Balakirev

You can go a few different routes. One is to try a companion as-is. Vilja is good for this. Not only does she have basic healing skills, but she's good in battle, has several quests, and tons of responses. Best companion around, hands down. If you'd like something more basic, just about any companion will do. Add Companion Master, which will allow you to teach them spells. Of course, your character will need to know Heal Self and Heal Others, but once you've got those, the rest is easy. What CM does is allow you to choose whatever spells you want her to know, at any time.

Exactly. Unlike Skyrim and Oblivion, the lore of Morrowind is actually embedded in the game, not on top of it. You'll find characters you speak to refer to some historical figures, and hints of the evils you find are provided in books, as well. Some also feature in quests, as rewards, as items sought, or in one celebrated case, as an item that will help you find a host of locations on a very long, interesting pilgrimage.

Try this site, which I wish was better known. it details very clearly all the important ways that Mororwind, Oblivion, and Skyrim differ from one another. Very clear, and usually correct.

You might want to check out this one-on-one-on-one comparison of features in Oblivion, Morrowind, and Skyrim. It makes a great deal clear. If you're running from a PC, you should be able to install mods, and some are pretty important: the Morrowind Code Patch both deals with corruption issues affecting adding and removing mods, as well as quite a few fixes, and adds a lot of user configuration choices. Also, the Unofficial Morrowind Patch fixes a ton of bugs that got past Bethsoft. Finally, the big deal about combat is that Oblivion and Skyrim are FPS-like in that you can't miss in combat, and neither can your opponent. Morrowind uses a D&D-flavored die roll, based on a few factors, of which the most important is Agility/Dexterity. So if you have a a high skill in a given weapon by low agility, you'll be like the person who intellectually knows what to do with a sword, but never swung it. Best of luck. It's a great game. :)

And if you want to read still more Morrowind books outside the game, try this.

Quite a few people playing it, judging from the official forums. Mod development has slowed, but certainly not stopped. We've even had a big quest mod of significant quality come out lately--look at Lanceor's post, above--and others with patches.

Could you please explain why you find Skingrad screwed up? I find it resembled many old Central European city sections, and a few in the US (such as areas of Boston), where the streets curve about crazily, and multiple purpose-specific businesses pop up almost on top of one another, with none elsewhere. Though the winery was oddly placed.

For starters, You appear to be running Vanheim, a new mod that adds a huge number of new objects, has only one recommendation, and is in its 1.0 release. Nobody has posted to it. I'd suggest removing it and not running anything that large which hasn't been fully tested for months. Too many things could easily be missing--and judging from the error messages above, this is likely the case. You are running Wrye Mash, I'm assuming, as well as the Morrowind Code Patch and the Unofficial Morrowind Patch. These should help remove corruption from your game as you add or take out mods, as well as providing a number of other benefits.

Maybe you should try starting a new thread for that.

Then yours is not quite the same question as the OP: If you can be more distinct about what you want--if a house, exactly what kind of house, if a quest mod, how difficult, what kinds of rewards, etc--then I'll help out. It just gets kind of wearing so many years on when requests for mod suggestions pop up each week without much more in the way of specificity. :)

Is there a native Spanish speaker here who can speak him through options, and help change his download preferences?

I've always preferred companions with a back story, reactions to events and people, and (hopefully) a quest or two. Vilja, Constance, Ruined Tail, Sapphire: these and others are so much more than the usual go-fetch-kill companions. I won't run the latter, but I tend to collect the former.

I wasn't able to download from the non-premium servers before--getting the same message--but now, at least, the non-premium sites will download. Hopefully the faster, premium ones will be available, soon.

I wouldn't have posted here if I could download on the second or third try--would have figured things were in transition with some new code or equipment. Just to be sure, a minute ago I attempted to download Wrye Bash again, seven times in a row. Failed each time. And yes, tried again with my own mod, four times. Again, nothing.

I just tried to download a couple of mods with recent versions, including Wrye Bash, only to get a screen stating that the files were hidden, and that I should respect the wishes of the file's creator. On a hunch, I tried downloading my own mod, Skin-toned Mannequins, only to get the same screen. I then tried downloading a few other mods, and had identical results.