I usually just pick a direction and walk. No tricks for speed; I don't want to go too fast and miss all the little details scattered around the place. Make a spell, or some potions, that recovers your fatigue over time, or, if you're far enough in the game, have a constant-effect restore fatigue item; that way, if you ever get caught into combat with one of the many naturally occurring daedra throughout the island, you'll be okay. Always have amulets of almsivi and divine intervention with you to get out of trouble if you need to; they're easy enough to pick up around the place, especially if you're doing temple or cult quests; there are also scrolls of each in the Mages' Guild supply chests. Have cure common and blight disease potions or spells at your disposal, as you don't want to get your strength drained and be rendered unable to continue traveling. You can have levitation if you want to, or you can let topography guide you! Both are valid.
@@talonhatesnames7630 So many tricks! Getting hit with damage strength is always brutal. I'm very good at forgetting to have a means of countering it and end up needing to do a naked walk of shame
The lack of fast travel gave me something that I still remember to this day, I created an Argonian character and did all the things in Seyda Neen, but I'd also spent all my money on training and couldn't afford the Silt Strider so I set out of foot, as I did it started raining, I looked at my character and there he was, penniless, dressed in rags and bumbling along slowly through the rain, for the first time I ever I actually felt sorry for a character.
@@JimUK I think they should do Morrowind’s fast travel style for elder scrolls 6 but keep the quest map markers that Morrowind didn’t have. It forces people to walk in the environment, gives more purpose to money, makes leaving a fast travel hub feel like a true adventure you have to care about the coming back part as well, and lastly it creates parts of the map that have no fast travel a real feeling of exploration.
Every time the player heads out becomes an Event in Morrowind. Merely getting to and from your destination is an expression of player mastery and game knowledge
I will never forget when I just randomly decided to walk north from Ald Ruhn and after a short while, out of the fog my first deadric ruin faded into view. It was a feeling of wonder and dread at the same time that has stuck with me all these years later. Another moment I never forgot for the for the first time was finding Magebane in a cave that towered upwards with rooms branching off at different elevations. Morrowind was such an adventure the first rime playing and I have not experienced anything like it in other TES games. I havnt played morrowimd for many years now and my plan is to wait many more in the hopes I forget and get those moments again.
The world is so dense that I'm always finding new things myself. Always a new corner to poke around in. I have yet to dabble in Tamriel Rebuilt, but it should add even more corners to uncover, if my comments are anything to go by lol
@@abeclark524 hopefully they're very mindful of this and don't use quest markers as a crutch, or at least make it a toggle option like "guided" mode and "adventure" mode.
My brother and i used to play a self-imposed challenge. After the tutorial drop everything, and pick a random location. Until you make it there, no use of fast travel or merchant is permitted. You have to scavenge your gear and figure out how to survive. Still miss those crazy moments of being stupid enough to go into daedric ruins, gwtting nailed by a greater bonewalker, and having to figure out how to get to a temple shrine while naked and completely unarmed. Then getting back because thats where all my gear is. Good times.
Damage strength was certainly a decision that was made. Annoying, but punishes the player that ignores proper preparation, and can lead to some pretty wild tales.
I think it plays into the "power fantasy". As you increase in level and stats, you literally become faster and stronger. You jump higher. You run quicker. Love these videos great Morrowind commentary
The seyda neen+gnisis route has a visual fan explanation that actually makes a lot of sense through the mod where you get to ride the striders in real time! thwere the strider goes along the coast and in the water when going to gnisis, this way might be easier on the creature than the rocky and hilly terrain required for a long land trek.
Hm. That's an interesting theory. I was thinking that since the overland route would take you past Ald'ruhn anyway, it wouldn't make much sense to duplicate that line all the way up the West Gash. But that's 98% assumption, so I didn't want to potentially misrepresent it as fact in the video.
I've been playing Morrowind since 2003, and I LOVE that the only fast travel is in-universe options. The thrill I remember from finding a cave along a path I was taking to another quest and writing it down in my PHYSICAL notebook so I could come back to it and explore it was amazing. Some of the best loot in the game isn't tied to quests and is just in random caves, tombs, daedric ruins, or dwemer ruins and it makes the satisfactions of exploring so much better than in other games. I love Morrowind and the deluge of new videos in the last month or so about it is making me want to reinstall and give Tamriel Rebuilt a try.
Having played Skyrim and Oblivion first, I was really surprised to find the Masque of Clavicus Vile in some random Dwemer ruin while exploring Dagon Fel. It's such a cool feeling to find all the best gear not because an NPC was written to point you towards it, but because you took the time to explore. Of course, there's still strong signposted quest rewards like the Ebony Mail or Wraithguard, but all the Daedric artifacts and such all make you feel like an accomplished explorer, less so than just a theme park guest. It's awesome, wish there were more games like this.
I love how the physical map is actually useful, not just something to look good on your wall. The IG map is kinda like a satellite view, you see the cities but that's it. Some quests tell you "its east of the cross of this river and this river" and you actually have to check the paper map to see where they are. AND the paper map is hand drawn, it's far from perfect so you actually also have to use the IG map in paralel and mix the infos you get from the two.
The physical map is a real-life Artifact in my mind. The fact you can tell which locations have Temples, Imperial Cult shrines, Silt Striders, and boats just by looking around the map is amazing.
@@Takarias Everything about this game is just out of this world and yet so cleverly put. I've been searching that high ever since but there is no match. (Still there are very good games out there)
I find I gravitate to older games these days because they're just honest about what they are. No loot boxes, or squirrelly DLC structures, or bolted-on engagement systems. Just software designed purely to entertain.
If this is the norm here, I'm bringing my Sleep Club Membership Card with me next time. My insomnia craves stuff like this constantly. Well made and pleasantly executed =)
@@Sphendrana I used to have a small roster of streamers that I would join at night to fall asleep to, so I definitely get that. I would be honored to learn that I help people fall asleep
I love having fast travel limited, it makes exploration far more immersive. My all time favorite form of fast travel would have to be the GTA taxies, I never skip a ride and just kick back and enjoy the radio while I hitch a ride across the city. I wish we could actually sit through an entire silt strider ride.
What I love about Morrowind's "slow travel" is that it kinda forces you to go out and discover the world. Without the ability to click on a location and just appear there, you end up finding a whole bunch of neat stuff that you might not otherwise.
I downloaded a mod once for Skyrim that causes the in-game wagons to travel to their destinations in real time. It was sort of janky but it meant that even what was ostensibly a "fast travel" system took time and got you immersed in the world. I was genuinely surprised to learn that there's a bandit ambush with a frigging boulder trap along one of the roads. My character had somehow completely missed it because I had been fast-traveling everywhere. It was then I knew I needed to go cold turkey.
Oh the amount of times I used an intervention scroll while overencumbered (either from looting or a drain strength effect) and shed a mountain of items in front of the shrine or temple to be able to move again. Say what you want about the people of morrowind but they never stole anything from the poor argonian girl who had to strip naked and drop all her worldly possessions just to walk
First video i watched of you, but very entertaining! I like the more... 'no holding hands' approach of Morrowind. As much as i like skyrim, fast traveling really sucks out the fun eventually. You just hop from point A to B, slay this, steal that, ect. But just walking towards a certain area, meeting creatures and NPC's on the way, taking in the area, that's where the experience is at!
Skyrim certainly has things out succeeds at, but it pales in comparison to Morrowind at making me feel like it's a real place that I've come to know through the years.
I mean, the problem is that it's fun to walk somewhere new, or an area you haven't been in a while. It's not fun to walk back and forth over the same route over and over again to hand in quests, or visit traders, or whatever. Scale is also a factor because in real life things tend to be a lot further away than in video games. In real life I can walk for an hour and not even be outside my small city. In Skyrim I can walk half an hour and be outside the map. It's for that reason that even though I conceptually don't like fast travel, I can't not use it, because if I have to actually run everywhere I'll get bored and stop playing, and more diegetic fast travel is basically just fast travel with extra steps, and tedious. It certainly doesn't help that on top of this, there's just not enough to experience when traveling. There aren't many things to run into on the roads to augment the experience of all that stuff you just saw five minutes ago when you went over this route already.
Just came across this channel, and loved the video! There is something very special about Morrowind's diagetic fast travel, where mastering the various travel networks feeds into "the destination is the journey" idea. I was dismayed when Bethesda promptly forgot so much of MW's design when it came to Oblivion and Skyrim. Skyrim took a step back towards this with its network of carts and boats, so its there if you choose to self-limit fast travel or play on Survival. But Morrowind is still the best implementation. Even the propylon indices are a quest which rewards further mastery of the worldspace.
Thing is Shitrim forgot the main reason all this worked in Morrowind. People gave DIRECTIONS. If you turn off quest markers... you have no clue where to go 99% of the time. Like three people ever give directions, and then they're normally pretty sparse even then.
The issue with Skyrim's diagetic fast travel is just how inconsistent it is. If you're somewhere around Morthal trying to go somewhere you can sell a looted axe, you'll have to walk all the way to either Solitude or Whiterun. Even worse for Winterhold, with all the mountains in the way. There's also not a "shit, I was not prepared to be here" button like the intervention spells. Even getting a horse is still really slow and if you're just walking down the same roads over and over again, it stops being a fun adventure. I don't hate Skyrim, but I think they greatly misstepped with survival mode disabling fast travel on top of halving your base carrying cap, which was already really slow to increase compared to Morrowind or Oblivion.
@@plebisMaximus Something I didn't mention but you allude to is how the Intervention spells serve double duty. Used at the end of an outing, they're a quick exit back to town. But they can also be used early, as an escape. When used like this, they are the player admitting that they failed to adequately prepare, and the punishment is making the trip back. While this can be mitigated with Mark and Recall, you're then giving up your prior Mark, which may be an even worse punishment!
My favorite part when travelling through Morrowind is that I'll inevitably find some side quest where somebody needs help or needs something done, and I'll do it, and afterwards I'll just continue what I'm doing before. It seems so trivial, but that type of stuff really immerses me in the game world. On another note, you should consider opening up channel memberships when (or if you already are) eligible. I would personally love to be able to support you making more videos like these, as they're great to watch. Best of luck, regardless
The thing that really gets me is how the later games - especially Skyrim - are lauded for the density of stuff to do in their worlds, yet Morrowind's points of interest are barely outside of each other's tiny draw distance. People just don't know - or don't remember - how amazing this game really is. Regarding memberships... I am both enormously humbled and encouraged by your words. I will be turning them on when I am able, though joining will obviously never be required. Thank you for even considering it.
Slow travel (even though there are many fast travel options) is one of the many reasons Morrowind is a great game. But real Morrowind veterans unlock at least one propylon before even talking to their junkie boss in Balmora for the first time. Oh, and they become kleptomaniacs before leaving Seyda Neen. 😆
Morrowind doesn’t really have fast travel. It has travel services that you have to run to and pay for. You can’t just open up the map in the middle of the wilderness and fast travel to a city.
@@stevied3400Almsivi/divine intervention or mark/recall spells/enchantments are what you're looking for. The spells even work when you are in a scrap or overburdened.
@@stevied3400 Depends on how you define "fast travel". I think Morrowind has a very well implemented fast travel system - it's "services" or whatever you want to call it, but it's still fast travel, you just need to use your brains a tiny bit. Unfortunately, this was considered too much for the "average Joe", so they streamlined in Oblivion already, and streamlined it even more to the total crap that "fast travel" is in modern games.
@@TC-th1eyyes, mark/recall is great to take a huge amount of loot to the merchant where the mark is. I used to recall to the imp's shop in the orcs' manor. He made me incredibly rich 🎉
I generally don't take the stilt strider to Balmora so I can collect flowers and mushrooms on the way so I'll have everything I need for Ajira's quests at the Mages Guild. I actually didn't take the stilt strider on my first playthrough. Not sure why after all these years. I just know that when I was walking up the foyda and caught sight of the tower of the dwemer observatory, I paused and did a double take, wondering what the hell that thing was and thinking it was some sort of crashed space ship. My other major memory from that playthrough was walking through the ashlands on the way to the Urshilaku camp for the first time. One of my family members had walked up and asked me a question about the game, and I was cheerfully explaining. Then I turned around and found my character being attacked by a Lame Corprus. This was the first time I'd ever seen that creature, and it coming out of nowhere like that jump scared me so bad my heart was racing for a while after as I was asking myself what that thing was.
The more I hear you talk about Morrowind and the many things you like about it, the more I think you'd enjoy Outward. If you haven't played it, it has a lot of the elements you enjoy about Morrowind, and specifically the preparation phase you mention here. It's particularly important in Outward, too, since you have a very punishing inventory management system, hunger, stamina, and weather effects. It has a strong emphasis on travel too -- it uses no map markers, and has 0 fast travel. Learning to navigate the maps is part of the gameplay. And planning out your trip, your food, consumables, craftables, carrying money (because it has weight) -- all those things are essential to the Outward experience
Carry weight is the reason I always carry at least a few heather and scuttle on myself at all times. Because those make a feather potion if you are in a pinch. Then again I love alchemy in Morrowind more than anything. Even without the fortify intelligence exploit it is just so damned good. So I always keep my alchemy set and a variety of useful ingredients on me anyway.
I've just started my first every play through this week and I was just thinking how nice it is to just walk and follow the path! On my way north to Balmora yesterday, I stumbled upon Hla Oad were a gang had enslaved a Kahjit. I managed to free her before getting back on the road. It's so soothing to walk around and just go where my curiosity takes me. I'm excited to play after work!
I only just started playing a few years ago and it didn't take more than a single playthrough to learn how to get around Vvardenfell super, super fast and efficiently. But even with that, it's not like I can get to any point of the map in under a minute, any interesting key locations on the eastern half, in Sheogorad or the Red Mountain itself, you still have to walk to, and since that's all the dangerous areas too, those are the places it's the most interesting to travel in, as well as rewarding. But if you ever get overwhelmed there or you're just full on loot, it's made easy to get back to civilisation. It's a masterfully crafted system. I wish there were more games that let you travel like this, but that sentiment goes for pretty much every system in Morrowind, so that's redundant lol.
It's great you can still just walk in newer games but the designs of games fundamentally suffer when fast travel is in place and intended to be the primary method of travel. You end up without maps, without road signs, without any mention of directions in dialogue. It makes the whole world feel less grounded and makes it harder to navigate without trial and error.
And thing is, it's only "slow", right at the start. You build athletics FAST. Like, don't make it a main skill fast, because otherwise you'll outlevel your gear and level up bonuses, and start facing WAY tougher enemies than you should.
Maybe it's just because I jump around a lot, but I barely level my athletics outside of training. It's dreadfully slow. Any big speed boosts I get is from acrobatics making my jumps go further, boots of blinding speed or mid-late game enchanted gear.
I started having a lot more fun in Skyrim when I started playing with the self-imposed rule of "only fast travel to and from towns and the main roads between them" another fun one for the early game is "only if I have a horse"
It's definitely part of what makes it great, and also (combined with the relatively small map size that is chock-full of hand placed details and the lack of map markers) makes the map so memorable. I recently installed OpenMW and played it again for the first time in like 15 years or more and I still know my way around; I remember the place names and have a mental image of where things are and also where the nearest temple or shrine is even without consulting any maps. While in Oblivion and Skyrim even though I've probably played for more hours (at least more hours in the last decade) in Skyrim; I barely know where anything is and I can't remember the place names of anything but the largest cities. But I did play a quest mod for Skyrim where you're forced to walk everywhere together with a companion rather than chasing a quest marker. If I remember correctly the only quest marker most of the time was on the companion. And it really made me appreciate the nature more. Though it also highlighted how large and empty and same-y much of the Skyrim map is compared to the variety and density of Morrowid. Skyrim really isn't designed to be walked, so many roads are just dead ends and makes no sense for actual travel (not that all the roads in Morrowind does either, but they at least mostly connect more sensibly and have plenty of signposts that makes them usable).
I also share your love for Morrowind. I started when it first released. The game is MUCH easier now. When I played the first time, they did not have a quest journal. I still have my spiral notebook (full) with quest details, who gave the quest, and where everyone is supposed to be. Man! Those were the days. Still my favorite game (over 1,000 hours - including mods). But that first playthrough would have have failed if I had lost my spiral notebook...... No one can remember all that.
Morrowind had a quest journal upon release. The trouble was that there was no organization to it originally. It was just all the quest updates you ever got in one chronological journal, making it pretty useless if you weren't sticking to exactly one quest at a time. I had the habit of doing one quest at a time from Daggerfall when I first played Morrowind, due to Daggerfall's quests all having expiration dates so if you took too long, you'd automatically fail them. It made the journal more useable for me, but it also meant I was doing a lot of backtracking and return trips to places.
The original journal is pretty rough. Almost a straight port from Daggerfall, where having only a single active quest made sense, due to all quests being timed. Morrowind encourages completing multiple tasks in any given journey as much as possible, and the original journal just isn't up to the task.
@@CaptainBrash My first 'serious' attempts at something on UA-cam were in 2014, and I went hard into streaming around 2017. Nothing really caught on until now, but I had all that time to hone my audio and recording game. Finally putting my writing degree to use, too lol
"year of VIVEC"?!?! Your false gods will betray you! I love that sometimes the UA-cam algorithm will present me with gold. It's a miracle that I would your channel with less than 1k subs. You definitely deserve more. Your videos are great. Keep up the good work. Also definitely keep an eye on the Wayward Realms game. It's made by some of the original Daggerfall devs. When I first started Morrowind my PC was so trash I had to lower the viewing distance by a LOT. So much so, that I could not even see the silt strider while standing at that crossroads. So I naturally did not know about fast travel (I also was an inattentive child). So trekking to Balmora was to hardest and most fulfilling adventure I've ever gone on in a video game. I cannot describe the relief when I finally found the City (I got lost on the way too).
Thanks for the compliments! I put a lot into these videos, and these comments really make me smile. I originally played Morrowind on Xbox, which also has a really low draw distance. I have a PC that can run it really high, but I usually keep it lower than i have it in this video. Just feels right to me, but I'm sure that's just nostalgia talking lol
Love these chill but deep videos. I am a 49 year old newb to the game, but so far I use a combination of mark/recall and the other temple spells to get back selling off and then return. It's not perfect but at the minimum I can dump a pile of loot on the ground at the temple.
I'm glad my vibe is clicking with people :) There's so much to Morrowind that I still feel like a noob myself sometimes. That's the great thing about games with true depth
I actually realized that the "preparation phase" is the most important part of an RPG while playing Daggerfall. It's the part of the game where a lot of your role-playing happens, because it coincides with the period in which you're getting quests and making important decisions. I've found that it's my favorite part of most computer and table-top RPGs, because it's a period of time in which it's just you looking at your character and shaping them into what you want them to be, or compensating for what they turned out to be that you weren't expecting. I call it character maintenance, because what activities you do while recovering from or preparing for adventure vary depending on your character. The Elder Scrolls games, especially early on, did this really well, because the specific activities you undertook were tailored to your character class. Fighters rely more on their equipment and so need to make decisions about repairing and upgrading armor. In the older games, you have to keep track of schedules because armor repair takes time, which also means you need to have backup armor sets if you want to keep adventuring. Mages rely more on their magic, so they'll spend more time deliberating over spellmaking and trying to figure out how to optimize their mana. Thieves rely more on skills like dodging, picking locks, and sneaking, and so are less dependent on their equipment, but that also means that they take greater risks while they're out in the field. The tradeoff is that thieves are generally the best at finding and hocking loot, and develop something of a money pool they can use to compensate for certain weaknesses. And every character in The Elder Scrolls up until Skyrim needs to worry about some combination of these factors because of the nuanced class system.
Loving the Morrowind videos. I remember buying a copy of the game and spending many hours playing on the family computer back in the early 00's, and finally beating the main quest. Still one of the greatest games I've ever played. And, yes I walked everywhere, I don't think I ever once used the stilt strider. Walking/running everywhere and exploring the world was magical.
Modern Fast Travel ruins immersion. It's all about instant gratification, and then what. What is left to do when you've gone everywhere important instantly, done "all" the fun, cool quests? Not physically traveling between regions meant you missed out on a lot of content that was hidden between the lines. Morrowind did fast travel right IMO. You are limited to a few base methods, and that's it. Almsivi/Divine Intervention is great as a portable "get me outta trouble" card, but also as a neat "slingshot" type of fast travel. You have to plan ahead where you need to be in order to catch the desired location during casting. Silt Striders / Coastal Boats are nice for getting around local, well traveled areas, and cost gold to use. No gold? Start walking friend, you've a long journey ahead of you. Fair and balanced mechanically. Mage Guild/Stronghold teleportation is quite nice in that it is limited to very specific locations as well, but is an alternative to Silt Striders. Furthermore, the Stronghold Propylon Chambers require extra steps to get them working, so they still feel balanced since you have to work for it. Considering them End Game FT methods is accurate if you're not speedrunning it lol. To me, the fast travel in Morrowind is quite balanced for immersion. Oblivion/Skyrim on the other hand, pretty much threw that balance into the nearest Oblivion Gate and ruined things with the ability to just *Do It Your Self*. As I said previously, it's all about Instant Gratification now. Which really sucks when pretty much any game with FT does it this way now. No limitations. You can do it anywhere that's outside, as long as you're not in combat and there are no enemies nearby. Now back to Morrowind FT though, one of the most useful things to do around early/mid game is to enchant your own trinkets with Mark/Recall and the Intervention spells. Just as simply utility items that don't run out (after buying the 60th DI Scroll you start to wonder if you've been investing your money wisely) But I also always recommend getting a ring and putting Levitation on it (even at one single point) just to get over those big cliffs sometimes, as well as something with slowfall, so you can use the Jump spell more effectively. Above all though, my prefered method of fast travel in TES 3 is Icarian Flight + a 2 Second 1 Point Slowfall before touching grass XD
ENjoyed your video, subbed. I played Morrowind when i was a kid with my OG xbox. Didn't get very far with it, but i played a lot of Oblivion and eventually a moderate amount of Skyrim. I think I'll go give Morrowind another play.
I am convinced that easily accessible fast travel is a net negative on the experience. It actively detracts from exploration and makes traversal more mechanistic. Same can go for minimap ,too. The more the player stares at them, the less attention is left to be spent on the surroundings. I absolutely love the way Morrowind dealt with fast travel because first of all it is not gamey. It is not a click on the map but rather a sensible mechanic that exists in the world. Second, it is conducive towards exploration. And third, there are so many ways to get around faster, from levitation spells to potions of fortify speed. All those methods are, again, sensible in-world and make the eventually much quicker traversal feel earned - because it is.
I first played Morrowind when it came out 22 years ago! I was very new to gaming and it was such a fantastic experience for me. I became very immersed in the game just because of much of the walking. And being a low level, new player, walking around in a foggy rather hilly and bleak landscape was exciting as well as highly nerve wracking! It's a feeling one never forgets. But I do admit to fast travelling a lot just because I wasn't secure in combat as this was my first real video game. And, even though I got to the point of having my own home with servants etc, I never could find the place!! Drat the lack of map markers!! LOL! This time will be different! I just started replaying the game a few weeks ago and am taking a more measured and hopefully mature approach of playing by doing as much walking as possible. I'm enjoying your videos as they are setting a nice foundation for this playthrough. Thank you for your hard work. It is appreciated!
Not a lore explanation but the silt strider between Seyda Neen and Gnisis was likely added to make it easier for new players to join the Imperial Legion. You’re correct in saying that it makes zero sense in-universe but from a game design perspective it made sense to Bethesda in 2002, I guess.
Preparation is great, and I do enjoy actually walking places, but I hate doing it just to get somewhere to hand in a quest or going back and forth over area I've just gone through and know is clear, and at that point, limited fast travel systems are just time eaters and more uninteresting steps to check off. I'm very much a little of both kind of player.
Only other game i've really seen done this in the same way is S.T.A.L.K.E.R Anomaly. In that game the main gameplay loop revolves around having to travel around the Zone to complete jobs without expending more on the resources to complete them than you gain as a reward. The preparation stage takes front and centre attention as you need medical supplies, food, water, bullets, repair materials, etc.
Here's my personal theory regarding the lack of a silt strider route between Balmora and Gnisis. Balmora's a big trading hub located near the fertile Ascadian Isles and in the still-sorta-fertile West Gash. A lot of food is probably imported there. Ald'ruhn is in the middle of the Ashlands, where no food can be grown. However, Ald'ruhn is important for security reasons, so it needs to be maintained. Thus, most silt strider traffic from Balmora to Ald'ruhn carries foodstuffs that help keep Ald'ruhn garrisoned and functioning. Hlaalu and Redoran are rivals, obviously, but Hlaalu benefits from selling its food to the Redoran soldiers on-guard against the Sharmat. Redoran might not like paying Hlaalu for this, but they feel duty-bound (and aren't too good about navigating financial or economic matters), so they just throw up their hands and deal with it. Gnisis is also a Redoran town, but unlike Ald'ruhn it doesn't offer any benefits to Hlaalu. Plus, it produces its own food, so there's not much reason for significant trade with Balmora. Sure, there's the temple with the Ash Mask (and the Koal shrine not far off), but Hlaalu's not religious enough to care about that. Devout pilgrims can just do a stopover in Ald'ruhn if they really need to get there from Balmora. However, Gnisis does have a Legion garrison, which might explain the connection to an imperial port town like Seyda Neen. Basically, new troops and materiel get supplied overland from Seyda Neen (while Gnisis is near a river, it might be tricky to navigate or something, and does look pretty rocky). So when you consider the fact that there are only so many silt striders at any given time, it makes sense that there's no regular silt strider route between Balmora and Ald'ruhn.
I never thought to consider the economic and political aspects of how the lines of fast travel might become established! This one's an interesting theory
@@Takarias You can actually see a lot of that political/economic stuff in the game. You talked about it some with how eastern Vvardenfell is much more isolated, befitting the fact that it's quite distant from the Empire's and Temple's local power centers. With the exception of Seyda Need, silt striders only connect to Dunmer towns ruled by the Great Houses or Temple. The Mages Guild mostly has offices in major cities (with the exception of Caldera--some people theorize that Caldera's office is just there to teleport mined ore to the Balmora office, since the Odai River doesn't connect to Caldera and might be too shallow for major cargo traffic), presumably both because that gives it greater access to intellectual capital and because that helps the Empire extend its power (another example, consider the locations of the big forts). Even the town layouts and architectural styles reflect the values of their builders. A guy named Simply Simon had some YT videos on this subject. Basically, Halal towns are easy to navigate, which befits their focus on trading. Redoran towns are more insular and closed off. Telvanni towns are just extensions of their ruler's homes. And so forth. It's amazing how much the map's layout tells you about the world and the people who live within it.
Its far from overlooked. Every morrowind playing videogame essayist has a piece on this. And the truth of it is quite obvious, videogames are ultimetly about the journey not the end, cos the end is allways the same you go back to the real world.
If you have Athletics as a Major skill, you won't have any problem with managing stamina while traveling. By the way, I found a Daedric Dai-katana. It weights 60 kilograms and costs a lot of stamina per hit. How to make it less expensive for stamina? I can only hit with it for about 5 times before I need to go to bed.
Yes. The prep phase. Understood you immediately. I think scrolls and potions kind of key you into this mechanic as early as sedya neen and balmora, because utility options feature rather prominently on vendors there.
I was prepping with potions that my alchemist's skill made quite potent, mixing various effects to improve my stats, but also to make my armament that much more lethal. For alchemy, you need to love gathering herbs and other products, which give a strong motivation to explore every corner of the map as they might be found only in specific places. Then you ne lol! infinite patience mixing, experimenting and learning in order to become proficient. I just loved this aspect of the game, and at first was totally upset to have animals attacking me without provocation, but I had never played a PC game before!
@@nct948 I know alchemy is very strong and easily slips into being exploit-y, but it always feels a little underwhelming to me. Mostly because of the wide range of poisons that can be made with absolutely zero way to actually use them.
@@Takarias very true. I had masses of clever potions that I never used! I just had them producing them. Poisons are very useful on spears, arrows and all types of blades.
You might not see this comment, but... if you find all the walking meditative, you're exactly the sort of person who might enjoy Pathologic. Like, even the original (in which case PLEASE use Reputation Survival and Disease Overhaul, it's how the game should've been from the start, like Morrowind that game has decent mechanics but botched the numbers). Pretty much the entirety of Pathologic's gameplay is figuring out efficient routes between places and adjusting as needed. I find it fun, at least.
This is how I felt about DayZ. So many people complaining about getting lost and it being too hard to navigate. Bruh, just follow the road. Mastering the map is part of the skill cap.
I think the reason you can take a Silt Strider from Seyda Neen to Gnisis but not from Balmora is because Balmora has more Hills between it and Gnisis, there are comparatively fewer hills between Seyda Neen and Gnisis, so from Seyda Neen the Strider has an easier time navigating, while there are also hills between Balmora and Seyda Neen and Balmora and Ald'ruhn those towns are much closer to one another than Balmora and Gnisis
having acrobatics and athletics skill makes travelling a lot less tedious, since you actually feel progressing when you level up athletics and get little bit faster.
"slow travel" is usefull in this game because it contrasts very well with "efficent fast travel". Morrowind is an only game i can think off where literally every single thing can be improved upon as the player learns the game - even mundane stuff as walking (flying) across the lands
As you level up and learn the towns and are more experienced with the game you can mentally forge the fastest paths between two points in Vvardenfell. Getting to Tel Branora from Gnisis as a noob is daunting task. But a short silt strider to Ald Rhun and mage guide to Sadrith mora and then a boat trip and you are there in no time. :D
@@Takarias Radiant Ai made NPCs in Oblivion move around. So finding one of the Surrille brothers that have a vineyard near Skingrad would be much harder without a quest marker on him. Gaston is pathing all over the place.
That's a good point I hadn't really considered. There's no reason you couldn't be told "[NPC] frequents the [tavern name] most evenings" or something like that. It would introduce a minor source of friction, though
@@Takarias Daggerfall's solution was to have a marker that wasn't visible to the PC, but that the NPCs you talk to could see, letting them say "I know the place you're looking for. It's a bit west of here." No reason it couldn't be adapted to "I think I saw him earlier today. I'd head northwest if I were you."
Daggerfall also had a much more comprehensive map than later games - you could place notes on it in dungeons and towns, and asking for directions would occasionally mark the destination outright.
I was a freshman in high school when Morrowind released back in the day. As a console peasant, I had only really played linear JRPGs, with very specific plots and areas. While those games were very good ('Xenogears ftw!'), they were utterly unlike Morrowind. I had bought a physical disc of the game for Xbox, on a whim basically, and was entirely blown away by the freedom and adventure of it. As pointed out here, it's a game where one needs to put some thought into where you are going, how you're getting there, and how you're getting back. Fast forward to Starfield. I cannot think of another game, within the same genre and style, so diamterically opposed to Morrowind's design philosophy. In Morrowind, you could be going down the road and see a cave entrance to some place with a bizarre name, and wander in, and find something weird, but unique, placed within the world that ties in, in some way, to the larger setting. In Starfield, they plop down the same half-dozen structures willy nilly and tell you to gun down the random people, because Starfield isn't a game about exploration, not really; it's a game about shooting down people by the dozen. Starfield is many, many times larger than Morrowind, but there just isn't any *point* to wandering all the real estate. I hear they added rover vehicles now, and I just don't know why, when only a few places are worth bothering to see.
There are several asterisks off the back of this statement, but I actually like Starfield. For entirely different reasons than why I love Morrowind, or why I've come to appreciate Skyrim, but I kind of like it. I'll eventually make a video about it - my journal knows I've got plenty to say about it lol
I really want TES 6 to reintroduce utility spells like water walking, mark and recall and maybe even add a system similar to the propylon indices. I'd like the world to feel worth exploring. Level scaling and randomised loot makes progress feel almost pointless and dungeons feel identical and if I can craft something stronger than the gift of a literal God why would I bother serving them?
My first time playing, I didn't know about the boat services. Hated swimming because of the slaughter fish. So I levitated. Everywhere. My original Xbox version didnt like the world map and crashed whenever I brought it out. so i did without. I often got lost and flew into the endless space of nothing more often than id like. I learned to identify landmarks. Landmarks like certain cairns or a tribe of hostile ashlanders. I can find my way around decently now without guidance. It was great being lost lol
You forgot to mention how the geography of Morrowind / Vvardenfell has its own distinct features and how you can navigate by those features. If I say "go to Urshilaku from Maar Gan", you already know about Foyada Bani-dad and its entrance. The stone ... menhirs or whatever. You know. In Oblivion such features are rare and in Skyrim they are almost absent. Why? Because the game practically counts on you fast travelling around. Why walk when you can ... fast walk?
I think you mean cairns, which are stacks of rocks. Menhirs are standing stones. (And thank you for this delicious new word!) Oblivion and Skyrim rely entirely on waypoints on the HUD, and it's truly a shame. They're completely unplayable without them.
Oh no, it's really 2024 and I've just now learned of the propylon indices. I played this game when it came out like you, and have definitely over a thousand hours, but no Morrowind Prophecies or internet to aid me. I really think it may be time for a replay. EDIT: Regarding the silt strider route between Balmora and Gnisis, I don't think it has an in-game reason and UESP is no help in this regard, but it could be that such a route isn't well-traveled and isn't profitable, so services aren't offered. Mechanically, it seems fast travel options have a max of four destinations, and either Gnisis or Balmora already hit that cap before someone thought to implement that route, I guess. 🤷♂
Never touched it. I was a console player until 2017, so there's an era or two of iconic PC titles that I have only experienced recently, and in pieces.
I usually put my mark spell right in front of creeper, i go through a dungeon and get everything i want, pile it all up in a central dungeon area and then when i'm done grab my 600 lbs of shit and recall to Creeper lol you're right that the ability to teleport while overencumbered is a significant difference compared to the later games, it's broken in fact.
Bethesda’s Fallout 4’s Survival Mode disables fast travel. The Supply & Prepare steps are crucial. And the fact you can’t save without sleeping made the trip home a nail-biter. (I always take Aquaboy to swim home, bc its encounter-free). Partway through your game the helicopter like vehicle is introduced. Toss a smoke grenade, and one take you to another location. What I like is that it’s a real time mode of transportation, which feels completely organic and immersive. (Even normal mode with fast travel use them; game time when you fast travel is calculated based on how long it takes to walk. But when a settlement is attacked, if you can get there quickly enough, enemies may not have spawned in.)
I enjoyed Fallout 3 and New Vegas, but every time I try to play Fallout 4, I get to the settlement building and just check out. Same point, every time. It just doesn't do it for me.
@@Takarias Perhaps you need the proper motivation. I spent a month doing a challenge run with mods that made the game harder. Permadeath. Survival. The key mods would be larger settlement attacks, and Vaultman, which enhances difficulty. Also simple settlers/ mortal, which makes settlers mortal. Survival makes settlements desirable, larger attacks (15-50 enemies) makes defensive positions a premium, and mortal settlers makes your involvement necessary. And permadeath cranks everything up to 11. It’s amazing what you’ll come up with when you have to defend mortal settlers getting attacked by an army, and you can’t die. Motivating!
Honestly, I think it's mostly the whole premise. I don't care about a baby I don't know, and I never will. Then I get handed a suit of power armor immediately and given charge of a town? I can't take anything in that game seriously.
@@Takarias I get it; to each their own. I feel similarly about other beloved games (a wasteland mailman getting shot is part of the job; getting revenge, and tracking down a mysterious poker chip, is in my mind a ridiculous premise). I’d just like to make an argument for early Power Armor: it’s another entry in a long list of games that start you off with a Power fantasy, then take it away. A new player quickly runs out of Fusion cores (and 5mm ammo). Only a veteran can maintain a supply of fusion cores (even they run out of 5mm). But those elements (Power Armor, Minigun) along with Dogmeat, align with the philosophy of the open ended Perk chart; every Perk can be useful before leaving the starting city. It’s nice for a veteran to get their build going ASAP, and rewards their game knowledge. I agree that an RPG shouldn’t start you off too powerful (for that reason why I think Dark Souls 2 is the best souls). But if you need challenge, play on Survival, and Power Armor won’t take you far, and the Minigun, even less. That’s all. Have a good one.
You GOTTA try Outward. It has the same vibes as Morrowind, and it's a survival RPG by default, with soulslike combat, and a very interesting way it handles magic. There's cooking and alchemy, which are NECESSARY for survival. And there's a lot of build variety thanks to the different classes you can spec into, up to 3 of which you can fully spec into using the "Breakthrough" system, while all lesser skills can be freely learned by all players. It's an awesome experience that you should definitely try if you're into Morrowind.
@@Takarias that game is where they took the slow-travel and turned it into a core game mechanic, and it's so much better for it. It also has an interesting approach to how leveling and balance works too. i think it's got great world building with a great balance between environmental storytelling and exposition
I always walk north and follow the odai river to balmora grabbing the flowers ajura needs and popping into vassir diadantatlatylty mine to say hi to the rats and atronach
Akshually, TES 3-5 are not up to scale. Taking their relative sizes on official map, morrowind has greates scale, then skyrim, then oblivion being almost 1:2 compared to Vvardenfell, from what I remember.
I was looking for this comment. Like if you actually analyze Morrowind's small towns and villages compared to Skyrim's, Morrowind's are larger. Also, Fort Frostmoth is in both Morrowind's Bloodmoon expansion and Skyrim's Dragonborn DLC and the fort is huge in Morrowind but super small in Skyrim.
@@Takarias my friend told me I should have named my Argonian to Walks-With-Toes, but I liked Walks-With-Feet better. If I wanted toes in the name than Stands-On-Toes would be better lol but I guess toe related names only work in Morrowind. I could have named him Can’t-Wear-Boots. lol But I like the puddle name as well! 👍 if I ever see an Argonian standing in a puddle I’ll think of Stands-in-Shallow-Waters.
and damn it, ill stop in pelagiad this time around, and be disappointed at the shops yet again Also now that im older, i do spend more time in the towns preparing- no idea why, but I will also probably forget to use those shield potions
I can't complain! Though I think Morrowind has never really gone away in the first place. It's just too special to truly fade away from the cultural zeitgeist.
The algorithms been serving me up Morrowtube for a couple of years. It's a huge subgenre! I'll never get tired of it, put the skooma directly into my veins please
I've always been of the opinion that diagetic travel in rpg games is preferable to find a location instant fast travel like you find in onlivion and skyrim. The nature of open world games is a world to be explored and sure 10-20+ mins of walking for 30 seconds of combat can be frustrating if you have the means of preparing speed boosts proper gear etc you can actually explore and find new locations rather hone in like a homing missile to a location then going home for the next one to be more interesting.
@TakRathen precisely its why I actually quite like the frostfall mod in skyrim because it adds to that sense of adventure and planning around what you want to do instead of auto piloting to the marker. Add to the fact that in the early game morrowind, there are several points in the main quest where you're encouraged to go out and skill up of "find trouble." And not all of it is going to be marked in your journal. For example, there's a lost mine near the second fighters guild quest that has no auto journal notice that can lead to several different rewards depending on who you talk to. Or when heading out to the urshilaku camp, there's a cave on route that has some very interesting items, and you would likely never know they were there if you didn't go in the unassuming cave entrance.
Speaking of the main quest telling you to f-off and go do other stuff for a bit, is there anything like that in Oblivion or Skyrim? There's no natural points to take a break in Skyrim that I can think of.
@TakRathen to the best of my memory, no, not really. In oblivion, you're basically given the amulet and told to go find the heir before the tutorial area is even finished. Sure, you can maybe rp reason to maybe explore the imperial city and pick up some gear and small quests, but the nature of the story has a sword over your head due to you just carrying the amulet because 1 the emperor has just been assinated and you holding it and 2 mheruns dagon is looking for new digs and that is not going to be particularly healthy option for you. For skyrim, it at least least you out of the tutorial area, but the only possibility of a viable option comes with your chosen companion saying we should probably split up, which is immediately invalidated by saying that they have a contact in riverwood who then sends you on your way down the main quest. It then finishes with one of the graybeards giving a speech about being a hero or villain with all that power, suggesting you can now do all the other content. And given the scale of the threat of the initial dragon, we got a problem to oh no that's alduin the world eater we're all mega doomed the fate of the world kinds locks you into the main quest on kinda flimsy reasoning of you have more experience with dragons than anyone, which btw is patently untrue as the guard who delivered the message from the watchtower has the same experience of sudden dragon syndrome. As a reference in morrowind for the main quest, there are two maybe three times caius suggests you go out gear up and get some experience and at least once where he suggests for the first sixth house base near Gnaar Mok that it's risky and I believe suggests that it's okay to take a step back and level up some more. Of course, those options only happen in the early stages of the game, and not to the best of my memory for the rest.
For me, there are 2 things that ruin an RPG experience: fast travel and quicksave/save button. Morrowind handles the first one perfectly, making you "suffer" the encumbering problem but not punishing you extra. Not like Skyrim in survival mode (totally unnatural and, if you want only to travel on foot, just impossible).
hell no! what i most remember playing the game is the endless walking, talking & klunky combat system. it was basically like watching the star wars prequels 😴
Yeah, one of the mod packs I downloaded had the multiple marks mod included and it ruined the game a bit tbh. Will definitely make sure it's not installed next time I play
@@Takarias it'd be nice to have one locked to a home then another one for getting around but I think I'd rather just keep 1 than have 5 or whatever the mod allows. You may as well just have a fast travel mod at that point. But most of these games (Skyrim, fallout 4, I play modes that don't have fast travel) I can recommend Kingdom Come Deliverance hardcore mode for a similar experience. Despite having no magic I think that's one of the few games that has managed to capture a bit of that old Bethesda magic.
I haven't played this game without the Boots of Blinding Speed in 20 years. No. Slow travel doesn't make the game good. The game being good is what makes it good.
What's your favorite trick for getting around Vvardenfell?
I usually just pick a direction and walk. No tricks for speed; I don't want to go too fast and miss all the little details scattered around the place.
Make a spell, or some potions, that recovers your fatigue over time, or, if you're far enough in the game, have a constant-effect restore fatigue item; that way, if you ever get caught into combat with one of the many naturally occurring daedra throughout the island, you'll be okay. Always have amulets of almsivi and divine intervention with you to get out of trouble if you need to; they're easy enough to pick up around the place, especially if you're doing temple or cult quests; there are also scrolls of each in the Mages' Guild supply chests. Have cure common and blight disease potions or spells at your disposal, as you don't want to get your strength drained and be rendered unable to continue traveling. You can have levitation if you want to, or you can let topography guide you! Both are valid.
Mark and Recall.
@@talonhatesnames7630 So many tricks! Getting hit with damage strength is always brutal. I'm very good at forgetting to have a means of countering it and end up needing to do a naked walk of shame
Scrolls of icarian flight and a body of water to land in.
Chaining Almsivi and Divine Intervention.
And if I'm feeling a certain way, the Propylon network with the master index.
"...if you don't stop at every Ancestral Tomb or random NPC..."
....I don't understand.
The lack of fast travel gave me something that I still remember to this day, I created an Argonian character and did all the things in Seyda Neen, but I'd also spent all my money on training and couldn't afford the Silt Strider so I set out of foot, as I did it started raining, I looked at my character and there he was, penniless, dressed in rags and bumbling along slowly through the rain, for the first time I ever I actually felt sorry for a character.
@@JimUK I think they should do Morrowind’s fast travel style for elder scrolls 6 but keep the quest map markers that Morrowind didn’t have. It forces people to walk in the environment, gives more purpose to money, makes leaving a fast travel hub feel like a true adventure you have to care about the coming back part as well, and lastly it creates parts of the map that have no fast travel a real feeling of exploration.
Every time the player heads out becomes an Event in Morrowind. Merely getting to and from your destination is an expression of player mastery and game knowledge
Me fr
I will never forget when I just randomly decided to walk north from Ald Ruhn and after a short while, out of the fog my first deadric ruin faded into view. It was a feeling of wonder and dread at the same time that has stuck with me all these years later. Another moment I never forgot for the for the first time was finding Magebane in a cave that towered upwards with rooms branching off at different elevations. Morrowind was such an adventure the first rime playing and I have not experienced anything like it in other TES games. I havnt played morrowimd for many years now and my plan is to wait many more in the hopes I forget and get those moments again.
The world is so dense that I'm always finding new things myself. Always a new corner to poke around in. I have yet to dabble in Tamriel Rebuilt, but it should add even more corners to uncover, if my comments are anything to go by lol
How about play it again when Skywind is finished, that's my plan.
Took the words etc
@@abeclark524 hopefully they're very mindful of this and don't use quest markers as a crutch, or at least make it a toggle option like "guided" mode and "adventure" mode.
You know that it will use quest markers as a crutch. It's the Skyrim way.
Honestly, just not being led around by the nose and checkpoints for everything was nice.
My brother and i used to play a self-imposed challenge. After the tutorial drop everything, and pick a random location. Until you make it there, no use of fast travel or merchant is permitted. You have to scavenge your gear and figure out how to survive. Still miss those crazy moments of being stupid enough to go into daedric ruins, gwtting nailed by a greater bonewalker, and having to figure out how to get to a temple shrine while naked and completely unarmed. Then getting back because thats where all my gear is.
Good times.
Damage strength was certainly a decision that was made. Annoying, but punishes the player that ignores proper preparation, and can lead to some pretty wild tales.
I think it plays into the "power fantasy". As you increase in level and stats, you literally become faster and stronger. You jump higher. You run quicker.
Love these videos great Morrowind commentary
The seyda neen+gnisis route has a visual fan explanation that actually makes a lot of sense through the mod where you get to ride the striders in real time! thwere the strider goes along the coast and in the water when going to gnisis, this way might be easier on the creature than the rocky and hilly terrain required for a long land trek.
Hm. That's an interesting theory. I was thinking that since the overland route would take you past Ald'ruhn anyway, it wouldn't make much sense to duplicate that line all the way up the West Gash. But that's 98% assumption, so I didn't want to potentially misrepresent it as fact in the video.
@@Takarias That makes a lot of sense as well
I've been playing Morrowind since 2003, and I LOVE that the only fast travel is in-universe options. The thrill I remember from finding a cave along a path I was taking to another quest and writing it down in my PHYSICAL notebook so I could come back to it and explore it was amazing. Some of the best loot in the game isn't tied to quests and is just in random caves, tombs, daedric ruins, or dwemer ruins and it makes the satisfactions of exploring so much better than in other games.
I love Morrowind and the deluge of new videos in the last month or so about it is making me want to reinstall and give Tamriel Rebuilt a try.
The endless jotted notes that you'll inevitably forget! I remember them well lol
Having played Skyrim and Oblivion first, I was really surprised to find the Masque of Clavicus Vile in some random Dwemer ruin while exploring Dagon Fel. It's such a cool feeling to find all the best gear not because an NPC was written to point you towards it, but because you took the time to explore. Of course, there's still strong signposted quest rewards like the Ebony Mail or Wraithguard, but all the Daedric artifacts and such all make you feel like an accomplished explorer, less so than just a theme park guest. It's awesome, wish there were more games like this.
@@plebisMaximus "Theme park" is an accurate sentiment when it comes to some games...
I love how the physical map is actually useful, not just something to look good on your wall.
The IG map is kinda like a satellite view, you see the cities but that's it.
Some quests tell you "its east of the cross of this river and this river" and you actually have to check the paper map to see where they are.
AND the paper map is hand drawn, it's far from perfect so you actually also have to use the IG map in paralel and mix the infos you get from the two.
The physical map is a real-life Artifact in my mind. The fact you can tell which locations have Temples, Imperial Cult shrines, Silt Striders, and boats just by looking around the map is amazing.
@@Takarias Everything about this game is just out of this world and yet so cleverly put.
I've been searching that high ever since but there is no match. (Still there are very good games out there)
Morrowind gang is the best gang. We just enjoy gaming for what it is.
I find I gravitate to older games these days because they're just honest about what they are. No loot boxes, or squirrelly DLC structures, or bolted-on engagement systems. Just software designed purely to entertain.
You rule dude. These videos are so relaxing for some reason. I'm chilling in bed and you are really adding value to my day right now, so thanks (:
I've never been a hype person, but I'm more than happy to be a chill presence for viewers
If this is the norm here, I'm bringing my Sleep Club Membership Card with me next time. My insomnia craves stuff like this constantly. Well made and pleasantly executed =)
@@Sphendrana I used to have a small roster of streamers that I would join at night to fall asleep to, so I definitely get that. I would be honored to learn that I help people fall asleep
First Morrowind ASMR channel? Would you read the Lusty Argonian Maid into a binaural mic?
@@mungojerrie86 Hah! You kid, but I actually have binaural mics and have considered doing book/lore readings of both TES and Destiny.
I love having fast travel limited, it makes exploration far more immersive. My all time favorite form of fast travel would have to be the GTA taxies, I never skip a ride and just kick back and enjoy the radio while I hitch a ride across the city. I wish we could actually sit through an entire silt strider ride.
I've never looked for it because I play Morrowind in an aggressively vanilla state, but I have heard whispers of a mod to do exactly that.
"Something about slipping it in that gets me every time"
... that's what she said
What I love about Morrowind's "slow travel" is that it kinda forces you to go out and discover the world. Without the ability to click on a location and just appear there, you end up finding a whole bunch of neat stuff that you might not otherwise.
I downloaded a mod once for Skyrim that causes the in-game wagons to travel to their destinations in real time. It was sort of janky but it meant that even what was ostensibly a "fast travel" system took time and got you immersed in the world. I was genuinely surprised to learn that there's a bandit ambush with a frigging boulder trap along one of the roads. My character had somehow completely missed it because I had been fast-traveling everywhere. It was then I knew I needed to go cold turkey.
Oh the amount of times I used an intervention scroll while overencumbered (either from looting or a drain strength effect) and shed a mountain of items in front of the shrine or temple to be able to move again. Say what you want about the people of morrowind but they never stole anything from the poor argonian girl who had to strip naked and drop all her worldly possessions just to walk
For all the Temple's many crimes, they do absolutely take care of the poor in Morrowind.
"that poor farming implement just left all of its stuff at our temple- we should protect it for them"
First video i watched of you, but very entertaining!
I like the more... 'no holding hands' approach of Morrowind. As much as i like skyrim, fast traveling really sucks out the fun eventually. You just hop from point A to B, slay this, steal that, ect.
But just walking towards a certain area, meeting creatures and NPC's on the way, taking in the area, that's where the experience is at!
Skyrim certainly has things out succeeds at, but it pales in comparison to Morrowind at making me feel like it's a real place that I've come to know through the years.
I mean, the problem is that it's fun to walk somewhere new, or an area you haven't been in a while. It's not fun to walk back and forth over the same route over and over again to hand in quests, or visit traders, or whatever. Scale is also a factor because in real life things tend to be a lot further away than in video games. In real life I can walk for an hour and not even be outside my small city. In Skyrim I can walk half an hour and be outside the map.
It's for that reason that even though I conceptually don't like fast travel, I can't not use it, because if I have to actually run everywhere I'll get bored and stop playing, and more diegetic fast travel is basically just fast travel with extra steps, and tedious.
It certainly doesn't help that on top of this, there's just not enough to experience when traveling. There aren't many things to run into on the roads to augment the experience of all that stuff you just saw five minutes ago when you went over this route already.
Just came across this channel, and loved the video! There is something very special about Morrowind's diagetic fast travel, where mastering the various travel networks feeds into "the destination is the journey" idea. I was dismayed when Bethesda promptly forgot so much of MW's design when it came to Oblivion and Skyrim. Skyrim took a step back towards this with its network of carts and boats, so its there if you choose to self-limit fast travel or play on Survival. But Morrowind is still the best implementation. Even the propylon indices are a quest which rewards further mastery of the worldspace.
Thing is Shitrim forgot the main reason all this worked in Morrowind. People gave DIRECTIONS. If you turn off quest markers... you have no clue where to go 99% of the time. Like three people ever give directions, and then they're normally pretty sparse even then.
The issue with Skyrim's diagetic fast travel is just how inconsistent it is. If you're somewhere around Morthal trying to go somewhere you can sell a looted axe, you'll have to walk all the way to either Solitude or Whiterun. Even worse for Winterhold, with all the mountains in the way. There's also not a "shit, I was not prepared to be here" button like the intervention spells. Even getting a horse is still really slow and if you're just walking down the same roads over and over again, it stops being a fun adventure. I don't hate Skyrim, but I think they greatly misstepped with survival mode disabling fast travel on top of halving your base carrying cap, which was already really slow to increase compared to Morrowind or Oblivion.
@@plebisMaximus Something I didn't mention but you allude to is how the Intervention spells serve double duty. Used at the end of an outing, they're a quick exit back to town. But they can also be used early, as an escape. When used like this, they are the player admitting that they failed to adequately prepare, and the punishment is making the trip back. While this can be mitigated with Mark and Recall, you're then giving up your prior Mark, which may be an even worse punishment!
My favorite part when travelling through Morrowind is that I'll inevitably find some side quest where somebody needs help or needs something done, and I'll do it, and afterwards I'll just continue what I'm doing before. It seems so trivial, but that type of stuff really immerses me in the game world.
On another note, you should consider opening up channel memberships when (or if you already are) eligible. I would personally love to be able to support you making more videos like these, as they're great to watch. Best of luck, regardless
The thing that really gets me is how the later games - especially Skyrim - are lauded for the density of stuff to do in their worlds, yet Morrowind's points of interest are barely outside of each other's tiny draw distance. People just don't know - or don't remember - how amazing this game really is.
Regarding memberships... I am both enormously humbled and encouraged by your words. I will be turning them on when I am able, though joining will obviously never be required. Thank you for even considering it.
Slow travel (even though there are many fast travel options) is one of the many reasons Morrowind is a great game. But real Morrowind veterans unlock at least one propylon before even talking to their junkie boss in Balmora for the first time. Oh, and they become kleptomaniacs before leaving Seyda Neen. 😆
Morrowind doesn’t really have fast travel. It has travel services that you have to run to and pay for. You can’t just open up the map in the middle of the wilderness and fast travel to a city.
@@stevied3400Almsivi/divine intervention or mark/recall spells/enchantments are what you're looking for. The spells even work when you are in a scrap or overburdened.
@@stevied3400 Depends on how you define "fast travel". I think Morrowind has a very well implemented fast travel system - it's "services" or whatever you want to call it, but it's still fast travel, you just need to use your brains a tiny bit.
Unfortunately, this was considered too much for the "average Joe", so they streamlined in Oblivion already, and streamlined it even more to the total crap that "fast travel" is in modern games.
@@TC-th1eyyes, mark/recall is great to take a huge amount of loot to the merchant where the mark is. I used to recall to the imp's shop in the orcs' manor. He made me incredibly rich 🎉
@@stevied3400 Actually *pushes glasses up* it's as simple as learning or getting almsiv and mark and recall, theres a fourth spell also
This video is great i just started playing morrowind recently and I've fallen in love with it. I'd love to see more morrowind/elder scrolls from you
I've got no plans to stop!
@@Takarias hell yeah im dying for more
I generally don't take the stilt strider to Balmora so I can collect flowers and mushrooms on the way so I'll have everything I need for Ajira's quests at the Mages Guild.
I actually didn't take the stilt strider on my first playthrough. Not sure why after all these years. I just know that when I was walking up the foyda and caught sight of the tower of the dwemer observatory, I paused and did a double take, wondering what the hell that thing was and thinking it was some sort of crashed space ship.
My other major memory from that playthrough was walking through the ashlands on the way to the Urshilaku camp for the first time. One of my family members had walked up and asked me a question about the game, and I was cheerfully explaining. Then I turned around and found my character being attacked by a Lame Corprus. This was the first time I'd ever seen that creature, and it coming out of nowhere like that jump scared me so bad my heart was racing for a while after as I was asking myself what that thing was.
The dwemer ruins of Morrowind are wonderfully enigmatic. I have no idea why they changed the architectural style so much for Skyrim.
@@Takarias Lord of the Rings came out around Oblivion, which didn't have Dwarves.
The more I hear you talk about Morrowind and the many things you like about it, the more I think you'd enjoy Outward. If you haven't played it, it has a lot of the elements you enjoy about Morrowind, and specifically the preparation phase you mention here. It's particularly important in Outward, too, since you have a very punishing inventory management system, hunger, stamina, and weather effects. It has a strong emphasis on travel too -- it uses no map markers, and has 0 fast travel. Learning to navigate the maps is part of the gameplay. And planning out your trip, your food, consumables, craftables, carrying money (because it has weight) -- all those things are essential to the Outward experience
Carry weight is the reason I always carry at least a few heather and scuttle on myself at all times. Because those make a feather potion if you are in a pinch. Then again I love alchemy in Morrowind more than anything. Even without the fortify intelligence exploit it is just so damned good. So I always keep my alchemy set and a variety of useful ingredients on me anyway.
You'd need to have those potions with all that gear!
Definitely but worth it. I can run around naked if I have to but I won't leave home without alchemy gear.
Can't tell you how much I'm enjoying these carefully researched and well argued Morrowind analysis video essays.
Just making the kind of content I like to watch myself :)
Glad to see it's resonating with people!
I've just started my first every play through this week and I was just thinking how nice it is to just walk and follow the path! On my way north to Balmora yesterday, I stumbled upon Hla Oad were a gang had enslaved a Kahjit. I managed to free her before getting back on the road.
It's so soothing to walk around and just go where my curiosity takes me. I'm excited to play after work!
The pure joy of exploration
I only just started playing a few years ago and it didn't take more than a single playthrough to learn how to get around Vvardenfell super, super fast and efficiently. But even with that, it's not like I can get to any point of the map in under a minute, any interesting key locations on the eastern half, in Sheogorad or the Red Mountain itself, you still have to walk to, and since that's all the dangerous areas too, those are the places it's the most interesting to travel in, as well as rewarding. But if you ever get overwhelmed there or you're just full on loot, it's made easy to get back to civilisation. It's a masterfully crafted system. I wish there were more games that let you travel like this, but that sentiment goes for pretty much every system in Morrowind, so that's redundant lol.
Morrowind is, sadly, a singularly unique game in too many ways.
It's great you can still just walk in newer games but the designs of games fundamentally suffer when fast travel is in place and intended to be the primary method of travel. You end up without maps, without road signs, without any mention of directions in dialogue. It makes the whole world feel less grounded and makes it harder to navigate without trial and error.
Yeah, even though Skyrim has wagons outside the major cities, they're completely invalidated by the map-based fast travel system
Finally had time to watch, another great video! I love walking through vvardenfell and always go on foot to balmora too!
And thing is, it's only "slow", right at the start. You build athletics FAST. Like, don't make it a main skill fast, because otherwise you'll outlevel your gear and level up bonuses, and start facing WAY tougher enemies than you should.
Maybe it's just because I jump around a lot, but I barely level my athletics outside of training. It's dreadfully slow. Any big speed boosts I get is from acrobatics making my jumps go further, boots of blinding speed or mid-late game enchanted gear.
@@plebisMaximus You'd be even faster if you added that to a high athletics.
I started having a lot more fun in Skyrim when I started playing with the self-imposed rule of "only fast travel to and from towns and the main roads between them" another fun one for the early game is "only if I have a horse"
It's definitely part of what makes it great, and also (combined with the relatively small map size that is chock-full of hand placed details and the lack of map markers) makes the map so memorable. I recently installed OpenMW and played it again for the first time in like 15 years or more and I still know my way around; I remember the place names and have a mental image of where things are and also where the nearest temple or shrine is even without consulting any maps. While in Oblivion and Skyrim even though I've probably played for more hours (at least more hours in the last decade) in Skyrim; I barely know where anything is and I can't remember the place names of anything but the largest cities.
But I did play a quest mod for Skyrim where you're forced to walk everywhere together with a companion rather than chasing a quest marker. If I remember correctly the only quest marker most of the time was on the companion. And it really made me appreciate the nature more. Though it also highlighted how large and empty and same-y much of the Skyrim map is compared to the variety and density of Morrowid. Skyrim really isn't designed to be walked, so many roads are just dead ends and makes no sense for actual travel (not that all the roads in Morrowind does either, but they at least mostly connect more sensibly and have plenty of signposts that makes them usable).
The Boot of Blinding Speed and a 100% Resist Magicka spell come in handy. Also good to have constant effect levitate and water walking amulets/rings.
I also share your love for Morrowind. I started when it first released. The game is MUCH easier now. When I played the first time, they did not have a quest journal. I still have my spiral notebook (full) with quest details, who gave the quest, and where everyone is supposed to be. Man! Those were the days. Still my favorite game (over 1,000 hours - including mods). But that first playthrough would have have failed if I had lost my spiral notebook...... No one can remember all that.
Morrowind had a quest journal upon release. The trouble was that there was no organization to it originally. It was just all the quest updates you ever got in one chronological journal, making it pretty useless if you weren't sticking to exactly one quest at a time.
I had the habit of doing one quest at a time from Daggerfall when I first played Morrowind, due to Daggerfall's quests all having expiration dates so if you took too long, you'd automatically fail them. It made the journal more useable for me, but it also meant I was doing a lot of backtracking and return trips to places.
The original journal is pretty rough. Almost a straight port from Daggerfall, where having only a single active quest made sense, due to all quests being timed. Morrowind encourages completing multiple tasks in any given journey as much as possible, and the original journal just isn't up to the task.
These love letters to Morrowind are fantastic. Thank you.
(Geez, 680 subs. This is going to increase drastically I'm sure.)
I'm just happy to see my impassioned rambling is resonating with people :)
@@Takarias honestly it was more surprise because you seem like you've been at it a long time. Really nice videos, well edited and narrated.
@@CaptainBrash My first 'serious' attempts at something on UA-cam were in 2014, and I went hard into streaming around 2017. Nothing really caught on until now, but I had all that time to hone my audio and recording game. Finally putting my writing degree to use, too lol
"year of VIVEC"?!?! Your false gods will betray you!
I love that sometimes the UA-cam algorithm will present me with gold. It's a miracle that I would your channel with less than 1k subs. You definitely deserve more. Your videos are great. Keep up the good work. Also definitely keep an eye on the Wayward Realms game. It's made by some of the original Daggerfall devs.
When I first started Morrowind my PC was so trash I had to lower the viewing distance by a LOT. So much so, that I could not even see the silt strider while standing at that crossroads. So I naturally did not know about fast travel (I also was an inattentive child). So trekking to Balmora was to hardest and most fulfilling adventure I've ever gone on in a video game. I cannot describe the relief when I finally found the City (I got lost on the way too).
Thanks for the compliments! I put a lot into these videos, and these comments really make me smile.
I originally played Morrowind on Xbox, which also has a really low draw distance. I have a PC that can run it really high, but I usually keep it lower than i have it in this video. Just feels right to me, but I'm sure that's just nostalgia talking lol
Love these chill but deep videos. I am a 49 year old newb to the game, but so far I use a combination of mark/recall and the other temple spells to get back selling off and then return. It's not perfect but at the minimum I can dump a pile of loot on the ground at the temple.
I'm glad my vibe is clicking with people :)
There's so much to Morrowind that I still feel like a noob myself sometimes. That's the great thing about games with true depth
Today is my birthday and I am spending it in the bathtub with a bottle of wine watching your Morrowind videos. Sub'd, great work.
Sounds like a relaxing time to me!
I actually realized that the "preparation phase" is the most important part of an RPG while playing Daggerfall. It's the part of the game where a lot of your role-playing happens, because it coincides with the period in which you're getting quests and making important decisions. I've found that it's my favorite part of most computer and table-top RPGs, because it's a period of time in which it's just you looking at your character and shaping them into what you want them to be, or compensating for what they turned out to be that you weren't expecting.
I call it character maintenance, because what activities you do while recovering from or preparing for adventure vary depending on your character. The Elder Scrolls games, especially early on, did this really well, because the specific activities you undertook were tailored to your character class. Fighters rely more on their equipment and so need to make decisions about repairing and upgrading armor. In the older games, you have to keep track of schedules because armor repair takes time, which also means you need to have backup armor sets if you want to keep adventuring. Mages rely more on their magic, so they'll spend more time deliberating over spellmaking and trying to figure out how to optimize their mana. Thieves rely more on skills like dodging, picking locks, and sneaking, and so are less dependent on their equipment, but that also means that they take greater risks while they're out in the field. The tradeoff is that thieves are generally the best at finding and hocking loot, and develop something of a money pool they can use to compensate for certain weaknesses. And every character in The Elder Scrolls up until Skyrim needs to worry about some combination of these factors because of the nuanced class system.
Love these Morrowind videos. Greatest game of all time.
Loving the Morrowind videos. I remember buying a copy of the game and spending many hours playing on the family computer back in the early 00's, and finally beating the main quest. Still one of the greatest games I've ever played. And, yes I walked everywhere, I don't think I ever once used the stilt strider. Walking/running everywhere and exploring the world was magical.
Modern Fast Travel ruins immersion. It's all about instant gratification, and then what. What is left to do when you've gone everywhere important instantly, done "all" the fun, cool quests? Not physically traveling between regions meant you missed out on a lot of content that was hidden between the lines.
Morrowind did fast travel right IMO. You are limited to a few base methods, and that's it.
Almsivi/Divine Intervention is great as a portable "get me outta trouble" card, but also as a neat "slingshot" type of fast travel. You have to plan ahead where you need to be in order to catch the desired location during casting.
Silt Striders / Coastal Boats are nice for getting around local, well traveled areas, and cost gold to use. No gold? Start walking friend, you've a long journey ahead of you. Fair and balanced mechanically.
Mage Guild/Stronghold teleportation is quite nice in that it is limited to very specific locations as well, but is an alternative to Silt Striders. Furthermore, the Stronghold Propylon Chambers require extra steps to get them working, so they still feel balanced since you have to work for it. Considering them End Game FT methods is accurate if you're not speedrunning it lol.
To me, the fast travel in Morrowind is quite balanced for immersion. Oblivion/Skyrim on the other hand, pretty much threw that balance into the nearest Oblivion Gate and ruined things with the ability to just *Do It Your Self*. As I said previously, it's all about Instant Gratification now. Which really sucks when pretty much any game with FT does it this way now. No limitations. You can do it anywhere that's outside, as long as you're not in combat and there are no enemies nearby.
Now back to Morrowind FT though, one of the most useful things to do around early/mid game is to enchant your own trinkets with Mark/Recall and the Intervention spells. Just as simply utility items that don't run out (after buying the 60th DI Scroll you start to wonder if you've been investing your money wisely) But I also always recommend getting a ring and putting Levitation on it (even at one single point) just to get over those big cliffs sometimes, as well as something with slowfall, so you can use the Jump spell more effectively.
Above all though, my prefered method of fast travel in TES 3 is Icarian Flight + a 2 Second 1 Point Slowfall before touching grass XD
I also have many times elected to not use the silt strider in favour of walking, just to find adventure along the way.
Great vid! Maybe it's time to finally explore Morrowind.
It's certainly a trip and a half, and totally worth the time investment. :)
ENjoyed your video, subbed. I played Morrowind when i was a kid with my OG xbox. Didn't get very far with it, but i played a lot of Oblivion and eventually a moderate amount of Skyrim. I think I'll go give Morrowind another play.
It's old and a bit idiosyncratic, but there's so very much to love about Morrowind
3rd time you appear in my feed. Fine, nostalgia, you win! Liked&Subbed.
Haha, I do the same - I'll watch a creator's entire catalog before subscribing sometimes. Thanks for the support, and I'll keep 'em coming!
I am convinced that easily accessible fast travel is a net negative on the experience. It actively detracts from exploration and makes traversal more mechanistic. Same can go for minimap ,too. The more the player stares at them, the less attention is left to be spent on the surroundings.
I absolutely love the way Morrowind dealt with fast travel because first of all it is not gamey. It is not a click on the map but rather a sensible mechanic that exists in the world. Second, it is conducive towards exploration. And third, there are so many ways to get around faster, from levitation spells to potions of fortify speed. All those methods are, again, sensible in-world and make the eventually much quicker traversal feel earned - because it is.
Boots of Blinding Speed + Staff of Levitation is the best way to get around
Waiter! Waiter! More Morrowind videos please!
I've no intention of stopping! Though don't expect Morrowind to be the only thing I talk about :)
I first played Morrowind when it came out 22 years ago! I was very new to gaming and it was such a fantastic experience for me. I became very immersed in the game just because of much of the walking. And being a low level, new player, walking around in a foggy rather hilly and bleak landscape was exciting as well as highly nerve wracking! It's a feeling one never forgets. But I do admit to fast travelling a lot just because I wasn't secure in combat as this was my first real video game. And, even though I got to the point of having my own home with servants etc, I never could find the place!! Drat the lack of map markers!! LOL! This time will be different!
I just started replaying the game a few weeks ago and am taking a more measured and hopefully mature approach of playing by doing as much walking as possible. I'm enjoying your videos as they are setting a nice foundation for this playthrough. Thank you for your hard work. It is appreciated!
Hey, there's no shame in using the fast travel systems! Still gotta talk to everyone and take notes, though
Not a lore explanation but the silt strider between Seyda Neen and Gnisis was likely added to make it easier for new players to join the Imperial Legion.
You’re correct in saying that it makes zero sense in-universe but from a game design perspective it made sense to Bethesda in 2002, I guess.
Preparation is great, and I do enjoy actually walking places, but I hate doing it just to get somewhere to hand in a quest or going back and forth over area I've just gone through and know is clear, and at that point, limited fast travel systems are just time eaters and more uninteresting steps to check off. I'm very much a little of both kind of player.
There's absolutely arguments to be made in favor of both systems.
Only other game i've really seen done this in the same way is S.T.A.L.K.E.R Anomaly. In that game the main gameplay loop revolves around having to travel around the Zone to complete jobs without expending more on the resources to complete them than you gain as a reward. The preparation stage takes front and centre attention as you need medical supplies, food, water, bullets, repair materials, etc.
I really the narrators voice and the way they speak!
Great video as per usual!
Thanks for the support! I'm just glad people seem to be liking it :)
Here's my personal theory regarding the lack of a silt strider route between Balmora and Gnisis. Balmora's a big trading hub located near the fertile Ascadian Isles and in the still-sorta-fertile West Gash. A lot of food is probably imported there. Ald'ruhn is in the middle of the Ashlands, where no food can be grown. However, Ald'ruhn is important for security reasons, so it needs to be maintained. Thus, most silt strider traffic from Balmora to Ald'ruhn carries foodstuffs that help keep Ald'ruhn garrisoned and functioning. Hlaalu and Redoran are rivals, obviously, but Hlaalu benefits from selling its food to the Redoran soldiers on-guard against the Sharmat. Redoran might not like paying Hlaalu for this, but they feel duty-bound (and aren't too good about navigating financial or economic matters), so they just throw up their hands and deal with it.
Gnisis is also a Redoran town, but unlike Ald'ruhn it doesn't offer any benefits to Hlaalu. Plus, it produces its own food, so there's not much reason for significant trade with Balmora. Sure, there's the temple with the Ash Mask (and the Koal shrine not far off), but Hlaalu's not religious enough to care about that. Devout pilgrims can just do a stopover in Ald'ruhn if they really need to get there from Balmora. However, Gnisis does have a Legion garrison, which might explain the connection to an imperial port town like Seyda Neen. Basically, new troops and materiel get supplied overland from Seyda Neen (while Gnisis is near a river, it might be tricky to navigate or something, and does look pretty rocky).
So when you consider the fact that there are only so many silt striders at any given time, it makes sense that there's no regular silt strider route between Balmora and Ald'ruhn.
I never thought to consider the economic and political aspects of how the lines of fast travel might become established! This one's an interesting theory
@@Takarias You can actually see a lot of that political/economic stuff in the game. You talked about it some with how eastern Vvardenfell is much more isolated, befitting the fact that it's quite distant from the Empire's and Temple's local power centers. With the exception of Seyda Need, silt striders only connect to Dunmer towns ruled by the Great Houses or Temple. The Mages Guild mostly has offices in major cities (with the exception of Caldera--some people theorize that Caldera's office is just there to teleport mined ore to the Balmora office, since the Odai River doesn't connect to Caldera and might be too shallow for major cargo traffic), presumably both because that gives it greater access to intellectual capital and because that helps the Empire extend its power (another example, consider the locations of the big forts).
Even the town layouts and architectural styles reflect the values of their builders. A guy named Simply Simon had some YT videos on this subject. Basically, Halal towns are easy to navigate, which befits their focus on trading. Redoran towns are more insular and closed off. Telvanni towns are just extensions of their ruler's homes. And so forth. It's amazing how much the map's layout tells you about the world and the people who live within it.
Ok, you got me, I subscribed.
Its far from overlooked. Every morrowind playing videogame essayist has a piece on this. And the truth of it is quite obvious, videogames are ultimetly about the journey not the end, cos the end is allways the same you go back to the real world.
If you have Athletics as a Major skill, you won't have any problem with managing stamina while traveling.
By the way, I found a Daedric Dai-katana. It weights 60 kilograms and costs a lot of stamina per hit.
How to make it less expensive for stamina? I can only hit with it for about 5 times before I need to go to bed.
Yes. The prep phase. Understood you immediately. I think scrolls and potions kind of key you into this mechanic as early as sedya neen and balmora, because utility options feature rather prominently on vendors there.
I was prepping with potions that my alchemist's skill made quite potent, mixing various effects to improve my stats, but also to make my armament that much more lethal. For alchemy, you need to love gathering herbs and other products, which give a strong motivation to explore every corner of the map as they might be found only in specific places. Then you ne lol! infinite patience mixing, experimenting and learning in order to become proficient. I just loved this aspect of the game, and at first was totally upset to have animals attacking me without provocation, but I had never played a PC game before!
@@nct948 I know alchemy is very strong and easily slips into being exploit-y, but it always feels a little underwhelming to me. Mostly because of the wide range of poisons that can be made with absolutely zero way to actually use them.
@@Takarias very true. I had masses of clever potions that I never used! I just had them producing them. Poisons are very useful on spears, arrows and all types of blades.
You might not see this comment, but... if you find all the walking meditative, you're exactly the sort of person who might enjoy Pathologic. Like, even the original (in which case PLEASE use Reputation Survival and Disease Overhaul, it's how the game should've been from the start, like Morrowind that game has decent mechanics but botched the numbers). Pretty much the entirety of Pathologic's gameplay is figuring out efficient routes between places and adjusting as needed. I find it fun, at least.
FLY, CLIFF RACER, FLYYY!! SO VERY HIGH IN THE SKY! FLLLLYYYYYING!!
This is how I felt about DayZ. So many people complaining about getting lost and it being too hard to navigate. Bruh, just follow the road. Mastering the map is part of the skill cap.
I think the reason you can take a Silt Strider from Seyda Neen to Gnisis but not from Balmora is because Balmora has more Hills between it and Gnisis, there are comparatively fewer hills between Seyda Neen and Gnisis, so from Seyda Neen the Strider has an easier time navigating, while there are also hills between Balmora and Seyda Neen and Balmora and Ald'ruhn those towns are much closer to one another than Balmora and Gnisis
having acrobatics and athletics skill makes travelling a lot less tedious, since you actually feel progressing when you level up athletics and get little bit faster.
"slow travel" is usefull in this game because it contrasts very well with "efficent fast travel". Morrowind is an only game i can think off where literally every single thing can be improved upon as the player learns the game - even mundane stuff as walking (flying) across the lands
As you level up and learn the towns and are more experienced with the game you can mentally forge the fastest paths between two points in Vvardenfell.
Getting to Tel Branora from Gnisis as a noob is daunting task. But a short silt strider to Ald Rhun and mage guide to Sadrith mora and then a boat trip and you are there in no time. :D
It's such a unique form of mastery that they completely lost in later games.
@@Takarias Radiant Ai made NPCs in Oblivion move around. So finding one of the Surrille brothers that have a vineyard near Skingrad would be much harder without a quest marker on him. Gaston is pathing all over the place.
That's a good point I hadn't really considered. There's no reason you couldn't be told "[NPC] frequents the [tavern name] most evenings" or something like that. It would introduce a minor source of friction, though
@@Takarias Daggerfall's solution was to have a marker that wasn't visible to the PC, but that the NPCs you talk to could see, letting them say "I know the place you're looking for. It's a bit west of here." No reason it couldn't be adapted to "I think I saw him earlier today. I'd head northwest if I were you."
Daggerfall also had a much more comprehensive map than later games - you could place notes on it in dungeons and towns, and asking for directions would occasionally mark the destination outright.
I was a freshman in high school when Morrowind released back in the day. As a console peasant, I had only really played linear JRPGs, with very specific plots and areas.
While those games were very good ('Xenogears ftw!'), they were utterly unlike Morrowind. I had bought a physical disc of the game for Xbox, on a whim basically, and was entirely blown away by the freedom and adventure of it. As pointed out here, it's a game where one needs to put some thought into where you are going, how you're getting there, and how you're getting back.
Fast forward to Starfield.
I cannot think of another game, within the same genre and style, so diamterically opposed to Morrowind's design philosophy. In Morrowind, you could be going down the road and see a cave entrance to some place with a bizarre name, and wander in, and find something weird, but unique, placed within the world that ties in, in some way, to the larger setting.
In Starfield, they plop down the same half-dozen structures willy nilly and tell you to gun down the random people, because Starfield isn't a game about exploration, not really; it's a game about shooting down people by the dozen.
Starfield is many, many times larger than Morrowind, but there just isn't any *point* to wandering all the real estate. I hear they added rover vehicles now, and I just don't know why, when only a few places are worth bothering to see.
There are several asterisks off the back of this statement, but I actually like Starfield. For entirely different reasons than why I love Morrowind, or why I've come to appreciate Skyrim, but I kind of like it. I'll eventually make a video about it - my journal knows I've got plenty to say about it lol
Morrowind is all about finding ways to fortify speed!
Why is skooma such a problem in Morrowind? Because walking is so slow.
I really want TES 6 to reintroduce utility spells like water walking, mark and recall and maybe even add a system similar to the propylon indices. I'd like the world to feel worth exploring. Level scaling and randomised loot makes progress feel almost pointless and dungeons feel identical and if I can craft something stronger than the gift of a literal God why would I bother serving them?
Gear exists in a very weird place in Skyrim, caught between needing to reward the player for both exploring and crafting.
My first time playing, I didn't know about the boat services. Hated swimming because of the slaughter fish. So I levitated. Everywhere. My original Xbox version didnt like the world map and crashed whenever I brought it out. so i did without. I often got lost and flew into the endless space of nothing more often than id like. I learned to identify landmarks. Landmarks like certain cairns or a tribe of hostile ashlanders. I can find my way around decently now without guidance. It was great being lost lol
Few games reward being lost quite the way Morrowind does
No need for a “preparation phase” when you are chugging fortify strength potions with 110 alchemy and 65536 intelligence
You forgot to mention how the geography of Morrowind / Vvardenfell has its own distinct features and how you can navigate by those features. If I say "go to Urshilaku from Maar Gan", you already know about Foyada Bani-dad and its entrance. The stone ... menhirs or whatever. You know.
In Oblivion such features are rare and in Skyrim they are almost absent. Why? Because the game practically counts on you fast travelling around. Why walk when you can ... fast walk?
I think you mean cairns, which are stacks of rocks. Menhirs are standing stones. (And thank you for this delicious new word!) Oblivion and Skyrim rely entirely on waypoints on the HUD, and it's truly a shame. They're completely unplayable without them.
@@Takarias No problem.
Oh no, it's really 2024 and I've just now learned of the propylon indices. I played this game when it came out like you, and have definitely over a thousand hours, but no Morrowind Prophecies or internet to aid me. I really think it may be time for a replay.
EDIT: Regarding the silt strider route between Balmora and Gnisis, I don't think it has an in-game reason and UESP is no help in this regard, but it could be that such a route isn't well-traveled and isn't profitable, so services aren't offered. Mechanically, it seems fast travel options have a max of four destinations, and either Gnisis or Balmora already hit that cap before someone thought to implement that route, I guess. 🤷♂
I definitely stumbled upon the propylon network as a kid, but it was not surfaced very well. Definitely took some digging to figure out.
Drink Greef if you want to carry a bit more for your long travel
Loved sinking countless hours into Morrowind. While you're on a retro games kick, did you ever play Freelancer? Another 2003 alumni.
Never touched it. I was a console player until 2017, so there's an era or two of iconic PC titles that I have only experienced recently, and in pieces.
10:30 yay I made that
Thank you for your contribution to the community! It's not the most practical map, but I wanted to highlight it for its creativity and obvious passion
I usually put my mark spell right in front of creeper, i go through a dungeon and get everything i want, pile it all up in a central dungeon area and then when i'm done grab my 600 lbs of shit and recall to Creeper lol you're right that the ability to teleport while overencumbered is a significant difference compared to the later games, it's broken in fact.
I also love morrowind
Bethesda’s Fallout 4’s Survival Mode disables fast travel. The Supply & Prepare steps are crucial. And the fact you can’t save without sleeping made the trip home a nail-biter. (I always take Aquaboy to swim home, bc its encounter-free). Partway through your game the helicopter like vehicle is introduced. Toss a smoke grenade, and one take you to another location. What I like is that it’s a real time mode of transportation, which feels completely organic and immersive. (Even normal mode with fast travel use them; game time when you fast travel is calculated based on how long it takes to walk. But when a settlement is attacked, if you can get there quickly enough, enemies may not have spawned in.)
I enjoyed Fallout 3 and New Vegas, but every time I try to play Fallout 4, I get to the settlement building and just check out. Same point, every time. It just doesn't do it for me.
@@Takarias Perhaps you need the proper motivation. I spent a month doing a challenge run with mods that made the game harder. Permadeath. Survival. The key mods would be larger settlement attacks, and Vaultman, which enhances difficulty. Also simple settlers/ mortal, which makes settlers mortal.
Survival makes settlements desirable, larger attacks (15-50 enemies) makes defensive positions a premium, and mortal settlers makes your involvement necessary. And permadeath cranks everything up to 11.
It’s amazing what you’ll come up with when you have to defend mortal settlers getting attacked by an army, and you can’t die. Motivating!
Honestly, I think it's mostly the whole premise. I don't care about a baby I don't know, and I never will. Then I get handed a suit of power armor immediately and given charge of a town? I can't take anything in that game seriously.
@@Takarias I get it; to each their own. I feel similarly about other beloved games (a wasteland mailman getting shot is part of the job; getting revenge, and tracking down a mysterious poker chip, is in my mind a ridiculous premise).
I’d just like to make an argument for early Power Armor: it’s another entry in a long list of games that start you off with a Power fantasy, then take it away. A new player quickly runs out of Fusion cores (and 5mm ammo). Only a veteran can maintain a supply of fusion cores (even they run out of 5mm). But those elements (Power Armor, Minigun) along with Dogmeat, align with the philosophy of the open ended Perk chart; every Perk can be useful before leaving the starting city. It’s nice for a veteran to get their build going ASAP, and rewards their game knowledge. I agree that an RPG shouldn’t start you off too powerful (for that reason why I think Dark Souls 2 is the best souls). But if you need challenge, play on Survival, and Power Armor won’t take you far, and the Minigun, even less. That’s all. Have a good one.
This is handled beautifully by the game Outward
I haven't heard of this game before. Looks interesting, though!
outward def has some strong morrowind vibe
You GOTTA try Outward. It has the same vibes as Morrowind, and it's a survival RPG by default, with soulslike combat, and a very interesting way it handles magic. There's cooking and alchemy, which are NECESSARY for survival. And there's a lot of build variety thanks to the different classes you can spec into, up to 3 of which you can fully spec into using the "Breakthrough" system, while all lesser skills can be freely learned by all players.
It's an awesome experience that you should definitely try if you're into Morrowind.
@@Takarias that game is where they took the slow-travel and turned it into a core game mechanic, and it's so much better for it. It also has an interesting approach to how leveling and balance works too. i think it's got great world building with a great balance between environmental storytelling and exposition
The BEST way to navigate a video game is with a paper map. I looooove that my RDR copies have paper maps. I hope i can get Morrowind with a paper map.
If not, the UESP has links to many high-quality maps and other assets. Not quite the same, but I'm happy to call it authentic anyway
I always walk north and follow the odai river to balmora grabbing the flowers ajura needs and popping into vassir diadantatlatylty mine to say hi to the rats and atronach
Efficient! I didn't mention completing multiple tasks in one trip, but Morrowind definitely encourages it
Akshually, TES 3-5 are not up to scale. Taking their relative sizes on official map, morrowind has greates scale, then skyrim, then oblivion being almost 1:2 compared to Vvardenfell, from what I remember.
I was looking for this comment. Like if you actually analyze Morrowind's small towns and villages compared to Skyrim's, Morrowind's are larger. Also, Fort Frostmoth is in both Morrowind's Bloodmoon expansion and Skyrim's Dragonborn DLC and the fort is huge in Morrowind but super small in Skyrim.
My Argonian named Walks-With-Feet can hoof it across Vvardenfell in less than 30 seconds. lol
@@Takarias my friend told me I should have named my Argonian to Walks-With-Toes, but I liked Walks-With-Feet better. If I wanted toes in the name than Stands-On-Toes would be better lol but I guess toe related names only work in Morrowind.
I could have named him Can’t-Wear-Boots. lol
But I like the puddle name as well! 👍
if I ever see an Argonian standing in a puddle I’ll think of Stands-in-Shallow-Waters.
and damn it, ill stop in pelagiad this time around, and be disappointed at the shops yet again
Also now that im older, i do spend more time in the towns preparing- no idea why, but I will also probably forget to use those shield potions
It's fun, right? Something about the inventory management of games that do it well is just... good.
Long live the RP Walk
The algorithm is pushing morrowind and everyone on UA-cam is on the bandwagon 😂😂😂
I can't complain! Though I think Morrowind has never really gone away in the first place. It's just too special to truly fade away from the cultural zeitgeist.
The algorithms been serving me up Morrowtube for a couple of years. It's a huge subgenre! I'll never get tired of it, put the skooma directly into my veins please
don't fret, i'll watch it at 1.75x
I've always been of the opinion that diagetic travel in rpg games is preferable to find a location instant fast travel like you find in onlivion and skyrim.
The nature of open world games is a world to be explored and sure 10-20+ mins of walking for 30 seconds of combat can be frustrating if you have the means of preparing speed boosts proper gear etc you can actually explore and find new locations rather hone in like a homing missile to a location then going home for the next one to be more interesting.
Even more than that, it just *feels* more like a proper quest when you have to follow a map and maybe you end up taking a wrong turn!
@TakRathen precisely its why I actually quite like the frostfall mod in skyrim because it adds to that sense of adventure and planning around what you want to do instead of auto piloting to the marker.
Add to the fact that in the early game morrowind, there are several points in the main quest where you're encouraged to go out and skill up of "find trouble." And not all of it is going to be marked in your journal.
For example, there's a lost mine near the second fighters guild quest that has no auto journal notice that can lead to several different rewards depending on who you talk to. Or when heading out to the urshilaku camp, there's a cave on route that has some very interesting items, and you would likely never know they were there if you didn't go in the unassuming cave entrance.
Speaking of the main quest telling you to f-off and go do other stuff for a bit, is there anything like that in Oblivion or Skyrim? There's no natural points to take a break in Skyrim that I can think of.
@TakRathen to the best of my memory, no, not really. In oblivion, you're basically given the amulet and told to go find the heir before the tutorial area is even finished.
Sure, you can maybe rp reason to maybe explore the imperial city and pick up some gear and small quests, but the nature of the story has a sword over your head due to you just carrying the amulet because 1 the emperor has just been assinated and you holding it and 2 mheruns dagon is looking for new digs and that is not going to be particularly healthy option for you.
For skyrim, it at least least you out of the tutorial area, but the only possibility of a viable option comes with your chosen companion saying we should probably split up, which is immediately invalidated by saying that they have a contact in riverwood who then sends you on your way down the main quest. It then finishes with one of the graybeards giving a speech about being a hero or villain with all that power, suggesting you can now do all the other content. And given the scale of the threat of the initial dragon, we got a problem to oh no that's alduin the world eater we're all mega doomed the fate of the world kinds locks you into the main quest on kinda flimsy reasoning of you have more experience with dragons than anyone, which btw is patently untrue as the guard who delivered the message from the watchtower has the same experience of sudden dragon syndrome.
As a reference in morrowind for the main quest, there are two maybe three times caius suggests you go out gear up and get some experience and at least once where he suggests for the first sixth house base near Gnaar Mok that it's risky and I believe suggests that it's okay to take a step back and level up some more. Of course, those options only happen in the early stages of the game, and not to the best of my memory for the rest.
Punibi Yahaz has enemies in Balmora - so he won't take you there.
Source: I made it up
the NPC on the left at 9:07: 🧍
🎶 they say....yes nord...
I ask about cave troll.🎶
For me, there are 2 things that ruin an RPG experience: fast travel and quicksave/save button.
Morrowind handles the first one perfectly, making you "suffer" the encumbering problem but not punishing you extra. Not like Skyrim in survival mode (totally unnatural and, if you want only to travel on foot, just impossible).
Rice and beans
Breton, Boots of blinding speed, and CE flying and invisibility solved my traveling
hell no! what i most remember playing the game is the endless walking, talking & klunky combat system. it was basically like watching the star wars prequels 😴
Yeah, one of the mod packs I downloaded had the multiple marks mod included and it ruined the game a bit tbh. Will definitely make sure it's not installed next time I play
I've used that one before. It's awful convenient, but it sure is a big departure from the mechanic as designed.
@@Takarias it'd be nice to have one locked to a home then another one for getting around but I think I'd rather just keep 1 than have 5 or whatever the mod allows. You may as well just have a fast travel mod at that point.
But most of these games (Skyrim, fallout 4, I play modes that don't have fast travel)
I can recommend Kingdom Come Deliverance hardcore mode for a similar experience. Despite having no magic I think that's one of the few games that has managed to capture a bit of that old Bethesda magic.
I haven't played this game without the Boots of Blinding Speed in 20 years.
No. Slow travel doesn't make the game good.
The game being good is what makes it good.