Anyway. Morrowind is a veritable cornucopia of loopholes and exploits. Parts of the magic system seem intentionally designed to make use of them. The only two things Telekinesis is good for are setting off traps and, more importantly, stealing things right out from under the noses of NPCs who won't react at all.

Unless you're in a narrow hallway, Levitation lets you get out of reach of melee creatures, which is most of them, and rain fire and/or arrows down upon their unfortunate heads. Go far enough away and they won't even know where you are. Okay, that's just good tactics, right? Okay, how about the fact that if you're about 3 feet off the ground you can pick locks right in front of people and they don't notice?

And then there's the Spellmaking system. I love my Remote Unlock spell, which lets me unlock doors from a hiding place a few feet away and then casually stroll right past the guards and march through as if I belonged there.

So far I've stolen a whole hell of a lot of stuff and I don't have any Sneaking or Security skill to speak of, which doesn't say a lot for the value of thieving skills. I also don't have Invisibility or Chameleon -- all I use Illusion for is Frenzy so I can incite people to attack me and then kill them "in self defense" without raising the ire of the law. Another pretty blatant built-in exploit, as that's the only thing Frenzy Humanoid is good for.

The two most useful things in my spell list are obvious exploits though. "Empty Head" is 100% Drain Intelligence for 1 second... on self. All you need is 10 mana to cast it, and guess what happens to your mana when it wears off? If you said "it goes to 100%" you win the prize. Now if mana stayed at 0 instead, it wouldn't have been as cool, but a targetted version would still be a ridiculously cheap way to cripple enemy spellcasters. (The solution to prevent either exploit would have been to disallow self-targetting Drain spells, which should have no positive benefits.)

"Permalev" is what it sounds like, permanent levitation... and it's real cheap too. Combine any damage spell, targetted, 1 damage for 2 seconds, with any effect on self for 1 second. Aim at a nearby wall so that your spell strikes it in under 1 second. The effect of the tacked-on spell never times out, though its icon disappears. All that breaks Permalev is getting kneecapped or knocked unconscious in combat, or sometimes exiting the game and reloading.

Minor disadvantages: navigating in narrow hallways/stairs is a little more difficult than walking; too high a value on Levitate makes you move too fast indoors; no more free Athletics/Acrobatics experience for running and jumping everywhere. You can't rest without a bed, since you are never standing on solid ground -- but you can always mark/recall/intervention to get to a town with a bed, and you can use Empty Head to restore mana and other spells to restore health/fatigue.

Also Levitation looks just plain dumb at high speeds. In first person view it looks like you're floating around at will, which should be quite cool. In third person view, the animation speed is locked into your movement speed, so you're whipping your limbs around like a chihuahua on meth.

Anyway, I don't feel too bad about exploiting the loopholes because the game really seems to be designed that way in the first place. This would never do as an MMORPG.

All that said, there are some clever things about their magic system, and the game manages to be fun and occasionally challenging despite how easy you can make some aspects. A Nord barbarian with a hammer in a narrow hallway, or two skeletons in a narrow hallway, will have me drinking lots of health potions. (Maybe I need a non-Frost damage spell, heh.) I'm about to the level where it's time to try raiding Daedric shrines, or maybe start wiping out the obnoxious Hlaalu guards that patrol the streets... heh heh.

Posted 07:46 AM CST [Link] [Archives] [Index]