000.
6. Since I removed fortify spells, I modified many enchanted items to be constant effects instead of cast on use if they were fortify spells. Since they are stackable, most of them are only +5. If you use MCP and/or Madd leveler or my compiled mod version with MCP, then you will have +100 stats available so you will be able to go above 100 on your attributes AND skills anyway just from leveling, so creating your own fortify constant effects becomes a moot point.
7. Modified most racial abilities and star signs to something that makes more sense. Argonians water breathing has been changed to last much longer and adds swiftswim. Khajjits night eye is a permanent ability. Wood elves "Beast Tongue" is now more powerful.
8. I have increased the base hold breath time from 20 seconds to 23 seconds. This was done to balance out swimming with other changes.
9. Common Enchanted weapons are now worth more than normal weapons.
10. A few of my own bug fixes. (That other patch mods do not address)
11. Reduced the gold costs of enchanting at an NPC by 40%. The prices just seemed way too high in consideration of the player having far less wealth potential. This makes it fair. It takes awhile to build up enough gold to make powerful chants.
12. The Madd Leveler version in my compilation esp has an added bonus to health per endurance point gained of +2. Youll need it.(Just FYI, the ML has no mod conflicts any more like it used to years ago, so dont be afraid to use it)
13. Reduced the weight of many items. Potions, papers/scrolls/books, jewelry, clothing and other misc items.
14. Reworked or tweaked all races and birthsigns.(And a few classes, for NPC's) Every birthsign is now a meaningful choice. My goal is to have
the player sit and look at each birthsign and think, 'Hey, these are all good, I dont know which one I want.' And then spend the next 10 minutes trying to decide. Ive added a +5 fortify attack to all races. Everyone hates missing constantly, even when every variable is already in your favor. This will help with that, but also the enemy npcs will also benefit. You will only see the effects of the new racial bonuses and birthsigns by starting a new game. They do not retroactively effect existing characters, but they will affect enemies you face.
15. Some skills level up very slowly and its no fun to grind them. People tend to use exploits to grind them. Or cheaty mods. This mod is about fun, while being a challenge. I have made tiny adjustments to a few of those skill so players wont feel the need to have to do exploitive grinding methods, but instead just enjoy having those skills increase through normal play at a reasonable, balanced rate.. Acrobatics, Athletics, Enchanting to name a few.
16. Significantly Increased chance of recovering ammo from a downed enemy.
17. Overhauled Hand to Hand combat. At higher skill, fatigue damage was OP, but at the same time, health damage after KO was really low, and it takes years to kill a powerful enemy with lots of health. Now, h2h doesnt do OP fatigue damage at high skill, and now does significant KO damage. This change is for vanilla and you should not activate the strength based checkbox in MCP. Also, werewolves and vampires have been adjusted in regards to h2h as well, reducing their buffs to h2h skill and potential damage. With this change, a player wanting to have a monk type character will now find hand to hand a viable skill comparable to using weapons. The fatigue and damage of h2h is entirely based on the h2h skill. Strength only matters for melee bonus damage.
18. Beast races have been given a +10 racial bonus to their h2h skill. They have claws after all...
19. Changed encumbrance modifier back to x6 from vanilla. I just find the vanilla encumbrance modifier x5 too restrictive and unfun.
==========================================================================================================================
Important Information!
DO use the Morrowind Code Patch Mod
DO activate the **Soul Gem Balance** option in the code patch.
DO activate the **Enchanted Item Rebalance** option in the code patch.
DO NOT activate the **Container Respawn Timescale** option in the code patch.
DO NOT activate the **Strength Based Hand 2 hand Damage** option in the code patch.
==========================================================================================================================
Mod File Info And How To Install
The file named Morrowind Hardcore Mode has everything mentioned above, and should be last in the load order or else you might have issues with other mods that change game settings. Place in your data folder and check the box in the launcher.
The second file (ML GH FMR) is optional but highly recommended. Its a small compilation of my favorite convenience mods, In a single esp file + some meshes and textures for graphic herbalism. And it does require a new game to start the scripts.(or console commands to start the scripts may work too) To install just drop into the morrowind/data folder (replace files if there are any) and check the box in the launcher. It includes:
Madd Leveler with my own tweaks. This no longer requires disabling of any MCP check boxes to be compatible.
Fair Magicka Regen
Graphic herbalism (The MWSE version that is updated to be compatible with Morrowind Rebirth)
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Recommended Mods: These are not required, but for the best hardcore vanilla game play experience you should get them.)
1. Morrowind Code patch (MCP) - https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/19510
2. Morrowind Graphics Extender (MGExe) - https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/41102
3. Patch For Purists (PFP) - https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/45096 (Dont use the 'semi purist' esp with hardcore mode)
Suggested Mods:
1. No Taunting - https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/48889 - This mod removes the taunt option. Some people consider taunt to be exploitive, so here is an alternative. Warning, this mod may make completing some quests that rely on taunt to be more difficult (but not impossible) to complete. Use at your own risk.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
CREDITS:
Madd Mugsy and the madd leveler team for making the Madd Leveler mod
Smoke, the creator of Fair magicka Regen
ManaUser, creator of Graphic Herbalism mod
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________