Introduction
Morrowind is a game ahead of its time in many respects. The freedom you have to choose your path through the game is mind-boggling. The graphics are astounding in their detail and atmosphere, especially for an RPG. The sheer size of the game world is incredible. The storyline - if you choose to involve yourself in it - is immersive and complex.
While Morrowind is a blessing for most RPG gamers, sadly there have been many who are unable to make this game run at anything but a chug on their machines...and that's if they're lucky enough to get the game to run with any stability at all. The word now on gamer's lips is that Morrowind is also ahead of its time in terms of system requirements...
That's not entirely true, and I'm here to show otherwise. You may know me as PersianImmortal from various gaming and hardware forums. This is my first guide for TweakTown, and it's been a little while in the making, having gone through a few early iterations on the official Morrowind forums.
This guide has been written to help gamers get more out of Morrowind, smooth out and speed up framerates and loading times, and reduce and (hopefully) eliminate crashes to desktop (CTDs), lockups and error messages.
The guide is broken into three sections.
1. Basic Morrowind Optimisation
2. Advanced Morrowind Tweaks/Troubleshooting
3. Windows-specific Tweaks/Optimisation
Read through and follow all three parts for maximum benefit.
Note: This guide has been updated up to the latest version of Morrowind (Version 1.6.1820) which is the version with the latest Morrowind Bloodmoon Expansion Pack Patch. If you do not have Bloodmoon, the next latest full version of Morrowind is 1.4.1313 with the Tribunal Expansion and Patch, or if you just have Morrowind without any expansions, the latest version is the 1.2.0722 patch.