Hi there.

In the last couple of years, I went on several mod downloading sprees for Morrowind. Like probably everyone else, I noticed that hunting down mods gets increasingly difficult because of vanishing sites and outdated lists and links. Therefore I thought it might be worthwile to pool the community knowledge about how to track down mods that are really hard to find. There already is a very good guide by Ronin about getting mods in general, but specific information about the procedures I'm thinking about isn't included there (and may be out of scope for what it wants to achieve). So here's a start at a specific mod hunting guide (and it's really just a quick'n'dirty rundown, as I have little time. There will be lots of mistakes in it as a type that at work, while serving about 100 customers, so I can't concentrate too well. But I thought it might be worthwile to make a start).

Feel free to correct me, add to the guide, copy it, or use it in any other way that helps the community. Currently, this is just a draft, and I probably don't have the time for regular checks and updates, so the guide will need other people's help to take off - if it's a good idea anyways.


1. What is this?

The Morrowind Mod Hunter's Guide tries to help you to track down mods that are hard to find. Morrowind is more than five years old, which means that many Morrowind-related sites have opened ... and closed. For those people that are new to the game, or revive their interest in it, this unfortunately means that many searches for mods lead to broken links and closed-down sites. In these cases, this guide tries to list a couple of sites and procedures that may help you finding the mod you're after.

This guide is meant for Morrowind newbies as well as for veterans. As such, the veterans will probably know most of the information contained here, but perhaps they'll still find some useful tips, or at least a comprehensive list of useful links.


2. How to track down a mod

2.1 Search Engines

If you know the name of the mod you're looking for, or the name of its creator, or some of its features that would have been mentioned in a description of the mod, try various combinatons of these terms in a search engine like Google or Yahoo.

If you are looking for a site that Google or Yahoo never visited, you can try a metasearch engine. These are search engines that relay your search to a number of other search engines and collect the results. Good metasearchers are (for example) Clusty or Dogpile.


2.2 Morrowind Mod sites

Currently there are three "big" mod sites for Morrowind. Each of these sites has a well-tended searchable database of 1000 - 4000 mods, so it's usually more efficient to look there before checking the smaller sites.

Planet Elder Scrolls: Mod List / Search page

ElricM: Mod directory and search page

TESNexus: Mod directory / Search page (remember to switch from the "All Oblivion files" category to a "Morrowind" caregory)


There are also a couple of other sites who have collected several hundred mods each. Sometimes these sites aren't as well-tended as the first tier sites. Still, they are worth a look if the first-tier sites don't have the mod you are looking for:

Fileplanet: Mod list

Filefront Morrowind: Mod directory

Filefront Elderscrolls: Mod directory

(Note: The Fileplanet archive is not the same as the "Planet Elder Scrolls" archive, although PES stores its files on Fileplanet. Likewise, the two archives on Filefront are not the same. Don't ask me why. It seems illogical, but then again, assuming that the universe always works logical isn't a very helpful attitude anyways if you're looking for files that are hard to find.)


Another resource that's worthwile to check are the larger international Morrowind sites. Some of these have archives of English mods too:

Wiwiland (French) (currently restructuring its site, mods may not be available)

Morrowind Outlander (Italian)

Morrowind.pl (Polish)

Morrowind at Bonusweb.cz (Czech)

www.elderscrolls.hu (Hungarian)


2.3 Morrowind link lists

For a mod hunter, following link lists is often less efficient then using a web search or checking major download sites. However, that doesn't mean that they can't still be immensely helpful. One great resource are thematic mod lists, because these can greatly help refreshing one's memory when you don't remember the mod you're looking for very well. Another good use of link lists is that they provide the web adresses of sites that have vanished - and with this information, you can sometimes retrieve these sites with the Wayback machine (see 2.4)

Morrowind Mythic mods is the home of Telesphoros' List o' mods, the Empirical Morrowind modlist, and dozens of Specialty and Themes modlists. All these lists have download links. For a mod hunter, they are especially great when (for example) you know that you are looking for one of the lesser known dungeon crawl mods, but don't know the name of the mod or the author. In this case, a mod list that specializes in dungeon crawls can be a great help to download (or at least remember) the mod you're looking for.

General link lists can be found here:

Morrowind Connect

Mystara's Links Restored

Slartibartfast's Morrowind Links


2.4 The Wayback machine

The Wayback machine is a search engine that allows you to retrieve sites that have already vanished or changed. If you know the address of any vanished webpage, you can enter it into the Wayback machine, which will then display the dates of the versions of this page that it has stored. You can then check these stored pages, which may hold information that helps you in your search. Sometimes, even whole mods are stored in the archives. This is, for example, the case for Qwerty's mods, which can still be downloaded via the Wayback machine.

Note: In some cases, the file in the wayback machine will be corrupt and won't extract. In case of zip or rar files, you can open them in WinRar and use its "Repair Archive" function. This will make the archive extractable. A thorough test whether the extracted files actually work is advised.


3. Problems and tips

3.1 The webpage where I hoped to find the mod complains that it cannot find the folder I specified
- Look at the web address and delete the last characters up to the next "/". Then try again, and repeat. Sometimes there is still content on the page, but its internal structure has changed, and the specific link you wanted to go to doesn't exist anymore.

3.2 The webpage looks empty
- view the source code of the site to see if it's really empty. Perhaps it's just incompatible to your browser.

3.3 The webpage is gone
- Try to enter the address in the Wayback machine

3.4 I keep getting links to websites called "Thelys" or "Euro-Morrowind"
- These sites have closed down (or, in case of Thelys, shrunk). Most mods that were on Thelys can now be found at ElricM (see above). The mods that were on Euro-Morrowind were accesible from www.morrowind-mods.org for a while, but currently this site is down too.

(This section should obviously be expanded ...)


4. Ask the community

If a mod has really vanished from the net, there's a helpful community of Morrowind players to help you out. Perhaps one of us has the file you're looking for somewhere in his or her collection.

If your own attempts to hunt down a mod remain unsuccessful, ask other Morrowind players in Bethesda's official forums, or at the Planet Elder Scrolls Forums, or one of the other download sites. And even if you didn' succeed on your own, the effort you already put in your search will make it easier for other people to help you. When you have already searched for a mod, you've probably come across some information about it, like the name of the mod, the name of the author, the site where it was stored, the filename it had, etc. This is very useful information.

Just imagine a request like "I'm looking for the mod 'Iredior conspiracies' by people named Switch, Gorgareth, Theta and others. The website is gone, but can be retrieved from the Wayback machine. The filename was iredior_conspiracies.zip"

Now imagine the following request for the same mod: "I'm looking for a mod that added a huge city near Hla Oad, with lots of original artwork. Can you help pleeeeeease?"

Obviously, the more info you can give us, the easier it will be to help you.

A last note: If you managed to track down a mod that has nearly vanished from the web, please take a minute and write the author a mail, asking whether he allows the mod to be uploaded on one of the big Morrowind modding sites. This way the mod may be saved from falling off the web, and if you spent 15 minutes to locate a mod, then investing two minutes more two make the search easier for future Morrowind players doesn't hurt much, does it?


Edits:
02/18/08 - added Hungarian site, added info about repairing corrupted archives from Wayback
08/04/07 - added Czech site, added info about Wiwiland restructuring, some spelling errors corrected
11/17/07 - updated TESSource related information to mention (and link to) TESNexus instead, fixed another typo

what about user made sites? i know theres a few out there that hold good mods but i cant for the life of me find those sites.

I don't want to disencourage you but... Isn't that what the Mod Detectives threads are for? Or is this different?

Actually, the mod detective threads were one of the reasons for writing the guide, because people kept requesting mods there that could easily be found on one of the "big" sites. So I thought that a small guide could help to encourage people to check the obvious places themselves, and make it easier for them by directly linking to those.

Also, I hoped to be able to provide the occasional bit of information that makes it easier for the detectives to hunt down a mod ... for example, does everyone of the helpful people from these threads know about Wayback? And I'm sure there are people who know things that I didn't think about, which could be incorporated into the guide. I don't think it's a bad idea if the succesful mod hunters exchange some information about their practices.

In any case, this "guide" is no attempt to replace the Mod Detectives threads. Rather, it's an attempt to make life a bit easier for all the people involved there. (And the Mod Detectives thread should definitely be mentioned in the last section of the guide, I forgot that).

Alright, that should be useful! Maybe you can ask the Mod Detectives if they could add a link to this thread in their first post? Maybe.

(I furnished a few houses in Iredior )

Gah, almost feared this was lost already! *breathes heavily, tries to calm down*

Nah, seriously, while I was merely searching in the utterly wrongest corner, it would be a shame to loose such a great and painstakingly created guide. Therefore, Sera Thread: !

And big kudos to you, Psyringe!



*secretly pilfers a copy of the page*


Hand of Sotha

NO PILFERING UNLESS I HAVE DIRECT INVOLVMENT IN IT!

[j/k]


Nice guide. I like the idea of the "Wayback" search engine. Very, very, very cool.

Guide is helpful, but not successful in helping me find a particular model, Vorador, crafted by Sinius. I've contacted Sinius multiple times but he hasn't even logged on since febuary this year.

I keep an eye on it, and I do have a local copy, so it shouldn't get lost. However, since community reaction was barely existent, I guess that I overestimated the need for such a guide, so I currently focus my energy on a different project which (I hope) will aid the community more. There's a good chance that I'll refine the guide at some later date (this will also depend on how many good ideas and techniques get contributed in this thread ), I just can't make any promises (due to other duties it can alsways happen that I suddenly vanish for months or even longer).

Thanks for the kudos.

Yes, that surprised me as well. I mean, I know that I am mostly drowned by RL and therefore manage pretty little forum activity of my own (and that I'm most certainly not the only one drowned by RL ), and that the MW Mod forum is seeing probably noticably less activity anyway since OB was released ... but still!


Aye, completely understandable. I'm not the most skilled of mod trackers, but should I get mugged by a nifty idea or technique somewhen, I know where to drag it.

Another project, hmm? Sounds interesting ... Any hints?


A quite deserved kudos, in my eyes!


Hand of Sotha

Wow, Thanks for this Psyringe. I guess I should update Morrowind Connect soon. BTW - I am looking for someone to help me keep the site updated and add links. If anybody is interested PM me and we will discuss it.

Think again!


Never fear Yacoby to the rescue!!

Elder Scrolls Suggest Thread

Elder Scrolls Forum Archive
I just Suggested this thread!

How did this excellent thread fall so far so quickly?

Hmmph. Almost missed this great thread entirely. I've downloaded it and added a bunch of bookmarks. Maybe it's me, but Wiwiland isn't loading for me. Anyone else got this problem?

I don't know what URL you're using, so let me post the one that is working for me: http://forum.wiwiland.net/index.php?act=home

I'm not sure when they changed their site around--is it possible you have an outdated link?

Thank you, it worked. I hesitate to say it but I used the link in the first post in this thread. Of course, your providing a second one just helps out a really worthwhile thread. Thanks.

Don't hesitate. The sooner a non-working link is identified, the sooner it can be corrected.

In this case, I tried to link directly to the download pages (for better efficiency, and because people who don't know the language in question may lose time trying to find them if I only linked to the main page). Apparently Wiwiland is restructuring its site at the moment, so the link I provided didn't work for a while, and now redirects to the main page. The link *on* the page which should lead to the Morrowind mods also redirects to the main page instead, it still uses the old address that I used too. I guess that their restructuring is a work in progress, I'll check again some days from now

Minor updates to the OP: fixed some spelling errors, added info about Wiwiland restructuring, and added a Czech site I recently found that has 518 mods for download, mostly older ones.

Thanks for the heads-up!

bump -- maybe this could be added to pinned threads?

I am really beginning to feel that at least the OP should be put in the pinned threads. This is really useful; we're going to wind up bumping it constantly.

Update: Changed TESSource related information to mention (and link to) TESNexus instead, fixed another typo.

Nice idea ..

Updated: added a Hungarian site i found, and added info about repairing corrupted archives from Wayback (makes sense because more often than not the downloaded archive appears to be corrupt).

Another note about the Wayback machine: I believe that it must re-pack zips in some way - Windows will open them with it's internal zip handler but 7zip fails to open them (and as you've noted, WinRAR opens them).

Technically, the Wayback machine doesn't repack the archives, but it does indeed tamper with them. To be precise, the Wayback archive strips (or used to strip, the behavior may have changed by now) trailing zero bytes from the files stored in it, on the assumption that trailing zero bytes don't convey relevant information. However, zip archives always end with a trailing zero byte. If someone removes it, then a well written zip extractor will assume that the archive is corrupt, because the file clearly has been tampered with. The "Repair Archive" function of WinRar just adds the missing zero byte, so the file will be recognized as a well-formed zip archive again.

This method will work on (according to my experience) on all zipfiles from wayback which are shorter than 1 MB. Files larger than that may be truncated after the first MB, depending on how the crawler that downloaded it was programmed.

Another odd thing is that downloading a zip file from Wayback (at least with the Opera browser that I use) always results in an "error" displayed as status of the download. It's almost as if the Wayback archive knew how long the file *should* be, but sends one byte less, so Opera thinks it didn't get the whole file. But since the problem can be fixed easily I can live with it.

Thank you, Psyringe, for this most excellent and articulate guide.

. . . and for several useful tips of which I was completely unaware; very helpful.

i agree. this is very handy indeed.

No update this time, just a small bump to prevent the thread from being pruned.

And another to bring it back into circulation.