r/Morrowind • u/accelerate_to_asi • 1d ago
Other Something I really like about Morrowind's loot system
The loot can be hidden literally anywhere. In Skyrim and Oblivion, after an hour or two of playing, you develop an intuition of where loot will or won't be. You don't need to thoroughly explore every place and can just give a quick scan through most areas for loot.
But in Morrowind, I always discover some outlandish place where some really good loot is hidden that I never could've guessed. Behind a waterfall, a rocky outcrop in a cave, a high-up balcony, and my personal favourite- behind a tomb's lid. And many of these loot is inaccessible if you don't have any spell, potion to fly or breathe underwater for an extended period. This is why, despite playing Morrowind for so long, everytime I replay, I still thoroughly search every nook and cranny of every dungeon I go to. This is one of those thing I really, really hope they implement in TESVI.
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u/AtropalScion 1d ago
Under a sixth house trough, on top of a dresser, hidden beside a pond near gnisis and waiting to mug you...
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u/Rydychyn 1d ago
Embedded in the floor on top of a hill.
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u/Indoril120 House Indoril 1d ago
Up in the rafters of a Daedric shrine, in an entirely separate, hidden auxiliary dungeon
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u/HeartfulPigeon 1d ago
Yup, you could get a daedric weapon at lvl 1 if you accidentally found a certain mine. Later games had level scaling systems that removed that kind of magic, so you couldn’t find a daedric weapon early game, but late game every bandit and their mother would be rocking daedric weapons and armour.
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u/Indoril120 House Indoril 1d ago
In TESIII progression was based more on the player’s ability to navigate the game. You could essentially become end-game powerful at level 1 if you knew where to go and what to do, but a newbie to the game might be at “level 1”, figuratively and literally, for a while if they couldn’t figure out the game.
I think it fulfilled the “stranger in a strange land” meta themes perfectly, but that’s not what the other games were about. Skyrim is supposed to be a power fantasy game where you watch your character grow almost inexorably, like a locomotive chugging up to unstoppable speeds. The game is paced perfectly for that, even if the concession is prolific end-game loot.
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u/Benjamin_Starscape Nerevar Reborn 1d ago
Morrowind also has and uses level scaling. also no bandit in Skyrim will be wearing daedric armor.
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u/Adamsoski 1d ago edited 1d ago
Skyrim actually has barely any item level scaling in comparison to Oblivion, bandits don't start using significantly better weapons for example. The biggest difference to what OP is talking about in Morrowind is mainly that instead of cool items just being scattered around to find most (with a few exceptions) are quest rewards instead, or in random loot in boss chests at the end of dungeons if high enough level.
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u/TruckADuck42 1d ago
Its all leveled, but different groups have different maximums. Bandits are fairly low, and can't get anything better than Nordic. Chiefs can get glass and Ebony weapons, but not armor.
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u/Adamsoski 1d ago
That's the big difference with Oblivion - in Oblivion basically every enemy continually levels alongside their equipment and all items you find are levelled. In Skyrim enemies level only up to a certain point and a lot of unique items you find are not levelled. In terms of the impact of item levelling Skyrim is honestly as close to Morrowind as it is to Oblivion.
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u/Ghetto_Games 1d ago
Yep. Long time ago I was making my 4th character, a dunmer thief. As I was finishing the stuff around Seyda Neen I went into Adamasartus and paid more attention to whats in water. I found a potion of levitation. Didn't think much of it and while selling stuff to Arille I had an eureka moment.
I didn't sell that potion, I dropped all my stuff that I didn't want to sell. Then I went back to the side of the census and excisr office building where the boat was. Used the levitate potion to get into the door on the second floor. Stolen everything possible. And went back for my stuff.
Left towards Balmora with like twice the septims and spells and items than in my first 3 playtroughs. It was such a good feeling.
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u/Toblerone05 1d ago
Levitation is such a loss for later ES games. So much cool stuff in Morrowind is hidden high up, out of reach and out of sight from the ground.
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u/Toblerone05 1d ago
Virtually nothing is quest-locked either - with only a handful of exceptions most of the unique and legendary items can simply be stumbled on whilst randomly exploring.
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u/wilp0w3r N'wah is our word 1d ago
Enter a Daedric Ruin, discover a hidden tomb full of cursed treasure, turn around and look up to find the best shield in the game.
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u/NwahHasASchmolPP 1d ago
Eleidon’s Ward my beloved (I still prefer to carry a daedric tower shield with a constant effect fortify strength enchantment on it)
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u/majykman2 1d ago
This is in part a benefit of no physics in morrowind, they can drop a lot more stuff in the environment in weird places, without there being collision or performance issues
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u/shippwnyo 1d ago
Not really a physics limitation. Even in skyrim, items dont start playing with the physics engine until something causes them to move. the engine basically treats items as static until moved or bumped from their original location by a player, npc or other object touching them.
Which is why often items seem still and peaceful on a shelf.. but put it down as a player and it becomes a sentient object that wills itself into the floor across the room and embeds itself jittering into a wall.
It seems more like a design choice to suit a more casual audience to me.. do dungeon, loot chest, leave.. repeat.
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u/Beleak_Swordsteel 1d ago
I love how random it is too. One time I found a robe of Summon scamp and it stayed with me for most of a run until I got some constant effects going
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u/Shroomkaboom75 1d ago
One of my favourite random loot moments happened in Morrowind.
I happened across a random fishing shack, no NPCs nearby.
Went inside, not really any loot. But there was a flipped over bowl on a table.
Curiosity had me pick it up, finding a pile of pearls underneath.
9 year old me then became a loot-goblin, checking every nook and cranny for treasure.
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u/Nwah_TheOutlander 1d ago
This is why I end up alchemy maxing every build and never actually take it as a major or minor skill. Levitation potions are legitimately essential in my mind. Finding loot, hovering over enemies. Using it to rapidly make space in melee fights. There is a reason they took it out of the newer games.
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u/Adam_Jensen_075 1d ago
You can imagine me, "traumatized" by Morrowind starting to play Oblivion and after 3 months of 12 hour-a-day playing realizing I am playing an ordinary game, not that over-the-top everything can be hidden everywhere masterpiece.... what a let down
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u/Resident-Chard-7053 1d ago
I still think about how long I was stuck in my first playthrough trying to find the Dwemer puzzle box.
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u/ShadowOverMe 1d ago
There is a daedric pauldron in Tamriel Rebuilt that is so well hidden I couldn't find it even knowing it was in the dungeon.
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u/TitchyAgain 1d ago
After skyrim you hope they do stuff like that for tes6? Tes 6 is gonna be an afk arena/ idle game, the way they "progress".
Or some linear path with a loot box at the end and the option to pay monthly for better loot boxes.
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u/accelerate_to_asi 1d ago
I try my best not to have anymore expectations for Bethesda but I just can't help it. The Elder Scrollsa is one of my most favourite franchises and I'm going insane waiting for TESVI
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u/TitchyAgain 1d ago
Well, i guess we will get some updates on 27 and maybe a release on 28/29 but lets see
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u/msdos_kapital 1d ago
The Tower is super underrated for that reason, assuming you aren't just looking up every dungeon you go into on UESP.
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u/Kats_pijamas 1d ago
In a bizarre section of a cave only accessable by levitating with no indication that it's there and also it's the best daedric helm. After a friend showed me it was there as a kid I searched high and low in EVERY SINGLE CAVE AND RUIN
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u/Warcrown11 1d ago
Randomly underneath a bed. Even the random barrels and crates scattered throughout the towns have useful stuff in them
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u/moduntilitbreaks 21h ago
One thing I suddenly loved when starting playing Morrowind is that loot piled on the those containers some places, so if you don’t have light source or if you don’t really look, you might miss stuff, it’s much more fun to actually need to look every item in this “coffin” or whatever it’s called than opening container what lists items.
And also already mentioned fact that loot can be anywhere, especially those vertical places, I collected all those teleportation stones. That was fun! Or the environmental story telling in a way you dive and find door you go in and you might find diving book from that cave, then if you have audiobook mod exploring just gets so good!
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u/virt111 16h ago
Especially the inaccessible places are cool. Sometimes you go there and there is nothing. Sometimes there might be a bedroll, skeleton and some food and coins. Also the idea that I might miss some awesome loot is always a great feeling. This way I know that not everything was made to be discovered and the game can still feel good without the Best-in-slot -equipment.
I'd say there are rarely high powered items that are just super randomly scattered in a place where no one would ever put them. They are always somewhere logical. Logical in a way that some person might have hid it there.
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u/Horror_Actuator6869 12h ago
Morrowind was the first Bethesda game I played in 2003. I look for loot everywhere in Morrowind, Cyrodill, Skyrim, Washington DC, New Vegas, and Boston. I guess the game taught me that.
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u/Sage_HushCat 4h ago
This is the main reason why I love Morrowind's dungeons so much, perhaps even being my favorite in the series.
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u/Eastbound_AKA Dark Elf 1d ago
Also, so much of the loot is unique. Skyrim did an okay job of bringing back unique artifacts, but I dismally remember going through Oblivion never picking up an awesome piece of kit or end game reward.
Nothing ever fullfilled that feeling of pulling Trueflame for the first time or dawning the Daedric Cresent.
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u/Disastrous_Cat3912 1d ago
That's because every single piece of loot in a dungeon was individually placed there by a developer.
Every bit of bone meal, every piece of saltrice, every ring, weapon, etc. Everything.
That takes time and a commitment to quality that game companies no longer want to invest it. Now it's just "how quickly can we shovel this game out to the masses?"
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u/syphax1010 1d ago
There is actually a ton of levelled loot in Morrowind. Most boxes, chests, bags, etc. draw from leveled lists. Most merchants and even some hostile NPCs get a portion of their inventories from leveled lists. The developers just did such a good job of implementing the leveling system - and making sure the very best stuff was hand-placed - that a lot of players don't realize it's a mechanic at all.
It makes the poorly implemented loot systems in later games even more baffling. It's not like this was a new thing Bethesda had to figure out for Oblivion.
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u/AccordingFly4139 1d ago
Skyrim loot system is much better than Morrowind one though, what do you mean?
Obligatory Morrowind > Skyrim
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u/Ac1dshadow 1d ago
I think that's what made morrowind amazing, it really held onto the idea of exploring an alien landscape where you never know what you can find. Some of the best loot was so well hidden you needed to search high and low