Morrowind:Hints

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Contents 1 Melee Combat Hints 2 Barter Hints 2.1 Select One/Select Max 2.2 Increasing a Seller's Stock 3 Miscellaneous Hints 3.1 Super Capacity Container 3.2 Moving Lots of Loot 3.3 Taking Screenshots 3.4 Talking to Belligerent NPCs 3.5 Use Command Humanoid 3.6 Tips for the Atronach player 4 Obtaining Cash 4.1 Alchemy 4.1.1 Notes 4.2 Raiding the Vaults in Vivec 4.2.1 More Good Items In Vivec 4.3 Conjuration for Fun and Profit 4.4 Full Price Merchants 4.5 Infinite quality Weapons and Shields 4.6 More Money for Merchants 4.7 Stealing 4.8 Getting confiscated items back 5 Simple Training Tricks 5.1 Magic Training 5.1.1 Easy training for free 5.1.2 Training Athletics 5.1.3 Training Sneak 5.1.4 Training Acrobatics 5.1.5 Ultimate Training Technique

As always, there are a large number of requests for hints on lots of topics. This page will contain those various hints, compiled in some organized fashion. Feel free to add any hints that are not on here. For useful Glitches, Cheats, Hints to start out fast and places to call home, visit their own respective pages.

[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.

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

[edit] Barter Hints

Getting the most out of your Mercantile dealings with Merchants.

[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] Increasing a Seller's Stock

Particularly useful for players buying ingredients in large quantities, it can be frustrating to deal with merchants that only carry 5 or 10 of a particular item. For instance, if you wish 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 in the vendor's stock window while pressing the shift key, click buy, and repeat this process another nine times. 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.

An example with our Ash Yam vendor would go as follows: 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. Note, this hint only works with those items in a merchant's inventory that replenish their stock automatically.

[edit] Miscellaneous Hints

[edit] Super Capacity Container

One of the biggest problems for the advanced player is the limits on container space. I don't know the exact stats, but when you have a chest limited to about 100 pounds or so, you need a great many of them to stash all the heavy equipment you will eventually accumulate. The strongholds help, but they're not close to Mage Guild rapid transit or Silt Strider Stations. But in Balmora is a container that is in my game holding about 400 pounds of enchanted and unenchanted armor...

Do the Daedric quest for Mephala. Afterwards, revisit Balyn Omarel's house again. Remove all the household junk, and stash stuff. You see, the BODY of Omarel is apparently a limitless capacity container. This body doesn't evaporate, and I don't know if it has a limit. Now there are issues with the Xbox and probably the PC version if you put too many items (of small weight) into a container, of it behaving oddly. But as a container to hold your heaviest items, it can't be beat.

The body of Ralen Hlaalu also serves this purpose. Just don't let his servant see you take your things back off him.

[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] 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, and more importantly impossible to use persuasion on them. This can be a problem if you're sent to kill somebody in front of witnesses. You won't be able to use Taunts to get them to attack, and thus you'll end up incurring a bounty by attacking them first. The obvious way around this is to cast a Frenzy spell on them. But for those who lack the skills in Illusion to cast such a spell, there is another sneakier way around it. Strip naked. Completely naked. Remove all armor, clothing, and jewelry, and then talk to them. In place of the usual shove-off, you'll get the "Cover yourself! Are you mad? Have you no decency?" response, allowing you to continue your conversation with them as normal. Once you taunt them enough to attack, simply put your gear back on if you need it to fight, and you can now safely kill them with no bounty. Note that this will not work on Argonians or Khajiits, and it does not work on all NPCs, but in most cases, it will.

[edit] Use Command Humanoid

Want a merchant, enchanter or spellmaker next to your house? Use command humanoid as described at Command.

[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.

[edit] Obtaining Cash

[edit] Alchemy

Alchemy is one of the easiest ways to make money in Morrowind. Simply find a merchant, and purchase two different ingredients that have the same first effect (Dralval Andrano of the Tribunal Temple in Balmora, Wickwheat, and Marshmerrow are recommended). Exit the barter screen. Then turn around and sell these back to the merchant you bought them from. Exit the barter screen. Now once again, open the barter screen, and the merchant should have twice as many of the two ingredients you choose as he had originally. If the merchant does not, either pick a different set of ingredients or a new merchant. Repeat this step several times. Once you've increase the merchant's inventory to a high level, simply buy the ingredients, and convert them to potions, which can be sold at a much higher price than the ingredients were bought for.

[edit] Notes

• High level Alchemy equipment can be obtained from the Caldera Mages Guild.
• This method can also be combined with the Super Potion Trick - potions created with this trick will be much more expensive, allowing you, with the same encumbrance, to move more value.

[edit] Raiding the Vaults in Vivec

If you want to have a full 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.

[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.

Note: 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.

Second note: There is a powerful trap spell on the door that will kill you in no time. Telekinesis won't work because it is a key. A resist shock potion will keep you alive. A third note to these vault raiding suggestions is that Ordinators are very difficult to kill, even with restore health. A fortify health might be better for weak combat players, especially a fortify health from using the Super Potion trick. WARNING: Do not use a fortify health potion more than double your health; when it runs out, all the damage taken to it will be done to your health and you may die.

[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 to creeper a piece!

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 you 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.

[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 quality 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] More Money for Merchants

Before starting a 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. (Hit your space bar if you're on the computer) 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 accrue 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 (NPC's) 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 and pay 3 gold to have your Bounty removed.

[edit] Getting confiscated items back

If you end up in jail and have your stolen items removed, go back to the prison tower and you will find a chest marked "evidence". You can pick the lock on the chest and get your items back. Telekinesis can be particularly useful for this.

[edit] Simple Training Tricks

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

[edit] Magic Training

To receive experience points for spells, all you must do is successfully cast the spell. That means that you can practice such spells over and over again without having to pay for training.

An easy way to do this is to create spells that only cost 1 point of Magicka to cast.

[edit] Easy training for free

Obtain an Amulet of Shades. In Balmora, go to the top floor of Ra'virr's house and summon a Bonewalker. Strike it and then it will fight back. Then just attack it with your desired skill.

[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.

[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 on(depending on your luck level) 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.

Note: 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] 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. A tip for the PC version would be to bind the mouse wheel to jump, allowing you to jump many times while moving up staircases. However jumping downhill gives greater bonuses per jump.

[edit] Ultimate Training Technique

Anyone can easily get every single skill to level 100 very simply; all you have to do is get the spell Scourge Blade (or any other Drain Skill spell) and make a spell of "Drain (whichever skill you want)" 100 pts. on self for 1 second, then find an NPC that trains that skill, and cast it right before you talk to him. Having a skill at level 1, it will cost 1 gold to get your skill up to the next level. Do this repeatedly until you get the skill to 100. This way you will be able to train any skill to level 100 without a master trainer; most trainers stop at level 50-75 otherwise. This is very fast and is best done at any of the guilds (Mages Guild, Fighters Guild, Thieves Guild), because beds are easily accessible.

Notes: It helps to have about 40 Destruction when you start using this trick, due to the high effect of the spell.

If you can't find a spell of Scourge Blade, talk to Erer Darothril in Dirty Muriel's Cornerclub in Sadrith Mora or the woman near the evidence chest in Moonmoth Legion Fort.

If you are not proficient in Destruction, you can use smaller Drain Destruction on self spells to get proficient. It costs a few gold to keep remaking new versions of this spell when the old one becomes redundant, but by the end of it, you will be able to use the skill for the other spells with ease.