Morrowind Mod Gets Even Bigger

Tamriel Rebuilt, one of the largest mods for The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind ever created, received a new update that significantly expands its already massive content offerings. The sizable release helps solidify the game’s evergreen status that makes Morrowind still worth playing in this day and age.

Tamriel Rebuilt has long been touted as one of the best mods for The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind in existence. Much like its name implies, the project aims to expand the game’s map with the addition of Morrowind’s mainland, which accounts for roughly two-thirds of the said Tamriel province. And while merely modeling the area surrounding the island of Vvardenfell—the setting of the original game—proved to be a gigantic undertaking, filling out that custom map with content was an equally massive challenge in completing this ambitious mod.

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Yet that’s precisely what the project’s developers have been doing for years now, with the latest result of their tenacious efforts arriving in the form of the Tamriel Rebuilt update 23.10, which debuted at the tail end of October. This version of the mod introduces more than 100 new quests and nine additional faction storylines, most of which can be found around Lake Andaram, situated to the south of the Aanthirin region in central Morrowind. The update was originally code-named Hlan Oek, after the eponymous House Hlaalu port town, though its creators are now referring to it as the Andaram expansion.

Apart from introducing Hlan Oek, the patch also expands Almas Thirr, the legendary temple city that was first added to Tamriel Rebuilt as part of its 2019 Aanthirin expansion. Morrowind players will now be able to find the Fighters, Mages, and Thieves Guilds in this medieval metropolis, each with their accompanying questlines. Other new locations include the St. Delyn Monastery to the west of Hlan Oek and fishing village Idathren to the southeast, as well as the Hlaalu Ferry that can be found farther into the mainland.

A new dungeon type called Dreugh Citadel is also part of the package, together with over 30 additional dungeons located around Lake Andaram. Furthermore, the Tamriel Rebuilt team touched upon some of the mod’s previously introduced locations as part of this newly launched update, expanding them with more quests and landmarks that promise to incentivize players to reinstall Morrowind and revisit them.

The 23.10 update for Tamriel Rebuilt is the project’s seventh major release since its 2018 debut. The patch brings the mod’s total quest count to over 600, thus surpassing the combined volume of content from the original game and its two expansion packs. The Tamriel Rebuilt team described the project as halfway complete back when the mod reached 360 quests in late 2021.

Tamriel Rebuilt Update 23.10 Patch Notes

General notes

• Release 23.10, “Andaram,” is intended to be played with Tamriel_Data v10.0 or later.
• This is a major content release. Additional content has been added to TR_Mainland.
• New dialogue lines have been added to a couple of vanilla characters in order to provide quest hooks to organically direct players to the mainland. While these few lines do appear instead of vanilla dialogue, no other edits have been done to these characters and no pre-existing dialogue is modified. This should prevent most incompatibilites with other mods, but it is possible that additional patching will be needed for mods that explicitly rely on the now-hidden vanilla dialogue lines. Furthermore, a new activator is added into the Rethan Manor cell.
• A technical change in how plugin files are merged during Tamriel Rebuilt development should improve add-on mod compatibility between release 22.11 and this one, as well as all future releases (ESM reference IDs should now remain stable).

TR_Mainland

Exteriors

• Added 82 cells of new exterior land, fleshing out the remaining part of the Aanthirin region and including the first slices of two new regions: the Coronati Basin and the Othreleth Woods.
• Added the industrial town of Hlan Oek on the Thirr river, a hive of scum and villany.
• Added the sleepy Dunmer hamlet of Idathren and the Hlaalu Ferry outpost.
• Added the eldrich horror of a Dreugh citadel that is Paruddma’s Maw, featuring a completely new dungeon tileset.
• Updated (completely remade and expanded) the Temple stronghold city of Almas Thirr, expanding its bridge district to add a ton of quest content.
• Updated (significantly) the landscape of the Aanthirin region, moving us closer to vanilla aesthetics and improving navigation and performance, and replaced its Ascadian Isles flora and rocks with new, unique models.
• Replaced the lighthouses in Bal Oyra and Teyn with new, culture-appropriate models.
• Replaced many ships throughout the mod to use new, culture-specific ship models: Nordic trade ships, common Imperial trade ships, and small Dunmer ships. Also updated all Imperial cutter and galleon ships to use much-improved new models.
• Updated (culled) clutter throughout Old Ebonheart and Firewatch to improve performance.

Interiors

• Added or reworked much more than a hundred new interior locations:
• Added many new dungeons and other wilderness locations throughout the previously released parts of Aanthrin.
• Added, reworked, or remade more than fifty interiors in Almas Thirr to make better use of space and to conform to modern quality and consistency standards.
• Updated the Old Ebonheart Talos Chapel to focus on Talos, instead of being a TES IV-style temple to all Divines.
• Added a bunch of new Cathnoquey furniture and clutter from our sister project, Padomaic Isles, to the Cathnoquey mission in Firewatch.
• Replaced a ton of armor, books, clutter, etc. all over the mainland with new items from the updated Tamriel_Data.

Quests and Dialogue

• Added more than 110 new quests to new and old areas:
• Added House Hlaalu and Tribunal Temple questlines to Hlan Oek.
• Added tons of miscellaneous quests to Hlan Oek and throughout the newly added southern landmass.
• Added questlines for the Fighters, Mages and Thieves guilds, as well as the Morag Tong, to Almas Thirr.
• Added several new miscellaneous quests to Almas Thirr.
• Updated all old Almas Thirr quests and questlines to take into account the reworked city.
• Added a small, low-level House Hlaalu questline to Oran Plantation in western Aanthirin.
• Added a long-delayed miscellaneous quest to Oran Plantation and two other quests to the Aanthirin towns of Indal-Ruhn and Roa Dyr.
• Added another long-delayed quest to the Old Ebonheart Elsweyr Mission, featuring our first Alfiq Khajiit character, and another one to the herbalist Kassad.
• Replaced an overly silly quest in Gol Mok, Aanthirin, with a new and better one.
• Added a Thieves Guild questline to Andothren, a major piece of cut content from our previous expansion.
• Added a series of bounties given by the Imperial Magistrate in Andothren.
• Added several miscellaneous quests to flesh out the city of Andothren.
• Added the Baluath Vampire Clan questline to Armun Ashlands, another major piece of cut content.
• Added three miscellaneous quests to the Roth Roryn towns of Menaan, Bodrum, and Teyn.
• Added a couple new miscellaneous quests to Necrom.
• Added a new miscellaneous quest to Akamora.
• Added one-off House Telvanni faction quests to Tel Oren and Tel Rivus.
• Added several tiny quest hooks to existing vanilla NPCs to organically direct players to the mainland:
  • Vodunius Nuccius in Seyda Neen
  • Caius Cosades in Balmora
  • Ajira in Balmora
  • Tenyeminwe in Sadrith Mora
  • Tongue-Toad in Ald’Ruhn
  • A new courier in Rethan Manor
• Updated the miscellaneous quests Drinking, Stealing, Ranting in Roa Dyr and Tribunal Thrill-Seeking in the Roth Roryn wilderness to significantly improve their dialogue.
• Updated (reworked) the Freedom for a Fiend quest in Old Ebonheart, among other things removing the opaque level requirement.
• Added unique dialogue to the Redoran hamlet of Uman in the Velothi Mountains.
• Added many new latest rumors topics to NPCs throughout the Aanthirin, Roth Roryn, Armun Ashlands, and Velothi Mountains regions.
• Removed the miscellaneous quest Sheogorath’s Box of Fun upon request of its creator. It had outlived its time.
• Removed the miscellaneous quest Kneading the Dough, as it introduced lore and city planning issues and was frustratingly obscure to solve.

Miscellaneous

• Updated (revised) the services and spells offered in guildhalls throughout the mainland to be more consistent with each other and vanilla, and generally more useful to players.
• Updated (unified) faction reputation rewards across Tamriel Rebuilt quests.
• Added back generic dialogue topics to many NPCs that were previously lacking any dialogue.
• Updated travel links throughout western Morrowind to take into account the existence of Hlan Oek.
• Updated Hlaalu guards along the Thirr river to wear the new Iuvan-Thir armor designed specifically for the region.
• Updated our new Khajiit subtype NPCs to have tails.
• Replaced Roban’s merchant stall in Firewatch with one selling East Empire Company stock certificates and also added a similar option to the Old Ebonheart EEC offices.
• Renamed the Firewatch navy base to Fort Symmachus and the Old Ebonheart one to Fort Pelagius.
• Removed the bounty gained for running in front of Ordinators in Necrom. Their disposition will still drop if you do so.
• Fixed innumerable old script and dialogue consistency errors found using Evil Eye’s validator.
• Fixed a massive amount of quest, landscape, and mesh placement bugs and made a similar number of little improvements.

TR_Factions

• Updated (increased) faction reputation requirements for advancement in vanilla factions to account for added quests.
• Updated (revamped) faction reactions between vanilla and Tamriel_Data factions.
• Updated the Fighters and Mages Guild charters to take into account the mainland guildhalls.
• Updated Nerevarine quest handling by adding small edits to vanilla dialogue that direct you to the tribes.
• Moved some of the edits this plugin made to TR_Mainland into TR_Mainland itself, to make it easier to manage.
• Removed some old, unnecessary edits to mainland faction records.
• Fixed a bug related to a Telvanni Hortator quest.

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

$41 $49 Save $8

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind is one of the most influential open-world games of all time. Bethesda’s action RPG may not hold up visually today, though the game is still easy to get lost in, thanks to the freedom of choice that players have in where they go and what they do as they explore the game’s world.

Franchise

The Elder Scrolls

Platform(s)

PC, Xbox (Original)

Released

May 1, 2002

Developer(s)

Bethesda Game Studios

Publisher(s)

Bethesda Softworks

Genre(s)

RPG

Engine

Gamebryo

ESRB

T For Teen due to Blood, Violence

How Long To Beat

45 Hours

X|S Enhanced

No

File Size Xbox Series

1 GB (May 2023)