Mod status

= Introduction =

Once you have played through unmodded Morrowind and its expansions, you probably want to add some spice to your next playthrough: Hundreds of modifications (mods) are available to enhance the overall gameplay, adjust the game mechanics to your tastes, or simply improve the graphic's quality. There also are mods which add new landscapes and quests -- and some are proper total conversions (TCs), stand-alone games taking Morrowind's engine as a basis.

The OpenMW project has set one of its main goals to provide compatibility with each and every Morrowind mod which
 * is a pure replacer or a modification created with the original Construction Set,
 * doesn't rely on third-party software or other engine hacks,
 * doesn't contain any severe scripting errors or other crucial design flaws.

Our engine is, of course, not perfect and certain mods may fail to load or show unexpected behaviour. If you encounter any bugs with a mod, please report them at our bugtracker or at our forums (newbies should check out our Bug Reporting Guidelines). Additionally, we have created this page to keep track of tested Morrowind mods and provide information about issues related to each of these mods.

Status Indicators
This page contains a list of catalogued Morrowind mods and a list of catalogued Morrowind utilities -- both with extra information about certain famous mods or utilities respectively -- as well as an overview of OpenMW-exclusive mods. In this context, we use several icons to indicate the working status of a mod:

Mod Installation
OpenMW uses a more flexible method for installing mods. Check out our Mod installation Wiki page here.

Mod Sources
The OpenMW team does not provide any mods or external mod tools. However, there are a couple of great mod libraries for TES III: Morrowind (this list is not exhaustive):

Further information and discussion
Anyone who is a member of the Wiki group can add details of mods they have tested; see the forum's User Control Panel and assign yourself to the group in order to get access.

We also have a Mod Compatibility subforum where any issues can be discussed thoroughly.

If you want to test Morrowind mods in OpenMW but don't know how to start, check out our Mod Testing Guidelines. If you already know how to properly test mods in OpenMW, please check this page out too because it also contains information regarding posting your test results.

= Working Status of Existing Morrowind Mods =

The following list of "tested", "test in progress", "needs re-testing", or "not tested yet" mods makes no claim to be complete. Every Morrowind modification fulfilling the requirements mentioned above should work with OpenMW. The statements made about a mod's working status refer to a clean OpenMW installation, only using the particular mod and its required content files.

Mods using fake bump maps
The Morrowind Graphics Extender made it possible to use so-called fake bump maps in vanilla Morrowind. Apart from these bump maps not achieving the quality of real bump maps, our engine has a problem with this approach: The fake bump maps use the alpha channel to encode their bump mapping information. OpenMW interprets these values as plain alpha values, leading to very shiny textures. Moreover, our engine natively supports real bump maps which renders the hacky MGE version obsolete anyway.

Our member lysol has made some efforts to create a tutorial on how to get rid of these shiny textures in OpenMW. Once it is available, you'll find a link here.

To cut a long story short: Mods using fake bump maps will always appear very shiny in OpenMW. This can only be fixed by editing the textures/meshes.

Morrowind Graphics and Sound Overhaul (MGSO)
Morrowind Overhaul: Sounds & Graphics aka MGSO is one of the biggest and most famous Morrowind mod compilations ever made. It consists of a mere 300 mods (give or take a few) and integrates well-known utilities like the Morrowind Code Patch (MCP) and the Morrowind Graphics Extender (MGE). It comes with its own installer which allows players to adjust everything to their tastes.

Unfortunately, OpenMW does not support installer-based modifications like MGSO rendering this masterpiece basically incompatible with OpenMW. You may set up MGSO on your vanilla Morrowind installationn though, import your data and mod list to OpenMW, and hope for the best.

In any case, we've added many of the corresponding mods to the mod list above; check out the full mod list on our MGSO WIki page. (The original list was formerly available at the authors' website but has somehow vanished.)

= Utilities for Vanilla Morrowind =

There are quite a few third-party utilities for Morrowind which allow players to increase the game's graphical quality, tweak its performance, or adjust the load order of content files. While most of these programs are not compatible with OpenMW, some of them may be used to "prepare" an existing Morrowind installation and port the results to OpenMW. At your own risk, of course.

Please note that the meaning of the status indicators is a bit different compared to the other lists.

Morrowind Script Extender (MWSE)
This utility greatly expands the scripting capabilities of the original Morrowind engine. See our MWSE Wiki page for further information.

Morrowind Graphics Extender (MGE / MGE XE)
These utilities improve Morrowind overall graphical quality, make it possible to control certain graphics settings via scripts, and add several new features to the original engine, e.g., a variety of shaders. See our MGE XE Wiki page for more information.

Morrowind Code Patch (MCP)
This utility fixes a good amount of buggy or poorly-written game mechanics, many engine bugs, and brings a bunch of new (optional) features to vanilla Morrowind. See our MCP Wiki page to learn more.

= OpenMW-exclusive mods =

For the time being, this list keeps track of all OpenMW-exclusive mods available to the public. This section will be moved to a new page when modders' productivity exceeds a certain level (i.e., when there is a decent amount of OpenMW-only content).

= Credits =

Credits go to Bethesda for creating an exceptional game -- exceptional in every sense -- with unusual modding possibilities. Credits also go to the great Morrowind modding community which is still active after all these years. Finally, special thanks go to all the mod testers who made this page feel like a true list of tested mods rather than a small selection of user-created content.

Thank you
 * Amenophis,
 * asmo,
 * Atahualpa,
 * Cramal,
 * Durisat,
 * Hallfaer,
 * Loriel,
 * metalpoetza,
 * Natalie,
 * PoorYorec,
 * Slissith,
 * Sokami,
 * Steve Odom
 * Tinker,
 * Xandaros,
 * ... and all you unkown testers!