Has anyone else noticed a bug in Morrowind,(Elderscrolls 3) where on trying to use alchemy the potion dialogue box that pops up says "You must enter your name" and it refuses to create potions when that dialogue pops up? Maybe one out of about forty tries to make a potion will result in the normal dialogues of "Potion created" or the Failure cue. Most potions auto resolve their own name with the likely effect/result.

Just curious if its only me.

Used to have the game on ps2 and the name insert box never really popped up, especially in that wording. I think the ps2 version only would imply something like "you may not leave the name blank."

in my subjective experience, "TES" and "bugs" are synonyms.
can't say about the GOG version but the other ones I played didn't have such bug, sorry. try corresponding forum, maybe?

There are a lot of bugs in morrowind, but that one is new to me

BTW, at this point perhaps it's better to just use openmw to play morrowind than to use the origins engine

Never happened to me, but I didn't use alchemy at all in my last playthrough. That depends. With MGE XE, the original engine can still offer better visuals, and since the revival of the script extender as MWSE 2.0, many new modding possibilities have been opened up that probably won't be available in OpenMW for quite some time.

Then again, in my last playthrough I encountered so many bugs that were caused by mods that it probably doesn't really matter which version is used.

Morrowind has many bugs. The first thing to do with Elder Scrolls games is download the relevant "Unofficial Patches" inc expansions. I think the Morrowind Code Patch also fixed up a lot.

MGE XE adds a lot to the game particularly significantly better viewing distances. Examples:-
https://www.gog.com/upload/forum/2019/07/b42eb3eb6c19b1c3f792dcb04594b6e522cb0a26.jpg
https://www.gog.com/upload/forum/2019/07/49e830e8e760bdb2d718b2b688c112e9753e14a1.jpg
https://www.gog.com/upload/forum/2019/07/25bd7e5626743a3faaef2e22458275768304db78.jpg
https://www.gog.com/upload/forum/2019/07/8eeab5444c9d5cebabcf3b9ae4b87e395a00692d.jpg

Alternatively the game is completable in OpenMW.

Code Patch is a must, and the most up to date "Unofficial Patch" is Patch for Purists.

For someone who doesn't know, both do completely different things and are absolutely compatible with each other. PfP fixes bugs in the game's content, while the code patch fixes bugs in the engine itself. For that reason, PfP works in OpenMW, whereas the Code Patch does not.

My last playthrough was with OpenMW and it worked great! Just be aware that the most common leveling and power exploits are fixed in it.

Alchemy loop is more or less the only one still working (since it was a design flaw with the game, not an obvious bug).

My first thought on reading the title of this thread was "Just the one?"

Hmmm, from memory if you put two items up and you don't know what they might create, you will get a blank name and you have to give it a name and you'll 'Attempt' to make a potion.

If you put 2 (or more) items where you know the effects, a default name will be created, like 'Restore Stamina Potion' or something.

Doesn't seem like a bug, but it would be very annoying very quickly if you had to do it for every potion...

Best to do what i do. Buy tons of bread and a very cheap 1g ingredient, and spam stamina potions until you get higher. Then with more ingredietns known you'll have options for making your potions.

Well the part that makes me question it is that I run two laptops. One which runs terrible 8 will run alchemy in game fine though will occasionally crash. The other though runs 7 for some older programs and about 80% of the time the alchemy will bug and produce no potions.

Just seems an odd bug to me.

As for the unknown mixture, yes. I may not list a name. But this bug is with known mixtures. Any mixture. So the even the ones you could mix with only seeing the first possible outcome still give the name bug. Most off about it is that the name auto-generates because it knows the result sought from the combinations... yet for some reason will default a pop up of "You must enter your name first". Even with a name auto generated or generated by hand on the spot.

So as example if I brew a bread and saltrice "restore stamina" auto defaults as the name block... That's normal. When I hit "Create" the potion will refuse to create and the pop up at the base of the screen will state a name must be generated. Even with one already in the potion designation bar by default. Most times I just have to spam through it about a dozen or two dozen times to create a single potion when it finally accepts it. And, yes, it does get very annoying very quickly. It's why I'm trying to solve what's causing it on one comp but not the other.

-edit- A wiki seems to list the bug, and others are having it as well. Wonder why it happens for some of us. [url=https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind_talk:Alchemy#Overboost]https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind_talk:Alchemy#Overboost[/url] It may have something to do with multi-core systems faulting on timing in the games software from how I'm reading it

As for my easy potions? Saltrice, Corkbulb, Heather, and Scuttle : Best combo I'd found to date. Heals, Restores Stamina, and lightens your load too. Hope it serves you as well as it has me. There are few merchants that carry most of those and restock them. Most times they'll carry all but the scuttle.

Also I find it funny that merchants which sell moonsugar and skooma wont buy/sell while you've got any in inventory. Hypocrites.

Why you always use cheap ingredients until you succeed at least every other time...

Though boosting your luck, or one of the other stats can increase success as well as potion strength.

You completely failed to notice this >is< the bug issue. Try 20+ times... nothing. No potion. Nada. Not even ingredients used up. Simply no action on the game's part other than an error box. Just error messages. Then maybe a minute or two later it'll accept 1 potion. Meaning you have to try and create a potion anywhere between 20-140 times before it will accept it and actually make a one then keep refusing to make them again. Nothing to do with the probability of the game actually making a potion or using ingredients. EVERYTHING to do with the game glitching and simply refusing to even attempt to make a potion.

(Why isn't this topic on the Elder Scrolls Series subforum, where it belongs?)

This *is* a known bug in the original engine. I don't know if the code patch fixes it, though I do know that it's not in OpenMW.

With that said, note that having potions fail is normal in Morrowind until your effective Alchemy gets higher (unlike in, say, Oblivion).

One thing I noticed about this bug is that, whenever I would use potions to fortify my Intelligence and/or Luck to much higher values than you would normally get is that, when the stat gets high enough, that bug doesn't show up at all.

(Of course, if you are going to use that exploit, don't overdo it; if a calculation yields a result of 2^31 (a bit over 2 billion) or higher, the game will treat it as a negative value, and negative spell points means you can't use any spells or powers, even if the power doesn't normally cost any.)

One other reminder: When playing games that are known to be buggy (or Early Access or beta testing), save early, often, and in multiple slots.

+1. I did a playthrough in OpenMW earlier this year and it was fantastic. I used a load of mods: bug fixes, higher resolution textures and Tamriel Rebuilt, played through to the very end and encountered no bugs worth mentioning. I also increased the ECLD (Exterior Cell Load Distance) to 3 to increase the view distance and it looked amazing. I spent many hours climbing mountains just to look at the view. It enhances the game so much when you can see an interesting structure off in the distance and you go "Ooh, what is that over there? Maybe I'll go and take a look ...". It also enhances the forboding atmosphere significantly, when you can see Red Mountain and the Ghostfence better from places like Ald'ruhn.

With the original engine, you can walk about 200 yards past a large ruin and not even see it (LOL) ;-)