User:Darklocq/Mod testing notes

This is a [draft] page for extended mod testing notes, so the Mod status page can be kept more concise. Specific mods' entries here can be set up with link anchors. Need to add version numbers, authors, links. Also codes for MW, TB, BM, etc., as required by the mods The companion mod advice can probably be broken out into a separate page on that.

Companion Mods

Companion mods in general have proven challenging to work into OpenMW, other than rudimentary pack animals. A large number of more complex NPC companions appear to be based on Grumpy's Companion Project v3.1 (let's call that "generation 1"), often as improved by Emma in some of her companions ("generation 2") in various stages, and later by numerous others in different and inconsistent ways in later companions ("generation 3"). Some particular gen 3 companions (e.g. Jasmine and Dawn) appear to be the most functional, with many gen 2 mods failing to perform as expected (or at all, beyond stationary NPCs that can hold stuff and chit-chat). Gen 1 mods: not sure, since Grumpy's ZIP files and installation instructions are often faulty, and the companions have to be consoled in, and appear to provide little utility other than as guard-AI NPCs, so no one seems to be testing them. There's also the huge companion systems like CM Partners and its forks, plus A Lord's Men, and Staff Agency; I have not tested these.

General Advice on Companions

The five most frequent companion-mod issues encountered in OpenMW:

1. The companion eventually disappears, usually after restarting OpenMW, 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. 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).
   • The companion can possibly can be restored with commands that bring that gear-laden copy of the character to a specific map location (see the Julan forum thread).
   • In other cases the companion is simply screwed up. In this event, you can try to spawn a new copy with PlaceAtPC, at the cost of the gear and any training and companion quests to date, but 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. This eventuality may necessitate that you remove the companion mod, clean your save, then reinstall it and re-do the companion quests to restore the companion to working order (you hope). 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 3.1 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. So, read the companion's documentation carefully.
   • Some strategies for preventing lossage: When you are done gaming for the day (and periodically just as a form of backup), 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 and restart the game, reloading that save. If the companion disappears, it was already corrupted by something, and you need to load an earlier savegame. If you added, removed, or reordered any mods in the interim, undo those actions first. Do not leave any companion for 72 game hours or longer without interacting with them (and put them in follow mod to be sure they've interacted sufficiently); so, be careful about using "Wait" several days in a row with merchants. Never leave a companion in "guard this spot" (AI wander) mode and then exit the game, and save before you move from one exterior cell to another if they are in this mode. This methodology may not be foolproof; generally, 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.
2. The companion will not follow, and is just a stand-around NPC/container – This seems to happen with many Emma mods. 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, so systematically changing the script names and references to them may fix this. This is a known problem with both Laura Craft Romance and Indiana James Imperial Boyfriend, as well as Panther Buddy.
3. 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 (see previous bullet point), and with the same potential solution, though it may also be endemic to the scripting logic. A harder-core fix may be extensively rewriting the mods using generation 3 scripting from mods that do not have this problem and are otherwise similar at the basic interaction level. The "fighting forever" issue is a known problem with Beryl and Hurd, as well as the fighter companion and domestic staff of Domehome if you teleport them out of that location (they'll actually fight each other on sight as soon as the second one arrives).
4. The companion's control options disappear when another companion is added – This (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 them to be unique. No one seem to have tested this approach on any existing mods. This is a known problem with running Laura Craft and Indiana James at the same time, among others (sometimes their own documentation will warn of this, as do Grumpy's Cally and Grabran readmes). Many mod authors have used Grumpy's scripts without doing much to adapt them to be unique to their specific mod.
5. 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.

Specific Companions (Humanoid and Creature)

• Jasmine, a Morrowind Companion 2.7 by Gulfwulf (GHF) – Fully functional so far (have not completed all her included quests), but highly sensitive to changes in other mods, and may have to be restarted from scratch as a result. Use a) after you are certain what mods you want to run with this time and that they're in a functional order, b) before you start the main quest, and c) without mods that greatly alter the MQ, if you want to do all her quests and want her to be stable. She is pretty tough, but I have gotten her killed in testing several times, so she's no over-powered, though may make things rather easy for a level 1-3 character. The house she comes with in Seyda Neen is not over-powered, and quite modest. A minor bug is that the crap armor she comes with she will not use, and she won't equip anything comparable. You must give her Chitin or better or she will not armor up; but you would do that anyway. Getting her to trigger properly as a companion requires specific undocumented steps: after you find her, you must acquiesce to her two requests, take her to her house, dialogue with her again inside it, then click on her closet, then dialogue with her again to configure her behavior, and all in that specific order; only then is she ready to go. A great thing about Jasmine is she does not suffer from the potion-guzzling bug; you can stock her up with 20 health potions if you want to, and she'll use them as needed. Like most companions, she is not at all careful with missile weapons and will happily stick arrows in you if you get in her way. She's smart enough to not turn into your enemy if you give her a minor wound during combat (she'll issue verbal warnings instead), but will of course turn enemy if you attack her outright, or if you injure her seriously during combat. Her quests so far have one and only one right answer, seemingly always the first one; if you don't give the right answer, that avenue is permanently closed to you, so save frequently in case you click the wrong one. Her ability to stay out of your way is very good; she has the smartest AI I've seen in a companion mod so far. She also comes with some real voice acting, which is not overdone or frequently triggered. My favorite companion to date. She's also compatible 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 seems to vary on its own, but I have not paid close attention to it.

• Wolf Companion 3.1 by Emma – Fully functional, and my second-favorite companion mod. 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 enemies) this puppy can and happily will slaughter all wildlife (land and sea) 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 ever 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. 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 that of the PC, and reduce his scale slightly so he gets in the way less. Must be fed a potion manually; this companion cannot carry anything. Has highly desirable "follow me, but wait outside interior cells" feature that I wish all companions had, especially creature ones.

• Dawn Companion 1.3 by Korana (based on Linsner's comic book character of the same name): Fully functional so far, but I've only been testing this for a day. 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 (e.g. instructions to console her in; she's actually already in-game at Desele's House of Earthly Delights). The same modder's Lady Death Companion (based on the Chaos Comics character) probably is equivalent, with mostly the same scripts, but is much harder to rationalize, lore-wise.

• Beryl and Hurd by Emma: Severely malfunctional; they go into unresolveable "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 Adamasartus 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 can see you, or B and H will go into combat freakout mode the instant they walk out of Arrille's, and b) you probably need to lead each of them to Adamasartus 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.

• Panther Buddy: Will not follow or dialog; if you click on her after purchase, she's just a container. Her control pearl does not work. The only use for her is (after using console to move her) as a non-functional guard pet outside your manor, for the cool sound effects, and to use as a really weird form of storage. "Yes, I hide my diamonds and other jewels in my panther's butt. Who's gonna try to steal them?" >;-)

• Laura Craft Romance 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). So, 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. She has various abilities, like armorer, that I have not tested personally yet. The creature in Laura's basement will follow, but seems to serve no purpose but amusement. One issue with this mod is 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. Not cool, unless you are already at a level where you have access to this sort of stuff. The home also has excessive storage, though this is typical of many house mods.

• Indiana James Imperial Boyfriend by Emma: Same problems as Laura Craft; they use the same scripting.

• Domestic staffers and fighter companion of Domehome (see below): The fighter seems to have the same broken AI as Beryl and Hurd (see above). The three domestic staffers have a similar but peculiar issue: they'll fight each other 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, since 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; I have not tried this. I would ensure that they are kept out of any room you plan to teleport into with any other companion in tow. Another trick for moving them might be using a portable home cheat mod 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 the console.

• Pack rats:
  • Those added by Bethesda's official mods appear to be fully functional (have not used them myself in OpenMW, but I don't see reports of problems with them).
  • Those added by Balmora Expansion (see below) seem to be fully functional.
  • Those added outside Pelagiad by [mod name here] are not usable; the NPC who has them doesn't respond with any purchase options.

• Pack guars:
  • Those added by Balmora Expansion (see below) seem to be fully functional.
  • Those added outside Pelagiad by [mod name here] are not usable; the NPC who has them doesn't respond with any purchase options.
  • Those added by [third mod here]: not tested yet.

• Pack donkeys:
  • Pack Donkey 1.0 by Emma (those added in Suran) – Seem to be fully functional. Warning: version 2.x by same author is for TES4: Oblivion, not TES3: Morrowind.

• Wildlife and farm animals:
  • Cait's Critters Unleashed – Working flawlessly so far, including audio and their limited AI. It's fun getting killed at level one by a chicken you pick a fight with when you're out of stamina. 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. If this happens, the problem beast can simply be slaughtered. I have found no incompatibilities so far, even with mega-mods of Seyda Neen and Balmora (see below). 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, but I have not tested them.

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.

• Companion Role Play Plus (a.k.a. Companion RPP) 1.01 by ManaUser – Partially functional, 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. Those appear to work. The features for having companions change their outfits do not appear to work; I have a suspicion that these are MWSE-dependent and that the author did not mention this in the readme.
• Universal Companion Share – Seems to work, other than for some "non-standard" companions that use custom scripting (e.g. Panther Buddy, who seems to actually be a container, not an NPC). This lack of functionality with those does not appear to have any negative affect on anything.
• Move or Take My Place 1.0 by abot – Despite the fact that the readme says "MWSE required", this actually seems to work, aside from the quick-key trickery. However, it is frustratingly dependent on NPC disposition, which means it will not work most of the time for low-level characters, or at all with NPCs who aren't you best faction buddies. This is worth hacking to make it always work, so NPCs who have totally blocked you, to the point you feel like nuking them with the console, 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.
• NPC Commands 8b by Horny Buddha [MW+TB+BM] – Partially functional, 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, 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. One highly desirable feature, the ability to force NPC merchants to sell gear they have personally equipped, does not work. This is desirable because if you sell something good to a merchant and want it back, you can't get it 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). There are also various strip/disrobe mods that may work (though with a nude NPC side effect, and thus just as immersion-breaking); from testing several weeks ago, I know that one of these works and several do not, but I do not remember which. I just remember feeling some "virtual shame", and giving the merchant some clothes without haggling just so they weren't buck-nekkid any longer.  :-/
• Dancers 0.8 by Nicholiathan – Working, including in other mods that use the strip-club resources to add dancers elsewhere. This just diversified the (human) races of dancers instead of them all being the same.
• The Regulars – Abject failure, 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. 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 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.

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.

• GS Seyda Neen Complete 2.5 by Gianluca, et al. – A merged compilation of mods to the locality, it seems to be functional, 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 large amount of rapid transit 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. By itself, this mod works fine. PS: Those playing the slavery angle from either directly will like the inclusion of buyable slave companions at an estate in the newly developed Seyda Need, to either exploit or set free (I have no idea if they count toward freed-slave totals, though I doubt it).
  • GS Seyda Neen BB Market 1.3 by Gianluca, et al. – This add-on for the above appears fully functional, though trivial (just some clothing vendors, and not exactly kid-friendly ones). It incorporates some other mods; one of these is Silver's Dresses which was not compatible with OpenMW as a stand-alone mod.
• Seyda Neen Village Expansion 1.3 – Severely buggy in OpenMW, and over-powered. Everything good about it has been incorporated (and re-balanced to some extent) into GS Seyda Neen Complete, above.
• Balmora Expansion 1.4 with Slarti's BE Fixes – Another merged compilation of local mods. 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). I did not and would not try this without Slarti's BE Fixes. I also did not try some third party's Balmora Expansion 1.5, because it fixes fewer problem than Slarti's patch did. As with other such mega-mods, some of what BE adds is basically trivial and some of it may be over-powered for newbies (not free, just available rather soon), but overall it makes Morrowind seem more like a real place with people doing stuff and with a vibrant economy. Some of the shops are only added with an optional add-on, so you can skip some of it. ** 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, but I did not go through all of them.
  • One virtually mandatory add-on, if you like your ears, is BE Waterfall Volume Patch The BE team added sound effects not in the original Heremod Balmora Waterfall but forgot to normalize the volume. I almost broke my headphones ripping them off my head, then went looking for this add-on. Another solution would be to identify the offending audio file and just remove it; that would free up a mod slot.
  • The biggest 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 south may raise the shore north of town, and a house mod in the west-central part of town may cause a landscape fracture north of town).
  • BE includes the magnum opus Carnithus's Armamentarium, an underground, monster-laden, gothy vampire and werewolf gush, with a hot outfit shop and a "dark side" club you can join. This is hardly TES lore, but if you're already playing goth 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.
  • BE also includes a buyable home mod already, so you may not want to add another here.
  • One slightly annoying thing is the inclusion of a prominent fletcher crafting shop (full of typographical errors in almost every sentence). Major, complicated crafting mods (especially half-baked ones) should not be included in town mods like this except as optional add-ons; this one is harder to ignore than Carnithus's, since it's right there, and it's also a regular archery shop you'll have use for.
  • See also The Regulars, above, for an issue that affects many mods and is clearly an OpenMW bug.
  • There's an "armorer" in this mod, from the Breton Arms original mod, who does not actually sell (but will buy) armor. The purpose of this shop's inclusion is a special item, and presumably there's a quest to get it, though I have not investigated further.
  • I've discovered BE has one outright cheat in it, the availability of a Corprus cure spell or item somewhere. This will just have to be ignored; the one patch I've found to remove this this also attempted to patch allegedly too-high lighting levels, but which just made every interior ridiculously dark (in OpenMW, anyway), so it is not usable.
  • If you want to use Domehome (see both above and below) with BE, it is only partially workable (its front door and top deck door are partly occluded, and its top deck is broken). It must be loaded after BE. It cannot be used with Balmora Balcony House.
  • Balmora River House (see below) requires the BE-compatible variant, and should load before BE. It must also load after Domehome if using both, but before Odai Boat Service if that one is used. If you also use Canoe Travel, then BRH will mostly bury the closest canoe, but it actually remains usable.
  • Concept Exterior Abode conflicts with BE, and seems to be alpha-ware.
  • The useful and practical Adul's Arsenal and more silly Adul's Arcane Armature (using the same door) are compatible, though the shack entrance does not fit the milieu.
  • 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). I loaded both of these after BE.
  • Balmora_Trader_Market 1.7 by NinjaOcean is compatible.
  • Clean the Apartment by Grumpy – Introduces issues, but they may be resolvable with load order. In my tests, 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. CtA will also conflict with various other house mods that affect the Cosades home, of course. The fact that the apartment's closet has infinite storage will be an issue to some.
  • Heaven's Lookout Updated will have its access ring go missing if BE is installed, since the tower is changed. The shop can still be accessed by consoling into it. It doesn't seem to have a functional exit, anyway, so you'd need to use the same method to get back to land if you can't fly for a long time.
  • Fighter's Guild Home – Works fine, other than if you open that rooms door and the door to the vanilla "dorm" room at the same time, they stick to each other and become unusable. This has no real effect on gameplay and is just cosmetic.
  • Balmora Mages Guild Abode 1.05 – Works fine with BE.
  • Private Tower Balmora 4.0 – Not compatible with BE. OpenMW crashed when I tried using this, but I had other mods installed, so a clean test is needed.
  • Sgaillach Manor – Not compatible with BE.
  • Balmora Balony House 1.002 – I think this was compatible but imperfect; I would have to reinstall it to be sure. It conflicted with Domehome and with another Balmora house mod I tried.
  • Balmora Grocery – Not compatible with BE.

Major Quest Mods

Some ambitious mods provide expansive quests, sometimes with new types of creatures, their own cutscenes, etc. Some work, some do not.

• The East Empire Expansion – Caused 12–20 sec. delays in saving (even with Quick Save); did not test further. Sounds exciting, but I'm not sure what issues it may have.
• Balmora Keep 1.0 by Pinthar – This big quest, place, and home mod is full of dirty references, and caused my OpenMW (on a Mac) to crash on load, but I had other mods installed. May try it again with a new game, if I can find a Windows box on which to run a cleaning tool.

New Places

• 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". Doesn't seem to do anything useful, just provides merchants with powerful items. Has a very alpha-test feel to it.
• Glenfinnan – Couldn't load this; caused OpenMW to crash on my system (Mac), but I had other mods installed. May try it again with a new game.
• Morrowind Public Library – working so far.
• Balmora Waterfall by Heremod Productions. Working and fun for low-level characters. Note: This mod is integrated into several others, including Balmora Expansion (see above); do not install is separately with them. This will also, obviously, conflict with any other waterfall mods in the same location (at the bridge between Balmora and Caldera), though I accidentally ran it with one of them and it worked okay, other than it made it difficult to get in and out of the area behind the waterfall.

Homes

• Balmora River House – Fully functional, including the alchemy sorter. This is a very practical and compact user home base for a player who is not a hoarder. Compatible with Balmora Expansion if the correct variant ESP is loaded (see details above).
• Domehome – Seems fully functional as a house, but see above about issues with its NPCs/companions, and compatibility with Balmora Expansion. Not lore-friendly; it is full of Dwemer tech that the PC should not be aware of until late in the game, and it has a bunch of Imperial stone block architecture looming above Balmora, so it's very out-of-place. It's conceptually interesting, but someone needs to re-do it. It's principal value is its domestic staff NPCs, who can be relocated, but only very carefully, to a different manor that needs some.
• Kahleigh's Retreat 2.0 – Fully functional, but 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 (a gothy clothing shop, or the Imperial Airships mod) is also used and affect the same ground area. It actually interferes slightly with the Imperial Airship ramp regardless of load order, but both remain playable. This home is very nice and conveniently located, but is over-powered and full of free stuff. It has enough storage to store probably 1000 copies of every item in the game, which is silly. If you want to use this, I would suggest using the console or other tools to clear it out, then use a furniture mod to set it up as you prefer, paying as you go for plausible roleplay. The amount of silver tableware in here, by itself, is a bit much.
• Private Tower Balmora 4.0 – Caused OpenMW to crash on my system (MacOS), but I had other mods installed, so this may be worth a re-examination. This is more than a house mod, as it has quests, and modifies 10 exterior cells.
• Bob's Armory [I] – Seems to be working, though I have not tried out the clothes in it, nor the third-party add-ons like the alchemy lab. Bob's Armory II is a shop (see below).

Merchants and Items

• Balmora Market 1.22 by ivegotabettername (cameronvsdwayne) – Seems functional on its own, and probably with many Balmora mods, but is incompatible with Balmora Expansion, since it puts vendor stalls exactly where BE merchant shops are.
• 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.
• Cali Starstone Outpost by Calislahn – Significantly broken 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, and (worse) the armorer guy in the basement has a dialogue loop that locks up the game and forces you to quit the application to get out of it (or perhaps there's a console way to escape).
• Silver's Dresses – Not compatible with OpenMW as a stand-alone mod (the NPC vendor never appears). A functional variant is integrated into GS Seyda Neen BB Market (see above).
• Chascoda's Armored Dresses – Totally malfunctional: the NPC vendors shows up nude, the items are broken, and her shack, with a mis-coded door, cannot be exited, even with Intervention.
• Bob's Armory II – Seems to work fine.
• Map Tapesty – Works fine.
• Correspondence of Morrowind [actual archive has a typographical error name, Correspondances of Morrowind] – Working fine.

Core Game Mechanics

• 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 no tested. Honestly, this 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 and fighting the same rats 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. 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.
• Fair Magicka Regen – Only works if fixed; see the main Mod status page entry. 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 of us really just want to get on with the action, not spend all our 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 vanilla magicka-using foe, you generally find them too easy to kill once their magicka reserve is depleted. Now they don't run dry so fast.
• 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. If I remember correctly, this is also the mod that allows you to mine additional bits out of ores if you install the add-on for that, and also get a miner's pick, though I have not tested that part yet.

Fast Travel

As far as I can determine, zero mods with scenic-travel options (where you get to watch the travel as it happens) have this functionality in OpenMW, though they work otherwise (i.e., they get you there the same way a siltstrider would). GS Seyda Neen Complete (see above) includes some additional ship travel, but is not redundantly listed here.

• Imperial Airship – Working so far, though see note above about Kahleigh's Retreat.
• Canoe Travel – Installed okay. I did not keep it long enough to find the magic paddle to use the canoes. The problem is that it puts canoes just about everywhere, cluttering the whole game with them, and providing rapid travel anywhere. If you demand that, just use a teleportation cheat; much cleaner and simpler.
• Odai Boat Service – Working. If used with Balmora Expansion (see above), it must load before BE. If used with Balmora River House, it must load after BRH.

Texture Replacers

I am not listing any pure texture replacers here unless they are ones with problems; the presumption is that any such mod will work, unless the texture image files in it are corrupted, or it uses "fake bumpmaps". I'm also not listing anything that I tried and reject just because I thought they were subjectively hideous (and there were lots of those, especially Hlaalu and Vivec replacers). I will list here mesh-and-texture-at-once replacers that work and do not work.

• Better Bodies 2.4 (a.k.a. Better Bodies ZW): Working so far (as others have reported), but I'm still testing.
• Better Bodies 2.2 (the "official" one from the BB project at Psychodog Studios): Was also working; used it for a month.
• Better Clothes 1.1. Testing, but good so far. This is designed for use with Better Bodies and Better Heads. Pre-BB/BC clothing meshes in some old mods can not come out right, but that has nothing to do with OpenMW.
• Better Heads 2.0. Testing, but good so far. Only issue is that with some "head pack" mods (like World of Faces), I've had missing-neck problems, but I think that's the fault of the head packs, not of Better Heads (or Better Bodies or Better Clothes, but it's going to take a while to nail down, and I'm not running MacKom's Heads, for which this was a known problem). I'm starting a new game and will test without the head packs.
• Skies IV – Spectacular. 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. I have not yet tested its changes to snowy or ash skies. For SW Vvardenfell, it's definitely my favorite skies texture-and-mesh mod so far.
• Spewboy's Bitter Coast – Excellent. Get it. It verges (no pun intended) on a grass mod, without any of the problems associated with them. Also affects local rocks and other stuff, to good effect.
• Better Skulls 1.4b – Definitely an improvement over the cartoonish originals.
• Better Picks-n-Probes – Nothing to write home about, but makes them easier to distinguish.
• Better Looking Liquor, Drugs, and Vials 1.0 – Testing. Looks impressive, but I'm not sure what load order will be needed to resolve conflicts (in inventory) with Potion/Scroll Icons and Potion Sort, Fixed, below.
• Metallic Road Signs – Working so far. Makes it easier to tell what is down what road without hovering over signs. Purists will not like that the signs are in English. Speaking of which, I have no idea if there are any additional localizations, but I suspect not, since 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. Note that 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.
• Faylynn's Signs and Banners, Refined+Darkened – Working (I did not test the brighter original version). Makes it more obvious which merchant type is which.
• Shiny Septims - Original – Technically working, but too bright, 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.
• Lysol's Hlaalu Normal Mapped for OpenMW 1.1 – This omwaddon works and is nice work, 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. It's a tiny bit distracting. There's another one I used that looked almost as good, wall-wise, and did not have this furni issue, but I forget which one it was. Not Faylynn's; I did try several of hers.

Audio

I'm listing here stuff that works together. There are other sound mods I'm not trying out that will definitely conflict with some of what I do list here, 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.
• Ambient Town Sounds 1.3 – Working, including with BS, below, and Cait's Critters Unleashed, above.
• Better Sounds 1.1 – Working, including with ATS and CCU, above. Note: This incorporates Bethesda's own Bitter Coast Sounds, so disable BCS before running BS. You also can't use the weather effects changes in the config files that are prescribed by both ATS and BS at the same time; just pick one set of adjustments and ignore the other.
• Swiveller's Sounds 1.1 – Did not attempt. This is a half-baked mod that requires a whole lot of manual sound-file format conversion work on the part of the player.

Misc.

• Meteors 1.2 – I had it installed for a month, and never saw a single meteor.
• Key Overhaul 1.1 – Seems to be working.
• Pearls Enhanced 3.0.0 – Working so far; have not tested the alchemy effects. I'm not sure how much of an enhancement this is. 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, I don't really see the point. "Clutter-ware"?
• Chalk – Working, though a bit tedious to use, and 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 map (didn't know that? double-click on any spot that isn't already a little "named place" square), about the only use I've found for this is labeling containers.
• Lower First Person Sneak Mode 1.01 – Working, and useful.
• New Leveled Animated Practice Dummy 1.1 – Working so far; this is not for homes, but for dummies in guild rooms.
• Potion/Scroll Icons and Potion Sort, Fixed by Spirithawke (patches PSIPS 1.0 by rm_rfstar, Erasmus, and Srikandi) – Working and useful, 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 ("Health Restore, Quality", etc.), without making weird changes to chests or to Golden Saint summoning scrolls as earlier versions did. See also Better Looking Liquor, Drugs, and Vials in the "Texture Replacers" section.
• GotY Script Tidy 2.02 – Did not work for me, even with just the minimal variant installed. It is likely that the fixes this attempts to apply to coding errors in the original Bethesda ESMs conflict with fixes already applied to the OpenMW game engine itself. However, I did have other mods going at the same time. The only way to adequately test this would be to run through the entire game with no mods but this one, and see if various well-known vanilla bugs stop occurring.

Trivial and Amusement

• Morrowind Achievements 0.5b – Working so far, though it clutters the main journal.
• Hunter's Achievements v1.0 by Trollf – Working so far, and uses its own journal.

Hacks, Testing Tools, Exploits, and Cheats

• Tempus Fugit Ring by abot – Functional. As in the vanilla 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. This item is actually a must 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. While the 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 he/she/it were a real person, so this is more of a practical hack than a cheat.
• 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.

Additional Load-order Notes

• 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 type 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, and I was tricked by it myself when testing Morrowind Kilts by dg around the same time as Cali Clothing; the latter had covered Hastien into clothes+armor, so the later-added kilts did not appear there. 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 (if they work anyway, even with or after other mods, then "no harm, no foul").
• Systemic mesh-and-texture changes that you want to be consistent game-wide (skies, all Hlaalu textures, new meshes for Imperial uniforms, 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.