Foreword

I really ought to copy-paste this disclaimer thing. Oh well here goes: it is simply impossible to do justice to all the great gameplay mods out there in a Top 10. A very important thing to remember is that a good number of the latest Gameplay mods take advantage of MWSE lua scripting capability, as a result, this top 10 is almost exclusively for MGE/MWSE installs.

#10

Here is a mod full of possible destinies and endless characters: Randomised Chargen by PetetheGoat. During character creation, you will see a reroll button on the race, class and birthsign selection pages. Click them and see what race, gender, face, hair, class and birthsign the gods have given you. Because the gods are not that cruel, you can hit reroll as many times as you want. Randomised chargen is a great mod for those who run out of character ideas and those who tend to play the same character over and over again. Did I mention that Randomised Chargen is pluginless and will work with every modded race, class and birthsign?

My advice, install Chargen Revamped - Expanded Lands to further randomised your character with random skill and attribute values, random faction and random start location. For the bravest, I have a Full Random Challenge

#9

We have a mod for pack-rats. Remember, wasn't the year 2000 great? We've all enjoyed piling up books, weapons and whatnots in the manor of a certain murdered noble mer of Balmora, we were defying the laws of physics re-creating the tower of Pisa with cuirasses and greaves and got great screenshots to share on PlanetElderScrolls. But fast-forward to 2019 where it's even better to be able to place objects with precision and relative ease. Not just on tables and the likes, but also on the walls, well pretty much anywhere you care to place an object. You can place any object including those from mods. The name of the mod is Perfect Placement, and its author, the very hard to pronounced and therefore mispronounced, I'm sure, Hrnchamd.

Looking for a place to decorate that fits seamlessly in the game, like it's always been there even? Apartments of Morrwind lets you legally own some houses/shacks that get vacated after certain quests. A more recent mod is Welcome Home.

#8

Customizable MWSE Multi Mark and Harder Recall by Virnetch. This mod covers pretty much all you teleportation needs: you can have multiple marks, the number of marks you can store is based on your Mysticism skill. You can recall off course, but you can also limit how many times a day you can recall. Companions can be teleported back to you, they will also teleport with you whether it is with Recall of Intervention spells. Teleporting longer distances means greater Magicka cost. And as with many lua mods: you get to enable, disable and tweak all these directly in-game.

If you feel that multiple mark and recall is too powerful, you could try OperatorJack's Anchor Teleportation where Mark and Recall spells work like they used to in The Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall.

#7

Gavrilo93 was kind enough to bundle all his main quest mods into a single download giving us much freedom and many more role-play options regarding the Morrowind Main quest. With Main Quest Overhaul, you may refuse the main quest altogether, side with the native Dunmer rather than the Empire's Blades, you can choose to delve deeper in Ashlander lore or on the contrary avoid the wretched savages and never join the clans. If you have given up on playing the main quest, this mod might reconcile you with your character's destiny.

If you are decidedly done with the main quest, check Gavrilo's mod page, his Bounty Hunter Bundle as well as Census and Excise Office mod in particular will give you a good few hours of adventures. Gavrilo's blog has character rol-playing ideas, fan-fiction and mod recommendations.

#6

A mod so sexy and essential, it's been ported to OpenMW. Stuportstar and Greatness7 teamed up to bring us this new old mod: Graphic Herbalism. Manauser's original mod has been given new sexy lua scripts and smoother optimised models so that we may pick up plants, mushrooms, flowers, eggs and rocks even with a single click without losing our fps. This new Graphic Herbalism caters for the major plant replacers out there. The budding alchemist and veteran apothecary alike may even travel to the new regions of Tamriel Rebuilt and enjoy the same comfort as they do back home on Vvardenfell.

#5

A great mod for anyone who's ever hesitated between having the "trapped" tooltip enabled or not in MPC. You want your game to have some measure of realism, but you don't want to reload every time you forget to check for traps. With AdituV's Skill-based Trap Detection, only a player skilled in security will know if a container or door is trapped. Simple and fair. The greater the trap, the higher security skill is needed to detect it.

Works great with OperatorJack's Security Enhanced where you will equip the probe automatically IF you can detect the trap.

#4

This next mod is a mod for anyone who loved Galshia's Character Development, Madd Leveler or MCC Leveler, or more generally anyone who dislikes how unnatural leveling up is in Morrowind. Like its predecessors, Mort's Ultimate Leveling Experience will improve you attributes natually, as you skills improve effectively removing the need to min-max. Because it's lua, the mod is plugin free and has in-game configuration: how quickly will your attributes improve, how much health you gain per level, do miscellanious skills matter and how much: all of it for you to decide.

The only feature missing right now is skill decay, for those who like their game a little more punishing than it needs to be.

Before I reveal the top 3, there are some honourable mentions that did not make the cut but really deserve some attentions.

Honourable mention # 1

This is a mod that might not appeal to everyone but for any player who cares to tell their story, this is godsent. Svengineer99 released MWSE 2.1 Journal Search and Edit in May during the Modathon. The first part of this mod is about being able to search for words in your journal, even if they are not in blue and that is useful especially if you have many quest mods that don't use hypertext, the blue words. The second part of the mod lets you edit and even add whole entries to your journal, therefore giving your character a voice of their own. If neither functions appeal to you, then the collector in you might enjoy inserting art found in books and scrolls directly into your journal.

Not keen on writing your story? Svengineer thought of everything: you can add screenshots to your Data Files\BookArt\Journal\ and add those to your journal.

Honourable mention # 2

There are a few ways you can get away with crime in Morrowind and the choice is yours: 1/ make sure no one sees you and 2/kill all the guards that attempt an arrest. NullCascade gives us a middle ground option with The Last Witness: kill any witness before they have time to report your crimes to a guard. The idea of this lua-powered mod is very simple as well as realistic. Just make sure that no one sees you disposing of a witness, you'd have to chase them and kill them, soon enough you'd be right back to option number 2.

Honourable mention # 3

AxeMagister or Archimag has given us a whole suite of mods that greatly change the gameplay with his 4NM series. From a Magic Overhaul with 4NM_Magic, a combat overhaul with, you guessed it 4NM_Combat, a levelup overhaul 4NM_Training as well as a few more mods that I recommend such as 4NM_random that randomises the size and stats of creatures as well as anti-witcher that control how much and how fast you can eat and drink based on your attributes and skills.

these mods are large overhauls with new ways to calculate pretty much everything and add very cool new mechanics. I do wish they took better advantage of MCM to offer more customisation.

#3

Next Generation Combat by Aracelliy is a complete rework of combat, starting with what many consider a must: the 100% hit option but then so much more than that. Each weapon now has a perk associated with it: an axe for example, may inflict bleeding status and blunt weapons have a chance to stun. The more skilled you are with your weapon, the stronger the perk. Other features are active blocking, Fortify Attack and Sanctuary tweaks as well as how fast weapon and armour skills progress. Next Generation Combat, like more and more lua-mods, uses Merlord's very sexy MCM menu so you can easily enable and disable perks and features as well as their values.

If you worry about bandits, thinking they won't stand a chance, don't, enemies benefit from the same advantages you do.

#2

For MCM alone (now built-in MWSE), we owe Merlord a debt of gratitude: the ability to configure our favourite mods right there in game rather than fiddle with json files is godsent. Beyond that Merlord's Character Backgrounds will make many a player's game more fun. Some of the backgrounds are hilarious such as the bodybuilder who has more personality when not wearing a shirt or a chest piece, others can be challenging like the Artificer who has very high enchant butcannot cast a spell, the Rat King is a favourite where rats are your friends and may even join you in your crusage against Dagoth Ur. Whichever of the 20+ background you choose, it will make you play each character differently. I would be amiss if I did not mention the other mods Merlord gave us last year, all of them just the right amount of realism, survival and role-play: Kill Command for example make having companions and summons fun again, and No Combat Menus to make sure every fight is full of adrenaline, Realistic Repairs because no, hitting your armour in the middle of a dungeon with a hammer is not how it's done, and Quick Loadouts that lets you switch whole outfits with one push of a button, are some of my favourites.

#1

What 2019 mod has had an impact on our game and promises to continue in 2020? Magicka Expanded by OperatorJack. Just picture this: your mage now has at their disposal new summoning spells, can teleport to any city in Vvardenfell and beyond, they can control the weather and read the minds of npcs. The best part of Magicka Expanded is that it is a framework that modders can use for exciting new spells. OperatorJack himself has already created a few: Homing Projectiles lets you control your fireballs and the like, Chrysopoeia lets you transmute items, Cast-On-Swing Enchantments makes your Harry Potter dreams come true and Anchor Teleportation bring you back to the Elder Scrolls 2 Daggerfall mechanism. Melchior Dahrk has updated his Atronach Expansion and Sanguine Rose mods and Fekkius gave us a Summon Creeper spell. If you are not sold yet, sit tight, the Detect Spell suite Enhanced Detection just got released, a telekinesis overhaul, Enhanced Telekinesis, an Invisibilty overhaul: Enhanced Invisibility and finally Enhanced Light is out as well. OperatorJack mentioned a Vampire mod and Mort hinted at a Necromancy mod...
Beyond the mod itself and what it will be, what I love the most about Magicka Expanded, it is the result of OperatorJack's work, of course, but it is also a group effort with collaborations from many modders/coders/graphic artists such as RedFurryDemon and Kurp.

Let me tell you, 2019 was great, 2020 will be even greater.

I know the common phrase is "What a time to be alive", but really, 2019, what a year to be playing Morrowind.