I want to like Morrowind, but...

[Brundlefly]

Solver, how would you rank the magic skills in their importance?

[Solver]

Destruction and Alteration are the two most important. Destruction is how you kill things, and does increase fast as a major skill. Alteration does provide levitation, jumping, opening and a few other nice effects, and is commonly used. For a mage character, obviously, you can have the magical skills as major or minor. For instance, I would major in Destruction, Alteration, Illusion, Blunt Weapon (wizards use staffs) and Enchant.

Enchant is actually a tricky skill. It's great if you are going to enchant your own items. Which takes practice. So if you want to do that, it might be good to stock up on soul gems, go out and kill lots of tiny critters soultrapping them, and trying to enchant something with their souls. That way, your enchant skill will increase at some point enough for you to be able to decently enchant powerful items. Enchanting yourself is good because otherwise you'll spend hundreds of thousands of gold to pay an enchanter.

Oh, and the Unarmored skill is bugged and weak. I'd be tempted to take it as a mage and walk without armor, but the way the game works, it's not a good idea.

[Brundlefly]

Originally posted by Solver
Destruction and Alteration are the two most important. Destruction is how you kill things, and does increase fast as a major skill. Alteration does provide levitation, jumping, opening and a few other nice effects, and is commonly used. For a mage character, obviously, you can have the magical skills as major or minor. For instance, I would major in Destruction, Alteration, Illusion, Blunt Weapon (wizards use staffs) and Enchant.

Enchant is actually a tricky skill. It's great if you are going to enchant your own items. Which takes practice. So if you want to do that, it might be good to stock up on soul gems, go out and kill lots of tiny critters soultrapping them, and trying to enchant something with their souls. That way, your enchant skill will increase at some point enough for you to be able to decently enchant powerful items. Enchanting yourself is good because otherwise you'll spend hundreds of thousands of gold to pay an enchanter.

Oh, and the Unarmored skill is bugged and weak. I'd be tempted to take it as a mage and walk without armor, but the way the game works, it's not a good idea.

If you have a character with some combat skills and not a lot of magicka, is destruction necessary? For such a character, what two or three magic skills does he need?

[Dis]

my next character will be one who uses an axe or bludgeoning weapon as primary damage dealer.

I tried destruction, I didn't like it that much. But it comes in handy against groups of enemies.

3 important mage skills. Alteration, restoration, and either enchantment or alchemy- whichever you prefer. Or do both.

[Solver]

If you have a character with some combat skills and not a lot of magicka, is destruction necessary? For such a character, what two or three magic skills does he need?

I would prefer to take destruction because it can have very powerful spells... but then again you aren't going to have lots of magicka. You know, since most birthsigns are useless, take a sign that gives you extra magica (Atronach or, IIRC, apprentice) for a mana bonus, or use some enchantment for it. Destruction IS very good. Not only for spells like fireballs, but also for direct damage health, or draining enemy attributes, skills, etc. I think destruction is the single most powerful skill, as a ton of spells come under it.

Don't major in restoration, leave it at minor. It's really not worth being a major skill. However, if you care to do it, majoring in alchemy is a great idea for a character that will have some magical ability. Making potions is easy, can give you lots of money and is, in fact, the most overpowered skill. That is because you can use alchemy to make yourself insanely powerful. I mean insanely. Like, kill any enemy with a single staff hit, move around at an unbelievable speed, not lose any helth, or gain thousands of magicka.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

I have to agree that power-gaming Morrowind is ridiculously easy. In fact, if you chose heavy armor, a bashing weapon (ax/blunt/longsword), merchantile and alteration as major skills, you really wouldn't need anything else. Bashing weapons will kill your enemies; heavy armor will do the best job of keeping you from getting killed; alteration will make sure you can go anywhere yu need to; merchantile will get you anything you can't get any other way. After those four, whatever else you choose is gravy.

So you really should roleplay instead. Build a character based on what you want to be and do, not what will win (because, really, Morrowind isn't so hard to beat that you need to game it that way). Or take a pre-made character and have them grow; I'm playing an out-of-the-box bard who, I decided, only got interested in the Marksman skill once he found a crossbow, and has been training himself to use it ever since. But the variety of characters you can build is one of the best things about the game.

[Solver]

Mercantile is useless for power-play. Absolutely useless. If you power play, you kill an Ordinator, go sell his armor and get some 35k gold. Repeat it several times and you have more gold than you can spend.

[Brundlefly]

Did they design the game with some obvious way to cheese up your skills. For instance, in the cave outside of Seyda Neen, there are 3 prisoners chained there. You can ramp up your Speechcraft skills endlessly by Admiring them. I consider something like that a cheat, but maybe it was designed to be there for people to use?

[Solver]

Nahhh, they just designed the game to give you maximal freedom, which does, in turn, often make balance weak. Heck, you can level up most skills very easily. Take any magic skill. Create a custom spell like fire damage 1 pt on touch and cast it repeatedly while running, it will only cost 1 or 2 mana and will level you up fast.

[Dis]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly
I have to agree that power-gaming Morrowind is ridiculously easy. In fact, if you chose heavy armor, a bashing weapon (ax/blunt/longsword), merchantile and alteration as major skills, you really wouldn't need anything else. Bashing weapons will kill your enemies; heavy armor will do the best job of keeping you from getting killed; alteration will make sure you can go anywhere yu need to; merchantile will get you anything you can't get any other way. After those four, whatever else you choose is gravy.

So you really should roleplay instead. Build a character based on what you want to be and do, not what will win (because, really, Morrowind isn't so hard to beat that you need to game it that way). Or take a pre-made character and have them grow; I'm playing an out-of-the-box bard who, I decided, only got interested in the Marksman skill once he found a crossbow, and has been training himself to use it ever since. But the variety of characters you can build is one of the best things about the game.

I have to admit, I'm finding the Mournhold expansion to be hard. The original game is very easy, but this expansion is tough in areas.

Darkbrotherhood Assassins tough.
goblin handlers- tough
those uber liches (can't remember what they are called)- tough- mainly because they drain your strength.

There was this one guy who I gave money because he was asking for it, then keeps demanding more. I eventually cut him off. A few days later he attacks me. Ridiculously tough!! . I had to lower the difficulty level just to defeat him.

That guy who was a hand of the lady. Very, very tough. I had to lower the difficulty level to defeat him as well.

yeah I know, a lot of it is my weapon. I just wanted to try something different. But short blades suck. The game is so biased towards long blades. I just made that weapon that female god (her name startes with A Axelta or something like that) want you to make. And of course it's a long blade. I think I'll go find a long blade master trainer. I'm sick of every good weapon being a long blade.

[Solver]

Yeah, Tribunal is considerably harder. In fact, it's extremely hard for a mage, as most characters and enemies are extremely magic resistant. That beggar, Gaenor, is probably the toughest fight in the game. Of course, Almalexia's hand is impressive, and Almalexia is also strong (a god, duh), so yes, Tribunal is good in that regard.

[Brundlefly]

I find myself so wrapped up in trying out new characters with different skill sets and races that I am not getting very far in the game. I have created about 8 characters and none of them have gotten much farther than Seyda Neen and Balmora because I play a different character every time I play. I guess I'm trying to find the one that I like the best.... So far I like this female Argonian adventurer I made the best...

[child of Thor]

Originally posted by bfg9000
I find myself so wrapped up in trying out new characters with different skill sets and races that I am not getting very far in the game. I have created about 8 characters and none of them have gotten much farther than Seyda Neen and Balmora because I play a different character every time I play. I guess I'm trying to find the one that I like the best.... So far I like this female Argonian adventurer I made the best...

That is one of the good things about Morrowind, you have a lot of re-playability(becoming rare these days) in the game. I havent ever finished the main quest yet, or even gone into the expansion area's yet. I've probaly played for a good 60 hrs.

I havent played it for a good few months at-least, but now i feel the urge to get back to it

[Solver]

There's great replayability even without creating new characters... I for once don't do that, I become rather attached to my characters. I played with one character first, power-gaming it, becoming extremely powerful, and then retired it. Then I created another character, a more interesting one, and have stayed with that one since, using the mods and expansions to prolong the lifespan of the game.

And yeah, it's great how Morrowind can be played for some time, put aside for two months, and played again.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Solver
Mercantile is useless for power-play. Absolutely useless. If you power play, you kill an Ordinator, go sell his armor and get some 35k gold. Repeat it several times and you have more gold than you can spend.

It's very useful at the beginning, before you're strong enough to pull tricks like that off. After that, though, you're right.