Dear community,

I am using a modpack. I don’t know which one, but probably one installed with Wabbajack.
Morrowind is a game I read I really should play. So I start with it, get bored of it, stop playing and later start over again, etcetera. I am getting tired of questing in and around Seyda Neen.
My latest play I stopped in October 2023 and I am wondering whether I should continue it or not. Rather than go into a probably complicated discussion on the problem of the first paragraph, I would like to narrow it down to my build: whether I just have a bad build this time.

My build is a level 9 Briton battlemage with the Ritual of Masser birthsign (see “Moonlight - Birthsigns of Morrowind” mod on Nexusmods).
Major Skills:
Unarmored, Hand-to-hand, Alteration, Alchemy and Athletics

Minor Skills:
Conjuration, Illusion, Mysticism, Restoration and Speechcraft

The idea was to combine a warrior with a mage as hand-to-hand combat goes well with no armor and magic also goes well with no armor. I also want a decent strength to be able to carry a decent amount of loot, which pure mages are bad at.
Now, my statistics are already pretty high for this stage of the game. (There should be picture here somewhere showing that). And yet I find combat hard. I have already reduced difficulty several times. A rat is still something I don’t dismiss with a single punch and when there was a blight storm for several days, the creatures generated by it were just too strong for me. They even killed several of Neyda Neen’s soldiers. (I lured the monsters to Seyda Neem to get rid of them by letting the guards fight them.)
Given that the maximum of the statistics is if I recall correctly 100, I can’t get that much stronger anymore.

Edit: I replaced Alchemy by Restoration in the Minor skill list.

Magic and no armor actually don't go well together in Morrowind, for a few reasons:
* You have fewer slots for slots for constant effect enchantments, once they become feasible.
* The only penalty for wearing armor is that you move more slowly due to higher encumbrance. (Unlike in Oblivion, there's no reduction in spell effectiveness.)

In Morrowind, I believe hand-to-hand only damages Fatigue, not Health, until the enemy has been knocked out, which means that it takes a while to kill even the weakest enemies.

The way to really make melee and magic work together is to use spells that support your fighting abilities:
* Conjuratino gives you bound weapons. Bound Axe, in particular, is *really* good, maybe even too good. You can also get some good bound armor.
* Restoration, which it doesn't seem you took at all, is good for temporarily boosting your stats. Fortify Strength to do more damage (but your weapon will break faster), or fortify Agility if you're having trouble hitting enemies. (Alchemy can also be used, but you need to find the ingredients, so it's less convenient, though potentially more powerful and longer lasting.) In expansion areas, you can get Fortify Skill, which is when the skill *really* gets powerful.

(Also, I noticed a likely mistake in your post: You have Alchemy listed as both a Major skill and a Minor skill.)

Edit: Seems you do have Restoration as a minor skill, instead of Alchemy.

This is correct. But with improving skill, it takes fewer hits to knock out an enemy. And reduced enemy fatigue means reduced chance to hit the character (and I believe less damage for characters when hit, too). You'll never be able to defeat a rat with one hit, but you can knock it out with one hit, and then it can't defend itself anymore.
In my opinion, hand-to-hand becomes the most powerful fighting skill once it gets high enough (for example, there is no resistance against hand-to-hand, no repairs required, and it reduces enemy fatigue).

In my opinion, Thoralin's character is a bit odd, but not a bad one - when played well. Not necessarily recommended for a beginner. Hand-to-hand plus Restoration should be enough, ideally supported by Conjuration (Bound stuff and / or conjured minions). The character is also capable of casting Fortify spells etc and creating potions (magicka replenishmnet while fighting might become an issue).

@Thoralin: There is no need to use Seyda Neen as a basis. For example, towns like Balmora, Caldera or Ald'Ruhn, or Telvanni locations in the east can be used, too (depending on what you want to do). Generally difficulty increases when you move to the east. Increase Speed (helps hand-to-hand fighting) and get your Strength back to normal (it's damaged).
You shouldn't have to use the difficulty slider to make fighting easier - practise hand-to-hand fighting more (just to get better used to it), against weaker enemies in the beginning.
To lure enemies to Guards is a good idea, but it shouldn't be necessary to do this on a regular basis.

Reduced fatigue does other things, as well. For example:
* It makes the character's spells more likely to fail.
* It makes it easier for the character to repair items. (I don't think this matters for NPCs, and this particular behavior is considered by some modders to be a bug.)
* I think it also affects negotiation.

Looking at UESP, it looks like:
* Fatigue does not affect damage.
* Strength affects weapon damage, but not hand-to-hand damage, for some reason. This means that boosting Strength won't help, and fortifying it won't help, either. On the other hand, if you're able to get a Fortify Skill effect, Fortify hand-ti-hand could be a useful effect. (Just don't make it constant effect on a weapon, as that would be pointless.) I don't think Speed affects hand-to-hand combat. In fact, the only relation between the two is the reverse: Increasing your hand-to-hand skill allows you to get a bigger Speed boost at your next level up.

The stats that would help are Agility and Luck, with Agility being the bigger factor.

Using Hand-To-Hand (HTH), you have to knock out your enemy (reduce Fatigue to 0) before damage is applied.
Both Fatigue and Health damage are proportional to the HTH skill value (with diferent proportionality factors). Speed lets characters attack more often.
I mentioned Strength only, because it's damaged, and because the OP wants to use it to be able to carry more. Has nothing to do with HTH fighting.

Edit: More Speed has a defensive HTH effect, too: Enemies can attack back less often.

Thank you for your advices.

First, a short additional context: I last played Morrowind in oktober 2023. Then I considered continuing from my last play in December last year, but wanted advice on the problem described in the OP. However, I could not post on this forum and only succeeded in posting a few days ago. So I started playing Oblivion instead. Also there is a lot I don’t remember well.

Yes, I have Restoration as a minor skill i.s.o. Alchemy. I have now corrected it in the original post.
A reason to pick unarmored and hand-to-hand as a mage is to save on weight to be able to carry more loot and alchemical stuff.
Independent of whether hand-to-hand is good against single foes, it seems bad against multiple ones as one has to focus on one enemy while its comrades are able to pummel you for free.

Dtgreene: “Conjuratino gives you bound weapons. Bound Axe, in particular, is *really* good, maybe even too good. You can also get some good bound armor.”
Is Conjuring bound weapons useful if one has the hand-to-hand skill? I think that would slow down the progression of the hand-to-hand skill. Conjuring bound armor seems bad for the unarmored skill. Maybe that use of conjuration would be better in conjunction with skills that can use those conjured weapons and armor.
Greywolf: “In my opinion, hand-to-hand becomes the most powerful fighting skill once it gets high enough (for example, there is no resistance against hand-to-hand, no repairs required, and it reduces enemy fatigue).”
What is high enough? It is already at 62, this early in the game and allegedly it can go no higher than 100. As far as I remember I am still unable to knock out a rat with one blow. How am I supposed to stand a chance against dragons (or what is as powerful in Morrowind)?

Greywolf: “In my opinion, Thoralin's character is a bit odd, but not a bad one - when played well. Not necessarily recommended for a beginner. Hand-to-hand plus Restoration should be enough, ideally supported by Conjuration (Bound stuff and / or conjured minions). The character is also capable of casting Fortify spells etc and creating potions (magicka replenishmnet while fighting might become an issue).”
Again, why conjure weapons and armor if you have unarmored and hand-to-hand as skills? I got Conjuration hoping for good minions, but the single ancestral ghost I can conjure is weak. Also Alchemy has serious drawbacks. It makes you carry a laboratory full of ingredients with you, which is heavy. It is also work, gathering ingredients and learning making and selling potions. All those sold potions are a cash source though.

Greywolf: “@Thoralin: There is no need to use Seyda Neen as a basis. For example, towns like Balmora, Caldera or Ald'Ruhn, or Telvanni locations in the east can be used, too (depending on what you want to do).”
I use Seyda Neen as base because that is presumably what the game designers intended. First I get stronger by questing around Seyda Neen and then I go to the harder areas. Is it not so that farther away areas tend to be harder?
Obviously I did practice hand-to-hand fighting. I even have a mod that introduces a timing aspect to it which I did I think fairly well. It wasn’t enough against those blight monsters.

Dtgreene: “Strength affects weapon damage, but not hand-to-hand damage, for some reason. This means that boosting Strength won't help, and fortifying it won't help, either. On the other hand, if you're able to get a Fortify Skill effect, Fortify hand-ti-hand could be a useful effect. “
UESP says it specifically about hand-to-hand skill: “Unlike weapon damage, Strength does not affect Hand-to-hand damage at all. Instead, both fatigue and health damage are increased by boosting the Hand-to-hand skill directly.”

To me, it's always felt like you're intended to head to Balmora early and use *that* as a base.

Balmora is where so many things open up. There's guilds to join, opening up many new quests, as well as spellmaking and alchemy opportunities. There's even the person you need to talk to to start the main quest (though you do need to be level 3; the developers basically want you to get your feet wet first).

A good bound weapon is likely to do more damage than an unarmed attack ever would. The axe, at (IIRC) 50 strength, will do 80 damage if you press the attack button while standing still and hold it for a moment before releasing it, and this could be further boosted by boosting Strength. (You will, of course, need Axe skill to actually hit with this; one strategy, once you get access to Fortify Skill, is to put Bound Axe and Fortify Skill on the same spell.)

Also, only the base value of a skill (or attribute) is capped at 100. You've surely found those scrolls that fortify Acrobatics by 1000, right? (Save first, then try using one of those scrolls and jumping before it wears off.) So, you could fortify your Hand-to-hand to over 100, and get more damage out of your unarmed attacks that way.

I don't hink I could write a meaningful guide how to play successfully with your character (and dtgreene could do it better than I anyway :-)). In addition, I don't know what your mods do - like I said, I play without.

HTH is not primarily an attack skill. You can use it to prevent your opponents from attacking, and to knock them eventually out. When they're knocked out, you can easily damage them, be it by a weapon, spell, or by HTH (which causes less damage per hit than weapons or spells). HTH takes longer than weapons or spells, but saves weight / magicka, the effort to increase weapon / spell skills, and managing weapons / spells. In addition, I believe HTH is not affected by Fatigue.
You still have to worry about defense. The higher enemy Fatigue and the lower your HTH and Speed values are, the more likely enemies will hit you, and then cause damage to your character. And there are ranged attacks, too.

I never counted the number of HTH hits it takes to knock an enemy out - I was more interested in the time it takes. In the beginning, the Seyda Neen mudcrabs took me minutes (up to 10 or 20, if I remember correctly), in the end (HTH skill 100, I suppose), a few seconds at most for all weaker enemies, and (again, if I remember correctly) still a few minutes for Dagoth Ur (all I can say is that I found it easier to defeat the guy HTH than with weapons or spells - but this could also have to do with my ineffective / inefficient way of fighting).

What remains is, as dtgreene has pointed out, that fighting HTH against more than one enemy is problematic. You can't take on, say, 4 or 5 cliff racers, 2 kagoutis, a nixhound, etc. directly. Unless you have alternative fighting options, you can only avoid such fights, run away - or kill the enemies one-by-one, and recover in the meantime.

The value of your HTH skill is not really relevant, in my opinion. The real question is, is it high enough to knock out an enemy. And the easiest way to find out is to test it (save before testing it). It may be possible to calculate the risk - I have no idea how this could be done (nor am I interested in it).

What strikes me is that your character has managed to get to level 9, which I find impressive for such a character and for someone who is not familiar with using it to its full potential. Why don't you just continue playing? It would help to think about how you want to attack and defend, possibly develop a few rarely used skills (like, for example, a weapon and an armour skill, Destruction, ...., by practising or by using trainers), improve strength (and cure that crippling effect indicated by the red value). If you want to continue to focus on HTH fighting, improve Speed and the HTH skill (and consider practising HTH fighting more, to get a feeling for it).

Well the good thing about Bound Weapons is they fortify the associated skill, so at low levels you should still have a decent chance of hitting reasonably often (pick something with a very fast attack speed like Bound Dagger) and the damage they do (Daedric) assures you of dispatching most early game enemies with a single strike or two. If you encounter multiple enemies it's a terrific backup for a low level pugilist/martial artist. Always a good idea to have a secondary weapon skill anyway.

Bound Armor is most effective in the early game because it gives a flat 30 armor rating. Again an important backup when fighting up-close at low levels and you're outmatched. You're right it doesn't help level Unarmoured but the contribution to Light Armor would arguably be interesting for you anyway, as those would be the pieces your character may want to wear later when you start thinking about enchanting items. Bound Armor is also weightless and has no effect on speed (The cuirass and helm also both boost Unarmored so if you were only wearing those your natural skill to evade strikes would still be leveraged)

Morrowind has multiple low-level starting points for questing. Seyda Neen, Pelagiad and Balmora are all appropriate bases for a level 1 character, with Balmora in particular having lots of quests which send you around the region. Even Vivec has a robust range of low stakes quests and interesting threads to pull for a new playthrough. Don't restrict yourself to what you think the designers intended—Morrowind was made in a much more freewheeling way than you'd think and even the Main Quest encourages you to wander off and do your own thing, your own way. I like your character concept btw.

Finally, if you're fiddling with mods anyway there are a number of interesting Hand To Hand ones. I use one which subtly boosts attack speed as you level it; not overpowered but just enough to pummel your opponents in a fun anime way at very high levels which, combined with Unarmored and a high Speed, makes for a fun and challenging Monk playthrough.

Thank you for your advices.
OK. So I could just head out to Balmora or Pelagiad in stead of exploring around Seyda Neen in case I start over yet again.

Dtgreene: “A good bound weapon is likely to do more damage than an unarmed attack ever would. The axe, at (IIRC) 50 strength, will do 80 damage if you press the attack button while standing still and hold it for a moment before releasing it, and this could be further boosted by boosting Strength. (You will, of course, need Axe skill to actually hit with this; one strategy, once you get access to Fortify Skill, is to put Bound Axe and Fortify Skill on the same spell.)”
So if one conjures weapons one must also have the skill in that weapon. Is that also so with conjured armor?
So I would have to give up at least one other skill for a weapon skill. I suppose I could give up hand-to-hand. And for conjured armor I could give up the unarmored skill.

Dtgreene: “Also, only the base value of a skill (or attribute) is capped at 100. You've surely found those scrolls that fortify Acrobatics by 1000, right? (Save first, then try using one of those scrolls and jumping before it wears off.) So, you could fortify your Hand-to-hand to over 100, and get more damage out of your unarmed attacks that way.”
That’s assuming that fortify skill spell is decent. I’m playing Oblivion now and the spells tend to be weak.

Greywolf 1: “I don't hink I could write a meaningful guide how to play successfully with your character (and dtgreene could do it better than I anyway :-)). In additionn, I don't know what your mods do - like I said, I play without.”
I suspect I The game is using the Path of the Incarnate modpack, directly running in OpenMW, so not via MO2.

Greywolf 1: “You still have to worry about defense. The higher enemy Fatigue and the lower your HTH and Speed values are, the more likely enemies will hit you, and then cause damage to your character. And there are ranged attacks, too.”
That is what I have unarmored for: defense

Greywolf 1: “What remains is, as dtgreene has pointed out, that fighting HTH against more than one enemy is problematic. You can't take on, say, 4 or 5 cliff racers, 2 kagoutis, a nixhound, etc. directly. Unless you have alternative fighting options, you can only avoid such fights, run away - or kill the enemies one-by-one, and recover in the meantime.”
Two enemies is already a problem, unless they are weak.

Greywolf 1: “What strikes me is that your character has managed to get to level 9, which I find impressive for such a character and for someone who is not familiar with using it to its full potential. Why don't you just continue playing? [1] It would help to think about how you want to attack and defend, possibly develop a few rarely used skills (like, for example, a weapon and an armour skill,[2] Destruction, ...., by practising or by using trainers), improve strength (and cure that crippling effect indicated by the red value). If you want to continue to focus on HTH fighting, improve Speed and the HTH skill (and consider practising HTH fighting more, to get a feeling for it).”
[1] I explained why I stopped playing. Despite the plague storm having stopped, there are still plague monsters out there and they are really tough. Moreover, the games graphics/performance ratio is poor. I get less then 25 frames per second on average.
Moreover, I am playing Oblivion now (another game I have abandoned several times). I’m trying to stick with it.
[2] Why would I do that? It would come at the cost of HTH and unarmored. Practicing means work (i.e. not fun and fun is what I was hoping playing the game would be). Trainers want money, which requires work (not fun) to obtain.

Stiffkittin: “Well the good thing about Bound Weapons is they fortify the associated skill, so at low levels you should still have a decent chance of hitting reasonably often (pick something with a very fast attack speed like Bound Dagger) and the damage they do (Daedric) assures you of dispatching most early game enemies with a single strike or two. If you encounter multiple enemies it's a terrific backup for a low level pugilist/martial artist. Always a good idea to have a secondary weapon skill anyway.
Bound Armor is most effective in the early game because it gives a flat 30 armor rating. Again an important backup when fighting up-close at low levels and you're outmatched. You're right it doesn't help level Unarmoured but the contribution to Light Armor would arguably be interesting for you anyway, as those would be the pieces your character may want to wear later when you start thinking about enchanting items. Bound Armor is also weightless and has no effect on speed (The cuirass and helm also both boost Unarmored so if you were only wearing those your natural skill to evade strikes would still be leveraged)”
I have the impression that a battlemage with Conjuration is better off using his conjuration magic for bound equipment than fighting as a monk.

Stiffkittin: “Finally, if you're fiddling with mods anyway there are a number of interesting Hand To Hand ones. I use one which subtly boosts attack speed as you level it; not overpowered but just enough to pummel your opponents in a fun anime way at very high levels which, combined with Unarmored and a high Speed, makes for a fun and challenging Monk playthrough.”
I have a hand-to-hand combat mod that influences damage (in fatigue) depending your timing. I don’t remember which one though. If return to playing that character further I’ll have to figure out how it works again.

It's true with conjured weapons, but not conjured armor. (Yes, it's inconsistent.)

On the other hand, I believe such weapons come with constant effect Fortify Skill enchantments, and if you go to one of the expansion areas, you can get a Fortify Skill effect, then crate a spell that conjures the weapon and fortifies the skill.

Thanks for your detailed explanations. That you play OpenMW, not Morrowind, is good to know (and probably the explanation for your low frame rate, in conjunction with your hardware).

Monster strength is determined by region to a high degree (rather than character level), due to region-influenced appearance probablities. You can go everywhere, but you're not guaranteed to be able to defeat all enemies you find everywhere.
By "practising" I didn't mean walking around with the single purpose to find enemies and defeat them - do what you want to do, but use HTH when fighting, not something else. This should be enough to get the skill up. By the way, my characters have never used a trainer in all the years I play Morrowind (one of the personal "house rules" I use to make my games more interestng - another one is to never buy weapons and equipment).

There is certainly no reason to abandon Oblivion for Morrowind (unless you want to) - but it may be interesting to have a look at Morrowind again after you stop playing Oblivion. Just make sure you don't get used to quest markers, automatic magicka regeneration and fast-travelling. :-)

Actually, the way it works in Morrowind is as follows:
* Random creatures spawns are determined by your level. At higher levels, stronger creatures will spawn. You need to reach a fairly high level before random Golden Saints (useful for enchanting) start to spawn. These creatures respawn if you leave the area for long enough, and are rerolled when that happens.
* There's a lot of fixed creature spawns. These are not scaled to your level at all, so there's a finite number of Golden Saints (for example) that you can encounter even at low levels. These enemies never respawn.
* NPCs are always fixed. Every non-guard NPC has a name and will not respawn if defeated. Their stats are als onot scaled at all.

For comparison:
* In Arena and Daggerfall, creatures and NPC enemies are random (except for special ones in main quest dungeons). NPC stats are scaled to your level. (Note that NPC enemies exist only as enemies, not as entities capable of conversation.)
* Oblivion is like Arena and Daggerfall, except that, like NPCs, high level creatures also have their level and stats scale.
* Not sure about Skyrim, but it might be similar to Arena, Daggerfall, or Oblivion.