Hi everyone! While working on the Illusion effects guide, I came across another formula for player's stealth rating. This one incorporates the weight of the player's boots/shoes. Essentially, heavier boots reduces your character's stealthiness. This is pretty difficult to test for the information's accuracy, but I'm fairly certain that this "new" formula is correct, whereas the stealth rating formula in this video is slightly inaccurate.
Yes and no. Heavier boots are supposed to reduce your character's stealth, but a bug makes it so that only shoes cause a penalty; armored boots are unaffected. This is fixed in later versions of the Morrowind Code Patch.
I love your clear and detailed information and theory etc... But .. lol but... Pickpocketing?? Skill?? Dude how come on, I have seen you play, your OCD F5 pressing is just like mine... So that being so, tell me... What is the ONLY skill to pickpocketing?? Haha 😋 .... I'll give you time to think. 🇬🇧👍🤣 Edit: omg the video ended and you didn't even mention it... Oh how the mighty have fallen 🤣👍
I cant even tell you how helpful these mechanic videos are. I tumbled down the rabbit hole of morrowind after finally playing daggerfall. I've NEVER been so immersed in a game world. Thanks dude!
This is an old video but I just thought I'd say something about sneak magic attacks: You may not get any critical hit damage bonus for magic attacks from stealth, but what actually happens is that for some reason your next melee or ranged attack on the target will always be a critical hit whether you're sneaking or not.
this is from the code patch description: "brief": "Pickpocket overhaul", description": "Pickpocket in vanilla Morrowind is a broken mechanic. Any character, no matter what level or stats, has the minimum chance (about 5%) to steal any item valued over 100 septims. An early game thief character with 40 sneak and 60 agility has under 60% probability to steal a 15 septim item from a merchant with minimum countering skill (5 sneak), and is often caught just closing the pickpocket window. This is the easiest scenario, which should be a reliable success of over 90%, and only gets worse when picking an NPC with real sneak skill. Finally, the pickpocket chance is capped at 75%, but is tested both when taking an item and when closing the window. Together this gives a 44% chance of being detected, no matter your skills. This option re-works the whole pickpocket calculation to be based on weight, and lessens the chances of being detected. It is generally much easier to get started if you choose a thief, and the best things to steal are the lightest - jewellery and gold. You will have to pick your targets carefully, as scouts, other thieves and seasoned adventurers are more likely to notice you. Grabbing anything noticeably heavy such as a weapon, is very likely to give you away. There is no longer a cap on pickpocket chance, and anyone with basic thief skills will not be detected when closing the pickpocket window."
Yeah, this was as much as I could ever find on the Morrowind Code Patch changes. The option to toggle the pickpocket re-write in the mod has a similar description. Kind of a bummer, but at least we know the vanilla formula so we can still make some educated guessing.
I have no idea how/why the original pickpocketing mechanic made it through the test phases during development, because it’s obvious to anyone actually playing the vanilla version that successfully pickpocketing anything or anyone is insanely difficult and frustratingly random to pull off. The bugged formula is one thing, but the double check (on both opening AND closing the pickpocketing NPC’s inventory window) should have been an obviously bad mechanic by design as it needlessly, illogically and exponentially lowers the success rate by design. While I usually refrain from using pickpocketing in not only Morrowind but also in Oblivion. I recall trying it back when I originally bought the game (when it was first published) and quickly concluding that it was next to impossible. Instead, if and when I engage in larceny, I steal stuff from the environment, preferably when blocked from view. I’m not that much into mods, but fixing pickpocketing is one thing that might make me use them.
True, but it was practically impossible in the vanilla version of Morrowind (I know because I tried to do it a lot of times, including with the aid of various spells and it would simply fail and fail and fail and fail and fail and fail and..., well, you get the drift...). A feat which is clearly supposed to be somewhat feasible in a game, but actually ends up being virtually impossible, ought not to have made it into a release version with this many bugs; not to mention the double whammy of having to pass a well nigh impossible dice roll twice(!)
By contrast, the dice roll fight mechanic, which meant that, initially, you’re less likely to hit, never bothered me at all. As long as you don’t try to fight when you stamina is very low (easily fixed by carrying some restore fatigue potions or simply being a bit careful when you travel) you’ll still stand a pretty good chance against enemies that aren’t way beyond what you’d expect to encounter at your level, unless you decide to go running into the really nasty areas or try to whack city guards or something like that. Also, the notion that every slash and stab automatically connects would be laughably unrealistic and since there is no real, separate dogde or evasion mechanic, the failed dice rolls stand in for those.
When sneaking around in order to steal items people put on their tables and book shelves you can of course wait for the undetected notification to pop up and then pick up the items you were looking for, but I either had bad luck with timing the theft and always grabbed directly the item after an NPC checked, or there's some kind of additional detection risk when picking up items. Anyway, whatever happens over here it seems to be avoidable easily. Go into range of the item you want or cast a sufficient telekinesis skill and wait for the undetected notification. Now simply open your inventory so the game is paused and drag the items with your mouse into your inventory. Happy Thievery everyone! ^^ Does not work with containers. About pickpocketing: If I remember correctly, most keys have a hidden value of 300 drakes. Might be worth to look this up as this will decrease the success rate of pickpocketing keys in vanilla alot if it's true. On a side note @00:56: If you're close enough you should hear the critical hit sound though instead of the usual hit sound so you know you succeeded in doing a critical hit.
Oh wow, I had no idea about keys having a hidden value. It seems pretty likely that you're correct on this. Hearting your comment to signal boost it, thanks!
For sure. It's pretty fascinating to dive so deep on it. There were so few 3D open world games before Morrowind, let alone open world RPGs, that it's cool to see where the developers were experimenting or just had less option available to them because of tech limitations. Thanks for tuning in
It's 2024 and I'm trying my hand at a different build than what I'm used to, and I still find myself coming back to your videos. Your Morrowind Mondays are what got me into the game in the first place, so it feels fitting that I'm still getting tips from you to this day. Thanks as always, man. Keep being awesome 😎
Your Morrowind mechanics series is great for new players (such as myself) and the hitchhikers guide to Morrowind is also a great series for newbies. I bought Morrowind 3 months ago and have only in the past 2 weeks have I gotten into it. (primarily due to these 2 series.) Keep up the good work, helping and allowing many people to enjoy this amazing game that I have only just scratched the surface of.
Wow, thank you so much for the kind words! I'm always so glad to hear that these videos are helping more folks get into the game. Also totally agree on JustRed's videos. I think I've watched most of her guide series. I wanna say that she was even the first person to start putting up a large series of Morrowind guides on YT. Much respect for her.
This guide really helped! I've been playing Morrowind for years and I've only ever played Combat or Magic characters. I just started playing a Khajiit assasain today and I'm already enjoying it.
I just reverse engineered the version of the pickpocket success function patched by MCP's pickpocket overhaul option. Here are the formulae (simplified with the default game settings; I'll post the full details in a link in a reply but don't want to risk this comment being filtered as spam) x = (your AGI / 5 + your LCK / 10 + your sneak skill) * your fatigue modifier y = (npc AGI / 5 + npc LCK / 10 + npc sneak skill) * npc fatigue modifier w = 60 * weightPerItem * numberStolen t = x - y - w + 5 The minimum weightPerItem is 0.01 Succeed if d100
@@yourfriendlyneighbourhoodl6206 Morrowind Code Patch, a very useful mod for fixing many bugs of Morrowind, which allows you to choose which features you implement. There's also Patch for Purists if you want to double down and fix more bugs and glitches.
I haven't seen this tip elsewhere so leaving it here: I only recently accidently discovered that at least the GOTY version has toggle sneak on the console. At first I thought it might have been added for the Xbox One edition, but when I tried it on my old original Xbox it worked there too. You activate it by pressing the sneak button twice. It's kind of wonky, but as long you enter sneak BEFORE hostiles can see you, you should be ok. Note that you can't just cancel it by suddenly running, you have to UNtoggle it by pressing the button again. Hope this helps, I wish I'd known years ago. 16 years ago, to be exact.
Just bought an external usb dvd drive, so, I could start playing one of my old time favorites again. Morrowind. Thanks, this is an awesome video. It is just what I needed. I couldn't get my sneak to increase from 5.
Pickpocketing is helped absolutely tremendously if you make a spell to fortify Sneak by 100 (or up to 500 if you have the code patch). Incidentally, since multiple spells with different names count as different effects, you can make any number of Fortify Sneak 100pts spells and, as long as you can cast the last before the first expires, you can get your sneak skill to arbitrarily high levels for pickpocketing. Enchanting multiple items may help even more, since enchantments are used instantaneously.
I was able to quickly max out stealth by going into stealth mode near the top of the stairs of the tradehouse's second floor, crouched and just in the peripheral vision of three NPCs. I advanced one point every three minutes.
So in this game Sneaking is questionably designed at best and a complete glitchy mess at worst? Good to know to never waste my time with this skill. I actually started a Dunmer Nightblade and got to the point where I would cast Chameleon and dance around a friendly walking NPC's detection radius to grind my Sneak skill. About as fun as it sounds.
Haha, yeah, that's the trouble with doing stuff around a 15 year old game, but I think I just like Morrowind too much to stop. Thanks for the kind words
This is extremely helpful! I'm on console, and decided to try and do a thief build in my stream. Upon trying to pickpocket a key for a Thieves Guild mission, I noticed that the key sometimes wouldn't pop up in his inventory, which confused the dickens outta me (I was very little when I watched my brother play this, so I've never got to try until just recently again). Now I understand why this is. It's all stat based, in a sense. Hm... Looks like I'll need to "get gud" at thievery. 😅
Haha, yeah, it's unfortunate that pickpocketing seems so busted in Morrowind. Thankfully, you can usually brute force pickpocketing most items by fortifying your stats high.
Gud powerup if not running patch(spam until finger breaks):soultrap on target 0ft for 1s ,7x(fortify sneak 100pts 1 sec on self) the same with anything else is fun especially attributes like int and skills like merkentile
Want what someone else has, but you keep getting caught trying to take it? Visit your local enchanter and enchant a few items with fortify sneak, 100 points for 3 seconds on self. Use said items, immediately pickpocket your victim from sneak mode, and profit. Mmmmm...Auriel's bow and the keys to all the house vaults...
I do believe item weight plays a role in stealing in general. I tried to steal an enchanted shield from a closet and I kept getting caught even after reloading a save and instead grabbed a 4.0lb lighter shield and then when for the heavy one once more and got caught. Then reloaded the save again and stole the big shield only to get caught with no success
About Pickpocketing: Pickpocket overhaul: Pickpocket in vanilla Morrowind is a broken mechanic. Any character, no matter what level or stats, has the minimum chance (about 5%) to steal any item valued over 100 septims. An early game thief character with 40 sneak and 60 agility has under 60% probability to steal a 15 septim item from a merchant with minimum countering skill (5 sneak), and is often caught just closing the pickpocket window. This is the easiest scenario, which should be a reliable success of over 90%, and only gets worse when picking an NPC with real sneak skill. Finally, the pickpocket chance is capped at 75%, but is tested both when taking an item and when closing the window. Together this gives a 44% chance of being detected, no matter your skills. This option re-works the whole pickpocket calculation to be based on weight, and lessens the chances of being detected. It is generally much easier to get started if you choose a thief, and the best things to steal are the lightest - jewellery and gold. You will have to pick your targets carefully, as scouts, other thieves and seasoned adventurers are more likely to notice you. Grabbing anything noticeably heavy such as a weapon, is very likely to give you away. There is no longer a cap on pickpocket chance, and anyone with basic thief skills will not be detected when closing the pickpocket window.
Yes in my first playthrough to level up sneak I placed myself somewhere where someone was standing still and leave crouch pressed and then came back later to see how much exp I gained in sneak.
Sorry, it didn't occur to me include fast ways of manually levelling skills. Since there's there's no training limit per level in Morrowind, buying skill training from NPCs is the fastest way. Of course there's definitely some folks who don't like that route because of how easy it is
The fastest is leveling for gold. If you want to do it manually, find a place, where some guard stands still with some free space behind, ideally a corner. Then, go behind him, sneak, look at the corner and press q.
Now, act like I am new to gaming. On the ps4, playing Morrowind. How do I even get into sneak mode? I am 63 and never regularly played any video games except Skyrim. Where sneak mode is just pushing down on the left toggle. What do I do, in Morrowind?
Ok, so I just place myself behind an NPC in sneak mode and just walk a bit trying not to get detected to level it up, and I get a quarter point every 5 seconds, is that what I'm getting?
Im doing vanilla plus melee run for my first playthrough. Im also interested in a stealth build but ibhear the vanilla stealth mechanica are bad. Should i use a stealth mod? :O
Can you be an assasin as in Skyrim? It's been like 12 years since i've played this game so I want to know if I need to use mods or not. In skyrim it actually works with distance and time of day. they actually come and search for you. Is this the same as in Morrowind? And I must say, this is a very nice video indeed! Well done!
Davy Koenen You can, but it's definitely tougher to pull off. Also, you'd ideally be using a heavy weapon for its high damage wind-up attack like a 2-handed blunt or axe weapon. This would help you one-shot more enemies with your opening sneak attack. Or you can abuse illusion magic like invisibility or chameleon to break combat and continually get sneak attacks on the same target. It's a little weird, because weapons like daggers or short swords actually go against the grain of typical fantasy tropes and in Morrowind are pretty ineffective for sneak attack assassin-type characters. Enemies also don't go searching if they suspect someone is lurking around. Stealth detection in Morrowind is more binary, unfortunately. It's sort of an all-or-nothing situation.
I m still struggling, lol. years later, my skill is now a minor and I have it as my specialization too but nothing. Sneaking and the icon not disappearing and yet not even a single percent increase
Im new to morrowind and im getting into it slowly through your guides and i started playing already. Could you do a little how to train .... series because i want to train things like sneak alchemy and such things but more effective thatn i might do right now :)
Oh you mean like ways to quickly level a skill yourself, manually? Personally I'm a big fan of paying NPCs gold to train up skills. I feel like it makes gold really valuable. But yeah, I'll consider doing power levelling ones later down the road. I've still got a bunch of general stuff I want to get out of the way first. Always happy to hear more people getting into the game though!
I had to click my joystick a bunch to get it to work. It seems inconsistent. Maybe it's my controller maybe it's just me idk. Glad it works when it does. About a month old controller too. Like new
It sucks because not only is elder scrolls 6 still years away, I know it's going to be a dumbed down version of skyrim. I know this because skyrim is a dumbed down version of oblivion, oblivion is a dumbed down version of morrowind and so on. Morrowinds world felt so alien, but I believed it... It felt so real. The art style, the music, the story... It was amazing. I don't want to rely on mods for a decent game either.
At 4:45 you mention the 180 degree view in which NPCs have impoved detection. Does that field of view rotate when the NPC turns their head and looks around, or is that purely a cosmetic effect?
I believe their head turning is just a purely cosmetic animation. Been a while since I did the testing though. There's a console command or two that toggles on wire frames and hitboxes
Hello, very informative tutorial! One question: does the type of armor the player is wearing affects his sneaking ability? Like for example: does the Light Armor make your character more "sneakier"?
I think the Morrowind Code Patch is the only one that I recommend to everyone, no matter what. I'm hesitant to directly link to sites where someone can download a mod in the event that said site gets compromised. A few years ago Nexus mods was running into problems like that. The last thing I want is someone to click on an external link in an old video of mine and end up getting a virus. Anyway, other stuff to check out would be the "Morrowind STEP project" or the "Morrowind Graphics Guide" if you're interested in big graphical overhauls. I use MSGO 3.0, but it's pretty outdated nowadays so I can't really recommend it.
I remember playing this when it was original Xbox - in-game cheats to regen health, magic, and stamina made the game much more appraochable at many times. For instance, you are going to be running and jumping everywhere, so just give yourself regen stamina and you cant get places a little faster the original 10 or 20 minute walk. Also, because there is no regen for health or magicka, this would save you the waste of time the grind for potions would be. At this point, you are probably not playing Morrowind for a potion grind simulator.
Is there any concrete evidence on the rumour that npc eluding skill increase is per NPC so that eluding multiple at once gains you skill faster? Or that moving while sneaking increases stealth faster?
moving while sneaking is the only way to gain xp for eluding. standing still will never gain you any. and no, you dont seem to gain any bonus xp for more npcs in the area. you gain a set amount per second which decreases as you level up. i dont understand where this guy is getting these shit tier formulas that ignore the fact that you gain less xp per action the higher your skill level. havent watched his videos on magic, but im sure hes gonna say "spam the lowest level spell you have to level up" when spell xp is clearly based on magic cost and/or chance of casting.
Been using OMW for a few months, found it on a 'net search looking for Win7 patch. Anyway, I like it but it still needs tinkering, some missions and graphic renders seem broken. Haven't tried UMCP. Hoping that an update pack is coming soon! Thanks.
I use the MSGO 3.0 (Morrowind Sound & Graphics Overhaul) collection of mods. Several of the mods are out of date versions so I occasionally run into issues like a mesh doesn't properly load. You can get around this by reverting something back to its vanilla default. Just find the file that's the problem and delete it. There's also a FAQ with a patch you can apply to the collection. There's also way more graphics options than what I show. Some add new sounds, animations, or just loads of grass everywhere. I actually turned down quite a few to keep the game looking how I remembered it appearing. Hope this helped.
A mesh is basically the lines or vertices of an item model. So some mods change the meshes meaning that they change the polygons of an item model or character model or whatever model. Think of it as the wire frame you see if you go into a debug mode in some games. Or those dudes you fight in Smash Brothers. ;P
Im wondering what is going on. I have the codepatch installed, but when I try to increase my sneak level, it stays at zero. Even sneaking around for 15 mins doesn't increase it despite the icon appearing for longer than 5 seconds.
do you have any tips? Does darkness have influence on it? Does it matter if you are far away or close by the target? How do you know for which npc the sneak icon is going off for? I managed to get it up now because I killed the Breton 'dancer" with the dropped ring near gnisis and got the amulet of shadows of her righthand woman.. but otherwise I could not figure out how to increase it without little exploits. I like to roleplay and I want to have a warrior character that denies magic, so I choose redguard as they have neither bonuses for magic nor defences against it (I don't want my character to even knowledge the existence of.
Nah, lighting doesn't impact your ability to sneak in Morrowind like how it does in Oblivion and Skyrim. Unfortunately I don't know of any way to know which NPC is setting off your sneaking. You may be able to monitor with some sort of console command or even a mod, but I don't know it.
You have to find the sweetspot where the NPC should be detecting you, but doesnt = successfull sneak check happens you get skill points towards your skill level
the MCP fixes the bug where you just gain xp for nothing. you have to be sneaking and either in their line of sight or behind but close enough that its possible for them to detect you. if there is a 0% chance for them to detect you, you gain no xp as it should be.
Hi lyle,. I can't increase my sneaking in vanilla morrowind (plus expansions), so no mods by fans. I see the sneak icon, but I never receive any boost in the stat AT ALL. I snuck around for 15 mins and it didnt change from being undetected to detected once, but it is still empty
It sounds like you might not actually be within detection range of an NPC. For example, if you're sneaking in the wilderness the icon will appear and you'll technically be undetected, but you only get XP for the sneak skill if you're undetected near an NPC that can potentially detect you. This actually makes it kind of hard to get started with levelling sneaking manually if you're starting out with a very low sneak level. Consider buying 10-20 levels of training to get you started if you run into a problem like that. Hope this helps
So, I need to get how close aprox to a npc in order to improve? Also, this is unrelated but seeing as you are able to reply to comments in a quick manner as you have only few comments, please consider, if possible getting a better mic or edit it better. some videos have high, ear hurting pops in it, and it would improve quality I think.
Hmm, I'm not sure precisely how close you need to be. 15-20 feet is definite within, but maybe the best way to check is by referring to your skill xp to see if it's changed at all. Haha, and yeah, I try to make an effort every day or two to set aside some time to reply to comments. Some do fall through the cracks, but I figure if people take the time to comment, the least I can do is respond. Lol, you just caught me a good time. And yes, I absolutely did have audio problems in my older videos. I did actually get a professional quality mic and learned more about audio editing/processing. That's why this guide video has better quality than my first one (character creation). I think it was around week 16 of me starting this whole thing that I first upgraded my setup. Unless you mean more recent videos have audio problems. If that's the case let me know in a comment. When it comes to playthrough videos, I don't watch through the whole 50+ minutes of each one after it's fully rendered, instead I'll skip through at about 10-15 minute intervals to make sure everything came out alright overall.
Well, my xp didnt change at all. Nothing 0-100. I m not sure what I do 'wrong' I sneak up to cute scrib and guar (the tame ones) and I m not noticed. I see no npcs in the area (or I killed them like cliff racers, mudcrab, slaughterfish, hostile npcs, so I think I would be in the clear
Yeah, that sounds weird. It could just be a bug. There's a fair few of them in the base game. I'd say either try getting the unofficial Morrowind Code patch to see if that fixes it. Otherwise you could level it at skill trainers for gold or use console commands. I can't really think of another way around it, sorry.
I understand this video is 4 years old. But as far I know, you absolutely cannot toggle sneak on the Xbox version. I'm currently playing on the Xbox one. I've tried everything. Settings, google. You can't toggle sneak. If you can, PLEASE let me know how.
I’m not entirely sure, but I think you need to be “potentially viewable”, i.e. not blocked from an NPC’s view by scenery etc. However, as Lyle pointed out, ALL(!) NPCs perform individual(!) “awareness checks” every 5 seconds, meaning that sneak levelling will be much faster if multiple NPCs fail to spot you simultaneously. Hence the recommendation in various Morrowind guides that you try to sneak in inns or taverns as also shown in Lyle’s video. For instance, 4 NPCs consistently failing to spot you, should generate 1 point in sneak every 5 seconds.
I feel like my sneak is completely broken. Even behind a NPC i never get the sneaking indication. I checked my skill progress bar and it says 0/100. I installed the morrowind overhaul with sounds. Any ideas??
+Ryan Larivee Were you able to figure out your problem? If not, what's your sneak skill at and are there any other NPCs nearby? It could be that your sneak is low enough to where a more distant NPC is detecting you. If you're on PC, I'd suggest first using console commands to buff your sneak and then test whether or not a mod broke your sneaking altogether. Try: setsneak 400 -- Be sure to save beforehand and target your own character from 3rd person before using the command.
A lot of the math just boils down to an action being influenced by a relevant skill, a relevant attribute, luck, and fatigue. Most of the information isn't worth keeping in mind while you play. If you want better success rates, just stack those things and keep fatigue topped off. Value the stats in order of relevant skill > relevant attribute > luck.
It’s simple: 1) Enter sneak mode. 2) Activate NPC 3) Get caught (almost certainly), if you play the vanilla version. If you want to pickpocket, you basically have to use mods.
Yep, it's me! Your old pal, Lester! Here to get you that heist money! In all seriousness though, lol, some other person in one of these guide videos said that I sounded like Wallace Shawn. I'm both honored, and gravely insulted!
