CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
This guide is a collection of mod related lists, sites and links to useful mod information for The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. It is intended principally for the mod user.
If you are new to Morrowind or new to mods, you should first read and thoroughly understand the information provided in Starting Out With Mods and its supporting links.
If your interest is in making mods, you should start with the pinned threads at the top of the General
TES Construction Set Forum that provide essential introductory information and links to modding tutorials and tools. There are also some mod maker's resources toward the end of this list.
SEARCH TOOLS
You will eventually want to find a specific mod or type of mod that is not listed. Here are some basic search tools:
- Search function - Most forums and download sites have a search feature allowing you to find content based on key words or phrases.
On the ES Forums, it's near the top right of every page & an advanced search is available to refine the results. See Searching for Mods and Mod Information for instant expertise in the art of stalking mods.
- ModList – Quickly search, view, download Morrowind mods.
- Google – Google’s advanced search options allow you to progressively refine and narrow your search for mods and modders' web sites.
REVIEW SITES
These are sites with quality analysis by experienced reviewers. They can aid you in your selection of plugins.
INSTALLATION TUTORIALS
Guides that provide step-by-step instructions on how to get the mods you want into your game with a minimum of fuss. Those new to mods or to Morrowind for PC should first see Starting Out With Mods.
MOD LISTS
- Povuholo's ToMorrowind (2010) - recommended mods for all aspects of the game.
- Gluby's Guide (2009) - detailed outline on some of the mod options for balancing your game.
- Telesphoros' List o'Mods (2009) - the legendary and comprehensive list of many popular mods, developed with suggestions from the mod community, selected and play-tested by the author and updated regularly.
- Specialty and Theme Mod Lists (2010) - looking for a new house or weapons, a different playable race or mods for your mage, monk, vampire, Khajiit, necromancer, thief or tomb raider character? Mods grouped on a theme or subject basis are listed here.
- Empirical Morrowind Lists (2007) - a very large list of lists, with a section on Realism mods.
DOWNLOADS AND MOD HOSTING
Sites where you can download from a general collection of plugins or find hosting for your own mod. Before you download anything, see this thread about viruses for some sound advice on how to protect yourself - Firewalls, Anti-Virus Programs, Spyware.
- Great House Fliggerty Downloads – Fliggerty's fan site also hosts plugins by a variety of featured modders.
- Morrowind Mod DB – the self proclaimed world's oldest video game modification community, includes a modest selection of Morrowind mods.
- Morrowind Modding History –
a place for mods that are no longer available anywhere else. By far the largest collection of TES3 plugins with over 16000 files, including most of the mods previously hosted on Planet Elder Scrolls and Elricm.
- Morrowind Nexus – a stalwart of the Morrowind modding community, providing mod hosting since 2001 under a variety of names. Includes over 5000 TES3 mods, some of which can't be found elsewhere. Also offers a Mod Manager that allows you to download, install, update and manage your files.
DOWNLOADS - SELECTED SITES
- Official Patches - The TES3 game patches by Bethesda are available from their site.
- Official Plugins - Bethesda released eight free minor plugins, but they are no longer available from the official website. The stock versions can be downloaded from UESP, or get the fixed versions by WHReaper instead.
- Endhome.com - a smaller site hosting some quality mods and utilities.
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Khalazza Productions - download site for a number of international and French mod makers.
DOWNLOADS - COMPANIONS
Vorwoda the Black's excellent Unofficial History of Companions is the place to start. Meanwhile, here are a select few sources:
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Cutthroat Mods - previously home to Blackie's innovative Partner's Mod. Closed mid-2006; mods hosted at MMH and elsewhere.
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Emma's Quest and Companion Mods - companions with Emma's distinctively rich storylines and notable performance attributes based on the scripting of The Other Felix, also VTA Travel Agency for companion travel. See also, other contributors to this excellent site. Mod support on Emma's Forum
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Grumpy's Morrowind Mods - R.I.P, Dennis. Grumpy's mods are now hosted on Emma's site and supported on Emma's Forums. Grumpy's warping scripts are the basis for most recent companion mods and he makes, pound-for-pound, the very best fighting companions going. He wrote about how best to make use of their particular fighting characteristics here - Companion Usage by Grumpy, definitely worth a read.
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Sakaki Manor 1.28 by Neko: an excellent vanilla Morrowind companion mod. Now includes a Companion Share console addition for those who do run Tribunal.
- RPG Mods by Baratheon79 - a full stable of mercenary and other companion mods. Also offering some general mod hosting.
- Vorwoda the Black's - Companions Hippolyta and Decius - the classic companion mod for vanilla Morrowind.
DOWNLOADS - LISTS
Websites and Forum lists that provide links to a number of download sites and mod makers’ home pages. Some lists overlap and not all of their links are current: please contact the author of the original list directly about their broken links.
DOWNLOADS - INTERNATIONAL
Major sites in languages other than English. Others listed at UESP.
MOD COMPATIBILITY
Getting mods to play nicely together is partly a matter of realistic expectations about which mods can do that and some skill in identifying and resolving conflicts. Places to find out about known conflicts:
- The mod release thread and readme, reviews and conflict reports on the major forums, usually found with a Search on the name of the mod.
- Telesphoros List o'Mods at Mythic Mods may include some known conflicts in the mod descriptions.
- Links to Compatible List and More - by Iamhere and previously at the CON2 Forum, was the most comprehensive list of compatible mods, now somewhat dated.
MOD FORUMS
Morrowind fan sites and forums.
TOOLS FOR MOD USERS
Most desired changes to mods can be made in the Construction Set (CS) that comes bundled with your game. Utility programs generally make it easier or faster to make these changes. Directions for
using the more popular utilities to perform most common tasks are found in the Techniques section.
Extracting Compressed Files. Zip file support is included with Windows OS, but many mods are distributed in other archive formats. To extract these you may need to install other decompression utilities:
- 7-Zip - fast, and its own 7z archive format offers better compression ratios than other archive formats. Can compress to 7 formats and decompress to another 25 or so. Free and open source.
- PeaZip - cross-platform, full-featured and user-friendly, can open and extract 180+ archive formats (including ACE). Free and open source.
- PowerArchiver - fully featured, fast and supports many file formats (including ACE). Paid software.
- WinRAR - fast and easy to use, includes support for most of the major archive formats. Shareware, though a free expander is available.
Gameplay Utilities. Tools that are intended to directly improve your in-game experience in some way.
- exe.optimizer - by Timeslip. Originally intended to be an FPS increaser this programme turned out to have a large CTD reducing effect for many users.
- Morrowind FPS Optimizer - by Alexander Stasenko. This programme runs behind Morrowind and improves game performance by dynamically changing render quality to maintain a stable FPS (frames per second) rate.
Mod Editors. A family of utilities used to modify plugins and savegames.
- TESTool 1.3 - by ghostwheel, also at most major sites. This is a powerful and easy-to-use editor suitable for use by a novice or experienced player. Functions: remove unnecessary data including GMST entries, merge levelled lists for all active plugins [sic], merge changes to TES objects and dialog entries, generate detailed conflict report, manage list of active files - update ESP file header (version and master file sizes) and change loading order and a one-click “JUST FIX IT” button that automatically executes a set of tasks to reduce conflicts.
Some users have reported errors from using the Merge Dialog function - you may choose to unselect this task.
The Merge Leveled Lists function was found to append rather than resequence levelled list entries. This has been resolved with aerelorn's Leveled List Resequencer v1.0 for TESTool which should be used in conjunction with TESTool.
Basically, run TESTool and then run the Leveled List Resequencer - detailed directions are in the readme file.
An easier approach is to use Wrye Mash or tes3cmd to generate a leveled list plugin, as neither require a separate resequencer tool.
TESTool produces three additional .esp files if you run Merge Dialog, two if you do not. These should appear last in the load order in your Data Files window on startup. This can be manipulated in the CS, with TESTool or with a number of the other utilities listed below.
- TES Advanced Mod Editor (TESAME) 1.2 - by Scarabus. TESAME is another powerful editing tool. Preferred by some users, it is somewhat less friendly to novices. Edit mods, clean unwanted items including GMSTs, merge mods and export and import specific objects as modules or.ESD.
- The Enchanted Editor - by Farren Hayden. The most powerful of the Morrowind editors, the Enchanted Editor is designed to do things that cannot be done in the CS or are difficult to do there. It is NOT recommended for novice users.
The Enchanted Editor Manual, also by Farren Hayden, is now available with detailed instructions and examples for completing a wide range of operations using the editor. See the release thread for details - Comprehensive Manual for Enchanted Editor and [RE-REL] Enchanted Editor Manual, In a Single Windows Help File (.CHM)
- TES Dependency Tool Kit - by Argent. A special-purpose editor that adds/removes parent master dependencies, quickly updates old mods to the current version of Morrowind,converts TESAME modules to plug-in files, reverts ESM files to ESP and converts ESP files to ESM. Requires a Java Runtime Environment, included.
- Wrye Mash - initially a plugin manager developed to prevent doubling, Wrye Mash includes some editing and repair capabilities. Manage mods and savegames, add and remove mods without doubling and deletion problems, fix most broken reference problems, merge and resequence levelled lists, change load order and a number of other useful functions for managing mods. Requires python and wxPython : links are in the readme.
Load Order. The order in which your plugins load can be critical to their successful operation. Load order is influenced by changing the time stamps on mods and can be manipulated in a mod editor, including the CS and Wrye Mash. Several other utilities also change file dates:
- Reorder Plugins by Bingo the Clown, also at Endhome. Although it requires a Java applet be downloaded to run, this little utility is intuitive and effective and it provides positive control of load order.
- BulkFileChanger v1.60 - by Nir Sofer. Allows file dates to be changed easily, another tool to influence the load order of mods.
Detecting Mod Conflicts. Conflicts between your plugins can be detected using any of the mod editors, including the CS, or with this utility:
- TES Plugin Conflict Detector (TESPCD) 0.31 - by Ely VanReen Soto. Detects conflicts between plugins and gives you the option to delete or merge them. Excellent directions and source code available. A useful and powerful utility - 'TESPCD is a lot stronger tool than at first appears: it has elements of Enchanted Editor in it as well as elements of TesTool.'
Leveled Lists. Leveled lists are used to allow creatures and items to appear only at certain levels. If more than one mod changes leveled lists, the game engine uses only the changes from the last loaded mod and you will miss changes intended by mods loaded earlier.
- Morrowind Leveled List Merger 1.14 - by Horatio, was the first utility to combine the levelled list data from all loaded mods into a single plugin. It made some errors in calculating a few probabilities, however. For most users, TESTool 1.3 used in conjunction with the Leveled List Resequencer 1.0 would be a better option.
Mod Managers. These utilities help in installing, registering and uninstalling plugins neatly and efficiently.
- TES Mod Utility 2.01 (TESMU) - by Macgyver, acts as a registry for your installed mods, allowing you to keep track of which files belong to which mod, and to remove them quickly and easily. Includes source code. Outdated, use Wrye Mash instead.
- Morrowind Plugin Manager 1.2 - by DW. Installs all files found in a Zip or Rar archive to your chosen Morrowind installation path and associates them with the plugin entry in the plugin management display. Uninstalling a plugin removes all files associated with the plugin except files shared with any other plugin and removes empty directories that are no longer needed. Timestamp update and an advanced mode 'Clean Up' are supported. See the readme at the Morrowind Plugin Manager Homepage for more information.
- TESFILES (Tribunal ∓ Bloodmoon) 1.08 - by MentalElf. A tool for packaging all files in a Morrowind Mod or uninstalling a mod, it automates the tracking of what files belong to a mod.
Various. Utilities and tools that do not neatly fit into other categories.
- ieSpell - A Spell Checker for Internet Explorer - a free utility that provides quick and reliable internet spell checking. Used on forum dialogue boxes, it can be a boon to effective communication.
- Morrowind Construction Kit Commands - at UESP. This is a table of all CS commands. The console is an in-game scripting device so this table lists the possible console commands.
- Morrowind Savegame Editor - by Jorge 'DeliriumT' Ossorio, lets you edit a number of variables stored on Morrowind savegames.
- TESFaith - by Paul Halliday is a command-line utility to copy, move or delete entire cells, including landmass and its associated objects, NPCs, interior doors and script and dialogue references. A GUI version has also been developed by Timeslip called TESfaith#.
Multiple Setup. These utilities make it easier to operate multiple installations or the various savegames by different players on a single installation. They may be of limited use unless you are extremely short of HD space.
- Morrowind INI Switcher v0.9b - by Aridale, is a small program made to switch out the Morrowind.ini file as quickly as possible with other copies of it with different settings. Anything thats done through the Morrowind.ini file can be made into a INI Profile and switched as needed with MIS.
- Morrowind Profiler 1.0 alpha - by Cheek, allows you to select multiple profiles for computers that have more than one user playing. It moves the save files associated with each profile in and out of the saves directory.
- MWSwitcher 2.0 - by MentalElf, enables the quick switching between Morrowind copies, which allows quickly switching between sets of "Data Files" selections, meshes, textures, etc.
- Savegame Manager - by Tylius. A savegame manager that will manage the different savegames of multiple users or multiple characters. [The .NET framework is required to run this, and is available at Microsoft]
TECHNIQUES AND INFORMATION
Morrowind Tweaks.
Setup and Gameplay.
Tool Use. Some instructions for the various tasks that a mod user will need to perform and the utilities that can do the job.
GMSTs. Game Setting records or GMSTs provide information required by Morrowind. GMST contamination and the "evil" GMSTS from Tribunal and Bloodmoon can cause difficulties when creating or editing a mod, or loading one that has not been properly cleaned.
- GMST Cleaner - by Argent. A special-purpose editor to clean mods of the 'evil' GMST entries: it will not remove other intentional GMST entries.
- GMST Contamination - The UESP description of GMST contamination and how to avoid or fix them.
- GMSTs, Unavoidable? Wrong! - Toccatta's clear description of a simple way to avoid and clean GMST contamination.
- GMST Vaccine - Wrye's explanation of
contamination, prevention and solutions. Download Wrye's GMST Vaccine, which includes ManaUser's GMST Fix.
- What the Hell is a GMST? - by Argent at Morrowind Tech - what they are and how to avoid and remove them.
Doubling. What causes those extra sets of doors and NPCs and what to do about it.
Tips and Fixes.
Mod Conflicts.
World Map.
CREDITS, PERMISSIONS AND CONTACTS
My thanks to the many hundreds of talented and generous folk who have produced all the excellent
work that is merely sign posted here. To Bethesda, for the greatest game ever. To all
those who have answered my PMs looking for a dead thread or an explanation of how-something-works
and especially Grumpy - R.I.P. Dennis, Emma and Vorwoda The Black. And to Iudas,
DoomedMarauder, Telesphoros, OldeCow69 and DinkumThinkum for many and various kindnesses of
technical review, material additions, proof reading or support. Any shortfalls in the material
presented are mine, not theirs.
This page itself may be reproduced, copied, linked etcetera in whole or in part, preferably a
current version, without further request or permission. This permission does not apply equally
to the linked pages, reproduction of which should be discussed with the original authors, though,
for the life of me I cannot see why anyone would object to the distribution of useful mod
information.
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