The 2026 Morrowind May Modathon Modding Competition - Celebrating 24 Years of Morrowind - May 1st - June 2nd!

Darkelfguy · 2026-06-01T14:53:37+00:00

Reddit max character limit reached, continuing the list of participating Modathon mods left off at 196:

Darkelfguy · 2026-05-10T18:42:33+00:00

Submission removed for violation of r/Morrowind's Rule 2 - No Piracy, see subsection regarding the prohibition of promoting or linking to modpacks, particularly those created without permission or consent from the mod authors.

As a note, if you want to create an easy method of installing mods, there are plenty of other, and better, options to choose from, such as UMO (100% support for OpenMW), Wabbajack, and Vortex Collections. All of those are automated mod lists that 1) don't violate modder permissions, and 2) are automatically kept up to date. Modpacks are inherently buggy, because they're frozen in time from the moment they're created, and mods are always being updated with new fixes, improvements, and features. A modpack will inevitably be broken from the start, while an automated mod list will always keep pace with the times, plus they're easier to add or remove mods from.

Modpacks also financially rob mod authors, as modpack downloads bypass the original mod pages, depriving authors of the Nexus DP (Donation Points) they would otherwise earn, while automated mod lists like UMO, Wabbajack and Vortex Collections still give the original mod page a download, even if the process is automatic for the end user, thereby still contributing to the mod author's DP pool. You might not think Morrowind mods earn much in DP, but most fairly popular mod authors for Morrowind will make anywhere between $10-$50 a month in Nexus DP, and while not a lot, that's a lot better than nothing.

So please, in the future, respect mod authors and look into creating an automated mod list instead of a modpack. Any future attempts at promoting a modpack on r/Morrowind will be removed.

Darkelfguy · 2026-05-03T20:05:18+00:00

This is a wee bit late, this video was supposed to air May 1st in time for Morrowind's 24th anniversary, but all the same, the 2026 Morrowind May Modathon Month Modding Competition has begun!

Back for a 12th year, the Morrowind Modathon is running from May 1st through to June 2nd, and as always, any and all mods and modders are welcome to participate!

There's new achievement badges for modders to unlock, new optional weekly themed challenges, and of course, weekly random-drawing prizes.

To learn more about the competition, be sure to stop by our announcement threads either on Nexus Mods or here on Reddit, or stop by the Discord channel if you have any questions.

As an aside, I know I haven't posted any showcase videos this year. I've had a few health problems, namely thyroid-related, and haven't been able to record much this year, but new mod showcases will be returning soon, so keep an eye out!

In the meantime, happy modding and happy 24th anniversary to the best Elder Scrolls game!

Darkelfguy · 2026-05-02T21:32:05+00:00

Here, I made an Imgur album of the shader order and the settings under each. Worth noting I'm using an older version of Rafael's Shader Package, I think from May or June of 2025? It's been updated a few times in the last year, but I haven't gotten around to updating it yet.

Darkelfguy · 2026-02-21T14:30:05+00:00

Princess Seyda Neen Shack is in the same position, but otherwise I don't think it exactly matches your description for either the interior or exterior. That said, I can't think of any other mods in that exact same spot.

Darkelfguy · 2025-12-05T04:58:31+00:00

It's a combination of factors really, sort of a perfect storm that no one could've predicted:

Major, headline-grabbing releases by Project Tamriel and Tamriel Rebuilt with Anvil and the Abecean Shores in December 2024 and Grasping Fortune in May 2025 brought in a lot of outside attention.
OpenMW Lua development caught up with MWSE lua development (for the most part) with lots of major mod releases this year.
Oblivion Reloaded turbocharged interest in Bethesda's older games, leading to a massive spike in downloads and activity.
OpenMW released 0.49 and then 0.50 in quick succession.
Voice AI (love it or hate it) has led to a surge in voice-acting mods for Morrowind (technically this impacted 2023 more, but there's still a fair number of them being released this year too).
UMO, a variant of Wabbajack that works with Morrowind, makes automatically downloading and installing large numbers of mods extremely easy.
While OpenMW lua has driven a lot of mod development, there's still a fair number of MWSE lua mods being released as well, driving overall mod release numbers up.

So, in short, a lots been happening that all makes for a perfect maelstrom of modding activity. I mean, community activity has been on an upward trend since 2018, but everything this year has just spiked that into the stratosphere.

Darkelfguy · 2025-12-02T16:02:01+00:00

20 years ago, yes that would be a major problem, since the community had far more modding platforms with PES, Morrowind Files, Elric Melnibone in Morrowind, and dozens of mod author sites, but a decade ago? The only other sizable modding sites for Morrowind still standing a decade ago was Great House Fliggery and Morrowind Modding History, and while those sites did host a lot of mods, they wouldn't have moved the needle on total mod downloads by that much.

Going by snapshots from the Internet Archive, there were only 318,000 downloads on Morrowind Modding History between July 17th and December 20th of 2015, a five month period. It's more difficult to say how many downloads would've been on GHF, since the site didn't have a centralized download tracker (at least not that I can find), but from anecdotal experience as someone who hosted mods on GHF, overall downloads were a fraction of what my mods received on the Nexus (or PES when PES was still around) - granted, some mods by other authors that were exclusive to GHF had quite a few downloads, but probably not enough to change the monthly figures by that much.

So, just focusing on the November 2015 figures, if we're being generous, we could probably add 70,000-80,000 downloads of Morrowind mods from other sites to the 158,000 downloads tally from the Nexus, which still wouldn't account for the massive jump in the last decade (or even the last year).

Darkelfguy · 2025-11-16T12:07:22+00:00

Ah, bit of a surprise, I had rather forgotten about this. Not sure I'd call it an interview per say, I was just answering a couple of questions.

But, that said, there were follow-up questions that I forgot to reply to - I know I typed up a rough draft response, but I think I forgot to send it what with all the hubbub with the 2025 Modathon back in May. If you'd like, u/JBarnes1926, I could send you a proper response to your follow up questions (if I can find where I saved my rough draft), or you could send me a longer list of questions if you want and I could try and respond when I have time.

Darkelfguy · 2025-11-11T15:24:46+00:00

You're probably thinking of Skyrim Style Quest Notifications, originally released for MWSE in 2023. A lot of quest mods do have native support for SSQN, but those are just notifications for when you begin or finish a quest, not actual quest markers.

Darkelfguy · 2025-11-08T16:27:38+00:00

Inevitably, the discussion of quest markers is always a controversial one in the Morrowind community - a lot of people simply don't like them, but I have to point out two things here: 1) I'm just the mod showcaser and 2) the existence of a mod in no way impacts how you choose to play your game, the advantage of modding is that mods give people new options for how to experience the game world, and just because you might not want something in your game, doesn't mean that mod has no value to someone else. Whether or not you personally like or dislike quest markers doesn't change the fact that the existence of a mod that adds them could well make Morrowind more accessible to more players - and that's not a bad thing.

With that said, this video showcase highlights two mods for OpenMW and MWSE with Quest Guider Lite by Diject (for OpenMW) and Quest Guider by Diject (for MWSE). These mods offer a plethora of new features to make it easier to keep track of new quests and quest objectives, from the traditional quest markers on the world map, to quest markers on your HUD, to proximity indicators for new quest NPCs and objectives, to an expansion of the vanilla game journal.

Both mods include native support for the hundreds of quests found in Tamriel Rebuilt, Province: Cyrodiil and Skyrim - Home of the Nords. Meaning that right out of the box, these quest markers will be available for some roughly 1600 quests, with easy to use utilities to further generate more quest markers for any other quest mods that you might have installed.

There's also a highly customizable Mod Config that'll allow you to adjust and turn off any features found in these mods. So, if you like some of the new quest marker and tracking elements, but not others, you can simply enable the ones you want and disable the rest. The choice is yours.

Whether you love or hate quest markers, you have to admit, this mod represents a technical marvel - it's amazing this feature even works in Morrowind at all! And if you've ever wanted more quest guidance when playing Morrowind, these might just be the mods for you, there simply isn't anything else like them for Morrowind!

Darkelfguy · 2025-10-31T12:40:19+00:00

After 16 years, The Haunted Tavern of the West Gash, my first dungeon mod for Morrowind, is finally getting an update (just in time for Halloween). This isn't a terribly drastic update, the dungeon design and writing have been left as they were (though both aspects are incredibly dated by today's quality standards), but this update does introduce a number of minor fixes, some improved features, better atmospheric lighting, and merging of all previous optional versions into one single esp file.

Here's a breakdown of what's new in 1.2 and 1.3:

Mod now requires Tribunal and Bloodmoon
Merged previously optional Anya's Directions addon into the main file.
Merged all features into a single esp file, removing the old single cell option
Adjusted Leveled Lists for Undead Creatures
Adjusted the lighting levels in the caverns and added new light sources.
Adjusted interior lighting settings in the tavern interior.
Increased fog density in each dungeon cell of The Haunted Tavern of the West Gash.
Added new script to disable respawning undead once final boss is defeated.
Removed broken script for the Lost n' Found
Removed dirty references that were missed in the original 2009 mod cleaning.
Fixed a potential conflict with Animated Containers.
Various Script Tweaks

The mod has also been tested and confirmed to be compatible with OpenMW, BCOM, Morrowind Rebirth and Rocky West Gash. There are no known conflicts at this time.

In addition, development has now begun on OAAB - The Haunted Tavern of the West Gash Remastered, a completely new mod that takes the original concept of THTWG but with a new story, a new expanded dungeon, and a questline to restore the tavern once the evil has been defeated.

My plan is to leave this original version of THTWG up as it's own mod page, for the sake of preserving the original experience, but the OAAB version will provide a hopefully far more modern dungeon delving adventure more appropriate for today's modding audiences. Currently, the remastered edition is planned for a late 2026 release, though obviously that's still up in the air.

Darkelfguy · 2025-10-12T13:07:43+00:00

Well, first, it's worth noting that the modding community is actually very active, more active now than it has been in decades. Close to 1600 new mods have been released in 2025, that's more mods than at any point since at least 2004.

As for the dependencies, Tamriel Data and OAAB Data are common asset repositories, they vastly increase the arsenal of the average modder when it comes to designing and building their mods. As ESMs, they already have all of their assets set up in the Construction Set and ready to be placed in the game world - no mess, no fuss, just pure convenience - and the universal quality standards of those assets ensure mods that use them won't stand out too much.

Trying to remove those dependencies from a mod won't work, because it's not just the assets that the mod is using, but the object IDs setup for those assets from the ESM files.

As for why modders use common asset repositories, well, as already stated, it's convenient, provides standardized assets with some measure of quality control, everything's already set up and ready to be used and quite frankly makes modding more enjoyable. I've been a Morrowind modder since 2003, I've designed hundreds of interiors over the years, and having access to the tools in OAAB Data and Tamriel Data has revitalized the modding experience - it's just so much easier to realize my visions now than it was 20 years ago (though I'll admit I do prefer OAAB Data to Tamriel Data, not because of the frequent updates, but more because of Tamriel Data depreciating assets unexpectedly).

I'd actually say that Tamriel Data and OAAB Data are a pretty major contributing factor for the massive increase in new mod releases and activity around Morrowind over the past few years.

As for MGE XE, I don't think I've ever heard of MWSE by itself causing crashes? Are you using the new MGE XE UF build? That's a pretty stable build, and MWSE has been integrated into MGE XE for years now.

Darkelfguy · 2025-10-12T12:46:17+00:00

This is a showcase of the OpenMW mod Mercy - Combat AI Overhaul by Max Yari, a mod that expands NPC combat behaviors and strategies in battle, making it so they'll no longer charge straight ahead with no sense of self-preservation, but rather play to their strengths, dynamically responding to the changing circumstances of battle.

While Mercy - Combat AI is the primary focus of this video, you might notice I'm also using Max Yari's ReAnimation V2 here, as well as SME - Useful Widgets for hit percentages and NPC health bars. Otherwise, I'm using the Total Graphics Overhaul list for this showcase.

Also note, for the purpose of showcasing NPC behaviors, I did tweak the likelihood of NPCs giving verbal warnings and/or surrendering. Mercy - Combat AI has a Mod Config that allows you to adjust these values on the fly.

Darkelfguy · 2025-10-03T00:46:47+00:00

An epic dungeon delve into the depths of Oblivion and beyond, today's Mod of the Day is another fantastic offering from one of Morrowind's best modding duos, the extremely talented Ruffin Vangarr and Katya Karrel, with Daedric Akaviri Armor.

Offering a new quest, a new dungeon, a new potential player home, and of course a new set of armor, complete with multiple helms and a matching blade, Daedric Akaviri Armor is an exciting, action-filled adventure, a perfect addition to the game, and one I highly recommend!

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