"Correct. Enchantments are a one-shot deal. You can't remove, replace, or modify the enchantment once you've finished making it. "

"Remember how Soul Trap works in Morrowind. You cast the spell on a creature, and then you have to kill the creature before the Soul Trap spell expires. Then, if you have empty soul gems in your inventory, the soul will be placed in the smallest soul gem in which the soul will fit. You can soul trap summoned creatures, but you still have to kill them -- and while, being in your group, they might forgive you a few hits, they WILL defend themselves "

"It's a power. You can only cast it once per 24 hour period."

"There are keys for lots of places, too. If you want to play the pure fighter with no security skills, and you can't find a key for a particular door or container, well, you're not going to be able to get past the door or into the container. But we won't put any essential quest items or destinations in such places anyway. "

"Anyway, many of the spell effects such as resistance or weakness to fire are additive in nature. By default, you have zero resistance to fire. If a resistance to fire effect is added due to your race or birthsign, that resistance number is increased by the magnitude of each effect. If you also have a weakness to fire effect, that will be subtracted from the number.

So suppose you have a 75 resistance to fire from being a Dark Elf, and The Lord gives you a 100 weakness to fire. You'll end up with a -25 weakness to fire. Similarly, if you had 0 resistance to fire and you chose The Lord as your birthsign, you'd have a -100 resistance to fire. Note that these numbers are not necessarily the final numbers you'll see in the game, but it illustrates the point.

Anyway, this resistance value is added in to the resistance formula, along with other factors such as your willpower and fatigue and the caster's casting chance, and that dictates how much (or if) a magic effect affects you. "

"there is a skill which mandates a base for how much chance you have to pick a lock, security. higher lock levels will - of course - be more difficult to pick than lower ones.
additionally, there are varying types of lockpicks (i.e. apprentice, journeyman, etc...)
lastly, lockpicks do have a finite number of uses, but there are so many lying around - many hidden, many not - that the issue of running out of lockpicks shouldn't be a problem. just don't expect to pick a level 70 lock with a security skill of 5 and an apprentice lockpick on your first try. ^_^"

"you need to have the lockpick in hand. but if you have a key for a lock, you don't have to have that in hand, just in your inventory. "

"lock levels will be displayed.

also, i don't test the XBOX version, so i couldn't say about how picks are accessed. "

"1) yes and no. you need to sometimes complete several quests in order to raise a rank. additionally, some skills and attributes need to be at a certain level before you raise rank. (skill/attribute requirements to attain the next ranking in a guild are displayed when you mouse over your current ranking in the stats window.)

2) to some extent you can. sometimes you need to complete certain quests before others will be offered. there is not one fixed way to complete all the quests, but often times you must complete X number of quests before the ability to raise a rank is possible, regardless of the order in which you complete them.

3) depends on what you consider a grand finale. for the most part the last quest is extremely difficult, but the advantages of completing all quests are numerous and well-worth the effort. (you'll find out when you play the game and do it yourself. i don't like to spoil anything.)

th-th-th-th-that's all folks! "

"well.. the lower your rank, the lower the requirements will be to raise rank. the devs have done a good job of making raising your rank take effort, but not on a herculean scale. (her-ka-leez, HER-KA-LEEZ!) "

"they can't be killed. "

"as far as the whole 10 square mile thing, it is "miles" on the scale that would be applicable to your character, with the average character being somewhere around average male height. different races are taller/shorter than others.

additionally, i have played the game quite a bit. definitely not as extensively as some of my colleagues, BUT i can say it is big enough that i don't like to huff it from one town to another all the time. (though sometimes it is pretty fun to stroll around just to see how detailed and expansive the environments are!)

it's REALLY REALLY big. i mean really freakin' huge. don't worry.

seriously. "

"re cloaks: there are robes, but no cloaks. and there are no hooded robes."

"already in game

its actually geometry with an animated texture, and a special type of collision set to kill you if you touch it "

"you can actually recharge an enchanted item without having to wait over time. or you can just hit the wait button "

"yes, there is a float script. problem is, you have objects on the boat, and npcs. in order to make the boat bob up and down, you would have to make everything bob up and down otherwise they would be in the air."

"No, NPCs dont sit. They could if we included a need for them to sit but there is simply no NEED for sitting. Sure, we thought about it; you walk into a tavern, see some NPCs sitting at a table, you walk up and talk to them. Really didnt do anything for anything. No different than them standing. Would have meant MORE animations and routines for them to sit, stand, fight, and even pathfind back to a chair and sit down. Woudl have called for a LOT of uneccessary scripting. I personally would rather have 20 more scripted quests than scripted sitting.
And nobody is "ignoring the boards" or "avoiding questions". We are devs making a game, not Q&A answering posts all day. To be honest, we are lucky is we get to spend a total of 10 minues a day on the boards. We try. "

"I think much of this is due mainly because of content, which in turn, equals size. Take Morroiwnd for example (I know you were waiting for this one). To create a demo, the game would have to be cut down DRAMATICALLY. Well, the game features the entire island, and in a demo, that is a no no. A small PIECE of the island would have to be REMADE and REPOPULATED. Basically, we would have to handcraft a complete new game. Just no time or staff available for that. I would LOVE to create a demo, and it MAY still be done, I just have no idea how and when. I think a lot of other game develpers have this very same problem. The more content that goes into games, the more difficult demos become. "

"I have a GeForce2 with 32MB in my work PC. While on a card with pixel shader capability, the water looks fantastic, the game is most definitely playable without it. The non-pixel shader water looks just fine, I think.

If you can't live without it, get a card with pixel shaders."

"The screenshots show cliffracers. They're leathery bird-like creatures. Their plumes are fairly valuable. "

"There will be a guide for sale... The Morrowind Prophecies to the Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.
SRP is $15.99."

"yes.

they look at you (if they note your presence) as best they can in many directions.
just don't expect any full 360° rortations like in The Exorcist. ^_^"

"----------
1) Do the clawed races(Kitties and Lizzies) get a bonus to hand to hand damage?
2) Can you fight unarmed while you have a shield equiped and block as well?
3) Are there a limited number of soul gems in the game?
4) Where are my pants?
----------
1) can't reveal all the secrets about the game, now can i?

2) hand-to-hand is two-handed combat, so no. BUT you can have a shield out with no weapon in-hand and defend yourself with it.

3) yes. but there are many. and there are several types. i can't divulge specific numbers, though. but it should be enough to keep anyone happy, while still keeping game balance in line.

4) hopefully some are on you, and others are in the closet/dresser or laundry pile."

"waiting, resting, and not doing exhaustive actitivity (combat, running, jumpng, etc.) will make the fatigue meter go back up. additionally, there are items/spells which will restore your fatigue."

"If you're doing the enchanting, yes you need a (filled) soul gem. And the available enchantments will only be the spells that you know. So you'll need to use Soul Trap to fill the Soul Gem (either through the Mysticism-based spell, or a scroll), and then actually enchanting the weapon will check your enchant skill.

If, however, you choose to pay an enchanter to do the job for you, you don't need to have a soul gem. You will, however, need lots of money.

Hope that clears things up."

"Why is there an unarmored skill?

It's called HEAVY armor for a reason. It's really, really heavy. Unless your character has the strength of an ox, he's going to be able to carry heavy armor, a weapon, and not much (if anything) else.
Granted, any character can improve his strength over the course of the game, but since mage/thief types would likely have other attributes they'd want to focus on, strength most likely won't be that crucial to them. As a result, heavy armor might not be the best choice for them, since it'll be quite a burden. "

"answer 1) some particular sets would be easier to complete than others. for instance you could probably have a full set of chitin armour VERY quickly after starting a game, but a full set of something like glass armour would take a while.

answer 2) yes and no. it's not like voltron where if you had 5 lions you could make a giant human robot, but if you had a FULL set of one type of armour, then it would (obviously) be in the same class as all the other pieces (i.e. medium, heavy, light) and would therefore maximise your usage of that armour skill type.

answer 3) for the ITEMS, no. however, as your skills and attributes (that affect the specific skill) increase, you will find that your character will use them more efficiently, and therefore more potently.

and is the JS remark a hint to get a preview of music he did for MW? nice try. ^_^"

"when you find an enchanted item, you know what its effects have been / are / ever will be right from the get go. there is no adjustment or alteration or modification to previously created enchanted items. if it's a 10-15 points of fire damage blade when you found it, it will be a 10-15 points of fire damage blade forever.

additionally, levels are not the case for weapons, it's more figurative. a super powerful weapon is super powerful now and always. and a crappy weapon will always just be that.

lastly, different enchanted items have different effects... sometimes they will have effects which you consider beneficial, other times not. and sometimes it's a mixture between the two. it's all a matter of retaining ideal balance.

hope this clears up any confusion."

"As far as full sets of armor go, keep in mind that some of the stuff is so rare, and so valuable, that vendors don't even carry it. The really good stuff will have to be found, and there isn't much of it in the world. It will be extremely hard to acquire, say, a full suit of Daedric - but the pieces are all in there, somewhere. "

"i thought it would have been understood with the "there is no adjustment or alteration or modification to previously created enchanted items. if it's a 10-15 points of fire damage blade when you found it, it will be a 10-15 points of fire damage blade forever. " portion of the post, but i guess not. ^_^

NO... you cannot re-enchant anything. whether you found it, made it yourself, or had anyone else make it for you.

the ONLY thing you can do is recharge an enchanted item with soulgems in case their magicka runs out, and you're too impatient to wait for it to recharge naturally. (though i HIGHLY recommend patience, as a good soul gem should be used to create an enchanted item, NOT recharge an existing enchanted item... just my 2¢ worth.)

hope we're an unmuddy lake now. ^_^ "

"in re: to the cold and ice spells...
yes there are frost spells, but no they do not hinder the enemy, just damage them. HOWEVA... you can use other types of magicka to slow down or halt your enemies. "

"They cannot wear shoes or boots because none are available for them on Morrowind. They cannot wear full helmets because of their snouts, but they CAN wear partial, open-face helmets."

"It should be noted that Morrowind's spell effect list is not the same as Daggerfall's. "

"The TES Construction Kit is a Windows program -- it takes advantage of Microsoft Windows graphical user interface software libraries. These libraries are not present on the Xbox, and Microsoft has no plans to bring them to the console. So there's no way the TES Construction Kit could be ported to Xbox without a monumental effort -- and it's simply not worth pursuing that."

"POTENTIALLY MISINTERPRETED INFORMATION REMOVED.

...the duration of the creature depends upon its HP, or - if not attacked until dead - the specified duration of the spell.

also.. there are CALM HUMANOID and CALM CREATURE spells which should probably stop an enemy from attacking. i don't want to say anything about control, though. can't give away EVERYTHING about the game, now can i?

also... enchantment is only placed on objects like clothing, weapnons, armour, etc., and NOT on creatures. however, some weapons and armour CAN be conjured, were you to have the right spell!

hope this helps. "

"enchanted items can have multiple spells on them which cast at the same time. (e.g. i have sword which does shock and fire damage at the same time.)

additionally, it should be noted that placing multiple spells on one enchanted item uses up a LOT of the enchantment space allotted to that object, and consequently also uses up a LOT more magicka per use."

"This is incorrect. A single spell can have up to EIGHT effects. So it is possible to have ONE spell that summons up to eight creatures.

The confusion here comes from terminology.

There are magic effects, such as "Summon Scamp", "Levitation", "Fire Damage", "Restore Health", etc.

Then there are Spells, Enchantments, Potions, and Wortcraft.

Spells and Enchantments can each have up to eight magic effects, in any combination.

Potions can have up to four magic effects. This is because ingredients can have up to four magic effects. You "select" the magic effects in a potion by combining ingredients with matching effects. Wortcraft is simply the process of eating an ingredient -- the first effect in the ingredient is applied to you (unless you resist it or fail a check against your alchemy skill).

Enchantments can be applied to clothing, jewelry, armor, weapons, and ammunition.

For more details, read my article about the magic system on the official website.

One clarification -- if you make a spell in the game, you cannot select the same summon effect more than once. So while you could have a spell that summons up to eight DIFFERENT creatures, you can't have a spell that summons eight of the SAME type of creature. I think this is what donutbringer was talking about.

You could, however, create such a spell in the TES Construction Kit, where no such restrictions are in place, and then load that plug-in. "

"Bronaus, once you've made a spell, you can't edit it. You'd have to make a new spell. As far as the exact cost goes, it'd be expensive to buy, and expensive to cast! Especially with any reasonably long duration. "

"DavidW, I don't know where you got that spell book info, but it's not correct -- there are no "spell books". Your spells are listed in your magic menu in the order you learn them. You CAN delete spells you no longer want to use, however."

"It increases the ambient light level. So while at night the sky will still be dark, and NPC's will still have torches out, everything will appear lit up. The spell has a duration, and turns off once the spell expires. For Khajiit, the spell is a lesser power. This means there's no check against your skill to see whether you succeed or fail casting it -- as long as you have enough magicka, it'll always be cast successfully. This also means that you won't get a skill usage for casting it."

"ok.. here's the scoop.

first and foremost, swinging at the air with no target will not increase your skill. you must come into contact and successfully HIT a living target. (no, walls, pots, rocks, etc do NOT count!)

secondly, the "level" of the creature being attacked does not have any bearing on the experience you gain using the applied skill, save the fact that nastier creatures have more HP, which means they need more strikes against them to kill them. as a result, higher level creaures will give you more points towards levelling up the applied skill, IN THE END.

lastly, it should be noted that when your skill is low, you have a much lower chance of successfully striking your target. so if you have a spear, and the skill is at 5, you'll be swinging for quite some time until you actually do damage and get a few points towards raising the level of the applied skill. but the bright side is this... the lower the skill, the fewer successes are required to raise it another level.

though one thing of note - to wrap it all up - is this: raising a level in an attribute that is not major or minor will not count towards levelling up your character's overall level. (though it's predominant usage between one overall level and the next will account for modifiers for the governing attribute. e.g. if athlettics is a misc skill, but you raise it 25 times between overall levels - 5 and 6 for example - then you will only go to the next level (6 in this case) after you have raised the major or minor skills the required number of times. BUT since you raised that skill 25 times, you will get a HUGE bonus for your speed attribute, as speed is the governing attribute over athletics... WHEW... DONE!)

hope this clears up any vague rumour or speculation. "

"you're not being a pain.
no.. the level of the skill determines your % chance of success.
usage of a skill continuously will cause its governing attribute to have a larger bonus modifier come time for levelling up your character overall.
it will be very clear to you when you play. "

"it's a gold based economy, though it can be called several things (septims, etc.)
when dealing with merchants of any kind in the game, we call buying and selling "barter". but one way to barter with no money to start is to go to a merchant and sell things to him/her, and then buy from him/her afterwards.
and those actions DO increase your mercantile skill. "

"jail appears just like resting, for the most part.
like resting, your screen fades to black and fades back in, telling you what detreiment has occured.
unlike resting, you fade in not at the same location, but just outside of jail.

speaking from experience (in the GAME ^_^)... avoid jail."

"if the crime isn't too severe, when they accost you you will be given a choice, pay a fine (which i recommend, if you can afford it), go to jail, or resist arrest and fight.
if the guards fight you, it's to the death. and unless you rock, prepare to have your booty handed to you.
oh, and resisting arrest and killing a guard makes your bounty even higher."

"1) yes... they're called clothiers. some have better clothes than others.

2) no... everyone starts with the same commoner clothes.

3) no and sort of... no capes, but there are bracers. (not exactly armbands, i know.)

4) no.

hope this helps."

"the clothes - by and large - are broken down by cost type: common, expensive, etc...

there are a FEW variants in each category, and you do not have control over the colours with a slider.

most of the clothes have some sort of design to them, and i haven't looked at all of them to know what's on all of them.

and yes, you could find the texture of a certain clothing type, and edit it in photoshop. that's why we're throwing the editor in with the game. (while nothing is wrong with the notion, we hope you do more with it than JUST become fashion designer!!!)

and it's insignia, since you asked. (ensigna minus the A is ensign, a low rank in the military.) "

"there are no cloaks.
nor are there capes.
at least none that i have run across thus far. "

"they fall to their death, with a cool set of animations (depending on how they fall, etc.) and their corpse remains for a while, unless you dispose of it immediately. "

"when you die a prompt displays the choice to exit the game or reload your most recent save."

"it was a slip... i meant to say ATHLETICS as athletics is governed by speed, and acrobatics by strength. sorry if i set some bad thoughts in motion... i can't correct the old post, though... sorry x 10.

anyways... yes, some races can't use certain armours or clothing. but if you want to get logical about it, what is the point of wearing shoes? to protect your soft-skinned feet. and seeing as how the two races in question have tougher skin or padding on their feet, why would they ever need shoes? ^_^ "

"i was the one who posted the NEXT TOWN info...

it was in regards to purcahsing of armour as whole sets or as individual pieces. anything taken out of context can look bad or misleading.

NOW... in the very beginning of the game, you are given directions to go to another town (the "second" town) as part of the "main" storyline. whether you choose to go there or not is up to you. HOWEVER, it should be noted that many people actually DO go there, as it's a much larger town, with more stuff to buy, more quests to be received, AND it's the next step for the "main" storyline to progress.

don't get worried, the game is as non-linear as they come, and nothing i have said should EVER give inclination as to anything different.

also.. i didn't post anything at a DESTINATION MORROWIND site. it was this thread.
scroll down most of the way until you see my lego guy.

i just want to make sure there is no conflict in thought."

"----------
1. in Towns, will there be people doing things in the streets besides walking around and looking silly, maybe street musicians? kids playing street games? six toothed bums begging for coins if they do the chicken dance backwards and for three repetitions followed by an oblong backflip?

2. Can I kill my dinner? in The Bush? and Cook in on a Campfire or in my House?

3. Will there be happy little rabbits for the slaughter?

4. Can I eat people, while they are still alive, in front of everyone, in the daytime, in the middle of the street?

5. Can I get drunk with visual effects to depict it?

----------
1) no.

2) no. but after killing creatures, you can take their "meat" and eat it raw. apparently USDA standards haven't made their way to MW yet.

3) no.

i notice some redundancy now...

4) no.

5) no. but if blindness is cast on you, then... well.. take a guess."

"The Tower is actually the one I use religiously. I dont play a thief character, but it allows me that added sumptin sumptin when I need find some goodies (Beggar's Nose) or need that free "Unlock" on a door or chest (up to a certain lok level that is). I find it extremely handy."

"They are located on the Mainland of Morrowind and want little to nothing to do with the area of Vvardenfell."

"well, considering the size of the team, everyone does a different area. dont know all the answers but i can make an educated guess.
ingredients (food, things you get when you kill creatures, etc) are probably no more than 100 polys.
clothing would be around 1-2000, depending on how elaborate it is. some of the robes are pretty fancy, with tassels and folds etc. and would obviously be more expensive than a simple shirt or pants.
since armor is broken down into individual pieces, i would venture a guess that they are about the same as clothing.
figure that characters are generally the most elaborate and then go backwards from there. if you keep all clothing, weapons and armor around or under 2500 you will be doing pretty well. remember, a 3 sided cylinder with a smoothing property applied to the faces looks very much like a 12 sided cylinder if its small enough. geospheres often work just as well as regular spheres but with significantly fewer polys. delete faces you wont ever see (you can always add them back if you need to). use your polys wisely, grasshopper, and have fun "

"waterfalls are actually created in Max.
HD was right - if you want different levels of water in a dungeon, you will have to either do it by makiing part of the dungeons geometry higher, or have two different interiors. water levels are the same outside no matter where you go. you would create a river by pulling the terrain below the water level "

"Funny thing I saw in-game the other day:

I was in combat with an NPC that was using hand-to-hand.
Drawing a throwing dagger, I backed off and threw it at him - scoring a hit.
I was rather surprised when the NPC threw it back at me. "

"A large chunk of the guide is dedicated to the quests. All of them. Where they are, how to do them, that kind of thing. Also lots of information on where to find all kinds of things.

It's been a huge effort just to squeeze in the kinds of things we think people expect from a strategy guide and still keep the page count reasonable."

"Here's what it would take to add bump-mapping to the game.

First, the 3D Studio Max exporter would have to have the capability added to it. Next, the rendering pipeline would have to be modified to display it. Also, we'd have to add options to turn it on & off, and probably add some hardware detection code to turn it off automatically if the hardware couldn't handle it. The TES Construction Kit would have to be modified so that texture painting on the terrain could also apply bump mapping.

Then, the artists would have to modify EVERY SINGLE piece of art in the game to include bump mapping information in such a way that it looks good both with the bump mapping and without it, and re-export all the art. They'd have to then re-paint the ENTIRE landscape with the bump-mapping features in the editor.

Then there'd be another round of bug testing all the various hardware configurations to make sure it works in all situations, followed by a significant amount of time play testing the game to make sure there are no areas that need to be re-done, no art that needs to be tweaked & re-exported because the bump-mapping either doesn't look right, or the non-bump-mapped version doesn't look right.

So I'd say adding bump-mapping at this stage would take, conservatively, at least 6 months. More realistically you'd probably be looking at a Christmas release.

What sounds simple is quite often actually extremely complex. Features like bump-mapping need to be incorporated into the DESIGN of the game, especially one like Morrowind, and accounted for from the beginning. And back when that sort of design work was being done, bump-mapping was a much more expensive (performance-wise) feature than it is now, so it was not included.

Look at the screenshots, and at the videos. If you honestly feel that Morrowind looks BAD because it is not using bump-mapping, it's your prerogative to buy or not buy the game based on that. Sure, it would look even better with bump-mapping. It'd be awesome to have pixel shader grass that waves in the wind and parts as you walk through it. There's a lot of new graphical techniques that now exist that would make Morrowind nearly photorealistic. But you have to design for those things from the beginning, ESPECIALLY if you're talking about a game like Morrowind, with thousands and thousands of art assets and a huge, continuous, hand-made game world."

"When you're invisible, your entire character -- including weapons, armor, shields, etc. -- are made semi-transparent. We didn't make you totally invisible, so you could still see yourself. When NPC's are invisible though, they're almost TOTALLY transparent. Makes them really hard to see "

"There's a huge number of auditory greetings that will be played when you approach an NPC, based on the NPC's race & gender, based on their disposition towards you, and many other factors. Other than that, there are a bunch of combat vocalizations that NPC's will say, again based on race, gender, etc. All NPC's have auditory greetings and combat sounds. Some NPC's will have far more to say."

"audio greetings - yes (sometimes nice, others... not)
audio during combat - oh yes (surrender your life and i will end your pain!)
audio during key events - yes
audio for no reason at all - sometimes

trust me.. this is by far NOT a silent or muted npc world."

"Morrowind was in development for over two years before the decision to make an Xbox version was reached. So of course the game was not designed from the ground up to take advantage of every single advanced feature of the Xbox. "

"Morrowind is a harsh, brutal place. Not everyone in the game is a stunny beauty (although there are a few attractive faces here & there). This to me seems far more realistic than if everyone in the game was some ideal god or goddess. Just as there are ugly, plain, or unattractive people in the real world, so too in Morrowind.

Personally, I think it gives Morrowind a lot more character. "

"No head bobbing (of which I am glad).
Your weapons sway slightly as you move around, and a bit less when you're standing still.
Your fingers move when you're in hand-to-hand or have magic ready.
When you see the game full screen on your monitor or TV set, I seriously doubt you'll feel the way you do about movement."

"just like your own character, weapons are hidden away, and appear when drawn. it's an efficiency with inventory issue, as if everyone had all their weapons visible in some way AT ALL TIME, it would greatly increase the number of models onscreen at once. and that's not a good thing. "

"sometimes npc's will follow you for specific quests. no one ever gets "hired" per se. but if you like the guy that's with you, well, whether or not you decide to finish that quest and have them continue to follow you... that's up to you.

but remember, if they were important and they die... "

"unlike many other rpg's money is not in ridiculous over-supply in morrowind. this is not to say you will always be a broke-ass, but you will learn very quickly that a good mercantile skill will help.
also... you cannot steal from a merchant and sell his own goods back to HIM. there is a way around this, but i'll let you figure it out. ^_^

oh yeah... one other thing.. having a good personality and speechcraft will help your mercantile a bit if you manage to successfully butter up the merchant before bartering. "

"there is no headbobbing. with all the hours of intense walking and running you'll be doing, your stomach will be thanking us. ^_^ "

"unarmoured ONLY goes up when unarmoured completely.

additionally, if you have (let's say) medium as a major, and the other armour types as MISC skills, but are wearing a mixture, you will have a hard time getting any skill up, because they all sort of work against each other. it is very easy to make sure that you are only wearing one type of armour, even in the beginning of the game.

so i would say if you can afford to get only a few things, get all the armour of one type, and leave the rest of you uncovered until you can afford more. your chosen (and used) armour skill will go up much more quickly. "

"every piece of armour when moused over (or selected on the xbox) lists what armour class to which it belongs. and i haven't played DF so i can't compare, but the VERY first tradehouse you go to has a pretty large assortment of armour. by the time you make it to the 2nd town, i am pretty confident that - were you to have enough money - it would be easy to load yourself up with your major armour class' armour type. "

"you can have as many independent saves/characters as your HD space will allow. "

"Some will be people you find on a quest. Some you will be asked to escort somewhere. Some will escort you somewhere. Others may be slaves that you buy. There are a variety of companions. You will not have access to their inventories. "

"All I said in a previous thread was that there were no witches covens used to activate the Daedric quests. There are still witches. Enjoy. "

"Okay, some quick explanations of some things vampire-related:

Sun damage for vampires is serious. However, there are different degrees of damage, based on the amount of sunlight received. There's still tweaking going on with this, so there are no final numbers. When it's done, it should do a hell of a lot of damage to you. Period. Traveling as a vampire during the daytime should be more than a minor inconvenience.

As I've said, it would be possible to make a regeneration-type spell to cast to help counteract the effects of sun damage. However, as I also said, it would have to be a very powerful spell, and would likely take lots of magicka to pull it off. This is nothing vampire-specific. It would be just as difficult for any character to make this spell.

There are currently no items in the game to make sunlight not hurt vampires. I toyed around with the idea for a while, but decided against it. Why? Because, as I've explained before, vampires are Really Damn Powerful. Possibly too powerful. There are some vampire-specific items in the game that will be more useful to a vampire than to regular characters. You'll find them as you play through the vampire quests.

Healers, wise women, etc. will not be able to cure you of vampirism. Period. There is ONE WAY to do it, and that ain't it. They may have information that's helpful, though. Once you are cured of vampirism, you cannot become infected again, not even by a different clan. There is a reason for this as well: becoming a vampire in Morrowind is most definitely a choice. You will have ample opportunity to not become one, even once infected with the disease, and the chances of actually becoming infected aren't particularly high. Therefore, the choice to become one (and subsequently become human again) should be a major, life-altering decision. I don't want folks to be able to turn vampirism on and off like a light switch. That said, it's really easy to fix that in the editor, and I'll be happy to explain how to do it once the game is released.

Please remember, once again, that vampirism exists on the periphery of Morrowind. It is not one of the main themes of the game. It is merely something to be pursued on the side of the Main Quest, Faction Quests, etc. Because of this, the game is most definitely not specifically tailored for vampire gameplay. Is it fun? I certainly think so. I think the vampire quests are among some of the coolest ones I've done. You may disagree, which is your fine. I would suggest you at least try them before tearing me a new one, but that's up to you. Would I like to do more with the vampires in a future game? Yup. Will I? Don't know yet, but there's certainly an infrastructure created to allow it.

Vampirism in Morrowind is not going to be the same as in Daggerfall. While I realize that this is a disappointment for some of you, there are reasons for it. Morrowind is a more tightly focused game; vampirism only narrowly fits within that focus. I hope that those of you who are interested in it will give it a shot. If not, there's a ton of other stuff you'll be able to do.

I'll try to keep an eye on this thread if you all have any more specific questions about vampirism that a) haven't already been answered a million times and b) should be answered. I still don't want to spill everything about what's going on with it, because I still think there should be a few things left to surprise the gamer. Silly me."

"I have never witnessed any slowdown in Morrowind on the Xbox. The framerate always appeared to be fairly locked and comfortable. I dont test on the Xbox though and from my few hours total on it, I have had no opportunity to really tromp far into it. Just remember, there is a big difference between a PREview and a REview. "

"The Xbox version is virtually identical to the PC version. The only difference is the interface. In terms of the technical specs and architecture, we are taking full advantage of what the Xbox has to offer -- much of the technical jargon is beyond me as I'm not a programmer, but I guarantee we are doing things on the Xbox that nobody else is coming even close to attempting, or would even try to attempt.

As for the framerate, I spend my days testing on both the PC and Xbox, and the Xbox is what is running a bit faster for me lately. The main reason is my PC is on the low end of the system requirements, though my geforce2 card allows me to push my viewing distance almost all the way out. The Xbox framerate is plenty beefy. "

"The pixel shaded water is in the Xbox version and it does look SWEET."

"i ain't wormy, but i'll tell you...

yes... there are sewers in the game.

and they smell.

bad.

probably has something to do with the ventilation."

"weapons arent animated, unless you wanted to do something unusual. there are scripts that can be attached to make things bob up and down in the water, for example. flags and banners would need to be animated in Max. as for having everything blowing in the right direction, the easiest way would be to line them all up in the same direction. otherwise you would have to have separate animations for everything to compensate for their position in the world
oh, and you could add reflection maps to everything shiny, but it is one more thing for the engine to handle, and is used infrequently "

"Not that this will be helpful at all, but since I have 2 monutes to spend here....

My work PC is a P3 800, 256 RAM, Gf3. I use shadows off, clipping distance about 75%, pixel shaded water on, 1024x768. My fps varies between 24fps and 48fps most of teh time. Choppiness and slide shows arent even a concern since I have never had any.

NOW! At home, I have a P4 1.5, 512 RAM, Gf3. Shadows on, clipping full distance, pixel shaded water on, and 1280x960. A few more optional details (unmentionable) set to high. Basically, the settings on my home system are balls out, top knotch. Morrowind runs at 38fps and up. Them's the grapes I's be makin wine out of's! Ya'll come back now, ya hear! "

"for verification... any race/class has the ability to equip and use any weapon/armour found or purchased. it is true that if it is not one of major/minor skills that it won't be as advantageous for you to use them, but persistence will allow you to level up in that specific skill.
it should be noted - however - that leveling up any skill that is not major or minor will not count towards levelling up your character's overall level. (E.g. if you had acrobatics as a MISC skill, levelling it up 1, 10, even 50 points will not bring your character up an overall level, just that one skill.)
BUT... and this is a BIG but... since acrobatics (using my example) is used by your speed attribute, when you finally do level up overall (via the major and minor skills) you would get a larger bonus towards speed, since you used that attribute so much (let's say it went up 15 points since you levelled up last.)

hope this helps."

"you can most definitely join the temple."

"after committing a crime, you are offered the choice of paying a fine, going to jail, or resisting arrest. additionally, an increase in your bounty - determined by the severity of a specific crime, or the quantity of overall currently unpunished crimes -will make it such that guards will become more aggressive towards you, and after a while will not even offer you the choices... they'll just fight you!
pay your fines if you have the gold, as aside from jail-induced skill detriment and guard fights, it will make it very difficult to do other parts of the game, which i'll leave open-ended for you, until you get the game. ^_^ "

"sunlight hurts any vampire character... standing in "shadows" has no effect. i just got done testing vampirism for the past hour. while it most definitely has disadvantages - being hurt in the sunlight is just one of them - you do gain cool things. some skills go up, and some new abilities are gained. it just makes for an altered gameplay experience.
i had fun with it.
oh... and there is a cure. just don't expect to find it easily! ^_^
hope this helps clear things up."

"don't hold me to this 100%, but i am pretty sure (like 75%) that when we offer the final release date that system req's will be posted. but to allay any fears you might have, i will tell you now that my work PC (i just use it for the TES and testing) is only a dual PIII 600 with 256MB ram and a GF2 with 32MB or 64MB ram (don't know for sure on the card.) most of the rigs i see you guys using way surpass mine, and the game is definitely playable for me.

and as a dev i suppose i am designated to answer q's just as much as all the other devs that come here. and we appreciate you noticing our committment to you guys. "

"the sound effects, like the other assets for the game, are identical for both PC and XBX. the usage of dolby 5.1 is a coding issue, and has been implemented quite well by mr bad pony... heh heh. sorry mk, couldn't resist.

while i have not really played the XBX version (for "official" testing purposes), i have messed around with it a little here and there, and it appears to me that the combat system is handled the same for both versions, albiet one interation with k+m, and the other with a bulky-ass controller. (thank god for the japanese controller!) "

"i should state that "playable" differs from person to person. i get a pretty decent fps - as in it's not herky jerky when i play, and i've never had my config cause any problems with usability, visibilty, etc...
NOW... if you are looking to have the resolution maxed, and have all options put up at max, and want 60fps at all times, you may be disappointed. but when you take into account all the AI, models, sound, music, etc, going on simultaneously in this game, i am sure you wouldn't be surprised that THAT wouldn't happen.

pong this is not. ^_^ "

"1280x960 and 1600x1200 are supported.
any card which uses DIRECT 3D will be supported (as far as i know.) "

"What has been learned about Black Marsh is limited. It is assumed that it mostly consists of tribal cultures, but actual first-hand knowledge of the area is limited. According to the PGE, the only humans who spent any extended period of time in the area were the Kothringi tribesmen, but they were wiped out by the Knahaten Flu epidemic. The author goes on to suggest that the flu was, in fact, engineered by the Argonians themselves. Always remember, though, the PGE is an incredibly biased piece of work.

Were one to explore the area now (and a few have tried), a completely different account might be written. It is true that the Argonians are a tribal people, but these tribes can rise as one nation to protect against invading forces. It has been said that entire Argonian armies, hordes of powerful warriors, have appeared seemingly out of nowhere. Where advance scouts had reported peaceful tribes of Argonian families, upon return they have encountered massed armies, coordinated under a single, unseen general.

An interesting people, to say the least. Are there big cities in Black Marsh? Possibly. The area, being less than hospitable for all but the Argonians, hasn't been properly documented. At least not yet. House Dres has conquered some of the northern territories of Black Marsh, so they might know a bit about it. Perhaps there are great Argonian cities beneath the swamps deep in Black Marsh, or perhaps in the trees. Then again, it's possible that they are, after all, just scattered tribes throughout the area. "

"There are a number of Daedra Lords represented in Morrowind, and they will still offer up the opportunity to get some sweet artifacts. No witches covens this time around, though. "

"pretty much. AI does have a big effect on framerate. so essentially, bodies that are always dead have the same effect on the framerate as does anything else static with that many polys."

"there are levelled creatures and levelled loot, but the story lines remain the same. that saying, you will need to be pretty advanced to finish most of them and many questgivers wont talk to you if you're below a certain level. "

"i have found playing as a high elf with the elfborn sign is the best choice for mages.
without a doubt. "

"My preference is for The Atronach. You get a 2X magicka bonus (so your total starting magicka is 3X your intelligence), and you get a 50% absorb magic ability. You can't regenerate magicka when by sleeping, but the absorb ability makes up for that. Basically, any time any thing casts a spell targeted at you, you have a 50% chance of simply absorbing the magicka used to cast the spell. (Note that this doesn't happen for self-targeted spells.) So you regain magicka that way, plus it means that half the spells cast at you do nothing to you.

And by the way, the birthsigns are named based on the corresponding constellation, but the abilities they give you have different names. So "The Apprentice" gives you the "Elfborn" abilities, while "The Atronach" gives you "Wombburned" abilities. donutbringer was referring to the name of the spell he gets from the sign "The Apprentice". "

"Yes. You can expect ingame cutscenes and prerendered."

"There are a few things possible here. Some dungeons have respawning creatures. It's a must in order to keep them looking populated and to allow the player to continue to level up. It wont happen right away though. It will take some time before creatures decide to repopulate one.

Also, bodies of the fallen will remain. You have an option when looting their corpse whether you wish to Dispose of their remains."

"we have it set up in the console testing lounge, and all i can say is...

DOPE FOR THE ROBOT!

a LOT of time has been put into how the sound plays on both the PC and the xbox, and i think due to the effort of the programmers responsible, no one will have any reason to worry. "

"Yes, you can do that. One thing you should know though, is that your character will not be affected by any area effect spells that you cast yourself. There's only two ways that spells you cast can affect your character -- 1. if it's a self-targeted spell, or 2. if you cast a spell that is reflected back at you by an NPC or creature. "

"Tanelorn, your skills increase "on the fly" in Morrowind. You only need to rest in order to level up. So as you're playing the game, you'll be running down a path and you'll get a message that your Athletics skill increased. Or you'll send a fireball hurtling towards your enemies, and you'll get a message that your Destruction skill increased. And so on.

Whenever you use a skill, you get "skill usage points". These are displayed in your stats window -- you hover the cursor over the skill in the stats window (or highlight the skill on the Xbox), and you'll see a meter that shows you how close you are to a skill advance. When the meter fills up, the skill is increased by one point.

As others have said, only major and minor skill advances count towards levelling up. However, ALL of your skill advances are accounted for in the form of attribute bonuses. If you use particular skills a lot, even if they're miscellaneous skills, the game keeps track of that, and you can get bonuses towards the governing attributes of those skills in the form of multipliers. So if you do a lot of things where Speed is a governing attribute, you might get a 2X or 3X bonus multiplier on Speed. Then if you allocate a level-up point to Speed, you'll get 2 or 3 points added to your Speed attribute, instead of just one.

Basically what this means is that ALL skills can count towards improving your character, so there is incentive to exercise even your miscellaneous skills :-)"

"Each ingredient can have up to four effects. When you make a potion, you try to match effects -- if at least 2 effects match, that's what the potion will do. Potions can have multiple effects, too.

As your alchemy skill increases, you'll be able to see more of what each ingredient can do. So when you're unskilled, you'll only be able to see one of the effects. This means you might make a potion with unintended side effects, because you can only see the first effect on each ingredient.

Certain types of apparatus can reduce this. Also, the quality of the potion -- how long it lasts and how much it affects you -- is determined by the type of ingredients and the quality of the apparatus you use.

And yes, you could have a potion of telekinesis."

"Yes, you can do that. What you do is you create the separate models as you mentioned, and you co-locate them where you want them. They're all disabled to start with, which as someone else mentioned means they don't show up in the world at all. Then, as different conditions are met, you enable and disable the various objects as necessary. This is how we handle the construction of your stronghold, if you join one of the great houses."

"The item will stay there forever. Although if the merchant likes it, he or she may just keep it for himself "

"Everyone should take special note that the screenshots on that review are using the non pixel shaded water. So all you Gforce 2 gamers out there can get an idea of how excellent the water looks even without the fancy Gforce 3/4 effects."

"Well there are a lot of people wanting you to do lots of things. And, because of this, you will undoubtedly have many quests going on at the same time. But the Journal in the game really helps you keep things straight... "

"The areas of Morrowind definitely feel different. What's funny though is that most screenshots that reviewers take are of the Seyda Neen and Balmora areas. Mainly because these are the places you are most likely to go at the beginning of the game. But, if you take a look at the wallpapers (which are in-game shots) you can tell there is quite a bit of variety in the game. "

"Vanity mode is a little slicker now than it was then. It's still a script-function/screen-saver, but there's also a trick that'll let you rotate the camera around your character., zoom, pitch, etc. while you're playing (both P.C. and XBox.) The P.C. folk can even take glamour shots "

""That doesn't really answer the question does it?"

In slightly less than a nutshell, it really sorta does.

"The PC user has the ability to adjust certain aspect of their display settings whereas the Xbox user does not. Do we assume that the Xbox is set at the highest visual settings (with the exception of resolution)?"

The highest possible setting for the Xbox is the best we can do. What these settings are, are not relative to the PC since the PC user can adjust it accordingly. Can the Xbox use the highest settings that the PC can? No. Not much can be done about that. That's console design at work. But, Morroiwnd for the Xbox is still quite impressive for it's limited resolution.

Is AA enable on the Xbox version?"

Alcoholics Anonymous? I sure hope Morrowind doesn't push people to drink.

"Is the texture quality maxed?"

The texture quality IS maxed, as per what we can get maxed to work on the Xbox. Remember, this is an RPG, not a shooter, so there are are ton more textures being loaded into memory.

"Is the view distance maxed?"

If you mean maxed as in what the highest clip setting is on PC, once again, it is not relative. We aren't talking 2 different computers here. We are actually talking about a PC and a console. Being console, there are always some limitations.

"Is the Xbox achieving a framerate equivalent to a high end PC setup?"

I guess I will be the first to touch this can of worms. I don't know actual numbers but from my limited playtime on the Xbox version, it feels fine, and in some instances faster. Remember, we are talking about "1" console compared to near infinate numbers of setups for PCs. A high end PC setup plays it fast just as well. Do remember, an RPG does not rely on speed like a shooter or a driving/flight sim. Of course, we don't want the game to run like a slide show either, and it doesn't. Not on the Xbox or high end PCs. (for all you lower end PC users, dont let this scare you. I have played on a mid range pc a LOT and it works great. I even have the Nvidia water effects!)

"These are the real questions that need to be addressed."

So demanding! Are you sure you aren't Todd or Matt?"

"I cant shed much light on the topic of Xbox screens since I dont test that. The screens I take are PC shots. I have done a LOT of visual CG work before games though, and I know well, that when imaging anything from tv, you WILL lose some detail. ANYTHING from tv to a PC WILL lose detail. Remember, what you are seeing is an image taken in 640X480, the you are veiwing it on a monitor, up to, most likely 1024X768. Also, the saved image itself, whether it be a bmp or a jpg, will lose quality. Such as life.
Now, I have seen and played Morroiwnd on the Xbox here, and I am still stunned. Visual continuity doesnt even ring a bell in my head. It looks just as good to me. I never even actually thought about a difference until posts like this started. I have even gone back again, yesterday even, and looked at the Xbox version. Still doesnt strike me as looking different. "

"No textures have been changed for the Xbox. The guards in the PC version will wear the very same thing the Xbox gurads are weaing. There are multiple sets of Imperial armors so you are just comparing 2 different ranking guards. Dont worry, its all good.

By the way, many of those pics for the Xbox appear to be washed out a lot too. That is cause gamma settings were set high and the pics may have been lightened up for web use. This much is apparent after seeing many of the OUTSIDE shots. Plus, I just played the Xbox version here for about 1/2 hour. Seemed perfectly good to me. The speed was excellent and the visuals were zesty. As a matter of fact, I think I am gonna bang on Todd's head and see if I can get an Xbox version of it to test at home. Give me something to test in my part time status.

PS- YES! Do remember, what many are stating already, that loading everything into the allotted 64 megs for the Xbox has been a challenge. There has been quite a deal of optimising and compressing to squeeze it all in. No easy task. "

"Training costs are not negotiable. "

"Nope, the crosshair can be toggled on or off. Comes in MOST handy for missile weapons. You WILL want it at that point."

"I'm not saying this is what happened, because I'm not sure in the case of those screenshots... but, many times when you take screenshots in Morrowind, you use the debug console to toggle the collision off. This allows you to fly up into the sky and get a better overhead shot of a town or something else (like that Balmora shot the website features). BUT, when you do this NPC's can fall through bridges, walk through walls, etc. Even after you turn the collision back on they can get stuck inside the walls or bridges. A normal person playing the game won't be toggling collision on and off so they probably won't see this problem.

So it is possible that this is what happened and the guard got trapped under the bridge because the guy doing the article was fiddling with the console settings.

I've played the game a lot and I've never seen the Seyda Neen guard get stuck under the bridge like that."

"no you don't type out questions to get responses from NPC's. You select keywords in the dialog menu to get more information."

"1: dont know exactly. havent tried. there is a sun damage spell you can give yr character. this may do the trick (answer provided by BlueDev)
2: no, they dont light up from outside. they are all clouded over so you wouldnt probably see light anyway"

"the construction set that will be available to the public is the same one we used to make the game so there will be no beta testing. it will ship with the game, and was created from scratch for morrowind"

"no you cant"

"There are at least a few time-sensitive quests. I'm not a huge fan of them in general, but they made sense in a couple of instances. If you were to slow down game time, it would be a cheat for these quests. At leasts on the quests I've done, the time issue isn't huge, so you shouldn't need the cheat. "

"Walk up to them and click on them. Then choose from whatever topics they have available. Of course, some folks will start conversations with you, whether you want them to or not. Speechcraft will affect your ability to admire, intimidate, and taunt the person to whom you are speaking. Raising an NPC's disposition will often open up new dialogue pathways, or cause them to divulge important information. "

"There is NO Paladin class in Morrowind that is PREmade. Custom creating one is the option here. Probably better that way since everyone has an idea of what they want their Paladin's attributes and skills to be. I have talked to quite a few folks online and they all see their Paladin class as being something TOTALLY different. I seem to think that most hardcore gamers will create a class of their own, regardless their character mission anyways. "

"Ah yes, the dragons. I like dragons myself and would love to have them in the game BUT, there are environmental reasons for not having any dragons. I know I stated this once before, but, since it was a while ago, I'll throw it out there for old time's sake.

As "D&D" would have it, many red dragons are usually found near volcanic regions. Well, that being D&D and this being TES, we strive to be original. The outcats of fantasy, if you will. Well, there is still no reason that dragons cannot be located in volcanic regions in TES, but Vvardenfell is much different an many regards. Dragons are extremely rare and Tamriel, and most of the known ones are protected by and used by the Imperial Legion. Many dragons may even be seen throughout Cyrodil. As you may remember, a dragon was called upon by Lord Richton to put an end to the Redguard rebellion in Stros M'kai. Wild dragons are rare indeed. And in the case of Vvardenfell, there would be no wild dragons in or surrounding the volcano for many reasons. One, the blight. Dragons are not ignorant creatures and would know to avoid the blight at all costs. It WILL affect them too, as it does most creatures, including humanoids. Two, ashstorms. A little tough to breathe and navigate through an ashstorm. Three, cliff racers. You may remember the movie "Pitch Black", where the nocturnal creatures portrayed devoured every living thing around. Well, cliff racers are much the same and exist on large quantities. It is rumored that the cliff racers may have become the dragon's natural enemy, and either devoured them all or drove them out. And the cliff racers not being nocturnal creature, makes them that much more ferocious. These things were thought of LONG before development so dragons were not part of the design. They were not excluded for AI or pathing reasons, nor the fact that they would be overwhelmingly huge.
I do second the fact that dragons would rule, but, maybe there will be a place for them in the next title. "

"Those are all from a build that's at least a few months old. The "dashboard" -- the mini version of the user interface -- has changed significantly since these images were taken, and there are a number of other differences as well. "

"And don't forget. Losing limbs and decapitation is a double-edged sword. It's fine until creatures start using the same thing on you."

""Less detail"?!? Give me a break. You'd be hard-pressed to find many games that are MORE detailed than Morrowind.

We didn't include dismemberment because we didn't feel it added enough to the game to make it worth the effort. I don't know why it is that some people think that every game has to have every feature conceivable or it's a failure in some way. Would you rather we had kept the random dungeon & town scheme of Daggerfall, so that we could have spent time on things like decapitation and dismemberment?

Every design decision is carefully weighed -- how does it add to the gameplay experience, how much time is it going to take to implement it, what are we going to have to sacrifice in order to fit it in, is it going to break something ELSE in the game, etc. Dismemberment didn't make the cut. It simply wasn't important enough to warrant the time necessary to add it to the game.

If Morrowind was a hack & slash dungeon crawl, then yes, it would probably have had a lot more gore, gibs, dismemberment, etc. But it's a much deeper, more involved game than that. This doesn't mean the game isn't brutal -- the island of Vvardenfell is a tough place filled with all sorts of murderous monsters and evil NPC's. Just because we didn't give you the ability to hack off a limb or decapitate someone doesn't diminish that fact. "

"Neojin, no, but there are keys to cycle between spells (as well as keys to cycle between weapons) and you can assign hot keys to different functions. "

"You can, in fact, set it up so that creatures will drop random loot. The easiest way to do it is using leveled lists; you just put all the items you want to potentially drop in a single list, give it a percent chance of dropping something, and then add that list to the creature's inventory. If you want multiple objects to drop off a single creature, just increase the number of times the leveled list appears in his inventory. You can even set it so that if a creature drops 5 items, they're either 5 of the same item or 5 random items. And then, on top of all that, you can set it so that the items picked from change depending on the player's level.

There's a lot of felxibility in the system - it's really pretty cool. "

"See, now I thought it was just because of your sheer incompetence. Silly me. For the record, it works now. So get me my coffee!!!!

On another note, I thought it was kind of funny that everyone answered something different as well. We don't actually see each other's answers before they're published (well, Pete does, but we know he doesn't really count). Good to see people are enjoying different aspects of the game.

The vampire pic was a surprise for me. It's definitely a dark elf. I wish the detail were a little better on it--they're pretty scary looking up close. Especially nasty b/c you probably won't realize they're vampires until you're up close...and then it's a bit too late. "

"The easiest way is to just take the existing texture of *insert object here* and open it up in *paint program of you choosing* and modify it. It works much like the old Quake days. Be sure to back up all the textures you modify though. "

"The second box that says "texture" is for the Icon that is in the game, not for the texture of the 3D model for that item. "

"No, there are no taunts and worthless other animations. It doesnt pay to dance in front of a nix hound or to wave at a Dremora. The things have little to no game value unless you just wanna be silly in a MMPOG. Even when I played DAoC, it was only funny the first time I did it. Then, well, it was quite useless.
So, summing up, none of that stuff. No gameplay value whatsoever."

"1. "Are there puzzles or riddles in the dungeons that will take knowledge learned elsewhere in the game to solve?"

Yes.

2. "Are there a few dungeons that will have areas that are unaccessible because I don't have the right stats or abilities?"

Yes.

3. "Are there dungeons that require real world smarts? Things like mathematical riddles, word puzzles, etc."

No real world smarts needed. We realise there are some fans who cant count, may not have all their limbs to count on, or simply do not believe in numbers, so we didnt get into that.

4. "Are there dungeons that are invisible or concealed unless you have a certain item, or piece of knowledge? The entrance is sealed unless you are on a specific quest, etc."

There are many secret locations. Some may require certain items to proceed.

5. "Are there Dungeons that are protected by factions or houses?"

Not necessarily, but at the same time sorta. There ARE areas that are protected by certain folks, but I cant any of that away. You must figure this out on your own. "

"Quick answer: yes.

You can't pull land up to make it float, but you could create a "floor" using rocks. And, yes, there is something like this--the prison over Vivec. Enjoy building your castles in the sky."

"you will need to make sure the .ini file is set to allow for screenshots. after that you just print screen and it saves in your morrowind folder "

"er, no. actually its eight creatures per summon spell. remember, though, that the more powerful your spell the more it costs, unless youre cheating.
so you could make spell "summon beastie 01" which summons 8 creatures and a spell "summon beastie 02" which summons another 8. then fire one off after the other (assuming infinite magicka) and you would have 16 summoned creatures. so, assuming infinite magicka and infinite duration, you could have a pantload of critters around at one time. oh, and this is also assuming infinite framerate.

you should be able to find more stuff about this if you do a search
have a lovely day "

"1-npcs will follow you till the end of time. they will follow you across the world, through load doors, into dungeons, etc
2- a monster will follow you across cells. when i say cells, i am referring to an invisible grid that stretches across the world. monsters will not follow you out of a dungeon or through a load door
3- the npc that is following you will attack whatever is attacking you. however, if he gets in the way of your attack, he will turn on you.
4-see # 3
you're most certainly welcome
have a lovely day "

"----------
1:Is there head leaning in the game? I haven't seen any reports of it, or screenshots, but curious nonetheless for those sneaky thief-types.

2:Concerning Inns and sleeping in towns, is the only safe place to sleep in Inns's/Taverns? OR will any abondoned house you see suffice? Likewise, will the guards hassle you or even take you in for loitering or attempting to sleep within or too close to a town?

3:It seems all of the important dungeon entrances that are quest related will have doors to them. Is this correct in guessing that many dungeons are not seamless parts of the world, but interiors like insides of buildings? For example, I will have to load to go into dungeons and not be able to seamlessly walk from the outside into a dungeon/cave I spot, correct? (IE- there are doors for dungeons)

4:How will quaffing potions work during combat? Will you have to disengage, unequip your weapon, drink your potion, and re-equip your weapon -or- will there be a hotkey ala Diablo or other games that when pressed has you drink said/linked potion?

5:On the subject of alchemy, will mixing of ingredients have to be done with beakers, vials, alembus (sp?), and specifically done in controlled areas such as alchemy labs or wizard towers, or can they be done in the field?

6:Will any sort of enchanting of bows and crossbows favor combat at all, or is it only the projectile (arrow, bolt, throwing knife/star) that has any impact at all? If so, what will be the benefits of say a daedric bow over a chitin one?

7:Are trees (specifically those large braches I see) considered solid objects, or are they pass-through (non-collision). IE-Can you say, levitate on to one of those braches and stay there?

8:Will there be a haste-type spell in the game?

9:Will monster attacks interrupt spell-casting or missle attacks such as using a bow/xbow?
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1) No.

2) You can sleep anywhere, as long as there's nothing around that want's to kill/eat you. In town you'll have to find a bed/cot/other sleeping apparatus.

3) Dungeons are interiors by definition. Though a door in Morrowind doesn't have to look like a door on a house.

4) You can quaff a potion from the inventory menu without un-equiping anything. You can also hot-key inventory items (including potions).

5) Various alchemical equipment is required to create potions. You can use the equipment anywhere, as long as you are not in combat.

6) You can enchant either.

7) Just the other day I managed to get a Khajiit mage stuck in a tree with a levitate spell. I could only cast it once and the fall would have killed me.

8) There will be many spells that you could consider "haste-type" spells.

9) Sometimes."

"There is some random scribble of daedric about in the world. None of it is made so that you MUST read it. Including teh scrolls as MS FD said. Some could be interesting to read, some could be nothing great, and some could include a secret dev message. Who knows "

"The name of the scroll appears in English (or another localized language) in the popup info about it. But if you drop a scroll on your character in the inventory window, the scroll will appear on the screen and you can read the Daedric text. It's just like books -- the popup will tell you the title of the book, but if you 'equip' the book you can actually read the contents.

Also, the name of the scroll appears in your magic menu. (for example, "Scroll of Divine Intervention"). "

"Hypnotikk, you can always go to menu mode, click on the mini map to bring up the map window, set it to whatever size you want, and then "pin" it on the screen so that it remains visible while you're walking around. You can do the same with any of the menus. The 'dashboard' is meant as a minimal size display, to take up as little space as possible while still conveying enough info. "

"Yes, there is an area hit on characters. This is so that PIECES of the character's armor may be damaged. You get hit in your chest a lot, you cuirass takes damage and your hp only get a %. If you are fully armored except for your thighs and you get hit there, your legs take full damage without the armor -%. I say I say, you get what I'm saying boy? Listen to me when I'm talking to you. That boy's got the attention span of a box of hair.... and then some. "

"You can take it all. Of course, the undies stay on. "

"The Xbox simply cannot work with the editor. Lack of console program resources, mouse, and keyboard. Would have been cool though. "

"Of course, typing out scripts, dialogue and other text heavy things with an on-screen keyboard would have been quite a challenge. "

"Many of the load time feel instantaneous. Larger dungeons and such may take a whole 3-5 seconds. If you ask me, it is SO worth the extra clutter and detail added. "

"Yep, plenty of that. Watch out for those bandit camps out in the wilderness too. "

"You get "points" and you can spend them on whichever attributes you want. The attributes whose skills you've used the most can be raised more for the same number of "points." "

"Well, you COULD build interiors in the outside world if you wanted, but too much of that type of thing would probably bog the framerate WAY down.

I would imagine, though, as technology advances, games in the coming years will be able to have seamless and detailed worlds with working windows. "

"if you have an NPC following you, and a monster attacks, it will defend you "

"each spell can have 8 parts to it. therefore you can make a summon spell that summons 8 creatures. however, when you cast it again, it will replace the existing creatures so you still have 8. the more critters running around, the slower the framerate. "

"no bump mapping. the bricks look like that cuz we are some kick ass artists! (shameless selfpromotion)
environment mapping takes way too much memory so it is used extremely sparingly.
"noise" filter as seen in Max (assuming that's what youre referring to) is not, i believe, supported by NetImmerse although i would have to wade through the docs to verify, which i dont feel like doing. just smile and nod your heads and say "yes, smudge you are right" "

"Nope. You can't look through windows."

"Sorry. Looking into a window and seeing what's on the other side would mean we would have to load the interior cell of that house, building, whatever.

We are trying to put an end to the whole Peeping Tom business. I think this is a great start. "

"They won't be OPEN, but they may be UNLOCKED. "

"Yep, sure can. The name of the save game will default to some description of the save-game, but you can fill in whatever you'd like. "

"When you highlight a saved game in the load screen, there's a popup that has a screenshot taken when you saved, your character's name, and the date & time of the save. Pretty sweet!"

"When you save a game you are given the opportunity to rename the save to anything you like. When you load a game the name you entered will be displayed along with a screenshot of the game at the point that you saved. There is a virtual keyboard (the same used for entering your character's name) that allows you to input the name. "

"No, you can't script the camera to move around. The only thing you could conceivably do is turn vanity mode on & off. "

"Scripting can alter the weather, but I'm pretty sure the magic system cannot directly affect it. "

"spells cannot affect the weather"

""Can spells affect the weather? Is there a rain spell for example? Will alteration be the college to follow in order to do such things?"

The answer to all these questions is "NO", which is what smudge told you. That's official confirmation. There's no need to go beyond a yes or no answer because there is nothing more to say about it. Spells cannot affect the weather.

As far as scripting the weather, a script is not a spell, and a spell is not a script. You can't cast a spell that triggers a script. You can't write a script that makes the player character cast a spell. So while you could write a script that causes a certain type of weather to occur in a certain region, it's not going to happen because of a spell. The game's simply not set up that way.

So in summary, in answer to your question, NO -- there is no way for a spell to affect the weather."

"By looking at your character's stat sheet, you will be able to tell how close to a skill raise you are in any given skill, as well as how many skill raises you will need to attain your next level. Very easy.

As for bugs, we're working hard to kill them all as we speak. "

"You can also train to get your skills up, as well. And there are skill books throughout the world that will raise your skills, too.

Your statement about gameplay broadening -- you sound like you want to be able to improve and get better at all the skills, the "super power" gamer, a super being that just rampages through the game. This is possible with Morrowind, we just don't tailor the game specifically for this.

One of the goals of Morrowind was to ensure that a thief player's experience differed from a fighter's experience. A level 20+ thief is going to have a different experience than a level 20+ fighter, than a level 20+ mage, etc..."

"you can set the NPCs to "follow" in the editor, or you can script them to follow you under certain conditions and they will continue to follow you until the conditions are satisfied."

"netimmerse has plugins we use as well as character studio. "

"The Xbox Collector's edition is currently available through our pre-order page. It's a little pricey though at $109.98. The upside is you get everything from the PC Collector's edition plus everything from the Morrowind Xbox version. It even comes in two seperate boxes. "

"Don't blame you for that if you aren't sure. However, we aren't going to announce them until we're sure what the min requirement is.

We've said before that you'll want at least a PIII with a 32MB video card. If you're concerned whether you'll meet the min spec, I'd recommend waiting until we announce it.

We aren't not telling you just to be difficult. We just haven't nailed it down yet through compat testing. "

"Actually, there's a way in the .ini file that you can force a specific plug-in to be loaded and also force the cell you start in. When you force the starting cell, it bypasses the game loading screen, so when you run the game it just starts up at that starting cell, bypassing character creation as well. In this case, the plug-in contains my character, with his stats set to whatever I wanted them to be. If I happened to wander over to the area where you do character creation, the process would start again. It's a method we use to test the game.

That's how I used the editor to beef up Scourge's stats. "

"OK here's the deal. When you're in third person, the camera's behind you. If you look up & down, the camera tilts so you can see in the appropriate direction. That's the vertical panning you were seeing.

In both first and third person, if you stop moving for a short while, the camera will start panning around your character in a circle. This is "vanity" mode, made so that you can check out your bad self. As soon as you hit any controls, vanity mode stops.

On the PC version, there's also a console command to turn on vanity mode -- it doesn't turn off until you use the command again. In this mode, you can play the game, although it's tough because the camera keeps panning around you. You can zoom in & out and tilt the camera up & down. "

"The TES Construction Kit is not available on the Xbox because it is a Microsoft Windows program, and the Xbox doesn't have the graphical user interface parts of Microsoft Windows installed. So it's impossible for the editor to run on the Xbox, even if a keyboard and mouse were available. "

"The TES Construction Kit is not available on the Xbox because it is a Microsoft Windows program, and the Xbox doesn't have the graphical user interface parts of Microsoft Windows installed. So it's impossible for the editor to run on the Xbox, even if a keyboard and mouse were available.OK, I'll bite.

1. I see what you're saying, but you're oversimplifying things a bit. You can click very rapidly, but with ANY weapon you'll be doing minimum damage. The most powerful attacks are a combination of holding down the mouse button before releasing, which "charges up" the attack, and selecting the best attack type (from chop, slash, thrust) based on the situation. You can also dodge, run around, strafe, etc. These are the decisions that you make when you're fighting, and the strategy you pick very much depends on what weapon you use and your skill with the weapon. Also, your fatigue comes into play. Basically, while combat CAN degenerate into a click fest, it doesn't have to, and personally I find much more enjoyment in varying my attack, dodging, backing off, jumping around, etc. I also switch weapons during combat, especially when using enchanted weapons. At any rate, the combat is much more varied and there are a lot more options than your impressions have led you to believe.

2. By "improving your character" I'm presuming you mean levelling up. Yes, you can only level up by advancing your major and minor skills, and you only advance skills by using those skills. Yes, you could jump around everywhere you go to increase your acrobatics skill, cloister yourself in a room and cast spells for days on end to increase your magic skills, etc. But you don't have to. If you follow the quests, explore dungeons, etc., your skill will raise naturally. And there is a great deal of incentive to improve your miscellaneous skills. A Mage doesn't have speechcraft or mercantile as major or minor skills, but they can come in VERY handy if you need to persuade someone to do something in a quest, or if you want to buy or sell items at a good price. Improving your athletics skill will allow you to run faster and get fatigued slower. But there's another twist -- when you level up, you get bonuses to various attributes for skill use. So even if you have athletics as a miscellaneous skill, if you have some skill increases in athletics when you level up, you'll get a potential bonus in athletic's governing attribute. This means it's in your best interest to improve ALL of your skills.

3. There are some AWESOME story twists in the game. I've been testing the House Telvanni quests -- just one group of quests out of the many in the game -- and there are connections to the main quest, to the other house quests, to the guilds, and some very cool surprises. The main thing that we haven't talked much about is the plot of the game, and believe me it is VERY complex, and if story is important to you, you'll have a blast discovering it as you play along. Also, the fact that all of the dungeons and quests are hand-crafted in Morrowind means that there's quite a bit of thought behind them. It's hard to do more than "collect X from dungeon Y" when you're randomly generating quests, and we're not doing that in Morrowind.

Basically, I think your concerns, while well thought out, are premature."

"My favorite bug that I encountered was actually one from months ago. There was something really funky with the Daedroth going on. When you killed them, they didn't do their death animation. Instead, their heads would begin to spin in random directions. Looked pretty cool when I had three of them lined up, all standing there with their heads spinning in different directions. Sadly, this was fixed a long time ago. "

"Well, this wasn't really a bug, but it was humorous.

Late last Summer, I was working on the Summon Item spells, in particular Summon Helm, which summons a daedric helmet & puts it on your head. I'd written about half the code to do this, and compiled & ran the game to try out what I had so far.

I went to third person view, selected the spell and cast it...

and POP! Off went my character's hair. He was completely bald. I thought about leaving this in the game, calling it "Summon Baldness", but alas, I was voted down. "

"I was particularly fond of a visual anomaly that reared its ugly head (pun intended) a while back. A certain combination of race and head during character creation resulted in this gargantuan, and I mean massive head on the player. Everything was fine in first-person mode, but switch to third-person, and all you saw was your big, stupid head. Man, did I get a kick out of that."

"My favorite is still the one where corpses would float to the top of the water... And then keep going in the sky. "

"Shipping costs are 100% dependent on where you live. They aren't randomly generated costs. We calculate them using the address you provide, and the cost UPS charges to ship it to that location from Livonia, MI. You can use the calculator at www.ups.com to figure out the cost if you don't want to enter any info on our pre-order page. Hope that helps.

Ooops...it'd help to give you the Zip in Livonia. 48152 "

"OK Here's the deal. Turn Undead works on creatures that have an "undead" checkbox turned on in the editor. That's it. It won't work on NPC's, or on the player character, even if they are vampires. It's a touch or range spell, so you can't cast it on yourself.

By the way, if you cast an area effect spell and happen to be in that area, the spell does NOT affect you. There are only two ways a spell you cast can affect you: 1) if it's a self-targeted spell, 2) if the spell is reflected back at you. If you're not a valid target of a spell you cast (as is the case with spells like Turn Undead and Soul Trap) and the spell is reflected back at you, nothing happens. "

"Vampires in Morrowind aren't "undead" in the traditional sense of the word. This disease (or curse, depending on what you read) causes a number of changes that seem traditionally "undead." The victim never ages, or ages much slower than normal men/mer (okay, okay...no characters age in the game, but you know what I mean). He takes on a death-like pallor. He hungers for blood. It is understandable why, to the Dunmer, vampires appear as the walking dead, when they are actually not. Hence their hatred of them--it seems like they've been brought from the grave, which is something accomplished most often through necromancy.

To answer another question: if you have the turn undead birthsign and you're a vampire, you can still cast it. "

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2.Im sure you are balancing this out, but is there actually player skill involved in combat or is it all statistics? I want to know wether practice will actually make me BETTER than everyone else or if its just "That fight is over my head." Im jsut curious how big a factor skill plays in combat.

3.And another balancing question, in almost EVERY screen shot of a guard and stuff i see them where Indoril armor, and Imperial Guard, and stuff. Depending how much skill plays into it, could you not as soon as you start walk up and kill a guard and get a decent suit or armor? Being as what you see is what is equipped on them.

4.Do you have to lead spells when you fire them? I am wondering if NPC and monsters will attempt to dodge spells.
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2. Yes, there is some skill involved, but it's not a "twitch" game.
3. They will kill you.
4. Spells don't track their target, so you'd better lead them. "

"There are strict guidelines for the size of Xbox manuals. so we are definitely constrained by the number of pages the Xbox manual can be. Also, the same issues are now faced with the mini-box format that PC games are shipping in now.

The manual is very important to us and we have spent a lot of time getting as much detailed information on playing the game as possible within the manual. Considering the size limitations I think we did a pretty good job of including the vital information. "

"I'm not sure if this is your question, but...

Many/most games have a good-guy = win type of morality - if you play the good guy, make the good-guy dialogue choices, etc., then you win; if you don't, then you're almost doomed to failure. Black Isle's recent games (Planescape most of all), as well as Deus Ex (and probably many others that I'm not thinking of), are notable recent exceptions.

It can be hard in real life to be a good guy - life would certainly be easier if you just took what you wanted, to hell with the circumstances.

Morrowind is designed with this in mind. It's not always easy to be a good person. It makes for a VERY cool gaming experience.

If you make a choice in this game with consequences you did not intend, it is (almost?) always because you are still thinking with game-rules that you picked up from other titles, instead of real-life-rules.

Ultimately, the morality in our game does boil down to a set of rules, but you don't have to follow it to win (in fact, trying to follow it will make your life difficult at times). Sometimes, being good has to be it's own reward (quoting Ken Rolston).

Enjoy."

"A "thick" or dense forest is pretty hard to come across in Vvardenfell, mostly because it is a volcanic region which gets ash storms quite frequntly. There are some pretty well wooded areas though.

To answer your other question, if you wanna create a dense forest within the editor, it's easy. All it takes is a bit of time."