Morrowind: A Beginner’s Guide To The Skills and Attributes System

The mechanics behind skills and attributes are much more complex in The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind than most RPGs — here’s a guide to how they work.

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Though Morrowind shares some common elements with Oblivion and Skyrim, several mechanics set it apart from the later Elder Scrolls installations. One of the most prominent differences would be the skills and attribute systems.

Unlike some games, Morrowind isn’t about a quick grind to player level 100. In fact, you’ll want to pay closer attention to the skills you’re leveling along the way, which consequently affect corresponding attributes as well. If you’re having trouble making heads or tails of Morrowind’s convoluted leveling system, this guide will help you sort it all out so you can prioritize your leveling goals.

Updated on August 11, 2021, by Kim Dailey: Stepping into Morrowind for the first time or returning after years trekking through Tamriel, The Elder Scrolls 3 can be a convoluted system to readjust to. So to that end, we have flushed out this article with even more tips and tricks for a smooth journey.

The Difference Between Skills and Attributes

While they are interconnected to some extent, skills and attributes are contrasted to each other. You can think of skills as being active abilities that become more proficient the more you use them. In other words, you can actively level them up by practicing them.

Attributes are more like passive characteristics that determine the proficiency of your character’s traits or abilities. Most of them act as an accuracy percentage in that they determine the likelihood of a certain action being performed successfully or getting an optimal outcome through dialogue. For instance, various primary attributes govern the effectiveness of different skills, such as the Strength attribute affecting skills like Acrobatics, Armorer, and Longblade, to name a few.

Skills and Attributes

Below are the skills and the primary attributes they are ruled by, along with the style classification of each skill in parentheses, which will be explained further later on. For now, we’ve included some general tips and tricks for leveling various skills, which will in turn advance the attributes they are governed by.

Strength Attribute

Practicing Acrobatics is an easy path to leveling the Strength attribute, as it is one of the quickest skills to level by simply spamming the jump action.

Intelligence Attribute

Alchemy can be power leveled by stocking up on replenishing ingredients, usually found cheap in shops. Otherwise, the best way to advance Intelligence is to train the skills under trainers or level them through reading the correlating books.

Endurance Attribute

To level up armors skills you simply need to act as a tackling dummy for low-level creatures such as fish or Mud-Crabs. In order to withstand enough attacks to power-level, you should prepare with plenty of potions of Health and Cure Disease.

Willpower Attribute

The classic approach of practicing, training, or studying skills is the best approach here. You can create a custom spell expelling only a one point effect and costing only 1 point of magicka, allowing you to power level your chosen area of magic.

Agility Attribute

You can level up Light Armor the same way you would the other armors, otherwise, training, study, and active practice will be the most straightforward approaches.

Personality Attribute

Mercantile is a fairly simple skill to level, giving you a good start towards advancing Personality. The trick is to adjust all transactions by roughly half of your current Mercantile skill, then continue clicking on “Offer”, they will eventually accept your offer and it will get you a good amount of skill progress.

Speed Attribute

Like Acrobatics, Athletics is one of the easiest skills to level making it the fastest route to advancing Speed. In fact, you can even level up Athletics while AFK, by activating auto-walk and facing a wall.

Luck Attribute

This is the only primary attribute that has no corresponding skills.

Skill Classifications

Skills can be considered major, minor, or miscellaneous skills for different classes. Skills classified as major or minor for your chosen class will add to the skill points required to level up your character each time the skill gains a point. Miscellaneous skills, the ones which are not noted under your class skillset, will not.

The skills are further categorized into three stylization categories: Combat, Magic, and Stealth. These are also known as the Guardian signs, The Warrior, Mage, and Thief; birth signs which govern themselves, and three other birth signs. The skills and attributes which fall under any birth sign are categorized under the corresponding Guardian sign.

Of course, Morrowind allows players to mix and match skills to create a custom class, regardless of what classification the skills are categorized under. These categorical classifications simply represent the type of skill and give you a hint as to what classes the skills are best suited for.

Primary Vs. Secondary Attributes

Both primary and secondary attributes affect the character’s actions in gameplay. The difference is primary attributes affect the effectiveness or accuracy of the character’s actions, while secondary attributes affect the player’s abilities to execute actions at all. For instance, a high Willpower allows for stronger and more proficient spellcasting, but without a Magicka reserve, the character won’t be able to cast any skills in the first place.

Primary Attributes

Secondary Attributes

Leveling Skills and Attributes

Advancing Skills

As we’ve begun to cover above, there are a few different methods you can utilize to level skills.

Active Practice

Like the later games, Morrowind facilitates leveling up skills by usage. As mentioned above, using skills will also advance their corresponding primary attributes as the skills themselves level up. In turn, secondary attributes are reliant on the primaries and will be recalculated each time a primary attribute gains a point.

Reading &Study

If you want to level up a skill that you aren’t actively putting to use, you can increase the skill by studying. Hitting the books for a quick study session is a tried and true method that has persisted through the later games as well. Be sure to skim through any books you come across, as only certain ones will contain the knowledge you’re looking for.

Training Under Trainers

Training is also a proven method that has remained prevalent throughout the Elder Scrolls series. You’ll meet specialized NPCs throughout the land of Morrowind whom you can pay to train you in their various fields of expertise. In The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, each trainer is qualified to train you in a skillset of three different skills.

Advancing Attributes

Attributes are more passive in their incremental growth, given they are leveled up through the increase of the skills they govern.

Attributes gain levels in conjunction with each character level-up. The exact amount an attribute’s proficiency increases is determined by the amount of usage its skill(s) have gotten between character level-ups. A multiplier ranging between 1x to 5x notates just how much an attribute is increasing each level.

Luck is the odd one out, being that it doesn’t hold sway over any specific skills. So instead of its proficiency increasing based on how many times a skill was used, Luck increases by the number of times it affected any actions taken between character level-ups. The Luck attribute should be leveled up to a base minimum of 50 to negate the possibility of any negative effects regarding the accuracy of skills.

Character Customization

Character customization determines what skills and attributes are going to work best for you. With the vast amount of possible combinations in the character’s birth sign, race, and class, each character will be an individual and provide a unique gameplay experience.

Skills

The birth sign you choose will allot a bonus of five points to each skill categorized under it. Those skills will then prove easier to gain proficiency with throughout gameplay.

Depending on which race you choose, certain skills may have a higher base level pertaining to that race’s special skill sets. The Class you choose may also raise the base level of different skills along with the rate of advancement for certain ones.

Attributes

Race affects an attribute’s base level at the start of the game. Depending on the race, an attribute can be positively or negatively affected. The base value of all attributes is 40 before selecting a race.

Regardless of the race, Luck holds a base value of 40 across the board, but many others take a ten-point deficiency from several races and up to a 15-point setback with select races. However, attributes can also be boosted to a base maximum of 50 points with other races. Whether a character is male or female impacts these bonuses.

Each class has two characteristic attributes, which allow them to perform certain skills better from the get-go. In turn, these attributes can be increased by using their corresponding skills to level up, as mentioned earlier.

Link Source : https://www.thegamer.com/morrowind-skills-attributes-explained/