Morrowind:Hints

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Cheats- Various cheats to modify and manipulate your game.
Glitches- A list of known glitches that appear in Morrowind.
Houses- Places to call home in Vvardenfell.
Quest Timing- Suggestions on what quests to do early, and which to save for later.
Starting Out- A list of hints to help you start your adventures in Vvardenfell on a good note.

[edit] Barter Hints

Hints for getting the most out of your Mercantile dealings with merchants.

[edit] Increasing a Seller's Stock

If a vendor has a self-replenishing stock of a product, it is possible to increase the level to which the stock replenishes by selling back to the vendor. It's particularly useful for players buying ingredients in large quantities, because it can be frustrating to deal with merchants that only carry 5 or 10 of a particular item. Say you wanted to buy 50 Ash Yams, and your vendor had 5 in self-replenishing stock, you would have to begin a barter session, click the Ash Yam icon while pressing the shift key, click buy, and then repeat this process another nine times.

To increase his stock you would do the following: in the first transaction, purchase the vendor's 5 yams. In the second transaction, sell the 5 yams back to the vendor. The vendor now has 10 yams. In the third transaction, buy 10 yams; in the fourth transaction, sell the 10 yams; in the fifth transaction, buy 20 yams; in the sixth transaction, sell the 20 yams; in the seventh transaction, buy 40 yams. With seven steps, you have increased the merchant's permanent self-replenishing stock from 5 to 40. The increase is permanent, and any self-replenishing stock can be increased.

[edit] Lower Enchantment Costs

Enchanting via enchanter can be very expensive, and can drain your money very easily. However, the cost is determined in a similar way to training. Personality and Mercantile play a huge role. Boosting by 100 each can half the cost if you already have 100 for each. Simply make one large purchase to create an item that greatly increases both for one or two seconds, then use it before you enchant anything else. Constant effect items that are normally 100k can drop to 10k easy. And if you do the trick to actually add the money you spend to the enchanter's gold amount, you can simply sell back things with high mercantile for high prices, getting a rebate.

[edit] Orcish Armor

If your Security is not that good and you can't use open spells, or you lack level and need money, go to Caldera. If you look around a little, you'll see a place called Ghorak Manor. There are three floors there. Walk to the third floor and you will see some crates around an orc. Loot the crates and in some of them is orcish armor, greaves, and pauldrons. You can sell them to the scamp merchant Creeper who is right on the second floor, or if you use medium armor you can wear them, as they are much better than bonemold.

[edit] Prices and Merchant Disposition

When buying, you will want the merchant's disposition at 100. However, when selling, having the merchant at 100 doesn't give you the highest price. You can temporarily lower the merchant's disposition towards you by trying to buy an item for 0 gold. Each rejected offer lowers the disposition. To reset, simply exit out of the conversation completely and talk with the merchant again. There is no magic value for the highest offered gold, but the higher your merchant skill is, the more of an effect the user's disposition has on the prices. See Mercantile for more details of this bug.

[edit] Select One/Select Max

When trading with a merchant, it is possible to use two shortcuts to complete the transactions more quickly. These are keyboard functions that have not been documented, and it is a mystery since the shortcuts exist and do make this aspect of the game significantly less tedious. To select "one" of an item, click the item you are either buying or selling while holding down the control key. To select "all" of an item, hold the shift key while selecting the product. The shift and control + click shortcuts also work while performing Alchemy. If you have 10 emeralds in your inventory and wish to move them all to your alchemy workbench, press the shift key on your keyboard while selecting the emerald.

The "select one" feature works like an "add one" feature as well during barter. If a merchant has twenty Kresh Fibers in his inventory, and you wish to buy two of them, you can press the control key on your keyboard and click twice on the merchant's Kresh Fiber icon. This will cause two to be moved to your inventory, ready for purchase.

[edit] Selling Deadly Items

If you sell a merchant an item that they then equip, and that item has a constant damaging effect, it will kill them eventually, and you can loot them without any risk to yourself. However, if anyone sees them die then it will be reported as a crime.

[edit] Selling Expensive Items

If the merchant has a lot of stock, buy all of it to increase his or her gold supply, then sell the expensive item, sleep for a while and sell the other stock back. Although you will lose a bit of the actual worth it is still better than just selling them.
If there aren't enough items to buy, sell cheaper items first then wait a day, come back, buy the cheaper items back and use the increased gold stash to sell the more expensive things. You can then sell back the cheaper items the next day.
Sell gold. This will increase a merchants' gold supply for a longer period of time, during which you can sell your more expensive items.

[edit] Melee Combat Hints

If you're facing a group or a powerful enemy beyond your level, a few swigs of Sujamma will raise your strength, the to-hit ratio and the damage you deal. Other drinks are helpful as well, but nothing offers the bang-for-the-buck of Sujamma.
Try to isolate enemies when dealing with groups, use the terrain to your advantage, and any superior reach or speed your weapon might have.
If you're facing a group of melee enemies (enemies that don't use ranged attacks), cast custom spell levitate 1 pt for 60 secs in 50 ft on target - they will move very slow and you'll be able to finish them with your spells/ranged weapon.

For a detailed description of mechanics and tactics, see Combat.

[edit] Miscellaneous Hints

Hints that don't fit into a particular section.

[edit] Boots of Blinding Speed

If you drink a potion of magic resistance or use other means to get Resist Magicka and then immediately put on the Boots of Blinding Speed, you will not be blinded but will retain the speed effect until you take the boots off. A spell or enchanted item with 100% Resist Magicka for 2 sec on Self works well. For a higher degree of usefulness use the boots alongside the Cuirass of the Savior's Hide.

[edit] Finding Odd, Unique Items

If you come across an item that has a name you've never seen before, there is a chance the item may be used in a later quest. Some quests in the game require you to acquire a particular item. If you have already acquired that item, usually by visiting the dungeon where it is located before you did its related quest, then there is a pretty good chance you have also sold it or otherwise gotten rid of it. It is wise to store such possible quest items somewhere for later instead.

Such quest items usually have special names and little value. You can then check the article on the item you've just obtained to see whether it is related to a quest, or you can search the Quest Items page to see if the item is listed there.

[edit] Moving Lots of Loot

Even if you can't move due to being over encumbered, you can still use warping spell like Almsivi Intervention, Divine Intervention, and Mark/Recall. This can be used to transfer large amounts of loot to a nearby town in one quick trip.

[edit] Super Capacity Container

One of the biggest problems for the advanced player is the limits on container space. Each container can only hold around 100 pounds, so you will need quite a few to store all of your items. The strongholds help, but they're not close to Mages Guild rapid transit (unless you install the Master Index Official Plug-in) or Silt Strider Stations. This can be circumvented by not using containers, but by using bodies that do not disappear. There are two of them in Balmora. This first is Ralen Hlaalo in Hlaalo Manor. Don't let his servant see you taking things off of him, though. The second is Balyn Omavel after Mephala's quest. There is also one in Ald'ruhn in the Morvayn Manor, found outside Skar.

For a complete list, see Permanent Corpses.

[edit] Super Strength

After contracting corprus, find a bed or place to rest. Set the time for 24 hours, and you will get a message saying "Your case of corprus has worsened." Repeat this several times to raise your strength and endurance as much as you desire. The increase is permanent, although since it does not affect your base attribute values, any damage strength or damage endurance effects cannot be rectified by restore spells.

[edit] Taking Screenshots

In order to enable the taking of screenshots within the game, you will have to open up the Morrowind.ini file with any text editor, and change the line Screen Shot Enable=0 to Screen Shot Enable=1.

Then, once in the game, simply press the Print Screen key to save a BMP file in the Morrowind directory. Screenshots are not overwritten between game sessions.

[edit] Talking to Belligerent NPCs

There are some NPCs who will refuse to talk to you. They will immediately end the conversation with their greeting, making it impossible to talk to them. More importantly, it is also impossible to use persuasion on them. This is a problem if you need to taunt them into attacking you, so that you can kill them without incurring a bounty. The obvious way around this is to cast a Frenzy spell on them, but for those lacking Illusion skills, there is another way. Just strip naked. Completely naked. Remove all armor, clothing, and jewelry, and then talk to them. Rather than their usual shove-off response, NPCs will say, “Cover yourself! Are you mad? Have you no decency?” and then you can continue the conversation. Once you taunt them into attacking you, put your gear back on, and proceed to kill them without incurring the bounty. Note that this will not work on Argonians or Khajiits, and some other NPCs, notably in the expansions.

Another neat trick is to strike up a conversation while invisible. This lets you speak with NPCs who normally have dialog disabled to force combat, such as Ash Zombies, Corprus Stalkers, and so forth. Though in most cases, these NPCs don’t have many conversation topics, if any. Either of the two methods is essential in order to receive training from hostile NPCs, such as the Master Trainer of enchant, Qorwynn.

[edit] Tips for the Atronach player

There are several ways to easily refill magicka, besides alchemy. These include:

Shrines offering Almsivi Restoration, or Imperial Cult altars offering Restore Attributes. These can refill your Magicka completely with 1-2 blessings, and a cheap Divine Intervention can take you there.
Summon Ancestral Ghost for twenty seconds, custom made. If you hit your summon a few times bare-handed, he will start to attack you with spells that refill your Magicka. This should only cost six points to cast.
Acquiring Greed and the Necromancer's Amulet will give an Atronach player two more chances of spell absorption at 20% and 25%. Keep in mind that Spell Absorption effects are checked separately and do not simply add together as one check, so in this case you get less than a 95% total chance; it actually results in 'only' 70% total chance.
There is one easier way: simply obtain sujamma or other boosting drinks (e.g. mazte, shein) that have the negative side effect of decreasing your character’s intelligence. The items can easily be bought at taverns and clubs at cheap prices. Sujamma is the best for this purpose because it decreases intelligence by 50 points. Drink the items (2 sujamma will be enough if intelligence level is at 100) until your character's intelligence is reduced to 0. Wait for the effects of the sujamma to wear off and your magicka will be refilled 100%. Easy and cheap.
You can also create a spell that drains 100 intelligence on self for 1 second, although some may consider this exploiting.

[edit] Use Command Humanoid

Want a merchant, enchanter or spellmaker next to your house? Use command humanoid as described at Command to bring them anywhere you’d like.

[edit] Obtaining Cash

Hints on ways to make money within the game.

[edit] Alchemy for Fun and Profit

Once your Alchemy skill is above a certain point (around 35ish), you will be making potions at a high enough success rate and quality that you can buy ingredients that cost 1 gold and expect to make a profit, selling the potions back to the same vendor. If that vendor restocks the ingredients, you can keep buying, mixing, and selling back for a profit, while simultaneously training up Alchemy skill very quickly, which will increase your profit even more. Buy better equipment as soon as possible, because that will make the potions more valuable as well. Restore Fatigue potions tend to be convenient for this, because many sellers restock items with this effect, and they are usually very cheap. If you increase their stock of these ingredients, you can buy up massive quantities very quickly, avoiding the tedious repetition of getting 5 or 10 of each at a time.

You can also increase your intelligence with homemade fortify intelligence potions. As your intelligence increases, you make better potions. Use that extra intelligence to make even more powerful fortify intelligence potions. Eventually your intelligence will be high enough to start turning your herb collection into bottles into cold hard cash. Balmora is a good place for this as ingredients with this effect can be purchased from restocking merchants in the area. Telis Salvani in the Balmora temple restocks netch leather, and Nalcarya of White Haven, the local alchemist, restocks bloat.

[edit] Conjuration for Fun and Profit

One of the easiest ways to make money, if you have the proper Conjuration skills, is to Summon creatures. Then cast Soultrap on the summoned creature before attacking it. The Soul Gems with trapped souls can be sold for a large amount of money, while you gain experience in Conjuration, Mysticism, and combat skills.

Also, one of the better monsters to summon is a skeleton, because they also have swords or axe/hammers and sometimes a shield, which you can also sell.

However, for more experienced players, the Greater Bonewalker makes an excellent choice. When they are killed they will often drop a common Soul gem, which can then be used to trap another Greater Bonewalker. Soul Gems acquired in this way can be sold for 3000 gold a piece to Creeper!

Also, another tip for the avid conjurer is to know your summons. Most of the early valuable goods acquired by conjuration come from undead. Most undead are highly resistant to cold, electricity, and poison, so the best way to bring down your summons is with fire spells. For those early skeleton kills all you need is a basic spell that does 40 points of fire damage on touch for one second, to bring down your skeleton in one shot.

Dremora and Golden Saints carry highly valuable daedric weapons. The trick with the xbox seems to be moving up close to your summon after they appear, so you can quickly click on them as they fall to the ground after you kill them. Golden Saints in particular can carry Daedric Towershields, and Dremora can carry Daedric Dai-Katana and Battle-Axes. Using powerful Strength potions is recommended, since with a couple of hundred, you can basically set up an assembly line, summoning and killing your target with one hit. Use powerful restore Magicka potions to keep up the "flow of raw materials."

[edit] Full Price Merchants

In Morrowind, there are two merchants that will buy items at full price. The Creeper, who lives in Caldera with 5,000 gold, and the Mudcrab Merchant, who's on an island east-southeast of the Mzahnch ruin with 10,000 gold.

[edit] Infinite Quantity Weapons and Shields

This is for the Xbox GotY Edition, but should work on the PC version too. You need to be at least medium level, have visited the Mudcrab Merchant, and possess the Mark, Recall and both Intervention spells. First, Mark the Mudcrab Merchant. Go to Falas Ancestral Tomb at Gnisis. Kill the three Daedra guards and loot the very nice ring. Be sure to dispose of the bodies of each daedra. Now go outside, re-enter, and all three Daedra, because you disposed of the bodies, have re-spawned. Complete with random loot. Rinse and repeat until you have multiple Daedric weapons, and sell off the rest to the Mudcrab. To go back to Sadrith Mora, cast the Almsivi Intervention spell to go to Molag Mar, then Divine Intervention to go to Sadrith Mora.

[edit] Looting the Vaults in Vivec

If you want to have a full set of ebony armor, lots of very good enchanted weapons that are worth at least 300,000 gold, 1,000 pure gold, and more.

This is what you need:

Some restore health potions if you aren't that good in combat.
A good Security skill or a good Open spell (door locked 75).

Go to Vivec, Telvanni Canton. Enter the Telvanni Tower and go to the Telvanni Vaults. Enter and use an Open spell or lockpick to go through the next door. There are also two Storm Atronachs here so be ready to fight. Turn right and go through another door. Now you are in the stockroom. Taunt the two guards until they attack you. If you kill them, you can take everything you want from the chests in this room. Alternatively, wait for both guards to go near the door then stand in a corner where they cannot see you and take everything in the room with a Telekinesis spell.

[edit] More Good Items in Vivec

Go to the Redoran canton and go up to the plaza. There you will see a few manors. If you go upstairs in Dralor Manor, you will find a dresser drawer with a woman standing next to it. Open the dresser and take out the key. After you have the key, everyone in the house will attack you, so if you don't want too high of a bounty, just run out (the bounty of stealing a key is not enough for the guards to recognize you as a criminal). You can also stand in the door and close it so it blocks the woman from seeing you, but you can still see the dresser to open it!

After you're out of Dralor Manor, go across the plaza to the other side and go into the Redoran treasury. To the right you will see a door labeled "Redoran Vaults." If you go in and go straight down the ramp to the bottom, you will find a cage door with a guard in it. Use the key on the door and open it. You will have to wait for the guard to leave the room (sometimes it will take a while). After he leaves, go in and shut the gate behind you (it does have bars, but it works the same as a wooden door and the people and guards outside can't see through it). When you're in the room alone, feel free to take anything you want.

There is another vault up the ramp, but you either have to use a 90 pt. open spell or take the key from the man just outside the barred door. There is a powerful trap spell on the door that will kill you in no time. Resist Shock can help you to stay alive.

[edit] More Money for Merchants

Before starting an enchantment transaction, buy from or sell to the enchanter something trivial, like a petty soul gem or 1 drake. This purchase is critical because it ensures that your huge enchantment fee will be added to the enchanter's money supply instead of disappearing from the world. Now order the enchantment, pay the fee, and then sell the enchanter some combination of items to get your money back. Luckily enchanters will buy just about anything other than alchemical items, books, and random housewares. Better yet, they will buy filled soul gems. Since most players don't need 5 glass cuirasses and 8 ebony longswords, this is a great way to extract value from them. The down side is that you have to have the enchantment fee in cash upfront; it would have been so much easier to simply trade items for services but that's not the case.

[edit] Stealing

For details, see the Crime article.

One of the quickest ways to obtain cash is through a combination of murdering and stealing. Simply find a building, preferably a store because merchants tend to have more valuable goods on hand than other NPCs, that only has one NPC in it. If you're on PC, simply attack and kill the NPC as lone NPCs can't report crimes, and then proceed to ransack the building. On Xbox, the process is slightly more complicated, but still very doable. Just steal something worth a low amount of gold and then wait for the NPC to attack you. Since you have the right to defend yourself, you can then proceed to kill them. Then just unequip all your items but a bit of gold and pay your fine. Depending on your Speechcraft level, taunting the NPC into attacking you is also an option, with no fines at all.

The murdering is actually optional; you can either sneak around and steal many of the items or just flat out take them and run to a thieves guild member who will get rid of your bounty. Then when you return the merchant or other NPC will act as if nothing happened.

In addition to killing and stealing from merchants, Ordinators are also very good targets for this act. They wear several thousand gold worth of armor, and can be easily taunted into attacking you. If you have a high Illusion skill, go to the Sadrith Mora Mages Guild and buy Frenzy Humanoid on touch. Simply create a spell that frenzies 100 pts. on target. It should make most people attack in 1 or 2 hits.

An off shoot of this is mining Ordinators. This is done by acquiring a low bounty by stealing something from a merchant (5 gold is enough) and getting it listed as a crime. Escape without any more damage, then approach any guard/Ordinator and activate them. This brings up the choices of pay fine, go to jail, resist arrest, etc. Choose resist arrest and the Guard/Ordinator will attack. Kill them and take all their items. You won't acquire any further bounty as you have the "right to defend yourself" and you may then go to the next guard/Ordinator. Often there is one standing next to the one you just killed. Be sure to allow them to hit first. Otherwise, it will be your crime, and your bounty will inflate. Don't hit any other guard except the one that attacks, and don't hit any innocent bystanders (NPCs). Also note; if you are in the Temple, at some unknown number (upper 100/1000) of killed Ordinators you may/will be "expelled" It is advised to join the Temple after you have "collected" enough funds from these walking banks. If you are a Thieves Guild member and wish to cease withdrawing funds, simply go to a Thieves Guild member who can remove your bounty and pay 3 gold to have it removed.

[edit] Simple Training Tricks

Easy ways to level up, if you're too poor for Trainers or want to earn your stripes.

[edit] Armor Training

Equip the armor type of your choice and a custom constant effect Restore Health item. Tweak the difficulty slider, if necessary. Find one or more low-damage creatures and let them attack you. Don't fight back and you will gain experience for that type of armor with each hit. Crabs are the best animal to use. Just don't forget to wear a shield! A successful block will raise both the block skill and the skill governing the shield's armor type.

You can raise your Unarmored skill this way as well, even though it is more risky.

[edit] Cheap Training

If you have the Fortify Skill effect, just fortify your own Mercantile by 100 for 1 second before activating any trainer. Even training high levels usually costs fewer than 100 gold.

[edit] Create your Own Master Trainers

Again, you must have Fortify Skill. Trainers are set to teach you their three highest skills, up to their own skill level, so all you have to do is fortify anything up to 100 and they will suddenly become master trainers of that skill. Combine this spell with the cheap training trick, and you can train any skill up from 5 to 100 at any trainer, without spending more than a few thousand gold.

[edit] Conjured Monsters Training

Practicing the Conjuration skill can be very beneficial, not only as a money-maker for starting out, but as a way to train other skills. You can summon as much as you like, if you have some Restore Magicka potions. So this is a great way to get your combat-related skills up without having to travel too far, and it is less dangerous too. If your summon is about to defeat you, you can always summon it again to stop its attacks.

Be sure to try this in controlled locations where important NPCs will not get involved. For efficient use of these summoned creatures, you can always summon them near a bed where no other important NPCs are present. You can use up your Magicka and then rest until it is filled back up to repeat the process.

If your Conjuration skill is low and you still wish to reap the benefits, you can use certain enchanted items, such as this, that summons an Ancestor Ghost.

[edit] Magic Training

To receive experience points for spells, all you must do is successfully cast the spell. That means that you can practice spells over and over again instead of paying for training. And since spells can be cast on the run, it is not necessary to stand in one place to cast repeatedly. Spells can be cast while engaging in many of the activities described on this page.

All spells within a skill will give you the same experience when cast. So it is best to train a magic skill by casting the spell with the lowest Magicka-cost. The best way to do this is to create custom spells that only cost 1 point of Magicka to cast.

Remember that while you can cast spells on the run, the chance of each cast succeeding is less if your fatigue is low.

[edit] Training Acrobatics

Very simple. Simply jump everywhere you go, and your Acrobatics skill will increase quickly. Jumping while moving up staircases, or hill sides, will allow for more frequent jumps than along flat terrain. PC players can bind the mouse wheel or other convenient key to jump. However jumping downhill gives greater bonuses per jump; the skill bonus increases along with the distance fallen. A minimal duration, minimum magnitude levitate spell, or similarly minimal Jump spell can, before it wears off, allow a player to achieve just enough height (10-30 feet off the ground, as is safe) to only take a small amount of damage, but raise the Acrobatics skill very rapidly indeed. Obviously Alteration is raised, more slowly, at the same time.

Characters with both Acrobatics and Athletics at 100 move faster by jumping than by running.

[edit] Training Athletics

Simply find a flat wall in a river (such as the ones in Balmora) and swim into it. Then find a way to continue swimming into the wall, while you leave the computer or Xbox alone. On the PC, simply hit 'Q', the autorun button. On Xbox, it is a bit more difficult, requiring the use of a rubber band. Another thing you could do is roll up a tissue and wedge it behind the analog stick. This is usually more effective than the rubber band. Once you return to the game, your Athletics skill will be high, with the exact amount depending on how long you were away.

It is recommended to avoid jumping while running. Jumping prevents you from receiving experience towards Athletics up till several feet of running after you have landed.

[edit] Training Security

Although you can't leave the game running (like when training sneak and training athletics), it raises security very fast.

First, make sure you have about 15 to 20 Journeyman's Lockpicks. Then go to Medila Indaren at the Caldera Mages Guild. Buy Fenrick's Doorjam, a 10 point Lock spell. Now go to any container or any place that has 2 or more containers reachable from the same spot. If the containers are locked, unlock them first. Finally, lock them with the spell and unlock them with your lockpicks. Repeat the process over and over to train your skill, making sure that nobody sees you, since unlocking anything is a crime.

This method will also raise your Alteration skill quickly, since the spell's base cost is 1 Magicka. A stronger lock spell is useless since the strength of the lock does not affect how much experience you get.

[edit] Training Sneak

A safe and easy way to train Sneak to 100 is to close yourself into a room with an NPC. Hide behind an obstacle or wait until their back is turned and go into sneak mode. Get back into the NPC's line of sight and just stand there. To hurry things along, you can walk about or open and close doors, but standing works just as well. As with the training athletics hint, you can pursue other activities at the same time, if you make use of a weight to hold down the sneak key on PC or a rubber band on Xbox, or just toggle sneak mode.

Another way, though best used in combination to the above method, is to get into sneak mode, and cast an invisibility spell repeatedly, you'll find that each cast will put you one or 2 points (depending on your luck level) on your character's trait progress level bar. If you are unsure of what that is, simply go into your stats menu and press Y when the Sneak attribute is highlighted, a window will pop up displaying information on the character trait as well as the percentage of progress your character has left until the next skill increase.

There is an option on the Xbox console to automatically shutoff after a set period of time. If you plan to do this trick you must make sure that your Xbox is not set to automatically shutoff. To do this you must access the Xbox options by turning on the system without a disc in the tray. It is off by default.

[edit] Weapons Training

Consider using low-damage weapons on easier fights. The more hits you land, the more you train. Boosting your Agility will help you connect a blow.