Morrowind Tutuorial: Acculturating your Inner Newb

Okay there's snoop. Nice corn rows biotch, you had some Skooma today huh? Wow they totally put in like a token black race. (Oh fuck it's like February(Black History Month)) Two actually if you count the dark elves, Dunmer, Ashlanders, whatever you want to call them, although they really aren't token. Pretty deep history, kind of like a cross between Native American and Christian mythology along with some invented culture. Well enough of this racial historical nonsense onward!

This dude totally looks like my political science teacher. He lets you pick your class. I always just pick mine. If you can't decide answer his questions. I was disappointed when I did it, he gave me archer. Actually I picked an assassin which isn't anything more than a glorified thief-like archer. So I guess this method is pretty accurate in a weird sort of way, although I thought the questions were a little long-winded and capricious. If you really want something specific go for the custom. This game is really accommodating you shouldn't have any complaints.

For this time around I'm going to pick a Breton Pilgrim, and I have named him John Wayne Bobbit. Okay go out the door. Don't take anything in plain site of the guard and Mr. Jack Palance, they'll give you a warning and make you put it back, unless your a thief and got some skills. In the next room take all that shit, even the paper. Down the hall a little further is a storage room. Take everything in here too. There's a mat on the floor for sleeping but well come back to that later...

Okay I ganked everything in the room. I would have taken the chairs too but they were nailed down. Go outside and get everything in the barrel. They'll remind you to take a look. It seems Hriskkar likes to leave the newbies, "a little some'm some'm." Then go and speak to the strapping young Sellus Gravius. Just looking at those oiled up arms makes me quiver with anticipation. He'll hook you up with some cash and send you on your merry way.

Go outside. This is a good time to save in case you do something stupid like attack a guard, they will smack you down. To your left you'll see some of the Seyda Neen folk wandering around. The bums. Anyway talk to Fargoth, who is clearly bi-sexual. He'll whine to you about his missing ring. Now you have your first real choice in the game. And this sets up the common theme. You can lie and keep the thing (stupid) or give it to him (smart). He'll put the good word in over at Arrille's. In this role playing game, and pretty much all the others, whenever you have a choice between selfishness and philanthropy pick philanthropy and it will pay off your selfishness ten fold. Trust me.

Now run over to that tree with the shroom shelving on it. That's Hyphia Phacia and Bunglar's Bane. You'll need them for a simple quest later (Balmora Mage Guild) that will otherwise require you to run all over hell to get and we aren't doing that. Now go to Arille's. It's up the steps and around the corner.

You'll note that Arrille likes you quite a bit, so giving Fargoth that ring saves you some cash. Sell all the stuff you got over five gold, except for the alchemical ingredients (unless you don't want them or you aren't into doing alchemy). The reason you keep the one gold stuff will become clear later. Now I want you to buy a scroll. It's called Undusi's Unhinging, note if you picked a Thief character you probably don't need to do this. You might be able to pick the lock on a door with the lockpick you picked up in the excise office. We are going to go steal some shit in a little bit. Actually buy two, also if you are an alchemist buy a pestle and mortar so you can start mixing some potions. The only way to improve is with practice. Then run upstairs and talk to Hriskkar.

Let him string you in on his insidious little plan with Fargoth. After that go to the right and talk to the bartender, she's a scout. Find out where all the places are so you can see them on your map. Keep this in mind whenever your in a new place. Try to find scouts and have them tell you where shit is. You can talk to those other jokers standing around in there and playing grab-ass if you want to but they don't have much to say.

Now go back to the place where you first started before you spoke to Fargoth. Across from that door you came out of there is another door, that's locked. Position yourself next to the door and hit F1. This will bring up your quick item menu. Pick a slot and look under magic inventory and find those scrolls you bought. Your hands should come up in front of you in a mystical sort of way. You can toggle this with the R key. Cast it ensuring your are close to the door.

If you hold control while you cast it you might get away without someone noticing you. If someone does notice you it's no big deal. They'll make you pay a five septim fine which is really nothing, and more importantly the door will be unlocked now and you can go inside.

Basically loot everything. I would try to make sure I got, if I was a medium/heavy armor user, a cuirass or "body armor" of that type. Your body armor makes of 50% of your total armor. For example my Pilgrim has Medium Armor as a major ability therefore I will try to get an Imperial Chain Cuirass. If you don't get one on the first try I've discovered a quick and easy way to reshuffle the item drops in the boxes. While inside hit f5 (quicksave). Now open the boxes. You can go in and out of the room doors too but I think this is faster. If you aren't satisfied just load up the saved game and have another go at it. Eventually you'll get what you want.

There's a chick upstairs that offers training. I wouldn't try to swipe the gold on her desk unless you're a thief. Even then it might not be too good an idea as your a low level thief. Also be mindful of the guard (you'll hear his footsteps coming). If he sees you taking stuff he'll arrest you fine you and take the crap you stole and it will be gone forever. Okay now take all this stuff and look it over. If your character is a light armor type I might consider buying all the chitin stuff over at Arrile's and selling all the other stuff (besides a weapon too of course). Otherwise for Heavy and Medium armor guys I would try to equip just the stuff I find in here and then pick up other medium/heavy armors as I go. It's cheaper and unnecessary to buy his crappy iron helmet/shield whatever when you'll find it later anyway and often you'll find better stuff. The one exception like I said is the Chitin. For all intents and purposes Chitin is the best (if not a bit ugly) light armor your going to get in the game until glass and if your a light armor type chances are you're going to need it.

As far as weapons are concerned I like short swords. They're the best in my opinion. They're fast and easy to use. They don't do as much damage per hit but if you're good you'll hit them twice for every time they hit you once so in a way they actually do the most damage in the game. Long swords are for showy types (how do you think the Romans conquered all of Europe, they used the gladius, a short sword). Okay, axes and hammers I have no idea. Use your best judgment. Be conscious of the swing type, slash/chop/stab. Poking someone with a hammer doesn't hurt too much. Chop is default unless you use optimal swing which is in the options menu. Otherwise you have to move forward or to the side a little to set a stab or slash attack.

Here's what I got out of it. Now sell off what you don't need. You will have to set your Skooma and Moon Sugar down. I got about 800 gold so far. Not bad. Adjust the price to activate bargaining, especially if mercantile is important for your character. This will raise your mercantile skill while saving you gold. Also now's the time to buy spells/alchemical herbs/pestle mortar/thieves picks/probes or smithing hammers. Everyone who uses armor or weapons should use these hammers. They'll save you lots of money, especially when you are repairing your 32,000 gold glass longsword. If your not a warrior type and don't have the skill get trained in it. I think the first guy you meet who can do this is Wayn in the Balmora's Fighters guild.

Equip your armor and get out you weapon. Were going to bash some skulls now, don't forget your skooma and moon sugar. Go across the bridge and out of town. And veer to the left. If you asked anyone for rumors they probably talked about this tax collector guy. We are going to find his body. Go left for a bit. His position is east of Seyda Neen but you have to go north a little ways to get around the rocks. You'll probably end up fighting some rats or hermit crabs. They're pretty wimpy. If your a monk the fights are somewhat on the long side, if your using your fists that is. Eventually I think Monk's probably kick a lot of ass. I'm not sure if the Khajit get some kind of claw bonus damage, might be worth looking into.

Okay his body is positioned in a ring of rocks and growth. If you have sharp eyes you might spot his legs poking out. He's located on a little inlet. Just search around the coastline if you have problems, you'll run into him eventually. Grab the gold and tax list off his body and if you are a pervert his clothes too and head back to town. Talk to someone about it and they say you should talk to the old gray haired dude. Now this is another example of how not being greedy will reap even greater rewards.

Give him the 200 gold and if you find the killer he'll give you 500! Were not so interested in that right at the moment. First go back to that room with the bedroll and rest until your wounds are healed. Pick increments if it is already pretty late. When you wake up make sure it is still night time (before 6 in the morning or so, I am not sure what time will deactivate the Fargoth quest, otherwise you have to wait until the next day to do it). Then go back outside and this time go past the tree with the mushrooms on it and head up to the lighthouse.

Talk to the woman inside about the tax guy. She'll activate your next quest and tell you she wants a ring and who you have to take out in order to get it. First go upstairs though. There's a book, the Wraith Wedding Dowry. Read it and take it, don't worry no one will catch you. Take the other junk too if you want. Next go outside and upstairs and wait around for a bit. You should see Fargoth creeping around, just like Hriskkar told you. Wait for him to go out into that scum filled pond then run down there and grab all the stuff out of it.

You'll get the ring back plus 300 gold and a lockpick I think. If you report back to Hriskkar he takes 200 and that's it. So this is an example when doing the unselfish thing is truly unselfish, as far as I can tell you just short yourself 200 gold. So don't talk to him I guess and save 200, roXXor. Now go kill that dude. He's in a hut behind the pond. Basically just walk out of the pond and into his house. Warning, he's going to try to hit you with his fists. Now the way this works is he hits you and it damages your fatigue not your hit points. If your fatigue goes to nil you fall down and any hits he gets on you will do damage. Except your fatigue stays low so he just keeps wailing on you till your dead. So you can be like a level 30 Barbarian fighting this dude and if he hits you with your fatigue at zero he's probably going to kill your ass because you can't fight back when your on the ground. This is why I think Monks are probably the deadliest class in the game, it takes a long time at first but later if you combine your punching with drain fatigue spells/scrolls you will pwn 31337.

All that aside if you just go in and hack at him with your sword with full fatigue you will win. He's gonna whine a little and try to get you not to kill him and just give you the ring so that you will complete that quest but you wont get the 500 from old baldy. So kill him and ignore that whining nonsense. Don't forget to grab the ring and snoop around his shanty a little and get that book, it's worth 150 and will boost a skill 1 point.

Then give the ring back for some healing potions (You can keep the ring but it's hardly not worth it to sell and she gives you some useful healing potions which you might need) and don't forget to get the gold from that 60 year old geriatric guy at the excise office.

Talk to this Volonius Nuncius character. He'll give you a little advice which you should take. Don't do it right now but say when you are getting ready to leave go talk to the silt strider and scroll down and select his name. She'll mention something about him being a gloomy gus. Now go back and talk to him again and mention his name. Hell give you a sob story and offer to sell you his ring which admittedly sucks but I think it is probably (just barely) worth it. Especially if your character is on the slow side. Incidentally I'll show you one more thing how you can give your character a super speed burst: permanently (In future addition to this report).

Now go back out of town, healing potions readied. To the right is the silt strider and to the left was good ole' Processus, god rest his soul (and the gold we made off him in our pockets). We are going straight ahead. There is a little cave here that is probably worth looting. I'll let you wander around in there with out advice. When your done with that visit the silt strider.

Take the silt strider to Balmora or elsewhere and when you begin interacting with vendors here's a trick. Sell them your junky one gold stuff you took out of Seyda Neen and do it one item at a time. Anything you sell them or buy from them, provided you don't mess with the price, will cause their reaction to you to go up one point. It's time consuming but if your looking to unload something valuable you can get a better deal this way. Once you've got them to 100 sell them that shield you found in the Dwemer ruin and jack the price up as much as they will go. Of course Arrille was already at 100/100 and I am willing to bet you've sucked just about all the gold out of him you can.

Now about all that's left is that locked door to Arille's. It's pretty high level and in plain view (meaning you will require very good sneak or a nice chameleon spell). There's some other doors which are locked too, like Fargoth's and Eldafire's. You can try your hand at these if you wish. Also since you've done just about all you can go around and taunt or admire everyone as much as you can to try to boost your personality skill up if it is a major or minor one for your class, don't worry about doing this if it is in your offhand skill list however.

For all characters who aren't thieves be on the look out for an open lock spell (thieves look for a lock spell, someone in the Caldera mage's guild might have one, that way you can lock a container then pick it over and over gaining in your security skill). Then you can enchant something like a ring to open locks (thieves enchant a ring to lock things) for you. I'd think about saving up a little and getting something that can open 100/100 on target with a nice gem. You can get a sufficient gem in Sulan, one of the trader's there has common soul gems. You want to get something like a bonelord or skeleton champion in this thing, their pretty tough for someone your level, but they will give you more points (maybe 50?) in your enchantment.

For those of you playing with warrior/thief classes and who are planning on doing a lot of enchanting , say eight or more, I'd first enchant a weapon to capture souls, cast when strikes, with a decent soulgem, that way you don't have to buy scrolls over and over. Keep lots of soul gems in your inventory and have a lot of different variations. Scrolls are another way to go but they expire after one use and are fairly costly.

The rumormill in town mentions something about a lost ring in the bittercoast region. I have no idea where this is. A little farther east from the body of the tax collector is the Thelas burial tomb. That might be a place to check. There are ancestral ghosts in there (in my superficial survey of it) so you need either a magic or a silver weapon or spells to kill them. As far as I can tell that wraps up Seyda Neen. Onto Balmora or one of the other places I mentioned.

Like I said this game aims to please and there are no consequences in going off freelance. You should have somewhere between 1500 and 2000 gold if you did all the stuff I said. Not enough for any heavy duty enchanting but certainly enough to buy a nice magic sword or some nice Armor. The Armorer in Caldera has some nice heavy body armor. As far as medium armor goes it shouldn't be too hard to come up with a nice Bonemold set eventually. Dwemer is another particularly nice heavy armor which you can get fairly early in the game doing the Blade's quests, which you get from Caius Cosades if you wish to go to straight to him.

I guess you should also be aware of the conjured armors. These spells are good for cutting down on weight and the armor is practically the best heavy armor in the game if not expensive magic wise to maintain. Stock up on restore magic potions if your going this route I suppose.

I think I'll stop it here for now. There's one more thing I want to add but it really isn't necessary for the purpose of this report and admittedly it's more of a convenience issue anyway. Also it is kind of complex and involved but not long enough to warrant another separate report. So check back in a week or so and I will have something in regard to getting the Boots of Blinding Speed, which helps if your notice your character moves slow.