Any essential mods? Are mods essential?

Playing OpenMW now, only thing I notice is I thnk the collision might be slightly stickier, and that NPC wandering is a little off. The Balmora silt strider person has fallen on the platform and now stays on the ground to the side of it.

Newest version of openMW is better and more stable than the vanilla game, currently.

Uninstall wizard, play Gothic or M&Ms

Fucking wew, lads.

It's not remotely as good as morrowalk, it's better by orders of magnitude.

This basically. Whatever you do don't install the mod that makes you hit on every attack, the game isn't balanced around it and it kills the progression. Just make sure you're actually have skill in the weapon you want to use and keep your fatigue above halfway, if you take the starsign of the lover on top of that you'll very rarely miss.

There is a mod that allows you to use alchemy equipment without pilfering it and another that changes the plant models after you harvest them. If you find the combat tedious, there is a mod that removes all dice rolls from it letting you hit every single time you swing your sword.

How about you play a GOOD game instead of this shit?

I've already played Torment

There does seem to be a lot of walking

Until you get the Boots or Shoes of Blinding Speed, then there's a lot of diagonal jumping.

that didn't happen to me until I updated to openmw 0.40 so there's hoping it will be fixed in the next version

I can't be arsed to search the bug tracker now

why not play all three? and throw Sacred Underworld in the mix because it's just as comfy

The best mod is the one that lets you actually keep slaves to haul your shit or act as guards for your conquered Dunmer fortress. God damn modded Morrowind was fun as hell.

OpenMW and the unofficial patches
Tamriel Rebuilt
Sotha Sil Expanded
Return of Great House Dagoth
Versus Vivec
Greater Dwemer Ruins
Morrowind Watercolored

OpenMW allows you to play the game at arbitrary resolutions and fixes many core engine bugs. It's still not 1.0 but 0.40 is definitely better than vanilla at this point. They're at the point in development where they're fixing shit like a specific particle effect not being the correct scale.

You must not have played it recently. Over the past year it has become far better than vanilla and is significantly less crash prone, runs quite a bit better, and of course fixes many bugs and has extended functionality like arbitrary resolutions.

OFFICIAL MORROWIND DLC BY BETHESDA

NOT IN THE GOTY VERSION FROM STEAM

These are nice to have. If you want experience-enhancing mods, I'd say get them after you get a feel for the regular game first.
uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Official_Plug-ins

Or just enchant your outfits, get 300 strength, and jump around like hulk.

How to make morrowind 10x more fun:
it's that easy

It's so weird to look back and think how Bethesda actually gave a shit once upon a time

These two games have almost nothing in common for what they offer. Morrowind is good because of its art direction and writing, Gothic has shit art direction and mediocre writing. Gothic has good gameplay and RPG mechanics, Morrowind has shit gameplay and RPG mechanics. Morrowind has many ways to establish your unique character in its complicated faction system but forgettable NPCs, Gothic has a boring set protagonist with voice acting and more of a focus on the man quest over factions, but it has great NPCs.

Just because they're both open world RPGs released around the same time doesn't mean you can compare them and say that one is decisively better than the other. It just comes down to whether you're someone that prefers art direction, writing, and role playing or gameplay, RPG mechanics, and interesting NPCs.