Strategy Guide Wiki - The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

As you can see, the highest possible multiplier to achieve for a single level up is 5. But as you know, it only takes 10 levels of major or minor skills in order to earn a level up. I would at this point like to remind you that miscellaneous skills, while not contributing to a level up, do count towards modifiers. And, as I will discuss in section II.D. of the FAQ, it is possible to "train" your skills up by paying a certain amount of money for each level. Ergo, you could train the miscellaneous skill "Long Blade" 10 levels prior to your level up and earn a x5 multiplier for it. And, as you might have guessed, training skills from very low levels (such as 5, where all of your miscellaneous skills will start) is pretty cheap. And what this all amounts to is an easy way to increase your stats in the early game.

The drawback of exploiting this system is that it can often cause you to get way ahead of yourself attempting to reach a certain multiplier before leveling up. Too many times, I've actually found myself with enough skill levels gained for more than one character level gain. In this event, you will only level up once per rest, which will allow you the opportunity to gain more multipliers for your next level. Another complication involves actually needing to rest for one reason or another (for example, you are leveling up a magic skill and need to rest to restore your magicka), in which case you are sadly out of luck. What this kink in the system is meant to do is discourage the player from this sort of behavior in the first place.

I most certainly do not condone the abuse of this system, but the knowledge is noteworthy, nonetheless. The primary reason I make this point is to address a number of misguided individuals who have reached a rather inappropriate conclusion from the knowledge that we have garnered thus far. As we have mentioned before, your character will gain 1 level for every 10 levels you gain on major and minor skills. These skills, as you might have expected, cap at 100. Logically then, these folks assume that the lower these skills start, then the higher level they can eventually reach. But if you've been paying attention to what I've been saying, then you might have already begun to see how this thinking is flawed.

Typically, a higher level indicates higher stats. This is the norm in just about any RPG I could name. But as we've already discussed, you can level your stats as quickly or as slowly as you wish in Morrowind, meaning that the highest level you can possibly reach should not necessarily be one of your highest concerns. By keeping the information I've given you in mind, you can play through the game with the comfort of knowing that you will be very able to max out your stats if you so choose. Even luck, which is the most difficult stat to level due to the fact that it will never gain any multipliers (as luck governs no skills), can be maxed out if you dedicate 1 point per level to it starting no later than around level 10 or so.

The only further benefit that leveling up conveys upon your character is an increase in maximum health, the increase being roughly equal to about 1/5 of your character's endurance stat at the time. Your health will indeed continue to rise with each level you gain, but if maximum health is a concern of yours, then the most reasonable course of action is to work towards increasing your endurance stat as much as possible early in the game. Maximum magicka, on the other hand, is a direct result of your intelligence stat, which will be capped at 100. This fact demonstrates just how useful races or birthsigns which fortify your maximum magicka can be.

Moving away from the subject of leveling up, I'd like to focus now on the game's skills, and the concept of choosing ten of them as the major and minor skills of your class. Now, I've gone over some general information concerning skills in this section already, and the next section of the FAQ (section I.B.) goes over all 27 skills in a bit more detail. Before continuing along to that, however, I'd like to go over some advice concerning skills that will apply to any player, regardless of class type.

There are basically four different kinds of skills (excepting Athletics and Acrobatics, which seem to resist categorization): weapon skills, armor skills, magicka skills, and everything else. Weapon skills govern the use of a particular style of weapon, such as Axe or Long Blade, and your accuracy with them. Damage dealt depends only on the equipped weapon and your character's strength stat. On the other hand, the agility stat is a factor in determining accuracy, and can help compensate for a low weapon skill. Next, armor skills dictate the magnitude to which armors of its type will add to your defense (read: NOT your evasion). Evasion, or dodging attacks is purely a result of your character's agility, and curiously has nothing to do with the weight of the armor currently equipped.

A magicka skill will determine how likely a spell that falls under its particular school is to be successfully cast. The chance-of-success percentage is listed for each spell in your spell menu next to that spell's casting cost like so: "casting cost/success %". A spell with a 100% success rate will never fail when cast. Spells with a higher casting cost are less likely to succeed when cast, and another major factor in spell success will be your character's current amount of fatigue (fatigue is discussed in more detail in section II.B. of the FAQ). You should also bear in mind that spells are not necessarily the only method of brandishing spell effects in Morrowind. Section III.C. of the FAQ discuss the art of enchantment, which essentially allows you to imbue an item or piece of equipment with magicka. It is a fact to seriously consider when deciding which schools of magicka you'd like specialize in, as many spell effects tend to be more useful and readily available as actual spells.

All other skills in the game (besides Athletics and Acrobatics, as I have already mentioned before) will have an effect on your chances of successfully performing the action controlled by that skill. Block, though technically an armor skill, falls under this category since it affects your chances of successfully blocking an attack with a shield as opposed to the amount of defense offered by that shield.

The relative natures of each of the four different types of skills are your first tier of consideration as far as choosing your major and minor skills go. On the subject of armor skills, for example, you're better off picking one type and sticking with it as opposed to selecting multiple types. The same can also be said for weapons, though it bears mentioning that the Unarmored and Marksman skills are both meant to serve moreso as supplementary skills rather than primary ones, and thus can sensibly be chosen as major/minor skills in conjunction with others of their respective types. These rules tend not to apply to magicka or other skills, thus you should find quite a few of either type in just about any character's major/minor skillset.

Weapon skills (aside from Marksman) tend to level very quickly as a result of everyday melee combat. Even the less combat-oriented characters must resort to duking it out every once in awhile, so this should be pretty universal. As major skills, weapons level extremely, perhaps even uncontrollably fast- a fact which might influence your decision. Minor weapon skills still level at a good pace, but much less so than they would as major skills. However, the initial 15-point difference between a major and minor skill tends to have a noticeable and significant impact on your character's accuracy, which is compounded by the slower rate of experience gain a weapon skill would possess as a minor skill. It is for this reason that I personally recommend that any player select his or her chosen weapon skill as a major one if possible.

Armor skills naturally gain experience a lot slower than your weapons do unless you spend a significant amount of time in the game getting your ass kicked. However, armor skills can be raised far more easily than weapon skills can by simply putting a bunch of that kind of armor and then letting a rat or slaughterfish beat the shit out of you for awhile. Block and Restoration, for obvious reasons, are two skills that level up great alongside any armor skill. And given how easy they are to level, I've found that armor skills can fare just as well as minor skills as they do as major ones, so that's where I usually put 'em.

Magicka skills are also notoriously simple to level up. Since a spell need only be successfully cast in order for you to gain experience from it, all you need is a spell with a casting cost of one (available from any spellmaker) and a place to rest and you're in business. The only real disadvantage to this is that the frequent resting might cause an unwanted premature level-up, to which I reply "tough shit". Before you go making all of your magicka skills minor ones, however, you should note that even the easiest spells to cast demand a fairly high skill level to be cast with much consistency. Around 30 or so is sufficient for simple spells, while more advanced ones may require levels of around 40 to 60 to be of any use at all. Therefore most, if not all of your magicka skills should probably be set to major slots if at all possible.

The rest of the game's skills vary greatly in terms of how they are best managed. Some are impossibly difficult to level, and are probably best left out of your top ten. Others level quite easily, and may be chosen as minor (or major) skills based on that fact alone. And then there are skills like Athletics, which you're going to make use no matter what, but they level at such an uncontrollable pace that you couldn't pay me to select 'em as major or minor skills.

And finally, there's the type of character you choose to play through the game as. Different skills work better for different characters, as should be obvious. But although the game directs you to choose only one specialization for your class (combat, magic, or stealth), you should in no way feel confined to that description. In fact, it is virtually impossible for anyone to create a character focused entirely on a lone category. In the coming sections, I'll be talking quite a bit about what skills, races, and birthsigns work best for combat-oriented, maicka-oriented, and stealth-oriented character types, which is why I mention this. Attempting to focus your character on a single class category tends to make selecting a full set of major and minor skills at the very least exceptionally difficult. So with that in mind, try to keep an open mind about skills, races, and birthsigns that you think may not apply to your character type, because they just might.


Last Update: December 10, 2005	Contributors: BTB