User:Darklocq/Mod testing notes

This is a page for extended notes about testing various mods with OpenMW, so the main Mod Status pages can be kept more concise. Specific mods' entries here can be set up with link anchors. The info on this page is the result of "live" playtesting with various mods, and is not the one-mod-at-a-time formalized testing used, per the Mod Testing Guidelines, for the Mod Status page. Unless otherwise noted, all mods referred to here are found at either or both of [http://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/categories/? NexusMods] or Morrowind Modding History, part of Great House Fliggerty, which also hosts some directly that are not in the MMH archive. Note that MMH has two search features; only the one at the top of the pages works. The main GHF pages have the same issue but worse, in that the top search feature doesn't always work at all (trying searching for "Better", for example); GHF is best browsed by category.

Some mods are listed in multiple sections of the list below, if more than one kind of mod. Better-developed entries are reviewing for playability, lore-friendliness, usefulness, glitch workarounds, etc., not just compatibility; knowing a mod doesn't crash OpenMW isn't enough to know whether it's worth installing it. Mods are English-only unless otherwise noted; some very simple mods will work regardless of language, but most have at least some language-specific material in them, and will emit the wrong language or just not work at all, if used in the wrong version.

This page also provides generalized mod and companion advice (toward the top) for OpenMW users, which can be spun out into separate articles.

Feel free to directly edit this page with corrections, additional entries, new observations, etc. If you add your own first-person observations, please sign it even if you're an anonymous IP user. Objective facts need not be signed. Questions or objections should go on the talk page; one correction has already been made this way.

Style notes: Mod titles have been normalized (unless ambiguity would result) to put authors' names after the mod name (as "by ..." credits), and to drop any redundant "Mod" from the end of the title. Mods with more than one known title, and authors with multiple aliases, are shown with all the names as AKAs. Unrelated mods with the same name by different authors are disambiguated by author. "Vanilla" in this material refers to the game without third-party mods. When we're discussing the game without even official add-ons, this will be made explicit. When discussing the original game engine, we refer to "the Bethesda engine". This page is written in the following style: Capitalize what the game capitalizes (names of spells, items, creatures, etc.) to avoid ambiguity. Also gives mod titles (and abbreviations thereof, and Morrowind itself as a game rather than an in-game place) in italics, as published creative works and to help distinguish these titles from other things. Executables (OpenMW, Morrowind Script Extender, Bethesda engine, etc.), projects/collaborations (Morrowind Patch Project, The Dremora Team, etc.), and filenames do not get that style. Path and filenames are given in /path/filename.ext style and console commands in  style. "PC" means "player character", not "personal computer" or "Windows personal computer"; operating systems are identified specifically (e.g. "MS Windows").

Work-in-progress notes: Need to add more version numbers, authors, links. Add more TB and BM codes to indicate Tribunal and/or Bloodmoon dependencies of certain mods. Some of this material is written with first-person perspective ("I tested ..."), which is being edited out as time permits. Need to remove more editorializing. Also, wrap more potential spoilers in

Abbreviations
Codes for dependencies on (or incompatibilities with) official Bethesda add-ons are given in a form like:. Hover the cursor over them for a tooltip explaining what they mean. Downloads for mods are given with links like:. Again, hover over them for notes, such as the site name and (if needed) download instructions.

Installation and setup

 * For detailed instructions on mods in OpenMW, see the Mod installation article.  Most of the material below is about  them.  Some quick tips:
 * If you've got a mod in a .ACE archive and use MS Windows, WinAce and some newer versions of WinZip or 7Zip may work. For Linux and Mac OS users, the solution is the new Python 3 command-line tool acefile ; previous applications for these platforms either do not handle later versions of the archive format, or will not run on newer OS versions. The acefile tool is easiest run in the same directory as the archive, after moving the archive to a temp directory; it will extract the archive contents directly into the same directory, not into a container directory named after the archive (unless the archive itself contained one). You can also specify a target directory with the -d option. It is still being improved; you may wish to periodically run  to get the latest version. This tool also works in Cygwin in MS Windows if you have Python installed.
 * The path to a mod directory in its  entry in openmw.cfg will cause problems if it has a   character anywhere in it.  OpenMW will crash with a confusing error.  There are two solutions:
 * Rename the offending directory in your operating system to replace this character with "and" or "+".
 * Or escape it in openmw.cfg, without renaming anything in the filesystem, by doubling the character to , e.g. changing   to.
 * This path will also be a problem if it contains double quotation marks (permitted in some OSes). Two solutions again:
 * Rename the directory to get rid of the quotes (or change to single quotes)
 * Or escape the character in the config file without renaming folders, by preceding the character with, e.g. changing   to.
 * This path as it appears in openmw.cfg must also not use backslash escapes for spaces or other characters; check what you are pasting, as this will be invalid:.
 * The path to a mod directory in   be surrounded by double, straight quotation marks.
 * The filename for a mod in the corresponding  line (if you are editing that section of the config file at all)  be surrounded by quotation marks, even if you would use them (e.g., to escape space characters) in your operating system.  Hopefully this confusing inconsistency will be fixed in an upcoming version.  Entries should look like , even if they have apostrophes, spaces, etc.
 * The path to a mod directory must be a real filesystem path or a symlink; it cannot be a Mac OS alias. [Untested: can it be an MS Windows shortcut?]. On the up-side, this can be used to create short paths, like /mw/mods/ mod_name.

Changing mods mid-game, and avoiding problems this can cause

 * OpenMW does not like you to add, remove, or change the order of mods once a game has been underway. The longer you've been playing, the more mods you have, and the greater their complexity, the higher the risk of adverse effects, both from adding new mods and removing them, especially if resources from them are used in the cell the player character is presently in, or are in the player's inventory. Removing unused mods, absent those conditions, is somewhat safer than adding them, but not foolproof; see especially the next note, about soul gems. Mods that only add things are safer to add mid-game than those that change existing things.
 * : Before removing a mod, be sure to use up or eliminate (with  in the Console) any soul gems that contain souls of creatures added by the mod.  Failure to do so can cause the game to crash to desktop if you even hover over the item (the attempt to display mouseover info about it will fail, because the data for the soul is missing; this can happen if the item is in your inventory, on the ground, in a container, or a merchant's inventory). This problem may eventually get fixed, but for now, you should probably keep a copy of the mod and of your OpenMW.cfg from when it was installed in case you missed one.  It is safest to get rid of  items in your inventory that came from a mod  remove the mod.
 * The most common adverse effect of changing mods mid-game is meshes/textures not loading, so that various items, faces, surfaces, etc. show up day-glow fuscia, or with giant "!" icons instead of rendering properly. This problem usually affects just one or a few things at first, then gets worse and worse the more you play. This can sometimes be catastrophic, e.g. when it's a floor that goes missing, and you and all NPCs fall into the water table or the void, or when the only door out of a room vanishes, or when a key NPC disappears.
 * If this missing texture, mesh, and/or object problem happens and a save-cleaning routine doesn't resolve it, the only potential fix – other than removing any recently added mod(s) and loading an old savegame – appears to be to restart the app, then move as needed to a cell where there are no such errors visible (including in your inventory – drop any glitched items in another cell first). Then play a bit and keep saving in cells with no errors, and reverting to those games, with a fresh app restart, any time something shows up glitched.  If you do this "glitch-cleaning" routine enough times, there's a chance the game will right itself, but there is no guarantee, and even when it does, in bad cases it can take days or weeks to work.
 * Also try removing old mods you don't need (e.g. add-on quests you already did, and from which you are no longer using any reward items; or a mod that gives vendors new items that you don't actually want). The "my game is turning pink" mesh problem seems to relate to how many resources the game engine has to load, and conflicts between them, so reducing the load and the potential for conflict seems to help when all else has failed. However, this is fairly likely to make companions disappear (recoverably; see below).
 * The second most common negative effect of mod changes is the disappearance of NPCs, either mod-added ones like companions, or vanilla ones you have relocated with Command Humanoid. They can usually be recovered with the Console (see note no. 1 in The five most frequent companion problems in OpenMW section, below, for instructions).
 * Not as bad as in Bethesda's engine: In the original game, all kinds of problems would result if you changed the number of loaded mods such that a mod was no longer in the exact same position (e.g. 17th) in the load order. This does not seem affect OpenMW. One Bethesda behavior that definitely does not happen under this condition is doubling of items, NPCs, and other resources.
 * If not starting from a brand-new game, do a full (not quick) save before changing your mod(s). Exit the game app, and make your changes. Restart the game app.  Load the save, save again, restart the app again.  Repeat for good measure, using the most recent save.  This is known as a save-cleaning or clean-save routine.
 * Hardcore save-cleaning: If the above does not resolve your problem, try a more brute-force approach: Drop gear, and go naked into a small, simple, vanilla room that does not contain any modded items (potential examples: a minor NPC's hut, or a one-cell ancestral tomb that you have just cleared out, but left the corpses in), then do the save-cleaning routine, and go back for your gear afterwards. If containers in the space might contain modded items, check and remove any first and add them to your temporary gear pile in another cell.
 * Load the mods you think you want to use, in a test game with a throw-away character (don't even bother customizing it any more than necessary for testing). Use Console cheat codes as needed so that you can go test whatever it is the mod or mods add (e.g., give your new test character money for transport to a mod shop's location and to buy items from the shop and ensure they work, or give yourself the necessary stats, level, reputation, and faction rank to trigger a mod-added quest and make sure that it will activate). It is safest to back up your config files, and copy your entire current mod directory as a backup; if you need to revert, you won't have to remember what your earlier set of mods were and what order they were in.  Geeky users can also use a version control system like Subversion, Bazaar, or Git.
 * If you rename or move a mod in your filesystem and update the config file to compensate, this sometimes causes the in-game resources of the mod to reset to default (e.g. a companion will no longer be your companion "yet" or have the gear you gave them). The game thinks a mod has been removed and another mod added (they just happen to have the same code in them). In rare cases, you may have to use Console commands to fix the situation, after looking up Journal entry IDs of companion's scripts, journal entries, etc. in OpenMW-CS, if simply re-doing stuff in-game does not work. With companions in particular, always remove gear from them before changing file path information for their mod. This sort of scenario also often happens when you upgrade a mod in mid-game, or change mod load order.
 * If a quest, NPC behavior, or some other factor is not working right when you load a savegame, try quitting the game, then restarting the game entirely, to clear any global variables from memory, then load a savegame from before the appearance of the problem. Get in the habit of using the full save feature (Esc &gt; Save &gt; Save new game); do not depend on Quicksave or Autosave; the game does not always save every bit of game data with those.

Compatibility and dependencies

 * Use a nightly build of OpenMW if you can, since the nightlies fix various bugs as they are reported and resolved. Back up your entire game directory and config and savegame directories first; sometimes the nightly can fail to work with a pre-existing set of mods due to some regression or other, and restoring a functional game is easiest from backup rather than trying to downgrade specific files. MacOS nightlies are available at this repository (sort by "Last modified"). For MS Windows, see links at top of this page. For Linux and other platforms, see various options at the main download page; you probably want the GitHub repo at the top, to build your own local copy.
 * Use OpenMW-CS's Verify feature. Do it first on vanilla Morrowind and any official expansions loaded, without other mods. Use your operating system's screengrab method to screen-shot all the "stock" errors (yes, Bethesda's original files throw numerous errors in OpenMW). Then add your mod and do Verify again, and look for non-stock errors.  If you're competent with the code, you can fix simple problems yourself, and save the patch as a .OMWAddon file to use in place of or along with the downloaded .ESP.
 * Repeat this as needed until your desired mods are all loaded and seem to be working. Be prepared for some of them to still not work entirely as expected.
 * Not all features of all mods will work, even after work-around efforts. The culprit is usually obscure scripting syntax errors, but sometimes it's a dependency on exploiting a bug in the original Bethesda engine that has been fixed in OpenMW.
 * Some mods just cause OpenMW to lock up or crash to desktop, and others do not but are totally malfunctional. The mod lists below will annotate such issues when they are known.
 * There is no guarantee that a mod that seems to work at first will work perfectly. If it's complicated, with lots of quest scripts and such, there's a good chance it will break at some point, and require Console commands to rectify, an OpenMW-CS patch, or will not be fixable.
 * Many mods rely (at least for particular features) on MCRE and/or leveled-list merging, and not all of them disclose this. If MCRE is needed for something, that aspect of the mod simply won't work, and the entire mod may not work. If the leveled list in the mod needed to be merged, its random items may not show up, or may show up too frequently, having replaced something in the vanilla leveled lists instead of being added to the list as a possible random item.  There are some tools (finally) for merging leveled lists in OpenMW; see Mod installation for pointers.
 * Various mods have dependencies on other mods. Some have a dependency . If you have a habit of renaming .ESP or .ESM files to have clearer names, you will have to occasionally undo that for certain mods. You'll know this is the problem when OpenMW crashes during the mod load phase and tells you that so-and-so mod has a dependency on-thus-and-such file and that it cannot be found, but you know you do have the "missing" mod. If you preview your mod list in the app, you'll also see a warning icon; hovering over it will tell you the name of the missing dependency file.
 * Some mods have a gameplay dependency on specific versions of other mods (often not coded as a by-filename dependency), and OpenMW cannot detect mismatches in this regard. Success in getting the game to start does not mean it will play correctly if you didn't load the right mods. Check ReadMe files carefully. Using a newer version of a dependency mod is usually safer than loading an old one (since most later releases are minor), but it is not foolproof – the developer of the original mod may have moved an entire fortress and the mod dependent on it may expect it to be in the earlier location.
 * Any mod that adds new items to a vendor's inventory needs to be added before you visit that shop, or the items may never appear there. This can sometimes be fixed by a save-cleaning routine, but sometimes not. This also means that if you remove a mod then re-install it later, the items from that mod might not show up there again.
 * Any mod that adds an inventory to a vendor (e.g. allowing a clothing-only merchant like Milie Hastien in Balmora to buy and sell armor) must be loaded after all other mods that affect their inventory, such as new clothing items.  This is perhaps the no. 1 way to get confused into thinking that a clothing-items mod is not working. It's also a good example of why to test mods one at a time in an all-new game if you think they don't work.
 * Systemic mesh-and-texture changes that you want to be consistent game-wide (all Hlaalu textures, new meshes for Imperial uniforms, high-resolution skin textures, etc.) should be loaded late, since various mods are apt to include misc. variants their authors created, or even just duplicate vanilla resources because they didn't clean their mod before releasing it. See notes in the Meshes and textures section.
 * Mirrors tend to kill frame rates. While mirrors cannot actually be used as mirrors reflecting the PC and other stuff (in OpenMW, anyway), they are still doing something processor-intensive, probably some kind of crude ray-tracing. They are most commonly found in clothing shop mods, and the symptom of their presence will be a super-slow frame rate in the shop. The solution is the open the Console, click once on the mirror, and enter the   command to delete the object.  Repeat for any other mirrors in the cell.
 * Some shops and such will exhibit terrible frame rates for other reasons. The two most common are animated but poorly optimized new objects, like particle-animated magical doodads, rotating mannequin platforms, etc.; or some kind of scripting that is poorly written and running many times per second by accident. The first problem can be solved the same way as with mirrors; the second requires extensive debugging in OpenMW-CS and may not be worth the effort.
 * Another frame-rate killer is NPCs walking endlessly into walls or other objects. This most often happens when a mod added or moved something in the cell and did not change the path grids properly or at all. This can be resolved by finding the wandering and now wall-walking NPC, opening the Console, clicking the NPC, and entering   to make the NPC stand still instead of walk around.
 * This same trick can also be used when a mod adds too many animated NPCs in one place for your system to handle without lagging. Just turn them from wanderers into loiterers.
 * While OpenMW supports real bump mapping (including normal mapping and spectral mapping) to create realistically shiny textures, the original Bethesda engine does not. Some third-party add-ons introduced a hacky "fake bump mapping" technique that is used by many mods. When those mods are used in OpenMW, this results in excessively shiny or glowing textures that don't look right.  Debugging this can be either easy or hard, depending on the mod, and there is a tutorial about it here.

Companion mods
Since the the Tribunal expansion's introduction of Pack Rats and the special NPC Calvus Horatius, a Mournhold mercenary whom you can hire and share inventory with, companion mods have been among the most popular mod types, getting better all the time. Companions generally all require Tribunal (or the Game of the Year edition of Morrowind, which includes it). Vanilla Morrowind followers (e.g. the Hlaalu hireling Fjorgeir, the Tevanni Shock Centurion, and various "please rescue me" NPCs) cannot do anything but follow and fight; you cannot give them new gear or repair their existing stuff, other than with the Console.

Players without Tribunal have one known option other than giving/taking gear with the Console, and that is Companions Hippolyta and Decius 2.01 by Vorwoda a.k.a. John Segers, which has limited (specific-item) inventory sharing through dialogue; it is also (optionally) a romance mod, for either gender. Not tested yet in OpenMW. All other material about companions herein concerns Tribunal-style companions.

Credits: This advice below incorporates a few observations that were first noted (in off-site materials this page links to) by Kateri and Emma.

Various "generations" of companions, and their issues
Companion mods in general have proven challenging to work into OpenMW, other than rudimentary pack animals and very basic "shut up, carry, and fight" followers. A large number NPC companions appear to be based on Grumpy's Companion Project v3.1 (let's call these "generation 1"), or often an older version ("generation 0.5", the early experimental phase). This code has been improved by Emma and others, and some later companions have integrated these improvements and sometimes inherited their new bugs ("generation 2"). Later still, with much more complexity, numerous others (and Emma, in some later work like Witchgirl Adventure), have produced extremely complex companion-and-quest mods, all working in different and inconsistent ways ("generation 3").

One would think that the gen 3 companions would be the most functional in OpenMW, through a process of refinement, but this proves not to be the case, due primarily to lack of communication and code-sharing between mod authors. In the majority of gen 3 companion mods, their big pile of quest scripting breaks (sometimes repairably) at some point in the OpenMW engine, even if their general companion behavior (movement, combat, spell use, etc.) is usually exemplary. This failure-by-complexity is a factor of OpenMW's parser being much more strict about code syntax errors than Bethesda's original; the more quest scripts there are, the higher the likelihood that some one-line or even one-character error is present and causes OpenMW breakage. The problem strongly affects rich mods like Julan, Ashlander Companion, Laura Craft Romance (and its male version, Imperial Boyfriend Indiana James), and rideable animal mods like abot's Guars. A few are mostly functional, like Jasmine, a Morrowind Companion and Witchgirl Adventure, though they still have some issues. Check the forums; various people are trying hard to fix these mods to work with OpenMW (though in a few cases, a particular problem is actually OpenMW's own fault). Gen 3 companions also have a stronger tendency to simply vanish and to have to be restored with a  console command – fortunately, without losing gear or quest progress.

The most usable for the longest time are the simplest ones that are based on Companion Project 3.1, such as Dawn Companion, and Gatanas, Dremora (Markynaz) Companion (though that does have one harmless dialogue bug). These usually have little original dialogue, no quests or a few simple ones, and lack complicated features like trainability. Unlike gen 3 companions, they usually also have little if any effect on cells (i.e., do not add or radically change any game locations). They're also less immersive and involving, basically being humanoid pack animals who fight and whom you can dress up. Various actual animals, like Wolf Companion and Dog Companions, are also highly functional gen 1 companions. Gen 1 are the least likely to disappear for no apparent reason.

Generation 0.5 companions, based on older versions of Companion Project, often have glitched combat in OpenMW, and will not stop fighting once they start, will start fighting the air for no reason, or will attack, unless forced to stop with console tricks. Some examples are Emma's Hurd and Beryl. Grumpy's own Cally and Gabran are, ironically, in this category. His .ZIP files and installation instructions are faulty (though fixable), and these two "model" companions were included in some archives of CP 3.1 but were not based on its code but 3.0 or earlier; they just do not work properly, if they appear at all.

Many gen 2 mods fail to perform as expected (or at all, beyond stationary NPCs that can hold stuff and chit-chat). This is also true of some mannequin mods (which are just paralyzed NPCs, basically, other than those that are upright corpses). Some mods in this category are usable, with issues. The hireling addons A Lord's Men and Staff Agency (one is a fork of the other, though both can be used simultaneously) are in this group. Both of them provide various mercenaries and domestic/utility staff that are fully functional, some that are mostly functional, and some that are just broken (though they do not appear to do anything bad to your game). One that is not really usable in OpenMW (yet) is the complex Constance, Thief Companion, which borders on a gen 3 mod; she exhibits the same combat problems as gen 0.5 companions. Same goes for the fighter companion and domestic staffers provided in Domehome. It just goes to show that companion mods have been built along similar principles but without programmatic sharing of code, such that companions that post-date fixes for various problem often do not integrate those fixes. Gen 2 companions also often have a tendency to inexplicably vanish (mostly after changes to the list of loaded mods, or when left alone for 72+ game hours), though they can be console-restored. This issue also affects those provided by Friends and Rivals (and presumably any other variant of CM Partners). Staff Agency companions appear to somehow be immune to this problem; studying how their code differs is likely a good idea for anyone intent on creating a "generation 4" of companion mods. [Tester note: In a room full of about a dozen idle, wait-mode companions from numerous mods of differing generations and multiple authors, a mod load change that triggers the "vanishing companions" problem typically results in all of them disappearing except those that are from Staff Agency. However, A Lord's Men was not running during these tests, so it's not clear yet if it also has this "immunity".]

The five most frequent companion problems in OpenMW
A sixth issue which may have brought you here, "the companion keeps falling and dying", is not an OpenMW-specific issue, and is covered in the Help your companion survive section, below.
 * 1) The companion eventually disappears, taking all of their carried gear and loot with them – This is most often caused by adding or removing some other mod in mid-game, or some other form of savegame corruption (it will happen after restarting the app or reloading a save). With some companions, it also happens if you are away from them (i.e., not in the same cell) for 72 hours in game-time. Regardless, sometimes the companion has ended up in the off-map void, and cannot be relocated in-game even if they have a teleportation/telepathy/control ring (they may appear to respond verbally, but this is item scripting, not NPC AI).  Sometimes they are in the cell, but have incorrect elevation ( z axis).  Or they may have ended up at world map coordinates 0,0, which is right near the Daedric shrine Assarnatamat (this is rare).  Sometimes the vanishing-act problem also occurs after using a teleporation ring for a specific companion, e.g. Jasmine.
 * 2) * This disappearance can usually but not always be resolved with, e.g.   (that's  ). The easiest way to use this is first do   and repeat for y and z , move back to make room, then use those coordinates, rounded  to nearest whole integer, in the   command.
 * 3) *Some companions also have a particular location they return to by default; try looking in the same place you originally found that character, or see if some other option has them show up somewhere. E.g. Wolf Companion has a "Have you seen my wolf?" NPC dialog thing that causes the wolf to reappear in Arrille's Tradehouse (not its original location) if you ask that question of a random NPC in Seyda Neen (only). Gatanas is scripted to appear in the nearest tavern if you ask any major-city NPC if they've seen her. So, read the companion's documentation carefully. Some companions that supposedly have this feature, e.g. Jasmine returning to her house, do not have it working properly in OpenMW (she will go there if you tell her to, but will not by default when she goes missing for inexplicable reasons). It's advisable to test these features early on, so you know what your companion will actually do and not do before an emergency arises.
 * 4) * In other cases, the companion is simply screwed up. In this event, you can try to spawn a new copy with  in the console, at the cost of the gear and any training and companion quests to date (if any). This does not always work, especially if the companion has elaborate "complete these steps to earn me as a companion" scripting; you may not be able to re-do those steps. Jasmine is one such mod (though it is difficult to break it to the point you'd want to try this). This eventuality may necessitate that you remove the companion mod, do a save-cleaning routine, then reinstall it and re-do the companion quests to restore the companion to working order (you hope). Sometimes, however, just changing the mods loaded is enough to further corrupt your game, so backup first.
 * 5) * Some strategies for preventing lossage:
 * 6) ** Just as a form of backup, periodically remove all gear you care about from the companion, make sure the companion is in "follow" mode, do a full (not quick) save, in an indoor cell, with no combat active (no combat music is still playing), and after being at rest for several seconds and certain that the companion has followed and is also at rest. Then quit. Restart the game, reloading that save, next time you play, and give the gear back. If the companion disappeared, the game data was already corrupted by something by the time you did that save, and you need to load an earlier savegame. If you added, removed, or reordered any mods in the interim, undo those actions first. A good time to do this is at the end of your gaming session, or at least every several sessions.
 * 7) ** Do not leave any companion for 72 game-hours or longer without being in the same cell (it may also help to interact with them, e.g. by toggling their follow mode or accessing their inventory). So, be careful about using "Wait" several days in a row with merchants (it helps to bring the companion to the merchant with you, and keep him/her in follow mode; then you can do the Wait trick for many game days if you want). Good places to "park" companions you aren't using for a while is in your player home, just outside it (if you don't always teleport in and out), in the main room at any Mages Guild if you use guild guide travel a lot, near a siltstrider you use very frequently, and in the shop of a merchant you go to almost every game-day.  Any place you are certain to return to within 72 game-hours is good.  Some companions can be left for longer without negative effects. A simple test is to save your game, put the companion in wait, guard, or wander mode, and go sleep for four days in a row in a different cell, then come back to the companion and (if they're still there) test them out for glitches. If all's well, you can restore your saved game and proceed with less "three-day" concern.
 * 8) ** Don't leave a disappearance-prone companion in "guard this spot" (Guard AI), "walk around" or "stay in the area" (AI wander), or "stand here" (AI wander off) mode, and then exit the game; put them in follow mode first (returning to where you "parked" the companion first, if applicable).
 * 9) ** This methodology may not be foolproof. The safe bet: do not give companions any irreplaceable equipment and do not rely heavily on anything their mod provided, while also treating quests that came with them as optional diversions not central gaming goals, because you may lose all of these things.
 * 10) * Disappearances and other problems due to mod load changes are, in the Bethesda game engine, most often attributed to changes of mod load (e.g. a companion who was mod no. 10 becoming mod no. 9 or mod no. 11 in the load order). It is unknown if this is a factor, or as significant a factor, in OpenMW, but it's fairly likely.  If you have to remove a mod before a companion, try moving another mod, that doesn't have a load ordering issue (e.g. a mod that just adds a new sword somewhere) to before the companion mod to preserve the companion's "place in line".  However, the Bethesda engine's doubling bug, caused by mod load-order changes, does not affect OpenMW (see the Good news section).
 * 11) The companion will not follow, and is just a stand-around NPC/container – This seems to happen with two Emma mods (Laura Craft Romance and Imperial Boyfriend Indiana James). The forums have suggested that this has something to do with a) scripts with names that begin with numerals, and/or b) scripts with version numbers in their names (it may be the period/dot/stop character,  ), and/or c) NPC IDs that exactly coincide with script names. So, systematically patching the mods to change the script names and references to them may fix this.
 * 12) * Sometimes it's a problem of a companion failing to give a teleport ring, and similar issues can happen with pack animal (and PC home) mods where the seller will not give you the command ring (or the key) you bought. These are probably minor script typos, and likely differ from mod to mod. Issues with armor mannequins and practice dummies are usually along similar lines.
 * 13) The companion goes into combat mode for no apparent reason and cannot be taken out of it – Also affects many Emma mods, possibly for the same reason as refusal to follow, and with the same potential solution, though it may also be endemic to the scripting logic of everything derived from Companion Project prior to version 3.1.  It can be fixed temporarily by a) making sure all enemies are dead, b) casting a strong area-effect Calm Humanoid (use Fortify Illusion first if you need to), c) using the Console to issue   to the companion and any other combatant NPCs, like other companions (who may by this point have attacked the turned-hostile companion in your defense), d) waiting for them to sheath their weapons or stop casting, e) putting them in wait mode, then f) putting them back into follow mode.  Sometimes just the Console command is enough. If these steps don't work (companion is stuck in a sheathe-unsheathe loop while Calmed and/or seems fine then attacks you again when Calm wears off), make sure there are no more enemies around, and also try exiting and re-entering the cell with the companion(s) in wait mode. If all else fails, wait 72 game hours in another cell, and come back; if companion is gone, use   to return them.
 * 14) * A harder-core fix may be extensively patching the mod using code from Companion Project 3.1 or from generation 3 mods that do not have this problem and are otherwise similar at the basic interaction level.
 * 15) * The "fighting forever" issue is a known problem with the following Emma mods: Thief Companion Constance, Beryl and Hurd, the fighter companion Ingred of Domehome, and (with a variation) the domestic staff of Domehome (if you move them out of that location with their teleport ring, they'll actually fight each other on sight as soon as the second one arrives). It does not affect Witchgirl Adventure 's Morgana, most non-Emma companions.
 * 16) * Most companions will turn and fight you if you damage them by any means three or four times in the same fight, and some have a lower threshold (sometimes even one hit). Almost all will fight you if you hit them even a split second after the last actual enemy dies, and due to clipping issues, you can sometimes hit them without realizing it. So, you need to  to use the Console. You cannot be of the "all use of the Console is cheating, no matter what" philosophy, and still expect to use companion mods for more than a few hours, sorry.
 * 17) The companion's control or dialogue options disappear when another companion is added, or options that do not pertain to this character are added – The first of these (which also happens with the original Bethesda game engine) is usually due to two companions sharing scripts or dialogue options with the same names, and can presumably be fixed by systematically patching their dialogue and script IDs to be unique. No one seems to have tested this approach on any existing mods. This is a known problem with running Laura Craft Romance and Imperial Boyfriend Indiana James at the same time, among others (sometimes a mod's own documentation will warn of this). Many mod authors have used Grumpy's scripts without doing much to adapt them to be unique to their specific mod, probably because Companion Project 's own documentation is unclear in parts. The second problem, of inapplicable dialogue options appearing, happens for unknown exact reasons, but is obviously a general matter of a coding error not limiting an added dialogue option to particular NPCs correctly.  This issue is annoying but harmless in most cases (in the case of abot's Guars it is not harmless, and wrecks the functionality of affected companions).
 * 18) The companion's elaborate quests don't work – Why this happens will be entirely dependent on the nature of the scripting. Sometimes the fault is OpenMW bugs, sometimes it's script syntax errors on the part of the mod author, and sometimes both. See again the Julan thread for an example of how many errors of both sorts can arise in testing a single mod, yet can be resolved.

Additional companion tips
These are not OpenMW-specific, unless so indicated.

Basic

 * Habitually move to the side when engaging. Every time you approach an opponent (or one charges you), quickly move to the left or right, and turn and re-face their flank. If you do not, you will get hit – a lot – by your companion(s), who try to strike directly at the baddie in front of them as if you are not between the companion and the enemy.  Also, you run increased risk of hitting the companion inadvertently; they will frequently clip through you when fighting, sufficiently that you'll hit them in the arm, and trigger them to attack you instead.
 * If your companion is already attacking you in retaliation, move to put the enemy between you and the angry companion. When the enemy is dead, quickly take the steps outlined above in point #3.
 * Check behind you frequently to make sure your companion is still with you; they can get stuck on things, left behind at doors and transport services, blocked by other NPCs, fall into a pit/crevasse, or even enter combat you weren't aware of. Some have much better movement scripting than others do.
 * Increase their ability to keep up with you, or you will lose them frequently. In addition to setting a superhuman   (to prevent accidental deaths), use   and   to match your own stats, and use this every few levels at least, as your stats increase, if the companion mod isn't clever enough to have their stats increase along with yours. See next section for details on how the   commands in the Console work.
 * Companions who are Guard class (i.e., have Guard AI) will attack hostile creatures on sight, whether in follower mode or not (and if not in follow mode may react with hostility if you commit a crime they're aware of). Those that do not have Guard AI will not, even when in follower mode, react to hostiles of any kind until a blow (or hostile magic effect) is landed against them, you, or someone else (in follower mode) in your party. This can be used to your advantage. For example, if you are a weak noob, you can travel with a Guard-AI companion as a "human shield", then when you are a badass later, you can travel with a non-Guard companion who will have minimized involvement in combat and keep out of the way. Update for OpenMW 0.43: There's now an option in OpenMW Launcher in the Advanced tab to control whether followers attack hostile creatures on sight or wait for you or the create to actually land an attack.  Having them not attack on sight is a good option for most play; it lets you do more of the fighting, and have more control over your positioning in the fight.  It's untested at this point if Guard-AI companions are affected differently by this setting.  Companions with Guard AI will probably continue to attack hostiles on sight.
 * Even if you have a companion capable of self-healing, it's a good idea to cast a Restore Health on them periodically just to be sure. Not all of them heal themselves as often or as well as they should, and they can run out of Magicka and potions with which to do so.  Some that are supposed to do so don't do it at all due to scripting bugs.
 * It's safest to never give quest items, or other "I'm gonna cry if I lose it" gear, to a companion. There's no guarantee a mod won't glitch out, and the more mods you run, the higher the chance of that happening.
 * Get familiar with basic ; you are definitely going to need them sometimes.

Help your companion survive
Use  commands in the Console to examine your companion's attributes and skills, and   commands to change one of them. These Console commands drop spaces and hyphens in things like "Long Blade" and "Hand-to-Hand", thus,. Some important tips to make any companion practical for the long haul are listed below. For more general (not OpenMW-specific) tips, see also "Companion FAQ" by Emma.


 * All companions need to have abnormally high Acrobatics. This is because NPC movement AI is remarkably stupid, and they will fall or jump off high places as if blind and drunk, and die in the process; they can even kill themselves just jogging down mild slopes if you are running!  You can sometimes get promising companions killed in minutes simply by going to a place with a high siltstrider platform and not walking perfectly up the middle of it.  Tribunal 's Calvus Horatius is notorious for this "idiotic deaths" problem, and it happens a lot with Gatanas, Dremora (Markynaz) Companion. Highlight the companion in the Console, and do   (this is enough to survive any fall, and helps them follow you over rough or steep terrain, without affecting the gameplay otherwise). This step is also important for when companions end up in the void due to game glitches. They will technically be falling the entire time they're missing, and when you put them back into a proper place with   they'll instantly die from impact if they do not have superhuman Acrobatics.
 * This tip cannot be used with creature companions (other than creatures turned into NPCs, such as the several Dremora companion mods), because creatures do not have an Acrobatics stat. The upshot of this is that creature companions are only useful for low-to-mid-level player characters.  After your own Acrobatics skill is high enough to survive long drops, a creature companion is likely to die while trying to follow you.  Even badass vanilla Daedra can be killed by fairly short falls, as you'll note if you see one spawn on top of a large piece of Daedric shrine and jump down to come fight you.
 * where Value  is something reasonable like your own Health level, or close to it (or even more than yours if you keep getting them killed, and especially if you've nerfed their combat, as described below).
 * to a reasonable number, even if they're just a fighter. Below, we're going to give them some basic survival spells. If the companion is a mage, they may already have a higher Magicka than you, set by a script, and you can leave this as-is.
 * to something reasonable, especially for companions with inventory sharing, which is most. One who can only carry 120 units when you and other companions you have can carry over 400 is going to see you quickly "retire" that weak companion if you don't directly remedy the deficit. On the other hand, you may only be able to carry 120 at your current level and may have a companion who can carry 600 for no explicable reason, and not nerfing that is obviously a cheat, like carrying a Pack Guar in your back pocket.
 * and  (and same for Water Walking if you like), followed by   (there is no reason to set it lower, since the game's AI isn't advanced enough for companions to do Alteration-using clever things on their own initiative). There's no guarantee a companion will use these spells, but many will.  If you have one that won't, and get tired of casting on-touch Water Breathing on them (companions who cannot breathe water and who are in follow mode will blissfully follow you underwater until they drown), see if you have a companion installed who does auto-Water-Breathe, look up that NPC in OpenMW-CS by ID, and find the name of their Water Breathe ability, then give it to the won't-Water-Breathe companion as a "spell". (Another route: search IDs for , and scroll down the Spells results, looking for a 0 cost, always-succeeds, Ability version of the effect.) This will almost always work.  Same goes for auto-Levitation and auto-Water-Walking ability that some companions have, to follow you automatically (you might have to cast Dispel to make it stop, though, if you give it to a companion who didn't come with it). Note that some companions that include such abilities have to be manually told to use and stop using them, while others are full-auto.
 * You can also give a companion a Constant Effect enchanted item that provides Water Breathing.
 * , followed by .  If the companion is a mage who is scripted to be capable of curing/healing you and whose stats and spells increase over time, you should skip changing their Restoration skill and let it develop as intended.  Most of those carry their own (inventory-invisible) Restore Magicka potions for when they get low.  For a fighter companion, though, just max their Restoration and set Magicka high enough so you don't have to worry about whether they can self-heal any more today. Be aware that some crude companions still won't heal themselves even after you do this step, and you need to heal them frequently.
 * You can also give a companion a Constant Effect enchanted item that provides Restore Health. Two points is sufficient most of the time, with manual healing only needed after (or during) big fights. At 5 points per second or so, they'll be very hard to kill. (An exception is that some crude ones come with very low health and do not seem to get more over time; one example is the slave mod that permits you to buy any/all slaves in the vanilla slave markets; they typically have around 55 health, and at higher levels of game play they can take more damage than that from a single hit, so something like  to match your own may be advised.
 * Also check that they have armor skill (or Unarmored) appropriately high. Many come with all of them set inappropriately high, and this should be reduced, with one reasonable and the others low, both for plausibility/balance and for the practical reason that you will not be able to keep them equipped in a stable set of armor (which you may have custom enchanted). Otherwise, any time you have them carry a piece of armor loot with a higher nominal value that what they're wearing, they may equip the loot item instead, even if it's a total mismatch for the armor class you want them wearing and even if it's a net loss in protection due to not being enchanted.  Note that some mage companions (and others with high Unarmored skill) will not usually wear armor at all; at mid-to-high levels of game play, they depend upon you to provide them with Constant Effect enchanted Exquisite clothing to keep them from dying every five minutes. So, if you have not yet hunted down the one NPC who sells the Summon Golden Saint spell, or found the guy in Mournhold who restocks Grand Soul Gems, now is the time. However, since this is just an effect of them having a very high Unamored stat, you may be able to get them to wear armor, if you demand it, by adjusting their stats.  E.g., set their Light Armor skill higher and lower Unarmored so the former is at least one point higher than the latter, and the latter is 85 or lower. This will not work for companions with scripted stats that change in fixed ways depending upon your own stats.
 * Look at all the companion's stats and adjust as needed. Companion Personality, Speechcraft, and Mercantile are completely meaningless (except for those that also offer services like Barter, Spellmaking, Enchant, or Repair).  But you'll often find nonsensical stats that actually do matter, like Agility or Luck set to 150 (a serious combat cheat), or a Marksman of 5 or 10 which means "miss virtually every time and waste expensive ammo" (this stat needs to be 30 or higher at a bare minimum for any companion you give pricey missile weapons to, and 51+ is better).
 * Some advanced companion mods auto-set various stats based on those of the player character or in response to direct training by various methods, so may not retain all of them you manually set with the Console. Some also change them on-the-fly in response to things like "Use your missile weapons" commands, jacking up Marksman to higher than other skills – even to 200, which is cheaty and sloppy, but there's no way around this other than by editing the mod to use more reasonable numbers. It's cheaty because not only will they never miss, they'll get maximum damage out of the range of possible damage per missile.
 * Contrary to popular belief (even the UESP wiki had this wrong for years), NPCs can definitely get both Common and Blight Diseases. if they go out fighting with you.
 * When this happens (and it may not be obvious except with Strength), if they do not have an option to Cure and Restore themselves, they must be Cured by you, and have Restore spells cast on them (in that order) to fix damaged stats (including from Greater Bonewalkers, which damage stats directly without an intervening disease; the Cure part can be skipped in that case). Very few companions have any scripting to detect their own diseases or damaged stats. No NPCs can use shrines, potions, scrolls, or cast-on-use items to resolve these problems for themselves. With companions that have dialogue options to cast restorative spells on themselves, check their stats before and after, because there is no guarantee that this feature works as intended in OpenMW. There is at least one mod  that makes the curative and even buffing effects of shrines/altars work as an area effect, so that it applies to companions.
 * The safest bet is to get Restore spells for every Attribute, in on-touch versions, and use them periodically on all companions, after first using a cure-all spell, like Vivec's Touch (which you get for free and which has a far lower casting cost than it should). Due to the Magicka expenditure, you may want to Fortify Magicka first and do this routine immediately before using Rest, unless you also want to drink some Restore Magicka. Note: There are no Restore Skill spells available in the game; the effect is only provided by shrines/altars. It is needed to counter Damage Skill effects of Fury and Elvul's Black Blindfold, and of various monsters and items added by mods. If you have a mod that provides Restore Skill spells, you will want them, since it likely means the mod has also added more Damage Skill things.  The shrine/altar restoration does not  work in OpenMW, so you may need to manually correct a damaged skill with the Console (including on yourself).
 * Companions can even catch vampirism and lycanthropy (the werewolf disease in Bloodmoon). These are just Common Diseases during the first three days, but after that there is no way to cure an NPC of them in-game, only in the Console.
 * There is, fortunately, no known way for an NPC to catch Corprus disease.
 * Companions will happily jump into lava pits in places like Dwemer ruins. They simply do not recognize lava as dangerous; all they see is a drop they think they can handle (and are often wrong about that, too, if you don't fix their Acrobatics – they think they can handle any jump that you can). Quickly cast an on-target Levitate on a lava-swimming companion to get them out ( quickly if you're using one of the "deadly lava" realism mods that jack up the damage). With smarter, auto-levitating companions, you can also simply case Levitate on yourself, and the companion with do the same and rise out of the lava.  To date, zero companions have been found smart enough to understand they are in lava and need to levitate out of it.

Customize your companions as you like with similar Console adjustment to those described above. Most companions seem to come with either a) high Short Blade and/or Long Blade skill and poor skills with any other weapon type; or b) implausibly excessive skill with all weapon types; or c) no real skills, if they are some kind of trivial hireling like a farmer or maid. If you have a big stockpile of high-end maces and staves you don't use as a player character, and have a Long Blade skill of 75 yourself, try   to have a mace/staff/club-wielding companion who can nearly keep up with your combat ability, and set their other weapon skills very low so they avoid equipping other weapon types you might have them temporarily carrying. Better yet, set that skill to more like 50-something and the others to 5, so you are the leader and do most of the serious fighting.

You can also use OpenMW-CS to modify the companion's starting stats, if they are of the sort that grow in power with you. Just be aware that some of their stat-changing scripts can be complicated, and some are not affected at all by the initial starting values (which may be set only so they have some stats as an NPC if you attack them upon first meeting).

Either technique is a solution for the "I really love the looks of this butler or dancer NPC, who has inventory sharing but worthless stats, and I wish they were a combat-capable companion" scenario. Just fix them. It's your game; the mod author isn't watching over your shoulder, and probably wouldn't object anyway (their own mod is taking the game in a new direction from Bethesda's, after all). Be aware that usually only combat-oriented companions come with advanced combat options, like being able to tell the companion to use ranged or melee attacks only.

Limitations of companions
There are many:


 * It's important to understand that companions do not have their own AI and that their personalities are an illusion. All they have is scripts that check for a condition that a script can detect in this game engine, and do something predetermined in response, if the mod author thought to include such a test and response, and did so correctly. If the author didn't add a specific test for something (and it is not built into NPC AI), there isn't a way for the companion to "notice" or react appropriately. Some well-developed companions actually do various custom condition tests, but even these cannot prefigure every eventuality, nor can they, and there are conditions that cannot be tested for anyway.
 * No companions appear capable of proactive use of magic that responds directly to the threat that has appeared (e.g., using a spell, scroll, or potion of Resist Fire, or purposefully choosing a Frost Damage weapon, when facing a Flame Atronach). Some individual companion mods may be scripted to cast appropriate defensive or restorative spells in response to certain attack types after already being hit by one, such as using Cure Poison (a script can detect Poison Damage), but there seems to be no scriptable way for them to "see what's coming".
 * Most rely on the game engine's NPC algorithm for weapon selection, which is a bit mysterious. They sometimes pick weapons that are not the best for them, and it seems to be a mixture of factors including nominal weapon value, the minimum and maximum base damage it does, their skill level with the weapon type, whether it is magical, whether it still has charges, and various other bits of data.
 * On the plus side, one adaptation seen in several companion mods is use of a Jinkblade to attempt to paralyze the enemy, then switching to a more favored, higher-damage weapon. But, some companions will in fact just stab and stab with a Jinkblade, doing very little damage, until its magic is depleted. They also don't seem able to detect when an opponent is resistant to the Paralyze effect.  Overall, it is most effective to give a companion a jinkblade and see how they do with it (unless you want to nerf their combat and do most fighting yourself).
 * Companions will not use Cast When Used enchantments of any kind; all their gear must be Cast on Strike or Constant Effect. This is true of all NPCs not specifically scripted to use the Cast When Used enchantments of a particular item they already have. In theory, individual companions could be coded with this capability, but none seem to be, and it would break if you gave them different gear.
 * Some forum users report that companions will activate Cast When Used gear, if a) it has at least one offense (not just defense) component, and b) it is fully charged.  This does not seem to work in OpenMW.  If this claim about the vanilla game is correct, then OpenMW has a bug.
 * Companions will not use fortification potions or scrolls of any kind.
 * Nor will most of them use Restore Fatigue or Restore Magicka stuff (though some are scripted with their own invisible restoration "stash" and can apply it when told to or, rarely, on their own initiative). A handful (e.g. Gatanas and Julan) will actually use bought/loot Restore Fatigue and Restore Magicka potions of the vanilla sort, but this is a unusual feature. Most will use Restore Health (during combat only). Just give them one of each kind and see if they ever use them. If they don't, check their stats after fights; they may be scripted to cast equivalent spells on themselves, or to regenerate quickly.
 * Many if not most are scripted to slowly regenerate both Magicka and Fatigue (whether you use Rest or not).
 * Most use a generic Shield scroll (Scroll of X th Barrier), but a) they'll do it even when facing a trivial creature like a Nix Hound, and b) if they have more that one, they'll use them all back to back before starting to fight.  So, just give them one at a time, when about to take on a tough baddie.  They used to do this use-them-all-at-once thing with Restore Health potions in the generation 1 companions, but OpenMW has fixed the problem, and it never affected most later companions anyway.
 * Some will not take a Restore Health potion of the cheapest two varieties, and virtually none will take a player-made one, only a standard one from a merchant or found as loot.
 * Most companions will not use Restore Health potions or spells until near death (typically 30% or even 20% Health), no matter how fast they are taking damage, and none will use one automatically except during combat, so they need to be healed (or, if they have this feature, told to heal) manually by the player after combat is over, if they don't have constant-effect Restore Health items. A few will not even take the potions during a fight, and must be healed on the fly by the player if facing tough opponents. Many will also refuse to take one even if they have a option to tell them to do so, if their health isn't below a certain amount, typically 80%, requiring you to cast a Restore Health on them if you want them back up to full.
 * Unless scripted to so do, companions will not tell you they are injured or tell you what their health and other status is. The easiest way to at least check their health is to cast a very low-cost Restore Health on them; this will (in OpenMW) show the same yellow status bar you get for enemy health in combat. To check other things, you will usually need  commands in the console.
 * Companions will not equip items that it might seem they "obviously" should. E.g., if you are buffed temporarily to Speed 300, and give a companion the Boots of Blinding Speed, they will not equip them in some effort to keep up; they only see them as low-quality leather boots and will ignore them unless all they have is shoes.
 * Some good companions have a script to increase their Speed to keep up if the player's goes up (and some will Levitate or Water Walk when you do if they are in follow mode). Many do not, however, and you can easily outrun and lose them, as with "take me to safety" NPCs in various quests. See above for how to give abilities like Water Breathing to companions, and increase their base Speed and Athletics, with the Console.
 * Many companions have stats set such that they will disregard low-quality armor, and either will not equip items like Netch Leather or Chitin at all, even if they came with it, or will have it equipped but will de-equip it the moment you change their inventory in any way. Some even reject Bonemold! This is a game-engine bug of NPCs. So, some companions may not be very usable at the very beginning of the game, until you've got some spare, non-terrible loot for them to wear.  One solution to this is to use   etc., to see what their current skills are and reduce excessively high ones, and raise excessively low ones; they will then often then equip "lesser" gear. It may take experimentation. If they're scripted to set (and reset) their stats based on the players', this trick will not work, at least not for long (most often resets after Rest, but sometimes also upon being changed from wait to follow mode, or being out of then back in the same cell as the player).
 * If your companion is rejecting armor, do   on them; if this stat is high, reduce it and they should start wearing the gear.  If it keeps resetting to a high level, and you do not use Unarmored yourself, try resetting yours to a low level and see if that also reduces the companions' (you may have to sleep first with the companion present and in follow mode).
 * Companions with a high Unarmored skill may refuse to equip armor of various sorts or at all. It is not actually consistent from armor piece to armor piece, and may not be from mod to mod. Some non-exhaustive testing shows that some companions will refuse to equip a shield unless their Unarmored is 86 or lower, regardless what their Block skill is, but will still wear a cuirass when Unarmored is in the 90s.  So, try adjusting Unarmored downward, and raising the desired Light, Medium, or Heavy Armor skill until you get them wearing what you want them to wear. It may be possible for some mage/monk companions to be hard-coded to refuse to wear armor at all.
 * A similar effect may also happen with regard to weapon-equipping with companions with very high Hand-to-Hand skill.
 * Because companions equip clothing based on its nominal value, you should always use Exquisite-level items when doing Constant Effect enchantments for them. Otherwise, they'll de-equip something they're supposed to be wearing if you give them Exquisite loot to carry.
 * An exception is that many companions will not wear two Exquisite rings at once, so one must be Extravagant if you want them to wear two rings (the first should be Exquisite). Some companions will not wear two rings at all. Also, glove quality does not go above Extravagant in the vanilla game.
 * You can ensure a companion always wears a particular item of apparel by using a very expensive one from a clothing mod, that exceeds the value of any loot item of the same class that might be encountered.
 * A companion who favors missile weapons will waste ammo trying to shoot Slaughterfish and Dreughs underwater which seems to be impossible in OpenMW (and maybe in Bethesda's engine too?). If you are near water, put the companion in melee mode if there's an option to do so; if not, take away the missile weapon. If it's too late, kill the water critters yourself as fast as possible to conserve companion ammo. Similarly, spellcaster companions may try to use on-target spells underwater and they do not work (in OpenMW, anyway); only on-touch and on-self ones do (though any area-effect they have will work).
 * While most spell-focused character classes will use Destruction and/or Conjuration magic in combat, some fail to do so. If you have one that won't, they probably either lack the necessary spells, do not have the Magicka to cast them, or do not have high enough Destruction or Conjuration skill, all of which are adjustable in seconds with the Console, as detailed above.
 * If you have one who summons dangerous things like Storm Atronachs, or casts area-effect Destruction spells like Greater Shockball, and thereby keeps killing you or other companions, use  to take the spell away from them and give them a somewhat nerfed replacement, like Summon Dremora or Daedric Bite.
 * You cannot give custom (Spellmaker-sold) spells to companions, only stock ones, by ID. You may wish to upgrade these over time, as spells that seemed badass when you were level 5 are a joke when you're level 20. This is not necessary with advanced, "learning" mage companions if their ReadMe file says they pick up new spells on their own.
 * Depleted magic items will not regenerate their charge while equipped by or in the inventory of companions (or any other NPCs, unless game scripting individually charges up items for certain of them, as I think it does with some essential NPCs). They only charge back up over time when in the possession of the player character. It is thus vital that you either rotate weapons between you and companions, so they always have one with charges, or you periodically take rest breaks, taking all their items from them that need to be charged, and doing Rest with them in your possession or manually (and expensively) recharging them with filled soul gems – even if you are over-encumbered while doing so – then give them back after they're charged up. This is best done indoors in secured locations, since in the wilderness you can be attacked by random creatures while Resting, you may be encumbered, and your companion may be unarmed. If using the soul gem approach, you do not have to leave the inventory-sharing window to charge the items; just put them in your inventory, drag soul gems onto your paperdoll, charge the desired item, and give it back.  You can save time by putting the soul gems in the companion inventory so they stack, then dragging them back to yourself so you can use the stack instead of one gem at a time. Using Fortify Enchant will get better results and waste fewer gems.
 * For this can't-charge reason, combat companions should always have multiple magic weapons (even as many as four or five, if you plan to be at it all day without stopping). Most will switch to a new, charged weapon after they deplete their preferred one; this may be part of the game's general NPC AI.
 * Similarly, NPCs cannot repair their own gear, even if they are Smiths and offer Repair as a service. You have to take damaged gear from companions and fix it yourself (or have them do so via their menu if they offer the Repair service), then give the items back. You do not have to leave the companion inventory window to do repairs, just put the items in your inventory, do the fix-it work, then give them back to the companion. Using Fortify Armorer will do more repair, with higher chance of success, per hammer use.
 * If you have a "pseudo-companion" – a with whom you cannot share inventory – like Forgeir, the Fighters Guild mercenary you can hire in stage three of the Hlaalu Stronghold quests, their gear will eventually wear out, making them useless and helpless.  This can be fixed by: a) saving your game, b) Console-killing them with   temporarily, c) taking all their repairable items and dropping each on the ground, d) using the Console to click on each and get its ID, e) reloading your savegame, f) opening the Console and clicking the follower, then g) doing   followed by h) , for each item.  This will give them fresh, 100%-fixed replacements for all their damaged gear items. This even works on custom enchanted items, which have IDs like " $dynamic12345 "; with those, like IDs containing spaces, the double quotes around the ID in the commands are mandatory. If you're a stickler, you can deduct from your own gold the approximate cost the repairs would have run, with something like  .  This Console-based gear removal and addition can also be used to replace any crap gear they have with better gear you've earned or bought but don't need, then use   on your gear item you dropped to get its ID, thus deleting the original item (you only gave them a copy with the console, not that actual item, which remains in the game world otherwise).
 * When companions use Levitate (by any means), they often clip into the ground if your elevation is higher than theirs and they have not risen to yours yet. This can cause them to get stuck or fall through the floor if the effect ends while they are still clipping. If you see one clipping like this, move to where this isn't happening as soon as you can, and keep the levitation going until you do so.
 * Some companions (all those based on Companion Project 3.1) have a "warping" capability, such that when they are in follow mode, and are not in combat, if they get too far away from the player character they'll teleport to the PC's location. While this can look funny – they may chase off after a critter in the distance then reappear in front of you and do it again – it is very practical for not leaving them behind accidentally. Older companions do not have this feature, and it is missing from some later ones that were independently developed. Not all companions who have this feature have it implemented correctly enough to work in OpenMW, though that particular failure is rare (only affects Witchgirl Adventure in tests so far).
 * Most companions do not have any kind of "move out of the way, you are blocking the player character" capability, and consequently will very frequently block the PC into corners and otherwise become an obstacle. You just learn to work around it, by anticipating tight spaces (e.g. Imperial towers' spiral stairs) and having the companion wait; by moving in ways that "lure" the companion into a new position that hopefully gives you enough room to get by; and by using the Console's    command for a moment to get unstuck.  Even companions who do have a "Move" feature often don't have one that works reliably.  Some "NPC commanding" mods have an option along the lines of "Take my place", which swaps your cell position with that of the NPCs; if you find one that works, it should work on all companions and is a handy alternative to the Console trick.
 * In Bethesda's engine, that Console trick often got companions and wandering NPCs stuck in walls and floors because the no-collision clipping applied to them, too, for the duration. This bug/misfeature is almost entirely fixed in OpenMW; about the only way it will happen is if you use this trick to move far enough away from the companion that it triggers them to warp to you, and they do so in a way that causes them to clip with a wall or something, and you turn collision back on. To fix it, just move far enough away again to cause them to warp again, or cast Levitation if they auto-Levitate with you (which puts them into no-collision mode temporarily), or cast an on-touch or on-target Levitation on them for the same effect, then lead them to somewhere they are not overlapping anything.
 * follow the oft-given vanilla gameplay advice to use the Console command   to fix this or any other problem.  It often does not work, and doing it will send  NPCs back to their original locations (or at least all of those in the same cell – this needs further testing). This was poor advice even for vanilla gameplay, since it will also undo your hard Command Humanoid work to move some vanilla NPCs around.
 * Teleportation and companions:
 * Except a few specifically scripted to do so (and some of those fail in OpenMW), companions cannot follow you through Recall or Intervention. The only forms of teleportation they can consistently follow you through are: guild guide, siltstrider, and ship fast travel; and teleport doors (a.k.a. load doors – doors that load a new cell rather than swing open – they go from one cell to another, indoor or outdoor, and may be an activator that does not look like a door). Some mod-provided teleport items will work with companions, but only when they go to either a) an outdoor cell, or b) a specific, pre-determined indoor location. Even then they may not work.
 * The one known mod solution for Recall/Intervention and companions, that works in Bethesda's engine without MWSE, has also been patched to work with OpenMW, but only works for a few high-end companions. (See Companion Teleportation entry in the Companion and NPC utilities and misc. section.)
 * Mods that add new teleportation means (airships, etc.) that use the same underlying method as fast travel or teleport doors will work with companions (usually), and many mods do this with additional guild guides. Those that are based on Recall or Intervention (i.e., direct, on-the-spot teleportation without an NPC or object outside your own inventory) will generally not work with companions. This includes house-mod teleportation rings and similar items. This also holds true of mod teleportation that is borrowed from that of Bethesda's to-and-from-Mournhold NPCs rather than from regular Guide Guides (see next entry).
 * Taking companions to/from Mournhold: The teleportation NPCs provided by Tribunal are player-character only. Some companions have "Let's go to Mournhold" or "Meet me in Mournhold" options to compensate (or even are guild guides themselves with Mournhold as a destination), but most do not. A work-around is to install the Balmora Council Club mod in the Fast travel section (even if you have no interest in that home/business), since it adds companion-compatible Mournhold guild guides. Another is to use the two alternative Guild Guides provided by the Staff Agency mod (in the Many-companion mods section).
 * Some companions will not follow you through a teleport door or fast travel until you move and then stop again. If you go in a door and then another door (perhaps to its left or right on a perpendicular wall) without walking, or use one guild guide then another without taking a step after the first, the companion may be left behind. A few also will not follow if they are still in motion when you trigger the teleport. And some companions are bugged in that they require a moment after a teleport to get back in follow mode.  So, the best practice to avoid  these problems is to teleport when everyone is standing still, wait a second after the teleport, take a step, wait a second, then do the second teleport. This becomes second nature quickly, and will keep multiple companions following you no matter who wrote them with what glitches.
 * If you have two or more companions following you, you have to ensure they're all in range (approximately 25 feet) or the further-away one(s) will not follow you through fast travel or a teleport door. The maximum practical number is three followers (especially indoors), and even this is often frustrating. Two rarely pose a left-behind problem, though they still increase your likelihood of being boxed into a tight space by them, and are also apt to damage each other frequently in combat, and to thus require Restore Health attention. If you note that they always follow in a particular order, you can compensate by giving the frontmost one better armor, the back one weaker weapons, etc.
 * Think thrice before you give a companion the more powerful stuff available in the official Area Affect Arrows add-on. Be careful using them yourself; you'll rarely get to shoot two in a row, because your companion will rush to meet the enemy as soon as the first hits, and thus will get in range of the area of effect of a second shot in most cases.
 * Like other NPCs, companions will respond to being hit with Soul Trap as a hostile action, so be careful with area-effect versions of the spell.
 * Various companions (especially fighter mercenaries) come with Guard AI as part of their scripting. The author thought it would be cool if they auto-attacked hostile creatures on sight. Unfortunately, they'll arrest you if you attack a humanoid who hasn't initiated combat first, even in the wilderness or in bandit/smuggler lairs (and even if the companion is in follow mode when you do it; they'll arrest when taken out of follow). They may also arrest you for theft and lockpicking if they are not in follow mode when you do it, but will ignore it if they are.  They can be edited in OpenMW-CS to not be Guards.  Some cleverer mod authors kept the Guard AI, but included scripts that prevent them from treating you as a criminal.
 * A few companions without Guard AI have a high Alarm level and will report you for crimes rather than arrest you, or react negatively to you if you have a Bounty; these can usually be fixed with a  on them in the Console, though a few have custom scripting in this regard.
 * Companions (not just Guard-AI ones) may turn hostile toward you if you attack one of your own summoned creatures. If you are going to "harvest" some Golden Saints or whatever, put followers in wait mode first. They regard the attack on your summon as an attack on their party, and respond by attacking the culprit, who also happens to be in the party. This is also why two companions will sometimes turn on each other after one hits you during combat with a real enemy.
 * Never give a companion a weapon or other item with a Damage Attribute or Damage Skill effect, or use one around them. Inevitably, your companions will sometimes hit each other and you, and you'll hit them. In a big fight, you might end up crippling each other. The Drain version is safer, since it wears off without having to use Restore potions, spells, or shrines. Also, Damage Skill effects are not always properly repaired by shrines/altars, and are especially dangerous. Companions can't recover from the shrines/altars anyway without a mod that gives them an area effect when you trigger them (nor does the game provide any other means of Restore Skill, without third party mods doing it), though some companions have a "restore your stats" dialogue option.
 * For the same "collateral damage" reason, avoid giving companions area-of-effect weapons or spells.
 * Companions (and vanilla followers) will "stack" and clip/collide when going through doors between cells. If you have them in tow, always be moving forward at least for a split second when going through a teleport door so that you are a step ahead of them when they materialize. If you do not, and two or more are colliding with you, you can sometimes be forced through the ground, and fall (to the water table or into the void). If this has started to happen, quickly enter the Console and use  briefly to get unstuck (or un-falling).
 * Companions who increase in skills and level as your own stats increase do so in inconsistent ways from mod to mod. In many cases, a companion's stats will not go up unless you successfully use the Rest function, with the companion in the same cell, and in follow mode. At least one (Jasmine) does not do this properly (needs to be told to "practice your skills", i.e. recalculate stats, after every Rest for which she's present).
 * As covered in previous sections in more detail:
 * All companions need to have abnormally high Acrobatics, or will frequently die from falling off things like siltstrider platforms for no apparent reason, or simply from following you when you jump around. However, many come with this stat set as low as 5 or 10, and must be fixed in order to be usable for very long. (See the cheat-potential notes below for a consequence of this Acrobatics boost with a companion who offers Training service.)
 * Companions don't recognize lava as dangerous and need to be very quickly Levitated out of it.
 * Companions most certainly can and will get diseases and have their stats harmed by them and by Greater Bonewalkers. Even if they have an option to cast Cure and Restore on themselves, they depend on you to make that happen.
 * Some aspects of companions (even them being present where you left them) can reset after 72 hours away from the player character, so don't leave them alone for long stretches. Some companions do not seem to be affected by this (especially the simplest ones), but others can get their stats messed up, or will disappear.  Safest to leave them at home (where ever you decide that is) and return to it frequently.
 * Companions with an "auto-move" or "step aside" feature temporarily exit follower mode to move; if you teleport (including by a door to another cell) before they get back into follower mode, they'll be left behind.

Good news: Bethesda companion bugs fixed in OpenMW
At least eight long-documented bugs in the Bethesda engine that negatively affected companions appear to be completely eliminated in OpenMW:


 * Companions (and player characters, for that matter) who are Unarmored specialists no longer have to be wearing at least one item of armor. In Bethesda they must, or their Armor Rating will be always be 0 even if they have an Unarmored skill of 100.
 * Companions no longer sometimes disappear when going through doors between cells while the Levitation effect is active on them.
 * The game does not crash when a companion with a Slowfall effect active on them goes through a door between cells.
 * Companions no longer guzzle, back-to-back, all Restore Health potions that they have in inventory. Many companion mods have specific code to stop this behavior, but in OpenMW it no longer even happens with Tribunal 's stock Calvus Horatius mercenary companion, nor any third-party companions tested so far. However, companions will still fire off as many Shield scrolls (such as Scroll of the Fifth Barrier) as they have in inventory, back-to-back, as soon as they enter combat.
 * Companions no longer randomly drink other potions (including booze) in inventory. In OpenMW, it is safe to have companions act as "pack mules" for potion loot, other than they may drink a few Retore potions if they happen to need one at the time.
 * Companions scripted to auto-regenerate Magicka and/or Fatigue would sometimes have this regen effect turn negative under certain circumstances, when changing cells – it would act as a drain instead of a regeneration. This is why so many companions have a dialogue option to reset Magicka regen. In OpenMW, you should never need to use it.
 * Relatedly, constant Effect items often caused problems with companions in the original game engine, by their effects turning negative (e.g. a CE Restore Health would become a slow-death item). This doesn't happen in OpenMW at all, and CE items are highly recommendable for companions.
 * In Bethesda's engine, changing the load order of a companion (or other NPC) NPC mod would typically cause doubling of the companion and sometimes other NPCs in the mod, and typically would break companion scripting. This required using  in the Console on the original NPC, and re-doing a bunch of stuff to get the companion back into something like their former self. None of this appears to affects OpenMW. (Doubling is still possible if you add two mods that contain the same NPC.)
 * Companions in OpenMW will no longer drink random potions and booze from their inventory.

Cheat potential and balance problems of companions

 * Companions make almost all combat situations at least somewhat easier for the player character (as long as you stay out of the companion's line of fire). This can totally unbalance the game, especially with multiple companions.
 * The first compensating method is to turn up the Difficulty slider.
 * Another obvious way is to leave companions outside in wait mode when you enter a new area or at least a "boss" fight area. Feel free to reload a savegame and do a fight over if it was disappointingly anticlimactic with a companion's help. A few companions have a "stay out of the fight but keep following" sort of option, but most do not, and have to be put into wait or wander (not guard) mode. For vanilla follower NPCs, who are usually a liability not a help except at the earliest levels, your best bet is to outrun them to a new cell by Fortify Speed or some other approach, and come back for them later – within 72 game hours.
 * If the game is still too easy for you, you may have to adjust in other ways, e.g. by using the console to reduce a companion's stats or even your own (especially for companions whose stats change with yours). See the Nerfing companions section for a detailed "make the companion harmless" approach.
 * You may need to stop using an over-powered companion and pick a different one after a while, whose stats are not so excessive (and stay non-excessive).
 * You can also try installing difficulty mods. There are many, ranging from enhancements of specific foes, or increased numbers of random creatures or hostile NPCs, to economy overhauls that make gold harder to earn, or all-new combat systems. Some are MWSE-dependent (not OpenMW-compatible), and others make such systemic changes they frequently conflict with other mods; look for a simple one to start with.
 * Another compensation is to only use companions for combat if you are tackling something earlier than you are supposed to (e.g. at level 15 for a mod that recommends level 30 and higher, or doing tough parts of Tribunal and Bloodmoon around that level).
 * You can avoid using companions with Guard AI; those without it will not rush into combat with hostiles, but will wait until hostiles, or you, actually land a blow (or negative spell).
 * Companions increase your effective carrying capacity, sometimes by more than your own Encumbrance stat. This can help you get richer, quicker.  It's also a major time saver; you make fewer trips back and forth between loot piles and merchants. Anything that reduces player real-time spent on "bureaucracy" and tedium is a convenience not a cheat in the minds of many players, especially those wanting to play this game once and move on to another, or those who've already played it before and are eager to get past the early stages and on to high-level quests in factions they haven't tried yet. However, the increased profitability is a bit cheaty.  A compensating mechanism is to not use Personality and Mercantile boosts to get better prices, and just accept those that are offered by merchants. Another is to make no use of the two wealthy creature merchants who buy at full retail (Creeper and Mudcrab Merchant).
 * Most companions will still follow you, haltingly and at a distance, if they have a "warp to player position" script, even when they are overencumbered, and they can still fight (rooted to one spot) in this condition. So, you can load them with 5,000 units of loot and drag them around like they're a Pack Elephant. (One mod's Pack Rats follow in this manner while, if they died in follow mode.)  Exploiting this is . If your companion isn't following properly, and always lagging behind, standing stock still, overencumbrance is surely why. (If they shouldn't be overencumbered – e.g., they weren't a few minutes ago, with the same loot – this is an indication that a Greater Bonewalker, disease, or other problem has affected their Strength or Endurance and reduced their Encumbrance capacity; see tip about fixing this in the Help your companion survive section. If their stats frequently update based on yours, a sudden reduction in their capacity might even mean it's  that's diseased or cursed.)
 * Services: Various companions offer services. Many players will consider it cheaty, especially if they offer more than one service.
 * Trainers: Anyone will find this option cheaty if they consider the efforts to find better trainers over time central to the game. This will be especially the case with companions whose own stats adjust with yours; what they offer to train will vary over time and their ability will keep increasing, making them a "mega-trainer". Also, the necessary fix to raise all companions' Acrobatics high (see above) will make any trainer companions into Master Trainers of that skill, unless you temporarily lower it while using their Training service.
 * Merchant: Kind of a senseless option, and basically a lame "slow but sure infinite money" cheat, if the NPC has any significant daily-resetting funds: you can sell them an item, then take it back via Companion Share, and have the item and the money, and keep doing it until the money runs out, and do it again every day. Another thing some may object to is Merchant companions with any restocking goods like silver arrows or Restoration potions, though this is primarily a time-saving convenience that doesn't make the game much easier, just less repetitive of returning to shops or making your own potions.
 * Spells: May be cheaty if the companion offers a lot of spells, rare ones, ones that cost less than they should in gold or in Magicka expenditure, or spells that should not be possible (e.g. with doubled, tripled, etc. application of the same magic effect, or doing something not normally available, like Restore Magicka). A particularly obvious cheat is a companion selling you any Fortify Skill spell; these are normally only available from a total of four NPCs (three in Tribunal and one in Bloodmoon), and are not available to just-starting characters, but require faction quests. Used "too cleverly", fortified skills and other "super-spells" from a companion can unbalance the game very quickly.
 * Spellmaker and Enchanter: Not very cheaty, since NPCs who offer these services are fairly common and often not faction-specific, and you can bring them home with Command Humanoid. The potentially cheaty element of a companion providing these services is that you can get a replacement spell or a new item enchanted right in the middle of a dungeon crawl without having to return to civilization; for many this will be a real-time saver, not a cheat.
 * Armorer: Gets you repairs without having to buy hammers, and at a low cost once your companion's Disposition is maxed (and with many simple companions it starts that way). The cheat potential of this is limited, since your own Armorer skill will go up over time, and it will be much cheaper to do repairs yourself (nor will you even care about that pocket change anyway, after a certain point).
 * You can use OpenMW-CS to create a re-mod of the companion mod that removes any or all services from them; they are just checkboxes in the NPC's entry.
 * When you get to a level where you are regularly producing your own enchanted items, companions can be used as "mobile storage" for ones you don't need in combat but only situationally (e.g. a belt of high-speed Levitation, on use), without you having to carry all of them. Companions don't do anything with on-use enchantments.

Nerfing companions

 * If you love the virtual camaraderie of companions but want them to have real effect on combat, yet not die all the time, you can use the following technique to make the companion harmless (unless their stats auto-adjust to track with your own):
 * Set their defensive skills (armor of whatever sort, Agility, Block, Restoration, Illusion, Alteration) very high – over 100 – and/or give them cheat-powerful armor if some mod provided some, and/or make sure they have great defensive spells and abnormally high Magicka
 * Set Luck in the middle (around half of yours)
 * Reduce offensive combat skills (weapons, Marksman – always with low-end ammo you got free as loot – plus Destruction and Conjuration, and replace powerful spells with weaker ones). Set them low enough to usually fail and to do minimal damage when they succeed (but keep the favored weapon higher than others, e.g. set it to 15 and others to 5).
 * If you want an "arm candy" companion just in fancy clothes and no armor, you can give them Unarmored 200 and they'll be pretty much invincible, especially with constant-effect Restore Health on some items.
 * Contrarily, if you've beaten all the game's quests and enemies, and a bunch of mods for high-level characters, and are running out of challenges, you can try intentionally using companions who are weak and death-prone (Calvus Horatius is a good choice, without any modification necessary, especially if you are over level 25 – leveled monsters are apt to kill him). Your new mission is to keep the companion(s) alive through hair-raising adventures – which can be more difficult than it sounds.
 * A good taste of this and the serious challenges it can pose is doing the official Siege at Firemoth add-on quest at level 40 or so, with no goal in mind (given the low-end loot) other than the survival of all three, eventually four, game-provided followers. The only way to do it is to switch gears and be nothing but a support mage healing your compatriots while they do most of the fighting, and to Calm the spellcasting one again and again to minimize the damage he does to his friends; you will need a large number of Fortify and Restore Magicka potions. At the final Lich fight, switch back into baddass mode, and take that boss out before he kills them all in one to two strikes. (See  for details.)
 * Hard-core nerfing: If you have an "über" companion, like Belial, you can nerf this NPC's combat ability more seriously by using  to take away powerful spells (and replace them with weak ones via  ), then custom-enchanted weapons that are low-damage and have negative Constant Effects, e.g. a Glass Dagger with a Drain Short Blade effect, and just refrain from giving them higher-damage weapons.

Roleplay

 * Most companions charge no money for their services. If you find this too implausible, you can manually pay them a periodic fair salary or a loot share, by giving them gold in inventory or, less visibly, by just docking yourself the amount with something like.
 * Give them great gear; you really do not need 1 million septims, or a collection of a dozen Glass Curiasses in a chest, so don't be stingy. They're risking their virtual lives every time they go somewhere with you, and take a lot of damage.
 * If you have a big house mod or have already built your Great House stronghold, you can enhance the sense of having a buddy (or spouse, or bodyguard, or whatever) by using a furniture mod to give them their own stuff (bed, closet, etc.), removing useless stock furniture if necessary. If you have lots of houses, you can give some to specific companions as their own homes (though remember to visit within 72 game hours if you don't want aspects of some companions to reset to defaults).
 * See also the Companion and NPC utilities and misc. section for roleplay interaction and realism mods.

Specific companion mods
For slaves-as-companions mods, see the Slaves and slavery section.

Humanoids
See Player homes section for notes on Domehome as a house mod.
 * Julan, Ashlander Companion 2.02 by Kateri  –  with a patch and with daily builds of OpenMW 0.42 and later, from July 2017 or later (did not work even with the patch in 0.41 versions in January and March 2017). See bottom of first forum post here  for the .omwaddon patch file.  This is probably the most famous Morrowind companion mod of all, and has even been said to be the best home-grown mod for any game ever.  Its many connections to the Ashlander side of the Main Quest really do enrich the game – various fans of this mod will not play the game without it, and it has been among the most-requested for OpenMW compatibility testing and fixes. Julan is highly interactive, has a rich back story and side quests, is trainable (actually  be trained, by you, by trainers, and/or by skill books), and pretty well simulates having a mind of his own.  He comes pretty skilled at a few things, including Light Armor, Short Blade, and Marksman, but he's easy to train into a combat mage, an axe specialist, or whatever.  At some point, he can even train .  How powerful he becomes is entirely up to you.  He will automatically use Levitate, Water Breathing, and Water Walking with you. Disposition progresses naturally; Persuasion appears scripted to fail and reduce Disposition, even if your Speechcraft is 100. His quest scripting is quite particular; e.g., if he says he needs to stop in Vos before taking you to meet his mother the mabrigash, he means it; when at her camp, and he says to go light a fire, actually do it; and so on. That said, it is hard to mess up his quests, unless you tell him you aren't going to help him any longer and dismiss him. Many of his dialogues have multiple possible responses you can choose, that produce different reactions from him, but they do not seem to have serious game-play consequences (e.g., you can be serious, or jokey, and it's okay). Exceptions are romance-related ones (either toward him or toward another character, Shani). Julan uses the game's default male Dunmer voice acting, not to excess; Shani actually uses Bosmer voice, to sound less like an old lady who smokes too much.  Julan interacts a little with some other companions (mostly Jasmine and some of Emma's, below).
 * Like some other companions, but unlike various "sleeping" NPCs (Dagoth Ur's Sleepers, and a sacrifice victim in Bloodmoon), he will not lay down and stay there. In a scene in which he's supposed to be recuperating, he lays down and stands up over and over again, until you talk to the healer and give him a moment to get out of bed. (This seems to be an OpenMW bug, since other companions like Gatanas and Laura Craft (below) have malfunctional "sleep" or "lie down" dialogue options.)  If you are playing Imperial Cult, and he is in follow mode while you are on one of its quests in which something was mentioned about sending a missionary to the Ashlanders, Julan goes into "mock-missionary" mode, producing silly screeds about ancestors and the Daedra, which is fun for about five minutes then very annoying.  He sticks in this mode until that quest is complete (which you may not intend to do for some time). To make him stop harassing you about it, enter   in the Console.  If Sinnammu does not reappear in her Yurt after doing the vanilla part of making Ald Daedroth safe and leading her there, do   inside her yurt; she's stuck in the ceiling.  If Julan and/or Shani won't leave Vivec's palace, levitate (to get them to levitate with you) when going back out. If they get stuck in follow mode even after you tell them to stay, or keep fighting you or each other, use   on them.  See also Julan-specific notes under the Companion Teleportation entry in the Companion and NPC utilities and misc. section.
 * Finding Julan: . Suggested level: 5+, since you have to save Julan from some baddies there (scary-looking, but weaker than their vanilla versions). If you pick him up after you are rather high-level, he'll be less fun.
 * Main Quest temporary blockage: With Julan installed, a few things are mandatory, or Main Quest progression is blocked (unless you dismiss Julan or he is dead). 1) He must be trained until ready to face what's inside the Ghostfence (without freaking out and teleporting away).  The MQ stage involving Zainsubanni is blocked until this part of Julan is done.  2) Your entry into the Cavern of the Incarnate is blocked until you do the Shani (Julan's ex) and Mashti (Julan's mom) side quests. If you get stuck on either of them, see the FAQ posted by the mod author ; they're aimed at puzzle solvers, not thud-and-blunder gamers, so they require talking to particular people, etc., in particular orders, and sometimes seem to enforce realtime waiting (e.g. after Shani goes hunting, go do something else for a while, like a faction quest; same when she's staying in Mamea's Yurt.)
 * Not a puzzle solver? If you get stumped by Julan's often vague quests, see "Julan hints" on the talk page. The gist is that you have to follow clues in conversations and in your journal, raise people's dispositions, talk to more (mostly but not always Ahemmusa) Ashlanders than you might think (usually without Julan in follow mode), and go back and forth a lot. Look for new dialogue topics like "murderous witch", etc.; some of them are mandatory (often with someone other than who first mentioned the topic).
 * Version 2.1 3.0 is in the works, as of April 2017 (and still as of February 2018, though beta testing is underway now . It is not compatible with savegames from 2.02 or earlier. PS: This "modder reawakening" is a good proof that OpenMW is renewing interest not just in the base game but also in its community.
 * Jasmine, a Morrowind Companion 2.7  by Jac (Gulfwulf, GHF)  –, aside from minor glitches, and highly recommendable just for Jasmin's actual companionability.  She's a solid contender among the best MW companion mods to date, with lots of dialogue and quest scripting.  She's Scout-class, uses the games default Redguard female voice acting (not to excess), and will automatically use Levitate, Water Breathing, and Water Walking with you. Can (when prompted) cure herself of diseases as well as restore her own stats if they get damaged. She has abnormally high (200) Acrobatics, like many companions, to avoid ridiculous falling deaths. Jasmine is pretty tough, but not over-powered when you meet her (less so than Wolf Companion, below).  As her stats and level increase with yours, she eventually becomes rather powerful; this can be mediated by nerfing her offense gear. The home she comes with in Seyda Neen is very modest. She has some of the smartest movement AI (aside from a minor bug), and usually responds to a nudge, and also has command options to move out of the way. She does not seem to cast offensive or defensive spells, though will sometimes cast Restore Health on herself, but usually will not (it's safest to give her her Constant Effect gear and stock potions that provide the effect).  She's also easy on the eyes – her appearance is modeled on a particular Playboy Playmate, and she's a Better Bodies companion, so looks pretty realistic, not like the awkward, cartoonish NPCs of the vanilla Bethesda game. Jasmine has much to say if you look for dialogue options appearing after journal entries in the Main Quest and some major side quests.  Sometimes she gives advice or expresses doubts (e.g. about a Fighters Guild quest that looks like an outright assassination). She is also romanceable, but it takes work and might not all be functional in OpenMW yet. Her quests so far have one and only one right answer, so save frequently in case you click the wrong one.  It is difficult to find most of them; go with her to  for a long series of them (frankly repetitive, but the rewards are , so worth it).  There are some more important ones that are only findable by walking around with her (especially in the mainland part of the Ascadian Isles region) [Tester note: Some of her quests have yet to be triggered by me after months. This includes the romance option (beyond the point where you get an impulsive hug), and a show-down with an enemy from her past. – Darklocq.] She's compatible with Julan, above (he has some bits of custom dialog when they're together). She works with Companion Role Play Plus; you can use this to raise her rather neutral disposition to something that makes more sense given what you do for her upon meeting her. Her disposition will vary on its own (mostly going up, though it drops temporarily if you try to talk to her while actively wielding a weapon, when you're diseased, and when giving "wrong" answers to her own quest prompts). Persuasion appears scripted to fail and reduce Disposition, even if your Speechcraft is 100.
 * : Sometimes her stats wig out a little; her strength may shoot up inexplicably, and it goes back to where it should be with this restore option, or after you use Rest. But it can also go lower than it should be after a Rest; if her stats have dropped, there's a "practice your skills" dialogue option that will fix it. After any teleport (including fast travel, and doors between cells) she can get confused and may stay standing where she is, unless you remain standing close to her for about one second, or nudge her,  continue forward. She will not use the crappy armor she comes with, so you have to get her better gear immediately. She has a dialogue option to teleport with you if you use Recall or Intervention, but it does not work in OpenMW. See Companion Teleportation in the Fast travel for a workaround with does work with her.  Under OpenMW 0.42, using her teleport ring caused her to disappear unrecoverably.  Other issues from that period were fixed in OpenMW 0.43, but this one has not been re-tested yet. This mod has a minor conflict with Bitter Coast Compilation; Jasmine's house intersects with that of another NPC (not that you'd notice), and blocks the latter's door. This is harmless since getting into Jasmine's place is necessary while getting into the other's is not.
 * Finding her: Do so a) after you are certain what mods you want to run with this time and that they're in a functional order, and you've started a new game (she's sensitive to mod-list order changes); b) before you go to Caius Cosades to start the Main Quest; and c) without mods that radically alter the Main Quest. Getting her to trigger properly as a companion, rather than just some NPC you rescued from, requires specific undocumented steps: after you find her, you must , and all in that specific order; only then is she ready to go (hopefully to the shop for some real gear).
 * Main Quest note: Jasmine will not follow you into the Cavern of the Incarnate; and until you complete that part, her inventory is inaccessible, so get what you need from her before approaching its door.
 * Companion Project 3.1 by Grumpy – . This is the basis for most later companion mods, and provides as a demo a Nord named Nancy, a straight-up fighter with Guard AI. (You must bring her into the game with via the Console, e.g with  ). Using this modders'-resource ESP as the basis, you can comparatively easily build your own custom companion by duplicating scripts and TopicInfos and creating a new NPC with the features you want (though this is honestly easier said than done with the current version of OpenMW-CS).  The download link provided here is to a repaired ZIP file; while you can get it at other sites, the original ZIP had hard-coded full paths in it, which may be problematic on some systems.
 * Dawn Companion 1.3 by Korana (based on Joseph Michael Linsner's comic book character of the same name) :, though simple.  Her disposition does not vary, she has no quests, is not a spellcaster, doesn't have very unique dialog, never triggers audio, and has permanent fancy underwear regardless of your version of Better Bodies. Her scripting is very robust, and her navigation and combat AI is as smart as it gets, other than – like most companions – she'll happily injure you if you don't get out of her way in combat.  Technically not lore-friendly, except you don't have to interpret her as Linsner's character, just as some random human with some tats.  Some aspects of the readme actually pertain to an earlier mod this one is based on, Grumpy's Companion Project 3.1 (e.g., you can ignore the instructions to console her in, since she's actually already in-game, at , with a "luggage" chest). Dawn comes with over-powered gear, other than her good but unenchanted sword; the un-cheat is to put the mega-armor away until you earn comparable gear in the game, then let her wear one of her saucy outfits. I think this is the intended idea, since she has 4 of them in wildly varying armor classes, from pretty darned good to Daedric level.  Another philosophy on this is that mega-strong armor for a companion isn't really a cheat if you don't use it on the player character; all it does is keep the companion alive, which you would likely do by reloading a savegame if she was killed anyway. She automatically does Water Breathing, but must be told to Levitate and to stop doing it (she'll clip into the ground temporarily if you forget the last bit).  Her agility is super-high; if you can survive a jump/fall, so can she.  She's not over-powerful, and you can get her killed pretty easily if you don't give her the super-armor she comes with, so be protective. Like many companions, she will not use a healing potion until desperate, and will not use one between fights, so use a Restore Health on her after every fight, and during them in big fights or give her CE Restore Health gear.  She also cannot cure herself of diseases or their effects (including damaged Strength from Greater Bonewalkers), so use Vivec's Touch (or equivalent) after fights with diseased enemies, and periodically cast Restore spells on her for all stats (do so for any other companions who lack self-restoration).  Dawn offers Repair service. She's also her own unique race, for whatever reason – pale and flame-haired, and of Breton stature. Dawn's unique teleportation feature, to Mournhold or to Balmora Mages Guild, will bring you along, but if other companions (or pack animals) are in tow, they will not go along for this ride.  The author says Dawn "should" work as a vampire companion, if you get her to contract that condition.
 * The Companion Teleportation mod doesn't work with Dawn.
 * You can play as your own version of this character (the race has Imperial stats, with a different daily Power) with this head and permanent underwear, by using the Playable Dawn and Equipment (formerly Dawn Prefabricated Character) mod, included in the same archive; in OpenMW yet.
 * Beryl and Hurd by Emma – ; they go into "I'm in combat against nothing and will fight the air forever" mode at the drop of a hat.  About the only present use for these two (alone or as a pair) is to pick them up as a level 1 PC, and use them as cannon-fodder against the smugglers in Addamasartus and other nearby caves and tombs, and hope they die in the process. If they don't, just leave them in there when they inevitably flip out.  To even do this with them, you a) need to not have any fish around Seyda Neen who are aware of you and still alive, or B & H will go into combat freakout mode the instant they walk out of Arrille's where you find them, and b) if you have both installed, you probably need to lead each of them to Addamasartus one at a time, since just leaving Arrille's together can sometimes trigger their fight response.  Also, do not use their "Put away your weapon" feature, as it has the opposite effect and sends them into combat mode (against you!). The combat-fixing steps in point #4 of the general companion advice above will work. Still, since this would have to be done again and again and again, they are not practical companion mods in OpenMW.
 * Laura Craft Romance (originally Girlfriend Breton) 2.2 by Emma: Will not follow, but all other functions appear to work, except perhaps her specific trainability-for-a-cost (however, this might take effect after you level up yourself). Update: Actually, engaging her dialogue section about hurrying up or sleeping a little longer will put her into an endless wake-sleep-wake-sleep loop. If you avoid that part of her menus, she can still be used as a girlfriend mod, just one you have to manually visit. Her teleportation ring might be usable to move her into your own stronghold; I haven't tried. It can definitely be used to teleport her to a public square in Vivec (one of her "meet me there" places). She has various abilities, like Armorer. An included non-hostile creature,, will follow and fight, but is quest-related, so best not get it killed.  One balance issue with this mod is that Laura's house includes over-powerful stuff, like Ebony armor; while she'll get angry with you if she catches you using it, you are free to do so as long as you don't interact with her while wearing it. The home also has lots of storage, though this is typical of many house mods, and every permanent corpse in the game is infinite storage, so it's not really a cheat.  Some may find Laura's lovey-dovey dialogue a bit over the top, but "Romance" in the mod title was fair warning! Some of her extensive back-story with you may not match what you envisioned for your own character, though.  Update: As of 2017-04, using a nightly build of OpenMW, and fixing one script name to have a   character instead of a   is apparently sufficient to restore most of Laura's functionality. See the forum for details, especially this post of 2017-04-05.
 * Imperial Boyfriend Indiana James (originally Boyfriend Imperial) by Emma: Same problems as Laura Craft; they use the same scripting (literally – they cannot be added to the same game or they will conflict with each other). The fix mentioned for Laura probably also works for Indy.
 * Domehome 1.1 by Grumpy and Emma :  The fighter, Ingred, has the same broken combat AI as Beryl and Hurd, with the same after-fight fix (see above). This fix needs to be applied quickly if she's using a missile weapon, otherwise she may fire all ammo at an imaginary enemy in the ground. The three domestic staffers have a similar but peculiar issue: they'll fight  if you attempt to use the Staff Ring to teleport them to a new home.  They can be manually led to one, but it needs to be in the same town, or with the path pre-cleared (as with trying to move the easily killed Mudcrab Merchant). Any encounter with hostiles will put them into combat modes they will stick in. It is possible they can be individually teleported to different rooms in a new home and allowed to mingle by manually leading them into the same room; they do not go into kill-thy-neighbor mode when individually led outdoors to the same exterior cell (i.e., through a teleport door), so it may be just a problem with the ring's special teleportation.  Suggestion: ensure that they are kept out of any place you plan to teleport into with any other companion in tow.  Another trick for moving them might be using a "portable home" cheat mod temporarily, for the sole purpose of putting them into it and moving them to another regular house in a different city.  Or just move them with   in the Console.
 * Cally and Grabran by Grumpy – These "generation 0.5" companions . They simply do not appear, even if you attempt to Console them in. (Yes, they cannot be loaded simultaneously even in Bethesda's engine; they were tried one at a time.)  These seem to be early beta versions of Grumpy's Companion Project, and some downloads of CP 3.1 include them even though they are not using the 3.1 code.  Many other companions based on the final 3.1 code (before Grumpy's cancer got the better of him), including Dawn Companion and Gatanas as well as Emma's Wolf and Dog Companions mods, work quite well.
 * Witchgirl Adventure by Emma –  One (also occurring in vanilla Morrowind) is that your instructions to her to not summon atronachs during combat will not "stick"; you have to tell her this again and again (or just let her do it and keep well clear of the carnage, or bulk up on Resist Shock; she always wants to summon a Storm Atronach, and a Skeleton, even to fight a rat).  This constant summoning is ruthlessly exploitable: Wander the landscape with her, let her summon her minions, do a ranged, area-of-effect Soultrap, to trap the enemy and any of her summoned minions that die, then attack the surviving minions, and individually soul-trap any more she summons. Just be careful not to hit her with a soultrap, nor issue a new soultrap on any minion unless at least one regular or summoned fighting enemy is still alive, or she'll interpret you as attacking her and go hostile (fixable with Calm Humanoid).  Anyway, she's overpowered and dangerous, may kill your other companions through summoning negligence (and maybe you, too), and is not of much use except for distracting Gaenor and other "boss monsters" with summons while you hit them from behind.  With her in tow, Gaenor (who has super-human Luck) is beatable at around player level 15 (I think he's aimed more at level 30+ people) as long as you have a large stockpile of Restore potions and wear him down over the course of half an hour or so; he'll direct most of his hostility to Morgana's summons, as long as you keep him away from her personally and from you.  A good positioning is: M  Ss  G    P (Morgana, her summons between her and Gaenor, and player out of his reach and hitting him with everything you've got). Move around a lot to preserve this combat layout, and keep the fight away from bystanders (harm done to them by Morgana's summons will be blamed on you). It's not clear if all of her quests can be successfully completed in OpenMW yet. Her movement AI is bugged, in OpenMW, in multiple ways. The author is skilled at modding, and there's all kinds of stuff in the code for fine-tuning movement, but none of it actually works, so there must be some syntax error in there that was permissible in vanilla but is "fatal" in OpenMW's strict parsing engine; probably easily fixable by someone who knows the code.  Morgana in OpenMW has among the worst companion movement and navigability, to the point that she is easily trapped behind small rocks she should step over, cannot follow you up steep slopes (even if you do   on her), is very slow and gets left behind (even if you use the Console to boost her Athletics and Speed), has great difficulty navigating ladders (often goes under them and gets stuck), and does not have an actually functional "warp to the player's position" script despite the ReadMe saying she does, so she's easily left behind when exploring.  If you use her, you constantly have to check behind you to make sure she's still there, and wait for her to catch up or go back and get her unstuck, exactly like with a vanilla "rescue me and lead me to safety" follower NPC.  To trigger her quest scripts, you have to return with her to her house (more than once; I think you have to leave Ald'ruhn, then return to it on a different day).  You're on the right track when she tells you about her chatty grandfather's ghost downstairs (do not attack it). Unfortunately, the first of her quests is broken, as the special skull you eventually have to find does not appear in the cell it belongs in. You have to give it to yourself via console with   (or a   command).  This is as far as I've tested her quests.  If you find her missing brother early, nothing happens; you have to trigger the right quest stuff for her to even recognize him.  She has a "personal trainer" NPC in Ald'ruhn (in the Rat in the Pot, if I recall correctly) who can raise her skills.  This raises a whole bunch of them in groups (combat, magic, stealth) for a steep cost, instead of being able to raise specific ones, or just having them auto-raise as the player progresses.  She does not auto-Levitate or auto-Water-Breathe, and has to be manually told to start either effect, and told to stop with a hard-to-find Dispel option (under "extra magical tricks"). Her dialogue menu is a mess, with commonly needed options buried among trivia.  Morgana comes with her own scripted, enchanted Ebony Stormsword (priced at 1 gold), but will not use it unless you specifically tell her to go melee.  You can give her a more powerful Short Blade (the only weapon she's any good at), with the same caveat.  As with summoning, she won't "remember" that you told her to use melee, between sessions with her.  Any time you put her in wait mode, her combat options reset to her summoning overkill defaults.  Despite these issues, she can be a fun diversion, if you're tough enough that being zapped by Storm Atronachs all the time isn't a big deal. She has a fondness for Moon Sugar, and a sharp tongue.
 * Thief Companion Constance by Emma –  Installable, and one is able to pick up the companion, get her to follow, take inventory, fight, and engage in some unique dialogue options and behaviors (like going off to Balmora on her own and stealing stuff).  However, she goes into constant-combat mode, like the same author's Beryl and Hurd mods, and the Ingred fighter in the Domehome mod.  Her Morgana mage companion in Witchgirl Adventure (see above) does not have this problem, but was written later. This mod's quest scripting has not been tested in OpenMW, due to the combat bug.
 * Bosmer Companion – With Patch by JMK (JohnK222)  –  Sammie, a female Bosmer fighter, is found standing around and lonely in Ald'ruhn.  Can be used as a regular companion mod, or as a girlfriend/lover one.  Its ReadMe says it has risqué dialogue and sound effects for the latter option.  Should be run with the included patch that fixes a skills and leveling bug that may occur when you complete her included quest (vengeance for her framed and executed brother).  She levels (gets better stats) only after you complete each part of her ten-stage quest, so you can't blow her off forever and expect her to still be usable as a companion for long.  She is slow and easily left behind, at least at first, and has an annoying habit of "warping"  the player character rather than right behind you.  She prefers Blunt Weapon and Heavy Armor, which is odd for a little Bosmer lady, but is also competent with Long Blade, and will wear other armor if it's good enough.  Rare for a companion, she has virtually no short-blade skill; if you want to give her a jink weapon (short-term paralyzer), you'll need to custom enchant one out of a mace, club, or longsword.  Tester experienced grave game instability with this companion (multiple crashes per hour), though it could have been due to mod conflicts.  Best tested alone, then try adding other mods.
 * Ordinator Companion 1.2 – Get an Ordinator as a companion after you meet the living god Vivec in the Main Quest.
 * Galatea by lochnarus (LOCH) – Nord female fighter, found in the Six Fishes in Ebonheart. Not tested long enough to report strengths/weaknesses.
 * Taryn Companion a.k.a. Taryn the Warrior 1.3 by MatthewTheBagel – Nord male fighter, found in Balmora.
 * Tag Lady, Elf Version 1.6 by Galgat – See entry in Racy section, since it's an intentionally raunchy mod.
 * Ninja Girl, Kumiko's Revenge a.k.a. Ninja Girl Companion 1B by Wildman  –, as a part of Bitter Coast Compilation (in the Major overhauls of vanilla places section); not tested yet as a stand-alone mod.  An Akaviri (Asian) girl with a quest.  Serviceable companion with some cool gear.  Includes a bunch of wigs that are high-end light helms, and useful for companions in general (good protection for them, and you can see their faces).  There's also a patch for teleportation to Sniper-Daria's Japanese House home mod.  Note: The file to download is the third one available at the page; it's the complete final mod, with the house patch included.

Many-companion mods
Various mods provide companion, guard/mercenary, and service and domestic staff systems, with numerous available NPCS, who are sometimes coded to work together in special ways.

For slaves-as-companions mods, see the Slaves and slavery section.


 * A Lord's Men 2.5.0 by Arjan (a.k.a. Arjan Wardekker or Lord Gildor) and WH-Reaper  —  with fairly trivial problems. This is an enhancement of Arjan's original 2.0.2 .  Representatives of the A Lord's Men mercenary faction appear in Vivec FQ and several other places. Can be used simultaneously with Staff Agency, with some redundancy.  This mod works by you buying coupons and trading them in for staffers; you can use the fact that the representatives are merchants to sell them spare gear (within the same game day) to recoup the cost.  Any used as combat companions need their Acrobatics boosted so they don't have pointless falling/jumping deaths.  Hiring is a one-time cost, and there are many staffing options (some with bugs that make them not very useful, and some providing no real function but roleplay enhancement, but most are fine):
 * Guards for strongholds (generic, "Elite", or specific to particular Great Houses). These have generic names, but can be used as companions [Tester note: did all of Bloodmoon with one from this mod and one from Staff Agency.] Those that are specific to a faction (e.g. Redoran Guards or Imperial Legion troops) can only be hired if you are in the proper faction.  Be warned that they still have Guard AI, so will turn on you if you attack any humanoid without provocation (even in the wilderness and even if the companion is in follow mode), and will arrest you for theft if they are not in follow mode when you steal in front of them.  (If you're wondering, most companion mods use modified Guard AI: there's a test that prevents them from arresting you, while retaining the Guard function of attacking hostile creatures that go into settled jurisdictions, whether the companion is in follow mode or not.) The "Elite" guards are not just clones of the generic guards, but still have generic names, and are sometimes hard to distinguish from the "Advanced" guards in Staff Agency
 * Companions of various basic combat classes, fully fledged with combat control options, etc.: [more details forthcoming]
 * From the Vivec rep, you can hire any of several "Champion" companions whom other companions (from this mod only) will follow, to make companion management easier. You can tell the Champion to wait, and the others will auto-wait. This feature can be used to build a small army, useful for dealing with outdoor bands of thugs, as found in Bloodmoon and various third-party mods like Morrowind Comes Alive and things that borrow from it (it doesn't much help with indoor work). The Champions do not suffer the Guard AI problem. They have individual names, and varied classes (mages, archers, etc.).
 * Service staff, including: bartender, merchant, smith, service mage, trainers [details forthcoming]
 * Misc. staff, including: butler, cook, maid, farmer, miner, dancer [details forthcoming]
 * Multiple dancers with new dances
 * : If you get in a fight in the Foreign Quarter plaza in Vivec, any of the unhired Champion mercenaries within alarm range will rush over to offer you their services on the spot, during the fight; but the dialog is bugged and cannot be dismissed by any means. The only solution is to reload a previous savegame, or to use  on each of them in the Console, then   after the fight is over.
 * Staff Agency 2.0 by Danae (and Arjan)  –  with fairly trivial problems. This is a fork from an early version of A Lord's Men, and was updated as recently as September 2016. Both mods can be used simultaneously, with some redundancy.  The hiring representative is in the Grand Council Chambers at Ebonheart. Hiring requires some gold and (other than for guards, trainers, and a few others) an item that is particular to the occupation of whomever you want to hire (most of the items are common and cheap).  Each non-guard hire will come with a shield and a light that are made out of other objects (e.g. a smith may have a hammer that is defensive and another that acts as a torch).  The light options are malfunctional, at least in OpenMW (most do not actually work as lights, and they mount wrong in the hand and stick out sideways instead of hanging down, which seems to be an OpenMW model bug). Any hires used as combat companions need their Acrobatics boosted so they don't have pointless falling/jumping deaths. Hiring of most staff is a game-monthly cost (often with two tiers of service); if you ignore one for longer they do not leave, and you don't owe back-pay, you just don't get service until you pay again. There are many staffing options (some with bugs that make them not very useful, and make two cheaty, but most are fine, and the selection is quite comprehensive):
 * Guards for strongholds ("Elite" ones, roughly equivalent to those in A Lords Men, and the generic ones that are specific to particular factions). These have generic names, but can be used as full-fledged companions, and have combat-control options. Be warned that they all still have Guard AI, so will turn on you if you attack any humanoid without provocation (even in the wilderness and even if the companion is in follow mode), and will arrest you for theft if they are not in follow mode when you steal in front of them.
 * The Elite guards are not just clones of the generic guards. Aside from lack of personal names, they're effective simple companions, even long-term. [Tester note: did all of Bloodmoon with one from this mod and a similar Elite from A Lord's Men.] The Elven Archer Guard and a few others come (seemingly accidentally) with a spare Adamantium Helm, which pays for their salary for a long time .... This is rather cheaty, since that helm, even with all official content installed, is only available from two places and not for sale. Minor bugs: One of the Bosmers is unarmed, the other has no shield, some have spells that are not useful for NPCs, the Ordinator one is missing the standard Ordinator spells, various ones that would probably like two-handers and who do not have shields have one-handed weapons, so need one or the other, one as a crossbow and a bow but ammo only for one, some are missing some clothes under their armor, and so on. Nothing some inventory jiggling can't fix.
 * Generic guards specific to a faction (e.g. Redoran Guards or Imperial Legionnaires) can only be hired if you are in the proper faction and high enough level. They come in melee and sharpshooter variants (but have the same heads), and have generally appropriate gear, e.g. Hlaalu Guards come with a full set of Armun-an Bonemold Armor and either a Silver Longsword, or a Steel Crossbow and Silver Bolts.  Some have the wrong stats and will not wear the Bonemold they come with, and have to be tweaked in the Console (try reducing other armor types to very low, and even reduce Medium; test equipping by opening their inventory and dropping one of the Bonemold items back on them – they'll either wear it or unequip all their Bonemold).  There are a few bugs, like stats that are nowhere near the vanilla guards in some cases, missing spells on Telvanni and Sharpshooter guards; missing clothes and other gear.  Not a huge deal given that they just stand around unless you lead a creature into town or tell one to come with you.
 * Companions of various classes, fully fledged with combat control options, etc. They have proper names, not things like "Guard".
 * Ashlander Scout, Rey (female): offers fast travel to the four main Ashlander camps, which is very convenient for repeat players, but a bit cheaty for first-timers. She will also present you with alchemical plant ingredients harvested from the countryside if you go out and about with her, but not very often.
 * Dumner Spellweaver, Modri (female): offers a filled soul gem if you give her an empty one; also offers Enchanter service, and is a capable mage companion, but without Destruction or Conjuration, so she needs weapons and will beat on things with them happily. A very different take on the Battlemage/Spellsword idea. Will usually not wear armor, though can be Console-tweaked to have one or more armor skills and a lower Unarmored so she'll wear the gear.
 * Imperial Agent, Roy (male): nothing unusual, just a typical fighter–thief combo. Provides no special service. If you're big into your Blades role, he'd be a suitable minion, especially if you deck him out in black stuff like he's going on a sneaky mission for you.
 * With some console work to adjust their stats, any of the staff below (except the Merchant) can be made into combat-capable companions, but lack fine-tuned combat control ("use your range attacks", etc.) [Tester note: Successfully did this with both the maid and the gardener.] They already have non-terrible stats in most regards.
 * Service staff; they also have individual names. Some have bugs, with one or more services not working. All of the hirelings' special services are once per game day (except for bugs). Those that offer upgraded service for more pay may offer both the upgraded service and the basic one on the same day, or just whichever you choose that day; depends on the character; this is probably unintentional.
 * Alchemist: Produces a selection of potions. Has two tiers of service. Does not provide any on the first day.
 * Mage: Provides Spellmaking service; does standard (companion-friendly) guild-guide travel to Mages Guilds; produces a random soul gem or scroll.
 * Guild Guide: Rather mis-named, since she provides companion-friendly travel to non-Guild locations: Gnisis, Molag Mar, Fort Frostmoth, and Mournhold. If you take a companion there by that method, the companion has no way to come back to Vvardenfell. Fix this by ...  to provide return trips.  Or use the Mournhold travel provided by the Balmora Council Club mod in the Fast travel section.
 * Healer: Heals, cures diseases (not Corprus) and restores damaged stats, like a Tribunal Temple shrine. That last feature is probably the most practical one, though higher level characters will have spells for all this stuff.
 * Necromancer: Performs Restore Magicka, at the cost of some Health, unless you opt for the second-tier service. This is probably only useful if you take him along to some fight you expect to drain you of Magicka.  Probably best for someone playing a character with inhibited Magicka regen, like the Atronach birthsign.
 * Merchant: has 2500 gold to trade. Costs 1000 gold to hire, plus the monthly wage. Does not have any inventory when she starts, just some gold and what you eventually sell to her. She'll buy most things other than specialist tools.  She is not a companion, and has no inventory sharing for obvious reasons.  Also provides fast travel to Creeper and Mudcrab Merchant, if you're aiming to rack up semptims for some house mod that costs 3 mil.  If you are avoiding the creature merchants as too cheaty (hint: use   on them in the console, or just fight them), it's still a convenient way to get to Caldera and Azura's Coast.
 * Smith: Repairs gear (for standard Disposition-based prices), and produces a Master Armorer's Hammer for you each day (very convenient if you're doing Bloodmoon). Does not have a bunch of stuff for you to buy. However, you have full access to his inventory, so you can take his hammer stock with impunity.  Should have been non-shared inventory like the Merchant.
 * Trainers:  All of them, despite supposed specialization, had the same stats as the Defender Trainer, and train only Block, Medium Armor, and Heavy Armor (they all had a skill level of 76 at each of these).  Current version of mod shows them with different stats in the CS, so this could be a fixed but, or could be the result of a stats normalization script for companions being run also by the trainers; needs further investigation. This could possibly be fixed by changing their stats in the Console to match what they're supposed to train, though a script might reset them again. They each cost a 1000 gold hiring fee, plus monthly wage, plus standard Disposition-based training costs.  They can be used as regular companions (but have generic names, and no combat fine-tuning options).
 * Misc. staff, including dancers, miners, maids, etc., also with individual names:
 * Butler: Brings you a drink of your choice (vanilla booze, and nothing over 100 gold in value). Has no second tier of service.
 * Cook: Produces edible vanilla ingredients. Second-tier service produces cooked food that is a powerful potion (e.g. +10-20, two Fortify effects, 4 minutes, no weight, and a much-too-high sale value). However, while this is more than you'd get in a bought potion, it's nothing compared to the "super-potions" you can create with stacked Fortify Intelligence if you're big into alchemy exploitation, so its cheatiness is relative. As a source of free significant income, it is cheaty. The basic service is not worth the expense, so a balanced approach might be to use just the basic service except once per month use the improved service.
 * Maid: Grooms the player (effect: Fortify Personality).
 * Housekeeper: Mostly just for roleplay. Is supposed to adopt cats and kittens over time (if you let her, by triggering her Service dialogue). : She jumps directly to the later kitten (only), and will keep generating copies of it if you keep talking to her about it. No adult cats. She provides no useful services, but is a great custom Bosmer, taller than average and without the buggy eyes of so many Wood Elf heads. The kitten can actually be used as a companion, but is not combat-capable, and cannot carry gear (though that would be funny).  If you adore the kitten and want it everywhere with you, just do something like   on it in the console and it'll be invincible.
 * Miner: Produces a variety of ores and gems. If you've at the higher level of service, provides substantial ore quantities, including occasional Stalhrim but not Adamantium (it shouldn't do the Stalhrim, since it is not really an ore, but should do Adamantium because, except in the Xbox version, Bethesda messed up and did not provide enough of it to actually have Bols Indalen in Mournhold craft Adamantium armor for you other than maybe one piece; see Sufficient Adamantium in the Ingredients, plants, alchemy, and crafting stuff section for a work-around). You can use both the standard and higher service of the miner in the same interaction; probably unintentional. : At the higher tier of service, he'll provide the ore package again and again every time you ask him.  To avoid the cheatiness, station him next to someone who only works once per day, and ask that one first to see if it's time yet.
 * Farmer: Produces a variety of crops (ingredients), but not on the first day. : His upgraded service is broken; you get a package, as with the miner, but it cannot be opened. However, he seems not to produce at all unless you have the second-tier service (i.e., pay for that, but only use the basic service).  Given what he produces, it is not worth the expense, especially given that he can take two or more days to produce anything, and it is not rare stuff.  But he's very cute; has no romance option, but you can roleplay you're setting him up with the Housekeeper. LOL.
 * Fisherman: Produces Scales and Dreugh Wax, in sufficient quantity that it's profitable. Minor bug: He's unarmed.
 * Dancer: a clothed ballerina, a stripper. Her dance routine appears to be unique to this mod.  There's just one, a very interesting-looking Nord.
 * Bard: Plays music (some MP3s, which you could replace if you wanted to). Side note: If you're playing a male Nord and are a big fan of the "Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser" novels, this little fella is an ideal Mouser, with some Console stats tweaking and some less clunky gear.
 * Gardener: Produces potted alchemical plants (harvestable after letting them grow a while, and you don't get one on the first day). All of the plants appear to be Tribunal ones. : If you attempt to move the plant after putting it down, the pot moves, the plant stays, and a new plant is created where you drop the pot, so this either creates multiple plants in the pot if you move it a little, or left-behind plants with no pot if you move it a lot. Taking the plant and putting it in inventory then taking it back out again to move it seems to work, rather than moving it in the background of the inventory window.  It takes time for the plants to grow; be patient. The selection is limited and randomized but seems to be entirely Tribunal plants.
 * Librarian: Produces a random book (and it really does seem random; I think you can get some books that you shouldn't be able to without going looking for them, but it is usually run-of-the-mill stuff). Some days she "doesn't find" a new book for you. No second-tier service.
 * Courtesan (male and female): Gives massages (effect: Restore Fatigue, Fortify Endurance), plus a fade-to-black sequence for, well, what courtesans are generally best known for. : The female one will arrive topless unless you are playing vanilla meshes/textures, or are using a full-underwear version of Better Bodies. Their second-tier service is just an additional dance, but it does not work.  If you move either of them (with the "Follow" option), they stop dancing (maybe an OpenMW problem). Fix this by   to spawn a new copy of the NPC, and   the old one.  The male's head skin tone does not come close to matching his body, so put a shirt on him.  The female is an unusual blonde Redguard; the male is of uncertain-looking, rather human appearance, but technically an Altmer.
 * Herder: Breeds guars, including (at higher service level) a dog-sized but strong miniature Pack Guar, Rupert, who can be summoned with a whistle. You get the whistle immediately, and can use it to summon Rupert (outdoor cell to outdoor cell). The breeding part is if you need a replacement (guars do die easy). This requires building a bit of a herd (appears to be eight baby guars) and the herder must be kept near the guars or will always think the herd is too small (hint: tell each one to stay put or they will wander). Will generate duplicate pack guars over time if you tell him to, which can be used independently, though which one the whistle will summon is anyone's guess (they're all Rupert). Probably best to regen a new one only if the first one dies.
 * Hunter: Produces meat and hides. This pretty tough Orc is quite serviceable as a basic combat companion. Sometimes he randomly has a no-luck hunting day and you don't get anything.  He does not appear to produce  stuff like Snow Wolf pelts, but sometimes fairly unusual stuff like Durzog Meat.
 * Sailor: Updates your world map with one port town of your choice per day; only useful early in the game. Plays sea shanty music if you give him a Nord Mead (funny, since he's Argonian). I would like to have seen more done with this guy, like transport to shore locations that are a hassle to get to.
 * Seamstress: Produces random shirts, pants, etc., of a range of qualities. Upper-level service creates new (female) outfits, from very expensive ingredients for "dyes" (gems, and Stalhrim), or one cheap set from Inkwells. The amount of Stalhrim produced by this mod's miner seems to be for this. She does not provide anything on the first day of service, and may take two or more days to produce regular clothes. Would have liked some male clothing options, and for the expense involved, some of these should have Exquisite-level enchantability.
 * : Mistakenly puts options to hire Hlaalu and Imperial guards in dialogue menus. Annoying, but not terribly problematic.
 * CM Partners and its forks:
 * Be careful when installing add-ons relating to it. CM Partners also exists for TES4: Oblivion, and some third-party mods are written for that version but are also .esp files. Trying to load one is likely to crash your game.
 * Friends and Rivals a.k.a. FnR 0.7 by enkephalin (a.k.a. Dok Enkephalin) and Cutthroat Mods  –   This variant has a simple adventuring party system, loads of NPC interaction, training, bandaging, all sorts of stuff.  Converts Ahnassi and Emusette Bracques/Barnand Erelie into companions (if you've activated their vanilla romance options). It adds the same potential-companion NPCs as CM Partners, but heavily modified, plus some new ones.  They're all over the game world – various races, classes, genders, ages – and you can tell who they are because they'll ask if you want "conversation" when you first greet them. It's unclear what version of CMP this was forked from (in 2004), but it may be 2.5. Bloodmoon options are added in a separate .ESP . This archive also includes a patch for the popular Havish island mod. Like various other mods, it adds back Jiub – your prison ship pal at the start of the game – into the world, this time as a potential Thief companion, and probably the easiest one to get. (This seems to not conflict with other Jiub mods, since they're using separate IDs.)  Picking up others takes some work, to raise the disposition enough.  The mod's NPCs are romanceable, but not automatically (there's a random element to sexual preference, etc.). If you have the nude Better Bodies mod, some females will show up topless (they were wearing bra tops in the original).
 * There's also a previously released archive, with the same 0.7 version number, but with Bloodmoon stuff integrated, so just one .ESP , and without the Havish patch. [There is no presently known download location for this variant.]
 * CM Partners 2.8 by Cutthroat Mods –  The NPCs show up and will dialogue, but none of them will become companions.  Various creatures will follow (e.g. an oafish Ogrim, and a sentient and non-hostile Cliffracer – not visually distinguishable, so easy to kill by accident).  Bandits show up and try to hold you up for money.  But the main purpose of this is humanoid companions, and they're not working. If you do not want the human companions in the mod but would like creature ones, you can probably safely use this mod or one of the later versions, treating the 100+ broken potential companions as more miscellaneous NPCs – an alternative to Morrowind Comes Alive. Has the same toplessness glitch as Friends and Rivals, above.
 * CM Partners Roleplayers Edition 2.9 by Cutthroat Mods –   Same issues as 2.8.  Adds the character alignment system (lawful good, chaotic evil, etc.) of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons into Morrowind, for the purpose of determining whether the mod's potential companions will pair up with you and remain loyal. This feature conflicts in a minor way with Seyda Neen Complete (listed in the Major overhauls of vanilla places section): the "alignment choice barrel" spawns inside a wall. A fix is documented here, in case the main problem with the mod (or a later version, below) is also fixed: Look on the ground near the Census and Excise Office wall in Seyda Neen for two books and a random alignment barrel (which you don't want to use unless you want no choice over the matter), then type   in the Console and the choice barrel should appear (you pick the desired alignment paper out of it).
 * CM Partners Roleplayers Edition 3.0 by Cutthroat Mods –   Same problems as 2.9.
 * Baron's Partners 3.0 1.1 by Baron Of Hell [the "3.0" is part of the title] –  Same problems as CM Partners 3.0, from which it was forked, though using an alignment is supposedly optional in Baron's.  Has the same toplessness glitch as all of the above.  At least one of the added vendors sells stuff a merchant should not, like the Skeleton Key that is supposed to be unique to the Master Thief of the Thieves Guild, and a powerful robe you're supposed to get from a quest, plus some new and excessively cheaty items; they even restock in his inventory, so you either have to pretend they're not there, or remove the NPC with   in the Console. Some or all of these additional problems may exist in some CM Partners versions (they were not thoroughly tested after figuring out that the main companion feature was broken).
 * Partners Unsexed 2 –
 * Partners Unlimited 1.0 –
 * Ex-slaves and Partners a.k.a. Ex-slaves Partners 1.5 by Nevena – When tested, it will be listed in the  section.
 * Clubs and Courtiers 1.01 by Nevena –  Adds some new taverns, and a Courtier class as hirelings (they recite poetry and stuff, and are not intended as combat companions). The new class is also playable. Known to conflict directly with CM Partners 2.6 and later, and probably does so with all of them and other derived mods.  Given that OpenMW doesn't create all the doubling problems the Bethesda engine does, you could try running this with other CMP-derived mods as an experiment. Has GMSTs as well as dirty references, and requires cleaning before use.


 * Assistants & Apprentices 1.0 by Nevena –  Adds 80 new NPCs throughout the game, mostly various hirelings (Smith, Chef, Brewmaster, Apothecary, Magister [Enchanter/Spellmaker], Guard, and Seneschal [staff manager], one each per race and sex), plus a new vendor with new ingredients and imported Tribunal and Bloodmoon ingredients.  Hires are paid monthly, and with a Senechal can be paid up to a year in advance. Has some unusual features, like being able to upgrade services of certain hirelings by engaging in contracts with other NPCs. With no companion functionality, the mod can apparently be used in vanilla Morrowind without the official expansions.  Hires generally seem to arrive as level 1, and they do not catch up to the player's level (e.g. if you Rest then check their stats). They may level up over time, however.
 * The hirelings are found in various major cities and towns, in clusters by race:.
 * The Guard and Senechal versions can optionally be used as companions, however they are utterly worthless for this. They have exactly the same movement AI as Bethesda's Calvus Horatius in Tribunal, i.e. the same as temporary follower NPCs in the vanilla game plus inventory sharing. So, they are very slow (no matter what you do with their stats), get stuck on even tiny obstacles (including other NPCs), get confused and run in circles, are easily lost, and don't have advanced combat or other capabilities (like automatically doing Levitate and Water Breathing with you). The Companion Teleportation mod doesn't work on them.
 * Apothecaries are 2500-gold merchants, who sell potions, ingredients, alchemy gear, and a recipe book. Offerings apparently improve over time.
 * Blacksmiths are 2500-gold merchants, who sell some cheap armor and some repair and thief tools (Journeyman level, at least to start). They have repair service.
 * Brewmasters are 2500-gold merchants, who sell some booze, plus Skooma and Telvanni Bug Musk. They allegedly expand their stock over time.
 * Chefs are 2500-gold merchants, who sell edible ingredients.
 * Magisters are 2500-gold merchants, who sell clothes, low-end soul gems (at least to start), and offer Enchanting and Spellmaking services, plus sell some spells (only a few at first).
 * Additional Morrowind Adventurers 3.0 by Harkonnen –  Adds 50+ potential companions (not all necessarily friendly, depending on faction, etc.) all over Vvardenfell, including even a bandit. This may actually be another CM Partners fork.

Creatures-turned-NPC
This section is for companions who have the appearance of what would normally be a creature not a humanoid, but are coded as humanoid NPCs with all NPCs stats (including Acrobatics, Personality, Disposition, and other features not possessed by creatures).


 * Gatanas, Dremora (Markynaz) Companion 1.3 (formerly Gatanas Markynaz Dremora Companion) by Princess Stomper and Westly  –  – an outcast, formerly high-ranking Dremora (NPC, not creature, and uses the Dremora (Markynaz) Race 1.3 mod for resources; the .esp for the race must load before the companion). You can pick him/her up as early as level 1, just outside . Tester installed the female version, from the race + companion combined archive. The female has 10 points more Speed, the male 10 points more Endurance. The only real issue so far is that after completing the "retrieve my stolen special armor" quest (the only quest included, which works fine, and is a tough multi-Daedra fight with a big boss Dremora), the companion's greeting will revert to the "we have much to discuss" one that starts this quest, but there is no dialogue option pertaining to it any longer, so it just stays that way most of the time, and seems to interfere with the romance option (sometimes). This has no other effect on the mod as a companion. Gatanas is not over-powered if picked up by a new player character, and dies about as easy as you do. The quest will still activate (with high enough disposition) even if you are far too weak to do it yet.  The romance feature can be worked manually, if necessary, by digging up the Journal entries in OpenMW-CS, but the mod is simple enough that it doesn't really do anything (doesn't have lovey-dovey stuff to do with or say to you after you accept the scripted advances; a bit like the vanilla Khajiit girlfriend for male PCs, Ahnassi, but without all the running out to fetch stuff). Gatanas is a capable fighter, has excellent movement AI, auto-Levitates (and Dispels it when done), and can carry a lot. Comes stock as an Axe specialist (with a Daedric one and a tower-shield to match, but no other non-clothing gear), though has some other weapon skills; you can use the console to tweak some stats. The gear actually makes no sense, since the axe is two-handed and she can't use the shield.  Better to sell off that insanely heavy axe, and give her/him one-handed ones.  Not much of a spellcaster (maybe not one at all, depending on your own stats).  Unlike most companions, (s)he's smart enough to take Restore Fatigue and Restore Magicka potions, not just Restore Health ones, and doesn't even need to be in mid-combat to do so.  Has services to offer – perhaps too many, including Spellmaking, Enchanting, Training (of what may vary – the NPC's stats adjust over time in response to yours), and Repair.  Also has some unique fast travel options, to four Daedric shrines, two in the far north and two in the far south. One might prefer the destinations be better distributed, but don't look a gift horse in the mouth; it's still very real-time-saving when trying to deal with intentionally far-flung quests in this game. If you go over all the dialogue options, you'll discover there's summonable pet Scamp, Pickle (it is too weak to drag around with you except at maybe level 1–7 or so). If you don't bother, Gatanas will eventually summon it anyway as one of the "We have much to discuss" things. It should be kept alive at least until the second of the mod's quest-related discussions about where Gatanas's stolen stuff is. The Scamp can be re-summoned, including to indoor locations.  Gatanas lacks clever but potentially annoying scripted interruptions. Other NPCs react to the Dremora with trepidation (if you ask them, and it doesn't affect their Disposition; the novelty wears off, and it's unfortunate that this is always a dialogue option, even when not in follow mode).  Guards have no particular reaction to Gatanas, unlike the Dremora companion Belial (below). The graphical work is impressive on both Gatanas and the included gear (after you do the quest there are extra skirts for the female version that you can use on someone else or yourself). The female Gatanas's armor (also gained by quest) is rather sexy-femme, aside from over-large pauldrons; it's good armor, but not excessive. Her quest is to go recover it, but she'll wear whatever.  Gatanas has lore-informative things to say when inside various Daedric shrines, and some haughty and stranger-to-your-mortal-plane random dialogue.  The mod adds some stuff to have him/her and some other popular companions interact (including both Jasmine and Julan).  You can feed Gatanas with Fire Petals and Wickwheat, and get her/him drunk on Mazte; these raise Disposition a little at a time, and it also goes up gradually on its own.  If he/she gets lost, ask any NPC in a major place and you'll re-find Gatanas in the location they say they saw her, usually a local tavern.  : The script to increase Gatanas's health as your grows does not work; you'll need to occasionally do   to some appropriate number, or you may be wandering around with a health of 400 fighting dangerous stuff while she has 80 and could die in a single Goblin hit. Curiously, she/he will not auto-Water-Breathe even if given that spell via the Console; you have to cast it as on-touch. [This is a ; she does in fact have an ability for this, but it is not working.]  Since it makes no sense that a demonic power who makes spells and enchantments can't cast a beginner-level Alteration spell, a workaround is to give the companion the automatic ability, with the Console, from another installed companion that has it, if you look it up in OpenMW-CS. The mod similarly lacks any option to self-cure and -restore, as with Dawn (above), so needs to be periodically tended to.  The option to dance often just makes Gatanas repeatedly strike a pose. Another trivial bug is an "at home" dialogue option that doesn't work right (thinks we're home when we're not), but it seems to serve no purpose but chat, anyway. Aside from bug fixes, and more quests and dialogue, the only improvement that a modder could easily make is replacing the already nice appearance with some of the stunning work collected in the Ranked Dremora creatures mod.
 * The Companion Teleportation mod doesn't work with Gatanas.
 * Belial, a Dismal Daedric Companion a.k.a. NON3.Belial 1.0.3 by HangHimHigher  –  A very different and more elaborate take on an outcast Dremora companion.  His/her appearance (you can install one gender or the other) is hard to distinguish from that of a Dunmer. (One can edit the texture files to give Belial a more different appearance, e.g. an otherworldly violet hue or whatever.)  This mod is recommended for higher-level characters, and is best for a Telvanni and/or Thieves Guild or Morag Tong player, and before completing Tribunal, but probably after becoming the Nerevarine.  Savegame when Belial is located; it's easy to give wrong answers, with a determination that you are not interesting enough. The mod includes a quest to take down another Daedra (and the reward of an unusual Artifact), advanced combat options (including Summon and Destruction control, whether or not to use inventory weapons versus Bound weapons, etc.), the opportunity to get an Altmer clan mad at you and plotting revenge, and more. You can play this as a straightforward "recover an item" quest with Belial as an opponent rather than potential companion (as an NPC, Belial's stats are not very high). You fairly quickly get a teleport ring, for when Belial gets lost, but the Dremora will return to the original spawning location, not your present one, so it is of limited utility. Later you get a proper teleport amulet. This is handy, because she's easy to leave behind due to the movement glitch.  Do not talk to most Guards when you have Belial in tow. Imperial ones will give you one warning (period – not one from each such NPC) and only if you have enough Reputation; otherwise, you get a big Bounty for consorting with demonic forces and they will attack, with backup from any other nearby Imperial troops!  Ordinators and regular High Ordinators will attack as soon as you talk to them, as will Royal Guards other than maybe Helseth's own bodyguards. Almalexia's personal circle of Her Hands High Ordinators do nothing, nor does she; presumably the man-god Vivec won't care, either. If you are Redoran or Hlaalu, your own House's Guards will do nothing, at least if your House status is high; Guards of the opposing house will give no warning.  Telvanni Guards don't care (even if you're not Telvanni); they're around summoned Daedra all the time. Mercenaries with Guard AI (non-uniformed Guards in stuff like Nordic armor, e.g. Thalestris in the merchant shop in Dagon Fel) don't care. Most other NPCs don't care, but a few do (e.g. Caius Cosades has a negative reaction, while some, like Therana, have special "Belial" dialogue options). The hostility is prevented by simply putting Belial into wait mode before talking to Guards or others. Belial does not have to be present for the hostility to trigger; put him/her in wait mode before teleporting away.  Belial's stats, calculated from your, verge on over-powered; this is probably best as a late-game companion used for intensely challenging quest and combat mods for higher-level characters (or for taking on Bloodmoon at below the minimum recommended level).  Belial has some high-powered Destruction spells (if you want to nerf them, do   and   in the console, then provide good but reasonable replacements, e.g.:   and  ), and is a Medium Armor specialist. Like some other companions, this one comes with a fatally low Acrobatics stat, which must be raised; otherwise, the character may well fall and die while just being led out of the shrine he/she is found in,, or later while climbing and jumping around.  At least 120 is recommend, and 200 will survive any fall. Personality-wise, the Dremora is a depressed nihilist, which will either be hilarious or annoying, depending on your own personality and mood.  The quest stuff unfolds over time; be patient.  And, no, there is not a romance option, though you can build a different sort of relationship.  Warning: Do not attempt any form of Persuasion on Belial; it appears scripted to fail and reduce Disposition, even if your Speechcraft is 100.  This mod has the same movement glitch as Jasmine; you have to wait a second after teleporting by any means, including doors, or the companion "sticks" and doesn't follow. Worse, Belial often just disappears after going through doors from one cell to another, and has to be restored with the Console or the teleporation amulet.  This may be a conflict with another mod, however; the frequency of this glitch seems to vary depending on what else is installed.
 * Finding Belial: Go to . He'll start the quest, to recover an heirloom Short Blade, but won't give you much to go on. Belial is in.
 * If you want the sword that is the object of the starting quest (and which is ), you have to ask Belial for it, then refuse to hand it over to the questgiver (which triggers ). If Belial is allowed to keep that sword in the first-meet dialogue, it will disappear after the conversion to a companion. If you want Belial to use it, you'll need to adjust her/his combat stats to no longer be a Short instead of Long Blade specialist.
 * Belial's appearance is based on the Baalithiel playable race in Daemon Race 1.0b by Oriphier, which also includes wings (optional), and has green and red variants.
 * The Companion Teleportation mod doesn't work with Belial.
 * Lady Death Companion 2.0b by Korana (based on Brian Pulido's comic book character of the same name)  –  Essentially the same comics adaptation idea as Dawn, above, but taken a bit further. She is her own unique race and birthsign, which are playable (female only). Includes a new creature (Hellhound, using a Durzog model) which is her familiar, and controlled by her, not you. This mod combines the companion, race, birthsign, and creature into a single .esp file.  She is rationalized in TES lore as some kind of Daedra, and her home,, is all Daedric all the time, complete with a Daedric teleport door in it (to , where one supposes she likes to hang out with demonic friends like Belial, above). Find her in her lair, added to a vanilla ancestral tomb.
 * The Companion Teleportation mod doesn't work with Lady Death.
 * Lustidrike Companion 1.5 – Converts the Scamp bartender found in the  shrine into a potential companion, with quests, and an reward Artifact.
 * Acashiea Moca a.k.a. Moca a.k.a. Clean Vampire Moka 1.4 by bbslayer_07 –  A vampire companion, who does not take damage from sunlight, but instead from water.  This is actually lore-friendly; one of the vampire-related books in another TES game says there are dozens of vampire types with different powers and weaknesses. On Vvardenfell, the three "native" clans just all seem to be the same kind; Moca says she's not originally from Morrowind province at all. She has two very different appearances, and comes with two outfits, and a fun pink lantern. Has various special features, like a transfiguration animation, and a need for blood from you regularly (has a minor Drain Health effect on you), and an ability to heal you with hers, etc.  Will auto-levitate, auto-level, etc., with the player, and has an option to catch up to your stats if you pick her up late (or if you make her transform by putting her disguise amulet back on again – it weakens her until you use that option).  Moca (spelled that way, not Moka, in-game) is rather chatty while traveling (in text, not audio), and it takes work to maintain her disposition.  She has a unique mortar and pestle for creating special herbal water-protection potions but does not tell you what stuff it takes to make them; experiment quickly, as she will happily follow you into water and get very sore (in both senses) if you don't.  Has combat control functions, and fairly typical movement AI (not as smart as Julan and other advanced companions, but better than some; can still get confused and stuck). Has custom movement, a sultry stroll; if she gets left behind, it will cartoonishly speed up quickly to catch up then return to a stroll; you mostly don't see the speed-up since it happens behind you. It's an alternative to the usual warp-to-player script, and cute but less practical.  She has high Unarmored, and will disdain cheap armor, though will wear really good stuff of any class. Can fight pseudo-unarmed (she actually equips "fist" gear temporarily, one of which is coded as a short blade, the other as a shield for blocking, but with 0 armor rating to not interfere with Unarmored.) Includes compatibility version for Morrowind Comes Alive, and both underwear and nude Better Bodies versions.
 * Causes frequent crashes to desktop, at least with a large mod load, and this may be due either to a mod conflict or a problem in this mod itself. If it were not for this, the mod would be pretty good. If you want to try it, add just this mod and see if it works for you, then build from there. Problem is triggered mostly when loading exterior savegames after adding this mod and then restarting the game app. Her special potion can be crafted only once; after that the script for doing so breaks. So make one, then Console-clone a bunch of it (e.g.,  ), and keep a spare around to do that again.
 * The OpenMW-patched version of Companion Teleportation works with Moca (if you turn on the teleportation following option on in her dialog menus, which has no effect without CT installed).

Guard and companion animals

 * Wolf Companion 3.1 by Emma and Grumpy  –  as of 3.1; previous versions have serious problems, at least in OpenMW.  The wolf, named Spot, is over-powered for new characters. With a level 1 PC (and thus weak leveled enemies) this puppy can and happily will slaughter all wildlife (land and sea, but not air) and most smugglers and such, from the Ascadian Isles all the way to Caldera and beyond, in a single session, for just the cost of a few healing potions, and without the PC much bothering to fight.  Spot is best added after there is less discrepancy between your and the wolf's power, and the enemies can fight back more, probably around level 5.  If you wanted to, you could re-mod this mod in OpenMW-CS to be less powerful. While you're at it, reduce its speed to the same as or close to that of the PC (he's +70 PC speed!), and reduce his scale slightly to 0.9 so he gets in the way less. Must be fed a potion (or spell-healed) manually; this companion cannot carry anything.  Has a highly desirable "follow me, but wait outside interior cells" feature that I wish all companions had, especially creature ones.  Does not Levitate with you (he stops following and stays put if you do), but does auto-Water-Breathe.  After about level 20, Spot becomes less useful and very likely to get killed; he does not appear to level with the character, and his once-excessive prowess becomes insufficient against powerful, leveled enemies.  He's still good for pest control (Rats, Nix Hounds, Alits, etc.) while exploring wilderness areas, but will get injured more often and worse.  Just heal him frequently, and be sure you are well armed to quickly kill things like random Daedra.  Spot comes in three colors (all the ones from Bloodmoon). One might prefer the natural reddish one, though in BM that's a diseased Plague Wolf. You can only have one wolf, though, not all three. His teleport ring (to bring him to you if lost or just away) is something all companion mods should come with, given how frequently they glitch and vanish.
 * Directly derived mods (reskins) should also be just as compatible – such as Hulking Fabricant Companion 1.0 by Natakiro – but are, unless they have their own entries below.
 * Dog Companions 2.0 by Emma and Grumpy  –, and you can have more than one. Uses essentially the same scripting as the wolf, above, and Cait' dog models in various breeds.  In wait mode, the dogs have unnecessarily loud barking; this can be fixed by altering their sound files with an MP3 editor.
 * Companionable Cats a.k.a. Cat Companions 1.0 by Emma –   The kittens will follow you home, two or three at a time, but the adult cats are bugged and do not appear; they cannot even be added with the console.  These are not come-fight-with-me companions, but house/stronghold accents, basically.  Part of their animation cycle causes frame rate problems, but only for a few seconds; it happens when they run around and run into a wall or object and keep running at it until the next anim. cycle phase. (This problem also affects regular companions when they get stymied in trying to follow you and run like mad for a moment against an obstruction; this seems to be a game engine problem not a mod problem).  It helps to put each kitten in a different interior cell, if you have a player home with some rooms that are not all in the same cell (i.e., they have teleport doors).  The cats (using Cait's models) are very cute, and you can feed them rat-meat as a treat.  Despite their size, they can walk up anything a humanoid can, so if you put progressively taller objects against each other in various places, effectively providing stairs, you can get very naturalistic results, like the kittens on windowsills or naughtily getting on the dinner table, as they wander around randomly.  If you like a silly game, you can give them powerful stats in the Console or OpenMW-CS, and use them as fighting companions.  A patch available in the forum fixes the broken adult cats; details to follow.  If you want non-companions cats to show up in manors and occasionally as alleycats, see also Cait's Cats in the Wildlife and farm animals section.
 * Panther Buddy 1.0 by DonnerGott  –  She is a much more balanced guard-pet for lower-level characters than Wolf Companion (and Dog Companions – same code).  In a back-to-back test, picking an unarmored and unarmed fight as a level 1 PC with Panther Buddy resulted in being killed by her after she scored six scratches, while the wolf killed the PC with a single bite.  The panther's level is actually higher, and she has more starting health, so she might be viable as a companion for more levels than the wolf/dogs in the long run.  However, her movement, control options, and other scripting is much simpler; a good project for fans of cats over dogs would be to compare the dog and wolf mods above to see how the adaptation was done, then apply it to some big cats using this panther model (or a better one), with various cat skins (jaguar, tiger, etc.), and maybe some mild scaling and stats distinction between cat types.  In one test with a lot of mods, she would not follow or dialogue, and was just a panther-shaped container (the Control Pearl did not work). It is unknown at present which other mod(s) PB conflicted with.
 * Dragon Companion a.k.a. Your Dragon Companion 1.0  by Kagz (Kagrenac, Raven)  –  Found around the Balmora south bridge. Uses the scripting from Dog Companions, even the same growly voice responses.  Will follow and fight, or stay. Can be healed with potions (not PC-crafted ones).  Is very large; definitely an outdoor pet. Is also rather slow, but might speed up as you level.
 * Snow Bear Cub (a.k.a. Snowbear Cub, Snow Bear Companion, Bear Cub) 1.0 by Jac (Gulfwulf, GHF) .   Will not follow through fast transport.  Also turned up dead because it had spawned outside the cage for it, and guards interpreted it as an invading beast and killed it (fix by using   in the Console to put the corpse in the cage, then  ).  Adopt in Seyda Neen from Sosucius Ergalla. Will not carry gear, but will follow and fight. Features: Levels with you; auto Levitates and Water Walks with you (presumably Water Breathes, too, but ReadMe doesn't say); will drink healing potions (not PC-crafted ones); will take your place if you ask it to when it's blocking you; will stay outside if told to; has a recall ring (which works around the transport problem, but outdoors only).  Modders note: Has a new script (by Melian) that has it step aside out of your way when you go through teleport doors.  Any new companion mod should have this feature, and it would be of value to hack into existing ones.
 * Bear Companion 2.1 by Baratheon79  –  Another Snow Bear (or Black Bear in ver. 1.x). Found at the Fort Frostmoth dock. Levels with the player and grows in size over time. Follows and fights, or stays; does not carry gear. Will auto-use Levitate and Water Walk, and move aside when asked.  Water Breathing: unknown.  May be hard to distinguish from Jac's version.  Note: ver. 2.1 is the second download on the download page; the main file is 2.0.
 * Sascha the Snow Bear Cub 1.0 by Raven (Kagz, Kagrenac)  –  This is a pet only, for safe places; will not fight.
 * Durzilla 1.0 by DonnerGott  –  A pet, scaled-down War Durzog, available to you at level 18 or 21, depending on version installed.
 * Staff Agency (in the Many-companion mods section) – Has an option in the Housekeeper's dialogue to generate some cat companions (not combat-oriented), one start with, more over time, including kittens, but unpatched it will only generate one kitten and no other cats. [Patch development in progress. —Darklocq]
 * Wildlife (in the Wildlife and farm animals section – The regular (non-"Lite") version has a few adoptable pets, though most creatures are free-roaming.

Pack animals and mounts

 * Pack Rats added by Bethesda's official Tribunal mod in Mournhold are fully functional in OpenMW.
 * Guars 1.19 by abot – ; multiple forms of failure.  After you get on one of these rideable guars, its navigation seems to be broken. Clicking makes it zoom into super-speed mode, plow through the landscape, and fall with you into the water table under the landscape geometry.  It also adds guar-riding dialog options to nearby NPCs, including companions, and badly interferes with their behavior (e.g., they will not follow until told to dismount a guar they are not actually riding, and this problem is permanent, even if you respawn the companion NPC elsewhere, and kill the guar).  Other broken things, even just using it as a regular Pack Guar, are that it warps to the player's position too much, and will often overlap the player character, obscuring vision, and impeding movement until told to move. Ordering it to follow until a fight does not work; it will join in the fight instead of stay away.  It does not teleport or fast-travel with you as advertised, so it can only be used if you're going to walk the entire trip. On the up side, its unique ability to heal from alchemical ingredients you give it does work, as does its ability to learn on its own (though it's not clear what it is learning; you get messages that it has done so). Update: A new version (2018-09) was released, and is now at 1.21; this has not been tested in OpenMW (but nothing in the release notes suggests any OpenMW-specific patching).
 * Balmora Expansion 1.4, with BE Fixes (see entry in Major overhauls of vanilla places section) – Adds some Pack Rats and Guars that are fully functional. This is code adapted from Baratheon79's mod, below.
 * Pack Animal Merchant 1.1 by Baratheon79 – The Pack Rats and Guars it adds just outside Pelagiad were not usable in one test; the NPC who has them accepted my money but you don't get a guar that will work.  [Tester note: I seemingly actually got one Pack Rat here for free, though, just by walking up to it and telling it to follow me. Balmora Expansion, with another copy of Baratheon79's code, was also installed, so maybe that's problematic. Did not test this mod by itself. —&thinsp;Darklocq ☎ ¢ 01:44, 10 August 2017 (CEST)]
 * Pack Guars (maybe also Rats?) added further from but still nearby Pelagiad by another mod – I think it was Grumpy's version – were not usable by me in the present test; the NPC who had them didn't respond with any purchase options.
 * Pack Donkey 1.0 by Emma (those added in Suran) – In one test, you don't get the control ring, and the donkey thus will not follow. In another test with a different mod load, the donkey did follow.  Another forum user confirms it is working, as of 2017-04-08.  Thus, the no-control-ring issue is likely a mod conflict.   Pack Donkey 2.x by Emma is not a TES3: Morrowind mod at all, but is a .esm for TES4: Oblivion, so do not install it.
 * Pegas Horse Ranch – Was able to install it without the game crashing, and most of the mod works. However, the key feature – riding the horses – is malfunctional in exactly the same was as abot's Guars: the mount and rider clip through the landscape and fall to the watertable.
 * Side note: The prices of the Pack Rats in various mods are inconsistent, but the carrying capacity and behavior appears to be the same. Both the pricing and carrying capacity of Pack Guars is wildly inconsistent between mods, and at least abot's Guars obviously has very distinct behavior.

Dwemer constructs

 * Yagrum Advanced 2.0 – Yagrum Bagarn will build you two companions, a Dwemer Sphere and Steam Centurion. To make them Mournhold-capable, there's a trivial side quest (look for the additional dialogue options "Mournhold" and "power source" from Bagarn). For airship, see entry in Fast travel section, below.
 * Private Mobile Base 4.2 by henkbein a.k.a. HB – Most players should ignore stuff the vendor NPC tells you about "Dwemer Cyborg Prototypes" in this mod (see its main entry in the Player homes section). You can eventually find them in Solstheim, and they are a less functional, alpha-test version of those added by the later Dwemer Cyborgs mod by henkbein [have not tested it yet], but also have infinite health, so they are super-cheaty as companions. Plus, they don't look Dwemer. They are not long-term functional as companions, and you can't even stably use them as mannequins; if left alone for more than 72 game hours, three will disappear from the game completely (even if you leave them at their original location), and the one that remains return to its original spawning point. A potential use: short-term bodyguards if you are exploring Solstheim at a much-too-low level; they can fight things for you if you give them weapons and keep a distance.) To this end, it should be noted that they are guarded by giant skeletons, and will slowly (being unarmed) fight them upon your arrival (one in the first room, several in the later room). You can hang back and let them do it, or help out. If you want a proper steampunk Dwemer companion, play as Telvanni, or get Yagrum Advanced, above.
 * Dwemer Cyborgs by henkbein – Not tested yet; the prototype versions in Private Mobile Base are not very usable. The fully developed ones have additional features like upgrades with "power cores", remote control, teleportation, etc.
 * Shock Centurion Companion 1.2 by Vorwoda the Black  –  Adds modern companion features and other enhancements to the vanilla Shock Centurion follower you get as a high-ranking Telvanni from Baladas Demnevanni in Arvs Drelen. Features include enhanced movement AI, four series of upgrades (with quests), an in-game manual, and a remote control.

Companion and NPC utilities and misc.
These generally seem to need to load before companion mods, but for some it might be the other way around, or might not matter. Mostly before seems better, since if a companion has a conflicting dialogue option, you probably want the companion's to work with that NPC, not the generic NPC mod's one, or a companion's quests or other special features might not work.


 * Companion Teleportation 1.1 by Charles Cooley a.k.a. cdcooley a.k.a. CDC  –  This mod is a non-MWSE version of Improved Teleportation. There is also a compatibility patch for CT included in Multiple Teleport Marking (MTM), in the Fast travel section. Using this mod takes a little work; companions don't just follow you through teleports, but are recalled to you after you teleport, and the list of whom to bring occasionally takes some maintenance. But it is better than nothing. The OpenMW patch is available here . This .omwaddon file is used in place of, not in addition to, the mod's original .esp file.  The CT add-on that comes with MTM definitely works work with this .omwaddon variant of CT.  However, there are many companions who aren't compatible with it (nothing breaks in them, they just don't get added to the mod's companion list and thus will not teleport to you).  Once in a while a companion stops working with this mod; try putting them into follow mode, then wait mode, then follow again. If that doesn't fix it, remove the mod, do a save-cleaning routine, and re-add the mod. If a companion usually works but then you get a funny noise when you try it later and they don't teleport, that means they're in an interior cell; they can only teleport into and out of exterior cells. The Julan mod occasionally has temporary issues (mostly when Julan or Shani do something scripted and it changes their follow/stay/wander/guard state). The fix is to remove them from follow mode, put them back in it (sometimes twice) until CT reports the correct number of followers.
 * companions: Julan (including his sister), Jasmine.
 * companions: Gatanas, Belial, Live Free, Staff Agency, Dawn Companion, Lady Death Companion.
 * NPC Functionality 1.3 (formerly The Request Mod a.k.a. The Dialogue Request Mod) by Casey Tucker – . Compliance varies by many factors: Disposition (you generally need it very high), Speechcraft, NPC class, relative level, faction, quality of the gear you are wearing, Reputation, plus a random element. Options: follow, stay, or guard this spot; move out of the way; lend money (and pay back, with interest); tell in-game date/time, NPC's best skills, faction (unless secret); fight melee/ranged/magic/no-magic/NPC's-choice, stay out of fight (but may heal from a distance if they're able), use stealth when PC does. You can go out of your way to be nice to raise Dispo a little. Faction members you outrank will comply with any request. Has a morale feature – asking some level-1 commoner to fight for you will just scare them, some weak NPCs who follow will run away from fights, etc.  Best-friend spellcasters may heal you if you're injured, without you asking. Can be used to build clumsy armies, e.g. to assault cities and strongholds.  Has custom text responses, including Khajiit dialect. The primary utility of this mod aside from roleplay realism enhancement: "assign 'team archers,' 'team warriors' and the 'team healer,' so that the entire group works effectively as a team"; this can compensate for simple companion mods that don't have combat-control functions.  A potential issue: increases the frequency with which NPCs trigger voice clips (some of us want a mod that sharply reduces them!). Also unnecessarily takes up two Topic menu lines for its main menu when one would suffice, and does not put all of its features in that menu. The only ReadMe is on the download page.
 * NPC Commands 8b by Horny Buddha –, to the extent it has actual functions.  Much of this is trivial "just in your own head" roleplay stuff, but it does have some actual game-affecting features, like getting NPCs to face you or turn away (good for testing companion outfits – as long as they're not in follow mode, since they'll face you against instantly).  With high enough disposition (100), it can be used to get random NPCs to do things like follow you, and this has obvious cheat potential, so, well, don't cheat (hint: if you're not powerful enough yet to get the same effect with Command Humanoid, you're cheating). If you do have enough Command Humanoid to do something like bring an Enchanter home with you, you can save time doing it with this mod (don't have to keep casting the spell over and over again). One highly desirable feature, the ability to force NPC merchants to sell gear they have personally equipped, does not work. This would be desirable because if you sell something good to a merchant and want it back, you can't buy it back if it was better than what they were already wearing and they've thus equipped your item. The only fix I know of for this is to figure out the item ID, Console them another copy of it, then they'll sell that one to you (aside from just Consoling it back to yourself, even more of a cheat). A practical use for "Face me" is to get an NPC that has slowly migrated to an in-your-way spot to turn in a different direction and either let them migrate that way over time, or forcibly move them with the Console, and keep them facing a direction that will keep them out of your way later.
 * Give Your Orders 1.3 by TheLys  –  Provides follow/stay/wander movement requests, and options to tell class and level, and give a full stats run-down. It has more/less likelihood of compliance based on things like relative rank in a faction. However, you generally cannot get anyone to do or tell you anything without both Personality and Disposition at 90+ (Speechcraft level seem to have no effect, other than by using it to directly raise Dispo); there's an excessive random element to it (they may refuse to tell you their class and level, then tell you, then refuse to tell you in the same dialogue session); many requests result in a lowered Disposition whether complied with or not (including from your full-on companions); and you can sometimes end up with the situation that a following NPC will refuse to stop following (another of these commands mods can be used to force them to stop). However, it can be seen as a realism mod, and someone focused on roleplay and the challenge of managing people's Dispositions may love it. The lowered-Dispo problem can be directly worked around with Companion Role Play Plus, which provides the ability to raise it again even if your Speechcraft is poor.  A nice feature is that those in follow mode get Speed, Swift Swim, Jump, Slowfall, and regeneration (Magicka? Health? Fatigue? all?) boosts, and there is also an option to add Levitate and Water Walk spells to them.  Most companion mods come with all of that built in, and can be adjusted with the Console if they don't (see the Help your companion survive section), so these features are mostly useful for NPCs who aren't true companions.
 * Companion Role Play Plus (a.k.a. Companion RPP) 1.01 by ManaUser –, to the extent it has actual functions. Much of this is trivial "just in your own head" roleplay stuff, but it does have some actual game-affecting features, like the ability to raise and lower disposition with "favors", and to have some requests complied with or denied based on Disposition. Another is to ask about health, including disease. Those appear to work.  The features for having companions change their outfits do not appear to work; it's possible these are MWSE-dependent and that the author did not mention this in the ReadMe.  Using those features makes equipping and de-equipping sounds, but doesn't appear to have any other effect; it's possible this was the actual intent (just more role-playing).
 * Move or Take My Place 1.0 by abot – Despite the fact that the readme says "MWSE required", this actually to some extent, aside from the quick-key trickery. However, it is frustratingly dependent on NPC's Disposition, which means it will not work most of the time for low-level characters, or at all with NPCs who aren't your best faction buddies, unless you can at least temporarily raise their Dispo to 100.  This is worth hacking to make it  work, so NPCs who have totally blocked you with no way out (aside from Console tricks) can be forced into moving, as a player requirement not a PC roleplaying request.  Someone please make that version, and call it Move or Take My Place, Dammit. (In the mean time, two Console tricks are , then   again after you move through them; or   then setting it back to 1.0 after you run at mouse size between their feet. Anyway, the Move request seems to work more often than Take My Place.   This mod is not necessary if you have NPC Commands, which implements these features and many more.
 * Mournhold Mercenary Upgrade – ; works but with a serious flaw that can be worked around. Adds a few modern companion features to the otherwise almost useless Tribunal companion Calvus Horatius, and gets rid of his weird "profit" calculator. The bug is that this mod disappears his follow/stay dialogue option; this can be resolved by using NPC Commands with it, since that mod gives you these commands for any NPC with a Disposition toward you of 100.  He (like many poorly-thought-out companions) still has to have his Acrobatics manually jacked up in the Console to avoid absurd falling deaths because of the game's poor NPC movement AI (see the Help your companion survive section, above, for details).
 * Firemoth Improved Companions –  Adds better gear to the half-assed companions you are assigned in the official Siege at Firemoth add-on.  They will die anyway, unless you are high level and take various strenuous measures to keep them alive, as detailed in  on this quest.
 * At-a-Glance Companion Status Bars 1.1b by skaeps –, as it depends on MGE. Version 2.4 likely does also, and it's reported at Morrowind Modding History that it "currently has some major problems" anyway. You can get the key functionality of this (seeing your companion's Health level) by casting a weak and cheap Heal on them; their health will show up, like an enemy's, above yours.
 * Healing 1.0 by Manauser, included in his "Mini-Mods" archive – . Makes NPCs with Healer class actually offer healing (Restore Health) as a service.  Of limited utility, since they will not actually provide the service to you unless you are pretty notably injured (not sure what the exact cutoff is, maybe 80%).  There are some other mods that purport to do this.
 * Hide the Skooma 1.0 by Manauser, included in his "Mini-Mods" archive –  (to the extent it has issues, they are probably also in the Bethesda engine). Temporarily removes Skooma and Moon Sugar from your inventory when dealing with merchants who object to it.  Issues: This temporarily affects your Encumbrance; if you don't pay attention, you can over-buy stuff then not be able to walk when your contraband is added back to your inventory after you are done with the merchant.  Does not prevent a drop in Disposition from those merchants coded to have one when encountering contraband; likely, the script cannot detect such merchants until they've already reacted to the contraband.  A few ingredient merchants are not fooled by the trick and will still refuse to deal with you until you manually drop the Moon Sugar (this bug does not affect Skooma, or other merchant types).
 * It's Me, You Idiot 1.0 by Manauser, included in his "Mini-Mods" archive – . Eliminates the annoying "Who's there?" NPC greeting.  This could be re-modded further to eliminate some other pointless NPC chatter that usually makes no sense in context (e.g. "Dirt, dirt, dirt", references to "that elf" being in trouble, etc.)  This would be especially welcome with companion mods that use the default voice responses of their race/gender, and to eliminate male NPC's fawning "Ma'am" and "Well  there! The pleasure is all mine" responses to male player characters wearing skirts.
 * Barb Fix 1.0 by Manauser, included in his "Mini-Mods" archive – . Tweaks stats of the Barbarian NPC class so they actually wear (duh!) the fur/leather armor they have in their inventory.
 * Lore Fix 1.01 – Enables various bits of Bethesda dialogue that are present in the vanilla .ESM but not actually used in the game; it gives them to various NPCs.  Only someone who has played through the entire game many times, and knows all the dialogue very well, would know whether this is working.
 * Shut Up! – ; needs further testing. Keeps NPCs from chattering at you unless you are looking directly at them and are close. Seems to work when used with a small mod load, but stops working after more NPC mods are added. This may be a mod load order issue, or it may simply be totally incompatible with some other mod.
 * Various "NoLore" mods: . These get NPCs to stop offering dialogue about a particular "generic" topic (Solstheim, etc.), when they have no plausible reason to have anything to say about it.
 * Roleplay junkies can run most of these (working) mods simultaneously, to get numerous (though often redundant) interaction options, at the cost of considerable Dialogue menu clutter with all NPCs.
 * Mods to get NPCs to unequip items or strip entirely – See notes in the Hacks, testing tools, exploits, and cheats section.
 * Improved Teleportation 2.0 by Charles Cooley a.k.a. cdcooley a.k.a. CDC – ; requires MSWE.
 * Universal Companion Share 2.0 by Fliggerty –, as it requires MSWE to do anything. When OpenMW finally starts natively supporting scripting beyond the original game engine, this is arguably the no. 1 thing to implement: ability to inventory-share with any NPC in follow mode.
 * At-a-Glance Companion Status Bars 1.1b and 2.0 by skaeps – ; these rely on the third-party program MGE.

NPC additions and changes
Numerous mods incidentally include new NPCs (e.g. item mods that add a merchant, quest mods that add a quest giver); those are not listed here. This section is for mods primarily focused on NPCs.

For NPCs only re-skinned, see the Meshes and textures section.

For changes to the frequency or locations of guards and other NPCs, see the Spawning section.

For changes to NPC combat behavior or stats, see the Combat and damage section.

General

 * The Regulars: Sitting NPCs 2.5 by GhanBuriGhan –, which is bad, because it has a cascading effect on many other mods. The Regulars adds seated NPCs in various taverns, but in OpenMW they are almost always levitating in mid-air, at butt-to-eyeballs height. I think I've only seen a single one seated properly in three weeks, and he did not stay that way.  Unfortunately, many third party mods, including mega-mods like Balmora Expansion (see below) include "Regulars" as resources they've imported from this mod, so the more mods you install, the more likely you are to see levitating Regulars even if you never install The Regulars itself at all. Nothing is said about MWSE or other engine hacks in the readme, so this appears to be a genuine OpenMW bug situation. I have not checked yet whether it has been reported on the bug tracker.  I also have not tried manually moving them on the z axis, but may attempt that, since it is annoying.  Note: Some seated NPCs in Kat's Kastle (in its hard-to-find fashion show rooms) are working properly, so whatever is different about them can be studied and used to fix The Regulars and mods that use its resources.
 * Morrowind Comes Alive (MCA) – Not tested yet. A few mods have a dependency on this, and many have patches for it.
 * Children of Morrowind (CoM) – Not tested yet. A few mods have a dependency on this, and many have patches for it.
 * Elders of Vvardenfell – Not tested yet.
 * Thugs & Louts 2.0 by JMK (JohnK222) –   Various brigands and assassins – 63, in 20 race/gender combinations, of levels ranging 5 to 50 – will attack you outside, in quite a number of places.  Has several variant .ESP files (only use one). Recommended to use the 2.0 version (archive includes all the earlier ones); it levels them to be appropriate opponents, and you will not get the best gear from them until after level 20.  If you use an older version, it amounts to a cheat mod, as they'll frequently drop Glass, Ebony, and Daedric gear. Even after level 20, you may find it a bit much; many of them will be wearing bits of gear (like Ordinator and Royal Guard armor) that they shouldn't have, and they drop a tremendous number of the more powerful dart weapons (though will also try to use them against you).  This comes with an ampersand ( & ) in the name of the folder; either this must be renamed to use "and" or "+", or you must escape the ampersand in the   path as && ; otherwise, OpenMW will crash while loading the game files.

Slaves and slavery

 * Twin Lamps & Slave Hunters v1.5 by Nevena – Total overhaul of Twin Lamps, and you can play as either an anti-slavery champion or join the new Slave Hunter faction.  Slaves and freed slaves can act as companions. Adds lots of new quests, NPCs, plus some items and ingredients. Both available archives have a lot of dirty references and need cleaning before use or some issues may result.
 * Ex-Slaves and Partners 1.5 by Nevena – ; when tested it will be listed more completely here.  Based on CM Partners 2.3.  Unclear how (if at all) this and Twin Lamps & Slave Hunters by Nevena inter-relate.
 * Live Free 1.0.3 by Apoapse –  This allows all (vanilla) slaves to be bought/sold, or claimed if you have the key to them. They can then be used as companions.  However, only non-mage types are any good for this without expensive compensating measures, and will never have a complete set of good armor: the Slave Bracer, which constantly drains Magicka, must be worn or the slave will be considered freed. There is no "raise disposition, free them, and have them stick around if they like you" feature.  So, a slave mage is useless, and a slave fighter/thief will always have an armor weak spot, unless and until one gives them a new constant-effect item that compensates for the Slave Bracer.  The mod has a party combat system, e.g. one skilled with Restoration should, after the drain problem is resolved, try to heal you and other companions, or at least those from the same mod; one best at Marksman will do archery by default unless out of arrows.
 * The Companion Teleportation mod doesn't work with those provided by this mod.
 * SlaveWarrior Jessica 1.2m by UlfGeir – ; the version integrated into Bitter Coast Compilation (listed in the Major overhauls of vanilla places section) works fine. She is a stand-alone slave companion you can buy in  for a comparatively low cost. Fully functional as a companion, and has some special features like ability to bind your wounds for a healing effect.  Will run off (with your gear) if you free her intentionally or by removing her slave bracer.  Ver. 1.2m needs cleaning (has 2 dirty references); a clean 1.1 is also available.
 * Slave Mod by Fliggerty a.k.a. Fligg – ; did not do it purported to. Appears to have a MWSE dependency or the like, or perhaps an error early in its scripting stops it from compiling; not investigated yet.  It sounded like a great mod, since you could use it to buy more slaves than those at a single Main-Quest-related vendor, free them, and possibly have them stick around as companions if you raised their disposition enough.
 * Slave Companions 1.1 by Da Mage –
 * Special Slave Companions 2.0 by Emperor –  Replaces his original Slave Companions 1.0.
 * Freed Slaves Counter Issued 1.01 – ; tester did Twin Lamps quest line with this installed and did not receive a counter yet, but it could be player error. An alternative is Morrowind Achievements, which provides a slaves-freed tally in its book.
 * Seyda Neen Complete (see entry in Major overhauls of vanilla places section) adds a slave market, but the slaves-as-companions feature of this is broken. You can do nothing useful with the slaves; they'll follow (unarmed and in nothing but clothes), you can free them (probably without effect on the Twin Lamps quest), and that's it. No inventory sharing, no disposition increase over time, etc.

Notes on NPCs

 * Skirts and male player characters: Some male NPCs, including companions like Tribunal 's Calvus Horatius, will dialogue with and comment about a male player character as if female when the PC is wearing a skirt or anything that equips as a skirt (e.g. kilts added by various mods). This is unexpected and undesirable, since skirts are unisex in this game, and even part of some uniforms, like those of Mournhold's High Ordinators (Hands of Almalexia), and Redoran Guards.  This may be a problem in the vanilla game, not OpenMW alone, and it does not seem to be related to a clothing mod.  It really doesn't make sense that any NPCs would trigger off a clothing item instead of just checking the PC's actual gender, but who knows?  There is a mod called Looking Good that alters clothing-related commentary; it may be worth studying to see about fixing this gender-confusion issue.
 * Lying-down NPCs added by various mods (e.g. sleeping guests in tavern bedrooms, drunks in pubs) have a tendency to not stay that way, to migrate around on the floor through walls, etc. Dagoth Ur's Sleepers (the basis for NPCs laying down in mods) also have this problem. An experiment using the console to spawn them on top of beds yields two observations: They actually spawn in the room in standing position, then quickly fall to their prone one; this is similar to posable weapon mannequins, who actually start standing normally then quickly drop into combat stance and freeze.  Sleepers also seem to conflict with the bed itself, and will often quite rapidly migrate on the y axis.  A modder solution to resolving this might be to use low, invisible walls to "box" them into position on the floor or bed you want them to stay on.  A similar approach, with visible ropes, has been used in some mods to keep dancers on their stages.  However, there's another laying-down bug that affects various companions and "NPC-commanding" mods with a "sleep" feature; to date, zero of them work properly in OpenMW; the character will lie down, then immediately stand back up, and sometimes repeat this over and over for the duration of what should have been sleep.

Mannequins and dummies
Mannequins, which are usually NPCs coded to stand in a position (effectively paralyzed) come in two varieties: armor-and-clothing, which can be given anything but only display those items (and may be posable in various ways, or even dance); and posable weapon mannequins, which can wield a weapon, too. They may look like wood, or like regular NPCs, or like something fanciful; this is just a matter of texture work. Some mannequins are actually coded as creatures or as upright corpses and have limited functionality, but most are "live" NPCs, and many pointlessly thus have disposition and "lore" dialogue topics.

The weapon-wielding kind hold a weapon by briefly entering fight mode to unsheathe, then freezing. This can have negative effects, including a) hitting and possibly killing you when you first tell them to do this, and b) triggering any companions in follow mode to attack the mannequin (which can happen repeatedly, since they drop from at-rest state into combat state every time you enter the cell). You can sometimes hear them unsheathe their weapons and utter a syllable of what would have been battle bravado banter, and combat music start for a note or two, when you enter a room which contains one or more of them. The solution is to not put them in a combat pose, and just have them be clothing-and-armor mannequins. This may not affect all modder "brands" of such mannequins, but the problem happens with many. Don't lead companions into a vendor who displays them in such a pose if you don't want to see your buddies attack the vendor's inventory, which seems to happen about one time out of every five to ten when entering such cells.

A rare side effect of NPC mannequins, and which do not have scripting that checks that they are standing still, is that some of them can be given commands like "follow me" in mods like NPC Commands, which may convert them into low-capability companions who cannot be put back into stock-still mannequin mode (nor dancing mode, if they're dancing mannequins) – except by picking them up, which will zero out their inventory (so empty it first), then putting them back down as newly spawned mannequins. This "not a mannequin anymore" effect can also happen if you use Command Humanoid or Charm on them. It most often affects dancing mannequins, since they have no code that makes them stand like statues.

Attacking any NPC mannequin may trigger other NPCs (even other mannequins!) to "report your crime" as a violent assault, though a few mods may work around this. Some poorly coded mannequins that still have an active Alarm function, and will also report you for theft (and possibly even go into combat mode against you but usually without an ability to strike you) if you take an owned item. So, it is safest to do  and   on them before using them in a place you have taken over as a player home where the containers are owned by the original occupant, or if you are daringly using a space that spawns combatant humans, like the Old Mournhold manors used by the Dark Brotherhood. You need to repeat those commands if you pick up and move the mannequins, since doing so respawns a stock copy. Some posable mannequins are glitched and may become unusable after you pose them, leave, and come back; if this happens, you have to kill them, plunder their corpse, and replace them; the killing is best done with  in the console, to avoid being reported for a crime.

Mod practice dummies are expected, of course, to be attackable, and are coded as creatures, not NPCs, whose health restores rapidly and who do not fight back, so you can hit them again and again to work on a combat skill. They do not always work in OpenMW.

A similar concept is security-training containers, which have locks and/or traps that reset themselves so you can try again and again to unlock or disarm them.


 * New Leveled Animated Practice Dummy 1.1 – Not working. This is not for homes, but for the stock dummies in Fighters Guild training rooms, which seem to do nothing with this installed. Some home and furniture mods provide working ones you can hit and train with (don't know about the leveled part).
 * Balmora Expansion 1.4, with BE Fixes (covered in the Major overhauls of vanilla places section) has a furniture store with two vendors that provide armor-and-clothing (not weapon-display) mannequins. Those from the upstairs vendor are broken, but the downstairs vendor's are fully functional.

Creatures
This section is for added and functionally modified creatures. Most mods that add non-unique, respawning creatures require leveled-list merging.

For creatures only re-skinned, see the Meshes and textures section. For changes to the frequency or locations of creatures, see the Spawning section. For changes to game-wide creature combat behavior or stats, see the Combat and damage section.

Dremora

 * Dremora (Markynaz) Race 1.3 by Westly – See its entry in the Races section for its main purpose. This mod has a side effect of turning all vanilla Dremora into females, who match the style of the PC race (and them all being one gender seems to be a bug). Using another of the mods below after this one will undo this effect (except for unique Dremora added by this mod and its optional companion add-on). The heads are largely by Rhedd, and the glowing tattoo work is adapted from Alienslof's Oblivion mod, Dremora Skins.
 * Unique Dremora 1.0 by Psymoniser (a.k.a. Psymon, Psy), et al. – .  Gives the several special, unique Dremora in the game their own individual appearance, and replaces all vanilla Dremora with ones using Reavance's Better Daedric Armor textures as well as BB bodies from Playable Dremora. Includes patches to instead use armor textures from GhostNull's mod or Darknut's.  The "uniques" aspect of the mod remains functional, for named and summoned Dremora, if you have Ranked Dremora installed after it.  Does not appear to change their stats.  See also Dremora Replacer in the Improved meshes and textures section for a scaled-back, pluginless replacer that only improves the base textures and meshes without any uniqueness changes.
 * Ranked Dremora 3.1 by Neoptolemus, et al. –  These are some of the best looking people in the game, very detailed, and Better Bodies-based.  This does way more than appearance changes: It adds males and females of the seven ranks of Dremora in TES lore – from Churl to Valkynaz – in place of randomly encountered Dremora (level 9) and Dremora Lords (level 10), though you'll still encounter the vanilla ones as summoned and unique creatures. The ranked Dremora range in level from 6 to, providing much more of a challenge; four of the seven are more powerful than the vanilla Dremora Lord. Their weapon loot has also been nerfed; they no longer have Daedric, but Dremora weapons, identical in weight and appearance, with less power, and about 1/10 the value. This addresses the "all I have to do is loot Daedric shrines for a few days and I'll never care about gold again" balance problem. It's still great loot, though.  Another plus is that they're distinct in other ways - they have different armor/clothing (no, you don't get it as loot), and they have different attacks, as some are bow users and some spellcasters. Superb variety. The male heads are from Playable Dremora, the female ones by Mr. Dave (from his early Nethaupaul Dremora mod), with armor by Carnithus and Jeremy McGuinn, and additional work by Miltiades, Ren, Axel, and Snakebitten.  Because it replaces the random vanilla Dremora entirely, it is not compatible with mods that only affect those (e.g. Improved Dremora by God 2.0), since the stock ones will never appear in-game. It  be used with the two mods above; see tips below for details.  An improvement a modder might make is a bit more contrast; these Dremora have very elaborate skins, but the details are hard to make out (other than the glowing bits).
 * : Use all of the above mods, in the order given. This will give you: occasional mod-added female Dremora that match the PC race; unique "special" and summoned Dremora who match the style of the originals (all male) but have distinguishable faces; and randomly encountered male and female Dremora of different ranks.  This gives the sense that Oblivion has multiple races of Dremora, just as Nirn (the mundane world of TES) has multiple races of humanoids.
 * : Run the race mod only if you intend to play the race or use the companion (and use Playable Dremora race instead, if you don't want the companion), then use Unique Dremora after it; all Dremora except those added by the race/companion mod will have vanilla appearance, beside some unique faces and hair.

Other baddies

 * Reign of Fire 1.1 –  Adds dragons to the game, as high-level foes, and eventually as something you can raise and train.  Also has a riding feature; this is the least likely to work in OpenMW, given the failure of abot's Guar, another rideable mod [has anyone tested Pegas Horse Ranch?].  Mod recommends you be level 30+, and will warn you if try to start a new game with it loaded (allowing you to defer appearance of dragons until you reach that level). Heed this warning; a dragon appearing when you are level 5 or so will get you and any companions killed near-instantly, and will make the exterior of the town/city of its appearance unusable until the dragon is killed.  This is not a normal beast fight, but begins with a flyover animation in which the dragon gets the first strike, then it converts to normal combat, with the dragon flying above you and out of reach of melee attacks.  After about level 30, this is playable.   When you track the first dragon to its lair, you may get severe framerate issues while fighting; it helps to move to the side and around after his cutscene, to put the animated flame braziers behind you.  The key NPC for the quest series may disappear from his eventual location if you are away from him for too long. He can be put back with   in the Console; this will put him in the side room of the tavern's ground floor.  The dragon attacks on cities (around a dozen total) can kill bystanders. It's unlikely any of the victim NPCs will be important  (e.g., the local siltstrider operator), but it could happen. This mod is challenging to play even from a puzzle-solving perspective (e.g. you are given only vague clues where the next dragon is, and if you don't find it, the story does not progress).  If you have Azura's star, you'll find that a dragon's soul is enormous (as in cheaty), vastly exceeding even of that of Almalexia.
 * Beasts of Vvardenfell 1.35 by Crankgorilla, et al. This is a community showcase mod, adding various modders' creatures in a single package. Many are leveled variants of vanilla creatures, e.g. electric Slaughterfish, but there are some all-new things. Requires leveled-list merging.   A few creatures, such as the new Storm Cliffracer, can sometimes show up with broken meshes/textures (day-glow pink, with no details); in one test, killing these specific ones sometimes causes the game to crash to desktop, so they are best  'd in the Console on sight. When not visibly glitched, the game seems stable. All the other creatures appear fully functional, except two have shown up without collision done properly; they can hit you but you can't hit them and have to kill them with area-effect attacks. This mod seems to have had the side effect of making many natural wildlife animals near civilization into non-hostiles, though this could be the fault of Bitter Coast Compilation or some other mod; a clean test will be required to be sure. The problem only affects some of the weak "pest animals" like Rats and Nix Hounds, so some might consider it a blessing.
 * Golems 1.1 by Neoptolemus – Adds Golems of various sorts and powers; their mesh is based on the Storm Atronach, with new skins.  They drop valuable vanilla ingredients like gems, ores, and salts, and have ranged elemental attacks. Requires leveled-list merging.  They will appear quite frequently as a form of Daedra, including in dungeons and in the Grazelands.
 * Minions of House Dagoth 1.1 by Neoptolemus – Adds numerous new kinds of Ash and Blight creatures, including some undead ones (optionally), mostly in the Red Mountain/Ghostfence, Ashlands, and Grazelands regions, and in Sixth House lairs.  Requires leveled-list merging.
 * The Undead 5.0 by Neoptolemus – – Adds 300+ enemies, mostly undead, and mostly new variants, some of which are pretty horrific. (Some are amusing, like the Beholder from Dungeons & Dragons, also seen in Doom.)  Requires leveled-list merging.  A handful of the tougher ones drop good gear, and they become common, but only at higher levels when you don't need the gear or the money.
 * Unique Creatures 1.0 [TB+BM] by Neoptolemus –  The uncommon higher-level versions of baddies in the vanilla game are made more visually distinct. Does not require leveled-list merging, and should probably be loaded late.
 * Giants 2.71 [and various earlier versions] by The Puma Man – ; requires installation via a .EXE file, so this can only be set up and tested for OpenMW compatibility under MS Windows. If it works, it needs to be repackaged as a regular archive. This will probably necessitate using a 100%-vanilla game folder, putting it under version control (with Subversion, Git, or Bazaar) running the installer, then seeing what changed.
 * Halls of Destiny AKA TheDungeon v1.0 by Demon_Xen  –, but you must install the textures included at the download page as separate archives. Adds various monsters and three scripted boss fights, one with  (for gear the author describes as "two ridiculously overpowered weapons", plus a whole lot of vanilla loot). They're found through a weird door near the entrance of Mournhold Temple; not exactly lore-friendly, but this was designed as a test/showcase mod for the creatures, which are intended as modders' resources. The only issue it has is some missing textures on a creature or two. While easy for high-level players and too hard for beginners, mid-level players may find it challenging.

Wildlife and farm animals

 * Cait's Critters Unleashed by Hoghead the Horrible and Cait (Sith) –, including audio and their limited AI. They are non-hostile unless you attack them first. It's fun getting killed at level 1 by a chicken you pick a fight with when you're out of Fatigue.  Some of their locations are a cute surprise, like finding a rooster high up on ... you'll see.  Because their locations are specific and not random, it is possible for some individual animals to conflict with other mods. No incompatibilities found so far, even with mega-mods of Seyda Neen and Balmora (see below), other than one mostly-buried pig.  The ambient animal noises work fine with both Ambient Town Sounds and Better Sounds, below. Presumably they also work with Atmospheric Sound Effects or its Expanded Sounds fork; not tested yet. It's easy to console-clone any of these animals with   if you want to add some to your stronghold. Some also respawn, and can be attacked without bounty or other consequence, and thus can be used as practice foes, if you're mean-spirited.  But many do not respawn.  Note: If you want to try Wilderness (see below), it already incorporates Cait's Critters Unleashed.
 * Cait's Cats by KAGZ and Cait (Sith) –   Has one known problem, with a known solution; will report more later after details are worked out.  Short version: The kittens work, the adult cats don't, but may be repairable.  The purpose of the mod is putting 200+ cats (mostly indoors, but a few alleycats) around Vvardenfell. They're the popular models seen in many mods, and have custom animations (butterfly-chasing, etc.).  These are not commandable pets; for those, see the Companionable Cats mod, under the Guard and companion animals section.  You can also use this as just a modder's resource, without the .ESP; Cait's animals are all freely usable, with credit.
 * Wolf Pack 1.0 by hollaajith –  The purpose was to "make [each] wolf pack in Solstheim behave as a true pack", with an alpha wolf, and to also have a 20% chance of a Snow Wolf spawning in the pack. That last bit did not appear to work at all. The behavioral change was negative in OpenMW: the wolf pack would attack as a group, and stop attacking if you killed the alpha; this was the intent.  The OpenMW problem is that the wolf pack would never, ever attack again, or do anything. They just sit there in the snow forever, even if you kill them all and they respawn later. (The premise is faulty, anyway; the "alpha dog" model of wolf behavior has been demonstrated to be pseudo-scientific nonsense.)
 * Several have known issues with OpenMW; see the Mod status page. However, most of this testing was done in OpenMW 0.41 and earlier.
 * Wilderness 2.1 by Puma Man, et al. –  Adds numerous (mostly natural) animals to Vvardenfell and Solstheim, plus new ingredients (meats, pelts, etc.)  Already incorporates Cait's Critters Unleashed (see above) and Water Nymphs and Other Creatures by TheLys; these should not be run with it. Get the "No exe archive copy" in the additional files section; the original mod upload is wrapped in an MS Windows executable.
 * Wilderness (Lite) Fixed 2.0 by Puma Man, et al., and proletarian1871 –  This is Wilderness 2.0 without any of the original's "pet crime" scripts (or invisible "pet security guard" NPCs), nor the companion AI on the various huskies, cats, etc.  No such patch was prepared for Wilderness 2.1; so you have a choice between 2.1 with more creatures and with pet-related scripting you might not want, versus Wilderness 2.0 with fewer creatures and without the pet stuff.

Major overhauls of vanilla places
As single mods or as combined collections of previous mods, various add-ons make major changes to some game locations – even all of Vvardenfell. Many of these include new leveled lists or additions to existing ones, so need a leveled-list merge before playing.

Some of these also incidentally add new landmasses off the coast; mods that do that only, or as their main purpose, are listed in the New major landmasses section.


 * Morrowind Rebirth 4.13 by Trancemaster_1988 —  This verges on a total conversion of all of Vvardenfell, and is both ambitious and popular, "the result of thousands of hours of modding". For a complete list of changes, see here.  Blurb: "Morrowind Rebirth is a total overhaul for The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind with the aim to enhance the gameplay by balancing certain aspects of the game, and by giving the player more to see and do. Explore the island of Vvardenfell as you never have before, with a world built anew to be both alien and familiar to the Morrowind you knew before. New adventures await, with new exciting areas to see and explore, and new artifacts just waiting to be discovered. This is a complete overhaul for Morrowind, adding countless new details, weapons, armors and much more for you to see and do." Some general info on what's changed: new creatures (some for high-level players), new packs of bandits and creatures, new cults, increased population and details in cities, new music, better landscapes, fixed objects, a large number of improved, optimized meshes, and gameplay balancing tweaks. Various other mods are not compatible with it (especially those that modify places or landscape, add buildings in settlements, or change gameplay balance), but many are – the less they change the more likely they'll work (short list of tested ones here).  While MR 's ReadMe lists a dependency on MCP, this is only for "fake bump-mapping" which OpenMW doesn't do anyway. It does require the English-language version of the game. Is compatible  with Tamriel Rebuilt (not sure about TRPreview.esp ) and – with minor pathgrid issues – Morrowind Comes Alive.


 * Seyda Neen Complete 2.5 by GS a.k.a. Gianluca, et al. – A merged compilation of mods. Of all the Seyda Neen compilation mods, this is the most functional one tested so far, though some of it is over-powered for new players and characters (e.g., a big free home with lots of storage, and access to powerful stuff in new shops).  Some may also object to the new assortment of ship transport to many destinations. However, this is highly convenient for experienced players who just want to "get on with it" and get through the baby stages of the game quickly.  Depending on your load order, you may get some odd visual quirks, like harvestable fungus growing in mid-air from a tree that was removed, or a shade not quite attached to a wall over a bedroll vendor added by another mod because the wall was moved in this mod.  By itself, this mod works fine.  The slaves available in the new slave market here, which are supposed to be usable as companions, cannot be used this way; their inventory sharing does not work.  Seyda Neen Complete includes  house mods for some reason, providing too much housewares loot for a balanced start.  If you just ignore this stuff until you are level 7 or so, no longer desperately selling silverware, one of the houses has a small "secret" cave full of semi-tough baddies for that level range.  The mod also adds more merchants, more NPCs and their homes, and a swamp-sinking house that has a quest, with a potent reward if you can handle some Daedra opponents.  (The quest has you give that item up, but you can do it very late in your game when you no longer want it.  Some might consider it over-powered and give it up earlier.)  Mid-level players will appreciate the additional merchants added to the town, if they like staying in this area.   New ropes added around part of a small swamp pool can interfere with Fargoth's movement in the Fargoth's Hiding Place quest (I can't believe they didn't test that). These ropes should be removed with the Console's   command early in the game.
 * Seyda Neen BB Market a.k.a. Better Bodies Market 1.3 by GS a.k.a. Gianluca, et al. – ; see entry in Clothing section. This was originally written as an add-on for SNC but does not require it.


 * Seyda Neen Village Expansion 1.3 – Everything good about it has been incorporated (and re-balanced to some extent) into Seyda Neen Complete, above.
 * Seyda Neen Expanded, Remix 1.0 by Rochndil and JamesW (a.k.a. JW) – . Adds some vendors with low-end gear, a quest, a sewer dungeon, and ship travel (makes sense for a port town), plus cosmetic changes like a fountain, and some huts for "homeless" residents like Elone. Conflicts, of course, with other major mods of S'Neen, though it is compatible with some minor ones, including Seyda Neen BB Market.  Rochndil's "Remix" version improves compatibility with other mods, and undoes some cheaty elements of the original Seyda Neen Expanded 1.7 by JW, while also patching the three closest vanilla ship-travel NPCs to offer Seyda Neen as a return destination.  Minor bug: Two creatures in the water in the sewer spawn stuck in the sewer's underwater floor and cannot be fought except by using   in the Console to get to them (or using an area-effect attack at the ground with a wide enough area to hit them). This bug might be present in the Bethesda engine, too.


 * Bitter Coast Compilation 1.0 by Samurai –  – Same idea as SNC and SNER, above, but combines elements of over 130 mods all over mostly the Bitter Coast, Seyda Neen, and nearby Ascadian Isles region, though it affects many cells in many places (e.g., adds a building in Caldera, adds fireplaces and other resources to many vanilla locations, etc., plus several landmasses in the sea, and one under it). A bit over-ambitious, it suffers serious but fixable frame-rate problems in and around Seyda Neen, and has numerous bugs, broken meshes/textures, NPC dialogue problems, and other issues. These are detailed below, with workarounds when known.  There may also be undisclosed MSWE or other such dependencies, though one would expect most of it to work.  Much of it does, which suggests that the original underlying mod behind any given working feature of BCC will also work in OpenMW, if you can track it down.  Someone may want to try running BCS by itself in a clean test, then adding some other desired mods around it, using BCS as your "main mod". BCS provides so much side-quest and other activity in south Vvardenfell that you could probably play to at least level 30 just in this area, which might be a nice alternative to doing the main quest again.  Adds a stronger Imperial Cult presence, including missionaries with cheap but slow-acting restorative potions, and shrines to particular Divines like Mara, with quests and other activities that lead rapidly to higher-level fights (e.g. against Golden Saints and other Daedra). This integration of the Imperial Chapels mod also puts chapels in many other parts of the map, which is a potential for building conflicts with other mods. This mega-mod adds so much it is likely one would have to play it multiple times to find it all. The area around Seyda Neen is now more dangerous; there are bandits not far out of town and you will not survive them at level 1 (nor will Guards help you). BCS provides at least one companion for you (an Akaviri ninja a long way from home); she is found in a hut near the new Treetop Village (a very well-done Bosmer enclave).  She handily comes with a bunch of wigs that are high-end light armor; these can be used on various companions to help tell who is who (their faces won't be hidden in regular helms).  The included haunted house works as expected, as do various new tombs, caves, and grottoes, and the expansion of Addamasartus (will be challenging up to around level 10, but is behind a locked door, so you can do the vanilla part of the bandit cave as usual). That is part of an extended quest involving undead forces.  There's a Thieves Guild branch in Haldenshore you can partner up with to create a new safehouse (and a skooma house you can clear out); unfortunately, the TG "den of iniquity" plan never progresses past the setup phase. There are some new fast travel (ship) options, though fewer than those provided by some other S'Neen mods. It also provides a hidden fast travel route from Balmora to just outside of Pelagiad and a "go fetch something" side quest. The mod includes some spaces usable as player homes, but it also converted some stand-alone house mods (including some also used in Seyda Neen Complete) into NPCs' inhabited homes (i.e., with unusable beds).   This mod integrates the official Siege at Firemoth expansion, so that should not be loaded again separately. See also its extensive ReadMe notes on which community mods were integrated and should not be re-added, versus which were just used for resources and can be loaded separately. Replaces the official Bitter Coast Sounds with some other ambient sounds. If you prefer BCS, load it after BCC (or use the patched Better Sounds, in the Audio section, again after BCC).  Depending on which Better Bodies you are using (if any) you may encounter bare-breasted mermaids (which makes sense, since they were that way in the real world's seafaring folklore).  More seriously, it has cheaty elements, like a buyable house (that of the dead tax collector) with a large stockpile of skill books (and lore-unfriendly ones from our world, like Crowley and Theosophist literature); there's also a tomb with a "god mode" weapon prize (8 constant-effect enchantments including Shield +100); plus a series of enchanted rings all over the map (and a book telling where they are), several of which are also excessive; just use   on them in the Console, or sell them off.
 * BCC includes an Argonian in Seyda Neen will sell you a surveying rod, which is very handy for testers; you drop it and pick it up again and it gives you your world map coordinates. Not sure what original mod this came from; would be good to list it here when this is known.
 * You can also buy a functional slave companion (Nord, female) from someone in town. This is from the integrated copy of Slave Warrior Jessica by UlfGeir.
 * for some of them:
 * Frame-rate issues:
 * Go to Haldenshore (just up the coast from Seyda Neen and across the planks). Here you will see an animated, bobbing galleon that has intersected with a fast travel boat. Open the Console, click the galleon, and enter  then enter   (as separate commands; this combo will prevent it from coming back later). You may have to do this two or three times back to back without exiting the Console until you see no more galleon; the animation cycle apparently spawns 2+ of these at a time at slightly different angles and transparency levels to achieve its animation). Enter a building (or otherwise leave the cell) and come back, and make sure the ship did not reappear. This ship serves no purpose but decoration; even its captain is part of the graphics and is not a real NPC.
 * In Seyda Neen itself, do the following to wandering NPCs, one after another, other than Fargoth and generic Guards, who are supposed to be mobile: open the Console, click the NPC, and enter  (this will make them stand still, and stop overloading the cell with NPCs in motion). Start with NPCs added by the mod. You can stop doing this after a few NPCs and see if your frame rate problems go away. If they don't, do it to more NPCs until satisfied.  Note: This technique can be used in other places, e.g. if mods have added too many wandering NPCs to Balmora or whatever, or in mod clothing shops with too many animated, rotating mannequins.
 * Most of the Balmora NPCs act like they're from Haldenshore, which is actually one town over. Their dialogue about it may temporarily interfere with normal dialogue from them. You may have to talk to them several times to get the responses you expect.
 * Broken meshes/textures:
 * For mod-added items with a day-glow appearance, just remove the offending item in the Console, with.
 * For vanilla items broken by the mod, such as several alchemy ingredients' icons, the fix is to get the working copies of icons out of the original game and replace the broken mod-provided ones. This may require some ID research in OpenMW-CS. It can be done by adding your own tiny mod directory after BCC, or by directly overwriting BCC files, e.g. replacing its Tx_whickwheat_01.tga with the original version, and its added Tx_food_kwama_egg_03.tga with a copy of the vanilla Tx_food_kwama_egg_01.tga.
 * Issues that may not be caused by Bitter Coast Compilation or by it alone, but which appeared while testing it with some other mods:
 * Broken vanilla quests: Nels Llendo's "pay me/kiss me, or fight me" script does not trigger, so you cannot pay/kiss him and later use him as a trainer. This can be fixed with the following Console commands: if PC is male, ; if female,  .  The first Fighters Guild quest from Eydis Fire-Eye, "Exterminator", has a similar problem, and has to be done using  after you trigger its start; the "cave rat" dialogue options for it do not appear and cannot even be added with the Console.  There are probably other issues like this, but no further ones have been encountered so far.
 * Disabled the steal-and-drop trick during the char-gen phase: You used to be able to steal and quickly drop both the Limeware Platter and the Census and Excise Warehouse key, without consequences, if you did it before leaving the Census and Excise Office for the first time; then you could come back for these items later. You can no longer do that, and will be sent to jail and lose stats if you try it.  The work-around, if you can call it that, is to come back for them, if you still want them, when you have a means of stealing without being caught.  The mod provides a new way into the warehouse (a rat-fight cellar), and you can also get in the other vanilla way, by using Levitate to reach to the second-floor door.
 * An enormous pile-up of displaced creatures were moved by the game to coordinates  in the world map (just outside the Daedric shrine of Assarnamatat; it is the default location for "lost" NPCs and creatures when the game gets confused). As these were mostly Dreughs and Slaughterfish, they had to come from modified but creature-populated coastal areas, so most likely from BCS (the cluster includes a few Rats, Kwama Foragers, and Cliff Racers, also native to the region, and is without creatures native to others, like Shalks).  This causes frame rates to drop to nearly a standstill in this cell.  The solution is to get close enough to the seething pile to pick out individual creatures, then use   on them in the Console, one after another (if you accidentally disable a landscape element, use   to restore it), then move closer and continue until they're all gone. This is about a fifteen-minute cleanup job. It's temping to get a big stockpile of soul gems, use a ranged and area-effect Soul Trap, followed by a similarly configured Paralyze, then something like Greater Shockball to kill the whole lot (quite a mega-cheat), but this will likely just make them respawn in the same place and make the locale effectively unusable again later, until you   all these critters. If they come back anyway, you may have to do   after each disable.  Or just studiously avoid going to this cell.
 * Broken cells and such:
 * if you attempt to enter The Alcoholic's House added to Seyda Neen (though you can recover from a savegame without restarting the app).
 * The House of Clues is broken; in at least two cases it will teleport you into the void. You can enter and plunder some stuff, but you will not be able to complete the series of clues for the final reward.  If you do enter, save first.  This part of BCC also creates a useless additional building in Caldera, which may clash with other mods (e.g., Imperial Airship will have to load after BCS).  You can clear this building of its paper clutter and use it for storage, though. It also creates world-scattered clues, and creates some things for them (e.g. a new shipwreck, and a new mine), with some slight but fairly unlikely potential for mod clashes.
 * Dialogue bug and broken quest: BCC includes a side quest involving a new NPC in Caldera; an "old Ted" dialogue option referring to him gets stuck in all NPCs' dialogue menus. When you find him, his own dialogue doesn't work properly, so you cannot actually do his quest.
 * (see New major landmasses section): BCC appears to be compatible with the main, release part of TR. However, BCC over-includes empty sea resources, and thus overwrites part of the optional TR_Preview.esp, just south of Firemoth. Near this area is an outright landmass conflict, where the BCC 's island of Teasha Crag obliterates the ground in much of TR 's Teyn and its environs, one of the few areas fairly well-developed in TR_Preview.esp . The same thing happens between BCC 's Dazzuk'ur Island (side quest and potential player home) in the far west and TR_Preview.esp 's partially developed coastal town of Rhun Huk (which has exteriors only at this stage). This cannot be resolved by loading TR_Preview.esp after BCS (which will also mean loading TR_Travels.esp and TR_Mainland_1612Patch.ESP after that); it just reverses the destruction, overwriting BCC land with TR Preview resources. However, you can play one mod's areas with one load order, then change the load order and go to the other, overlapping pair of areas.  Save before trying this, and do a clean-save routine after each switch; even then, there may be side effects, like companions disappearing until brought back with  . You might need to actually remove one mod completely, save-clean, then add it back in reversed order and save-clean again, at the cost of losing mod-specific gear, quest results, etc.


 * Balmora Expansion 1.4 by Gorg, Canadian Ice, and Jeremy (et al.), with BE Fixes (a.k.a. Texture Fix - Balmora Expansion) by Slarti (a.k.a. Sartibartfast)  – , aside from minor glitches. This is another big, merged compilation of locality mods, and makes good sense overall, since Balmora is supposed to be one of Vvardenfell's major cities.  Almost everything is fully functional, with few visual problems, and compatible with a surprising number of other mods, though sometimes with some visual defects, and highly dependent on load order (some must be added before BE and some after, and some before/after each other). Not recommended without Slarti's BE Fixes, which corrects numerous problems, and also upgrades several of the incorporated vendor mods to later, better versions. As with other such mega-mods, some of what BE adds is basically trivial though arguably adds realism (bathhouse, hospital, brothel, museum, brewery, restaurant) and some of it may be over-powered for newbies (not free, just available in shops), but overall it makes Morrowind seem more like a real place with people doing stuff and with a vibrant economy.
 * : Some third party put out a "Balmora Expansion Overhaul 1.5", but it fixes fewer problems than Slarti's patch did.
 * : Slarti has also released Balmora Expansion Lite 1.0, a scaled-back version.
 * There are various patches (some included with it) to make BE work with other mods, including dh Homes, Houses for Sale, The Soothsayer, Better Looking Morrowind, Callenwald, and Wizard's Islands, and there are additional mods for it, including Balmora Ghetto and BE Necklace Pack Addon. None of these have been tested in OpenMW yet.
 * BE Waterfall Volume Patch 1.0 by blueclock . Virtually mandatory, if you like your ears.  The BE team changed the sound effects of the Heremod Balmora Waterfall (integrated into BE) but forgot to normalize the volume, and Slarti's patch didn't fix it; without this patch, the waterfall is shockingly loud. Another solution would be to identify the offending audio file and edit it to reduce the volume; that would free up a mod slot.
 * The more common sources of conflicts involving BE are: a) things that affect the hillsides on the east and west sides of town, which are frequent locations for house and merchant mods; b) mods that affect Caius Cosades's house and its immediate surroundings; and c) those that affect the riverbanks. Sometimes conflicts are unexpected, and have effects nowhere near their main locations (e.g. a travel mod that adds a boat outside town to the Odai Plateau raises the shore north of town, and a house mod in the west-central part of town may cause a landscape fracture north of town).  Elsewhere in this page are load-order notes to work around these problems when these issues have been figured out.  The general pattern seems to be that mods that add stuff to Balmora should mostly be loaded before BE, since several of them are over-inclusive of landscape resources which will overwrite the hillside and riverbank changes of BE; but there are exceptions.
 * BE includes a dark magnum opus: Carnithus's Armamentarium integrated with Dark Club and some similar mods, forming an underground, monster-laden, gothy vampire gush (which can only be entered at night, at least through the obvious entrance), with a high-end outfit/armor shop, a nightclub you can frequent, and a tough quest that can earn you a small player home down there. This is hardly TES lore, but if you're already playing goth and vamp mods, you'll love it, and if you're not, just don't go down there. You have to look for it to find it, and fight like hell to get to it every time you go.  Its quest is good preparatory training for the Goblin quest under Mournhold in the Tribunal expansion.  For details, see the Carnithus' Armametarium entry in the Merchants and items section.
 * BE provides some other weapons and armor vendors (originally from other mods) with high-end gear, and they are very expensive. Some will object to either the damage-to-weight ratio or too-high enchantability of some items, but they can be removed from the game if you like (i.e. buy them,   them, then Console yourself back the septims for them).
 * BE also includes an easily earnable, non-excessive player home already (talk to the Balmora Overseer for the quest, and you may have to have a high enough Reputation to get it), so you may not want to add another here. It even includes a minor quest.
 * One slightly annoying thing is the inclusion of a prominent fletcher crafting shop (full of typographical errors in almost every sentence in its in-game manuals). Major, complicated crafting mods (especially half-baked ones) should not be included in town mods like this except as optional add-ons. This addition is hard to ignore since it's also a regular archery shop you'll have use for. Valuable loot relating to the crafting cruft appears randomly in loot containers, though fortunately not very often.
 * See also The Regulars, above, for an issue that affects many mods including this one, and is clearly an OpenMW bug.
 * BE has been said to have one alleged cheat in it, the availability of a Corprus curing spell or item somewhere (it is not the only mod to provide one; Kat's Kastle and Bitter Coast Compilation do, too). This will just have to be ignored if you object (and can even find it); the patch to remove this also attempted to patch allegedly too-high lighting levels, but botched the job and just made every interior in town ridiculously dark (in OpenMW, anyway), so it is not usable. This Corprus thing is of no consequence: the scripted disease you catch, and its quest-scripted cure, are required parts of the Main Quest.  There is only one possible other way to get Corprus (searching a particular corpse repeatedly), and that version is not curable and breaks the Main Quest, so having a mod-added option available to deal with that is actually a plus.
 * Mods incorporated into BE that be individually added to your game, or conflicts will result: Balmora Manor, Balmora Zoo, Balmora Bathouse, Balmora Museum, Morrowind Abodes: Your Balmora Residence, Dave's Furniture Store, Lysandrus, Quivers and Fletching Kit, Wyr's Jewelers, Carry Your Bedrolls, DEJ's Pocket Watch, Magic Backpacks, Nyagetan, Healers, WeaponPack2, ThievesGarb (Black Clothing), Dark Club, Ranger Robe, Heremod's Balmora Waterfall, and Sheikizza's Aedric Armour Collection & Daedric Armour Collection.  Some other mods that make use of Sheikizza armor resources seem to work fine; you just end up with different sets of Aedric or whatever with different IDs and stats.
 * Mods incorporated only in part into BE, which can also be added to your game in their original form: Dongle's Musical Instruments; LadyE's Display Cases, Spider Webs, and Jewelers Sign; Gorg's Flowing Capes; Forgotten Longbow Pack; Silgrad Tower; House of Mannequins; Tenience's Rare Items; Particle Weapon Merchant; Pack Animal Merchant; Lovemod; Heavenly Pleasures; Legolas Gear; The Regulars (but it does not work properly in OpenMW), Carnithus' Armamentarium and its add-ons (though there would be no point – would create a duplicate shop and NPCs in Mournhold or Molag Amur); LichLair; Darkstone Manor; Britney's Secret.
 * House mod compatibility: Each of the mods below has an entry in the Player homes and businesses section if tested beyond BE compatibility; the info here is just about how it behaves with BE.
 * Domehome by Grumpy and Emma (see both above, for its companions, and below, as a house mod) – Only partially workable with BE; its front door and top deck door are partly occluded, and its top deck is broken). It must be loaded before BE. It cannot be used with Balmora Balcony House. Domehome Compatibility patches are available from the main download page, for Balmora Expansion, Asgard, and both together.
 * Balmora River House by Calislahn (not Viv3c) – requires the BE-compatible variant (third download here ), and should load before BE. It must load after Domehome if using both, and after the optional Balmora Marketplace, but before Odai Boat Service if that one is also used.
 * Clean the Apartment by Grumpy – This apartment above Caius Cosades's house introduces issues with BE. It caused some wall duplication in the nearby guard barracks, wrecked the house of one of Cosades's neighbors, and blocked a shop and some walkways, when BE was also installed, though CtA worked fine as a stand-alone mod. The BE problem might be fixable by loading CtA before BE.  CtA will also conflict with various other house mods that affect Cosades's home, of course (e.g. Caius Cosades Better). The fact that the apartment's closet has infinite storage will be an issue to some. Then again, it is such a tiny and dark space, no one would want to use it long.  Plus, every single permanent corpse in the game is also infinite storage, so who cares?
 * Caius Cosades Better 2.0 by Spirited Treasure – Will conflict with BE, because it adds an apartment to the east of Cosades's house, and this will collide with the slope that supports BE 's hillside shops. It is vaguely possible that this could be make to work, with some visual defects, by toying with load order.
 * Concept Exterior Abode – Conflicts with BE, and seems to be alpha-ware.
 * Balmora Balcony House – Did load and appeared to work, but was not tested extensively due to conflict with Domehome.
 * Castle Nerevar v2.0 by Chick & Arielle – Conflicts with BE massively. Not lore-friendly anyway (Nerevar was a Dunmer hero, so would not have built an Imperial-architecture castle). Mod not tested by itself with OpenMW yet.
 * Merchant mod compatibility: Each of the mods below has an entry in the Merchants and items section if tested beyond BE compatibility; the info here is just about how it behaves with BE.
 * The useful and practical Arsenal and more silly Arcane Armature by Adul (two shops using the same door) are compatible, though the shack entrance looks out-of-place in a Hlaalu-architecture milieu. Load it after BE.
 * Balmora Candle Shop IV by Nathaniel "Wolfzen" Schrader – Is compatible, though it partly occludes the Adul's doorway if you install both (they both remain functional). Load it after BE.
 * Balmora Marketplace a.k.a. Marketplace Balmora 1.0 by Spirithawke – Compatible if loaded before BE. Must also load before some other mods in this area including Balmora River House, or will result in landscape fractures (it over-includes resources that are not very close to the market itself and should be cleaned of them by a modder with the right tools to do that).
 * Balmora Trader Market 1.7 by NinjaOcean is compatible (including with Balmora Marketplace which is nearby but does not overlap).
 * Balmora Market 1.22 by ivegotabettername a.k.a. cameronvsdwayne – Incompatible, as it puts vendor stalls exactly where BE merchant shops are.
 * Balmora Grocery – Not compatible with BE in tests so far. If you're a Necessities of Morrowind user, you could try running NoM, BE, and this mod only, in some tests to see if a particular load order will get them working, then add your other stuff one bit at a time until you get a game that will go. However, it may be overlapping buildings and unresolvable.
 * Heaven's Lookout Updated – Will have its access ring go missing if BE is installed, since the tower in which it would be found is changed. The shop can still be accessed by using the Console to get to its cell, or to give yourself the teleport ring (with ).
 * Bug: The potted plant seller added by the furniture mod incorporated into BE has no inventory, though his counterpart in Hla Oad does.
 * Feature: The furniture shops included are just about the best available. See entry for Furniture Store by Dave, as a stand-alone mod in the Furniture section, for details. The stone blocks sold here (use the Console as needed to duplicate them with  and resize them with  ) are useful for covering up landscape fractures that seem to happen inevitably the more mods you add (and some of which are dangerous - you can fall through big ones).


 * Solstheim Overhaul Pack Project (SOPP) – This is a mod compilation project by abot, not a download. The work is to combine all the major Solstheim mods so they work with each other instead of clashing.  These are the only versions being tested [so far] for this OpenMW mod list, except where noted below.  Several optional SOPP downloads are not being tested, due to complex dependencies, like Children of Morrowind, or because they also make wide-ranging changes to the main Vvardenfell landmass, or because they are trivial (e.g. small house mods, the addition of a lumber mill, putting covers on wells, etc.).  ; what's listed below is next in the testing hopper.
 * Solstheim: Tomb of the Snow Prince or S:TotSP (a.k.a. Solstheim Overhaul or SO) 1.3 by Wollibeebee and abot –  using the SOPP wl_SolstheimOverhaul_v1.3.7z variant ( .esm and resource directories, not a .bsa file).  This mod is a massive overhaul of all of Solstheim, using resources from Skyrim: Home of the Nords, and giving the place a craggy, difficult terrain instead of being basically the Grazelands with snow. Has many other enhancements, such as a bigger Frostmoth that's a town, smugglers in larger numbers and with bases, etc. Also replaces virtually every vanilla Bloodmoon texture with higher-resolution versions.  (Due to the scope of the landscape and building changes, most other Solstheim mods were not compatible, thus the Solstheim Overhaul Pack Project.)  This mod integrates and cannot be run with Windows Glow expansions for Solstheim.  Nomenclature: The current title is Solstheim: Tomb of the Snow Prince (1.2 being the last version by Wollibeebee); the old title Solstheim Overhaul was retained by SOPP/abot; his 1.3 is technically a fork.  Glitches: So far, mostly just some bad texture seams, landscape cracks, and a few places where landscape collision boundaries aren't right, but this is very minor.  Some of the mods below made to be compatible with it are not perfect, but are still playable (one may have to use   in the console occasionally to get around problems).   for second-time or advanced/hardcore players.  The work is amazing, and greatly increases the difficultly of Solstheim and its quests.
 * Skaal Gate Fix 1.0 by Wollibeebee – Provides a missing texture for the Skaal gate model. This may not be needed with SO 1.3 as provided by SOPP, but it's listed here just in case. It is an optional support download at the S:TotSP 1.2 page at NexusMods.
 * The White Wolf of Lokken Mountain (WWoLM) 2.0 (SOPP version) by Emma, TeuTonic, and abot –  using the SOPP Lokken+SolstheimCastle+AldVendrasVogar SO NOM.7z download. This is a landmass (off the east Solstheim coast) and quest mod – a popular one. Has 96 new NPCs, 400 new dialogues, several optional companions, a castle you can eventually live in, and an estimated 20 hours of gameplay (double that if you're a methodical explorer). Unfortunately, the SOPP re-mod includes two unrelated mods (the next two in the list below), whether you want them or not (it's a tremendous amount of PC housing for this remote area). If you don't, you can run the original version of WWoLM with the original version of of S:TotSP (see note below). The SOPP version is a revision behind; at least two WWoLM bugs are not fixed in the SOPP version (they cannot be run together due to a dependency filename mismatch). It is fairly likely that the companions suffer (in OpenMW) the combat-related problems of several other Emma companions, but not certain (some of her later ones do not have this issue); testing them will be a high priority.
 * The White Wolf of Lokken Mountain 2.1 (original archive) by Emma and TeuTonic, with S:TotSP patch by straub666 –   The straub666 patch has a named dependency on wl_SolstheimOverhaul_v1.esm while everything else listed herein demands SOPP's wl_SolstheimOverhaul_v1.3.esm . The required load order is the S:TotSP SolstheimOverhaul_v1.esm (presumably Wollibeebee's ver. 1.2), then White Wolf 's BT_Whitewolf_2_0.esm from the patch (with the resources of the full original White Wolf mod), then the Lokken-STOTSP Patch.ESP file. NOM compatibility is a separate add-on.
 * White Wolf (in either version above) conflicts with Strange Grove by JMK (JohnK222), though a modder could make them work together (please release a patch!). They conflict because of over-inclusion of empty sea areas, which overwrite part of the land in the other mod; if one or the other (probably SG) is scaled back to only include the water and seabed it needs to, and is loaded after the other, this will stop happening. They can be played in the same game by doing one, then switching their load order.
 * Solstheim Castle 1.1 by Korana –  using the SOPP Lokken+SolstheimCastle+AldVendrasVogar SO NOM.7z download.  This is a landmass, house, and quest mod. It adds a fairly large island off Solstheim's NE coast, with a town and an elaborate castle you can earn. The original SC mod  is here . A German version  is also available.
 * Ald-Vendras–Vogar 3.1 by Centurion and Lucan –  using the SOPP Lokken+SolstheimCastle+AldVendrasVogar SO NOM.7z download. Adds lots of islands to the east of Solstheim, with quests, multiple player homes (four castles and some smaller ones, earned or purchased), some additional wildlife (non-hostile, and could be spawned elsewhere with the console for atmosphere). In essence, this expands the Sheogorad island chain all the way to Solstheim.  Originally a series of separate mods, the non-SOPP AVV 3.1 is available in combined form here, but a reviewer notes that it  This may or may not have been caught by the SOPP project. Unfortunately, 3.x also added a bunch of cheaty trainers in player homes, and this is the version included in SOPP.  If you are not using SOPP, it is probably recommendable to use Ald-Vendras–Vogar Complete, Moved 2.0 , which first combined the entire series into one .esp , moves the landmass to avoid conflicts with other mods (including Solstheim Castle), and includes patches for use with White Wolf of Lokken Mountain (original, non-SOPP version), Inn of the Whispering Wood, and Balmora Expansion.  A later patch pack  resolves conflicts with Illuminated Order and Korobal Island. Another patch  improves one of the player home interiors, but is optional. There's a third-party bridge add-on to connect this mod (at Vogar island) to the Dungeon Island mod  (and thence to Smeradon and the rest of PCC a.k.a. Blockhead's series of dungeon-crawl mods), but it seems to pre-date the relocation of Vogar. Centurion's Castle Kanthrock can optionally be moved to Ald-Vendras . None of these have been tested yet.  Regardless of version, this conflicts with Northern Island and any other mods immediately west of the Sheogorad islands or east of Solstheim.
 * The Neverhalls 2.0 and The Forgotten Halls 3.0 by Midgetalien and Vality7 –, using the SOPP Neverhalls + Forgotten Halls SO.7z download. Falmer-ruin dungeon crawls; Neverhalls is the original , Forgotten Halls an add-on . Minor caveat: This uses retextured Daedric architecture meshes, so if you have a companion with poor movement AI who keeps getting stuck in Daedric ruins due to the jutting-out wall parts, the same thing will happen in here.  Problems like this are a good reason to have multiple companions and take them on different missions.
 * Ayleid Remnants 1.0 by JMK (JohnK222) –  using the SOPP JMK - Ayleid Remnants SO.7z download.  This adds Oblivion-style Ayleid ruins, and a new archaeological faction.  Lots of new mesh and texture work (may not be consistent with other modders' Ayleid approaches), with architecture based on Mournhold sewers, heavily modified. Note: You may need the ATI-compatible textures from the author's original archive, available here, even if you are using an NVidia card not an ATI (AMD) one. If stuff that should have a transparency effect does not, try using those.  : The unique lich Rendurth Paravor respawns by accident, which you can ignore, exploit, or fix in OpenMW-CS.
 * Fourth Era Solstheim 5.0 by Eldermaster 28 – ; using the SOPP Nchardamz+Fourth Era+Himmelryn SO.7z download. This adds three TES V: Skyrim Dwemer ruins to Morrowind 's Solstheim. This is basically a lore fix: it isn't possible for the Fourth Era Solstheim to have ancient Dwemer ruins that don't exist in the Third Era's island.  One ruin tested so far, and had no problems other than you have to use   in the console after exiting one of the doors to the outside, due to a landscape glitch. This SOPP re-mod is combined with the two below (which, unlike the combined White Wolf re-mod above, is actually sensible). It's not entirely clear whether SOPP's combined re-mod includes 5.0 or an earlier version.  The original FES mod is here.
 * Nchardamz: Skymrim Style Ruins 1.01 by RubberMan (RubberMan01) –  using the SOPP Nchardamz+Fourth Era+Himmelryn SO.7z download. Adds another Dwemer ruin to the area.  Not to be confused with Nchardumz, a vanilla Vvardenfell ruin.  If you find textures missing, see the "Missing textures oops" support download for the original NSSR mod here, though one would think that SOPP has integrated them.
 * Himmelryn Point 1.2 by CarrotFerret –  using the SOPP Nchardamz+Fourth Era+Himmelryn SO.7z download. Adds a new town, NPCs, Dwemer dungeon and travel system. The original HP mod is here.
 * Better Caldera by Loki the Grouch – Claims to be incompatible with about 90% of other mods that change Caldera.  It mostly adds detail, plus a new merchant and an Imperial Legion barracks, without making the town larger
 * New Caldera (New Cities Project) v1.0 by Trancemaster_1988 and Loki the Grouch – This is a fork of Better Caldera, and though it fixes several glitches in the earlier mod, this one promises "Smoother landscape for Caldera and its surroundings", which means it will not be compatible with virtually any other Caldera mod (they already frequently conflict due to environment tweaks causing landscape rips).
 * Caldera Expansion –
 * Ald-ruhn Expansion 1.61 by Crankgorilla –  Add news vendors, NPC dwellings, ingredients, etc., to the city, and a hot air balloon fast travel option (goes to the nearby Fort Buckmoth and to Pelagiad and back).  As with the same author's Khuul Expansion, there are pointless NPCs added who just stand around modeling mod clothes, but most of what is added is functional.  The place now has an oasis feel, with palm trees (coconuts are heavy and slow Restore Fatigue potions) and livestock.  Corn (maize), a new ingredient, is also grown here.  Has frame-rate issues, which are improvable but not entirely fixable by using   on animated livestock in the area, and   on wandering NPCs that don't really need to wander.
 * Khuul Expansion 1.4 by Crankgorilla – Adds various vendors and a player home to Khuul. Much of this doesn't really make sense for the location (new merchants have too much money and too-good gear for a tiny fishing village).  Some of the new stuff added is a bit über, though it's mostly potions and ammo, which don't restock.  There are also bugs, like a booze vendor who doesn't actually sell.  And there are pointless NPCs, like pretty ladies wandering around just to show off the wares of the included clothing shop.  Some things are not lore-friendly, like a guy selling Robin Hood gear (actually named that).  Provides a source (not restocking) of higher-end soul gems without having to go to the guy in Mournhold.
 * Gnisis Expanded 1.0 by Craigor –

Major quest and faction mods
Some ambitious mods provide expansive quests, sometimes for specific factions, and may include new types of creatures, their own cutscenes, etc. Some radically alter vanilla gameplay, others are add-ons. Some work, some do not.

Major alterations to the Main Quests of Morrowind, Tribunal, or Bloodmoon also go here.

Mods that add new islands, continents, and other landmasses (which have a high probability of conflicting) are listed in the New major landmasses section.


 * Nerevar Say Nerevar 1.1 by Blake –  Basically removes the Main Quest, so you can just play freely in the game world. It makes Jiub (your prison ship compadre at the start of the game) into the Nerevarine, and you can run into him in various places when your Reputation is high.  Will obviously break any other mod dependent on Main Quest events.
 * Grandmaster of Hlaalu 1.3 by Lady Galadriel, et al.  –  Ambitious overhaul of the later part of the House Hlaalu experience, including: vastly expanded Rethan Manor stronghold, more NPCs, new quests, your own entry in the Yellow Book, position on the House Council, mining opportunities, a new colony, improved vanilla companion Fjorgeir, new bow artifact, and much more.  This clearly needs to be installed from the start of a game, or at least before joining House Hlaalu. There is a Necessities of Morrowind patch for it. It will conflict with most other Rethan Manor mods, obviously, but adds so much to it (including from previous mods) you probably wouldn't want them.  Certain features require Better Bodies (a robe), and Book Rotate and Weapon Rotate (sorting bookcases and weapon racks); loading this mod without them has not been tested. The new quests require that you be Grandmaster of Hlaalu and have Stage 3 of your stronghold finished.
 * To trigger its quests, you need to frequently interact with your Rethan Manor staff; e.g. they may tell you that Daedra are attacking your mine.
 * Compatibility note: This has a side quest to bump off the Camona Tong people in the Council Club in Balmora if you didn't do Larrius Varro's quest with the same goal already. If you are running the Balmora Council Club (see entry under Player homes and businesses, you should also get the quest from Varro and do them concurrently, or just do Varro's first.  Dealing with Varro is required by that other mod to purchase the club. If you only want BCC for its companion-compatible Mournhold fast travel, this won't matter.
 * The East Empire Expansion – Caused 12–20 sec. delays in saving (even with Quick Save); did not test further. Sounds exciting, but it's unclear what issues it may have.  Try this mod alone, since this problem could be caused by conflict with another mod.
 * Rise of House Telvanni (a.k.a. RoHT) 1.52 [TB+BM] by Pozzo, bhl, and Karpik777 –  Major overhaul of the House Telvanni experience. "By a series of quests and political decisions the player can either lead House Telvanni to political predominance or expand it moderately. Depending on the player's decisions, House Telvanni will gain one to four new strongholds, topple or leave alone the Mages Guild, crush or support the Twin Lamps, take over or lose all influence in the East Empire Company, and maybe even shake Vvardenfell's Grand Council to the core. In total, RoHT features a main questline that, depending on the player's choices, consists of up to 19 quests. In addition, there are 2 miscellaneous quests. It also gives some lore about the Telvanni and a chance to reclaim some ancient Telvanni artifacts."  An archive of earlier versions is still available.
 * Balmora Keep 1.0 by Pinthar – This big quest, place, and home mod is full of dirty references, and caused OpenMW (on a Mac) to crash on load, but other mods were installed. To try it (and debug it if necessary), use a Windows machine (or VM) to run a cleaning tool on this and see if it will work.  Unlikely to be compatible with Balmora Expansion and various other major Balmora mods, though it will be great it if is, because it looks genuinely interesting.
 * Greater Dwemer Ruins 1.1 by Darknut – Provides a harder Main Quest, including changes to the Dagoth Ur fight, so recommended for second or later play-through. Is compatible with Julan, Ashlander Companion.
 * Our Lady's Solace 1.11 - Allows you to optionally (e.g. if you are Tribunal Temple) not have to fight Almalexia eventually, but convince her to change her ways.
 * Main Quest Enhancers by Trainwiz – A series of small mods that enhance the sense of doom and chaos gripping Vvardenfell as your showdown with Dagoth Ur approaches. Includes: increasing presence of blighted creatures and Sixth House agents outside the Ghostfence; worried citizens start to crowd temples; Corprus-infected gather at Tel Fyr to beg for a cure; people appear on docks trying to flee by ship to the mainland; Ghostgate becomes more thickly garrisoned by Armigers and Ordinators; vandalism of outlander (especially Imperial) institutions by the Sixth House; Dagoth Ur worshippers boldly set up Sixth House shrines in the cities and expand them over time.  You can pick and choose, or use a single .ESP with all of them in one.
 * South Wall, Den of Iniquity 1.4 by Balathustrius –   This creates a whole Thieves Guild base under Balmora, accessed through the South Wall Corner Club, in a new Balmora sewer system (which should be compatible with, though not connecting to, other Balmora sewer mods).  Includes new TG quests and NPCs, a place to sleep, an additional trainer, etc., and also puts some female dancers (non-nude) in the above-ground, public tavern at night.  At night, the frame rate drops severely.  This is caused by "regulars" (sitting NPCs), who are not sitting but hovering in the air and colliding with the ceiling and other things. The fix is to do   then   in the console in each one of them in turn (other than those with the generic name "Patron"). When they're deleted, the frame rate returns to normal.  In the dungeon area, you may also find a prisoner stuck half-way into the ceiling; this is fixed by with   on the stool below her.  [Tester's note: Stealing from the locked room behind the cook, and getting caught, caused a crash to desktop in one test, but not another. So, there is some kind of stability issue that can sometimes happen, but it's not guaranteed. Just save first. The rest of the mod seemed to work fine.]

Tamriel Rebuilt and the Project: Tamriel mods
The majority of new landmass mods (mostly islands, and a few underwater things) are incompatible with Tamriel Rebuilt simply because they overlap; for some, there are patches that move them to not collide with TR. A few, very close to Vvardenfell's vanilla shore, or to the far north, do not clash with TR "out of the box". If you are running TR, you should probably expect a conflict by default when testing any new landmass mod. MS Windows users can use a third-party tool to move these landmasses elsewhere on the map. If you've done this successfully, please see if you can produce a .ESP or .omwaddon patch others can use for the mod in question.

This section does not include tiny, just-offshore islands that are not likely to conflict with anything (e.g. some vendor huts are mini-islands just outside Seyda Neen). The further offshore and the larger it is, the greater the risk of conflict, especially with TR.

Project: Tamriel and the Tamriel Rebuilt Team have combined their new resources into a shared set of .BSA files (the Tamriel Data 3.0 package) used by both projects and all the mods they put out. An installation overview for OpenMW is included below. Almost all third-party add-ons for any of these Tamriel mods must be patched (by you) with TR_FilePatcher.jar to work with the new Tamriel Data 3.0; this is also detailed below.

Tamriel Rebuilt 17.09 is available as of October 2017, with new hotfix patches and a new mod-fixing Java tool. This will require some detailed installation and patching to test it. It is expected to work, as the TR team are very conscientious about OpenMW. Unknown if TR 16.x games can be upgraded on the fly.


 * Tamriel Rebuilt 16.12 by the Tamriel Rebuilt Team  -, but most quests have not been tested yet. TR is the largest landmass mod of all for Morrowind. Starting east of the vanilla Telvanni territory, this massive project has been adding the continental lands of Morrowind, wrapping around the island of Vvardenfell (except to the north). It comes with cities, NPCs, factions, quests, creatures, armor, weapons, ingredients, clutter, and the whole lot, but is not a complete province yet; there are parts of the map that don't exist, and you use fast travel to get from one completed area to another.  Various mods come with (or have separately available) compatibility patches for TR (many of which themselves need to be patched with an automated Java tool; see below). : The since 16.09, TR is a combination release of the three previous separately available ones (referred to by various names like "Map 1" through "Map 3", or more specifically "Telvannis", "Antediluvian Secrets", and "Sacred East"). If you have an old version of those installed, you have to remove them and replace them with the new combined files; this will require staring a new game – while the Java patcher can update Bethesda savegames, it cannot fix OpenMW's. Glitches observed so far: One or more crates from the Seyda Neen prison ship (the one you arrive on and which later is removed by the game) may remain, floating in the air near the dock, after the ship goes away.  Removing the mod did not fix the problem, though starting a new game without, then adding the mod after character generation, prevented the problem. An easier solution would be to simply use   in the console to remove the offending "hover containers", since this is just a trivial visual glitch.  At least one fast-travel option in Tamriel to other parts of it sends you to a place that doesn't exist yet (unless you have the TR_Preview.esp add-on, below, installed). So, save before using Tamriel travel until you figure out who teleports you where.
 * : The installation instructions in the ReadMe are for the original Bethesda engine. For OpenMW do the following:
 * Install Tamriel Data 3.0, e.g. to a directory called Tamriel_Data in your mods folder. Use the high-resolution not vanilla-resolution version; the OpenMW patch is only for the former. This is has a  pair of resource .BSA files, used by both TR and the mods of Project: Tamriel (below).
 * Download the OpenMW patch ; click "Download (Manual)" at NexusMods for a list of available files, including the patch. Extract its TD-Compat folder into to Tamriel_Data (it is just meshes and textures, without a .esp file, and it fixes things like glowing objects due to "fake bump-mapping").
 * Next, unpack Tamriel Rebuilt itself. You should now have two mod directories, for TD and TR, plus a patch directory inside the one for TD.
 * Add these three directories' paths with a  entry for each, in openmw.cfg, right after the line for your Morrowind/Data Files directory, one per line, and in this order (which is important):  ,  ,  . (If you're also using the Project: Tamriel Skyrim and Cyrodiil mods, described below, those are added separately and also after Tamriel_Data/TD-Compat .)
 * Near the top of openmw.cfg, add lines for the TD .BSA files:  and   on separate lines; these come immediately after the similar entires for Morrowind.bsa , Tribunal.bsa , and Bloodmoon.bsa .  While the acronyms obviously refer to Tamriel Rebuilt and the Project: Tambriel mods, these projects share resources freely, so both are needed. The files just sort the materials by which project created them.
 * Download and unpack the bug-fix patch for TR 16.12 ; see below for details. This is a TR_Mainland_1612Patch.ESP file that goes in your TamrielRebuilt_16-12 directory.
 * You can manually add entries near the bottom of openmw.cfg for the following, on separate lines and in this order (which is important),  ,   (added separately), and (if you are using them)  ,   (both included). These go immediately after the entries for the official Bethesda .ESM and .ESP files (for Morrowind, Tribunal, Bloodmoon, Siege at Firemoth, etc.); some of these, like Area Effect Arrows, provide resources used in the Tamriel mods, so just load  the official stuff first. (If you're also using the Project: Tamriel mods, below, those are added separately and also after  .) If you don't like editing the config file directly more than you have to, you can enable all these files in the OpenMW app's Data Files menu, then drag-and-drop them into this load order, after the official Bethesda files.
 * Add any other mods after these, especially if they include patches to work with TR (or with Project: Tambriel's landmasses). It is probably safe to load some mods before these (but after the official game files) if they are interface tweaks, like changes to the menu appearance, sound volume, etc., or are bug fixes of stuff in the vanilla game, like texture seam repair or patches for mis-placed items; but loading them after the Tamriel mods should be fine, too.
 * TR_Preview.esp – This is an included preview of lands (mostly to the south, southwest, and west of Vvardenfell) that are still in development.  While some parts of it, like Old Ebonheart, are fairly well-developed, mostly it is wilderness punctuated by ghost towns with a lot of stuff in them, but few or no NPCs, thus no quests. Parts of it are severely broken, e.g. landscape fractures, etc.  Due to the amount of unowned, unguarded stuff, TR_Preview.esp is basically also the biggest cheat mod ever; there's probably at least 1 mil septims worth of goods laying around free for the taking due to lack of NPCs. The obvious solution would have been to include a dummy NPC, and make all unassigned town/city goods owned by that pseudo-person by default until set to someone more specific, and to spawn generic guards to prevent looting the entire region.  If you want to explore this, you may want to add this mod later, or just avoid the unfinished areas (i.e., any place that should be populated but is empty) until you are high enough level and rich enough that stealing piles of soul gems and silver weapons and such is of no interest to you. If you do not have it installed, some TR mods (e.g., travel mods) may still make reference to parts of it, e.g. you may see Old Ebonheart appear in an otherwise empty part of the sea, and if you go there, there's no actual town.
 * Known conflicts between TR_Preview.esp and other mods: Bitter Coast Compilation (at least two landscape collisions, to the south and the west); Western Island.
 * TR_Travels.esp – This included add-on provides various fast travel options between Vvardenfell and the mainland, including guild guides and ships.  This more or less requires TR_Preview.esp ; locations within it are included, and if it is not loaded, fast travel will often take you to some non-existent places and just dump you in an expanse of water or a void.  (See Tamriel Rebuilt Travel, below, for a similar add-on without this problem.)  May conflict with mods of Seyda Neen if they radically change its dock (the mod puts a fast-travel NPC on it).
 * TR_Mainland_1612Patch.ESP – A separate download, this is a between-releases, bug-fixing patch. Only needed until 16.13 (or 17.0, or whatever the next release is).  This must load  both   and (if present) TR_Preview.esp, and possibly after TR_Travels.esp . Loading it before TR_Preview.esp will cause a landscape fracture hundreds of game miles long, an entire town with no ground, and other problems.  To test if yours is working right, go to Seyda Neen and, with TR_Travels.esp installed, take a ship from there to Teyn (or swim it if you don't have that add-on). If Teyn looks sane, all should be well. If Teyn is a bunch of floating buildings with no ground, or if your world map shows what looks like fractured and overlapping coastlines between Vvardenfell and continental Morrowind and you can't even enter Teyn, your installation is hosed and you have to start over with the right load order, hopefully without savegames being corrupted. Do a save-cleaning routine.
 * Mods: Most must be fixed with TR_FilePatcher.jar (see below), because they almost all were written for a version that pre-dates Tamriel Data 3.0 and its major changes. This includes TR compatibility mods included with other mods.
 * TR_FilePatcher.jar – included (along with the required Translation.txt ) in Tamriel Data 3.0. It is used to convert mods for prior versions of Tamriel Rebuilt (and the Project: Tamriel mods) to work with the current (late 2016 onward) versions. Most add-on mods for these big mods pre-date Tamriel Data 3.0 and haves dependences on .esm files that have been renamed; this utility fixes them to use the new names. It requires at least a semi-recent version of Java (if you don't like to run Java all the time, you can install it, use the tool, then uninstall it). Be aware that add-ons for very old versions of TR (or P:T mods like Skyrim: Home of the Nords) may still not work after being patched by this tool, because too much has changed in the interim. The tool definitely does work [tested under Mac OS 10.12], for OpenMW, for some add-ons.  Minor Mac and Linux issue: You may find that it doesn't appear possible to specify a mod file to patch; it's because the window is too small; the button for this will appear if you make the window larger. Note: Updated versions of TD will also included update versions of this tool and its Translation.txt file; always use the matching versions.
 * Tamriel Rebuilt Travel 1.3 by Ozrabl98 – . This provides fast travel by ship and by guild guide from various locations, to the Tamriel mainland and back to Vvardenfell. It also adds a travel option (via the stock NPC Effe-Tei) to go from Mournhold to mainland Tamriel.  If you are not going to run the experimental TR_Preview.esp, then this is the travel add-on you want, in place of TR_Travels.esp (though if you are using both of those, you should be able to also add this one to provide additional options).  This mod adds new travel-only NPCs to various locations, and slightly moves the original guild guides (in the same cell) to make room, without otherwise altering them, so it should be compatible with other mods that affect those vanilla NPCs. May conflict with mods that alter the ship transport locations it adds (e.g. it puts one on the vanilla dock of Seyda Neen, and adds a dock to the strange back door water entrance of Wolverine Hall.
 * Tamriel Rebuilt Census and Excise Travel Links 1.0 by The Crustacean –, even after patching.  The NPC for fast travel does not appear. When it worked in an earlier version, it was reported to , Siege at Firemoth (the Tamriel ship overlapped and mostly engulfed the Firemoth ship).
 * Fast Travel for Tamriel Rebuilt 1.0 by Alyndiar – ; not tested in OpenMW, but reported as problematic in various ways in the Bethesda engine with TR versions from 30 April 2016 onward.
 * Tamriel Rebuilt Transport Links 2.00 by HowlingSnail  –, but designed for TR 14+ and working as of 15.10, so likely to work. Adds additional Guild Guides and ships in various places to get you to and from the mainland.
 * Ring of Teleportation for OpenMW – includes TR options; see entry in the Fast travel section.
 * Stormburough – A House Mod (a.k.a. Firewatch House) 1.0 by QueenOfTheSilence – . Adds a buyable large home in Firewatch (purchase from ). Mostly Imperial, with a basement in Dunmer tomb/temple style. Does not come with much sellable stuff, nothing cheaty.  Simple, utilitarian, not for hoarders, and does not have advanced features like an alchemy sorter.


 * Project: Tamriel (a.k.a. P:T) – This not a mod release, but a community modding project similar to (and directly cooperating with) the Tamriel Rebuilt Team. Its mods are listed separately below.
 * Province: Cyrodiil (a.k.a. P:C or P:C Stirk) 01–4.8 by Project: Tamriel –, but no quests tested yet. Requires and must load after Tamriel Data (see Tamriel Rebuilt, above, for TD instructions). Despite its name, this focuses on Stirk, an island port between Cyrodiil, Hammerfell, Valenwood, and Summerset; there does appear to be a mainland segment presumably for Cyrodiil itself. Adds 80+ exterior cells, 60+ interiors, dozens of NPCs, 4 major quests. This is very far southwest of Morrowind (on the far side of the continent).  with Hammerfell Isles of Strik [sic], a beta compilation of a bunch of stuff by someone else.
 * Mods: Most must be fixed with TR_FilePatcher.jar (see entry under Tamriel Rebuilt, above), because they almost all were written for a version that pre-dates Tamriel Data 3.0 and its major changes. This includes P:C compatibility mods included with other mods.
 * PC_Stirk_Grass.ESP – ; though included in the P:C archive, it is known to be malfunctional with this engine, though P:C otherwise works better in OpenMW than in Bethesda's engine.
 * Stirk Boat Ferry for Province Cyrodiil (a.k.a. Stirk Ferry or Stirk Boat) 1.0 by Glisp – . This is for an old version of P:C, and has a dependency on a Cyrodiil.esm that has been replaced with PC_Stirk_v4.8.ESP . Trying to run OpenMW with this Seyda-Neen-to-Stirk fast travel mod installed will cause the app to crash while trying to load the game.  P:C provides fast travel already, from and back to the Ebonheart docks.
 * Ring of Teleportation for OpenMW – includes P:C options; see entry in the Fast travel section.
 * Skyrim: Home of the Nords (a.k.a. S:HotN or SHotN) 02–?.? by Project: Tamriel –  but with at least one broken guild. Requires and must load after Tamriel Data (see Tamriel Rebuilt, above, for TD instructions). Adds 200+ exterior cells, 150+ interiors, a large city (comparable in scope to Vivec), plus new quests, factions, NPCs, creatures, armor, weapons, ingredients, and clutter. Able to start at least one quest in testing so far. Skyrim is due west of Vvardenfell, beyond a strip of continental Morrowind added (optionally) by Tamriel Rebuilt 's TR_Preview.esp . Get there via guide teleport in the Skyrim Mission in Ebonheart.  Minor glitches: a few missing meshes and textures (a helm that makes your head disappear, some hookahs with blank textures). Probably too much stuff is unowned, but it's mostly clutter and low-end ingredients. Landscape looks great, quite different from but arguably better than Solstheim, with some of the same wildlife, and some mod-exclusives. P:T maintains an "OpenMW and SHotN" forum.: If you follow pointers and try to join the local Thieves Guild, you're asked if you're serious, then nothing happens.
 * Mods: Most must be fixed with TR_FilePatcher.jar (see entry under Tamriel Rebuilt, above), because they almost all were written for a version that pre-dates Tamriel Data 3.0 and its major changes. This includes S:HotN compatibility mods included with other mods.
 * Sky_main_Grass.esp – ; while included in the S:HotN archive, it is known to be malfunctional with the OpenMW engine, though S:HotN otherwise works better in OpenMW than in Bethesda's engine.
 * Ring of Teleportation for OpenMW – includes S:HotN options; see entry in the Fast travel section.

Misc. landmasses

 * Northern Island by JMK (JohnK222) –  Creates the small island of Hebrash, between Solstheim and the Sheogorad region, and isolated enough to avoid most conflicts. It is a small Redoran town with an Imperial outpost, a mine (for a new ore), some quests, and a vendor who'll trade ingredients for powerful potions (much less powerful than player-created "super-potions" using stacked Fortify Intelligence, but not trivial either).  This appears to be early, experimental work, and has problems, including two merchants with cheaty amounts of cash (18K to 22K gold), and too much stuff on which ownership is not set (e.g., the Orc questgiver offers some Daedric gear in exchange for tedious quests, but you can steal the gear right in front of him with no consequences).  These problems would be fairly easy to fix in OpenMW-CS.  This looks like it will conflict with Ald-Vendras–Vogar.
 * Strange Grove by JMK (JohnK222)  –  Adds a medium-sized island, Rodapfund, off the eastern coast of Solstheim; it is a sovereign Nordic kingdom and trade port, resisting Imperial pressure. Includes a number of short quests (some side quests are done locally, but the mod's main quest sends you out to various locations to retrieve key items). Adds some ingredients, a buyable player home, and a nice weapon, though some of the vendors have rather high amounts of money. Includes interesting "Magic Pictures" that are fast travel to the depicted places; they are not companion-friendly, and while stealable they weigh 4 units each, so are best taken for your own house mod.  Has numerous broken meshes/textures (the day-glow pink problem), including some entire floors, various trees, and trivial items. At least one of the mod's quests is broken in OpenMW: An NPC in a mostly empty manor asks you to help him get furniture, but the merchant he directs you to for a table does not sell any; this breaks his later quests (more item-fetching, plus a match-maker bit). This can be fixed with    in the Console (and if the match-maker quest gets stuck after you bring them together, use  ). The "trap the slavemaster" quest is also bugged; you may (or may not – it's not consistent) have to initiate the final battle yourself (with Frenzy or Taunt, to avoid a bounty). The mod includes a tremendous amount of easily stolen high-end gear, like a full suit of Glass Armor, and lots of weapons, jewels and jewelry, Soul Gems, Limeware etc.  The guards are all in Ebony Armor suits and are not terribly hard to kill. Most NPCs, aside from guards, are 0 Alarm, so you can steal their stuff without Sneak (this could be fixed pretty easily in OpenMW-CS). The included player manor has dead mannequins (fix with   in the Console), and a basement that cannot be accessed except with the Console (the entry door is missing). Conflicts with White Wolf of Lokken Mountain (and the original Lokken island mod), though there is no actual reason for the conflict: the landmasses do not actually intersect, they just over-include sea resources which overwrite part of the other's landmass; JMK has been contacted about ways to resolve this.  If you want to play both, you can do so by doing one, then changing the load order and doing the other (with the normal risks of messing with mod load order).  Given that all of Strange Grove can be done relatively quickly, one would probably do that one first.  It is probably best for characters over level 20, as it has some fairly tough monsters, like enhanced Draughrs.  Modders' note: The royal palace is something to look at if you've been considering doing some kind of "rebuild the Dunmer strongholds" mod. It uses stronghold architecture, but retextured to look well-maintained. Mod-users' note: This is one of the few mods that provides a Restore Skill effect (one of the island's merchants has potions for each skill). This can come in handy if you are also using a mod with creatures or weapons with Damage Skill effects, since the healing shrines/altars do not always properly restore a damaged skill.
 * Western Island by JMK (JohnK222)  -  Adds a small island pair named Loroneth, west of Ashurnibibi and the Sunken Shrine of Boethiah (not far from Hla Oad), north of Firemoth.  This conflicts slightly with Tamriel Rebuilt 's TR_Preview.esp ; it appears to just be overinclusion of underwater areas to the west of the mod's islands, so a modder could fix this.  Includes a quest and side quests, tough boss monsters, a tie-in to the author's (optional) Sunken Pirate Base mod, a clothing shop (with new robes that are bugged – they show up with broken meshes/textures), new items, and a player home with teleportation portals.  Also adds a new underwater cave, a location in Azura's Coast region, and items in various vanilla places. Recommended for higher-level characters (30+, probably). Overall, this feels like a beta version of the same author's Strange Grove, though the exact details differ and WI is much smaller and simpler than SG.
 * Sunken Pirate Base - Updated by JMK (JohnK222)  -  ReadMe does not reveal the location. Blurb: "Go deep into the sea to reach one of the bases of The Green Leather Club. Take part in various thief-style quests and also get your Skeleton Key repaired. Do a few jobs in a prison and find some sexy books." One plus is that it includes Bethesda's forgotten Stalhrim Spear, with corrected polygons (the hidden one in the CS is broken). Because of this, if you install the same author's Inner Depths 3 dungeon crawl, it needs to load before SPB, since it includes the broken, vanilla version from the CS.  Also includes: male and female strippers, prisoner torture, an analog clock (which may use MCP's "fake bump-mapping" and look poor in OpenMW), an elevator (lift), and a new faction.
 * UnderWater by JMK (JohnK222)  -  Adds an underwater temple to Meridia, south of Bal Fell.  Includes a far-flung series of quests to hunt down a faction of necromancers after they launch an attack on Caldera, and three side quests; involves magical Bone Columns, Blood Bones, a new tomb, new weapons, and other new stuff.  Doing it all is recommended for after you've done the Main Quest, though it can be started early.  There's a fair chance this will conflict with Tamriel Rebuilt, depending on how far south the Meridian shrine is.
 * Underwater - Extra Detail by JMK (JohnK222) -  Adds additional details to the underwater facility, though it remains rather spartan. This is an add-on, not a replacement.


 * Bitter Coast Compilation – See entry in Major overhauls of vanilla places section. While mostly a Seyda Neen mod, it integrates several quest mods that add landmasses, at least two of which conflict with TR_Preview.esp in Tamriel Rebuilt.
 * Booty Island 1.1 –  A big pirate-themed mod.
 * Dungeon Island 1.9 by PCC (Blockhead) - New island near Solstheim that is primarily a dungeon crawl. Has an add-on to connect it to Xindaz Veft and thereby the rest of the author's dungeon-crawl network of tunnel systems (listed in the Dungeon crawls section).  There's also an add-on to connect it to Volar island in the Ald-Vendras–Volar mod, but only for the 1.x version, before those landmasses were relocated.  Unknown if this conflicts with Tamriel Rebuilt or other near-Solstheim mods, but it is likely.
 * The Ebony Blade 1.02 by Astion – A good side challenge for high-level characters (the monsters are seriously beefed-up versions of stock creatures).  Has a Dwemer door lock puzzle that did not seem resolvable, but this could be player failure.  Another puzzle (a rockslide-blocked entrance) is more obvious when you find, that only works at that location. The titular weapon is a booby prize: while it looks nice and does some serious base damage, it has almost no enchantability. Do this quest just for the fun and the challenge, after you've done the Main Quest and Tribunal, but probably before Bloodmoon (which has even tougher baddies in Hircine's Hunt). You need to have a reputation of at least 25 or so, or the quest-giver NPC in the tavern in Caldera will not tell you were to go.  You might find it anyway, if you explore  a lot.  Has a minor bug seen elsewhere occasionally in OpenMW: when you "pick" Raw Ebony in here, its container rock doubles in size, and can even trap you with clipping. Fix it by clicking on the affected rock in the console and doing   or  . Does not conflict with Tamriel Rebuilt. PS: You get to fight !
 * Fishing Academy 2.54 –  This adds an island to the west where you can do all kinds of fishing quests and earn your own ship.  The NPC who takes you to the island he says he only takes people to the island, and then refuses to take you to the island, and just stands there.  [Did not test whether swimming or Water Walking out there would allow one to do use the mod's real features.]  Seems not far offshore enough to conflict with Tamriel Rebuilt, but worth examining in this regard.
 * Five Keys of Azura 3.0 by Dave Foster –  Big, story-driven expansion for level 30+ (level 50+ recommended, as is completion of the Main Quest, Tribunal, and Bloodmoon). Requires registering a new .bsa file, and even includes some new voice acting and sound effects. Focuses on the Northlanders, an independent nation of Nords (among whom you start with a Reputation of 0).  Adds: 280+ new cells, 500+ new NPCs, a new faction, a main quest and 50+ new side quests, 1800+ lines of new dialog in 220+ new topics, and 120+ scripts.  Author estimates 50–60 hours of gameplay.  Directly overlaps substantial parts of Tamriel Rebuilt, and the large number of topics could result in other conflicts. If you are not running with this as your main mod, it may be best to either remove mods you've already completed and do a save-cleaning routine, or start a new game with this one in mind, with few other mods, then use something like the Ring of Level Playing or Improved Character Generation to skip to an advanced enough character to go play this.
 * Haldenshore 1.2 –, as part of Bitter Coast Compilation; not tested as a separate mod. Adds a small island town just southeast of Seyda Neen. Help establish a new "hive of scum and villainy" with new Thieves Guild friends. If you are not TG, there's less to do, but still plenty.  Does not conflict with Tamriel Rebuilt, nor with most S'Neen mods.  The BCC version has the TG quests stop working after you jointly buy a new base of operations, and also suffers serious frame rate issues until you disable a bobbing animated galleon; see the Bitter Coast Compilation in the Major overhauls of vanilla places section for details.
 * Havish 1.3 – Adds a sizeable island city-state to the west of vvardenfell, with its own guilds. Most of the quests appear to focus on Thieves Guild characters. Conflicts with Tamriel Rebuilt 's TR_Preview.esp but not with it's main, release landmass.
 * Illuminated Order 1.0c – by Charles J DeVito –  New island to the north, new faction, quests (start in the Eight Plates in Balmora), gear, magic, monsters, etc. – even the opportunity to become a lich.  Created by a seeming expert in Elder Scrolls lore, as it has subtle tie-ins to other games like Daggerfall.  Recommended for high-level necromancer-ish mage players (especially if you actually want the lich reward/curse); reviews warn that to beat the mod, you'll need things like 100% Resist Magicka (or Reflect) and other high-end magic, at least for short periods.  If you get stuck, some hints (spoilers) have been preserved here from a now-dead forum. This mod has even inspired some fan fiction.
 * There may be a TR patch to resolve this problem; not investigated yet.
 * Kat's Kastle – See entry in Clothing section. Adds two islands (one unfinished) that conflict with Tamriel Rebuilt, but only the TR_Preview.esp part.
 * Private Tower Balmora 4.0 – See entry in Alternative strongholds section. Its optional quest add-on creates a new island chain that conflicts with Tamriel Rebuilt 's main, release landmass. One could probably install it, do the quest, sell off any non-vanilla items from it, then remove it.  Plot: some dark forces want to use this place as their secret lair, and they also have in mind to assassinate you.  Probably for level 10+, maybe even 30+; it has multiple Daedra, Skeleton Champions, etc., and some mind-blowing bosses. (The base mod, without the quest, still includes a dungeon with Daedra and undead.)  The quest starts in the home, with a series of creepy Skeleton Lord attacks. Two of the later ones regenerate health so fast (about 1000 points per second), you won't be able to beat them unless   Regardless, it provides a very functional home, and some additional nearby vendors.
 * Silgrad Tower 1.4.6.6 – Adds part of the Morrowind mainland, to the west; conflicts with the TR_Preview.esp part of Tamriel Rebuilt.
 * There may be a TR patch to resolve this problem; not investigated yet.
 * Wyrmhaven 2.0 - New island, with quests, and a troll.
 * Tel Nechim 1.3 by Antiscamp  – . New island in the east, with straightforward quests for fairly low-level to maybe mid-level characters.  Mostly a vanilla feel, and some attempt to be lore-conscientious while doing something new. The premise is an island nation ruled by a matriarchy, which has only recently been released by the expiration of a magical prison; the island was founded by a diverse group of female pirates centuries ago, who then lost an extended conflict with the Empire.  The author focused on story. Many of the buildings will look familiar, having been adapted from Seyda Neen, Caldera, etc.  Several vendors with anywhere from 100 to 5000 gold. Fast travel gets you there from Sadrith Mora, and more is available to back home via ship or guild guide. The island is small to reduce conflicts, and much of the action takes place in catacombs under it. The only issue so far (aside from some dialogue typos) is a potential balance one: guards are in full Ebony gear, and at least two VIPs are wearing partial suits of Daedric; a killing spree would be very profitable here.  The mod appears to provide at least three artifact-level magic items as quest objects. [Tester's note: Not done those quests yet. —Darklock]
 * Tel Nechim – Moved for Tamriel Rebuilt Compatibility  by Antiscamp and abot – An alternative   file so it doesn't conflict with TR. Also adds optional Necessities of Morrowind compatibility.
 * Riller Mosh 3.1 beta by Midgetalien & Avrahama –  A new island with an Argonian city and surrounding environment, with numerous quests, new items, a faction and class, etc.  Efforts were made to be lore-friendly.  Get there via guild guide in.

New places and minor quest mods
New towns, castles, dungeons, etc. are listed here, along with localized quest mods that exist primarily as such. Many house, NPC, weapon, and other mods also include incidental quests, but are listed in other sections. New landmasses are also in their own section.


 * Altmer Town of Illiandria 1.0 [or is it Iliandria?] – Badly malfunctional. It has overlapping structures, and numerous textures are glowing white, presumably due to "fake bumpmapping", plus ultra-dark interiors. Doesn't seem to do anything useful, just provides merchants with powerful items. Some of the buildings overlap a big tent structure added by the same mod. Has a very alpha-test feel to it, though I would guess that these problems did not show up in the vanilla game engine or it would not have been released.  The concept is reasonable, it just needs work, both to be functional and to be integrated into the milieu (e.g., some quests involving the politics of the Altmer establishing a colony on Vvardenfell that is neither an Imperial nor Great House endeavor).  Some of these issues might actually be the fault of the "Extras" add-on included with it.
 * Morrowind Public Library – Works fine, including the "most wanted books" quests (it's actually its own faction), and the little café with drinks that are actually useful potions. Many will find the sheer number of skill books in here to be a huge cheat (solution: pretend they're not there or   them with the Console).
 * Balmora Waterfall by Heremod Productions. Working and fun for somewhat low-level characters. Expect to have to retreat and come back if you are not armed with a large stockpile of Restore Health potions (and to come back multiple times to mine all the Raw Ebony, which is heavy). The enemies are not varied, but are numerous and attack you in a large group when you're deep in here. (Tip: If you keep healing, and periodically leave to repair, or bring extra armor for when yours breaks, you can rapidly train up an armor skill, even all of them one after another, including Block and Unarmored, by standing there and not fighting back – the sheer number of hungry critters results in you being hit again and again in rapid succession.) If you are high-level, expect to be bored and to kill all enemies and be done with the whole thing in half an hour or less; if you are low-level, this will be challenging and may take all day. Be able to Levitate before going into the place behind the waterfall, or there's a well you can get trapped in here. It's also convenient in the final area after the big fight.  This mod is one of the only ways to get the amount of Raw Ebony required to have the Crafters Hall armorer in Mournhold make some Ebony armor pieces for you, while you are still low enough level to a) bother with this much desperate ore-hauling labor, and b) actually need to have Ebony armor made, at high prices, instead of taking it for free off your victims. (You should also plunder the Vassir-Didanat Cave of its ebony before reporting its location to Dram Bero for a Daedric weapon reward.)  As just a waterfall, it's a nice visual facelift for the area.  It also provides some extra instances of Charles the Plant and its Meteor Slime ingredient (a variant of Scrib Jelly that can be stacked with it in potion-making).  This mod is integrated into several others, including Balmora Expansion (see above) and Sgaileach Estate; do not install it separately with them or problems could result. This will also, obviously, conflict with any of the several other waterfall mods in the same location (at the bridge between Balmora and Caldera), though might still be usable if it loads last.
 * The Old Unused Well of Pelagiad – . Another fun little dungeon crawl for lower-level characters, and voted into the Hall of Fame at one of the mod sites. Provides some reasonable loot for significant work by the character, and is fairly evocative for a cave. You can probably do it as soon as you can handle all the caves and tombs around Seyda Neen. At Level 15 or so, it will be too easy; the average smuggler/bandit cave is harder at this level range.
 * Of Justice and Innocence 1.3 by Darkelfguy –  Adds a medium-level side quest to Dagon Fel, to rescue a woman's brother taken by smugglers.  This is a well-written, bittersweet story, and you have the option to end it like a Shakespearean tragedy. It's a nice break from all the cheerfulness-and-light rescue quests provided by the vanilla game, which hardly vary from each other in any way.  If you find you can't get into the final cave, this is not a bug; it means there's dialogue you've not had with the right woman in Dagon Fel yet.   Version 1.31 requires (according to its ReadMe) the MGSO extension, which is not OpenMW-compatible; running that version could cause problems, though a tester used it without any noticeable ones.
 * Ashlands Village a.k.a Ashland Village by JMK (JohnK222)  -  Adds Beranmar Camp. Big, semi-civilized Ashlander camp near Ghostgate, with a shop (includes new items and some that Bethesda had in the CS but did not use in the game), plus new quests, and some kind of teleporting gateway in the West Gash near Caldera. The included .exe files are not needed, and are just for decoding secret messages if you're curious (they use a crude Rot1 substitution cipher, which you can decode at http://www.rot13.com/, or just read manually by shifting every letter up by one, e.g. A becomes B, Z becomes A).
 * Seedy Almalexia District – see entry in the Added homes section.

Dungeon crawls
This subsection is for mods that consist mostly or entirely of extensive underground "dungeons", focused on combat and looting, short on story. They're rather implausible as environments. Where do all these creatures live, and what do they eat? How can some of these places have merchants in them, surrounded by terrible things trying to kill everyone?

On the up side, they have very little potential for conflict, since the modifications they make to the vanilla game are usually just some entrances.

Some of them are very extensive, and there are patches to link many of them together. Most of them are created by random room generating programs, then tweaked by hand.

These often require a leveled-list merge (and it is always safe to do one).

one huge system that stretches from Solstheim to Ebonheart, corresponding to the surface distance (and also connecting to Mournhold). Adds new areas, creatures and NPCs, plus new entrances in 6 Vvardenfell locations. Requires a leveled-list merge. Manually cleaned using TESAME, not auto-cleaned with TESTool, since it needs to retain some bits in common to work properly.
 * Smeradon 1.7 by PCC (Blockhead), with Smeradon Patch 0.4, - The first and simplest of PCC's dungeon crawls. Runs from Seyda Neen to Balmora, with entrances in both (in NPC dwellings' basements, apparently).  Has wildly mixed architecture, as a result of "chaos magic".  Uses only vanilla resources and requires none of the official add-ons. Likely to conflict with major mods of either city, in that one or both of its entrances might not be available (e.g., one is in the Seyda Neen Lighthouse, which Bitter Coast Compilation completely replaces).  Requires a leveled-list merge.
 * Extended Smeradon 2.1 by PCC (Blockhead) -  Updates Smeradon to be more like PCC's later work.
 * Further Extended Smeradon 2.0, with Fix 1.0, by PCC (Blockhead) -  Requires all of the above, plus Knaarus, Dunzar, and Xindaz Veft (the specific versions below). Connects these dungeons together into
 * Knaarus 1.0/0.2 by PCC (Blockhead) - Entrance is southeast of Suran, and runs all the way to . Has inconsistent version info; listed as 1.0 at download site, but mod filename is PCC_Knaarus_02.esp . Does not require a leveled-list merge.
 * Xindaz Veft 0.5 by PCC (Blockhead) -   On Solstheim, entered below Fort Frostmoth.  Runs all the way to . Does not require a leveled-list merge. Unknown if this will work with Solstheim Overhaul / Solstheim: Tomb of the Snow Prince, which radically alters Frostmoth. If this is the case, the entry cell is named "Under Frostmoth" and can be entered via   in the Console (use   to bring any companions with you afterward).  There's an add-on that connects it to Dungeon Island if installed. Like most dungeon crawls, it will dump an unbalancing amount of loot on you if you go through it all.  A mixed bag of Daedra, Dark Brotherhood Assassins, undead, Dwemer constructs, critters, and hostile louts.
 * Dunzar 2.0 by PCC (Blockhead) -  Harder than Smeradon and Knaarus, it connects Vivec Puzzle Canal Level 5 and Mournhold Temple Sewers West, and runs the distance from Vivec to Balmora (over the latter is where the game engine thinks Mournhold is, though in lore it is on the continent).  Does not require a leveled-list merge. It focuses on exploration rather than looting, and has a mixture of architectures, including at least cave and Dwemer. Note: If you are willing to take a long, fighty walk, this is one way to get companions into Mournhold without using a fast travel mod.
 * South Dunzar 1.0 by PCC (Blockhead) -   Adds more dungeon, and more Mournhold entrances (Bazaar Sewers, West Sewers). This is an add-on for Dunzar, not stand-alone. Does not require a leveled-list merge.
 * Aard Vetooch 2.0 by PCC (Blockhead) - A 100-level monstrosity, using only vanilla lifeforms and items. Includes a player storage room with many containers.  Entrance in Arrille's Tradehouse.  Has a teleport room to every 10th level, but only after you've cleared the previous ones.  In this it is reminiscent of Doom, Moria, and other games with numerous levels.  No leveled-list merge is needed.
 * There are two plugins that connect Aard Vetooch to some of Qwerty's dungeons; they are listed here.
 * Dwemer Tunnels and Corprusarium Cavern 1.0 by PCC (Blockhead) -  Has 44 dirty references, and reported to have some glitchy walls.  The dirty refs may be due to manual cleaning with TESAME, leaving some shared resources in for a reason, but use at your own risk. The Corprusarium Cavern is basically a Daedra-fighting arena. The Dwemer Tunnels are a fight-your-way-there, "not-fast" travel route to a hub that links 7 major vanilla Dwemer ruins.  The tunnels are vast maze chambers like those encountered toward the end of Tribunal'', with lots of leveled monsters including Liches and the more dangerous Dwemer constructs (at least if you are over level 20 or so), and quite a bit of high-end but vanilla gear like Glass and Daedric weapons.
 * Smeradon to Dwemer Tunnels 0.7 by PCC (Blockhead) - Patch to link the two systems.
 * Dungeon Island 1.9 by PCC (Blockhead) - See entry in Major landmasses section. Has add-ons to connect it to Xindaz Veft and the original (pre-relocation) Ald-Vendras–Volar.
 * Lob Shephli by PCC (Blockhead) -, with the demise of various mod archives.


 * Inner Depths 1 by JMK (JohnK222)  -
 * Inner Depths 2 by JMK (JohnK222)  -  In the Grazelands.
 * Inner Depths 3 by JMK (JohnK222)  -  This one is in Solstheim, with two entrances.
 * Inner Depths 4 by JMK (JohnK222)  -  West Gash region. Includes a shop, and "Boost Crystals", though a patch is required for them to work properly.


 * Similar dungeon crawls by Qwerty –  Some of his are 100+ levels, all require at least Tribunal, and some may required The Undead, and a leveled-list merge.

Player homes and businesses
Some of these also include service NPCs, quests, etc.; if it's primarily a house or business mod, it goes in this section. It may also have an entry in another section if other things it provides are significant, e.g. companions.

Note that any "new house" mod will conflict with another mod that puts something in the same spot; you'll have to pick which one to use. A mod may also conflict with other mods in the general area if one or both of them affect landscape in the area (this is a common problem, especially in Balmora and Caldera).

Added homes
This subsection is for mod-added player domiciles that are new or replacement buildings, caves, treehouses, floating homes, whatever. If it affects an outdoor cell, it goes here, unless if fits a subcategory below better.


 * Balmora River House 1.0 by Cali a.k.a. Calislahn –, including the alchemy sorter (official ingredients only). This is a very practical and compact user home base for a player who is not a hoarder. Its location makes it convenient for all new to mid-level players; after Cosades is out of the picture, and especially if you are Redoran or Telvanni, you may wish to relocate.  Compatible with Balmora Expansion  the correct variant ESP is loaded and in the right order (see details in the BE compatibility notes in the Major overhauls of vanilla places section, above).  The only issue with it is that its interior is unreasonably bright, which you can fix by changing the Ambient stat in its cell in OpenMW-CS, and saving that change into a .omwaddon file. (This can take experimentation, because the Ambient figure is not just a light level, but also affects color.)  This house is all one cell. If you use the Odai Boat Service travel mod, it must load after this house mod, or a landscape fracture will result. If you also use Canoe Travel, then BRH will mostly bury the closest canoe, but it actually remains accessible. Patches are available from the same download page, for Balmora Expansion and for Necessities of Morrowind.  The stand-alone versions of BRH and Dave's Furniture Store conflict; the Balmora Expansion versions do not.
 * Balmora Riverview Tower 2.7 by – Thondur – . A modest tower on the Balmora riverfront (though it has a large storage cellar). Compatible with Balmora Expansion. Conflicts with one of the mods that adds outdoor vendors around here, but nothing that a little   and   in the console can't fix.  Various other house mods use the same spot.
 * Domehome 1.1 by Grumpy and Emma  –  Fully functional as a very mixed-styles house, but see entries in previous sections about issues with its staff/companion NPCs, and minor conflicts with Balmora Expansion (see below for patch).  Not lore-friendly; it is full of Dwemer tech that the PC should not be aware of until later in the game (and which is not stuff Balmora residents would be using in their houses). It has a bunch of Imperial stone block architecture looming above Balmora, which is very out-of-place, though most of it is Velothi, which is reasonable to be in this location.  It's conceptually interesting, but someone needs to re-do it, and in a different place on the map, outside of town.  It takes too long to get from the front door to the usable interior, for one thing.  Its principal value is its domestic staff NPCs, who can be relocated, but only very carefully (they have a "fight each other" bug if you teleport them), to a different manor that needs some.  It also comes with too much sellable silverware for a new character, and the low price of 2,000 septims makes it available to one, so just try to resist temptation. Domehome cannot be used with Balmora Balcony House.
 * The original Domehome 1.0 by Grumpy, without staff/companions and no Tribunal dependency, is included in the above archive. As a separate download, it was reported to have dirty references and thus needed to be cleaned before use; this may be true of the archive-bundled version as well.
 * Compatibility patches are available from the main download page, for Balmora Expansion, Asgard, and both together.
 * Domehome ImpBalmora Fixed 0.20 by Kiteflyer61 – Patch for Improved Balmora (itself not tested yet).
 * Kahleigh's Retreat [TB+BM] 2.0 by kwshipman and MWDeuce –, and one of the better house mods in the Caldera area. Highly dependent on load order if used with other mods, as it can end up floating in the air or partially buried if anything else is also affecting the same general ground area, e.g. Gothic Clothing Complete or Imperial Airships. It actually interferes slightly with the Imperial Airship's ramp regardless of load order, but both remain playable. This multi-cell home is very nice and conveniently located, but is full of too much free stuff for new characters (after about level 5, it won't matter, since you're not desperate to sell your own plates). It has enough storage (counting its basement) to store probably 1000 copies of every item in the game, which is silly.  If you want to use this, consider using the Console or other tools to clear it out (animated display cases take up most of the front room, etc.), then use a furniture mod to set it up as you prefer, paying as you go for plausible roleplay (and furni without collision is a good idea, so you don't run into your own chairs).  Definitely invest in lighting, as half of the rooms are too dim (if you give a companion a torch, they'll actually equip it in here, except in the front room).  You can also fix this by turning up the Ambient stat in each of its cells with OpenMW-CS, and saving these changes into a .omwaddon file. Adding armor mannequins helps a lot.  Its alchemy sorter is good but imperfect. It recognizes some mod-added ingredients and adds them to an "Other" jar, but fails to recognize a few (e.g. the pearl variants added by Pearls Enhanced), and fails to sort some official ingredients, like Amethyst, Opal, and Sapphire (though another mod might have altered them).  Version 2.0 is MWDeuce's reworking of kwshipman's 1.1  (does not require TB or BM), with additional features (like the sorter) and bug fixes.
 * Bob's Armory (I) a.k.a. Bob the Visigoth's Armory 1.0 by Mr. Dave –  (whether you want the included clothes/armor or not). You may want a furniture mod, because the place is bare aside from zero to thee closets (depending on version).  Location-wise, it's very close to Seyda Neen, so it's convenient if you like that area, but just far enough away to be unlikely to conflict with any direct mods of that town. (See the Armor and weapons section for details about the gear in the original BA as a gear mod, and for the Bob's Armory II shop.) There are at least three versions. The original includes a closet full of free female armor (much of it lingerie style); the two house mods below work only with this. Bob's Armory Icons version has three closets of armor and one of clothing versions). An empty, no-gear version is included in Bitter Coast Compilation.  A modder could compare them and see what's broken in the later versions and makes them not work with the add-ons.
 * Alchemy Lab for Bobs Armory –  Adds an alchemy room with a sorter.
 * Shelves for Bob's Armory 1,0 by theGreatNothing –   Adds lots of shelving (it is stocked with laid-out copies of all the free gear, but this can be cleared out.)
 * Buy a House Overhauled by Giggityninja and LegoManIAm94 – You can attempt to buy a house, but do not get the key. To test: try forcing open the lock and using the house anyway.
 * The Tall House of Balmora a.k.a. The Tower 1.0 – ; half of it was upside-down! Disappointing, since it had useful service staff, and was in a convenient place.
 * Sgaileach Estate 2.01 + update by Phinix a.k.a. Sgaileach1 –  but not with many other mods in the area. It's outside Balmora, to the northeast, and is a fairly modest, NOM-compatible home. Includes an alchemy sorter (with support for ingredients from Tamriel Rebuilt and a few other mods), Better Bodies mannequins (can be switched between male and female), a repair forge with near-unlimited use, and a teleportation ring.  Also includes working but loud clocks (can edit their sound files to make them quieter or silent), light switches (but remains very dim in OpenMW), and a modern-style toilet.  Heremod's Balmora Waterfall nearby is built into this mod already. Incompatible with Balmora Expansion and various other Balmora mods, mostly due to clashing landscape changes; it's difficult to find a load-order that won't result in landscape fractures and similar issues.  If you use Tamriel Rebuilt you'll need to run TR_FilePatcher.jar on this mod, to update its TR ingredient references to the new (2016 onward) IDs.
 * Balmora Balcony House –, but may conflict with Balmora Expansion, and definitely does with Domehome. Not fully tested yet.
 * Concept Exterior Abode 1.2 by Cjad the Nord – The idea was to build a player home using only external cells (and compensating by temporarily turning off weather). Its own readme says that it can cause a crash to desktop unless the player uses external tools like TESAME to remove things from it. Conflicted badly with Balmora Expansion, and was not tested further.
 * Balmora Underground 2.0 – ; also seems a bit cheaty. But the quests might be fun, if you want to run this long enough to do them then remove it before its unclean state causes problems. Or clean it first with MS Windows tools.
 * Clean the Apartment by Grumpy – Functional apartment above Caius Cosades's house. conflicts trivially with Balmora Expansion (does weird stuff to a neighboring house and guard tower). Also includes an infinite closet, is quite small, and unusually dark (get a lot of candles or other lights). Still, useful for brand-new characters just starting the Main Quest.  Will, obviously, conflict with most other Cosades house mods. The closet is not a big deal; every permanent corpse in the game is infinite storage, including that of Ralen Hlaalo in the vanilla player home Hlaalo Manor, just across the river.
 * Little House on the Rocks 1.0 by darkelf., including with Balmora Expansion. Is not compatible with Balmora Academy of Stripology (same location).
 * Mori Mountain Estate 2.01 –, and may have conflicts with other house mods in the area and possibly with Balmora Expansion. The sorting librarian feature in this is worth porting to other mods. This may be the one that has an excessive number of armor mannequins so you can collect every armor set in the game; needs a re-examination.
 * Morrowind Abodes –, but not all homes tested. The one in Vivec was very pretty but not terribly useful, since there are already multiple free places to live in Vivec. Each location is a separate .esp file, and the Your Balmora Residence one is already integrated into Balmora Expansion so should not be added at the same time.
 * Hidden House 1.0 by JMK (JohnK222) –  Adds an underground (hatchway door) player home in Mournhold's Great Bazaar. Has multiple rooms (most nearly empty, so suitable for a furniture mod), lots of high-capacity storage, five new alchemical ingredients, a teleport room with numerous destinations, a shallow pool, and a fighting arena you can bet on. Also includes a "harem" with dancers, and a shrine that provides some temporary stat buffs.  Includes a teleport ring to return home, but it will not work with most companions because it goes to an interior.
 * Seedy Almalexia District 1.0 by blake.  –, to the extent it's complete.  This is a demo of another district of the city of Almalexia (done as a big interior cell, and accessed via fast transport from the Mournhold Royal Palace Courtyard). It features modern-ish tall buildings, and is jarringly out of place; one expects Batman to show up, and some gunshots and police sirens in the distance. Most NPCs just dismiss attempts to dialogue with them, and only one building is functional, a messy house mod (complete with a dead woman, and a male skooma addict passed out on the floor).
 * Apartment for Seedy Almalexia District 2.0 by Princess Stomper and Tommy Khajiit  –  This is another, much nicer house mod that can be added onto it.
 * Abu Manor 2.0 by Phoebe –  Spacious, free, and well-designed, multi-room manor mod behind the temple in Ald'ruhn, with a sensible central layout (all rooms branch off a main room, and are separate cells, to avoid framerate and overflow problems if you have lots of stuff. Has animated cabinets and includes 16 mannequin stands for whatever mannequin mod you want to use. Has no real loot, only clutter and furniture, plus some books, ingredients, and a few jewelry items.  Alchemy room supports but does not require Tribunal, Bloodmoon, and Sri's Alchemy; does not have an auto-sorter. Includes a teleport-home ring (this probably does not work with companions). Download the Abu_Manor_v2_FIXED_archive.zip version; the original archive is not encoded correctly for proper subdirectory extraction by Mac, Linux, and some Windows apps.  There is a fair chance of mod conflicts due to the number of mods in the Ald'ruhn area, but much less so than in other cities, since Ald'ruhn exteriors are mostly small, and this one is not placed in the middle of town. Minor bug: One of the display case types does not work. It is a common type in other mods (including some where it works), so it can easily be replaced with the Console.

Alternative strongholds
Large-scale player structures, usually with numerous NPCs (some combination of guards, trainers, merchants, and magical service providers). Unless in remote locations, these have a higher risk of conflict with other mods due to their scope.


 * Private Tower Balmora 4.0 –, but not with Balmora Expansion (may caused OpenMW to crash), and probably not with most other major mods of Balmora. This mod provides a huge, free player home, with a lot of room and not a lot of stuff, so it's good for someone who wants to decorate with a furniture mod. Includes some new merchants (with sane amounts of money and no cheat gear), and a dungeon with Daedra and undead (even without the quest add-on). Various clues you encounter in the game world referring to the "Lost Souls" and the "Hlaalu Underground" are references to this dungeon. This home mod is best for a Hlaalu and Mages Guild player, since it has some Hlaalu Guards and an entrance in the MG in Balmora. Also has an entrance near the siltstrider in town, and another in the SE part of town (which may be one-way exits rather than entrances, depending on other mods you use in this area), plus the obvious tower entrance.  The included, optional add-on with quests creates a new island [for details, see entry in Misc. landmasses section] that conflicts with Tamriel Rebuilt.  : There's a small landscape tear where its stairway meets the Balmora market square, though this could have been caused by conflict with another mod (and it is small enough to cover with clutter). The teleport-home item you can get from the dungeon (which is slow – takes about 20 seconds to work – and will not work with most companions) has you arrive in a falling state and will thus kill you unless you are using long-lasting or constant-effect Levitate or Slowfall before activating it (or you have superhuman Acrobatics).
 * Jakey Keep 0.9 –, but requires a large stack of .ESP files, so is not ideal unless you are a few-mods player.
 * Glenfinnan – . A Scottish- and druid-themed island stronghold just off-shore, between Seyda Neen and the beginning of the Ascadian Isles. An Imperial- and Nord-architecture ring fort, basically, with a huge outer wall, a keep/home, and some NPC buildings. Provides a few trainers, and lots of storage, without loading the player with free gear. All that Gaelic in it isn't strictly lore-friendly, though plenty of Icelandic, etc., was also used in Bloodmoon, so whatever. The staff wear kilts (from the dg/Horatio Morrowind Kilts mod, which is included). Requires an old mannequin mod, but the mannequins in the display hall (who are glitched and show up with human shins) can be deleted with   in the console then replaced with modern Better Bodies ones from a different mannequin mod.  Note: In one test, a conflict between this mod and some other mod (unidentified, but possibly Seyda Neen Complete) caused a crash to desktop. In a later test it was compatible with Bitter Coast Compilation.
 * Callenwald – ; messed up almost all NPC dialogue, so everyone across Vvardenfell wants to talk about Callenwald constantly (and it's not really lore-friendly, inventing an "ancient" clan, etc.). It is a huge, Imperial-architecture fortress just southeast of Balmora, on the Odai. It is cheaty, with almost innumerable trainers and merchants, and quite a bit of free, high-end gear like Ebony weapons. A high-level player not happy with their Great House stronghold might like it, if you can live with the dialogue problem, and if you are not doing much else to the Balmora area. With some some other Balmora mods loaded, a huge landscape fracture resulted at the Callenwald site.  There is, however, a Balmora Expansion patch to make BE and Callenwald work together.
 * Artisan Tribute Manor 3.0 by Dracotrain, et al. –   An elaborate, multi-environment player manor, with a cave system, vampire-friendly dungeon with coffin bed, alchemy sorter, bright display hall with stone mannequins, traditional house rooms (bedroom, bathroom, library), private Daedric shrine, etc. Something for just about everyone. Created to show off the texture and model work from 18 mods and modders' resource sets by others.  This one does  have NPCs, and provides few items (mostly decorative, unusual clutter), but does give you a Daedric portal network all over Vvardenfell (and to Solstheim).  Has a small "footprint" in the world (various Daedric portal locations), but the number of them (about ten or so) is a potential for mod conflicts.
 * Construction 1.2 by JCK87 –  This is a mod to eventually build your own entire town, near the Zainab camp. You can find the construction business between Seyda Neen and Pelagiad, accept their foreman work, and build a test shack outside the Dren Plantation; then the mod just stops.  None of the three NPCs have additional option, and the town-building in the Grazelands does not proceed, though one of the NPCs provides fast travel to its (empty) site.

Movable or portable homes
This subsection is for non-stationary airships, boats, submarines, "pocket homes", and other mobile domiciles.


 * Private Mobile Base 4.2 by henkbein a.k.a. HB  –, and there are mods that improve it.  The PMB is basically an adaptation of Redoran architecture to Dwemer airship technology, to create a floating, movable mansion. Purists will object to the fast travel it provides, but for repeat players who don't need an "explore slowly in wonder" phase again, it's a great boon to saving realtime gaming time.  It is large and a bit of a maze; it could use more teleport doors between sections, or a total redesign with a central hub room, like the Redoran Council Chambers. There is also a pointless micro-room between its bottom door and its control room that can interfere with ability to get companions into and out of the home. If you use companion mods, you will need the first add-on mentioned below.
 * Older versions have fewer requirements (and fewer features): 1.1 requires only Morrowind; 3.1  requires Tribunal.
 * PMB Addon Transport 1.1 by Nemo (part of his "Private Mobile Base Addon Pack" archive ) – This add-on uses companion-friendly teleportation (with many more locations), and replaces the original mod's limited teleport room with a new one, using a teleport wall that is really just a teleport door. The original mod's method was an instant-teleportation thing that was compatible with very few companions. This mod also upgrades the PMB teleport ring to allow you (alone) to teleport into more of the PMB's rooms, and it also acts as a remote control to move the PMB (which must be done from an interior cell, including the PMB itself). If you only want the upgraded room or the upgraded ring, these also exist as separate mods in an earlier version.
 * Additional tip about companions: Be warned that the docking bay "airlock" you enter through at the bottom is very small; only try to take one companion through at a time or you may have problems (and may still find it difficult with just one – try jumping before activating the ladder to get to the control room, and failing that, try turning on  momentarily in the Console and moving up). It is also one-way for many companions (the exact nature of the bug is not known yet), which means that the PMB Addon Transport mod (above) is more important than it sounds: it's easy to get a companion into this home, but hard to get them out without it.  The hatch on the top of the PMB has this problem, too.
 * Other add-on mods by Nemo (his "Private Mobile Base Addon Pack" archive ) are of less benefit. PMB Inscription Station (scroll-making) is fiddly and may or may not work. PMB Addon AlchemySorter does not work in OpenMW; the lack of any working alchemy sorter for this mod is probably a fatal flaw for anyone who uses alchemy a lot. PMB Addon Supply, for duplicating alchemy ingredients, is patently a cheat. PMB Remote Storage (for remotely accessing chests onboard the PMB) is also fiddly and also cheaty.
 * PMB Docking Bay a.k.a. PMB Bigger Docking Bay by Dead Bolt –, which is unfortunate, for reasons already explained above.  Rather than making the docking bay (a vertical tube with only room for one without clipping) any larger, it adds a storage chamber off it (turn around and look a little upward).
 * Various add-ons to make the PMB free or cheap are totally unnecessary. The expensiveness of the PMB is mitigated by the fact that its vendor (found in the pub in Caldera, though he moves to the city street later, and eventually disappears after you buy the last relevant item from him) will buy stuff from you, so you can get your money back (on the same day) by selling him spare high-end loot. If you don't have unneeded mega-loot, summon some Golden Saints (you need their souls to power the PMB, anyway) or go to some Daedric shrines and get some gear from Dremora. If you die when you try, you are not yet worthy of the PMB.
 * Cheat mitigation, roleplay sanity: Always go to a new location the usual way. Don't move the PMB itself to anywhere other than a major city, Imperial fort, or your own Great House stronghold. If you hovered this over Skaal Village or an Ashlander camp they would (given better AI) flip out and run for the hills. If you're Redoran and hovered this over a Telvanni or Hlaalu Stronghold, it should be taken as a menacing act of House War. Don't use the PMB's on-board Propylon Chamber for any ancient Dunmer Stronghold for which you don't have the original propylon index and which you have not explored and beaten. Between its teleport-out room and teleport-in ring, there is rarely any need to move the PMB at all. Don't move it to Solstheim, since much of the point of Bloodmoon is isolation in a difficult wilderness with few civilized comforts, and only one way in or out to resupply.  It also doesn't make sense parked in Mournhold, because Almalexia forbids levitation – a huge flying building would clearly be illegal there, despite it being the default location at the start of this mod. (See general companion notes up top for how to get companions in and out of Mournhold with new guild guides provided in another mod.)

General feature add-ons

 * Better Bookshelves in Strongholds – ; loading it caused no known problems, but its functionality has not been tested yet. It is for your Great House (Hlaalu, Redoran, Telvanni) stronghold only, and presumably only affects the bookshelves included in the vanilla portion of the manor, though perhaps these can be Console-cloned for the libraries added by other stronghold mods (or for other player homes; the archive also includes modders' resources for adding them to new mods). Not likely to work out-of-the-box if you use mods that make significant stronghold changes.

Rethan Manor (Hlaalu stronghold, Odai Plateau)
Most of these will not be compatible with Grandmaster of Hlaalu by Lady Galadriel, a massive overhaul of House Hlaalu that adds quests, NPCs, mining, and a radically re-done Rethan Manor, with four stages. See entry in Major quest and faction mods section.


 * Enhanced Rethan Manor (includes the earlier Rethan Manor Underground and Hlaalu Manor Enhancement) – Works fine.
 * Rethan Manor Add-ons by Arjan – Works fine, including with the above, though with a TARDIS effect and some redundancy: the libraries added by each mod would overlap if they were real. The one with tables is better as a banquet hall, and a place to park NPCs, like companions you don't use, "guests" acquired via Command Humanoid, and the stronghold's own staff, if they get in your way. A time-saving feature is in-house guild guide fast travel from the Rethan Library to other libraries and bookstores. Its key features (including the fast travel) have been integrated into Grandmaster of Hlaalu (running them together seems to have no effect other than some doubled NPCs).
 * Rethan Manor Bunker by Iamthey – Works fine, including with both the above. However, it involves way too much walking down multiple very long corridors to be any practical use. This could be re-modded to eliminate that problem. It also includes Ordinators as guards, which is lore-incorrect (and might even get you attacked, depending on your relationship with Ordinators by that point in the game); they should be Hlaalu Guards. If you want this mod, you can fix this by using the Console to  these Ordinators and   some generic Hlaalu replacements.

Indarys Manor (Redoran stronghold, Bal Isra)

 * [None tested yet.]

Tel Uvirith (Telvanni stronghold, Uvirith's Grave)

 * Uvirith Awakened 1.9999 by Team Uvirith (DopeHatMan, Vorwoda, Grumblepunk, et al.) and Marac –   This is an extension of Uvirith Inside, in turn a combination of Uvirith's Vault and Uvirith Unleashed. It has two known bugs (in the readme – advanced features that don't work), but they should not affect this as a stronghold mod.
 * Uvirith Revamped 4.3 by Magistrate –  This is an independent overhaul of Tel Uvirith, and will not be compatible with the above or any of its predecessors.

Hlaalo Manor, Balmora

 * Buyable Hlaalo Manor –, at least as a House Hlaalu player. This is to buy the Hlaal o Manor, the owner of which was murdered, after his murder is solved. Has nothing to do with the Hlaal u Stronghold at Odai Plateau. As the murder mystery quest is a House Hlaalu one, you may not be able to buy this without being in that Great House, or perhaps the lack of any such quest for non-Hlaalu players means there is no barrier to purchase; not tested yet in that regard.

Velas Manor, Mournhold

 * Velas Manor Complete by Veg – [Tester notes:  Due to the Velas Manor bug (you can break in there and interact with the senior Velas without triggering him to fight you, despite the death of his brother), I've been in there and mostly looted it, and didn't notice anything special about the place then, or after I did the fight and earned the house.  But I don't recall what it was like without this mod.  As I understand it, the mod is a combination of several previous mods to add stuff to this home and make it more useful.  The place still seems small and basic to me for a player home, and doesn't have anything obviously added by a mod, like an alchemy sorter. —&thinsp;Darklocq ☎ ¢ 01:44, 10 August 2017 (CEST)]

Player rooms added to vanilla buildings
If it just affects a vanilla indoor cell, it goes in this subsection.


 * Balmora Mages Guild Abode –, including with Balmora Expansion; adds a room for you in the guild, with a bed, alchemy sorter, and a big crystal that works like a healing shrine. : Several tables [in one test, at least] do not appear except as broken meshes (big "!" icons). These can be removed and replaced with vanilla ones in the Console (or replaced with ones from a furniture mod).
 * Fighters Guild Home –, including with Balmora Expansion; adds a room for you in the guild. The only problem encountered was that if you open the door to it and the door to the vanilla barracks room at the same time, the doors overlap, fuse, and become unusable.  This has no real consequences, though. If the doors, sticking out into the hall, get in your way too much, simply   one or both in the Console.

Player businesses

 * Balmora Council Club 1.0 by Princess Stomper – {[strong|Functional as a dwelling and a fast-travel mod; broken as a business and quest mod.}} The scripting (adapted from Thirsk Meadhall in Bloodmoon) to make it work as a money-generating business is not working in OpenMW (ordered supplies never arrive, so you can never collect profits). Most of its quest scripting is also malfunctional (which you can work around by looking up the Journal and NPC IDs in OpenMW-CS – there's some fun stuff like dealing with an imposter noble trying to assassinate you, and working out weird magical mysteries in the building). The primary value of this mod is companion-friendly travel to/from Mournhold, for which you never need to do anything with the Council Club at all; see entry in Fast travel section, below, for details.  Note that once you complete the vanilla "Bloodbath" quest or the Main Quest (either of which trigger this mod into doing what it does with the pub venue), the entire Balmora Council Club is actually replaced by an expanded version, so do not leave stuff (or companions) in the original pub. You cannot buy the place immediately, but have to have a high Reputation (how high is uncertain). Has a few other glitches, like missing textures on some chairs, and unopenable display cases (I've seen these same models in other mods, also unopenable, so it's a fault in the display case resources). Has an interesting feature of windows that you can look out of onto Balmora (this is a fetching illusion; you're actually looking at a large interior cell that's an uninhabited façade of some of the town – clever trick, and more mods should use it). The glitched furni can be disabled with the Console and replaced with chairs and cases/shelves from a furni mod.
 * Balmora Council Club Shelves by SwordForTheLord – Working, and adds more shelves and storage chests to Princess Stomper's mod, at the cost of some décor, like tapestries. If you won't use this as a player home, you don't need this add-on.

Merchants and items
Most mods that add items either as random loot or as randomly available in shops require leveled-list merging. Those that add items to shops without a random element may not need this, but not all of their ReadMes disclose that this is what they're doing. When in doubt, merge.

Note that any "new shop" mod will conflict with another mod that puts something in the same spot; you'll have to pick which one to use. A mod may also conflict with other mods in the general area if one or both of them affect landscape in the area. Even mods that only add an NPC vendor can sometimes conflict, e.g. by spawning the NPC inside another mod's wall. Yet another source of conflict is a mod expanding what item types a vendor sells; this must be done after all other mods that add items of vendor's usual sort to the vendor.

See also Balmora Expansion and Seyda Neen Complete, in the Major overhauls of vanilla locations section above; they add lots of shops and gear, among other things.

General merchants
This subsection is for added merchants who carry vanilla items (and perhaps some mod-added ones), and do not have cheaty amounts of gold (for which see the Hacks, testing tools, exploits, and cheats section).


 * Balmora Market 1.22 by ivegotabettername (cameronvsdwayne) –  on its own, and probably with many Balmora mods, but is incompatible with Balmora Expansion, since it puts vendor stalls and homes exactly where BE merchant shops are, on the eastern hill overlooking the city.  Aside from merchants, this mod adds 6 quests (not tested yet, mostly underneath Caldera, in a new sewer system) and a new creature.  Note: Not to be confused with similarly named mods, including those below, and more by Raye, Fra, and EchoFlame.  Due to landscape changes, it can conflict with house and other mods that use this area of Balmora.
 * Balmora Marketplace a.k.a. Marketplace Balmora 1.0 by Jonathan Wesley (Spirithawke) –  (including with Balmora Expansion). Adds several outdoor vendors (and stand-around customer NPCs) to the northeast of Balmora, near the river.  It makes sense that the low-rent part of town would have poorer merchants.  While these do mostly have low-end items, they have more daily money available than they probably should for that scenario, though none of them are cheat-level rich.  Some may object to the availability of Dwemer Boots of Flying here, but they are farcically heavy, and the vanilla game provides better Levitation items (including a free amulet from a Telvanni in exchange for nothing but going and asking some Ashlanders about trade goods), so it does not seem to be a big deal.  This mod will even work with Balmora Expansion if you get the load order right (covered above). There are several house mods that use the same spot this mod chooses for its fairly large merchant stalls, so of course it won't be compatible with those.  If you have frame-rate problems in Balmora, try using   in the Console on the customer NPCs (or Taunt/Frenzy and fight them), since they serve no purpose but local color.
 * Balmora Trader Market 1.0 by NinjaOcean –  (including with Balmora Expansion and seemingly without load-order particularities). Adds some outdoor waterfront vendors in the northeast of town. Does not conflict with Balmora Marketplace, but is right next to it.  BTM 's merchants are even poorer than those of B. Marketplace, with one exception ("Fleabag Jim" has a lot of money despite his name). With the two combined, you get a "Balmora Flea Market" effect.  Higher-level players will have no interest, but it may be helpful for lower-level ones looking to speed up their ability to sell off low-end loot (especially if you are not availing yourself of Creeper).  You can even use these mods early in the game and probably remove them later if you need to free up mod slots, or just don't want the framerate hit in the area any longer. BTM will be compatible with more house mods in this end of town, as its vendors are right at the edge of the water and take very little space compared to those of B. Marketplace.  Actually, there is one same-named Reguard vendor in both B. Trader Market and B. Marketplace, but in different spots, so they don't conflict.  This mod is not to be confused with Balmora Traders by Kingflare5.
 * Balmora Candle Shop IV 4.1 by Nathaniel "Wolfzen" Schrader –, though in one test, the vendor didn't sell anything, though the shop had (stealable) stuff in it. If used with Adul's Arsenal and/or Arcane Armature, their doorways partly conflict, but both remain functional. All these light sources can be found throughout the game already. Various furniture mods provide more lighting options like chandeliers and hanging lanterns.
 * Night Gallery 1.0 by Skullhunter – This is a shop (friendly to vampires) that sells various goth/evil stuff, like black canopy beds, excessive gothy ballroom gowns, coffins, tapestries, rugs, and so forth. Also has mini-mannequins in various races.  In one test, some mannequins showed up the wrong size and were not usable, and in another they are all frozen in combat mode and are hostile.  The beds also have an incorrect collision bounding box on at least one side, making them impractical except in the largest of player homes (the invisible barrier impedes your ability to use the room anywhere near that side of the bed).  Do read the ReadMe: You have to do something with a ring first before the mannequins will work at all.

Artifacts
This subsection is for unique, powerful enchanted items (of whatever sort) that are comparable to the provided by the vanilla game.

For changes to the stats, enchantments, or other properties of vanilla items, see the Combat and damage section. For purely visual changes to the appearance of items, see the Meshes and textures section.


 * Extra Artifacts 2.1 by Chris (cmac) -  Adds twelve powerful but not excessive new artifacts, often with back-stories, that are comparable to those offered in the vanilla game.  They generally require quests, intense combat, and/or theft to obtain them. [Tester's note: In three months of play, I only ran across about half of them. —&thinsp;Darklocq ☎ ¢ 16:50, 21 July 2017 (CEST)]
 * The Forgotten Shields - Artifacts 1.3 by Painkiller_Rider -  Adds three powerful magical shields (and a dagger), generally difficult to obtain. Probably more importantly, it enhances the stats, enchantments, and/or appearance of ten of the vanilla Artifact shields (and semi-Artifact ones, like the non-unique Saint's Shield).  Mod includes versions with and without glowing effects.  The graphics work is elaborate in many cases, and based sometimes on historical sources.
 * Loot Well Urned: Ancestral Tomb Loot Enhancement 1.1 by pseunomix –  because it's extremely cheaty: it adds a special urn containing a powerful Artifact to each of over 120 ancestral tombs. Also adds a random chance of vanilla urns containing more than Grave Dust; see Grave Goods in the Spawning section for a mod that does only that.
 * The Lost Armor of St. Nerevar – See entry in Armor and weapons section below; the Artifact version is optional.
 * Snow Prince Enhanced 3.0 by Midgetalien – Changes the Snow Prince's gear to be worth having and to match the lore description.
 * Item Patchwork 1.1 by mjr162006 –  Fixes up several artifacts to have enchantments that are more sensible, which better match the lore descriptions, and/or to just look better, with unique meshes.  Also adds a couple that Bethesda included in the CS but left out of the final game.  A second release was planned, to upgrade more artifacts, but either was not completed or has been lost with the demise of various mod sites. This should probably load early, so that any mods that totally overhaul a character or item (e.g. Umbra and his gear) will replace what this mod is doing in that particular instance.
 * Umbra mods: Several mods of the Orc warrior Umbra not only upgrade his combat ability to match the legendary warrior status he's supposed to have, but also enhance his gear.
 * Mighty Umbra –  Makes him tougher, and gives him an enchanted bow as well as his sword.

Armor and weapons
May also include clothes and misc. items sometimes, and may have quests, but focused on combat gear.

Armor mesh conflicts: See "Clothing conflicts" notes in the Clothing section, which also apply to armor, though less frequently.

Stat and enchant values: The most common problems with armor and weapon mods are a) excessive damage-to-weight ratio for weapons, b) excessive protection-to-weight ratio for armor, c) stats that vastly exceed anything provided in the vanilla game at all, d) especially excessively high enchantment value. To determine if a mod is cheaty, look up the stats of the closest corresponding or  at TESW. Clothing mods often err in the other direction, giving enchant values that are too low for the price of the item, rendering it mostly useless.

For risqué "lingerie armor", see the Racy section (and for desexualizing mods, see Increased modesty).

For changes to the stats, enchantments, or other properties of vanilla items, see the Combat and damage section.

For purely visual changes to the appearance of items, see the Meshes and textures section.


 * Carnithus' Armamentarium, in several variants all labeled "1.0", by Carnithus –  Loads of stuff with a Daedric and vampire flair. Most of it is pre-Better Bodies, but will still work with that installed. This is high-end stuff with unbalancing potential if you use it early; much of it is stealable (about half a mil worth); and the custom guards might beat you or be fun to beat. If you want visually distinct alternatives to the stock Daedric gear, and have already earned a bunch of stock stuff, Carnithus' (in one mod file or another) is definitely the shop you want. Lore-friendly? Kinda not. It has a very goth, industrial, and black metal subculture feel to it.  Some will object to the shop providing purchasable Daedric and equivalent gear, but as long as your Corprus is already cured, you can get a full set for free in the vanilla game just for beating one Telvanni wizard who is tough but not  tough.
 * In the version included in Balmora Expansion (see entry in the Major overhauls of vanilla places section: You can't even get to it unless fairly high-level, since the two entrances in town and the secret one out of town are well-guarded inside by the critters that respawn. There's a Goblin-killing quest (for a modest underground home), but there's a minor bug; Carnithus (the NPC) is said to be who to talk to for the quest, but he just responds with the same "Carnithus has offered a bounty" dialogue as the others. The trick is to bring him back the skull of the Goblin leader in the sewers. There are definitely a lot of Goblins in the area, and this is good training for Mournhold.  There are also respawning Skeleton Champions, Bonelords, Vampires, Durzogs, etc. Another minor bug is a non-working door to a secret second basement, but nothing is going on in that room; may be abandoned work-in-progress. Unknown if any of that applies to the stand-alone version. The BE version is combined with the Dark Club mod, and some of these features may be exclusive to that combination: One of the vendors sells blood potions that are pretty cheap for the amount of Restore Health and Fortify Strength that they perform.  Another potion available in the area gives powerful Telekinesis (if you overcome its Drain Endurance knocking you down), and can be used as an aid to looting Carnithus' own shop.  The nightclub down here is full of nekkid people (or barely dressed, depending on which Better Bodies you have), has someone who'll make you a Vampire of your chosen clan, and features a cameo appearance by a key NPC.
 * If you are not running Balmora Expansion, you have two choices:
 * The rereleased "Complete" version with the additional gear from the add-ons; it is located outdoors in Molag Amur, and  have no dependencies, other than that a few items require Better Bodies (most do not).
 * The original Mournhold location ( version – or  version  without Bloodmoon, but requires resources from the original archive) plus the later Add-on 1  and Add-on 2.
 * Gothic Attire Complete 1.1 by Qarl and Cenobite – This tour de force of an armor and clothing mod combines the female items from Qarl's Gothic Attire, Gothic Attire 2, The Underground, and The Underground 2 into a very elaborate shop by Cenobite. Some is "evil armor" (and overlaps with some items in Carnithus' Armamentarium, presumably Qarl's contributions to that mod), while other items lingerie-ish, though some is practical as outerwear (corsets/bodices that go well with vanilla skirts, etc., and some boots). Most is highly enchantable, and prices are very high (make up the difference by selling off unneeded loot from Daedric ruin raids after you buy - the vendor buys armor, clothing, and weapons). Most of the practical, non-skimpy armor is also usable by male characters.  GA and GA2 also included some trivial armor items not included here, like "a beer mug set up as a shield". See entry in Clothing section for info on the non-armor material in this mod.
 * Bob's Armory (I) a.k.a. Bob the Visigoth's Armory 1.0 by Mr. Dave –, in various forms, as an armor and clothes mod (for this as a house mod, see the Player homes and businesses section). This legendary mod, which is said to have inspired all the other mods like it, is a substantial collection of cost-free, all-female, Better Bodies wearables, mostly lingerie-style though there are some more practical items that combine well with other gear. It is all rather high-end as protection, so it's too much for new characters. (Yet it all has very low enchantability, making it of no use to high-level ones.  Someone badly needs to re-do this.) It's obviously a cheat to just dig into these free wares. The idea is to use them as visual replacements for equivalent items you have already earned in-game. It's one collection of stuff re-implemented as Light, Medium, and Heavy armor class (plus, in one version, non-armor clothing) in one (or four) high-capacity closets. The clothing-only versions were added later (accessible via ). Good thing, too, because you can build some really great outfits by layering practical clothing under exposure-oriented armor. A nice touch in BA is that some of the items are kind of "butch", like armored pants (poleyns/quisses); it's not all dresses and chainmail bikinis. Some of the stockings included (as boots and/or greaves) are about the best you'll find in any mod and end up being something you'll use over and over for different outfits (hint: clone them with   in the console, for companions, since the mod only comes with one of each item).  Some of the items, like the attempts at fishnet tops, are visually poor.  A Pack Guar mod is useful for moving all the items to another player home, and even with one it will take several trips.  Some of the boots included come in both plausible and tiny foot sizes, depending on what you like. None of them are oversized "anime feet"; for that, see Heaven's Lookout (and some vanilla boots, especially High Soft Boots and Orcish). Only the original version of BA is compatible with the house mod addons for it.
 * Bob's Armory Icons 1,0 by Bryss Phoenix –  and includes a new version of BA that replaces the original. If your interest in BA is as a clothing mod rather than a house mod, you will definitely want this version, since the base mod comes with no custom item icons or recognizable item names.  These icons are not all that accurate, but they're close enough to help. This is also the version that adds the clothing-only variants, and splits the collection into four closets instead of one.
 * Shelves for Bob's Armory 1.0 by theGreatNothing – ; it adds another copy of all the armor (with original names and no custom icons), laid out on shelves (which you can later use as house-mod shelving). Does not work with the Bob's Armory Icons version.
 * Bob's Armory Wardrobe 1.0 by Bryss Phoenix & Fliggerty –   Creates a difficult-to-find "magical place" of model mannequins to make combining BA items into outfits easier, and an option to buy them, for those who feel getting the whole pile for free is cheaty.  It's unclear why this wasn't just made a doorway off of the armory itself.  At any rate, it likely only works with the original version.
 * Bob's Armory II (a.k.a. Bob's Armory 2) 1.0 by Mr. Dave –   This is a shop, not a house mod, and includes lots of historical arms and armor, mostly Mr. Dave's work for MCA 5.0 Medieval Armory. They are mostly high-end, designed as alternatives to use after earning top-flight vanilla gear. If you are a noob and use moneymaking or theft tricks to get this gear early in the game, it will unbalance your play.  Also includes some decorative stuff like [non-functional] mortars and trebuchets for your keep.  Some just-clothes items are also included, in the same "mostly lingerie" vein as the original Bob's Armory.  A potentially fun aspect of BA II is it is populated by almost every guard type in the game, plus some custom guards, and some of them are serious badasses.  You can test your mettle without Bounty consequences by using Taunt or a strong Frenzy Humanoid on each in turn and see whether you can beat them.  Also, this place is very lootable, by using Telekinesis and Chameleon; you can get a lot of gear for free this way.  Some of the textures in this are simplistic, and look a bit cartoonish (e.g. rather flat grey metal textures on helms).
 * Elvenwear Expansion 1.0 by Mr. Dave – Adds all the work Mr. Dave did for Drow City Denizens to the Bob's Armory 2 shop (or optionally to a shipwreck location for those without the shop mod). Items range from practical to lingerie-ish or dresses in form, are all-female, and mostly armor. [No public download link is presently known.]
 * Armored Robes 1.3 – These equip as cuirasses and just look robe-ish.  They are nice but low-end visual alternatives to stock gear for Battlemage/Spellsword types, early in the game.  (Maybe there are also badass Daedric versions and the like somewhere, but tester has not encountered any yet, just robe-looking equivalents of things like Bonemold and Imperial Chain.)  The items are uncommon, and you have to look around in many shops to find them, including an outdoor seller in Mournhold, an Imperial armorer in one of the forts, and armorers in Great House centers.
 * Open-face Iron Helm –  Helpful for telling your companions apart early in the game, but well ... it's Iron, and who wants to use that beyond level 1, if at all? Other mods add open-faced versions of more helms.
 * Bug Shield 1.0 –, and useful/plausible for lower-level characters to get a light shield that isn't a waste of time. You can now actually use those decorative insect-carapace shields you see everywhere in Ashlander camps (though those pre-placed vanilla items are not converted; you have to buy these mod shields).
 * Wooden Shields 1.0 – Same as for Bug Shield, but slightly higher armor value, and Medium class.  The colorful ones go good with various outfits. They're appropriate for medium-low to medium level characters.
 * Armored Dresses 0.2 by Chascoda – : the NPC vendor shows up nude, the items are broken, and her shack, with a mis-coded door, cannot be exited, even with Intervention. Damned shame, since several of them looked really cool.  One wishes that Seyda Neen BB Market had fixed and included these.  They didn't even work right when obtained via the Console.
 * Drow Priestess Armor 1.1 – This is low-end "bikini armor" for new-ish characters, and easily obtained .  Not the most impressive mesh and texture work, but goes well with a game that is mostly vanilla (i.e. kind of cartoonish, 2002 graphics). This mod is one of many incorporated into Bitter Coast Compilation.
 * 6th House Gondolier Helms Plus –  Adds a vendor outside in Vivec with gondolier/samurai/jingasa helms in various styles.  The mesh/texture set of one or two of them are broken in OpenMW, including the most desirable one (Ebony). At any rate, the range and price seem balanced; some are low-end and cheap, for new characters, with more expensive ones being better helms.  You might like these for companions as they are open-faced, colorful, and have a fun Asian flair (Europeans historically used "cymbal" helms like this, too, in various armies, though most people don't know that).  As the title suggests, there's a black-and-red one, and it also includes Morag Tong (has a weird goggle thing), two Dwemer ones (based on centurion parts), purple, etc., plus the original that the Vivec boaters use.  Realistically, they are not as good protection as full helms of comparable materials.
 * Laura Craft Leopard Outfit a.k.a. LC Leopard Outfit 1.1 by Emma – Just adds her bright gold and leopard-spots Domina outfit (as armor and as clothing, with additional pieces not in the original Laura Craft Romance mod) to a crate you can take from. It's low-end gear, so no big deal. It's also based on the pre-Better Bodies meshes of the official LeFemm Armor add-on; some pieces don't work well on BB characters.
 * Dagoth, Black Netch, and Red Dragon Armors by Silver Sorrow – Adds several dark-at-heart armors and weapons (not buyable) to the game, and inserts fairly tough NPC mercenaries with them into various Main Quest locations, mostly guarding high-ranking Ash Vampires (Dagoths), plus notes and various other items, new NPC responses, etc. The mercs make taking out some "boss monsters" harder. You have the option of installing a version where the mercs don't attack you on sight, and you can chat with them for their backstories and world-weary responses to routine questions, and fight them for their gear after the fact, but it's more fun to just make them hostile so the dungeons are more challenging (if you want the dialogue, too, cast Calm Humanoid and talk to them, then resume the fight; be sporting and wait for the spell to wear off).  Some of the armor pieces are findable in misc. locations, which can also be fun .  An included readme has walkthroughs/spoilers. I would recommend perusing it if you are the type to get to level 15 before doing any serious Main Quest stuff; get the lower-end items while they're still of use to you. But ignore that documentation otherwise, since the main quest will put you in the harm's way of these characters in due course.  The gear is nice-looking, and slightly better than the stock gear it's based on. You have to work for it, so this seems to be a balanced mod.  The notes and dialogue are funny, the clues take some work to figure out, and considerable effort was made to give these characters backstories that make sense in the context. Why are they working for Dagoth Ur?  How do they relate to each other? Etc. The only problem so far is very minor; the cave domicile of one merc pair is overly bright for the milieu.  OpenMW seems to frequently have lighting problems, with areas either much lighter or much darker than intended.
 * Full Glass Armor by Hellwolve – Adds some Glass Gauntlets as an alternative to the Bracers, and a Glass Full Helm as an alternative to the Helmet. Buyable from the smith at Ghostgate's Tower of Dawn.  The items might not appear unless loaded before another mod that adds stuff to this vendor, and a leveled-list merge is performed.
 * New Imperial Helms 1.0 by grVulture – Works. Adds 3 helm variants for Imperial forces (buyable if you look around). The mesh and texture work is early – looks cartoonish, and is best in a game not heavily graphics-enhanced.
 * Armor Hunters 1.5 – . Adds several new armors which seem balanced at first (and are mostly re-skins of existing ones, with different stats): Bronze (Medium, base Armor Rating 35), Chaos (Medium, AR 55), Gold (Heavy, AR 80, and different from Bethesda's LeFemme Gold Armor), Forest (Light, AR 24), Lava (Heavy, AR 70), Ocean (Light, AR 10), Rune (Medium, AR 50), Rusty (Heavy, AR 12), Stone (Heavy, AR 45), and Shadow Mail (Medium, AR 70). Of these, only Chaos includes a shield. Chaos has no greaves, Rune has no helm, Gold is cuirass and pauldrons only, Forest is Helm only. The catch is that many of them have grossly excessive enchantment values (enough for "god mode" invincibility); so, just don't enchant them past (or much past) the limits of comparable vanilla armor (which you can look up ). The mod adds at least one shop, in Dagon Fell (Welgar's), but distributes some of the goods to some other shops' leveled lists, and puts pieces of it in random loot leveled lists (a leveled-list merge is needed; if you don't do one, you'll keep getting the same few items over and over again). Adds a small dungeon, Zandores, in . The higher-end items are rare. The shop is liable to conflict with some other mods of Dagon Fell (and mostly blocks the doorway to the chapel added in the area by the Imperial Chapels mod, including the version incorporated into Bitter Coast Compilation). The mod also adds buyable display stands of various sizes and shapes to several merchants, some black clothes (with somewhat too-high enchantment value), and a new ingredient (Coal, from an outdoor miner on the east side of Balmora). Also adds two creatures ("Strange Beast" and a custom Daedroth), 18 NPCs (including some tough enemies, and some "Dead Adventurer"-type container corpses), plus several weapons (Bronze Claymore and Scimitar; Gold Claymore, Longsword, and Mace; Powered Dwemer Axe; Dragon Bite two-handed sword; and Rune Bow – all have balanced weight-to-damage ratios, but most also have excessive enchantment values). Note: A ver. 1.7 was produced, but does not seem to be available from any of the mod archives; it was removed from Morrowind Mod History for some reason.
 * Arsenal, with Arcane Armature add-on by Adul –, including with Balmora Expansion. The main one provides various historical weapons, shields, etc., with rather low-end stats, so best enjoyed early in the game. The Arcane addon (new room, same building) has weirder stuff, like a weather-changing rod (gives you spells to change weather, and they take about 1–2 minutes to do so), a giant and ridiculous gargoyle helm, and über-enchanted helm, strange gauntlets that look like 1950s sci-fi robot hands, high-end Medium-class boots (they are supposed to have thunder sound effects, but do not in OpenMW) and other enchanted or enchantable items (one, a funky pair of metal wings, does not render properly in OpenMW; another, an item that conjures an Absorb Magicka effect rather like Bound gear, is effectively useless in OpenMW because its particle animation makes a mess of the screen).  Both vendors are in one shop, Adul's Mart, which is a shack and looks very out-of-place in Balmora. Its doorway partly clashes with that of Balmora Candle Shop, but both remain functional. One cool thing about Arsenal is some special gear for Khajiit, including leggings (boots without feet; dunno if they work on Argonians), and a Morag Tong-ish goggle helmet (Khajiit-only).  The Arsenal has two customizable items (a mid-grade sword you can convert from two- to one-handed, for a reduction in stats, and an Masai-style shield to which can be attached spears.  Has some ninja-ish and Wolverine-ish stuff, too, plus elegant "combat hand-fans", but they are rather poor weapons and armor. Each mod can actually be run separately, but both depend on a shared .esp file, so there are three mod files in total.  Some mods, such as Bitter Coast Compilation, include some of this gear as resources, in other shops. If used with the stand-alone version of Dave's Furniture Shop, the Adul shop must load before the Dave one, or a landscape fracture results.
 * The Hidden Pathway 2.0 by Star Boi –, aside from a few texture glitches. Adds three multi-level shops outside Sadrith Mora with interesting items that often have particle animation effects. Unfortunately, many are extremely cheaty, having very high enchant values and often super-extended ranges (e.g. staves that can be used as ranged attacks from about 50 feet away). There are also wearable items, jewelry (again with truly excessive enchant values), decorative trinkets, and off-hand (a.k.a. defensive or dual-wield) weapons, which look like weapons, but equip as shields.
 * Magical Goods 1.0 by Star Boi – Same idea as The Hidden Pathway, just different stuff and a vendor in Vivec, Foreign Quarter, Upper Waistworks.  Since THP above works, this probably does too, with similarly unbalancing items.
 * Magical Goods Addon: Epic Encounters a.k.a. MG Epic Addon 1.0 – More of the same kind of stuff as THP and MG above; levitating shop is outside Vivec, Telvanni canton. Since THP above works, this probably does too, with similarly unbalancing items.
 * Chainmail Dress by Shan – Also included in Seyda Neen BB Market. Adds an NPC vendor with an armored dress for sale. The item is rather gothic and doesn't use a very realistic texture, but it goes well with a more vanilla-textured (i.e., kind of cartoony) game. This is fairly low-end gear, so enjoy it early.
 * Suran Archery Tradehouse 2.0 by WizBang – Shop appears, but numerous meshes and textures of the shop and of the items (bows, arrows, and quivers) are broken and just show up day-glow pink or as big "!" markers.  Might be worth testing this mod by itself and then adding more later to see if this is some kind of mod conflict. Also conflicts slightly with Ashlander Transports (not to be confused with Ashlanders Transport); the shop overlaps where the transport guy and his guars are. Most of them move, but one may get stuck in a wall, one may end up downhill, etc.  This can be fixed in the Console with   on the displaced guars.
 * Ash Glass 1.0 by T'nilc (T_nilc) –  Adds a dark red version of Glass weapons and armor to the smithy in Caldera.  Same stats as the original items. This is handy for telling apart two companions who favor Light-class armor. The mod may or may not work depending on load order with other mods.
 * ''Ash Glass Redux 1.0 by T'nilc (T_nilc) – ; some of the NIFs are named incorrectly, and it would take a modder to fix it.
 * Breton Arms – as part of Balmora Expansion (separate version not tested yet) – In one test with BE, the merchant had no inventory (a problem also affecting the nearby potted plant seller included in BE and the Balmora Candle Shop mod, but only sometimes). In later tests, it worked fine.  The vendor only has one of each new item, e.g. Gold Cuirass or the custom and slightly better Ebony. So, you and a companion can't have the same gear from this merchant.  The stuff adapts to female or male body, though.  The armor work is by Jeremy McGuinn, variants of what he put out in his Knights of Tamriel mod series. It all appears to be pre-Better Bodies work, but mostly looks okay with that installed, other than the greaves can look awkward. There are some trivial lore-unfriendly items in the shop, including bottles of Guinness.
 * Open Daedric Helmet 1.0 – An open-faced Daedric helm you can fight for; great for companions, to help tell them apart. Does not have a custom icon.  Trivial bug: The "texture" directory extracted from the archive must be renamed "textures".  You must install this mod before clearing out the Daedric shrine of Bal Ur, just north of Suran (or you'll have to give yourself the item with the Console).
 * Bow Pack 1.0 – . Adds a vendor of high-end bows and crossbows in fanciful colors to the Vivec FQ Canalworks. A bit cheaty given the number, stats, and prices.
 * Elven Armor, with female update and fix, by TG – . Armor to fight for in Indoranyon, east of the Zainab camp.
 * Aedric Armour Collection 0.1.5 by Sheikizza Icemane – as integrated into various other mods like Balmora Expansion.  The original archive is a modders' resource, though the items can be added via the Console for testing (the ReadMe gives the item IDs). The blue and silver armor has a "good guys" look to it, a nice break from all the "evil armor" mods. It is a bit better than Glass armor.
 * Daedric Armour Collection 0.1.0 by Sheikizza Icemane – ; another modders' resource, at least some of which (e.g. the Daedrascale Helm) is used in other mods, and working in them. Items in the original archive must be added with the Console for testing; a text file gives their item IDs. The set includes new helms (3), boots (2), bracers (1), cuirasses (5, including skimpy female ones for specific races, and a non-skimpy female one, male-specific one, and two unisex), gauntlets (2), greaves (3, including skimpy, again race-specific), and pauldrons (4). One cuirass and greaves set (Daedric Tunic and Leggings), in the Imperial version, is scripted to change to match the PC's race (but will not do so for companions). The later scripting included in Daedric Priestess Outfit, Companion Support and All Races Ver.'' shows how to apply this technique to NPCs. (The idea is to show skin between armor parts, even if the character is actually wearing something else like a shirt and pants. So, it could also be adapted to Hurdy Gurdy's robes).
 * The Lost Armor of St. Nerevar a.k.a. Nerevar Armor 3.0 by Aragon, Enlightened Daedroth, and Soulshade  –  This is one of several mods that puts into the game the modders' resource set of Indoril Nerevar's armor, developed by Enlightened Daedroth and (added helms) Soulshade .  It is designed as an ancient form of House Indoril armor (best known to Morrowind players as Ordinator gear).  It is Medium class, with open and closed helmets, and is better than the Ordinator stuff; this is one of various mods that attempt to rectify the lack of any high-end Medium armor in the game. Also includes a Light-class Nerevar's Mail, plus a mace and a two-handed sword.  Intended for high-level characters (it will be unbalancing for noobs). Suggestion: Don't consider yourself worthy to get it until you've become the Nerevarine or are well on the way to it.  Aragon's mod puts the armor in a "secret" location which you are fairly likely to run into on your own (. To get there via quest, talk to Daynillo Lleran in Holamayan Monastery about "latest rumors". This place is a lost Dunmer stronghold, without a working propylon chamber. It can be used as a very small player home after it is found; most of it is underwater and unusable, but Nerever's chamber is dry, and you get a teleport item to bring you back to it.  This version of the armor is unenchanted and highly enchantable; there's also a quest to "bless" it and turn it into Artifact-level gear with some pre-determined strong effects. The ReadMe lists item IDs, for testers.   There's a big landscape fracture underwater, and one of the lost stronghold's rooms is actually buried by the slope of a rising island (you can get into it by using   in the Console to clip through the land and find the door; but there's nothing inside that room worth bothering with, just a Dreugh).  It is possible this mod was actually intended to be run without the official expansion it conflicts a little bit with, and that the locations conflict entirely by accident; one might not even notice the landscape rift unless swimming to the location the hard way. Cleaning the mod of any GMSTs and dirty references, with an MS Windows tools for this purpose, may also fix it.
 * Nerevar Armor Texture Update – A pluginless texture replacer to increase the detail; should work with any implementation of Enlightened Daedroth and Soulshade's Nerevar armor (including Greevar's, below), as long as the texture names are the same.
 * The Tomb of St. Nerevar 1.0 by Greevar, Enlightened Daedroth, and Soulshade  –  This is another insertion of Nerevar armor resources into the game world, this time in an inland tomb (get quest info in the Cavern of the Incarnate during the Main Quest), and in an already-enchanted state.  The archive linked to purports to contain a .esp cleaned of dirty references and GMSTs.
 * Indoril Elite Armour (Black and Silver) a.k.a. Black Indoril Elite Armour 1.7 by VagabondAngel –   Adds Indoril armor in a silvery hue.  Talk to an NPC in  to get clues about how to get it, scattered all over Vvardenfell.  Includes an open-faced helm (combination of Ordinator and Dragonscale helm resources). The armor is Medium class, both better and heavier than standard Ordinator armor. No info in the ReadMe on whether it is scripted to trigger Ordinator aggression. If it does not, it could be seen as a bit of a lore fix – in the wider TES scheme of things, it doesn't make sense that no one in all of Morrowind has gear of any kind from House Indoril (who are not even directly present in the Morrowind game at all) other than Ordinators. There would at least be a black market for some of their stuff, if not open trade, and it should consist or more than the exact same handful of items.
 * Indoril WarMaster Armour and Alhanna Scimitar v1.1 by VagabondAngel –  Another Indoril armor variant, with an open-faced helm. Looks like Heavy-class armor, and silvery in appearance. Found (or quest for it starts) in ; may also add some kind of tower in which to fight.
 * Assassin's Leather 1.0 by Redguard_Slayer (SLA) – – Adds one set of light armor (and a clothing version); NPC assassin in  has them.  The description suggests this is yet more impractical "lingerie armor".
 * Custom Armors 1.1 by Sendai45  –  – Mods the Mournhold crafting armorer Bols Indalen so that he does in fact make  armor for you, as promised, instead of the same stock stuff.  The entire problem with Indalen was that by the time you could ever gather enough Raw Ebony, Glass, or Adamantium to have him make any pseudo-custom gear for you, you almost certainly already had the armor from other sources.  Now he makes stuff that is slightly better than stock gear (115% protection, 133% max condition, and 112.5% enchantment value), and will also do the shields, giving you an incentive to actually bother with him and with the ores (which is a lot of work).
 * Due to there often being insufficient Adamantium Ore for even a single custom armor piece in the original game (other than the Xbox version), you will probably also want the Sufficient Adamantium mod, in the Ingredients, plants, alchemy, and crafting stuff section.
 * Everything works except that if you try to buy an Adamantium Right Pauldron from him, he will not give it to you, and he's stuck unable to ever craft anything again. The fix is to have him craft whatever else you want, and for that item, just give it to yourself in the Console with , then drop a stack of 7 Adamantium Ore and another of 500 septims on the ground and do   on them, to pay for the item. Best to save before crafting with him, just in case.
 * This mod includes both of Dongle's Adamantium Shield mods (round and tower), and obviates the Tribunal Crafting Additions mod by Alaisiagae & Jac (it just adds shields to his crafting list), so should not be run with any of those at the same time.
 * Jingasa Hats and Helms a.k.a. Jingasa Hats and Helmets 01b by Draconis – Adds jingasa (samurai/gondolier) helmets in various materials. A new shop in Dagon Fell sells some pre-enchanted ones, and more are around the game world, worn by a variety of new NPCs (mostly fairly badass, often with unique enchanted weapons).  Unenchanted ones are available at vanilla shops in major settlements. The helmets are mostly pretty low-end as armor. The enchanted ones are powerful but not über; they often provide a +10 Constant Effect of one or more sorts, about comparable with the Mentor's Ring and other vanilla prizes. Most of the NPCs are non-hostile, so it's up to you if you want to try to murder them for gear. The ReadMe gives some hints on where to find hostile ones. The enchantments are quite varied, and are not all combat related (e.g. some are for mages and thieves, and there's even one for with a Fortify Personality and Speechcraft effect).  These items are especially great for companions, since they're "good enough" as armor for the most part, provide some buffs that are helpful, and don't block their faces. They're also light-weight enough to carry several of the special ones to use as needed (e.g. to buff Sneak or a particular magic school), especially if you are not a Heavy-class armor user already loaded down.
 * Anjurin Chest 1.0 by BadKarma –  A new vendor of Better Bodies, female-only (mostly impractical) armor in Hodlismod's shop in Caldera.
 * Clothiers of Vvardenfell [see entry in Clothing section] – Mostly Better Bodies clothing, but also adds three NPCs with new armor to buy (or in one case, fight for), mostly female, and ranging from full plate armor to skimpy but non-nude.
 * Macha - Ornate Katana 1.0 by VagabondAngel –  Adds a good-looking sword, obtained by quest. No problems were found.

Clothing
Might also include some armor and misc. items, and may have quests, but focused on non-armor clothing.

For risqué stuff, see the Racy section (and for the opposite, see Increased modesty). For purely visual changes to the appearance of items, see the Meshes and textures section.

Enchant values: The most common problem with clothing mods is a utility one; they typically have very expensive clothing (in the thousands of gold per item) but almost no enchantability because the modder forgot to do that part and left it at the default of 10 for most Common clothing items. Mods with this problem verge on useless, because newbie characters cannot afford the items, and non-newbies who can will not want to rely on them since they'll already being doing enchantments. Top-quality shirts (and anything equipping as them, e.g. dresses, corsets), skirts, and pants should enchant to 60 points; robes, belts and shoes (and non-armor boots) to 40; gloves to 20 each; rings to 60 each; and amulets to 120. Weapon and armor modders often err in the other direction, giving enchant values that exceed what the weight class of the item is supposed to be capable of.

Clothing conflicts: To paraphrase an explanation by Westly in a readme, mod clothing (especially for Better Bodies) may use unconventional body-part slots (like a shirt that technically equips on the ankle, or a necklace or wings the game thinks is a left pauldron), in order to apply alpha-channel (transparency or translucency) effects and whatnot to the "real" area the item pertains to (e.g. the torso). A side effect of this is that another item (usually a vanilla one) that occupies the same slot "for real" may visually go missing, cause the body part to go missing, interfere with the mod item (maybe make it go missing), or otherwise conflict. The upshot is that not all clothing items are compatible with other clothing items, and you may have to mix and match a lot to get an outfit that works. Sometimes a combination will work or not work depending on the order in which the items are equipped. A "wardrobe malfunction" effect can also result, e.g. suddenly becoming topless after putting on a different pair of boots (or even in combat, becoming part-naked when fighting, only to have clothes reappear after combat). Items that only have a male or female mesh may disappear partially or entirely when used on the wrong gender, or even cause a substantial part of the body to disappear (this may happen to merchants to whom you sell these items, if they equip them). Other types of conflict can be caused by two overlapping items with an alpha channel in the same place (typically causes flickering), and by clothing items of different sorts having colliding meshes (flickering again, or one thing clipping with another and showing through it, or one making the other invisible). All these caveats can also apply to armor items, not just non-armor clothing. Finally, remember that robes are intended to cover everything; anything coded as a robe, even if it looks like a fur loincloth, may completely hide armor and clothing underneath it. This is often intentional, as with Hurdy Gurdy's female robe series which look like thin, tight dresses, and are so you can have a witchy-looking mage who is armored, for the game mechanics of it, but still appears visually as someone in a sorceress dress. You can roleplay-rationalize this as a form of Illusion magic, if you like; after all, this is a magical game world.


 * Gothic Attire Complete 1.1 by Qarl and Cenobite – [See main entry in the Weapons and armor section.] The non-armor items in this mod are numerous, almost entirely for female characters, and range from dresses, shirts, pants, and (one of the few unisex items) trenchcoats, most of it with Exquisite-level enchantability. If you want Qarl's male non-armor clothing items, you need The Underground 2, which is an elaborate vampire-themed quest mod. Installing it should not cause problems with GAC also installed, but this has not been tested (and one would load GAC last, since it likely has improvements for a few female items). GAC is very useful for a few items, especially bras and panties that equip as Exquisite-level shirts and pants, and thus can be used invisibly with most minimal-size but high-end "armor" (bellydancer outfits with an armor rating, etc.)  Much of the outright gothic stuff looks very out-of-place in Morrowind, but women who want to dress their PC the way they dress when they go out to clubs will be thrilled; some of this looks exactly like classic Hot Topic gothwear.
 * Cali Starstone Outpost by Calislahn – in two ways: About 3/4 of the items have broken meshes/textures, such that the character's body is visible through highlights on the clothing models (I think this is a clash between Better Bodies and clothes that pre-date it). The armorer guy in the basement has a dialogue loop that locks up the game (if you don't know and remember the Console command , the only escape is to quit the game application).
 * Dresses for Better Bodies v2 (a.k.a. Silver's Dresses) 0.1 by Silver – (the NPC vendor never appears). A functional variant is integrated into Seyda Neen BB Market. If you have the stand-alone mod, you can Console yourself the dresses (they are IDs 0dress01 through 0dress04 ).  The version numbering is confusing; the "v2" is part of the title, indicating the second in a series (the first seems to be lost, with the demise of various mod sites); the actual version number of the .esp is 0.1.
 * Morrowind Kilts 1.0 by dg (Horatio) –  Only Milie Hastien in Balmora carries these kilts, and this mod must load before any mod that alters her significantly (especially one that allows her to sell armor as well as clothes); even then, other Hastien mods may make these items fail to appear in the shop and to only be obtainable via console. If they appear, buy them all immediately, as they may disappear from her shop on a second visit. The Cashmere versions are Exquisite-quality and highly enchantable (same as Exquisite Skirt), the others are Common-quality. The textures are very bright and saturated.  This mod is sensitive to changes in your mod load in other ways, e.g. the kilt texture may not load, being replaced by the hot-pink "no texture file" color. If this happens, go through a save-cleaning routine (in particular, leave the glitched item in another cell).   As of ver. 0.42, OpenMW logs show errors about the .bmp format of the texture files. You may have to convert them to TARGA graphics, with the .tga extension.  The item IDs for the higher-quality kilts are: dg_Cash_Bruce_kilt, dg_Cash_Duncan_kilt , dg_Cash_Campbell_kilt , dg_Cash_Fraser_kilt , and dg_Cash_MacDuff_kilt.
 * Ultimate Kilts 1.0 by Silaria – Seems to be working, but the items don't live up to the name, as they have low enchanting capability. These are less garish than the dg/Horatio ones, come in more variety, and are found at more vendors.  Both of these kilt mods use the stock skirt mesh, which isn't quite right for a kilt (and they don't have sporrans), but oh well.
 * Kilts note 1: If you want more complete kilt outfits with shoulder plaids, ghillie brogue shoes, socks with tartan flashes, and kilts with kilt pins (but missing the sporrans, which no real Scot would leave out), you can nab three off of NPCs in Kat's Kastle (see below); these appear to be the closest to complete Highland attire in any mod, though they have poor enchanting value. These have also appeared here and there in other mods, so are coming from a presently unidentified modder's resource (which may be lost with the demise of so many mod sites).
 * Kilts note 2: Hopefully someone will combine the stabler, more available, and less garish Silaria mod with the enchantability of the dg version. It would also be appropriate (with regard to both mods) to replace the included tartans with all-new ones that are not real-world clan/family/regiment tartans, as a lore-friendliness measure (it doesn't make sense that people in an alternate fantasy universe are wearing Clan Campbell, Royal Stewart, or Black Watch kilts). Some further mesh and texture work is needed: Use very high-res images, and adjust them so that the tartan pattern is not distorted so bad by the flare of the kilt; make the mesh shorter, but higher-waisted with a big belt (kilts are belted across the navel, and end at the center of the kneecap), and add a sporran (the pouch that hangs in front of the groin, used because kilts don't have pockets).
 * Heaven's Lookout Updated – Seems functional, aside from a minor issue with Balmora Expansion (covered above in compatibility notes about BE; short version: you have to use the Console to teleport to its location or give yourself its teleport ring). Some nice stuff, for males and females, in an anime (large-feet boots, anyone?), goth, and ninja vein.  Both plain clothing and armor-clothing. Weapons with optional wearable scabbards (pauldrons), which some people like. There's some kind of frozen critter here, unimaginatively named Kronos, who relates to a quest in a beta add-on (not tested yet).  Some may not like this mod's addition of a splash screen advertising it and its NPCs. Enchantability of the gear not tested yet (you can take one of the vanilla ones and paste its content into the mod-added splash screen file). You'll need long-lasting Levitate/Slowfall or a Recall to get home from the shop, since it is very high in the sky.
 * Kat's Kastle 1.2 by Kathryn, Lidi, Tommy Khajiit, NeoLiv, et al. – Works as a clothing mod, but its other features have issues. It's effectively a female clothing mall, and provides  outfits, from elegant to erotic, historical-looking to sci-fi, subtle to crazy raver-hippie, and mostly based on NioLiv's meshes.  Almost all are dresses or are like swimsuits (and both equip as shirts), plus various boots. Almost all are just clothing, not armor (including the boots), but one or two vendors supply some armor. There are only a handful of pants, skirts, robes, or gloves. Some of the work is beautiful (while some is silly and garish), but it's almost all of a low enchantability (typically 10 points), which is very disappointing, especially given the prices. The exception is boots, which are often 60 points (they should max at 40, like Exquisite Shoes). The mod also adds trivial and out-of-place things (like Robbie the Robot) and dialogue (from an absurdist British comedy), but only within the confines of the "mall" castle, which is far west of Solstheim. The place is accessed by a small two-way teleporter; once you get your goodies, you never need see the place again (though the maze of a castle, another modder's reproduction of the real-world Castle Vianden, is impressive).  A teleport ring is also included, but does not work in OpenMW (it takes you to 0,0 in the world map, which is a Daedric shrine, mua-ha-ha). The mod includes local, lore-unrelated quests to give you access to secret rooms, but most are broken in OpenMW, so any time you detect a space on the map that you can't access, just Console into it with  . Many rooms suffer pretty extreme frame-rate lag, and are difficult to use (this is a common problem with clothing shop mods, for some reason). Using   in the Console to remove animated elements like rotating model stands, and mirrors (which don't actually work as mirrors, in OpenMW anyway) sometimes helps. Temporarily using lower-quality graphics settings might help, too, but I think this is really due to some scripting doing something multiple times per second. The easy solution is to make a bee-line for the vendor, buy everything they have, then get out of the glitched room as quickly as possible and examine the wares elsewhere. Drop and disable the ones you don't want and Console back the estimated money for them.  You don't have to go home to do so; the place is full of unowned storage. (Since you can teleport to and fro, and none of these NPCs matter to the main game, you could actually use the castle as a player home, with some work, though an empty version intended for this, near Sadrith Mora, is available in the original Castle Vianden mod.)  Most of the wares are very expensive; it will probably take around 700,000 gold to get them all (with Mercantile 100, Fortify Mercantile +100, and 100% Disposition; without, it will be probably between 1.5 and 3 million!). Most of the items have no icons other than of a gift box, so you have to try stuff on to know what it is later (the shops have modeling mannequins, but looking them over is impractical in the rooms that lag out). Most vendor rooms include one free sample (not owned), but some are bugged (either cannot actually be taken, or equip as the wrong item type, e.g. boots as a shirt), so you're better off with bought items.  Some furniture is stealable and unowned (two nice desks, etc.), as are various booze potions, and an absurd amount of silverware; some items that should be pick-upable are not.  There are various empty platforms that were clearly meant to have something on them, and some walls show up without a texture (day-glow pink). The Labyrinth in here is bugged; you will need to use   to get into and out of it.  There are some nice male outfits on NPCs, but they are not for sale. If you try to do the quests (by looking up Journal entry IDs for parts that fail), some of these guys should not be Taunted/Frenzied and killed. The simple way to get those clothes is to save the game, temporarily Console-kill each NPC with , get item IDs by looting the corpses and dropping the gear for a Console examination, reload the savegame from before this meta-violence, and give yourself the stuff with  , and subtract the value from your gold if you like. Some of the items on males are also female-wearable (pants and boots, but not shirts or jackets).  Also, a few items are not available from vendors and only found on model'quins and other NPCs. If you insist on getting them all, you'll need to use the same Console-killing trick just mentioned.  Getting all the goodies out of a fashion show can take several tries, and you may get ear-wormed by its Steve Winwood music in the process (hope you like "Valerie", a lot). You cannot Console-clone the fashion show dancers outside of the show. No mannequins in the mod are player-useable. A handful of models are regular NPCs (Merchant-class with no goods or money) and can be led away with Charm Humanoid. (Does your stronghold need an accountant? It's surely a better job for her.)  Some of these have Asian (lore: Akaviri) heads, which is rare for Morrowind (though common in later TES installments). Some also have freakish appearances due to terrible makeup/tattoo texturing, or heads that mismatch bodies.
 * Tamriel Rebuilt note: This mod badly conflict with TR_Preview.esp, which wraps around Vvardenfell to the west and south. If it does overlap, this could be resolved by moving the clothing mod's islands (there are actually two, the other being a small unfinished one used in one of the mod's quests) to the far north of Solstheim, using Windows-based modding tools for resolving landmass conflicts, and this would also require updating its teleportation sphere (maybe also fix the broken teleport ring while you're at it). If you only run the release version of TR without the beta preview landmass add-on, the locations will probably not conflict, since the release stuff is east and southeast of Vvardenfell.*Timisoara Experience 1.0  by Kathryn, Tommy Khajiit (and NioLiv) – .  As a location and quest mod, virtually nothing in this works properly in OpenMW. However, the majority of the clothing items (about 98% female-only) work fine, if you just look them up in OpenMW-CS and use the Console to check them out.
 * Clothiers of Vvardenfell 1.1 by Korana, BadKarma, and Lady Rae –  The second-largest Better Bodies clothing collection (over 400 items, about 95% female), this is a three-modder combination of several previous mods plus new stuff, and provides: 1) the Wailing Wench tavern in Caldera, with new animations (really needs to be seen even if you don't want a clothing mod) and a "wench dress" vendor; 2) gypsy apparel from a cart vendor in Vos; 3) a hot "dark sorceress" outfit in the Vivec Mages Guild; 4) two new sets of fur armor and some matching clothing in Skaal Village; 5) revealing and full female armor from a woman warrior in Fort Moonmoth; 6) an Orc priestess to fight for a good but impractical sexy green armor outfit; and 7) four winged fairy dresses and wigs from cute fairies near Palansour (flower-harvesting quests required).  As with so many clothing mods, the items have very low enchantability (typically 10 points or less), regardless of price.  A cosmetic issue is that the Wailing Wench uses resources from The Regulars to creating sitting patrons, who are not compatible with OpenMW and instead float in mid-air.
 * Clothing Vendor a.k.a. Dresses 1.0 by BadKarma – – Another BB clothing mod, not included in Clothiers of Vvardenfell.  This one is a shop, ether in Vos  or Ebonheart  (and both can be used at once) with 57 all-female items (mostly dresses that equip as shirts). Some have been used in other mods, including Gothic Attire Complete.
 * Battle Suit a.k.a. Battle Suits 2a by Ceno and Kagz – Bugged and very out-of-place. These are bodysuits that look like something out of the film Tron, and they disappear if you put footwear on.
 * Lady Grey Boutique 1.x by Pozzo a.k.a. P0zz0 –  This mod provides expensive, mostly Dunmer-female-specific clothes, including Hurdy Gurdy-based robes, some hooded (Sheikizza) ones, bodices/corsets (arguably the best work in the mod), skirts, and accessories.  The shop in Maar Gan will not sell you anything until you do a little quest to go find a missing VIP customer on a shipwreck. But it's bugged and won't acknowledge that you've done so, so the vendor never works.  Most of the items are out in the open in the store and can simply be stolen with high Sneak and Chameleon; the inventory is small, so the non-stealable items' IDs can be tracked down in the mod with OpenMW-CS and added to your inventory with   in the Console.  This is pre-Better Bodies, and some items ("brassiere", actually a bodice, in both clothing and armor variants, and some gloves) clip horribly if you are using BB. The rest are okay with BB. The clothes have a trivial 10-point enchantment value, even when labeled "Exquisite".  Overall, this seems like a beta test not a finished mod.  Some of the clothes are nice (some are pretty wild-colored, though many fit the milieu well), the wigs (equip as helms, all with Dunmer ears) are compatible with various head-replacer mods, and the purple cuirass is great (a nicely retextured LeFemme one, which like all of those has a "tight corset" look when used with BB). Most of the few armor items have enchantment values too high, in excess of Daedric. A modder could probably fix this mod up pretty easily.  One unusual thing it includes are some "Jade" Ordinator armor pieces with the left side green, to wear with regular gold-ish right-side pieces – in imitation of the two-tone appearance of Vivec himself, I think. It looks hokey to me, but someone might love it.  The principal utility this mod will have is for someone who wants to dress up Dunmer lady companions and who can tolerate the very low enchant values these items have, or is just using the clothes for stay-at-home NPCs. An amusing bit is the inclusion of debutante customers in the shop, like yet another lab-grown Fyr and a Hlaalu noble's niece being tacky.
 * a 2.0 version is available;.
 * Black Clothing and Armour a.k.a. DarkItems 0.1, by Cer a.k.a. Cerebrecl – Mod adds three clothing items and one set of armor, all "blackened" versions of vanilla pieces. No vendor, just a crate in the Caldera Mages Guild to get them for free – but the crate does not actually appear in OpenMW. The only way to get the items would be to add them via the Console (not tested yet).
 * The Crimson Wire 1.0 by Mandamus – Broken. Puts all of Mandamus's male and female clothes in a new two-vendor shop in Sadrith Mora. Shop appears, but numerous meshes and textures of items are broken and just show up day-glow pink or as big "!" markers. Might be worth testing this mod by itself and then adding more later to see if this is some kind of mod conflict.
 * House Dagoth Outfits a.k.a. House Dagoth Outfit 1.0 by Alvirdimus – Adds a funny shop on top of the stronghold portion of Kogoruhn, with a set of "evil" clothes. They look pretty good, are practical not lingerie-ish, adapt to female and male bodies, and are enchantable as Exquisite items.  There's a limited supply of them, so after you get them all (or as many as you want), you can fight the Ash Ghoul vendor and non-sleeping Sleeper model.
 * Hooded Robe Collection 1.1 by jdooby – Many of the items show up as giant "!" markers, and also have messed up icons.
 * Seyda Neen BB Market a.k.a. Better Bodies Market 1.3 by GS a.k.a. Gianluca, et al. – Adds a cluster of four female-only clothing vendors, with dresses but mostly in an underwear and lingerie vein. It incorporates some other mods; one of these is Silver's Dresses which was not compatible with OpenMW as a stand-alone mod.  Another is Chainmail Dress by Shan (which did work stand-alone). This compilation was written as an add-on for Seyda Neen Complete but does not require it; it is also compatible with Seyda Neen Expanded, Remix, but not with Bitter Coast Compilation. If one were to re-work this, put them inside a building, since it doesn't make sense that lingerie models are hanging out outdoors in the town; maybe move them to a new room in the House of Earthly Delights instead of in Seyda Neen.  One or two of the items really do look great on female characters, especially when combined with some of the nicer vanilla skirts and pants or some from other mods. But, their enchantability is poor; for highly enchantable underthings, see Gothic Attire Complete.
 * Clothes Pack 1.1 by Elynda – Outdoor vendor on Arrille's porch in Seyda Neen. Has some Nord-oriented fur clothing in white and grey, etc., and some low-end armor items.  None of it has high enchantment value.
 * Korana's Closet 1.0b by Korana, with Necklace Pack I 1.0 by Gorg – ; added as a dependency for another mod. Main mod is a shop (not included in Clothiers of Vvardenfell) just south of Ebonheart (near bridge), which includes several Hurdy Gurdy robes with new textures, fishnet leggings with shorts, sandals and boots, shields, 6 Neuman's Tight Dresses with new textures, tapestries and paintings, fireplace screen and a few other furni items.  Also includes a small house you can use.  Requires Better Bodies 2.  The Necklace Pack add-on provides 18 necklaces that equip as helms, in the same shop. They have no armor value, but are enchantable. They do sometimes cause clipping with BB armor and clothing.  Another mod [which one? possibly Bitter Coast Compilation, which has a shop with necklaces] makes both of these mods' wares available in some other stores.
 * Serenity 2.0 by BadKarma and Leeloo –  One of the few male-focused clothing mods, it adds a ship-based vendor just off Ebonheart with menswear in medieval, Greco-Roman, pirate, and fantasy styles.  Not included in Clothiers of Vvardenfell.
 * CDR Exotic Robes 1.0 by Niero, Canadian Ice, Howndog, Astarsis, Silaria, Evereve, and Kieve –  This is for vanilla and Smoother Bodies only, and is not compatible with Better Bodies.

Furniture

 * Furniture Store (a.k.a. Dave's Furniture) 2.01 by Dave Humphrey and Erstam –  One of the most comprehensive furniture mods, with over 400 items, including furniture proper, lighting, plants (from alchemical potted ones to trees from all regions), clutter, and exterior and non-household items, such as wells, signage posts, altars, and forges, for jazzing up strongholds. (The altars are not functional as healing/blessing ones, though.)  Adds a shop in Balmora, another in Hla Oad, and a third outside Vivec FQ. It takes a while to figure out the furniture placement ring (and the options it offers are not the same for all item types, but an in-game manual is available). It's easier than manually positioning stuff with the Console, though, unless you're already good at that. The only serious flaw is that all the containers sold have a too-low capacity to be very useful.  Workaround: buy one there, disable it with the Console, then clone a similar container with better capacity from a house mod you know has better containers (or just clone the good one and dock yourself some gold for it), then place it manually with   in the Console. Maybe low-capacity containers are "realistic", but they're a hassle. Who wants their player home full of chests from floor to ceiling?  The stand-alone version conflicts with Balmora River House. If used with Adul's Arsenal and/or Arcane Armature, the Adul mods must load before the Dave one, or a landscape fracture results.
 * Version in Balmora Expansion 1.4, with BE Fixes (see Major overhauls of vanilla places section, for general info on the BE mega-mod) – Moves the Balmora store around to not conflict with other aspects of BE. Bug: The plant vendor in Balmora has no inventory; the others do. Minor bug: the mannequins sold by the upstairs vendor (in the Balmora shop, anyway) fall to the ground as corpses, so are useless unless you want dead-people mannequins. The ones sold by a vendor downstairs are working correctly. Another minor bug (or perhaps a mod conflict) is that some portable, non-hanging paper lanterns disappeared out of these shops after a while and were not offered again, though all other items seemed to still be available, and already-purchased lanterns did not disappear.
 * Stand-alone version: Not tested, but likely to work, though with three stores there is always a potential for mod conflicts, especially for the one in Balmora. Unknown if the bugs in the BE version also affect this one. Includes a player home somewhere.
 * 6th House Addon 1.1 by Markelius –  Adds Sixth House items, and apparently also lets you take them from Sixth House shrines.
 * Pelagiad Drapers 1.0 by Crankgorilla, Adele, and Shannon –  New shop in the grassy part of town sells positionable curtains.  They do not go well with all architectures, but are fully functional.
 * Killgore's Home Furnishings, Re-Release 1.1 by Killgore Killack and Denina –  Another furniture shop in Vivec, this one with some unusual things like cups with animated water.
 * Vivec Fine Furnishings (a.k.a. Vivec Chine Furnishings) 1.1 by Crankgorilla –  Vivec store with Chinese-styled furniture.  Looks out-of-place in an otherwise-vanilla game, but will be a welcome addition by those using Asian (lore: Akaviri) mods.
 * Buy Furniture 1.4 by DarkDragon –  Collision-free furniture, from a shop in Caldera. This is handy in a small home, especially if you have companions, and especially for furniture like chairs which cannot actually be used [normally – there are sitting mods].  Most of the items do not have icons (you have to buy-to-try), and a few have broken meshes/textures.  Includes some outdoor items, like various guar-hide awnings.  This may be a "don't put beans up your nose" point, but the author notes that the lack of collision (which affects the living, not objects) is actually an anti-cheat, for a cheat most probably never thought of: you can't carry around any of this furniture and use it as a blockade against enemies.

Ingredients, plants, alchemy, and crafting stuff
Changes to the mechanics of alchemy do not go in this section.


 * Sufficient Adamantium (OpenMW) 1.0 by Darklocq  –  Fixes the problem that Bols Indalen can't craft you custom Adamantium Armor because Tribunal doesn't provide enough Adamantium Ore. Compatible with Custom Armors in the Armor and weapons section.
 * Noddle's Travelling Garden 1.0 by Crankgorilla, part of his "Minimods" archive –  (including with Balmora Expansion) but has a texture issue.  Provides a market stall with houseplants in Balmora. However, the plants' flowers are day-glow due to "fake bumpmapping". They also have a mouse-over popup that makes them look like alchemy ingredient "container" plants when they are not.  The texture issue isn't unbearably distracting, just looks like excessively colorful flowers.
 * Balmora Expansion 1.4, with BE Fixes (see Major overhauls of vanilla places section) – The plant shop included in town does not work (merchant has no inventory). The one added in Hla Oad does, selling both potted alchemical plants and plantable trees from various regions.

Books

 * Correspondence of Morrowind 1.01 by Cliffworms [archive has a typographical error name, Correspondances of Morrowind; that's a completely different word] – Working fine.  Adds leaflets and handbills, love letters, communiques between bandits, and other paper clutter, plus a few useful alchemical recipes and such.  Most of these are takable (not owned by NPCs or factions), but there are exceptions. If you already know the formulas, or just, or don't use alchemy, the recipes will serve no practical purpose, though you may find some of the other stuff amusing or interesting.  Some of them are potentially game-enriching while persnickety players may consider them "lore-unfriendly", e.g. a note in Addamasartus that incriminates a Seyda Neen NPC as a smuggling and murder accomplice, and so on.  New players may actually find the handbills informative, since they tell you of local businesses you may not have found yet.

Portable storage
None seem to work in OpenMW so far.


 * Backpacks 1.0 by Dereko – This is pretty much just decorative in OpenMW. It adds backpacks that are a form of low-end armor and look nifty, but which most players would quickly replace with better armor. Also adds a portable campfire that is fun but is not for Necessities of Morrowind and doesn't do anything practical (probably cheat potential as an infinite, albeit inconvenient, light source, though). The scripting for this the backpack as a portable container is probably worth study by modders to see if it can be fixed to work in OpenMW. What I want most of all in this game is a portable container that doesn't cheat on weight, to use for alchemical ingredients, keys I don't need right now, and other clutter, to bring with me but keep out of my main inventory window.  I presently use pack rats for this, but they are a pain, always getting in the way, stuck on rocks, or killed.
 * Portable Hole – Item is findable and takable, but is just a black spot in OpenMW and has no functionality; probably an undisclosed MWSE dependency.
 * Alchemy Storage Helper a.k.a. ASH 2.0 by Scruggs – Incompatible; relies on MWSE.
 * Same goes for ASH 2.0 Ort Edit 1.1 by Ortorin; it's just a weight patch of the above.
 * Potion Storage Helper 1.1 by latendresse76 – Incompatible; relies on MWSE. This is just a fork of ASH.

Misc. items
This subsection is for mod-added items (and vendors thereof) that don't fit into the above subcategories.


 * Map Tapestry – Working. It's a blurry enough image that it has no cheat potential, and is just wall décor for player homes.
 * Pillows Plus 2.0 – Working, including with Balmora Expansion. Converts the crazy pillow lady in Balmora into an actual decorative pillows vendor for player homes. It lacks display, though. My solution was to buy one of everything and lay them out in her place, give myself back the money with the Console, then buy the pillows I actually wanted.  You may have to complete her Fighters Guild "cave rats are after my pillows upstairs" quest before she turns into a vendor. The easter egg mini-quest relating to her (bring her an invoice for pillows found in a shipwreck off the central north coast, and get an "extra-comfy pillow" reward) did not work for me in OpenMW; I don't know if that's an OpenMW bug, if this mod broke it, or what.
 * Donner's Toolkits – Not working. I tested the quest variant, and the NPC will not initiate dialogue relating to the toolkits. The toolkits themselves have broken meshes/textures and just show up in game as giant "!" markers. I did not test the vendor variant, since broken items are broken items.  Update: This  have been due to mod load order issues; if someone wants this mod, it may be worth testing it by itself; then, if it actually works, trying to add other mods, and keep testing it after doing so, in a new game each time, until you have the mods you want and this one still works. Still not sure what these toolkits do.
 * Improved Resting 1.0 – Seems to be working. A simple alternative to Necessities of Morrowind with much less overhead and fiddling about, and no known incompatibilities (but also doesn't force any necessities; it's all optional). Vendor in Seyda Neen provides "magic" pillow, bedroll, and cooking gear to use alchemical ingredients to prepare healing meals, and to rest for recuperation purposes without it being official Rest that triggers leveling, Tribunal assassin attacks, etc. Has lots of in-game manuals (mostly recipes).  Minor issue is that the awning over the vendor is floating in mid-air if you have Seyda Neen Complete installed, because the latter changed the wall. If it bugs you, fix the awning's position with   in the Console.
 * Balmora Grocery – A Necessities of Morrowind shop that did not work with Balmora Expansion. It may work fine without that mega-mod.
 * Trintinigant's Bazaar 1.0 by Crankgorilla, part of his "Minimods" archive –, but has a mesh/texture issue.  Provides a market stall with misc. decorative claptrap. However, some are day-glow due to "fake bumpmapping" or broken meshes or textures. Worked with Balmora Expansion to the extent that it worked.  Because the wares are on display outdoors, the day-glow items are very distracting in the environment; this could be brute-force fixed with   in the Console.
 * Arcane Armature – See entry in Armor and weapons section. Provides various unusual magic items as well as armaments.

Stats

 * Speed and Stamina Tweaked 1.0a – Working, though some may feel it is a bit over-powered. Regardless, it should be used with Better Fatigue Usage (below) or it definitely is over-powered. So is the original Speed and Stamina which I have not tested, but which inspired the Tweaked version because the original was too cheaty. Honestly, this mod makes the game much more playable and less frustrating; some will argue that the whole point of TES3: Morrowind is to take the game at a snail's pace, but many of us have better things to do with our lives than spend a real-time hour walking through grass or dust just to get to another town, especially if we've already played the game several times and have seen it all before. This mod lets you run more without becoming exhausted so fast, and replenishes stamina ("Fatigue", as the game backwardly calls it) slowly without having having to use Rest. It also increases base speed just a little. Purists will hate it, but I highly recommend SaST, along with BFU, FMR, and NPCMR below.
 * Better Fatigue Usage 1.01 – Working. While intended to re-balance Speed and Stamina Tweaked even further (by increasing the fatigue expenditure of combat, more so with heavier gear), you can use this alone to make the game harder.  I really like it for the quite visible, almost palpable, effect on Fatigue of swinging a heavy weapon around. It forces you to think about and buff Fatigue more.
 * Fair Magicka Regen – Only works if fixed; see the main Mod status page's entry for patch info. This is a must if you are used to spellcasting in Oblivion, or much of any game for that matter. Actually, hardcore players of AD&D will remember that spellcasting was something that took study and recovery and wasn't something you could wander around doing a lot of. But this is a video game, and some players really just want to get on with the action parts, not spend all their time on a bedroll, bartering for Magicka potions, or slaved to a lab bench crafting more of them.
 * NPC Magicka Regen – Working, and balances FMR, above. You can also use it alone to make the game harder, which was the original intent. As the readme notes, if you can survive the first part of an encounter with a Magicka-using foe in the vanilla game, you generally find them too easy to kill once their Magicka reserve is depleted. Now they don't run dry so fast.  High level characters will not notice a difference, since you can just rush in and bash most mages in a few blows, and will have acquired resistance to most of what they cast.  Early in the game, it makes spellcasters in bandit caves a force to reckon with.

Magic and alchemy
This section also includes mods relating to ores (Raw Ebony, etc.), since they are coded alchemical ingredients.

See the Stats section for mods that affect Magicka. See the Fast travel section for propylon and guild guide mods that affect travel.

See the Fast travel section for Mark/Recall and other teleportation mods.


 * Yet Another Herbalism Mod – Essentially working. The behavior is not entirely consistent from plant to plant, but this is true of the mod in Bethesda's engine. Not compatible with many other alchemy-changing mods, though this does little, other than help indicate (usually) when a plant or whatever has already been harvested so you waste less time trying to re-pick the same ones.  Includes an optional add-on that allows you to mine additional bits out of ores (Ebony, Glass, Diamond, Adamantium); it's supposed to require a miner's pick in your inventory, and will often say so, but lets you get a second load of mined goodies anyway; having the pick has no effect in OpenMW, presumably due to a minor scripting error.
 * Index Mod 1.0 by Manauser, included in his "Mini-Mods" archive  – Working. Makes propylon indices findable with Detect Enchantment, puts one in each ancient Dunmer stronghold, and puts some extra ones in the game world, so you can probably gather a complete set more quickly if you don't already know where each of their vanilla locations are. It's unclear why this has a Bloodmoon dependency, but the ReadMe says it does. Note: spare indices can also be used for a) retaining copies of individual ones if you have the Master Index add-on; and b) turning into a blank for re-encoding as a different stronghold's index, in a mod that provides an enchanter who will do so (there is at least one, and it may be this one; the enchanter Under Skar in Ald'Ruhn).
 * Turn Undead 1.0 by Manauser, included in his "Mini-Mods" archive  – Increases the power of the Turn Undead spell (enough to destroy weaker undead, though not instantly, at high enough magnitudes). Balances by making undead immune to Calm and Demoralize. , since it makes the spell no longer a useless waste of time and Magicka.

Ownership

 * Owned Beds 1.0b by Spirithawke –  The ability to remove ownership from beds, containers, and other things that belonged to now-dead NPCs is probably one of the first MWSE features OpenMW should implement natively.

Spawning
This subsection is for mods that only or primarily change the frequency, type, or location of the spawning of items, creatures, or NPCs.


 * Grave Goods 1.0 by Manauser, included in his "Mini-Mods" archive –  Random chance of more than Grave Dust being found in urns in ancestral tombs (mostly various salts).
 * Loot Well Urned: Ancestral Tomb Loot Enhancement 1.1 by pseunomix – See entry in section.  Aside from adding artifacts in tombs, it also does what Grave Goods does.
 * Mixed Guards 2.0 by Manauser, included in his "Mini-Mods" archive  –  Makes more of the random, generic guards female (the vanilla games only has female named ones and female Redoran generic ones).  Side effect: If you are running a random NPC head replacer, you can sometimes get unexpected and funny results, like an Imperial Legionnaire on patrol who is an elderly woman who would more plausibly have a desk job or be retired.
 * Dark Sister 1.0 by Manauser, included in his "Mini-Mods" archive  –  Randomly adds females to the Dark Brotherhood assassins and the respawning generic DBs under Mournhold.

Combat and damage
See the Magic and alchemy section for Destruction and Restoration magic. See the Stats section for Fatigue and other stats mods that may affect combat.


 * Hot Floor 1.0 by Manauser, included in his "Mini-Mods" archive  –  Steam grates in Dwemer floors can burn you (and follower NPCs) a bit, the longer you are on them; metal boots help a little, other boots help more, and so does running, jumping, and Levitate. You'd have to try hard to get killed by it, though.
 * Demon Weapons 1.0 by Manauser, included in his "Mini-Mods" archive – . Makes Demon, Devil, and Fiend weapons Cast on Strike instead of Cast on Use. Also gives both the weapons and the corresponding helms "more useful secondary effects". None are over-powered; this remains gear for characters who are low to medium-low level.  If you use other mods that change this gear, they probably need to be loaded before this one unless they are pluginless (mesh and texture only).
 * Riekling Knock Off 1.0 by Manauser, included in his "Mini-Mods" archive  –  If you hit a Riekling Raider hard enough for a knock-down blow, the Riekling will fall off his Tusked Bristleback mount and you will have two enemies to fight at once. This is balanced by you having two souls to trap and two corpses to loot.
 * Show Ammo Dmg 1.0 by Manauser, included in his "Mini-Mods" archive –, though it works. Shows the damage range dealt by vanilla arrows and bolts, a strange lack of information in vanilla.  Does not work with mod-added ammunition, only that provided by Bethesda in the original game and its official add-ons (including Area Effect Arrows). Includes a version that does not require any of those add-ons.  : Now OpenMW Launcher, under "Advanced", has an option to show the ammo damage, and it works for  ammo, including mod items.

Weather, seasons, skies

 * Sol-Weather Tweak 1.0 by Manauser, included in his "Mini-Mods" archive –  Fixes the bug that southern Solstheim has snow on the ground, but never any in the air, by giving a 15% chance of snowing.
 * Skies IV – See entry in section. Includes optional weather tweaks.
 * Ambient Town Sounds 1.3 – See entry in Audio section. Includes optional weather tweaks.
 * Better Sounds 1.1 – See entry in Audio section. Includes optional weather tweaks.
 * Arcane Armature – See entry in Armor and weapons section. Includes an item that provides weather-changing spells.
 * Simple Seasons 1.0 –  Its readme says it does things like trigger more rain in the Caldera through Bitter Coast region as a seasonal thing; the changes are meant to be subtle and gradual, so it's unclear how to fully test this.  Even removing this mod and seeing if it's still raining on a reload of a savegame might not be a good test, if it would continue raining for a set period once it's started regardless what started it. This seems likely, since none of the weather-changing mods work instantly, but take several minutes.
 * Rain Splash by abot – . Actually visible rain splashes are very rare. FPS lags occur during rain, due to the mod generating an excessive number of (mostly invisible) short animations. After removing the mod, the lags stopped, so it was definitely this mod causing it. This might be a nice touch on high-end systems if OpenMW worked with it properly (the mod does work in the original Bethesda engine).  : OpenMW now shows rain splashes on water. Not yet on solid ground, as this mod was intended to.
 * Meteors 1.2 – . The effect is very rare, but does not appear to cause any problems. [Tester notes: I had this installed for over a month and only ever saw a single meteor. — Darlocq]

Crime and bounty

 * Stolen Goods Fix 1.0 by Manauser, included in his "Mini-Mods" archive – Broken. Is supposed to make Evidence Chests freely lootable so you can recover your confiscated goods after fine/jail, but does not. Also intends to double the theft fine in balance; this aspect has not been tested.

Fast travel
Zero mods with scenic-travel options (where you get to watch the travel in realtime as it happens) appear to have this functionality in OpenMW, though they work otherwise (i.e., they get you there the same way a vanilla siltstrider or ship would).

Fast travel to new landmasses is covered under the entries for those places in the New major landmasses section.

For companion teleportation mods, see the Companion and NPC utilities and misc. section.

House mods that provide teleportation to/from them are not listed in this section, but in Player homes.


 * Multiple Teleport Marking (OpenMW and Tamriel Rebuilt) a.k.a. MultiMarkOMW 1.2 by rotat, Marcel Hesselbarth, and hessi9 –  This is a compatibility-patched version for OpenMW and (optionally) Tamriel Rebuilt and Project: Tamriel's Skyrim: Home of the Nords and Province: Cyrodiil (Stirk), plus a compatibility add-on for Companion Teleportation in the Companion and NPC utilities and misc. section.  Minor issue: this multi-mark mod does not work on any improperly coded interior cell that it interprets as undefined/unknown. The workaround is to Mark just outside of it and use its door to go inside.
 * Multiple Teleport Marking 2.2 by Marcel Hesselbarth and hessi9 –.
 * Multiple Mark –.
 * Daedric Teleport Stones 1.0 by melian and Trunksbomb –  This appears to be the only other OpenMW-compatible alternative to the original Multiple Teleport Marking. It uses paired teleport items instead of trying to hack the Mark and Recall magic. And it's not cheaty - getting them is hard, and most of them have negative (temporary) effects. The stones come in three types: exteriors, Mournhold (if you install the Tribunal version), and exterior/interior (a total of four pairs; two are of the first kind). The indoor/outdoor one will overwrite your last Mark (no matter where it is) if used in an interior, so it's best used outside anyway.  See the HTML ReadMe file included for where to get the stones; if you're starting a new game, then wait and discover them "naturally".  You cannot teleport companions with you, sorry; in this, it is just like Mark/Recall and Intervention, and unlike guild guide teleportation. The ReadMe says to try cdcooley's Companion Teleportation, which has been patched to work with OpenMW (see its entry in the Companion and NPC utilities and misc. section). Use a pair of stones by dropping one on the ground, and later equipping (as a ring) its twin, which acts as a recall item to the spot you dropped the matching stone. Teleport stones, when equipped, either cost Magicka to use (via Drain Magicka, Constant Effect – so de-equip it immediately after use), cause a very minor Blind effect, or even give a beneficial Feather. They range radically in weight, from under 1 unit to a heavy 5 units. Look carefully for them, as they are about the size of a Common Soul Gem, but dull-colored and hard to see, especially in low light. When you find one, you can use it to immediately teleport to its twin  that one is outdoors, which most are not; but be prepared, since most are in dangerous locations. Most have to be found manually, and it takes some work. Detect Enchantment is a major help.
 * Seyda Neen Complete – See entry in Major overhauls of vanilla locations section. Adds additional ship travel to/from Seyda Neen (which makes sense for a port town).
 * Bitter Coast Compilation – Ditto, but adds fewer ships, plus some hidden transport options.
 * Balmora Council Club 1.0 by Princess Stomper (see entry in Player businesses section for other aspects, some of which are broken).  Adds an NPC to the Balmora Guild of Mages (Davas Ores) and another to the outdoor Temple Courtyard in Mournhold (Sosile), who provide fast travel to and from Mournhold that works with companions, unlike the teleportation provided by Tribunal itself.  Be warned that if you use OpenMW-CS and the Console to get around this house/business mod's broken quest scripting, and complete its quests, they will eventually make Sosile disappear from that location to meet up with you in Balmora, and she'll have to be put back with   after she's done her quest role.  [Tester note: I have the sense that Sosile and Davas are also added by another mod (presumably by the same author), because I've used them a long time, but don't recall installing Balmora Council Club until later. —&thinsp;Darklocq ☎ ¢ 01:44, 10 August 2017 (CEST)]
 * Imperial Airship –  Does not have a tremendous number of locations, but enough to be useful. To use it, buy tokens from the keep in Caldera (it's worth stocking up on these). Because it adds a big siltstrider-style ramp, with ground changes around it, the mod is prone to conflicts with other locality mods (e.g. the Kahleigh's Retreat house mod in Caldera, among others), resulting sometimes in landscape fractures and other issues, but these can usually be resolved with load-order changes.  Its interior offers a quest, but the exit door is broken, so do not enter without a teleport-out means, and don't bring companions with you in there or they'll probably be stuck until you use the   command in the Console to move them out.
 * Canoe Travel – will load, but requires a magic paddle the tester did not locate.  Cheaty, in that it puts canoes just about everywhere, cluttering the whole game with them, and providing rapid travel to almost anywhere from almost anywhere. If you demand that, just use the Console's   and   teleportation cheats; much cleaner and simpler.
 * Odai Boat Service – If used with Balmora Expansion (see above), it must load before BE.  If used with Balmora River House by Calislahn, it must load after BRH.  Useful for Hlaalu players (gets you from town to fairly near your stronghold quickly). Of no interest to anyone else, since you have no reason to go half-way down the Odai River all the time; if you want to get to the coast from Balmora, take the siltstrider to Seyda Neen.  Given that it's called the Odai Boat Service, it's weird that it stops quite a bit south of there, but it's still closer than Balmora. Someone should probably re-mod this to make it actually stop at Odai.  There is no return service; it's one-way.
 * Private Mobile Base – Covered above in detail in Player homes and businesses section; provides teleport options, and can even be entirely relocated.
 * Boats 1.17 by abot – only the scenic travel animation options don't work. Provides some additional, much-needed, ship travel in various locations. Minor issue: as with a few vanilla ship captains, ones added by this mod can eventually migrate themselves into the water, drown, and disappear, requiring restoration by   in the Console after looking up their IDs in OpenMW-CS.  You can use the   command to pre-emptively move them them a bit inland (or fix it, if you find one in the water already and still alive).
 * Ashlander Transports – and a great time-saver for repeat players, but too cheaty for first-timers.  Adds fast travel from Maar Gan and Suran to an Ashlander camp, and from there to other Ashlander camps.  Priceless to me; the Ashlands and Grazelands are quite monotonous, and you only need to explore them once.  Conflicts slightly with Suran Archery Tradehouse (see it's entry in the Weapons and armor section for how to resolve it, if you can get SAT to work at all).
 * Ashlanders Transport 1.1 – Presumably working, since it's in .omwaddon format. Have not used it directly, so don't know if it also starts in cities like Suran, or exists only between Ashlander camps.  Archive includes English, Russian, and German.
 * Yagrum Advanced 2.0 – Yagrum Bagarn will allegedly build you a Dwemer airship, though I have not gotten him to do so yet, even after building both of the Dwemer companions (see entry in Dwemer constructs companion mods section, above). You have to check him for new dialogue options like "power source" to do stuff with this mod.
 * Kat's Kastle by Kathryn, Lidi, Tommy Khajiit, NeoLiv, et al. (see entry above in Merchants and Items) – The teleport ring it has, intended to take you to the "mall" island, doesn't work for that, but it does work (accidentally) for getting to the Daedric shrine near Fort Moonmoth, and also has an intentional working option to get to Sadrith Mora/Wolverine Hall (for some reason). This would be useful if you have a house mod in the area that doesn't have its own teleport ring, since you're not always near a guild guide who can get you to Wolverine Hall.
 * Raven Wings by Fliggerty, Nadaz, and Carnithus – Not compatible, as it is dependent on MWSE.
 * Propylon Mod 1.0 by Manauser, included in his "Mini-Mods" archive – Working. Makes the propylon chamber network a complete circle, both clockwise and counterclockwise, if you have all the propylon indices; you no longer have to back-track through them.
 * See also Index Mod by Manauser, in the Magic and alchemy section.
 * Suran Ferry 1.0 by Manauser, included in his "Mini-Mods" archive  – Working. Provides ferry service both ways across the river near Suran. Incidentally also fixes a "levitating" barrel and a too-high step.  Unless you are of a low enough level to fear Slaughterfish and unable to use Levitate or Water Walk, you are not likely to need this mod, since the trip is very short.
 * Airship 1.1 by Qwert and Lingarn – ; archive is in .ACE format, and is one that acefile (for Mac and Linux) cannot extract. An MS-Windows user will need to test this.  Please upload a re-archive to Nexus or ModHistory, in .7Z, .RAR , or .ZIP format.  There are a series of add-ons for this mod, collected in a single (non- .ACE ) archive).
 * More Gondoliers 1.0 – Adds additional Gondoliers for fast travel between sections of Vivec.  [Tester note: I don't know the vanilla Vivec gondoliers and their destinations well enough to know how well this is working. Even with this installed, getting around Vivec is still inconvenient. —&thinsp;Darklocq ☎ ¢ 17:24, 26 July 2017 (CEST)]
 * Gondolier Destinations 1.0 – Ditto.
 * The Traveling Thieves 1.0 by bryman1970 (get cleaned version from Additional Files section) –   Adds 3 Thieves Guild members who provide fast travel between Seyda Neen, Ebonheart, and Hla Oad.
 * Ring of Teleportation for OpenMW a.k.a. Teleportation Ring Distant Lands 0.3 by metalpoetza  –  (0.41, December 2016).  Includes support for Tamriel Rebuilt, Skyrim: Home of the Nords, and Province: Cyrodiil (unknown if they are required to run it at all).  It's a buyable item from Arrille (and costs 100 septims per use), providing fast transport to various major locations.  May require updating with the Java patcher ( TR_FilePatcher.jar ) that comes with Tamriel Data; see details in the New major landmasses section.
 * Artisan Tribute Manor – See entry in the Alternative strongholds section; this house mod provides a Daedric portal network all over Vvardenfell, and to Solstheim.

Meshes and textures
This section does not list any pure texture replacers here unless they are either a) broken, or b) objectively an improvement (i.e., higher resolution and without problems), or c) unusual or special-purpose., unless the texture image files in it are corrupted (which would affect the Bethesda engine, too), or it uses "fake bumpmapping" (link is to fix-it tutorial; see also summary section about this problem at the Mod status article).

The easiest way to use mesh-and-texture-only replacers (a.k.a. pluginless replacers – those without a .ESP, .ESM , or .omwaddon ) is to create a special directory for them, and manually copy the resource files from them together in a single Meshes or Textures (respectively) sub-directory under it, then put this directory at the end of the load order. Thus, you only use one mod slot for all of them, and other mods that load earlier and use modder textures or duplicate vanilla ones, and override the ones in the Morrowind Data Files directory, will still be overridden in turn by the ones you've chosen yourself. Various texture packs will conflict, providing reskins of the same things, so one must decide which resources from which mod to use. Doing it with this single, loaded-last dumping directory is easier to manage than either trying to work them into the game's own Data File directory, or mucking about with load orders of a bunch of pluginless mods. Doing is this way also provides personal, down-to-each-texture control over final appearance. It also obviates the need to edit openmw.cfg for mesh-and-texture mods (you cannot reorder pluginless mods in the OpenMW app's Data Files manager, only by editing the config file manually).

For various general texture replacers, see Paul Carr's Morrowind Texture Replacer Comparison page, which compares five Morrowind-wide texture replacers with Bethesda's original, using screenshots from around the game world.

Improved meshes and textures

 * Better Bodies 2.4 (a.k.a. Better Bodies ZW) by Psychodog Studios, ZWolol, Akavir, Harborgolfer, and Liztail –   This or a slightly earlier version is  (especially with Better Clothes, below, and a heads replacer), modernizing the appearance of the humanoids in the game to look like 2010s work instead of 2002 work. Makes bodies smooth and realistic, instead of angular and clumsily jointed like plastic dolls. This 2.4 patch corrects some problems in the last of the Psychodog Studios versions (2.2), and adds a few details, including fingernails. Like previous releases, it comes in three variants: underwear (and bras on females), "peanut gallery" (bottoms only), and nude.  The last of these works best with clothing mods, otherwise undergarments will be awkwardly visible with a lot of mod-provided clothing. However, it is anatomically correct and detailed; some will find that version objectionable for them or their kids (though ... you do know this game is violent, has slavery, a demonic cult, scary monsters, a strip club, and quests that make you a murderer, right?  Maybe get the youths a Pokémon game.)  See also the Racy and Increased modesty sections, below.  There's a BB labeled "2.7", but it is for the Russian edition of the game, and the version number seems to have been picked at random; this 2.4 is later, and includes improvements released in "2.7".
 * Better Bodies 2.2 by Psychodog Studios (the "official" final version from the BB Project):   Ignore 2.3; it was by the same people as 2.4 and just fixes less.
 * Better Clothes 1.1 by Psychodog Studios – . Detailed and more natural-looking replacements for almost all the vanilla clothing in the game (though keeping to the design aesthetics of the original items, and not modifying their stats). Requires Better Bodies (which doesn't do too well with the vanilla clothes anyway) and is best used also with a heads replacer. Should load after any old mods that do anything incidentally with vanilla clothing, and before any post-Better Clothes mods that cite it as a dependency.
 * There's a patch for one incorrect shirt model, here ; just replace the bugged .nif file in the original mod's Meshes/BC directory.
 * Head Replacer 1.0 by Beryl a.k.a. Beryllium –  This is one of various NPC head-replacer compilations of various modders' work. Does not have the missing necks issue that Better Heads (below) does.
 * Better Heads (formerly Faces of Vvardenfell) 2.0 by Gorg, Anthrax (a.k.a. DarkSharp), and Motoki –   This is a detailed, varied NPC head and hair replacer (over 400 meshes by a variety of modders). Unfortunately, they all show up with missing necks when this is used with Better Bodies.
 * Windows Glow 2.2 by Max a.k.a. ~NOBODY~ a.k.a. Max Shawabkeh –, including with add-ons as noted below. In-game windows do look lit-up at night with candle-flicker, when viewed from the outside; and they show daylight during the daytime when viewed from inside.This appears to be the full intent of the mod. [Tester cannot guarantee that this all looks ; would require comparison in Bethesda's original game engine.] Various other glowing-window mods definitely did not work right, just this one and its add-ons listed here. The others either had no effect, gave an effect almost too subtle to perceive, had garish and stuttering results, or caused frame-rate problems. The only issue encountered with this is that the flicker effect, when near other light sources like wall lantern,  become garish and too flickery under certain weather conditions, like heavy rain; it may be some kind of luminosity conflict in the game engine. But it only seems to affect a few windows, and could even be a problem caused by a locality mod.
 * Windows Glow - Tribunal 1.1 by Max (~NOBODY~) and Nikolaj "Colt17" Gorev –
 * Windows Glow - Bloodmoon 1.0 by Max (~NOBODY~) and Nikolaj "Colt17" Gorev –
 * Windows Glow – Raven Rock (a.k.a. Windows Glow RR) by Nikolaj "Colt17" Gorev – Tester seems to recall this working, but switched to the alternative in the next entry.
 * Windows Glow Expansion 1.11 by abot – Improves the effect in Nord and Imperial settlements. (Also adds it to Tamriel Rebuilt and several other mods.) Includes an alternative Raven Rock add-on to the one above. (There's third, Windows Glow - Bloodmoon (Now with Raven Rock) by Colt17, that abot says works with his WG Expansion, too, but it has not been tested in OpenMW).  Follow abot's detailed load-order notes.
 * Realistic Windows Glow Re-texture 1.4 by Gemini a.k.a. Daddy_Gemini – . This is a mesh-and-texture-only (no .ESP ) improvement, with windows "toned down in brightness with a higher level of detail". Looks very good, and also improves non-glowing windows (i.e. when viewed in the daytime from outside, or the inside at night). Load this one last, or any of the above will override it and make it have no effect.
 * : I'm experiencing a problem where some important Mournhold buildings, and many of the Raven Rock buildings in later phases of construction, are severely glitched, including missing exterior walls, even missing floors. One of these mods may be the culprit, since I am not running any Raven Rock expansions/overhauls, but am running WG with TB and BM add-ons. Making some windows glow seems unlikely to mess up entire buildings, but these mods are a point in common between the bugged locations. I've had no other Solstheim problems I can recall, though some similar problems in Mournhold (not in the vanilla Vvardenfell landmass). —&thinsp;Darklocq ☎ ¢ 01:32, 20 July 2017 (CEST)
 * Skies IV – This takes some manual work to install, as you have to select which moons you want, and also make some weather changes in morrowind.ini and either import them into openmw.cfg or make conforming manual changes. Worth the effort.
 * Bitter Coast by Spewboy –  It verges (no pun intended) on a grass mod, without any of the problems associated with them (there's no moving grass or individual grass blades). Also improves some textures of local rocks and other stuff. Too bad this modder didn't do the whole island.
 * Better Skulls 1.4b – Definitely an improvement over the cartoonish originals, though it doesn't affect all the skulls that are part of static bone piles.
 * Better Picks-n-Probes – Makes the different quality levels of them easier to distinguish.
 * Better Looking Liquor, Drugs, and Vials 1.0 – Looks impressive, but it's unclear what load order will be needed to resolve conflicts (in inventory) with Potion/Scroll Icons and Potion Sort, Fixed, below.  Main issue so far is that the meshes of BLLDaV look nothing like the icon shapes used by PSaPSF.  Someone needs to combine these into one consistent mod.
 * Faylynn's Signs and Banners, Refined+Darkened – did not test the brighter original version.  Makes it more obvious which merchant type is which, with pictorial signs.
 * Metallic Road Signs – Makes it easier to tell what is down which road without hovering over signs. Purists will not like that the signs are in English (and they're going to be angry when they get to Kogorhun, which has English blood graffiti in it in the vanilla game).  This will have to load after any more general sign mod (e.g. for merchants, such as Faylynn's) if that also includes road signs and you want this mod's road signs not that one's. There don't seem to be any additional localizations; this is not a font mapped onto a texture – the wording is actually part of the image, so it would have to be painstakingly done for every road sign in the game.
 * Shiny Septims - Original –, presumably due to "fake bumpmapping", with the cheat result that it makes coins in dark places glaringly obvious. There must be a better coin texture mod for OpenMW, where they look neither like gleaming beacons nor like vanilla's lumps of corroded brass.
 * Hlaalu Normal Mapped for OpenMW 1.1 by Lysol –, and is a .omwaddon specifically for OpenMW. Nice work for furniture, walls, floors, etc., but has the side effect of giving outdoor Hlaalu guards excessively fancy furniture (in the few cases where they have any) that looks like they stole it from someone's mansion. Only a tiny bit distracting.
 * Dremora Replacer 2.0 by Psymoniser (a.k.a. Psymon, Psy) et al. –  This is a lower-impact, pluginless adaptation of the same modder's Unique Dremora (see entry in Creatures section) to just improve the textures and meshes with resources from the Playable Dremora and Better Daedric Armour mods, without making any Dremora look unique.  Includes a patch for those who prefer the Daedric textures from Darknut's MW Armor Textures.
 * Sexy Creatures and Femmons – See entries in the Racy section.
 * Extreme Textures series by Masox – Generally a net positive, these are available in 512, 1024, and 2048 resolutions (1024 should be good enough, unless you have a great computer and really huge monitor).  The textures are a mixture of CGI work and photographic sources. Some tested so far:
 * Extreme Textures - Creature 1.0, Packs I–III – Much more detailed textures for vanilla animals and atronachs. Since they're all clearly named, it's easy to remove one you don't like (e.g. the rat, or whatever). Some of these may be too much for some people; the Mudcrab has stark white highlights on it (presumably from "fake bumpmapping"), for example.  But many are definitely improvements.  Some, like the Slaughterfish, don't seem to make that much difference, since you only see them in cloudy water.
 * Extreme Textures - Hlaalu – Redoes entire places like Balmora, inside and out. A few of the textures, e.g. on doors, seem too high-contrast, but mostly it's good.  The OpenMW-specific Hlaalu Normal Mapped for OpenMW by Lysol, above, is arguably better. One might Masox's first, then Lysol's over it, so that Masox is improving the resolution and naturalness of any textures Lysol didn't.
 * Extreme Textures – Ascadian Isles – Lots of real-nature stuff, and goes very well with Spewboy's Bitter Coast, above. Improves some of the alchemical plants of the region as well as ground textures like grass, roads, and coastal rocks. As with Spewboy's work, this is a good, low-impact alternative to problematic grass mods.  It might, however, conflict with some alchemy mods that almost make plant changes.
 * Extreme Textures - Menu – Replaces the Morrowind logo opening menu background, the in-game target crosshair, and "this item is enchanted" highlighting in the inventory. You can pick and choose from this, if you feel some other mod does a better job with one or two of these features.
 * Joyful Morrowind - Creatures 0.90, by Max a.k.a. ~NOBODY~ a.k.a. Max Shawabkeh – aside from the optional .ESP has not been tested. Provides more saturated and less blurry textures for various vanilla creatures, natural and otherwise. This is textures, a mesh for the Ogrim, and an optional .ESP "to apply the fixed Ogrim UV maps" (what was wrong with them?).  Without knowing what the .ESP really does, and given that the mesh may require that data file to load, one might using the Ogrim resources from this mod if you're trying to save mod slots. These are the same size as and barely different from the originals, other than being richer.  So, it may be good to use most of these as new defaults, then selectively replace them with higher-resolution offerings. Some take a little getting used to; e.g., the Cliff Racer is very ruddy.
 * Oblivion Style Dark Brotherhood Armor BB by Westly – but is a major change, not just an enhancement. It changes the appearance of the Tribunal Dark Brotherhood gear to look more like that in Oblivion.
 * Subtle Magic Glow 1.0 by atteSmythe – The "Faint" version of this greatly reduces the "shiny plastic wrap" look on enchanted items so that it's barely visible, and this stops the effect totally wrecking the aesthetics of various clothing mods (plus, the original shine just looked ridiculous and hokey).  There are two alternatives included to try, if you want: "Fade" which animates the shine in and out, and "Static" which has a slight shine which is not animated (the "Faint" version retains the original shimmer).  Unlike some other mods that attempt to do something like this, this one does not break the Detect Enchantment spell.
 * Vampiric Visages 1.0 by MagicNakor –, as it requires 54 separate .ESP files, one for each face. This should be munged into a single mod file.  Varied Vampiric Visages by the same author is thus also impractical to test, since VV is a VVV dependency, and it also depends on Vampire Embrace, Vampire Realism, and Bloodlines all at once.
 * BB Almalexia Replacer 1.0 by Westly –  Definitely an improvement over the cartoonish original. This is a pluginless replacer, but requires Better Bodies and should load after it.  Also replaces the mesh and texture of Hopesfire.
 * Daedric Lord Armor Morrowind Edition 1.01 by McMuffin and Bahamut – Cites MCP as a dependency, and includes "fake bumpmapping", though there seems to be a version included without it.  ReadMe says it will conflict with other mods of Daedric armor and of the Dremora creature. Parts of this may be selectively usable if the non-bumpmapped version is chosen and mod load order is adjusted.  Some may want to try this for the black-and-green items, a nice break from all the black-and-red.

Mesh, texture, and placement bug fixes
This section includes landscape seam repairs, object placement corrections, and the like, which are sometimes not strictly mesh/texture fixes. (Trying to avoid excessive subcategorization here.)


 * Pelagiad Fix 1.0 by Manauser, included in his "Mini-Mods" archive – Unknown. Written to fix disappearing building in Pelagiad, but this bug may have already been fixed in OpenMW. Loading the mod causes no problems, but might not fix any in this engine, either. To test properly, go to Pelagiad and look around, load the mod and look around again.
 * Suran Ferry 1.0 – See entry in Fast travel section. Also includes some object placement fixes.

Animation
This section for NPC and creature animation, not things like changes to the water appearance or skies, which are in the Meshes and textures section.

For exotic dancers (strippers), see the Racy section.


 * 1st Person Enhanced 2.1 by Darknut (and Djok, Dirnae, Hrnchamd, thugqwerty, LizTail) – . Makes your chest (and thus robe/cuirass/shirt) visible if you look down. Makes you bob more when walking/running/sneaking, and animates your arms a lot (especially when holding weapons, shields, etc., and a whole lot when running), with animation borrowed from third-person mode; many will find it distracting, though less so with short weapons. The major side effect is that your hands are below the viewport unless you look down, thus it is harder to tell when you are armed, have a spell readied, etc. This might be resolvable with viewing angle adjustments in the settings file (worth trying if you like most of this mod's effects). The new spellcasting animations work.  Even new swimming works, despite something in them having an MSWE dependency. But all swimming has your head submerged; if you're at the surface, your head comes up when you stop.  As in the Bethesda engine, you may have to save and reload to get some of the effects to work, especially if female. Comes with vanilla meshes version, and various adaptations to Better Bodies, Better Clothes and other mods. If you use BB and are a beast race, you have to also install one of the BB beast add-ons, or undesirable stuff happens like broken hand meshes.  Uses three .ESP files.  Includes an alternate animation file with different work by other modders – less excessive run/walk/sneak, and one-handed "Almalexia" spellcasting animations.
 * Animation Compilation 0.32 by Artaios (and Dirnae, Hrnchamd, thugqwerty, Greatness7) – . Pluginless alternative to the above mod to just provide new run/walk (including with weapon) and spellcasting animations; they did not show up, but it may be that it only works with vanilla meshes and not Better Bodies.
 * Balmora Council Club [see entry in Player homes and businesses section) – Adds dancing patrons (during nighttime hours), for example.
 * Staff Agency [see entry in Many-companion mods section] – Provides a dancer NPC who is a clothed ballerina.
 * Clothiers of Vvardenfell [see entry in the Clothing section] – Has a new tavern in Caldera, the Wailing Wench (originally a separate mod), that features an array of exclusive animations, including silly dancers, a staggering drunk, patrons drinking from flagons, a couple making out, a barmaid slapping a patron, etc.). Unfortunately, it uses The Regulars to provide some sitting patrons, and due to problems with OpenMW, they instead are floating in mid-air.

Audio
There are other sound mods not tested or listed here yet that will definitely conflict with some of what listed, probably in multiple ways. Chief among them are Atmospheric Sound Effects (ASE), and its lower-impact fork Expanded Sounds by Piratelord.


 * Quieter UI Sounds – Seems to work consistently, though honestly a lot of these sounds, like for equipping/de-equipping, remain unnecessarily noisy. This should not conflict with in-world sound mods.
 * Ambient Town Sounds 1.3 – Working, including with BS, below, and Cait's Critters Unleashed, above. Overall a plus, though the sound used for interiors with a bunch of PCs in them (a quiet background chatter) is not always 100% appropriate, e.g. inside temples and other places one would not expect to sound like a restaurant.
 * Better Sounds 1.1 by JEKA, TJ, and Colobos – .  The good: the sound effects work and add to immersion; the mod has been praised by many, and rated as superior for this effect to many competing mods.  Works with ATS and Cait's Critters Unleashed, above. The caveats: This incorporates Bethesda's own Bitter Coast Sounds, so disable that before running BS. If you have a mod that has a dependency on BCS, by name, you can try loading BCS then BS, but this may not work, in which case you may have to make a choice between mods. You also can't use all the weather effects changes in the config files that are prescribed by ATS and BS (and other mods like Skies IV) at the same time; just pick one set of adjustments and ignore the others.  The bugs: It changes the names of three regions (one by introducing a typo, and two by changing their   fields to match their   fields); this directly interferes with any quest or mod scripting that refers to any of these regions by name (e.g., it breaks aspects of Jasmine, a Morrowind Companion, among others, and also interferes with at least one vanilla Daedric quest in the Sheogorad Region). However, this is easily fixed, and a patch is now available.  Second, it includes a sound file that was apparently from the German version of the game (judging by the name); rename or copy the mod's Sound/Fx/Gizels_House02.wav (or copy another tavern ambient sound file you like) to Deseles_House02.wav .  While this latter problem caused crashes in the Bethesda engine, it does not in OpenMW (if not fixed, you simply don't get the ambient sound while in Desele's House of Earthly Delights).
 * Swiveller's Sounds 1.1 – This is a half-baked mod that requires a whole lot of manual sound-file format conversion work on the part of the player.

Races, classes, birthsigns, factions
Few have been tested yet.


 * Dremora (Markynaz) Race 1.3 by Westly – Resources in it are required for Gatanas, Dremora (Markynaz) Companion (see entry in the Specific companion mods section).  PC mod includes vampire head, both genders, and multiple head/hair options. See this mod's entry in the Creatures section for its effect on vanilla Dremora and how to work around it if you like.
 * Other Dremora race mods – There are at least four:
 * Playable Dremora (a.k.a. PC Dremora, though this name is ambiguous) by The Dremora Team and Miltiades. Parts of it were reused for the Unique Dremora, Ranked Dremora, and Dremora Replacer mods.
 * Nethaupaul Dremora a.k.a. PC Dremora (Nethaupaul) by Mr. Dave – Unconnected to The Dremora Team's work. Parts of it were reused for the Ranked Dremora creatures mod.
 * Dremora and Winged Dremora Races by redwoodtreesprite (a.k.a. RTS)
 * Dremora Clone by Jax Shadow – Extremely cheaty, and only of use for testing as a near-invincible character; see entry in Hacks, testing tools, exploits, and cheats section.
 * Lady Death Companion 2.0b by Korana  – See entry in . Includes a new playable race (female only) and birthsign.

Note-taking while in-game

 * Chalk 3.1.0 by ManaUser –, though a bit tedious to use. Allows you to write "in the world" with chalk sticks, e.g. to label doors, draw arrows, etc. Comes in white, red, and glow-in-the-dark. The chalk sticks weigh a crazy 1 full pound (or kilo or whatever these units are); use OpenMW-CS to reduce this to a sane 0.1. Given that you can add notes directly to the local map (didn't know that? double-click on any spot that isn't already a little "named place" square), about the only use for this is labeling specific containers. It adds chalk as random loot all over the place; no one needs that much chalk, and it's displacing the appearance of other, more useful items. This would probably be resolved by using a leveled-list-merging tool.
 * Journal Enhanced 1.1 by aerelorn –, as it relies on an external program, Morrowind Enhanced (MWE).
 * Take Notes 1.1 – ; requires the external program MWSE.

Misc.

 * Key Overhaul 1.1 –  Replaces some textures, but the main benefit is renaming, so all [vanilla] keys are grouped in inventory.
 * Pearls Enhanced 3.0.0 – . Not much of an enhancement. You do find some more valuable pearls, but the chance to find a normal one is reduced, with many of them flawed.  While that's balanced, it kind of cancels out. Alchemy sorter mods will not work with any of these pearls (unless specifically authored to support this mod). The "Colored Pearls" version of this is not compatible with OpenMW, just the base PE mod (though that provides two colored ones, black and pink, which do work).
 * Lower First Person Sneak Mode 1.01 – Working, and useful if you have a hard time telling if you're in sneak mode, which can happen if you have the toggle option on and are not walking; if you don't use the toggle mod, you don't need this mod – just let go of the sneak key! The only side effect is that the lower angle makes items on high shelves harder (rarely, impossible) to see and get in sneak mode.  This has not often been a problem, and usually fixed by jumping onto something else, then sneaking.
 * Potion/Scroll Icons and Potion Sort, Fixed by Spirithawke (patches PSIaPS 1.0 by rm_rfstar, Erasmus, and Srikandi) –, though takes a while to get used to. Gives distinct icons for various potions and scrolls (or at least types of them), and sorts vanilla ones ("Restore Health, Quality", instead of "Quality Restore Health", etc.), without making weird and surreptitious changes to chests or to Golden Saint summoning scrolls for no reason, as the original mod did. See also Better Looking Liquor, Drugs, and Vials in the Meshes and textures section. It would be better if it sorted even more logically ("Health, Restore, Quality"), but we'll leave that for another mod.
 * GotY Script Tidy 2.02 –, even with just the minimal variant installed; but many other mods were in use. It is possible that some of the fixes this attempts to apply to coding errors in the original Bethesda .ESM s conflict with fixes already applied to the OpenMW game engine itself. The only way to adequately test this would be to run through most of the whole game with no mods but this one, and see if various well-known vanilla bugs, that are also known to not be fixed in OpenMW, stop occurring, without new problems being caused by the mod.
 * Ingredient Weight by PeterBitt –, since the stock weights of several Tribunal items were wildly inconsistent with similar items in the base game. If you're a "thud 'n' blunder" player with no time for alchemy, and who isn't a low-level character desperately taking and selling ingredients, you won't notice or care about this mod's effect.
 * Morrowind Map Replacer v1.0 by Vality – ; this is a patch to the Bethesda Morrowind.exe executable. OpenMW uses a different (and better) mapping system (e.g., it auto-adds mod landmasses).

Trivial and amusement

 * Morrowind Achievements 0.5b –, though it clutters the Journal early in the game (you'll eventually trigger most or all of the "achievements", many of which are trivial, and won't see more Journal entries from the mod). It also has a book that shows you some playing stats, which is much more useful.
 * Hunter's Achievements v1.0 by Trollf –, and only uses its own book (for detailed kill stats). One or both of these achievements mods require a quill pen and inkwell to be in inventory. The simple solution is to keep both books side-by-side on the same shelf with one writing item on top of each, and update them one after the other, about once every game month.
 * Morrowind Trading Cards by Danae –  While one can find and collect cards, and some NPCs will trade them with you, the main NPC for this will crash the game if you enter his cell, or use the console to bring him to another cell. Furthermore, several vanilla NPCs and locations have been modded to have something to do with cards, and at least three will crash the game when you enter those cells or Console-spawn those NPCs. The crashes are partial: One cannot move or do anything in-game in these cells or in proximity to Console-summoned NPCs affected by the bug, but can still reload the game from a save, and use the Console. The albums for collecting the cards (available from that main NPC) do not work, even if you   them to yourself; the cards cannot be added to them.  If you give yourself the completed albums (different IDs), and are running the buffs version of the mod, you will get the buffs from them (they act as skill books at least, and may also add daily powers, I'm not sure – it was broken enough I stopped testing it).  There are other bugs, like one collector NPC offering you a rare Golden Saint card, taking what you offer in trade, and then giving you a junk card instead of the GS card.

Hacks, testing tools, exploits, and cheats
This section also includes intentionally un-balanced mods, like merchants with tremendous amounts of money.


 * Rings of Level Playing 1.0 by Princess Stomper and Grumpy –  This provides various one-use rings that change your level, stats, and gear to average for various levels and classes, so you can go test stuff as, e.g., a level 20 mage or whatever.  Does not add you to any factions, so you will not have Faction Reputation, but you can do that with the Console.  Does have an option to make you Nerevarine already, good for testing late-game mods.
 * Tempus Fugit Ring by abot – . Allows you to speed up and slow down game time. This item is also helpful if you play a time-dependent mod like Necessities of Morrowind, so your character will not be half-dead of thirst if you go cook dinner in realtime in the real world and forget to pause the game, which by default runs at 30x realtime. It can also be useful for temporarily speeding up time beyond 30x if you don't want to use Wait or Rest.  One might use it in the game-morning in exteriors to slow (or "un-speed") time down to 10x or less for more daylight playtime, and speed up the night even more than usual. While Morrowind's night can be exciting (especially with a mod that makes nastier creatures come out then), it can be a hassle for trying to locate something new. (A PC would be sane enough to wait for daylight if they were a real person, so this is more of a practical hack than a cheat.) As in Bethesda's engine, the ring will duplicate itself upon game start if you don't have it in your inventory. While annoying, this is not a big deal, as it is worth only 1 gold.
 * Chests of Holding 1.0 – Working so far. These are stationary, and are not portable. They're at Intervention locations, and exist so you can unload stuff and actually move if you've done a typical over-encumbered teleport. Not really a cheat, since you would just dump the stuff on the ground at the same spot anyway; the provision of a container just makes it more orderly.
 * Uniform Script Fixes 1.0 – This prevents Imperial and Ordinator troops attacking you if you are wearing their armor (in the case of Imperial, it happens only if you are not in the Imperial Legion faction).
 * Balmora Central Market 1.0 by Crankgorilla, part of his "Minimods" series – . Provides a merchant with 200,000 gold. There's not a lot of point to this; just use   if you need unlimited money for testing.  This could easily be re-modded to only have a reasonable amount of cash on hand.
 * Dremora Clone 1.2 by Jax Shadow –  Extremely cheaty: "race has maximum stats and extremely high skill bonuses"; might be useful for testing as a near-invincible PC without having to manually raise all your stats.
 * Stripping mods – There are various mods for getting NPCs to take off their clothes. Some work, some do not. A practical use is to get NPCs to drop or unequip gear (depending on mod) so you could examine it by picking it up or pickpocketing it, as applicable. However, it is easier to save your game, open the Console, click on the NPC, and do  to get them to die on the spot for corpse examination, then revert to your save (because Console-killing then  ing NPCs can break many quests). If you get the item IDs, this technique can be used to remove items from a stock NPC if you want to re-dress them in something from a clothing mod. Only one such strip mod gets NPCs to drop stuff on the ground, while the rest either cause them to de-equip but retain their stuff (if you have 100 disposition with them), or will do nothing at all (presumably due to an MWSE dependency or other OpenMW incompatibility).  For armor and weapons, you can do without any kind of cheat, though it's slow and costly: repeatedly use the Disintegrate effect with Calm Humanoid to prevent being attacked while doing it, until the item breaks and is unequipped. Some strip mods (or strip commands in more general mods) also just seem to be intended as "in your imagination" roleplay things, like the command of this nature in Companion RPP. (That also has kissing requests, etc., that don't actually do anything other than produce positive or negative text responses).  So, in the end, all stripping mods are pointless.
 * Wayshrines of Vvardenfell 1.0 – Puts healing shrines on all the roads, but only a few minutes apart (or seconds apart, if you have high Speed). There are literally hundreds of them. This would have made sense if there was maybe one per major road at the mid-way point between major settlements.  They're so frequent, you can encounter almost any outdoor land enemy, jog away toward a wayshrine, then fight next to the shrine and use it again and again while fighting.
 * Bitter Coast Compilation (see entry in Major overhauls of vanilla places section – Includes a vendor of surveying equipment in Seyda Neen. You drop it and pick it back up again and it gives you your world map coordinates. This was originally from another mod; a perusal of its ReadMe might reveal which, and allow you to find and install that instead of the BCC mega-mod.
 * Improved Character Generation 1.3 by Inari –  Lets you create up to a level-50 character, with appropriate stats, gear, and spells, at the start of the game. Intended for testers, it can also be used to skip the weak and slow beginner levels.

Racy
Consider this section either a pointer or a caveat, depending on your views/preferences regarding risqué material.

Some effort has been made to identify exposure-oriented clothing mods with materials that can be adapted well with other items for more practical outfits.


 * Clutterwear by Illy a.k.a. Illuminiel – Adds various female clothing and armors in the form of bodysuits, high-heel boots, bustiers, tights, and so forth (sexy but not nudie) to several general merchant shops (two in Balmora alone), and also includes male leather-daddy gear like open vests and biker boots and tight leather pants. It's one of the few mods that provides anything for males that could qualify as "sexy". It's also quite high-end armor, and is unbalancing until you already have access to the better vanilla armors, so put off indulging in it until then. This one is listed first just because it's unusual for the male fetishy items.  Pro tip: It's amusing to dress Caius Cosades in this stuff with the Console, instead of him always greeting you shirtless and in dirty-looking cheap pants.
 * The Shrine of Mephala 1.0 by Westly – A Morag Tong enhancement mod,, it also includes midriff-baring armor outfits for males as well as females. This list will do a proper entry on it as a mod at some point (just requires an MT player).
 * Better Bodies, nude and "peanut gallery" (topless, with panties) versions – See main entry in "Texture Replacers" section. The practical use for one of these is getting various clothing mods to not look like crap due to crude underwear visible under elegant strappy gowns and such. It's also a realism mod – if you strip a corpse, you can't unsee that, and it kinda makes you think about the virtual lives you're ending and whether you're callously defiling their bodies to sell their cheap armor for pocket change. But we all know the real purpose of this is probably just the "boobies and dongs" factor. Some potentially annoying things are the excessively large and elevated breasts that look like bad '90s pornstar boobjobs, and the almost total lack of pubic hair on anyone but a few males, another porno influence. It would be much more lore-friendly if all the bodies had bush (like just about everyone in the real world did until the waxing fad started a generation ago), perhaps in varying levels by race – one would probably expect Orcs and Nords to be particularly hirsute, and elves of various sorts to be much less so, with Imperials and Bretons in the middle. Some hair down there also makes the nude mods a bit less anatomically in-your-face, at least with the females.  When it comes to detail, they didn't skimp on the males in this regard, either.  The human[oid] figure is nothing to be ashamed of, after all, though many players may ultimately find the full-nude version distracting.
 * Sexy Creatures 1.1 by Dankbud – Works, and is very good. This is a mesh and texture replacer (high resolution, and much less cartoony than vanilla) for the Golden Saint, Dremora (turned into a female, and doesn't affect the Dremora Lord), Winged Twilight, and Spriggan, each installable separately (or you can combine their folders to free up mod slots).  It is markedly superior to Femmons in virtually every way (and the latter doesn't redo the Dremora).  This mod's Dremora is a black-haired variant of the Dremora (Markynaz) Race (see above), and thus distinguishable (barely) from Gatanas, Dremora (Markynaz) Companion.  If you run with Ranked Dremora, you will not get the female Dremora from Sexy Creatures, which is just as well, since the ones in RD are better still.  Anyway, the primary value of SC, if you aren't into animated nekkidness for its own sake, is surely the Winged Twilight: it's  to be attacked by a nude, screeching dragon-woman-demon-thing – and the harpy of classical mythology is bare-breasted, So are many goddesses and female demonic figures in historical religions and their myths, because the breast was not so sexualized in earlier times as it is in modern Western culture (only since the Victorian era).  So, it's kind of fitting for the Golden Saint and Dremora, even if the motivation for this mod was probably more toward the sexualizing side. A separate patch (available at Nexus Mods) optionally makes the Golden Saint not bare-breasted, but retains all the visual improvements. The nudity on the Spriggan just looks silly (then again, the Spriggan looks silly no matter what).
 * Femmons – Works, and is an improvement over the original meshes and textures of the Golden Saint and Winged Twilight. Also replaces the Spriggan. Sexy Creatures does all this and more, with even better graphics.
 * Bob's Armory [1] – See above, under Player homes and businesses. It also includes a boatload of femme clothing armor (high armor rating, poor enchantability, and middling texture quality, but great meshes), mostly in a lingerie style, though some of it is more practical, and much of it can be layered with clothes pretty well. Bob's Armory II (in the "Merchants and Items" section) also includes some stuff like this but is mostly historical arms and armor.
 * Balmora Expansion 1.4, with BE Fixes (see main entry in "Major Overhauls", above) includes a bathhouse and brothel (but the latter's feature to take a dancer to a "love room" does not actually work in OpenMW, so it's just another strip club). Technically, this is a realism mod; a city would likely have these places, absent an anti-nudity moralizing theocracy. These features are out of the way of normal gameplay; you really have to go looking for them, and no quests I'm aware of take you to them. Some of this is pretty puerile, like excessively flirty and exhibitionistic females (maybe males, too, if you're a PC female?) at the bathhouse.  The NPC bathrobe seller's name provides a quick laugh, though, and, well, you can get a bathrobe, which is amusing. (Would be even better if it had Exquisite enchantability. You could face Dagoth Ur looking like you just came from a spa.)
 * Sexy [type] Armor series by Cenobite (mesh work by NeoLiv and Durgoth), where [type] is one of: Bonemold, Daedric, Ebony, Glass, Ice, Ordinator or Red Glass – These require Better Bodies 2.0 or later, and do not require Tribunal or Bloodmoon even where they include resources from them (High Ordinator and Ice Armor). There's lot of gratuitous nudity and near-nudity, with "armor" that would not be effective at all, but there are a few interesting pieces. Most are sold, a few are available free.  Purists will probably complain that Daedric should be almost impossible to get, and not be for sale, but they'll object to many, many Daedric-related mods, and are forgetting you can get a vanilla set for free after one good fight, as long as you've already got your Corprus cured in the Main Quest.  It's disappointing these mods didn't include a lot more tamer options, more along the prettied and de-bulked rather than raunchified side. However, many of the "naughty" ones either accidentally have a black bodysuit effect under them due to a compatibility problem between their alpha channel (transparency) work and OpenMW – and this black effect is arguably an improvement – or they layer to very good effect (sometimes it must be done with loose vanilla clothes, sometimes with tight, Better Bodies mod clothes, depending on the armor item), and skirts can be worn over most of the teensy-weensy armorial bottoms, especially if of approximately the same color in case they clip a little at the waist. The enchantment values tend to be higher than they should be; to not cheat, only enchant them as much as the comparable vanilla piece can be enchanted (these can be ). The included footwear is all armor. Some of the mods include skirt form-factor items that are armor (greaves) and some that are just clothing.  Below are mod-by-mod notes on experiments in making practical-looking outfits with this stuff.
 * Sexy Glass Armor Mark II – Functional mod, but these four sets of minimal cuirasses and greaves would not be. The gear covers very little, and even where it does, it's mostly see-through to a greater or lesser extent, depending on the piece (only the Alpha One cuirass does not have this effect; all of the panty "greaves" are translucent). The one pair of boots look pretty cool, though are more like shoes with hose; these would go well with a short green or black dress, and they can also layer with a few pants for more contrast. Sold in Ald'ruhn by a new vendor, for very high prices, and have a cheaty (Daedric-level) armor rating. But that's okay if you use just them on companions to help keep them alive while running around dressed like a combination of Barbarella and a fetish model, one supposes (especially if you've nerfed their combat, as described in the section on companion tips).  The vendor also has a Glass Longbow (damage: 1-35).
 * Sexy Glass Armor 1.1 – Completely different items from the above, tamer, more practical looking, and with the alpha glitch causing the ninja bodysuit effect. As a consequence of this bug, the "Sexy" and "Prudish" variants are visually identical, so there's effectively one cuirass and one greaves. The two high boots included will not work with the boyshorts greaves in the same mod, because the latter's black alpha clips with those boots (one pair of which looks pretty good, in a neon-green dominatrix way, while the other is a bit goofy – thigh-high pumps with armor bits stuck on the front). The shorts will work with the Mark II boots (above), and many less outlandish shorter boots. The vest cuirass looks pretty nice, and fairly practical, especially when layered with a shirt.  Sold in Ald'ruhn by the original outdoor armorer, priced about the same as regular Glass Armor, and with the originals' armor rating.
 * Sexy Bonemold Armor – Working. Sold by a new vendor in the clothier's manor in Ald'ruhn, with Bonemold-appropriate stats and prices. One set, of tight and midriff-abbreviated cuirass, greaves in the form of chaps, and heeled boots; the first two items are each available in a more and less revealing option. These layer very well with tight clothes underneath.
 * Sexy Daedric Armor 1.1 – New merchant in the Assarnatamat Daedric shrine (near Forth Moonmoth and Caldera). The items have same black alpha channel bug, again with good results. Includes two cuirasses which look fantastic (especially on Gatanas Dremora (Markynaz) Companion, in the companions section above), that differ only a little (one was probably partly see-through, but is not because of the glitch). The two boyshorts greaves differ only in a minor detail (one was apparently crotchless but has lost this effect). There's also a "sash" (loincloth) that the bug has turned into a full, long skirt and actually looks classy (equips as greaves), and an animated cape (equips as left pauldron).  The armor is priced and has the armor rating of Daedric gear, and the skirt and cape have lower armor ratings and are lighter (though still Heavy class), which makes sense. The boots again clip with the black alpha of the greaves, and are thigh-high pumps, which can be worn with something else. Other boots that are not skin-tight do not clip with the greaves. Also includes two just-clothing skirts, one of which has an insane enchantability level.
 * Sexy Daedric Armor Mark II – Working. Two cuirasses, three greaves, two pair of boots (all different from the 1.1 set), plus one set of pauldrons, and two dresses. Had for free at the Assurnabitashpi Daedric Shrine (W of Urshilaku camp), and there's three of everything, which is a bit much; there's a patch available that makes you buy them. The cuirasses are Daedric faces (similar to the stock shield) over the chest; the exposure-oriented one (guess what shows through the eye holes?) can be layered with a tight shirt from a mod, but clips with vanilla ones. Two greaves are thigh plates with a crotch covering or just a belt, and layer okay with black mod underwear, but do not work with vanilla pants (clipping, and part of the leg disappears). The third greaves are the just the thigh parts of the vanilla ones and layer with vanilla pants.  The pauldrons are Daedric makeovers of High Ordinator (Hands of Almalexia) armor. Boots: a) an all-new, great-looking pair that are tight thigh-highs, and b) a reworking of the vanilla boots to also include the same thigh plates of vanilla greaves (these work with the boyshorts-greaves of version 1.1). Also included are two exposure-oriented just-clothes dresses (shirts), that layer with vanilla pants, loose mod pants, and tight, small mod tops (bras) that don't equip as shirts (e.g. some mod items that equip as pants are basically top-and-bottom bikinis).  A really nice set can be put together with parts of both of these Daedric mods, plus vanilla gauntlets and shield.
 * Sexy Ebony Armor 1.1 – Working, and available from a new vendor in Ald'ruhn. One top is breast-exposing, the other is "side boob", and neither will layer well with much of anything, but can be used with a few vanilla shirts (mostly Common) without looking too terrible (you mostly see shirt). The miniskirt greaves are layerable with vanilla pants, but not most BB ones from mods. Both the tops and bottoms come in opaque and translucent. One pair of boots is another shoe-and-stockings number as in Sexy Glass Armor Mark II, and the other is high-heel pumps with armor plates on the front as in 1.1 of that mod and the Daedric mods. Vanilla armor boots may not work with these pauldron-skirts, though BB ones from mods will (this may be true of some or all of the other mods in this series).
 * Sexy Ice Armor 1.1 – Available from vanilla merchant Thongar in Khuul. Like some of the others, has the black bodysuit effect. This looks okay with some pieces, but not one of the boots. Both the boots are decorative pumps. The top is a bubble-chested thing like the Alpha One cuirass in Sexy Glass Armor Mark II. The bottom is boyshorts. Because of the alpha issue, both the opaque and translucent options came out opaque, and thus visually identical. Layerability was not tested, since they have the bodysuit glitch and look fine without having to add underthings.
 * Sexy Ordinator Armor 2 – Has the alpha-as-black issue again. Includes Vivec Ordinator and High Ordinator (Her Hands) variants. New merchant in prison area of Ministry of Truth, Vivec, and has quite a lot of options; they cost about what they should (which is a whole lot, especially for High Ordinator), and have armor ratings one would expect. For regular Indoril: there are three tops in varying levels of intended coverage, and five bottoms (two boyshort/panty greaves that only differ at the belt, and three varied-coverage skirt-greaves), plus two pairs of boots. Most of the tops and bottoms look great with the bodysuit effect, and the bottoms have all become long skirts with armorial accents, due to the glitch. One pair of boots is great, a short and less clunky version of the vanilla ones, while the other is a thigh-high and looks funny because it has silver feet. Also included are the female Ordinator helm from another mod by Sheikizza (less useful because Sheikizza's original just adds a F mesh and texture to the vanilla helm, and it adapts to M or F correctly; this one is an F-specific separate helm), and an open-faced one that does not work in OpenMW (floats above the head!), plus pauldrons (labeled "Silver" though they are not) that are the upper-arm piece without the bulky shoulder piece. The tall boots clip with the panties/boyshorts, but can be worn with something else. The Hands of Almalexia variants: Essentially the same, except one of the boyshorts cuirasses (the better looking one) is mis-coded as boots and is thus pretty useless; no helm variants are included; and two of the cuirasses are visually identical with the alpha glitch.  The mod's vendor also supplies some stock parts (gauntlets, shield). Overall, some of this looks really good (armored Temple priestess?) especially with an open-face helm that works, or any female-ordinator helm.
 * Sexy Red Glass Armor 1.0 by Cenobite & Maw3193 –  Red Glass variant of Sexy Glass Armor Mark II; items must be added with via the Console.
 * Gothic Attire Complete 1.1 by Qarl and Cenobite (see main entry in Merchants and Items section, above) – Includes lots of racy clothing as well as tamer options. The racy stuff layers well, and the high enchantability means the underwear is useful as "pants" and "shirts" with skimpy outerwear even for high-level characters. If you have trouble with that, be aware that mod armor that is skin-tight will clip with skin-tight mod clothing and often make it disappear; one layer needs to sit a little above the other, so it can take experimentation.
 * Kat's Kastle by Kathryn, Lidi, Tommy Khajiit, NeoLiv, et al. (see entry in the Clothing section) – About half the 1,200+ offerings are on the racy side, mostly the more so the deeper you go into the castle. Some of them remain quite elegant despite exposure, not unlike much of female dress in classical Roman, Greek, Egyptian, Persian, and Indian art. But other stuff is outright fetishwear. It's almost all clothing not armor, and the vast majority are dresses, teddies, and swimsuits that equip as shirts (with disappointingly low enchanting values despite high prices), plus lots of boots/shoes (higher enchant than they should have). One or two shops have not mannequins but models that are regular NPCs you can get to follow you with Command Humanoid.  Some of the male NPCs have open-to-bare-the-chest poet shirts, tight pants, kilts, cool boots, etc, which you can get by killing them or using the Console; none of the male wares are for sale.
 * Seyda Neen BB Market – See entry in Clothing section. Provides dresses as well as underwear and lingerie.
 * Tag Lady, Elf Version (a.k.a. TagladyElf, Elftaglady, Elf Taglady etc.) 1.6 by Galgat (Taglag) –  An intentionally raunchy companion mod – and an elf of indeterminate ethnicity (likely intended to be a Bosmer, since neither blue-green-grey nor yellowish) – Monet shows up nude in Balmora, looking for succor, and perhaps a sucker, and for you to ....  Features: can heal you; provides guild guide travel to 10 locations (confusingly, they're separated into two different menus, and with many locations misspelled and at least one not working); offers Enchanting and Repair service.  Her stats are extremely generalist; she's mid-range competent with all weapon and armor types, and has fairly high attributes (can carry a lot), but not a tremendous amount of health.  Has combat control options. Will automatically Levitate with you (and stop), and has Water Breathing ability. Not much of a spellcaster otherwise.  Has some experimental menu system which is kind of annoying, though might actually save time after you get used to it (or would if the main option you usually need, Companion Share, were in this pop-up). She has "lover" options with explicit audio (they are slow, and fade to black; just wait for it to be over). She also just pops off with randomized salacious commentary, but it gets old quickly. She also periodically demands to take a leak, complete with a sound effect for it, which is rather ... unnecessary. The new voice files appear to have mostly been ripped from movies, though some of her "fight talk" is custom-made for the mod. The audio quality is poor, and these can be replaced with silent MP3s if you are so inclined.  Monet can apparently be run with the original Tag Lady (presumably human, and with the same options except offers Spellmaking instead of Enchanting service), if that mod ever resurfaced.  Even this one had to be recreated by using tools to pull her out of someone's game and clean it of GMSTs; the original archives dated to 2006, and seem to exist on no current sites. Original notes said "works better with other companion[s]", though in what way is unclear.  Doors (that are not locked and are not teleport doors to another cell) have a habit of opening and closing on their own in her presence. Any time you are caught stealing (even by 0 Alarm NPCs who just verbally object) she interrupts.  Tester experienced some game instability (fairly frequent crashes) with this companion, though also had many other mods loaded. She also stopped responding after a while (no dialogue options or inventory access, but would still follow and fight); reloading an earlier save and re-doing the same few minutes of gaming did not re-trigger the bug.
 * Bosmer Companion by JMK (JohnK222) – See entry in the Specific companion mods section; while usable as a regular companion, it is also a lover mod with salacious sound effects and dialogue, according to the ReadMe; this feature is optional.
 * Clothiers of Vvardenfell [see entry in the Clothing section] – Has a topless sleeping patron in one of the rooms of the Wailing Wench tavern.
 * Mods to get NPCs to strip – See notes in the Hacks, testing tools, exploits, and cheats section.

"Exotic" dancers (strippers) and prostitutes
Non-stripper dancers (e.g. animated patrons in taverns) are covered in the Animation section.

See also the Increased modesty section for mods that add clothing to the House of Earthly Delights dancers.


 * Dancers 0.8 by Nicholiathan – Working, including in other mods that use the vanilla strip-club resources of Desele's House of Earthly Delights to add dancers elsewhere. It diversifies the (human) races of the dancers (who remain regular NPCs, not companions), and changes their behavior options (e.g., must pay them to strip). If you use a nude version of Better Bodies they will eventually go full-nude.
 * Balmora Academy of Stripology 1.5 – Provides male dancers as well as female, but is bugged in OpenMW (dancers cannot be hired, as intended – if you pay, they will not go with you). For hirable dancers, see A Lord's Men and Staff Agency. Notes: If you use a nude version of Better Bodies they will all be full-nude. This mod uses the same location as Little House on the Rocks, and so cannot be used at the same time.
 * Balmora Expansion 1.4, with BE Fixes (see entry in Major overhauls of vanilla places section) adds another, two-part Desele venue in that city, with dancers, nude female wrestling (not actually animated, they just stand in their ring corners), and a non-working prostitution function, which was borrowed from another mod (and might also not work in that one).
 * Dark Club [does not have a separate entry in this mod list yet] – As both a stand-alone mod and as integrated with Carnithus' Armamentarium [in the Weapons and armor section] in Balmora Expansion [in the Major overhauls of vanilla places section], it includes nude dancers and nude, passed out drunks or skooma addicts.
 * Kat's Kastle [see above] – Includes at least two animated fashion shows of dancers in revealing attire. Girly bits will be visible regardless what version (if any) of Better Bodies you have. Same goes for the mannequin NPCs in the various shops included.
 * Northern Island [see entry in New major landmasses section ] – Has strippers in the tax collector's house. Also has a topless female miner (even the vanilla game does in at least two mines, if you are not running the underwear version of BB or using the vanilla body models).
 * A Lord's Men and Staff Agency [see entries in the Many-companion mods section] – Both provide dancer/courtesan hirelings (one provided by Staff Agency is a clothed ballerina). Some of them have mod-exclusive dances, but not all of these actually work in OpenMW.
 * CM Partners and its forks [see entry in the Many-companion mods section] – Later versions have nude (or semi-nude, depending on your Better Bodies version) prostitutes, the hiring of whom provides temporary stat buffs. None of the versions with this feature are presently operational with OpenMW as companion mods.  However, the variant that does work, Friends and Rivals, still provides a bunch of inexplicably topless potential female companions, unless you have the full-underwear version of BB (One supposes they were intended to be paupers in bra tops, if you were using the vanilla meshes.)  They are not prostitutes, strippers, or otherwise sex-oriented, just mercenaries, with missing clothing.
 * Hidden House 1.0 by JMK (JohnK222) [see entry in Player homes and businesses section] – Includes a "harem" room with several dancers (not the stock Desele ones); if you are not running an underwear version of Better Bodies they'll be fully nude.
 * South Wall, Den of Iniquity [see entry in the Major quest and faction mods section] – Strangely, has dancers in skimpy bikinis, but nude prisoners in the dungeon (though they'll have some level of underwear if you're not running the full-nude BB). The dancers do not appear to be BB at all (they seem noticeably thinner), and may be using Smoother Bodies meshes.
 * No known dancer mods provide any beast-race dancers; the animation hasn't been done for their unusual legs.

Increased modesty
In the opposite direction of the above, if you feel even the vanilla underwear is immodest, you have at least a few options.


 * CB's Better Bodies v1.0 by Cantina Boy – This is a mesh and texture add-on for Better Bodies that expands the built-in underwear of the no-nude version, to cover even more (both male and female). It's a bit like early-20th-century swimwear.
 * House of Earthly Delights, Harem Style 1.0 by NioLiv – Puts Better Bodies veils and harem/genie outfits on the dancers and staff at the strip club in Suran. You can also buy the outfits. (These are also included, in even more variety, in Kat's Kastle in the Merchants and items section, above.)
 * Suran Dancers 1.2 by Misty Moon – Puts tops and sarongs on the ladies at Desele's House of Earthly Delights. Pre-Better Bodies.  Also fixes the problem of dancers not staying on their stages (there are many other mods for that if you just want that feature).
 * DeFemme Armor Replacer by Alaisiagae –  Gets rid of feminized armor versions introduced in Tribunal, Bloodmoon, and LeFemm Armor (and adjusts the models so that breasts do not erupt through the male, now unisex, cuirasses due to clipping). Not sure this works with Better Bodies.
 * Consider also adding any of several mods that increase the variety and availability of Exquisite Robes (or other robes if you don't care about enchantment value).

Note to aspiring modders: Given how much critical material has been written about the impracticality and unrealism of "boob-plate armor" (Google it), the most-needed thing in this category is mesh work to produce "boob shelf" or "bosom bubble" cuirasses, like those seen in various films and other games, providing bust room in an across-the-chest manner without a division between the breasts. To de-emphasize breasts in this game, this solution is, because the breasts will in many cases clip through a flat male cuirass (if you are using a no-underwear Better Bodies version and the character has no shirt, you'll get bare breasts showing through armor; if not, you'll get the shirt, or the permanent bra of the non-nude body model, erupting from the cuirass). There are numerous, flattering approaches to the idea, any of which could be adapted to the rather prominent "rack size" in Better Bodies, but no one seems to have done it for Morrowind yet:

Unresolved problems in a "stress test"
To push OpenMW's boundaries, I'm running near the max number of mods. It works surprisingly, almost shockingly well. The issues I've run into so far:


 * Making mod changes – even to load order, or just adding a simple .OMWAddon that does nothing but fix a typo – after a game has started has a strong tendency to screw the game up in OpenMW, often in ways one will not notice for a while.  Some of these may include the following (and examples are given below):
 * Rooms with missing floors so you (and any NPCs who generate as the door opens) fall into water, to your death on rocks, or endlessly in a void. Sometimes also missing exteriors (e.g., nothing but a door and a glass-like hole in the ground you can walk on, where the building should be.
 * Rooms that lock you up (PC cannot move, and nothing else happens, though console still works) as soon as you enter them.
 * Missing meshes and/or textures (they show up as day-glow pink or big "!" markers). Nothing will re-load them, even adding them individually in a new   config file entry that just has Meshes and Textures directories with the missing things.
 * Companions may vanish, though are usually recoverable from the void with  as mentioned elsewhere herein.  (Do not use  ; that makes a new copy of the NPC in their default starting state, so you will lose the companion's gear, stats increases, quest flags, etc.)
 * NPCs in the wrong place, e.g. standing (even drowned) in a river, stuck under a bridge, etc.
 * Crucial NPCs just missing. They can also be recovered, with  or.
 * Items missing (including entire places, if added by a mod).
 * OpenMW crashing on startup, or upon leaving the cell one is in when re-entering the game.
 * On restarting the game app and loading a savegame, the player character is falling. Re-opening the save fixes the issue. Sometimes quickly doing   in the console also fixes it, but usually not. Another option is casting Recall, and another is using   in the Console and "flying" up to where you're supposed to be, then toggling it back off. It's easier to just reload the savegame. Sometimes the problem goes away, and sometimes when it does it comes back.  It's been happening to me consistently for months now.
 * Three interiors in Mournhold have lost their floors; in one you fall into water, in the others you're falling in a void. On exterior, that of the temple, is also missing and there's just a door and a big, glassy hole where the building should be. In each case, you can swim or fall-fly (respectively) over to NPCs (who are also in the water, for void-floating with you) and find out who they are, then just load a previous savegame, and use the console to clone the NPCs, with .  As far as I can tell, no objects in these rooms are essential, and only three of the NPCs matter (one gives quests, one is a hireable companion, and the other is some councilor guy who might be quest-related; all the rest are generic guards).  Anyway, just avoid going into the rooms after you figure out which doors lead to them.
 * The problem also appeared in Raven Rock, as the town is built, and it affects several NPC homes, the player's factor mansion, and the general store (presumably also the smithy if you built that instead). Does not affect the Hlaalu stronghold built at Odai Plateau.  One suspect is the Windows Glow add-ons for Tribunal and Bloodmoon.
 * A few NPCs have a tendency to wander into weird places/situations and get stuck, evidently due to faulty modified path grids in sloppy mods, or different mods doing different things in the same area that, in combination, mess up the path grid. You can just move them to a safer location in the console, as with companions. For a generic NPC, you can leave them as-is if you want, though I find it distracting to have someone walking into a wall all day, or a pack guar stuck under a bridge.
 * One NPC has flipped out. The siltstrider operator in Ald'Ruhn goes into "flee in terror" mode seconds after you arrive.  This sends any companions you have into combat mode. Since the NPC is in combat mode himself, first, you can kill him without it being a crime/bounty situation.  Doing so and cloning him with   just results in another travel agent with a panic attack. You don't need him anyway, since you can leave via Mages Guild travel.  I've tried every in-game way that came to mind to get him to chill out, and nothing works except temporarily.  I don't know what mod caused this behavior change. If it happens to you, and you want him there and on duty, the simplest solution is to open the console with him visible, click on him, and then enter , followed by   and   to reset him to typical NPC defaults. If you have a companion who has reacted and is already hostile, they will also need a  , and may need Calm Humanoid and to be taken out of and put back into follower mode.
 * A few wide-open texture seams here and there, including at least three you can fall into and get stuck; just use  to get out.  Don't use  ; it rarely actually sends you to a useful location and can make matters worse. One mod that creates several of these is the otherwise functional Imperial Airship, though this may be due to conflict with other mods including more landscape than they need to.  If so, this may be resolvable by loading IA later.
 * Some clothing and other gear mods are messed up, and have broken meshes and/or textures that show up as either a day-glow thing in the right shape, or a big yellow box with a huge "!". There does not seem to be an easy way to fix these.  Not all of them that seem broken at first really are, however.  Several provide female-only clothes, and if you put them on a male they don't work, or vice versa (either the clothes don't show up at all, they make part of the character invisible, or they clip badly with the body mesh.  Also, some are made for the Better Bodies mod and some are not, and this can also cause texture clipping (e.g. thighs showing through greaves).  This can be visually patched up to an extent by equipping underlying pants, shirts, or whatever, that are approximately the same color as the armor item they clip with.  Once in a while some mod or other will mess up a vanilla texture, e.g. the Crab Meat icon not showing up.  This mostly seems resolved by restarting the game app, and otherwise by toying with load order, but sometimes it may just be a faulty mod.  Most often, it is due to changing the exact number and order of mods loaded. Just do not do it if you don't have to.  If you aren't sure you want to run a mod, try it out with a test character, then start a new game after you decide which mods you'll use. This is unfortunate, but I wasted two weeks of game play by testing out some additional mods and removing some poor ones, only to find that my game got too screwed up to continue, and my mod load setup was too complicated to return to exactly.  This is a good argument for putting all your game directories under version control with Subversion (svn), Git, or Bazaar (bzr).
 * A handful of quests have been slightly problematic. The "Infidelities" mini-quest in Mournhold triggered the journal entry that the husband had been spotted, but not the one after following him around and spying on him and his maybe-lover; they never did anything unusual, just stood around.  Using the Console to set the appropriate Journal entry flag (see ) got past the problem. I encounter many problems like this (over a dozen broken quests so far), some of which may be mod problems, but some OpenMW bugs. A definite mod example: in one test game, Fargoth did not do his animated "go to my hiding place" routine, because some fencing added by Seyda Neen Complete got in his way. I used the   Console command on the fence components and all was well.  In another test, this scripted Fargoth behavior worked fine; he apparently approaches his hiding place from random directions, and sometimes they do not conflict with the fence. I think it is the same problem as some NPCs getting stuck against walls, under bridges, etc. (see above).