How To Morrowind 

this video made me buy Morrowind. got my intelligence to around 30 million, made a fortify speed potion, and ran clear off the map in a single step which crashed my game. honestly, the best purchase I've made all year.

Devs keep trying to simulate reality but forget reality is horribly unbalanced.

My biggest 'holy shit' moment with Morrowind was when I was dispatched to find a stolen document in town. I asked the locals and paid some bribes to get a name. I entered the suspects house and asked about the stolen documents, only for them to immediately call me by my Thieves Guild rank and admit to the crime saying they were on guild business. The intermingling of the factions is outstanding and the care put into aspects of this game's writing is unmatched in anything else I have ever played.

TES games as parentes: Skyrim and Oblivion: *cares for their children until they have matured and are ready to step out in to the world* Morrowind: *gives their children basic instructions until they know how to walk, then they're on their own* Daggerfall and Arena: *literally attacks the baby with a knife*

Skyrim player: I just like fighting dragons Oblivion player: "Have you heard of the High Elves?" Morrowind player: My potions are too strong for you traveler

Holy crap... capturing Vivec's soul in Azura's Star, of all places, is the most beautiful poetic justice I've ever witnessed! 👏😂

Daggerfall; Fatigue becomes problem about %80 of a dungeon Morrowind; Fatigue becomes problem before you leave the ship

In this world, you either die 2002 Todd Howard, or you live long enough to see yourself become the 2018 Todd Howard.

at seeing the thumbnail I thought this was a video from the African Warlord that is sponsored by generous guild of Merchants

Morrowind wasn’t the best game ever, but it was the greatest

Step one: acquire currency Step two: pay for training Step three: dominance

"With this character's death the thread of prophecy is severed. Restore a save game to restore the weave of fate, or persist in the doomed world you have created". See it's epic dialogue like this that made older classics great. No such attention to detail can be seen in modern games. It's like how it was said in the video: "Why not let the player break the game?".

Morrowind is great at making you understand regret and how much of a scrub you are. First time you go into a cave? Regret. Gained some levels, killed some dudes, feel tough - think maybe I'll kill a guard for his fancy armour - regret. Gets strong enough to kill standard guards, thinks that means you can take on and ordinator - MUCH regret. Yet you don't learn. And you die. A lot

"It does not hold your hand. It might hold your hair while doing you from behind. But that is only for leverage."

Morrowind has an incredible sense of progression. Your character at the start is an absolute piece of shit, slow as fuck, can barely hit anything, limited carry capacity, gets tired after a minute long slow jog etc, all the spells fail. But then you start to level up with the trainers, you become more confident, stronger, faster, you start to master the ways of enchanting and alteration, you explore and start to find badass gear of quality materials......and before you know it, you're controlling an unstoppable killing machine, jumping across the island in a single bound and one shotting every bastard with your daedric artifacts, not giving a fuck and having multiple factions answering to you. It's a zero to hero game done right

"You will remember him by his abs." That or his skooma pipe.

I also found an unethical but effective way to train Unarmed combat in Morrowind. Found out I could fight this one Dark Elf inside of his house in the starting area, without committing a crime! So every day, I went into that elf's house and beat his mfkn ass!! Worldstar! 👊😂

"The rat is resilient and MEAN."

I remember the exact moment I fell in love with this game. Early on, still learning the game, I swim to the bottom of some random pool of water and there was a tiny, easily missed, useful magic ring at the bottom. This massive open world, and some game designer cared enough to put that there. It felt like the first time a game world was actually worth leaving the plot trail for.

A small lore correction: House Redoran is a strong supporter of the Tribunal Temple. It was House Hlaalu who sided with the Empire.

"What happened to you, Todd? Show me on the doll where the money touched you." I spit water all over my keyboard just laughing.

Morrowind was a beautifully buggy, broken, unbalanced masterpiece. It will always hold a place in my heart. It was an RPG done right.

34:12 To be fair, summoning a skeleton from nothing and bringing a dead body back to life are two completely different things.

I literally started my first morrowind playthrough yesterday and it's honestly already my favourite elder scrolls and probably one of my favourite rpg's

"Morrowind works right out of the box, but here's how to make it look like a russian HL2 mod". thank you strat

I wish they never removed spears. The Spear of Bitter Mercy was so fun to use and had a bizarre quest to obtain. Spears allowed you to keep your distance and combined with magic attacks, you could become mostly unstoppable. Also, levitation was so much fun!!

To answer your question at the beginning of who was really behind the game creatively, that would be Michael Kirkbride. Characters like Dagoth Ur and Vivec are versions of ocs he's had since he was young and he was high as a kite creating the lore and world of Morrowind. After it he left Bethesda and wrote more lore and some fanfiction about Dagoth Ur and the Tribunal before going sober and disappearing off the face of the earth.

I like how it's a "little known secret" that Todd Howard took credit for Morrowind.

Imagine not playing Morrowind as a correct, ultra-nationalist Dunmer who knows Argonians are property and the Imperials must be driven out of all ancestral lands. Absolutely n'wah.

"how did Todd make this" He didn't, it was mostly Julian Lefay's technical work. He made a new engine for every TES game (as well as head game designer) ending in this one before he was let go. Then after that curiously, bethesda never made a new engine, just modified the one they already had, and every time they change it it gets more jank and unstable.

15:42 Actually it's not broken logic at all. magic may have generated those fireballs, but they are still fireballs. So unless you have some flame resistance, magic resistance should not prevent it. It should only protect against direct non-elemental attacks.

For those wondering, OpenMW is an engine replacer for Morrowind that basically fixes all of the stuff that MCP and MGEXE fix while expanding the engine to accomodate new features. While this limits some mods (i.e. MGE shaders), it also opens the door for new features, like Multiplayer (yes, this exists).

The fact that they killed all the fun in alchemy after Morrowind is why I've never really enjoyed the elder scrolls series since. It was so fun and playful in Morrowind, exploiting the systems. Oh, and they removed levitate and of course made all levels such that, everything is wheelchair accessible.

One thing I liked about the guild / faction system is you actually had to have the skills to increase in rank. You could join the Mages guild as a dumb fighter but you were basically stuck as a fetcher because you didn't have any real magic ability. It's not like in Skyrim where you can rock up to the Mages college, do a dragon shout and rapidly make it to Archmage with your starting flames spell.

The way you talk always makes me think that you're just waiting for the roofie you slipped in my drink to kick in.

25:27 ALL THESE YEARS and I never really thought about that. I didn't appreciate how the devs are basically catering to and encouraging the powergamer by saying "look what crazy shit is possible in this game engine."

30:23 another fun fact: killing summoned golden saints is another way of getting some of the best gear in the game, if your quick you can loot the golden saints corpse before it disappears.

Ah, the joys of finally making a potion of high strength. Only to find out that you're so strong you shatter any weapon you use with one swing.

first time i played Morrowind i totally missed Balmora and walked up to the Red Mountain also, those guild missions led me to the north of the island, walking miles under sandstorm, getting infected by blight, killing millions of cliff racers. back and forth several times.

I just remember making permanent spells for basically flying, water breathing, jumping, strength, carry weight, feather. I could one shot just about anything and carry an almost unlimited amount of stuff. Lol Loved the Mudcrab Merchant and Creeper the Scamp.

You failed to highlight acrobatics! Jumping over balmora, and hopping from rooftop to rooftop in vivec was one of my most fondest memories. All I did was never use fast travel. I would travel everywhere by foot, and just enjoy the scenery while just spamming abilities on the road. Spells, jumping, etc. This also increased athletics as a bonus from simply traveling. I miss this greatly. This game was one of the few games that let me feel like I was really an adventuring traveler.

I still remember the first time I played Morrowind. I took a wrong turn out of Seyda Neen and ended up going the absolute wrong way to Balmora. It ended up being a genuine little adventure I had, I even ended up, I have no idea how I did, at the Ghost Fence at one point. All these sights and sounds as I made my way, i still don't know how I survived that trip.

Even as a Morrowind player myself since 2004, I still learned somethings from this video.

“Show me on the doll where the money touched you” so funny yet so sad at the same time

For that magic weakness Altmers have, they're sensitive to magic, both in the magical sense and the literal sense. They can manipulate magic easier because it comes as easily as breathing, problem is they might just end up choking on that thing they're breathing on as well.

32:22 Actually, you got this bit of lore incorrect. House Redoran are incredibly close to the Tribunal Temple, and this is reflected in the True Noble's Code, which states "A Redoran's duty is first to the Tribunal Temple, second to the Great House Redoran, and third to one's family and clan." While the Redoran and Imperial Legion have a mutual respect for one another, the Redoran do not exactly support the presence of the Imperials.

For me Morrowind is the best Elder Scrolls game there is. It's so much more technical and komplex then everything that came after. The love for detail is amazing and just shits on oblivion/sykrim. Bethesda needs to pick up their game for TES 6.

I just played through for the first time and used OpenMW. It runs flawless on Linux which is what I use. You get all that real-time lighting and shadows, pretty water, increased draw distance, etc. I didn't have to install a single mod. It just worked. It's an entirely rewritten engine for Morrowind so the engine bugs from the game simply don't exist.

A video about morrowind?!? Shut up and take my like! P.s. the best way to feel like a god is having a fortify acrobatics 300 spell. You can flex on the telvanni by bouncing up their levitate shafts.

“Y’all Nwahs DONT even drink skooma”

My first Elder Scrolls was Oblivion I was just turning 10. Watching my dad play I threw my hat into the ring and started a playthrough as a Breton Spell sword. I only got up to beating the Knights of the Nine dlc and then retreated back to Fallout 3 (I 100%'d that game within the Summer). Then when I was about 13 I played Skyrim and then again at 16 when I got my first Xbox 360. I completed both the main quests, the Thieves Guild, and the Dark Brotherhood quest lines. Since then I have conquered so many games. Beaten ng runs on Dark Souls, legendary on all Bungie Halo's, and now recently a modded Vanilla Lite run on my PC of Skyrim. After watching this I bought a copy of GOTY Morrowind for Xbox. I booted it up decided I really wanted to be fast and light so I rolled an Argonian Spell Spear. Jeeraza Weaves-Many-Spells. I am fucking loving this game and am happy that I am playing it now with the level of experience I have at 26. Not to chomp at the bit either I actually like the graphics they remind me of playing MYST on my grandparents macintosh as a boy and it brings back grand memories. I really wanted to thank you for bringing light to this ES entry. I own all the irl books and it is my favorite fantasy world next to LotR. I plan to run bonemold armor for style with a glass Halberd to complete the aesthetic and color theming. I don't know what enchantments or illusion spells there are but I am thoroughly excited. I'm at Hla Oad I walked killing and looting everything along the way 😂.

I got Morrowind when I was 12 and remember the game being absolutely inscrutable to me then. I played mostly as the cat man and used to steal huge quantities of household items and sell them to the fence.

This is one of the best analytical game videos i've seen in a long time. So many times these videos can come off as pretentious and leave me with the thought of "wow, dude talked a lot for 40 minutes, but said nothing". You though, you perfectly execute these things, im in love with your channel. None of that corny lofi-hip hop, cassette tape sound effect, poorly edited title card transition bullshit with a broad topic word like "Wonder" or something. Just talking about games, and giving interesting insights. I really loved the way you worded how Morrowind gives you choices. It gives you options without telling you. It bothers me in RPGs when i get a quest, only hear of one way to solve it, yet 3 other methods with "(optional)" tagged onto them pop up. Games are afraid to let you miss out and see their different routes. Having the different options of solving a quest all written out for you from the start also breeds mindless gameplay, and mindless gameplay can lead to you not roleplaying. You're not thinking "how else could i solve this?" you look at your quest log, pick an option, and then follow that quest marker. Morrowind though, feels like it expects you to go "yea im a shady thief, don't have to waste words on this pompous noble nerd, cant i just pickpocket it off him? just kill him? search his room for what i need?" It expects you to already be thinking like your character, and think how your character would approach it. Idk, that's how its always felt to me. Giving you options without a whisper of them being there. I think the elder scrolls series is misunderstood by A LOT of people. I see the opinion of "The Elder Scrolls games aren't RPGs, never have been" come up. I can only assume someone would have this opinion because they think a games ability to let you roleplay can only be accomplished through spelled out dialogue choices and big branching narratives. Morrowind shows thats not true to me. The Elder scrolls lets you roleplay in the little moment to moment things, the small choices, the not so obvious ones. It gives you a toolkit from the start, based on what your skills and stats and the character you're playing, then how you solve all of the broader quest objectives with your toolkit is left for you to decide. It makes roleplaying fun because you feel like you're being creative.

"Show me on a doll where the money touched you" is an extremely under-rated comment!

to be fair, game mechanics aside, i think the necromancy in game thing has more to do with you summoning creatures (likely from a realm of oblivion, possibly soul cairn, possibly somewhere else) where as the necromancy they frown upon is more around fucking with peoples bodies and spirits and stuff. Creating an artificial animated skeleton with the animus of a daedra is completely different from raising a dead body or skeleton, and even worse if your binding someones soul to it

Your section on alchemy is missing a key component to making potions. The tools you pick reduce, or increase durations and effects. You can remove one of the tools to maximize the duration, because it's mostly used to reduce negative effects, but it also reduces positive effects.

Your "Story Time" at the end is exactly it. That's what it was like for me. I actually liked having to "pack appropriately" before heading out on a quest.

Any one else ever break Morrowind? If you level up to many times eventually you cant distribute attributes and cannot leave the level up screen.

Morrowind is the best argument for videogames being art. It elicits deep emotions within me that other games just don't.

Paul, I've watched this video possibly 10 times on repeat and have bought this game to play it now. Love the jokes, the style, and appreciate all the work you put in. Keep it up man!

“it may hold your hair when it takes you from behind“ this one killed me 😅😅😅

I don't know why, but I fall asleep to this video most nights. Something about the mix of entertainment and nostalgia helps ease my crazy mind at night. Thank you so much for this!

This helped a lot in understanding/knowing how to play the game and convinced me to dive into Morrowind after much mulling over and researching. It took 14 so hours for the game to finally open up but goddamn it really is incredible and overwhelming. Thank you for these videos.

It's weird to say that I have been playing this game from release back in 2002, and this is my absolute favorite game of all time, and I had no idea about certain aspects of the game after all these years. You really opened up some new doors for me to step through and perfect my experience in this game. Thousands of hours of mindless gameplay just to do things in a different manner, and now I get to put some thought into who I should and want to be in Vvardenfell. Thank you for this wonderful video. It has really helped a lot!

Ah, it appears that I will now have to install the game again, play it for 3 hours, and stop playing it indefinitely.

To be fair, Todd Howard is not to blame. He became PR while someone else took his roles as project leader and concept designer.

I come back to this video maybe every other week. It's just that entertaining. Thanks for the great work.

Great job on the video! I just wanted to express my gratitude for creating such a unique and high-quality piece. Thank you for sharing it with us.

Strat-Edgy released a Morrowind vid? This is gonna be CHIM

"How do I improve my hand to hand skill Strat-Edgy sempai?" "You see that huge mean ass rat over there? Start punching it." "W-what?" "And spend the whole day punching it, and tomorrow".

I'm just so in love how this game lives so fucking strong to this day, big cheers to the OpenMW team

I just want you to know I watch this vid at least once a year, it is one of my FAVORITE vids from you and it convinced me to actually give Morrowind a chance. Cheers man, keep doing you!

Meanwhile when you go there in ESO it's like a casual stroll on your mount to see the whole island. Lol

This is my favorite analysis of Morrowind I've ever seen -- keep up the great content, man

started watching 2 days ago and i cant put you down dude XD i love the monotone relaxed voice, and the similar humor to me. keep up the amazing work

hahaha, that last narrative about whether your prepared enough for a mission or exploration is what still makes me play this game :) currently playing an atronach mage and i was low on mana, decided to skip into a tomb hoping on a almsivi restoration from a shrine, only to find out this particular shrine is locked behind a lvl 80 door. so even if you know the game after years of playing it can still one-up you. great vid!

26:40 - You fool! You should ALWAYS go to Creeper in Caldera to sell the armor/potions/weapons for 100% profit! That **** doesn't care if you're the suavest of bards or ugliest of trolls.

Surely I can't be the only person who jumped everywhere.

A bit late, but I'm happy you highlighted the Mages Guild. I absolutely loved doing that questline on my first playthrough. I did it alongside the Thieves Guild, and they're both such great stories. You really do feel like you earn those ranks, starting out basically doing the work no one else WANTS to do, and finally doing the work no one else CAN do. I was so annoyed when I had to collect those plants and mushrooms, and when I struggled to get someone's house key, but I'm happy I stuck with those Guilds. They are absolutely worth it, and I can only imagine the other Guilds are the same way.

Very well done video. I enjoyed this almost as much as the game itself. I especially liked the part where you narrated your trip from bal mora to molag bal. I'd like to find a channel that does that regularly. I would watch the hell out of it.

Most of what you said was so different from my experience with the game. That goes to show the amount of freedom you have in it and how that changes your gameplay.

Praise Saint Jiub, bane of the cliffracers!

Whenever I want a nostalgia blast, I come watch Strat-edgy's Elder scrolls videos. They just bring back all the good memories from Morrowind, and Oblivion.

Bro this video is crazy great work man

I recently restarted both morrowind and oblivion and I really must say that morrowind has kind of the best UI of all "modern" bethesda games, it's plain and simple, you have your characters stats, inventory, map and spells aswell as active effects all on one screen and can adjust each window to your personal preference you clearly see that bethesda didn't give a single fuck about pc players since oblivion even tough that's the largest part of the community

Awesome video man. Your stuff is always top notch but this is one your best.

First of your work for me to see and im hooked without any more im excited to see what else you have. Thank you!

I won’t lie: I misunderstood actual theistic religion and it’s more mature, esoteric dual meanings. This games vast religious theologies actually made me look into our theistic traditions. >Good games influencing lives in wholesome ways

25:33 fun fact: if you enchant an item with a 8% slowfall constant effect you get immunity to fall damage making the scroll much more useful

A good option early game if you take the atronach sign is to buy a potions of mark and recall from Nalcarya of White haven in Balmora then mark a spot near a shrine which you can use to restore your magicka for some gold. I usually use the temple in Balmora since it's near her shop.

Listening to your soothing voice makes doing online training courses much more bearable. Thanks Strat.

I have a very soft spot for House Telvanni. I love the apathy they express towards everything other than their own pet projects. I love their contempt for their underlings, painted perfectly by the the rewards you receive for doing chores for the Magisters. I love their unique aesthetic, from the mushrooms to the humming crystals to their disdain for stairs.

When you accidentally watch the whole video

3:29 you gotta appreciate the explanation of mods available for morrowind, the technical terms used, then actual in-game examples of those features at work. i appreciate 'strat-edgys' work here, its thorough and well done thanks

You really captured the essence of Morrowind in this video. It really is something else, i especially recognized the feeling you described when being "far from civilization" - alone in the unknown with no guarantees :) When i eventually drift back into videogames ill be sure to try the graphics mods, it made it look super nice too. Cant believe you didnt show the suran strip club tho

I had no idea Morrowind was this realistic. I can see now why its the most beloved in the entire series.

ah I loved that game.... the spell making was one of my favorite feature.... i had a three part spell that I could jump across the map with at one point.... One time I beat the game with an argonian wizard that i didn't level past 10... best rpg of all time.

This video is really well made, clear and comedic.

that tip about the fatigue bar influencing everything is something I wish I knew sooner. Thanks for mentioning it. I have a ton of fatigue potions from alchemy but never use them because I can run even when totally gassed and power attacks seem pointless since just spamming the attack to roll those dice as much as possible seems more effective to ensure a hit.

I always laugh when people would tell me their characters were gods in Skyrim and never played morrowind ... these games aren’t even on the same level or even in the same league. Morrowind is the best in the series and the last time elder scrolls felt like a true rpg, not one that insults your intelligence by holding your hand around every corner and limiting any elements of what felt like an rpg and instead inserting perks. In Skyrim I never felt lost, I never felt like I achieved anything because the game held my hand, bottle fed, and burped me while it showed me every single step I needed to take to get there( by comparison Skyrim is a safe room your parents put you in with nothing that can hurt a baby and morrowind is your parents saying goodbye when you move from home for the first time). In morrowind you literally can’t even hit anyone when you start, you are pathetic ( this made you feel so good when you finally start to become a killing machine), you don’t know where anything is unless you explore the world, you are constantly reading your journal for only a vague direction of where you should be headed ( not just staring at a map marker and walking towards it )this added greatly to the immersion of this masterpiece ....so good