Let's play: Morrowind Rebirth
About time I took a serious look at Morrowind Rebirth!
This massive mod has been worked on by Trancemaster for years. It started out as a separate city overhaul and ended up the everything overhaul it is today.
If you want to read more on Morrowind Rebirth, check out this recently published article on PC Gamer.
There's also this recent showcase from DarkElfGuy:
One of the major issues with Morrowind Rebirth for someone like me, who plays with MANY mods, is that Morrowind Rebirth tends to not be compatible with, well, most things.
Here's a brief compatibility guide from the mod's page:
Morrowind Rebirth is a huge modification and will not work well with a lot of other mods, especially mods that make changes to the landscape or add new buildings.
Not compatible with:
Mods that alter the landscape in any way. Conflicting landscape edits will cause major issues where buildings or other static objects become submerged and can't be viewed or accessed as intended. Mods that alter meshes such as trees and rocks. Morrowind Rebirth was built with a specific set of tree/rock meshes and will not work well with other tree/rock replacers. Mods that add new buildings, such as house mods. Same issue as above.Compatible with:
Mods that alter stats (value, weight, weapon speed etc) will conflict, but are not necessarily incompatible with MR. Adjust your loadorder if you want to use another balance mod (such as BTB's). Mods that add new weapons/armor/creatures, but you need to use TESTool to merge leveled lists. Mods that add new features through scripting. Mods that replaces textures. Mods that add new dialogue.
The reasons for that are:
- Cities are heavily overhauled, so any mod that adds a building or even NPCs will most likely not be compatible: buildings will be on the same spot, NPCs will be stuck in walls, things will float.
- Landscapes, especially the ground levels are heavily modified as well, so any mod doing anything in the wilderness will not be compatible (you will see land tears, things will be floating or clipping).
- A good number of dungeons have been overhauled as well.
- The values of most items have been modified, sometimes their mesh as well, so any mod that changes the models, gives new textures (not pluginless) or changes values will not be compatible.
With that in mind, I looked for mods that I would enjoy, of course, but also mods that I don't have on my permadeath modlist. Here's the result
I went overboard with new creatures (Neo's creatures, Giants, Piratelord's creature) and even replaced a few models (Westly's new golden saint, corprus stalkers and Winged twilights) and new ingredients (Sri Alchemy, pearls, gems and ingredients from Abot's and Piratelord's mods) . Added my must have replacers (face, bodies, BB armour and clothes) though I went for an old classic: Riptides replacer that mostly used better heads. (I will let you know how I cope with better heads, not sure I'll still like them.)
I fancied a different sound/music experience so I picked Piratelord's expanded sounds as well as Mr. Swivellers sounds. I have kept the original magic sounds so that Elemental Magic could work properly. I have removed ALL music form the game.
Naturally, my favourite MWSE/Lua mods are there.
As far as NPC additions are concerned, I'm using Outlaws and added a couple of companions mods: Jasmine, Yshga and Comes-By-Road.
I almost forgot, this modlist has Morrowind xp and all the levelled lists have been delevelled.
Check out the full list for details (with descriptions and links).
Finally, I needed a new character.
I really considered using some of my failed level 1 characters from permadeath (Cirrean, my angsty evil teen Bosmer!) but decided against it and instead, made a list of traits (more or less inspired from the handicaps and goals we use in permadeath) and created a poll. My new character will use the top 3 traits. Go ahead, cast your votes, there is still time!
Before I can play, I still need to check my modlist for conflicts, I've moved Morrowind Rebith - main.esp right at the bottom before the merged esp. This way, nothing will overwrite the land edit from Morrowind Rebirth. I've moved all gear modifying mods right below Rebirth main esp (essentially choosing my pretty armour over the re-balanced stats -- I AM shallow, you knew that). I've modified Pearls and Pirates to remove land tears as well as Jasmine so her house doesn't float anymore. No doubt there will be more.
UPDATE:
The results of the poll are
- explorer (no fast travel unless I know the place)
- drunk! (must get drunk daily)
- Dwemer fanboy
During on of my livestreams on twitch we created the following character:
- female nord named Hela the Hamered
- custom class: goldsmith with the following skills:
- armorer, duh, we are a smithm this is our trade
- alchemy, we have an acute interest in the properties of metal and how they can be manipulated. Dwarven metal in particular is of interst.
- enchant, or how to apply magical properties to mundane items
- mercantile, part of our trade as a smith
- blunt: we like hammers
- heavy armour, because we are a nord and hoping to wear Dwemer armour
- mysticism, goes with manipulating magical forces
- axe, part of our Nord heritage
- athletics and acrobatics because I didn't think other skills would really fit this character - bithsign: the juggernaugh (summon armour and axe once a day): even though Hela is not primarily a fighter, she does come from a long line of warriors and can call on them to grant her power in combat.
We started of in Seyda Neen and got stuck there for a while, not so much because we had so many things to do, no, but because thanks to Abot's delever, we were surrounded by high level enemies (some in the Bitter coast, some in the bandit cave, some on the way to Pelagiad and even some in town. Fun times.