Istoleyoursweetrolls - Fargoth Ur

i cant believe the empire stole all the damn glass from morrowind just to create these abominations

Teacher and pupil :,)

I said this in that previous morrowind post:

“It’s the same reason Oblivion has a 30-minute character creation segment that contains a lot of watching helplessly as plot happens in front of you, while Morrowind’s is about three minutes long and ends with the phrase “You’re on your own now, good luck.””

I wanted to spin this thought off into its own post because it’s not really talking about the difference in design philosophy anymore. But anyway, I specifically said character creation segment here rather than tutorial because while the Morrowind tutorial ostensibly ends with the message that you’re on your own now, it doesn’t really. The entire town of Seyda Neen is really a little stealth tutorial and it is very cleverly done imo.

You emerge from the character creation with some plain clothes, an iron dagger, a lockpick, about 100 gold, and a magic ring. Just across from the door you emerge from is a locked door to a warehouse, but it’s locked. It’s lock level 40 which is too high to pick for a starting character. But it’s not so high that you can’t open it with The Tower’s special birthsign power, opens locks of level 50 and below. It’s a nice nod to your birthsign mattering, even if you didn’t choose the tower, you can see that it would have been useful (and the implication then is that every birthsign will be useful in different circumstances).

Anyway, you enter the town and probably the first NPC you meet is Fargoth. If you speak to him (which is highly likely given this is the first voluntary interaction with an NPC you can have) he asks about the ring and you have your first quest! Super simple, give him the ring or keep it for yourself. It’s a nice ring, it has a nice enchantment. If you give it to him, you get a disposition boost for him and for the trader in town. If you don’t, you can’t change your mind later. This demonstrates a ton of core principles of quests. Firstly that you can just keep useful quest items if you want. Secondly that quest rewards might be non-material but still good (better prices at the tradehouse!), and thirdly that sometimes you only get one chance at things.

Ok, so you’ve spoken to Fargoth. Maybe you speak to some other townsfolk, but you probably head over to Arrille’s Tradehouse. Why? Well it’s the only shop in town and you probably need a more suitable weapon and armour than your iron dagger. Also the character creation sequence told you it’d be a good idea. So you go over and talk to Arrille, whose introduction text is master-crafted: “Welcome to Arrille’s Tradehouse. I barter for goods or coin. I also have a small selection of spells for sale. No credit. You want a little advice? That’s free. That’s ALL that’s free. Would you like to hear about our most popular potions? Our most popular scrolls?” Specifically using the word barter is nice, since that’s the menu item for opening the shop menu. Just a little nudge in the right direction if you’re stuck on how to buy stuff. “Little Advice”, “Popular Potions”, and “Popular Scrolls” are all highlighted dialogue options, and even though Little Advice is an option common to almost everyone, Arrille has two unique responses to it which give you some guidance. The options for popular potions and scrolls are just newbie advice disguised as sales talk. Buy healing items, this is what divine intervention does as a spell effect, you might get diseased so it’s worth carrying some cure potions around. That sort of thing. He can also guide you upstairs.

Upstairs is Hriskaar Flat Foot, who asks you to find Fargoth’s hiding place and steal some gold from it. You know, Fargoth, the guy you gave the ring to? You can get a quest to wait until night time to see where he stashes his stuff. You do the quest, and get 300 gold and the ring of healing back. If you turn the gold into Hriskaar he gives you a reward… of 100 gold. Remember earlier when I said sometimes you can just keep quest rewards? This is teaching you to actively double cross NPCs if you like a quest reward! That 300 gold is pretty huge this early in the game. (It also introduces the idea of stealing stuff back via the healing ring, although that’s not always possible).

There are other interactions to be had around the town, but when you’re ready to leave you really only have two options. The town on on a little peninsula so the only exit is to the north, and it’s then a question of whether you go east or west. You’ve been told to go to Balmora, which you can reach by the fast transport. It just so happens that in walking that way, you will definitely spot the cave entrance to Addamasartus, a smuggler cave that you may have been told about. A perfect introduction to dungeon crawling (and for many characters, a perfect introduction to making sure you’ve saved before doing anything dangerous!). Say you go west instead, well, there’s a good chance that in exploring and practising fighting mudcrabs you will come across the body of the local tax collector who was murdered, drawing you into another quest (or just rewarding you with some money if you don’t fancy the quest), and teaching you that there are secrets hidden out in the world and it’s worth paying attention even on the road.

Anyway, once you’re finally done with Seyda Neen, you go to Balmora, you find Caius Cosades like you’ve been told to, and he tells you to ignore the main quest for a while and go find something else to do. It’s so refreshing, it wants you to engage at your own pace! It tells you explicitly that the game is about exploring and doing your own thing!

I think the genius of Seyda Neen as a tutorial is in its use of the shape of the world to guide you towards various quests and interactions to form a chain-reaction of stuff to do that in turn teaches you how the world works. And the best part is that it is entirely optional. If like me you’ve started hundreds of new characters in Morrowind and know Seyda Neen like the back of your hand, you can just run straight to the Silt Strider and get out of there. Or if you’re new, you can take your time, explore, and learn how to play & enjoy Morrowind.

why does no one talk about how the beast races in morrowind walk like they’re wearing socks in the kitchen and trying not to step on spilled water

my fucking squire died so I’m stuck in this stupid armor