Gluby's Comprehensive Herbalism Mods Catalog and Guide

A Guide to mods affecting the gathering of ingredients, reagents and craft materiel

Version 1.02 (Feb. 7, 2008)


In Morrowind, an herbalism mod is a must because of Bethesda's less-than-inspired treatment of plants and herb-gathering. Bethesda's default method of harvesting plants treats them all like containers; when you click on one, it brings up the contents, and you either drag the contents to your inventory or click "Take All." It's tedious, annoying and wholly unnecessary. The various herbalism mods fix the problem and make the game much more smooth and enjoyable. In addition, they reduce the respawn time for plants from four months to one, and can have various other enhancements.

When choosing a layout of mods to use in one's game, the herbalism and ingredient-gathering mods one uses should be one of the earlier choices made, as it affects one of the most fundamental aspects of the game. The most basic question, then, is which of various available mods, several with extremely similar names, to use? This guide provides short descriptions and comparisons of each of the available herbalism and ingredient-gathering mods. At the end of this document is a FAQ addressing several issues of concern with these mods (particularly the avoidance of conflicts with certain widely-used mods) which, it is hoped, will be helpful. I highly recommend at least glancing through the FAQ section.

Because the subject matter is so similar and sometimes may therefore conflict with these mods, this guide also addresses other mods affecting the gathering of "Ingredients" (alchemy reagents, food, ore, animal parts and so forth), such as those that improve the handling of mining and the preponderance of animal loot.


Herbalism Mods

Herbalism v1.3 [Balor]: The original herbalism mod. Setting the standard for the rest of the mods on this list, Balor's Herbalism eliminates the tedium of plant harvesting by doing away with the standard container pop-up box when one clicks on a plant, instead simply transferring the contents automatically to inventory via a script attached to the plant. [Oct. 2004. Requires Tribunal, and includes an optional ESP for Bloodmoon.]

• Chances of harvesting ingredients are derived from a newly-created Herbalism skill and, to a lesser extent, the Alchemy skill. Without adequate skill, one will not tend to recover much, and those below a certain minimum cannot harvest any at all. The skill improves with each use, whether herbs were successfully gathered or not.
  
• Amount gathered has a chance of doubling or tripling at higher skill levels.
  
• Once picked, a plant disappears, reappearing on the first day of the next month.
  
• Affects only plants, not kollops, ore veins or other reagent sources.
  
• Uses fairly extensive plant scripts, but the overall framerate impact is minimal (between one and two, according to the author). The mod used to cause an egregious decrease in framerate, but the problem was actually due to a bug introduced in the Tribunal expansion that caused a certain script command, which this mod used, to consume far more CPU time than necessary. Bethesda has since corrected the bug.
  
• Reports amount of and type of ingredients gathered via standard, unintrusive messagebox at bottom of the screen.
  
• A drawback of this mod, as can be seen in the screenshots, is that the grammatical handling of the gathering messageboxes is frequently fairly clumsy. For example: "You collect 1 hypha facia(s)," followed by "You skillfully collect 2 hypha facias"; or, worse, "You collect 1 ampoule pod(es)."

Screenshot 1: "Noteworthy Success" and Herbalism skill increase messages
Screenshot 2: Failure message when Herbalism skill too low for even an attempt
Screenshot 3: Plural syntax gaffes
Screenshot 4: More plural syntax gaffes

Herbalism v1.1 Seed Version [Balor, ed. Shanjaq]: Shanjaq's modification is an upgrade of a previous version of Balor's Herbalism that makes plants also yield plantable seeds. [Mar. 2003. Note that there will be a small delay before the download starts, as it references an archived copy of the original web page and download from the old thelys.org site, now defunct, at the Internet Archive "Way Back Machine."

• Plants will also yield seeds on certain moon phases, with different plants responding to different moon phases. The resulting seeds can be planted wherever dropped, and will become a plant in one month.

Screenshot 1: Success and failure messageboxes
Screenshot 2: Herbalism skill improvement message
Screenshot 3: Extra herbs gathered for higher skill
Screenshot 4: Seeds in inventory (note that, since they are scripted items, they do not stack)

Herbalism Lite v1.0 [Shakeidas]: A simpler alternative that also automatically transfers gathered ingredients to inventory without a container dialog when one clicks on harvestable plants, but avoids the use of new skills. It is particularly notable for the fact that, unlike the others, picked plants do not visually disappear, which avoids spoiling the aesthetic appeal of the landscape, but makes it impossible to visually know which have been picked or respawned. [Dec. 2003. Modular ESPs: one for Morrowind, one for Tribunal, and one for Bloodmoon. Note that the base Morrowind ESP file has errant GMSTs that should be cleaned from the mod before use. The Tribunal and Bloodmoon expansion ESPs are clean.]

• Chances of recovering ingredients and amount gathered are set up to give an average yield of 1.6 reagents per plant, with the exception of slough ferns (2.7) and kollops (0.5).
  
• No feedback messageboxes are given informing the player of reagents gathered—a messagebox is only shown if an already-harvested plant is activated a second time, reporting nothing found.
  
• Once harvested, plants do not disappear, but are not harvestable until the first day of the next month.
  
• Affects kollops as well.
  
• Scripted from scratch, with influence by Balor's mod, and with an eye toward minimizing framerate impact.

Screenshot 1: The only feedback given, when one attempts to petulantly pick a plucked plant a second time

Herbalism Redux v1.12a [Mode_Locrian]: Tries to strike a balance between Balor's Herbalism and its minimalist alternatives. Like other herbalism mods, it makes clicking on plants transfer gathered ingredients to inventory automatically. [Aug. 2004. Alternate download location: author's web site.]

• Flat 80% chance of recovering ingredients.
  
• Amount gathered from each plant is based on the visual nature of the plant (how many stalks/flowers/etc. in the 3D model, etc.).
  
• Once picked, a plant disappears, reappearing 30 days later—each plant is individually dated, rather than all plants automatically respawning on the first day of each month.
  
• Messagebox reporting of amount and type of ingredients gathered can be toggled on and off, a feature unique to this mod. (However, the messages used in this and the other herbalism mods are helpful, unintrusive and easily-ignored.)
  
• Includes an alternate ESP that incorporates MagicNakor's Bloated Morrowind (see below).
  
• Created from scratch to use tight, optimized scripting for low impact.

Screenshot 1: Feedback messages for success and failure
Screenshot 2: Variation in amount gathered

Advanced Herbalism v1.1 [Andoreth]: This is the cadillac of herbalism mods, and boasts an impressive set of features, notable among which is the ability to plant seeds anywhere—even in transportable planters—and to dig up the plants if desired. [Apr. 2004. Includes variant ESPs for different combinations of Morrowind with and without the expansions.]

• Chance of recovering ingredients is based solely on a newly-created Herbalism skill.
• New Herbalism skill improves with use, and can be improved with the aid of several new NPC skill trainers and skill books.
• Amount of ingredients gathered is affected by Herbalism skill.
• Once picked, a plant disappears, reappearing 30 days later—each plant is individually dated, rather than all plants automatically respawning on the first day of each month.
• Incorporates Shanjaq's seed scripts (see Herbalism v1.1, Seed Edition, above), making it so plants yield seeds during certain moon phases, and allowing the player to grow new plants anywhere. Further expands upon Shanjaq's seeds as follows:
  
  • Allows the player to dig up and permanently remove (delete) plants that have been grown from seeds by using an equippable "hoe ring."
    
  • Modifies some vendors and containers to sell/contain seeds (the merchant NPCs themselves are not modified).
    
  • Has an available add-on with purchasable planters for transportable plants.
• MagicNakor's Bloated Morrowind (see below) is integrated into the mod.
• Mostly original coding, created with only some input from Balor's Herbalism.
• Slightly heavier scripting than Balor's mod, but not substantially.

Screenshot 1: Herbalism skill improvement message
Screenshot 2: Higher Herbalism skill can result in significantly more herbs gathered from a plant
Screenshot 3: Finding a seed
Screenshot 4: Finding a seed on one plant, and getting nothing from another
Screenshot 5: Sara Agustine, the Herbalism skill trainer in Seyda Neen

Herbalism for Purists v1.21 [Syclonix]: Another minimalist alternative that eliminates the ingredient-gathering dialog box tedium and makes harvested plants temporarily disappear. Designed specifically to keep to the original "game balance" (i.e., not changing the original harvest chances and quantities) and to have minimal impact on framerate. [Aug. 2005. Includes variant ESPs for different combinations of Morrowind with and without the expansions.]

• Does not modify chances of gathering ingredients or amounts gathered.
  
• Once picked, a plant disappears, reappearing 30 days later—each plant is individually dated, rather than all plants automatically respawning on the first day of each month.
  
• Created from scratch to be tightly-scripted and low-impact.
  
• Incorporates Max and Nigedo's Flora Glow and MagicNakor's Bloated Morrowind mods (see below).

Screenshot 1: Variation in amount of herbs gathered
Screenshot 2: No herbs found message

Other Related Mods

Explorers v2.5 [Lord Lionmane]: Not strictly an herbalism mod, as it really has nothing to do with herbalism, but is included here because it occupies the same field as the herbalism mods and, therefore, directly conflicts with them. Specifically, it modifies all harvestable plants to have a small chance of having a treasure chest whenever a plant is "opened." The chests can be trapped, and may have guardians or bandits nearby. Introduces "Mind Gems" (a new item), modifies urns to occasionally contain them and to spawn guardians, and creates two NPCs who will buy them. [Nov. 2004. Also see Zappara's Explorers Addon Pack v1.1, which contains compatibility patches for Advanced Herbalism, Herbalism Redux, and Resources Enhanced, and Zappara's Disturb the Dead Addon Pack v2.0, which contains a compatibility patch for Zappara's Disturb the Dead v3.31.]

Nymeria's Monthly Respawn [Nymeria]: Normally, plants respawn every 4 months. This makes them do it every month, and should only be used if you want monthly plant respawning but do not wish to use an herbalism mod (all of which include the same functionality). [May 2004. Also included as a separate and optional add-on with Taddeus and Nymeria's Necessities of Morrowind.]

Minerals Respawn v1.1 [Evelas]: Makes diamond, ebony, glass, adamantium and stahlrim rocks respawn monthly. Like Nymeria's respawn, this is a more minimalist approach to respawning. [May 2004. Compatible with Complete Morrowind and its modular counterparts. Split into separate ESPs: one for base Morrowind, and one for the expansions.]

Bloated Morrowind [MagicNakor]: Bethesda designed and included a plant in the game, Bloat Spores, that it neglected to implement. This mod adds Bloat Spores into the game in select locations. [Oct. 2003. Only necessary if the herbalism mod you use does not include it.]

Flora Glow v1.0 [Max a.k.a. ~NOBODY~ and Nigedo]: Replaces the original models for all luminous flora (Luminous Russula, Draggle Tail and Violet Coprinus) with glow-mapped versions that make each plant actually luminous. [Jul. 2004. Will conflict with herbalism mods, but the changes can be merged using TESTool. Or, alteratively, one can manually integrate them using the CS or another tool with relative ease.]

Gluby's Creature Loot Mod [Gluby]: Modifies the probabilities and amounts of valuable recovered parts recovered from slain creatures in accordance with their size, relevant characteristics, and likelihood of damaging the parts while fighting the beast. So, for example, killing a bear will tend to net up to five measures of bear pelt, with a 70% chance per pelt of showing up as loot. Thus, there will be, on the average, between 3 and 4 pelts. [Nov. 2007. Unreleased as of yet. Based on the same idea as Sendai45's Animal Loot Mod, but avoids flat 100% probabilities of recovering set amounts of commodities per animal.]

Tribunal Bloodmoon Ingredients [PCC a.k.a. Blockhead]: Retroactively adds the ingredients introduced in Bloodmoon and Tribunal to the general ingredient leveled lists, so that there is a chance of finding them in containers throughout the rest of Vvardenfell. [Jun. 2004.]

Resources Enhanced [TheLys]: A small mod that introduces visual gathering effects for Kwama Eggs and Kollops, and allows the mining of raw ebony, glass, adantium and glass in mines by hitting them with a miner's pick. [Jun. 2004. Will likely conflict with other mods that affect mining, such as Indestructible's Indy Armorer Mod v1.94.]

Potted Plants v2.0 [Andoreth]: Adds potted plants, purchasable from Ancola's stall in Sadrith Mora, to the game. They function the same as normal static plants in the game, but are portable and automatically respawn their ingredients every 30 days. [Apr. 2004.]

Screenshot 1: Andoreth's screenshot, hosted at his web page

Hunter Modification v1.01 [Garak/Martin Bohnet]: A larger mod that adds a variety of new quests, many of which enable the player to obtain a new kind of ingredient, such as Guar Sinew, Slaughterfish Caviar and Golden Daedraskin, from slain creatures of the appropriate type. In all, nine new ingredients are added, and the player can also brew a new potion, Hammerfell Coffee. [Dec. 2002. The author is not a native English speaker, and the mod suffers from frequent writing errors and gaffes. However, the mod and its scripting are technically quite competent, and the author works around the problem with the AddToLevItem script command by instead attaching scripts to all affected creatures that add the new ingredients to the body of the slain creature via the AddItem command a certain percentage of the time—if the player has learned how to obtain them properly via the appropriate quest, that is. Tribunal not required, but a second ESP with expanded Tribunal journal functionality is provided. The mod contains 12 errant GMSTs that should be removed before use.]

Wild Rare Ingredients v1.00 [Alphax]: A modular collection of bugfixes addressing bugs and logic errors regarding the availability of certain alchemical ingredients in the wild. Specifically, it modifies Daedra to yield daedra skin, Ash Ghouls to yield ghoul hearts, and Spriggan to have heartwood past level 3. It also sets holly bushes and horn lilies to respawn. [Feb. 2008. Modular ESPs include a base version, add-ons for certain issues specific to Tribunal and Bloodmoon, and a merged version containing all the fixes.]


FAQ

What potential conflicts are there with other mods?

Herbalism mods change all plants in the game, and in some cases other items such as ore veins and kollops, by adding scripts to them. Thus, if you use other mods that affect the same objects, you may have to either choose which change of the disputed objects you prefer (i.e., change the load order so that the the mod with the preferred change loads after the other), or resolve the conflict (i.e., merging or editing the mods to combine the effects). If this is unfamiliar territory, don't be afraid; there are some great FAQs out there on resolving Mod Conflicts.

It should go without saying that herbalism mods are incompatible with each other.

One widely-used mod to be aware of is PirateLord's Expanded Sounds (patch to v1.3 available here, for the record), an ambient sound mod that uses the plants themselves as sound emission points (in other words, placing its own scripts on them) and is therefore incompatible with herbalism mods. However, the author has made available compatibility patches for Herbalism for Purists and Herbalism Redux that merge the scripts, available at the same web page.

Do I need to worry about the video framerate impact of using these mods?

Almost surely no nowadays. It was more of an issue in the past because of (1) a bug in Bethesda's scripting code that caused terrible slowdowns that were blamed on the herbalism mods that used the buggy script command, and (2) to a lesser degree, slower computers. Anyone reading this will likely have a modern enough computer that any impact will be negligible, and even fairly older computers will only see a slight impact. The heaviest-scripted mod, Advanced Herbalism, had no noticeable effect on my framerates when I tested it on my medium-end AMD Athlon 64 3000+ from 2005. I include the information for completeness, but it is really not likely to be a concern. Pick the one that has the features you want; the scripting is all fairly similar in impact anyway, despite protestations to the contrary.

Are there potential problem with removing herbalism mods from a game in progress?

Because these mods attach scripts to plants that temporarily "disable" them from the gameworld (until they respawn), it seems to be the case that removing or changing out an herbalism mod from a saved game in progress can cause problems, including the potential disappearance of all plants. It's safest to pick one and stick with it—but don't worry, really. They are all good and you will not want to get rid of it—just play the game without one for a while and you will understand why.

[I welcome any corrections or better info in regard to this section.]

Change Log

Version 1.02 (Feb. 7, 2008)

• Added Martin Bohnet's Hunter Modification v1.01 and Alphax's Wild Rare Ingredients v1.00 to the list.

An excellent summary. Gives plenty of detail, which should be really helpful in deciding which mod to use if you feel this concept is for you.
Nicely done!

How about Herbalism for Purists

Thanks, Symon69!



Looks like you missed it! It's the last one on the Herbalism Mods list.

*heads of to the eye doctor*

thanks this is really good, hope there will be some more on other categories of mods!

So ebony and other metals don't respawn in vanilla?

Thanks! Actually, I'm building up a series. I have something like five more written and ready, with a bit of editing, to be HTMLized, and seven or so more in their nascent stages. The goal will be to build up a series of guides, along with a central step-by-step guide that references the rest of them that will walk anyone through choosing a mod "layout" (or whatever we call them) to set up the "perfect game". It'll mostly focus on the infrastructural mods, as it were, and make easy the currently-daunting task of trying to figure out the pros and cons of each. The already-written (or mostly-already-written) guides I'll be cleaning up and posting soon are on:

Major Creature/Wildlife Mods
Pet Mods (and possibly Companions, but that's a whole new can of worms)
Magic and Effect Mods (magicka costs and regeneration, NPC spell use, etc.)
FX Mods (magic item glow, etc.)
Potions & Scrolls Mods (icons, meshes, renamer/sorters, etc.)
Signs and Banner Mods (roadsigns, tavern signs, etc.)
Sound and Voice Mods (focusing on ambient wilderness sound mods)

As you can see, these are mostly the mods that will set the overall framework and tenor of a game. I'm also working on an overview of the weapon/armor/item balancing mods, but that's a wormy can as well (though not as much).



Nope! At least everything I've read seems to indicate not.

Excellent! If they are all as comprehensive as this one, they'll make a fine resource.

Hi Gluby. Not sure if these fit in with your list or not. However, Srikandi's been in my load list for ages.

Sri's Alchemy (Bloodmoon Edition) by Srikandi
And maybe this:
Tribunal Bloodmoon Ingredients by PCC aka Blockhead (pcc_tr_bm_ingredients_01.zip).

Sri's Alchemy will go in a different list I've got cooking, along with other potion mods (renamers, sorters, replacers, etc.).

But Blockhead's mod seems appropriate for the theme of mods that affect the availability of ingredients, so it'll go on here. Thanks again!

Bump!

Updated it with PCC/Blockhead's Tribunal Bloodmoon Ingredients mod.

You should get these hosted at Morrowind Mythic Mods...

I just found this and it's a guide I wished had existed long before now when I could've really used this. Still, it was an excellent read and very helpful. Your writing style is very friendly and easy to read. Thanks for this.

Thanks Denina! I appreciate that.

Updated to version 1.02 -- I just added one mod to the list -- Garak's (Martin Bohnet's) Hunter Modification v1.01.

That's interesting... there are a few mods here that I've never even heard about! Good job.

WOW, this will come in pretty handy. I am about to embark on using a Ranger character for my next adventure in MW. This will work well with my characters life in the wild. Great job! Thanks.

Raed

Thanks, Icepheonix. For some reason, the whole reagent gathering thing was always one of my favorite parts of the game, and I love mods that enhance that.



My pleasure! Glad you find it helpful.