Morrowind and The Breaking Point

So I've been playing a bit of Morrowind lately. This is my first runthrough of the main quest- after a few flailing attempts and short-lived characters, I finally feel like I've got the hang of the more old-school mechanics and feel of the game. Where I was mostly frustrated before, now I can actually enjoy the experience for what it is- a rich atmosphere and story, an alien world that truly feels unique with its own culture and customs. Harsh, unforgiving, but still strangely beautiful.

For a 15-year-old game, at least.

For this playthrough I've been keeping it all vanilla. I'm a firm believer in not modding a game before you've experienced the original first. You should know what exactly you want to change before you go changing it. Even someone's bare-minimum "must-have mods" list is going to be subject to personal opinion. Form your own opinions, first.

Now, there are a bunch of things I want to change, based off my current experience with the game. But I'd resisted the urge thus far, strolling around enjoying the blocky faces, the infohub NPCs, and those lovely, lovely cliffracers.

But everyone has their limit, and I found mine. What was my breaking point? Vanity, of course.

Morrowind has a surprising variety of clothing, from the familiar Imperial styles to the native Dunmeri fashions. As someone who likes to ogle their character in third-person, I was having a good time trying out various items.

But then I decided to spring for an enchanted robe from a vendor, and encountered the hideous white saran-wrap shader Morrowind uses for enchanted items. After mere minutes of walking around looking like I'd been abducted by Dexter, I broke.

Correctly guessing that I wasn't the only one who couldn't stand the effect, I settled on Pluginless NoGlow as my solution of choice. I prefer the simple replacer solution, with the least impact possible on my game. Now my character can strut her stuff in style and continue her almost!vanilla adventure.

Stunning.

Well-Diving in Oblivion

So I've been back to Oblivion again- testing mods, experimenting with my own additions, and actually getting to play the damn game sometimes. I have a long-running "test" character who mostly goes around murderhoboing her way through various content mods.

Haela Long-Strider, mod-tester and grumpyface extraordinaire.

Currently I've been exploring a dungeon mod called The Well Diver. As you might imagine, it adds dungeons accessible through various wells from the vanilla game. I'm enjoying the mod a lot so far-even though there's no grand quest or storyline here, it's still a lot of fun as a good ol' dungeon romp. The new cells are well-designed (heh); they're unique-looking with some great use of modder's resources, but still fitting to the game's world. There's environmental storytelling, some secrets and a few neat rewards. Plenty to keep the spelunker occupied.

There's an ingame book you can find which will mention the location of a couple wells, but others must be found on your own. I haven't found all the dungeons yet, but I'm having a blast so far. If you're in the mood for some new dungeons to stumble on during a playthrough, I definitely recommend checking out The Well Diver.