X-Box Morrowind
 

Is Elder Scrolls coming out this Tuesday or next week? CC has it listed in there ad for 39.99 but the web site says that it ships on 6/10.
Also did anyone else notice that Best Buy and Circuit City had the PS2 and gamecube listed at the old price last week with the X-Box listed at 199.99.

Re: X-Box Morrowind
 

Morrowind still seems set for shipping on the 5th.

As for the ads, Microsoft had their drop planned well in advance for the 23rd. Sony and Nintendo had no plans to drop unless forced, which is why sales circulars, with their long lead times, were temporarily advertising incorrect prices.

Circuit City has Morrowind for $39.99 this week. BTW, Fry's ad said it will have it on the 7th.

I have gift card that I was going to use to get this game. I was hoping to be able to get it this week to make Bestbuy price match CC. It is now looking like this game wont be out until next week. No one at best buy seems to be able to bring the game up in their system. Maybe they wont carry it?

Have you tried CC?

The Xbox Morrowind is $39.99 at CC?

Must of missed that in the ad, but I will go and get it this week. (If it is released)

Circuit City will probably put it on sale again next week if it is delayed. They did that with State of Emergency.

From Team XBox:

Yes!! I may have to call of Monday next week if this game is that good. I can't wait.

I have $15-$20 in Toys R Us Gift cards. How easy would it be to price match the CC price at Toys R Us? toysrus.com's guarantee page seems to indicate that this is entirely possible, but I'm wondering how one would go about it -- never tried a price match before. Do I take in a copy of the ad with me? If so, is there a place I can print up the CC ad?

thanks,
Tuan Jim

I'm looking at the CC weekly ad on the website and I'm not seeing any mention whatsoever of Morrowind (or any non-PC games for that matter).

Tuan Jim

It was in last Sunday's ad.

Funcoland told me that they would have it today 6/6.

Well no luck.

Circuit City did not have them, said they offer no rainchecks for games and that they were getting it on the 12th.

Funcoland had them but I could not even ask how much they were. The lone salesperson was enthralled in a fascinating conversation with the only other customer in the store about a used gamecube and could not be bothered to even acknowledge me.

Just went to ebgames.com saw that morrowind is available now.

Has anyone seen this at bestbuy? I hate going into funcoland. I get the same type of service every time.

Hmm, I've always been able to get a raincheck out of them in the past.

I got it today at Funcoland (gamestop) $49.99

I stopped at bestbuy on the way home last night and they didn't have it out yet. The guy told me to check back on Saturday. I am going to stop and check again tonight.

I thought this strange as well, I spoke to two different people.

Well I called one best buy and the idiot wouldn't even look just said no that he doesn't have the game and it is not coming out any time soon. I hate best buy.
Stopped at another one on my way home and they had 1 copy left on the shelf. Picked it up and went to CC to get the sales flyer and had them price match it.

The worst part is on my way to CC to say 11.00 some lady in a lexus rear ended my new car.
Can't wait to play the game.

Well I was able to play for a couple hours last night and it definitely delivers on all expectations. Sweet graphics, and the control scheme is working like a charm - and the speed is incredible from something loading directly from the disc (and virtual memory), and not the HD.

Like any RPG the first hour is a little slow, and I'm still having problems figuring out what it is I'm picking up -- many items don't seem to have any sort of use (unless it's alchemical or magical or something), and the labels are rather confusing -- same with the spells, I can't find a distinct list of names and functions anywhere.

That said, I've made it to Balmora, hooked up with my patron, and just signed up at the Fighters guild. When I have a chance later today, I'll try a few subquests and whatnot. Incidentally, I did clear out the 3 smugglers at Seyda Neen (sp?), but I don't think anyone noticed, even though I also freed the slaves -- I have gotten a message that the legion commander at Balmora wants to see me, but I don't know if that's related. I'm trying to play a knight, honorable, chivalrous, etc.

great game so far, can't wait till I get off work.

Tuan Jim

That's the beauty of Morrowind, it's very open-ended so you can do about anything you want. You can follow the storyline (the Blades bit) or go off on your own and do whatever you like. But that's also something that may scare people off. Without the linear gameplay most games have it's very possible to play for days and not do anything to "advance" the plot... but that's all up to the player.

As for the useless items, yes you'll be finding a lot of things with alchemical use and healing herbs that you will only know what do if you have training in the skill that governs the item. And even if you know what it does you may not know how to use it correctly right away. I, as a Busker (bard-thief) just collect the more expensive herbs and sell them. Anyone can use potions though so hang onto those.

Be sure to join a house and a guild as they will give you jobs to do as well. And if you travel between towns you will find a lot of people needing you to do things for them as well as a few people inside towns... but it can be dangerous. Save a lot :)

Quick question, does the X-Box version allow you to create your own races and professions and is there a way to load mods from the harddrive at all? If you can do the mod thing there should be a Data Files option from the main menu.

Glad to hear it's a good game even after making it to the console, it's one of those titles that it's a shame for people to miss out on.

~Scheherazade

Another quick question -- I just finished the quest for the Fighters Guild guy to retrieve the puzzle box (and kill all the outlaws at the same time ;p ) -- there were a lot of cogs down there that could've made me some money had I been stronger -- base strength is still 300. Will my strength only increase when I go up in level or are there any tasks I can perform to raise my strength stat?

Also, how do I tell how long till I level? I've raised my axe, block and movement skills a number of times already, but my level is still the same.

thanks,
Tuan Jim

As far as I know, besides magical items, the only way to raise strength is by levelling. There should be a progress bar somewhere in the menus that tells you how far you have to go till level and how far you have to go to advance in each of the skills.

Space, and the distribution thereof, is always going to be a high priority. I think at level 25 I can carry 300 stones or whatever it is the units of weight are called in Morrowind, but I'm sure that all depends on stats and skills and all sorts of things.

~Scheherazade

yet another question -- If I'm supposed to (as part of a side quest) get something from someone, and when I ask them about that item -- ie. -- they tell me that they don't know what I'm talking about, would that be an example of not enough speechcraft or what?

Similarly, would I need higher intelligence to notice certain things -- ie. ?

thanks,
Tuan Jim

I will be picking this game up today at Best Buy. It is what finally made me decide to pick up an X-Box yesterday. :D

I can't wait to play it. Now I just have to wait for Best Buy to open.

You're running different quests than me Tuan Jim, so I'm afraid I can't be of much help except in a general sort of way. Sometimes someone will know something you want to know and refuse to tell you no matter how personable you are. This usually means that you need to find another piece to get the whole thing to fall together.

I know I figured out one of the quests I received but couldn't complete it because I didn't talk to the tavern keeper who gave me the quest again after making a certain discovery. If I had talked to him then I'd be able to talk to the person who was the culprit and end the quest, but without doing that one thing I couldn't, even though I knew it was them who did it.

A few things like this can be annoying but have to be expected in a game that gives you such free reign... they can't guess everything a player will try (but they sure came close).

~Scheherazade

I offed a guy in his house in caldera cause he had an "you are overdue" note on his dresser from the pawn shop. Figured I take him out and then go tell the pawn shop dude I solved his problem for him. so I go back to pawnshop hoping to show the guy the note but he couldn't care less. So I keep exploring and go into another house with another note kind of connecting it all into a threesome type deal. Guess this quest could have come up later but since I offed one of the players I probably won't get in on this one ;)

You level up by increasing your primary and secondary skills.

That's why you should focus on using those skills. Each time you increase 10 primary and/or secondary skills, you'll level up. You can still work on developing your minor skills, but that's time that you could've been working on primary/secondary skills.

I think it's a great way to handle levelling up. Very open (theme of the game 'eh?).

Once you level up, you'll get to choose where to put your allotted 3 points. Note that some attributes will have multipliers. Those are the attributes that you used a lot recently. If you put use one of your points on say, a 3x attribute, you'll get 3 points instead of 1. Take advantage of the multipliers to increase your character's skills!

So, think about what character class you choose as you'll need to use the primary and secondary skills of that class in order to level up. You can increase a skill by using it (use spells associated with a particular school of magic, fight, take damage, sneak, etc), pay for training or read special books.

so if I want one of my other skills to become one of my minor or major skills can I change that in game? for example, I want marksman skills to be a major or minor skill. I've got it up to 38 but it's still listed in the bottom :( can I move it up? I kind of thought as it increased and outnumbered other skills it would move up the list...

Nope, that's why choosing your class is so important. The classes will have different primary and secondary skills. You could create your own class, where you pick the skills that you want to develop. I haven't tried that, I'm still on my first character.

You can still develop those skills at the bottom of your skills list. They won't develop as fast and they won't count towards your levelling up.

In the PC version, if you put the mouse pointer over your level, it will tell you how far away you are from levelling up. For example, if you're level 5 and it says 6/10, then you need to increase 4 primary or secondary skills to reach level 6.

Primary skills develop the fastest, followed by secondary, followed by whatever the bottom ones are called.

I played with a prefab class at first to get a feel for everything... but let me tell you, the best thing I ever did was create my own class. The game was just so much more fun when I had the skills I chose rather than being stuck with something a designer came up with.

Sure I made a couple of mistakes, but I really do suggest that once you feel ready to try making your own class and starting over. It also lets you avoid some of the mistakes you learned the hard way on your first couple of attempts.

So has anyone who owns the PC version bought or played the X-Box version? I don't imagine there is much difference and don't see how the X-Box could be better, but just figured I'd ask to sate my curiosity.

~Scheherazade

Okay. I got this game hoping for a complex RPG where everything is chosen by the player and the game is non-linear. I think I got what I was hoping for. ;)

A couple of things, though:

Am I the only one having difficulty fighting? Maybe it's because I'm at such a low level, but I can't seem to beat anyone. I'm sure it will get better, and I know RPG's usually start out fairly slow, but I feel like I really suck at the game right now.

Are the load times supposed to be that long? At first I wondered whether I had an Xbox '98 or something because it seems to take forever to load the game. Thankfully the manual is long and the map is detailed enough to keep me busy through the load times.

Is there a way to load my own music to have it play during this game? I like the Morrowind theme and all, but so far that's all that is played, and only at five minute intervals or so at that. Some of my own fantasy film soundtracks would fit this game nicely.

Anyway, it's a really fantastic game and I think I might break my time-played record of 138 hours on one RPG game (FFVII) with this one.

stoolie

Once you get some armor and an ok weapon just head outside of the towns on the roads and kill rats and small creatures. Once you get better at doing that, then you can go for the bigger things like people. :)

They do seem kinda slow, but not that bad. If you want slow load times, check out Crash Bandicoot for the PS2. That's slow!

Not that I know of, but it would be cool. :)

Yeah, once you start doing all the guild quests, it could easily go over 100 hours. I wish it would say somewhere how many hours you have played. Anyone know if they have this info?

Glad to see that someone else is having problems fighting. I finally cast my first spell. Right now I have a pre fab class just to get used to the game. I like it but I like how Final Fantasy was much easier to play with out reading a thick book.

Does anyone have the stagety guide or whatever for this game?
Is it worthwhile to pick up?

Is this game sold out? I went to Best Buy, Target and Wal-Mart. Couldn't even find the spot where they would stock it.

I got mine last weekend, but Best Buy didn't have any this weekend. I'm just thinking they're not getting big shipments in and it's a pretty popular game, so it's selling out pretty fast.

I don't know what the deal is. The WM near me didn't have it either, and it's not even listed on Best Buy's website. Circuit City has it, but I'm waiting until it goes on sale again.

I saw copies at Toys R Us and KB Toys. The idiots at Bestbuy told me it wasn't even out when I found it.

I passed on the strategy guide. It's not really a strategy guide, but more of a walkthrough. It has maps that show where everything of interest is on the map. It also has quest walkthroughs that give a bit of info on every quest.

What is doesn't have (AFAIK): character development tips, combat tips, spell making tips, enchantment info, etc. Basically, I didn't think it offered any strategy. I was looking for tips and character development strategies, not a walkthrough.

Let's keep this thread going, its great. This game has made purchasing an XBOX a must.

If you go to your menu and highlight your current level, then press Y, you can see how far you are from leveling up. The same goes for increasing your skills.

Does anyone know where Fargoth's hiding spot is? This is one of the first tasks you can take on. At Arielle's shop some one asks you to find Fargoth's hiding spot and he'll share the gold with you. I've moved on in the game but it bothers me that I was never able to find it. Some one had told me to go to the top of lighthouse and watch where he goes, but the bastard doesn't go anywhere. He just walks back and forth.