Morrowind Mod Suggestion: Challenge!

Danae -

Foreword

Ok, so you have made your game balanced, you have realism mods (or not) but you want more of a challenge? I gotcha.

More enemies

  • All these creature mods add creatures (duh), quite a few of a higher level than those found in vanilla.
    • Piratelord's Creatures. Lets you pick how lore-friendly you want your creatures. Be sure to update your morrowind.ini (details in the readme).
    • Morrowind Advanced. Originally a mod by Gary Noonan/WormGod Elite (Bethesda staff member) and updated by Stormgarde and Pookhill. Includes creatures, hostile NPCs, new armour, and a dungeon.
    • My own Cliff Racers. Does NOT add more cliff racers but a greater variety of them. Cliffies now have powers and immunities, but also some balanced loot. You can hunt them down to extinction too!
    • Giants by the Puma Man: a great mod though some of the models are starting to look their age and the new creatures are not always lore-friendly. Be sure to grab this patch as well.
    • 4NM_Randomizer by Archimag won't add creatures but randomize the stats of exisiting creatures.
  • NPC addition mods like:
    • MCA: during the mod configuration at the start of your game enable: bandits, bandits that respawn, bandit attacks on towns (make that a large group), and don't enable companions.
    • My own Outlaws adds bandits, highwaymen, muggers, and pick-pockets (the last two are optional). Full disclosure, there's a very stubborn highwayman somewhere that asks for your life or your gold, but will only accept gold. I have to fix this ASAP...

I would not recommend The Hostiles for a challenging game because the loot is too generous. Vvardenfell Bandits II is good, though after level 50, you will find a couple of vampires in every tomb - more challenge, less realisism.

General Gameplay

  • Dynamic Difficulty by NullCascade. Every time you level up, the difficulty slider goes up. Simple! Configurable in-game by levels, regions...
  • Proportional Progression by NullCascade to configure the rate at which skills level. Many ways to configure this: by player level, by skill lever, by skill...
  • R-Zero's Lucky Strike. This one works both ways, you could deal more crit damage with high luck, and so can NPCs. Oh. My. God! Gaenor!!
  • Abot's More Traps. Let me see: traps are deadlier, traps can be added to any container at any time. For more painful fun, be sure to tick the "Hidden Traps" and "Hidden Locks" in the Morrowind Code Patch. Oh, doors and containers also get locked dynamically. Not recommended with Lock Bashing as you can trigger a (new?) trap every time you bash the same container.
  • Diseases galore!
  • Jac's Lightning Strike. You can get hit by lightning for 15-50 damage. Even more fun with Ashfall that gives you weakness to shock if you are soaking wet. Let me tell you, I fear for my life every time I need to be outside during a storm. Abot's version based on Jac's is more atmospheric.

The Heavyweights

  • Pursuit Revisited by Svengineer. I adore this mod! Enemies will follow through doors. Guards will come running towards you as soon as someone reports a crime. You cannot use transportation during combat. Oh, and Intervention is limited.
  • If you like having your teleportation options limited but don't want enemies following you try Merlord's Limited Intervention together with Virntech's Customizable MWSE Multi Mark and Harder Recall.
  • If you only want enemies chasing you through doors: Archimag's Dragondoor to make enemies chase you through doors.
  • Abot's deleveller will delevel creatures and items, including those from mods. Used together with creature/hostile mods, you will find yourself running away quite often. (For anyone curious to see a Morrowind Rebirth install with the creature and NPCs mods as well as Abot's deleveller, tune in to my YouTube playlist. I typically stream this on Friday mornings on Twitch.)
  • Merlord's No combat Menus. How I love-hate this one! As long as you are in combat, you cannot open your inventory. You will be able to if you put some distance between you and your enemy (configurable in-game). You wanted a challenge? This is it.
  • Archimag's Hardsave so that you cannot save during a fight.

More?

When playing permadeath, I use balancing mods, realism mods and challenging mods, but then I like to throw in a couple of random handicaps. Try them here,