Day 1: Setting up

Morrowind arrived, and it's the Game of the Year edition, with Tribunal and Bloodmoon. I'm not sure if it also includes the free official plugins, which I already downloaded. I saw a mod to "delay Tribunal assassins", which stated that assassins start showing up even if you're a new character, if you install Tribunal, but I did it anyway because so many nice-looking mods require it. I can always use the "delay" mod if it's a problem. [Edit: it will not be a problem, because the assassins don't show up until level 5 or 6.]

So, I've got it working, with a number of basic graphic improvement mods. Better bodies, vanilla clothes pack for BB, various custom clothes for BB, and "THE" Facepack Compilation, along with its companion THE Morrowind NPC Makeover. The improvement is huge. Next I need to try to find an animation replacer to fix those silly walks.

I also installed the Morrowind Code Patch, for various fixes, and the Unofficial Morrowind Patch, though I see there's a newer one that succeeds that one that I should probably replace it with, Morrowind Patch Project.

MGE works great, and adds animated clumps of grass like in Oblivion if you follow these directions.

However, MGE seems to make the gamma dark, and the in-game gamma control doesn't affect it anymore. At least, it's dark in windowed mode, how I prefer to play it (for easy switching between game and other things).

I got ENBseries running with it, too, just for the ambient occlusion effect (I didn't try the bloom, but I hear that re-lightens up the place), but I had to disable it because it made the character selection screen black. I'll try it again now that I have a nice character done and saved (I played through that beginning area many times trying out mods before I got to the part that lets you save!) [Edit: Nope, ENB slows things down to a crawl, makes things so dark I can't see, and the ambient occlusion is visible through walls. Will wait for improvements on that.]

One thing I can't seem to find is an interface mod to make the inventory easier to deal with. I want to be able to sort my items by weight (so I know what to drop when I'm encumbered) or value (choose what to drop or sell first), etc. And not have to hover the mouse over each item to see that. It's the same kind of icon-based inventory interface I had to deal with in WoW, except at least in Morrowind I don't need to place things in "inventory slots" like WoW and System Shock 2. I want a list instead, with columns for weight, value, etc., like Oblivion had. And a bigger font, please! This font is tiny at this resolution.

For my character, I went with a Breton mage. No surprise, given my history. I would have probably picked an elf if I could find a custom race like the mystic elves for Oblivion. This is Milly, with THE Facepack Compilation, and Hurdy Gurdy's robe replacer.

Anyway, just getting everything installed and working properly took all my time on the first day, so I wasn't able to start playing until Day 2.