Version 2.0
Introduction.......................................................................................... 4
Introduction to Version 2.0................................................................................................ 4
What to expect from this disk............................................................................................ 5
How to use this disk.......................................................................................................... 5
Notes:............................................................................................................................... 5
Basic plugin installation...................................................................................................... 6
UNinstalling plugins........................................................................................................... 9
Morrowind installation..................................................................... 11
Basic Installation and Patching......................................................................................... 11
Two Quick Adjustments..................................................................................................................................... 11
Official Plugins................................................................................................................. 12
Contents................................................................................................................................................................ 12
Installation............................................................................................................................................................ 12
Sound Enhancements....................................................................... 14
Sound............................................................................................................................. 14
Contents................................................................................................................................................................ 14
Installation:........................................................................................................................................................... 14
Game Fixes and Enhancements...................................................... 15
Fixes & Enhancements.................................................................................................... 15
Contents................................................................................................................................................................ 15
Installation............................................................................................................................................................ 16
Player Homes...................................................................................... 17
Player Homes.................................................................................................................. 17
Contents................................................................................................................................................................ 17
Installation............................................................................................................................................................ 17
Miscellaneous..................................................................................... 18
Miscellaneous.................................................................................................................. 18
Contents................................................................................................................................................................ 18
Installation............................................................................................................................................................ 19
Adventures.......................................................................................... 21
Adventures...................................................................................................................... 21
Contents................................................................................................................................................................ 21
Installation............................................................................................................................................................ 21
Visual Enhancements....................................................................... 23
Characters...................................................................................................................... 23
Contents................................................................................................................................................................ 23
Installation............................................................................................................................................................ 23
World............................................................................................................................. 24
Contents................................................................................................................................................................ 24
Installation............................................................................................................................................................ 25
Optional Items.................................................................................... 27
Contents................................................................................................................................................................ 27
Installation............................................................................................................................................................ 27
Utilities................................................................................................ 28
Utilities............................................................................................................................ 28
Contents................................................................................................................................................................ 28
Installation............................................................................................................................................................ 28
Hints, Tricks, and Help..................................................................... 36
Special Thanks.................................................................................. 38
Copyright............................................................................................ 39
Welcome to the Octopus Overlords Morrowind disc manual. What’s this all about? Some months ago on Gone Gold (www.gonegold.com), another of our famous Morrowind threads turned to the subject of plugins. People began comparing their personal lists. For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about - most games have mods that are played separately. They might change the weapons, add some new content, or fix a bug. Not Morrowind – its mods (‘plugins’ would be a more accurate term) actually meld with the game itself, and most experienced players wouldn’t dream about launching the game without a few dozen of their favorites. My own personal Morrowind installation currently includes 124 plugins.
A few people who were new to the game happened along, and while they were interested, they found the lists of hundreds of plugins to be confusing and daunting. Somebody asked “If I am just starting out, and wanted just a few plugins, which ones should I start with? Which ones are the basics?” Naturally, stacks of people jumped up and offered their suggestions. The result was, of course, another list of hundreds of plugins, which didn’t help anyone in the least. Worse yet, some of the choices were questionable. Some of these ‘basics’ would have had people turning their games into anime versions of The Matrix.
A few of us regular Morrowinders started talking and working up a new, combined list that really represented the basics, and included download links. Somebody suggested that when we finalized the list, they would download the whole set and burn a copy to DVD for interested forum members.
After Gone Gold went away and the community relocated to OctopusOverlords.com, I dug up the most recent archived version of the list and continued. By then, several people had offered to burn and distribute copies of the disk. Since I had offered to sort the list and type up the manual, it made sense that I would be the one to burn off the master DVDs for distribution. So here you are.
Well, it has been a solid year and a half since the disk was designed and presented to the community. Since then well over a hundred copies have gone out all over the world, and probably a hundred more have downloaded the compilation via bittorrent.
It has been long enough that quite a few of the plugins included have been updated or trumped by others that do the same thing better, and hundreds of new plugins have been introduced. It was time for an update. In addition, Oblivion is due in a few weeks. It is safe to assume that a huge percentage of the Morrowind community is going to migrate to the newer game, meaning that the current stable of plugins and mods won’t be getting as many updates in the future. Now is the perfect time to create a near-final version of this collection. You’re soaking in it.
This disk is intended to take you from ‘CDs on your desk’ to a fully updated, tuned, copy of Morrowind, complete with a baseline of plugins upon which you can build your own personal collection. The goal here was to create a master basic list of plugins that would appeal to everybody.
Some people like anime Matrix like games. Some people like a mindlessly hard game. Some people like every nook and cranny to be full of monsters. Some people like to find god-like treasure in the first chest they see and play Genghis Khan across the island. These are matters of taste. One person may love these things, but another person would find their game ruined by them. For that reason, you will not find any of these things on this disk.
You will find bug fixes, empty houses, tweaks, visual and auditory improvements, extra clothing and armor, adventures, and a bunch of other things, but great care has been taken to ensure that, once you work your way through this list, your game will be, at its heart, the same great game that Bethesda Softworks gave to us back in May of 2002. The choices are not unbalancing, and were chosen for their quality and stability. Once they are installed you will have a nice, clean baseline from which you can add your own, more personal choices.
If you are an old hand at Morrowind and its plugins, then consider it as a
handy repository for some of the best.
If you are new or want to make sure you get it right, then I recommend
that you start below and work your way through this document. In it, I will describe to you how to install
the game correctly, how to get the plugins installed and in what order, how to
select the right options, and how to optimize them so that they work right
together.
This describes the method by which to install a typical plugin. It will work with practically every plugin on this disk, and with about 2/3 of those found on the internet. For the other third, you’ll have to read the included documentation, although it usually just a matter of changing the directory.
Most plugins contain a file called either an .esp or an .esm (Elder Scrolls Plugin/Elder Scrolls Master, for the curious). The difference between the two is only really important to the plugin authors themselves. The .esp/.esm file is the core of the plugin. Some plugins also include other resources, such as extra textures, meshes (models), icons, music, sounds, and so on in folders along with the .esp/.esm file. Below is a typical plugin, extracted into a folder:

Within your Morrowind directory (by default this is ‘C:\Program Files\Bethesda Softworks\Morrowind’), you will find a folder called ‘Data Files’. Quite simply, installing a plugin consists of placing the .esp/.esm file in /Data Files, and all of the other assets into their appropriate folders within /Data Files.
In the sample image above, Wizard's High 2.0.esp would go into /Data Files, and the contents of the Icons, Meshes, and Textures folders would go into the folders inside Data Files that with the same name. This is generally simpler than it sounds – in a well-packed plugin, all you should have to do is use WinZip, WinRar, or WinAce to extract the plugin directly to your /Data Files folder, and all of the files will go right where they belong. All the plugins on this disk allow that.
After you extract your plugin so that the .esp/.esm file is in /Data Files, you need to tell Morrowind to use your new plugin. Run the Morrowind launcher. That is the screen that pops up by default when you double-click the Morrowind shortcut. It looks like this:

Click on ‘Data Files’ and you will see a new screen that looks like the one in the image below (although it probably doesn’t have the nifty silver skin). What you are looking at is a list of every .esm and .esp file in your /Data Files folder. You simply need to double-click each one you want to include in your game. A check mark will appear next to it, and it will be loaded the next time you hit ‘play’. Hit ‘OK’ and you’re done. You’ve just installed a Morrowind plugin. Only 149 more to go! ;)

Some plugins include several different .esp or .esm files representing different versions – perhaps a ‘hardcore’ version and a ‘lite’ version, or different versions for each expansion. To make life easier on yourself, I suggest that you make a new folder inside of /Data Files called ‘Other ESPs’. As you install plugins, move all the .esp/.esm files you don’t want into this folder leaving only those you want active in /Data Files. This will let you install dozens of plugins at once, then just go through the launcher and double click everything on the list (note that this is done automatically if you follow the detailed instructions below.)
Once you are up and running, if you decide to come back and add a new plugin later on, I very strongly recommend that you run TESTool, Leveled List Resequencer, and Reorder Plugins as described in the Utilities section later on. You don’t need to do it after each and every plugin, just once when you’re done, before you launch the game.
If you no longer want a particular plugin to load, all you technically have to do is run the launcher and remove the checkmark next to it. This will, however, sometimes cause all sorts of problems and errors. If, for instance, you have a plugin that includes a Mean Whatsit, and you save right next to a Whatsit, then quit and remove the plugin, when you reload the game, your save file will still contain references to the Whatsit, and you will encounter a horde of errors when you reload it, maybe even have a crash.
Here is a simple way to avoid trouble.
First, go into the game. Take your character somewhere unaffected by the plugin. The best place is inside a building that isn’t part of the plugin. Be sure to remove and drop any items added by the plugin outside of your hidey-hole before you continue. Now save your game with the ‘save game’ feature, not the quick-save, and then exit the game. At this point you should be able to remove the plugin without causing too much havoc. The idea is to ensure that the location you are in when you save doesn’t have any references whatsoever to anything in the plugin being removed. You may still get an error or two when you load – ignore them, resave your game, and they shouldn’t keep showing up.
Whenever you remove any plugins, I very strongly recommend that you run TESTool, Leveled List Resequencer, and Reorder Plugins as described in the Utilities section later on.
There are a couple of things you should do at this point to make the rest of this process a bit easier.

Right at the top of the page should be a heading that says “[General]”. Directly below this type the follwing line, just like in the picture:
AllowYesToAll=1

Save the file and close it. What this does is add a box to any error pop-ups that allows you to click ‘Yes To All’. This is important – when you are adding new plugins for the first time, especially if you load an existing save afterward, you can end up with literally hundreds of errors. This is normal – nothing to be concerned about. It is Morrowind saying that something that was there before has changed, which is exactly what plugins are supposed to do, but nobody wants to click ‘yes’ a hundred times to launch the game. This trick lets you click once.
These are all official plugins released by
Changes from 1.0:
None
Install the eight official plugins by extracting them directly to your /Morrowind/Data Files directory.
The following plugins are in this category:
Changes from 1.0:
~Removed Atmospheric Sound Effects: I've dumped this one, and replaced it with Expanded Sounds, below. The sounds are just as good, but the performance hit is significantly reduced.
~New: Expanded Sounds
~New: Voice Addons
1. Expanded Sounds – First, extract the
archive into /Data Files. This next part
is a bit more complex than any of the other plugins on this disk. Go to your Morrowind base directory and open
Morrrowind.ini in notepad (like described in the original manual.) Open the readme file from Expanded Sounds (in
your Readmes directory) and scroll down.
Note where it lists some items in brackets like "[Weather
clear]", and note the line under it (in this case "Ambient
Look for that same section (like "[Weather clear]") in your Morrowind.ini file (CTRL-F for find helps) and find the line that starts the same way (like ‘Ambient Loop Sound’) and change it to what it says in the Readme. Now do the next one, and on down the list. If you just copy/paste the part after the '=' the whole process won't take more than a minute or so.
2. VGreetings – Extract to /Data Files. You will want to select all of the VGreetings .esp files (there are six.)
3. Voice Addons – Extract to /Data Files
These files fix errors in the game, adjust severe imbalances, or make the game’s interface a bit easier to use.
Changes from 1.0:
~Updated No-Glo to No-Glo Revisited
~Book Rotate updated to 5.3
~New: Fair Magicka Regen
1. Ammo Fix, Bloodmoon Wolf Greaves Fix, CliffRacers, Fashionable Merchants, New Icons, No-Glo Revisited, Potion Sorter, Potions & Scrolls, Ring Texture Fix, Fair Magicka Regen, Unofficial Patch – Extract to /Data Files and check the appropriate .esp or .esm files from the launcher.
2. Book Rotate – Extract the archive to /Data Files. Check the .esp or .esm for each product you own (if you own all three, check all three.) A ‘Book Rotate Patcher’ folder in /Data Files will let you patch existing saved games to work with this plugin.
3. MW-TB-BM Text Fix – extract to /Data Files. Be sure to read the sections on TESTool and ReorderPlugins in the Utilities section, below.
4. TimePlugin – There are two files in here. 2xTimePlugin doubles the normal day/night duration, and RealTimePlugin sets them to real-world lengths. Choose one of them and extract it to /Data Files.
5. Wakim’s Game Improvements 9 – Modular – This one is a bit different. Inside the archive are eight different sets of files. Each set has a .esp and a readme.txt describing what that particular .esp adjusts. I recommend that you take the time to actually read each of the readme.txt files and choose those that you want. The ones you want should be extracted into /Data Files. Below are my personal preferences – I use them all except for the two listed below.
I do not use:
Balance – Game Settings (causes NPCs to run away when injured. It may be realistic but it gets really old having to chase every combatant in circles for five minutes to finish him off.)
Balance – Faction (I have actually started using this one again, but be aware that with it, the Mages guild will no longer allow non-members to use its teleporter service. I disagree with this particular feature, but like the rest of what it does. It also makes it much more difficult for non-mages to gain spells.)
These are empty houses full of empty storage designed to be used by the player. They don’t have any mega-loot, although a couple of them have teleport systems. Either pick the one that appeals to your, or install ‘em all and decide in-game. Note that the Balmora Expansion (described elsewhere) also includes a player home. See the Overseer in Balmora to get the goods on it.
Changes from 1.0:
~Removed Stonewood Hall. It has a few issues that I was never able to get resolved.
~Added Kahleigh’s Retreat
1. All of the houses install the same way – just extract the archives to /Data Files and select the corresponding .esp files from the launcher.
These plugins don’t quite fit anywhere else. Most add flavor or a few goodies to the world.
Changes from 1.0:
~Morrowind Comes Alive updated from 3.1 to 4.1
~Weapon Compilation Mod updated from v1 to v2
~GIANTS Ultimate removed. I've completely removed this from my lineup. It is just a bit too much - it overkills the idea. I’ve replaced it with Morrowind Advanced.
~New: Morrowind Advanced
~New: Morrowind Comes Alive Names
~New: Less Generic NPC Project
~New: Imperial Guards Anticlone
(Do 1-3 in order)
1. Balmora Expansion – Simply extract the archive to the /Data Files directory.
2. Necklace Pack – Extract to /Data Files.
3. Balmora Expansion Necklace Pack Addon – Extract to /Data Files.
4. Cait’s Critters Unleashed – Extract to /Data Files. Check only one .esp – the (Tribunal) version if you have Tribunal installed.
5. Daggerfall Book Collection, Imperial Guards Anticlone, Less Generic NPC Project, Morrowind Comes Alive, Morrowind Comes Alive Names, Morrowind Advanced, Curry's Recolored Armor Complete, Silt Striders are in Vvardenfell, Splash Screens, Suran Archery Tradehouse, Weapon Compilation Mod, and Vivec Expansion - Extract to /Data Files and check the appropriate .esp/.esm files.
6. Marksman Plugin – Extract to /Data Files. Select one or more of the options when you check your data files. ‘Newarrows.esp’ is the basic plugin. ‘Newarrowslite’ is a special version that removes several features, but is more compatible with other plugins (the methods I will show you later on should prevent any problems with it either way). Choose only one of these two. The other two are optional: ‘Areaeffectarrows.esp’ are just that – some area of effect arrows you can choose to include. ‘newarrows - crossbow realism.esp’ changes crossbows to make them much more powerful, but much slower as well. I recommend moving the extra .esps you don’t want to your /Other ESPs folder to prevent chaos.
These plugins add quests, dungeons, and other adventures to Morrowind.
Changes from 1.0:
~Abandoned well at Dagon Fel updated from v1 to v2
~Beyond