Man, this is exactly how i felt in Oblivion when i was a kid and have never seen anyone else mention this. Entering any dungeon legit paralyzed me with fear, and coming back to it years later i was surprised by them being... actually not that scary?
I played Morrowind when I was a young, young kid, but im pretty sure all i did was make a new character, wander around Seyda Need until i died, then make the exact same character again
Actually rather enjoying playing through this, the increased cost of armor felt a bit odd at first but none of it is -that- expensive, I might look into reducing the value of chitin, even if it's less common it still feels a bit strange.
Another note, it breaks pawnbrokers and some general merchants, the changes to durability mean many have their rarer items at 0 durability and will sell them for 1 gold.
Unfortunately since some are liable to be added by mods like "beautiful cities", there's only so much you can do on that front; given how ubiquitous that mod is however, it may be a solid idea to make a quick patch covering the handful of NPC's it adds.
I buffed chitin, so that boiled netch leather was more viable for lower level characters. Chitin is about as strong as bonemould or steel. That is why it is costly. I would suggest sticking with cheaper armor until maybe level 5ish? As a thief with mercantile you can afford it however. In base morrowind i could easily get full chitin right off the bat, which meant i used it until glass was available if i had the expansion delay. In the base game a lot of pawnbrokers and general merchants have 0 durability weapons for sale. I didn't change that, but since it is hard to make money selling them after repair, and repair itself is expensive, i decided not to mess with it. However if it seems like it makes the game a bit easier i might either A: remove them from the game, or B: increase their durability and have a guard blocking them. For example in order to change the durability of weapons in shops, you have to actually change each one individually. I didnt have time to do that.
As far as added mods go this was meant to be played on vanilla morrowind. I may patch certain mods in the future but as it stands the added armor bonus would make other mods armor completely broken in terms of value. Thats why I dont recommend playing with mods outside of graphics, sounds and survival/ difficulty mods like ashfall and pursuit mods.
And btw thanks for checking it out. I find morrowind a bit easy these days so I just wanted it to be a more balanced game for players, with some fun mechanics thrown in.
Absolutely understand on mod support (though I do not think the better cities mod I mentioned really adds many merchants), and Chiton always has been in a bit of an odd place; I don't recall items being sold for 1 gold when they were at lower durability but my memory may be failing me. I don't actually know if armor would be much more expensive to repair, since you have fewer uses but need fewer successful attempts. Though weapons might still be more-or-less okay on that front.
I wonder if the 1 gold bit is an odd interaction with the relative durability or something, maybe a nice middle-ground would be to give them all 1/2-1/4 durability so that they're *less expensive* but not "free to a good home" XD
In any case I've been enjoying playing through things quite a bit and like the ideas behind the mod, shy of introducing totally new mechanics this really does make the combat feel quite different and unique from vanilla morrowind (or any game, it really reminds me -in the best way- of some fun ideas and chats I tossed around/had ages ago for oblivion and skyrim mods with friends).
So with repair i made repair hammers have less uses so that thieves and mages cant just use them to repair. It also means a buff to warriors and makes their class more unique so i like it in that sense. And yes they must have sold it for 1 or at least extremely cheap, because for now all merchants have max mercantile. Of course I may eventually patch more mods, but that will take a lot of time. I dont even want to think of trying to patch mods like tamriel rebuilt. There are some glass weapons with 0 durability for sale in game as well. These were also extremely cheap. I might find low durability armor for sale and buff its durability, so that its not so easy to get. Very glad you like the new gameplay ideas. It's just stuff I thought would be fun to see, and also make armor actually feel like armor in real life.
I like the idea of giving (armor at least) things a touch more durability to scale things out a bit with merchants. I always liked Duke Patrick's mods quite allot and helped playtest the Oblivion versions (I did HEMA for a while), I also run a custom True armor setup for Skyrim when I play which behaves quite a bit more in-line with "armor is actually pretty good at keeping you safe" lol.
Shy of adding grapping mechanics with finishing blows, very specific locational damage, or a trauma/stamina bar which works towards you falling down, passing out, taking damage, etc; this solution via armor breaking and ramping damage from longer fights is extremely-simple and feels great.
Light armor characters and sanctuary spells, which rely on avoiding hits almost entirely, now *fall back* on their low-durability armor (and do take more damage when they get hit through it); and it feels so, so very in-line with the Morrowind experience. Heavy armor characters take a while to wear down, medium are somewhere inbetween, it just feels like Vanilla+++ with no extra scripts, new melee mechanics, or anything else thrown in.
Of course spears and Halberds still feel like they have a bit short reach because of how the engine renders things, and everyone moves crazy fast (and only get faster as you break their gear) so it's a bit more chaotic too haha. Honestly I think where it really shines is fighting wildlife at early levels, you feel so much better protected; right up until your armor breaks *and then you really, really don't*.
I had tried Morrowind Hardcore for a multiplayer run using OpenMW, but I genuinely really appreciate and prefer this approach and implementation, though it would be nice if merchants had more variety in skill level but I realize that's probably WIP still. I'd stay away from the overly-punishing approach that some other mods took with their skill/bartering&pricing in general and go for a nice middle-ground on it.
Yes absolutely. Thats exactly the idea, thieves should play like thieves, tanky characters tanky, and mages like mages. I wanted the player to feel like "I should prepare before I head out" rather than just mindlessly go do things. But also I wanted them to feel like they needed to risk their life to make some money if they werent some master thief. I should add that the vaults in vivec are a lot harder to steal from now LOL. Thank you for the feedback on the mod. It took me quite some time to get it in a state i felt was worth publishing. Yes I love the idea of fearing the wildlife. That feeling of "damn this nix hound is killing me" is something I havent felt since I was a kid. Another odd tweak you may not notice, is on a non openmw playthrough, npcs will not turn to face you when you walk by them. That way you cant abuse this mechanic to steal. And ya I might make pawnbrokers worse at bartering, so that they fill their function. I might make trainers not barter so they arent all master mercantile trainers lmao. Another thing to note is that i tested this on vanilla. selling and buying works slightly differently on openmw, and can be easier and harder i believe. Ive seen a 4000 gold glass dagger sell for 1 gold on openmw because the merchant did not like me and my mercantile was low.
I had a similar encounter with Kaguoti, there were a trio of diseased ones (I have passive non-diseased wildlife) and the fight started out feeling very safe, comfortable and easy, but -since I'm not hitting very often- as the fight went on my armor started breaking and I eventually had to start using potions and kiting because the final two had gone from doing almost nothing, to taking away most of my health each hit.
Really did feel great, I'm not certain if a level 2 character should have been able to take on two kagouti -then a third- (in full Imperial Chain maille and a steel halberd), but I do know that I really enjoyed the experience.
Ah, that is this mod? I liked the characters not always facing you honestly, solid idea. Trainers not bartering is probably a good idea too haha.
An easy way to do it might be to make pawnbrokers, general merchants, and specialists be a bit weaker at mercantile (armorers, provisioners at forts and guilds, and such focus on their craft, not buying/selling); the smaller town shops maybe also a touch weaker to compensate for needing to sell things for a living; and then reserve the super-high skill for the merchants carrying crazy strong gear who really don't need your business (like the armigers and such).
Did the kagouti have paralyze as an ability? If they did not then it may be effected by the mod you have. They might conflict as in my mod they can paralyze, kwama foragers can poison, nix hounds have absorb life etc. I might make a patch for that mod if they conflict. Or maybe a merger tool could fix it. If you like medium armor i changed studded leather to be brigantine, and imperial templar to be medium armor so its more viable. Even if the creatures are conflicting with other mods, the bulk of the mod should still be balanced decently.
I do have creatures XI but used wyre bash to make a patch, it could be that I need to use another tool to make a manual merge patch however, it has been a very long time since I've modded morrowind so I'm not entirely certain what tools are available.
I can't say I've had any of the wildlife cast spells yet unfortunately and, because of how unfamiliar I am with Morrowind's tools, I can't really look into why exactly that might be the case. The downsides of having only worked with TES4&5 I guess lol, I wish there were a functional TES3Edit...
I'll try making a merged patch with TES3Merge and see if that fixes things.
If there's something I can do to help narrow down what the issue may be let me know, would be happy to help.
One last little suggestion from what I've noticed while playing, do you think it may be reasonable to extend the gap in the lower-middle tier armor's (between heavy, light, and medium) durability values a bit more? I noticed that the entry level heavy gear, bonemold gear, and chiton all have, more or less, the same durability values.
That feels a bit low for heavy armor, resulting in it breaking fairly quickly, and a bit high for chiton; which results in it surviving quite a while longer than it probably should (because of misses and avoidance/agility) haha.
I guess that boils down to chiton feeling slightly overtuned to me so far, I like the idea of it being stronger quite allot; but it may be better to bring it down in potency to somewhere near 65-75% of bonemold? Making light armor stronger makes the already dubious medium armor early and late game even less attractive lol. But that's just a friendly take from someone who's been enjoyin' things so far.
And I did notice the brigandine! Loved having a real piece of historical and useful gear around! (Makes so much more sense than studded, oof I'm glad that trope is going away)
Guys i think this is a lot of cool changes. I'm building a super difficulty mod list with everything i can find - this is kind of a huge overhaul so i don't think it would work with what i've already got... but very nice! I've got "more trouble" and MDD, Beware the 6th house and lots more - but the FUNDAMENTALS you are changing are so cool. I think with enough difficulty you could even warrant using a nerfed version of MerLord's Background/lineage/culture & by-the-divines to really lean into a specific character build. You were right about a lot of things, OPEN is too easy of a spell.. Chameleon too... and i like the changes to resist potions. It is far too common for a playthrough to feel like a health potion chugging contest. i will be following this and taking a long look through this ESP. Thank you (>'.')^
I did run into a kagouti which tried to paralyze me last night, so that seems to be working; I don't know if it was your mod or not, but I do see that your mod edits it, 36 lessons sermon 16 has a value of 1000 instead of 100.
Hey so I will definitely make the durability of armor more drastic between the styles, fix some book prices, and basically patch out all the things that seem a bit off for now. And ya kagouti have a short paralyze "headbutt"
I have now been victimized by it a few times lol, is there a way to decrease the frequency of that attack? I know in Skyrim there's a "chance multiplier" and stamina cost for each move, it might help to tweak that one down a bit XD
LMAO. No getting victimized is the point. get some cure paralysis potions lmfao. Chug them all fighting two kagoutis. its meant to make us cry lmao. Willpower effects your resistance to it btw.
18 comments
Man, this is exactly how i felt in Oblivion when i was a kid and have never seen anyone else mention this. Entering any dungeon legit paralyzed me with fear, and coming back to it years later i was surprised by them being... actually not that scary?
I played Morrowind when I was a young, young kid, but im pretty sure all i did was make a new character, wander around Seyda Need until i died, then make the exact same character again
man kids are dumb
Another note, it breaks pawnbrokers and some general merchants, the changes to durability mean many have their rarer items at 0 durability and will sell them for 1 gold.
Unfortunately since some are liable to be added by mods like "beautiful cities", there's only so much you can do on that front; given how ubiquitous that mod is however, it may be a solid idea to make a quick patch covering the handful of NPC's it adds.
As far as added mods go this was meant to be played on vanilla morrowind. I may patch certain mods in the future but as it stands the added armor bonus would make other mods armor completely broken in terms of value. Thats why I dont recommend playing with mods outside of graphics, sounds and survival/ difficulty mods like ashfall and pursuit mods.
And btw thanks for checking it out. I find morrowind a bit easy these days so I just wanted it to be a more balanced game for players, with some fun mechanics thrown in.
I wonder if the 1 gold bit is an odd interaction with the relative durability or something, maybe a nice middle-ground would be to give them all 1/2-1/4 durability so that they're *less expensive* but not "free to a good home" XD
In any case I've been enjoying playing through things quite a bit and like the ideas behind the mod, shy of introducing totally new mechanics this really does make the combat feel quite different and unique from vanilla morrowind (or any game, it really reminds me -in the best way- of some fun ideas and chats I tossed around/had ages ago for oblivion and skyrim mods with friends).
I always liked Duke Patrick's mods quite allot and helped playtest the Oblivion versions (I did HEMA for a while), I also run a custom True armor setup for Skyrim when I play which behaves quite a bit more in-line with "armor is actually pretty good at keeping you safe" lol.
Shy of adding grapping mechanics with finishing blows, very specific locational damage, or a trauma/stamina bar which works towards you falling down, passing out, taking damage, etc; this solution via armor breaking and ramping damage from longer fights is extremely-simple and feels great.
Light armor characters and sanctuary spells, which rely on avoiding hits almost entirely, now *fall back* on their low-durability armor (and do take more damage when they get hit through it); and it feels so, so very in-line with the Morrowind experience.
Heavy armor characters take a while to wear down, medium are somewhere inbetween, it just feels like Vanilla+++ with no extra scripts, new melee mechanics, or anything else thrown in.
Of course spears and Halberds still feel like they have a bit short reach because of how the engine renders things, and everyone moves crazy fast (and only get faster as you break their gear) so it's a bit more chaotic too haha.
Honestly I think where it really shines is fighting wildlife at early levels, you feel so much better protected; right up until your armor breaks *and then you really, really don't*.
I had tried Morrowind Hardcore for a multiplayer run using OpenMW, but I genuinely really appreciate and prefer this approach and implementation, though it would be nice if merchants had more variety in skill level but I realize that's probably WIP still. I'd stay away from the overly-punishing approach that some other mods took with their skill/bartering&pricing in general and go for a nice middle-ground on it.
Love it.
Another thing to note is that i tested this on vanilla. selling and buying works slightly differently on openmw, and can be easier and harder i believe. Ive seen a 4000 gold glass dagger sell for 1 gold on openmw because the merchant did not like me and my mercantile was low.
Really did feel great, I'm not certain if a level 2 character should have been able to take on two kagouti -then a third- (in full Imperial Chain maille and a steel halberd), but I do know that I really enjoyed the experience.
Ah, that is this mod? I liked the characters not always facing you honestly, solid idea.
Trainers not bartering is probably a good idea too haha.
An easy way to do it might be to make pawnbrokers, general merchants, and specialists be a bit weaker at mercantile (armorers, provisioners at forts and guilds, and such focus on their craft, not buying/selling); the smaller town shops maybe also a touch weaker to compensate for needing to sell things for a living; and then reserve the super-high skill for the merchants carrying crazy strong gear who really don't need your business (like the armigers and such).
I can't say I've had any of the wildlife cast spells yet unfortunately and, because of how unfamiliar I am with Morrowind's tools, I can't really look into why exactly that might be the case. The downsides of having only worked with TES4&5 I guess lol, I wish there were a functional TES3Edit...
I'll try making a merged patch with TES3Merge and see if that fixes things.
If there's something I can do to help narrow down what the issue may be let me know, would be happy to help.
One last little suggestion from what I've noticed while playing, do you think it may be reasonable to extend the gap in the lower-middle tier armor's (between heavy, light, and medium) durability values a bit more?
I noticed that the entry level heavy gear, bonemold gear, and chiton all have, more or less, the same durability values.
That feels a bit low for heavy armor, resulting in it breaking fairly quickly, and a bit high for chiton; which results in it surviving quite a while longer than it probably should (because of misses and avoidance/agility) haha.
I guess that boils down to chiton feeling slightly overtuned to me so far, I like the idea of it being stronger quite allot; but it may be better to bring it down in potency to somewhere near 65-75% of bonemold?
Making light armor stronger makes the already dubious medium armor early and late game even less attractive lol.
But that's just a friendly take from someone who's been enjoyin' things so far.
And I did notice the brigandine! Loved having a real piece of historical and useful gear around!
(Makes so much more sense than studded, oof I'm glad that trope is going away)
I think with enough difficulty you could even warrant using a nerfed version of MerLord's Background/lineage/culture & by-the-divines to really lean into a specific character build. You were right about a lot of things, OPEN is too easy of a spell.. Chameleon too... and i like the changes to resist potions. It is far too common for a playthrough to feel like a health potion chugging contest.
i will be following this and taking a long look through this ESP. Thank you (>'.')^
I know in Skyrim there's a "chance multiplier" and stamina cost for each move, it might help to tweak that one down a bit XD