Morrowind spell effects

This address used to host the Morrowind spell effects list from the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages, a fan reference founded in 1995 that added Morrowind content around the game’s 2002 release and still exists today at uesp.net. Morrowind has 136 spell effects, spread across six schools of magic. Every custom spell, enchantment and potion in the game is made from them. This page lists each effect with what it actually does in the released game, where the rare ones come from, and how they work today on the Steam and GOG editions, under OpenMW and alongside Tamriel Rebuilt.

How Morrowind spell effects work

An effect is the smallest building block of magic in Morrowind. Every spell, scroll, potion and enchantment is a list of effects. Each entry sets a range (Self, Touch or Target), a magnitude, a duration and sometimes an area. The effect’s school decides which skill governs casting it. Its base cost decides how fast the magicka cost rises as you raise the other numbers.

The six schools are Alteration, Conjuration, Destruction, Illusion, Mysticism and Restoration. A custom spell’s casting chance depends mainly on your skill in the school of its most demanding effect. So a spell that mixes a cheap Restoration heal with an expensive Destruction effect is limited by your Destruction skill.

Base costs that shape every spell

The base cost is a multiplier set in the game’s data. A low base cost lets you cast long, strong versions cheaply. A high one makes even a small version expensive. These values come from the Construction Set data and are confirmed by the UESP wiki:

Damage, Drain, Absorb, Fortify and Restore

Five verbs cover most of the stat effects. Each one changes your character in a different way, and the in-game descriptions don’t always make that clear.

Here’s a worked example. Drain Health 20 for 10 seconds takes 20 points off the target as soon as it lands and gives them back when the 10 seconds end. Damage Health 2 for 10 seconds removes 2 points every second, so 20 in total, and those 20 points stay gone until the target heals. Against your own attributes the difference matters a lot. A Damage Strength curse from an enemy won’t go away when you rest. You need Restore Attribute, a Restore Strength potion or a temple priest. A Drain Strength effect goes away by itself.

Playing Morrowind today: editions, engines and patches

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind Game of the Year Edition, which includes both Tribunal and Bloodmoon, is the edition sold today. It lists at $14.99 on Steam (app 22320) and on GOG, and both stores discount it often. Tribunal and Bloodmoon matter for this list: they add the merchants who sell Fortify Skill spells, plus extra summon effects.

You can run the game in two ways, and they handle magic slightly differently:

OpenMW 0.51.0 changed the save format, so saves made in it won’t load in older OpenMW builds. Tamriel Rebuilt’s Poison Song release added a joinable Great House Indoril and parts of the Alt Orethan region around Almalexia. Grasping Fortune came before it in 2025 and centred on Narsis.

Alteration effects

Alteration changes the physical world and your body’s relationship to it. That covers carry weight, movement, locks and elemental shields. It’s also the school behind Levitate, which is the most useful travel effect in the game because later Elder Scrolls games dropped it.

Levitate, Open and Lock in practice

Telvanni towers have no stairs, so you need Levitate to get around them. Their guards don’t object to you flying. Open gets you past a lock only if the magnitude matches or beats the lock level, and quest locks that need a key ignore Open completely. Lock really only matters for scripted moments and for shutting a door behind you in a dungeon. Getting into locked places that aren’t yours is still a crime the game tracks. The spell does nothing to hide that.

Conjuration effects

Conjuration covers bound Daedric equipment, summoned creatures, the two Command effects and Turn Undead. It’s the school for characters who want Daedric-quality gear early or a creature to absorb the hits.

Bound equipment

Every bound effect calls up a lesser Daedra in the form of a piece of Daedric gear. The game equips it automatically and puts back what you were wearing when the effect ends. Bound items weigh almost nothing, and they disappear if you try to drop or sell them.

When you combine bound effects, put several into one spell. Each effect still swaps out the gear in its own slot. For example, Bound Longsword, Bound Cuirass and Bound Helm in a single spell dress you for a fight in one cast.

Summons

Summon effects bring a creature to fight beside you until the duration runs out or it dies. The original game has sixteen summons. Tribunal adds Summon Fabricant, and Bloodmoon adds Summon Bonewolf along with wolf and bear summons.

One trick ties Conjuration to Mysticism. Golden Saints carry a soul big enough for Constant Effect enchantments. So a summoned Golden Saint, killed while a Soultrap effect is on it, fills a grand soul gem without you having to find one in the wild.

Command and Turn Undead

These three effects change how enemies behave instead of adding bodies to the fight.

Destruction effects

Destruction is the largest offensive school. It covers elemental damage, the Damage and Drain families, the Weakness effects that make later attacks hit harder, equipment destruction, and the special disease and vampire effects that only scripts use.

Elemental and poison damage

The four direct damage effects are what most battlemages build their spells around. Fire and frost share a base cost of 5. Shock costs more per point, and Poison costs the most at 9.

Damage and Drain

The ten effects here look alike in the spell menu but behave in opposite ways. Damage lasts, Drain goes away. The table above under the five verbs explains how magnitude works for each.

The attribute effects only work on the eight main attributes: Strength, Intelligence, Willpower, Agility, Speed, Endurance, Personality and Luck. Health, magicka and fatigue have their own effects.

Weakness effects

Weakness effects lower the target’s resistance, so the next matching attack does more damage. Spells apply their effects in the order listed. That means the Weakness entry has to come before the damage entry in the same spell.

Worked example: a target with no fire resistance hit by Weakness to Fire 50, then Fire Damage 30 in the same cast, takes about 45 fire damage instead of 30. Stack Weakness to Magicka in front of a Weakness to Fire entry and it strengthens that Weakness effect too. That’s why experienced players order weakness effects carefully at the spellmaker.

Disintegrate and the special effects

The last six Destruction effects are either about gear or tied to scripts.

Illusion effects

Illusion works on minds and senses. It covers stealth (Chameleon, Invisibility), crowd control (Calm, Frenzy, Demoralize, Rally, Paralyze, Silence), and utility effects like Light and Night Eye. The old fan list put Demoralize Humanoid under Mysticism. In the game it belongs to Illusion, like its creature version.

Chameleon versus Invisibility

Chameleon is the better stealth effect for most builds, even though Invisibility looks stronger on paper. Invisibility is all or nothing and ends the moment you open a door, pick a lock or attack. Chameleon only scales with magnitude, but it survives all of those actions. That’s why constant-effect Chameleon gear is a long-running favourite among thief players. Invisibility still wins for a single dash past a guard to a door.

Mysticism effects

Mysticism is the school of strange, often unique effects. It covers teleportation, detection, soul trapping, telekinesis, spell defence and the Absorb family. It holds the most expensive travel spells in the game and some of the most useful ones.

Getting the most from Mark and Recall

Mark and Recall together are Morrowind’s fast-travel system for players who don’t want to rely on silt striders and guild guides. A common setup:

1. Buy Mark and Recall spells from a Mages Guild spell merchant or another Mysticism seller.
2. Cast Mark in a central spot you come back to often, such as your guild hall or a house you own.
3. Explore normally. When you’re overloaded or hurt, cast Recall to go straight back to the Mark.
4. Use Almsivi Intervention or Divine Intervention to get out of wherever you ended up, since those don’t use up your Mark.
5. Only re-cast Mark when you want to move your home point. Each new Mark wipes the old one.

With Tamriel Rebuilt installed, mainland towns have their own temples and Imperial shrines. So the nearest intervention destination may be on the mainland instead of Vvardenfell, which can surprise you if you’re used to the original map.

Soul trapping for enchanters

Soultrap is cheap, but your enchanting depends on it. Cast it with a short duration on a weakened creature and finish it off within that time. The soul goes into the smallest empty soul gem in your inventory that can hold it. Carry a mix of gem sizes so small souls don’t fill your grand gems.

Restoration effects

Restoration heals, protects and boosts. It’s the largest school by effect count, with 28 effects across five groups: Cure, Fortify, Resist, Restore and Remove Curse. Its two rare effects, Fortify Attack and Fortify Skill, cause most of the “where do I get this?” questions.

Cure effects

The Cure effects remove a condition completely. They don’t scale with magnitude, so their base costs are fixed and high.

How the corprus cure plays out

Corprus is the one disease the Cure effects can’t handle for you. The main quest takes care of it:

1. During the main quest you catch corprus, and Caius Cosades points you toward help.
2. Travel to Divayth Fyr at Tel Fyr, east of Vvardenfell.
3. Do his errand into the Corprusarium below the tower.
4. Take his experimental cure. It removes the harmful side of the disease but keeps its immunity to common and blight diseases.

Fortify effects

Fortify effects raise a stat temporarily. Five are easy to get. Fortify Attack and Fortify Skill are rare, and Fortify Maximum Magicka can’t go into custom spells at all.

Unlocking Fortify Skill

You can’t buy Fortify Skill in the base game. It was only available through Mephala’s Skill, the reward from Eno Hlaalu for the Morag Tong quest Threads of the Webspinner, and patch 1.2 removed that version’s Fortify Short Blade part. The expansions bring it back:

1. Install the GOTY Edition or another copy that includes Tribunal or Bloodmoon.
2. In Mournhold, buy a Fortify Skill spell from Nerile Andaren at the Temple’s Halls of Ministry, or from Laurina Maria or Crito Olcinius at the Royal Palace’s Imperial Cult Services.
3. On Solstheim, you can instead buy one from Bronrod the Roarer in Skaal Village.
4. Visit any spellmaker. Owning one Fortify Skill spell unlocks the effect for every skill in custom spells.

Fortify Maximum Magicka explained

In the base game your magicka equals your Intelligence, a multiplier of 1. Fortify Maximum Magicka adds to that multiplier in tenths. A magnitude of 1.5 gives you 2.5 times your Intelligence. You only get it from character creation choices:

Being an Altmer with the Atronach sign is the classic glass-cannon build: a huge magicka pool that only refills through potions, Spell Absorption and Absorb Magicka.

Resist effects

Resist effects lower incoming damage or the chance of a condition by a percentage. They’re the main pieces for building constant-effect defensive gear.

Restore effects and Remove Curse

Restore effects bring a lowered stat back up at a set rate per second, never above its normal value. Remove Curse covers the rare curse effects.

Effect IDs for modders

Each effect has a fixed numeric ID in the game data. Scripts, the Construction Set, OpenMW-CS and tools like tes3conv refer to effects by these numbers. The IDs below come straight from the original editor data:

ID 126 is an unused slot that the editor labels “EXTRA SPELL”. No spell, item or potion in the game uses it. The expansion summons come after 136. In OpenMW 0.51.0 and later, Lua mods can register new effects without taking over these old slots, which used to cause conflicts between Morrowind mods.

Making spells and enchantments with these effects

To use an effect in a custom spell, you first have to know at least one spell that contains it. Spellmakers only offer effects you’ve already learned, which is why the rare effects above matter so much.

Step 1: learn the effect

Spell merchants in the Mages Guild, the Tribunal Temple, the Imperial Cult and House Telvanni each sell spells from the schools they favour. Cheap starter spells unlock their effects as well as expensive ones do. A weak Fortify Attribute spell lets you build a strong one.

Step 2: find a spellmaker

Spellmakers are mostly found in guild halls and temples. The Mages Guild halls in Balmora, Caldera, Ald’ruhn, Sadrith Mora and Vivec are the easiest to reach early on.

Step 3: set the numbers

The magicka cost grows with magnitude, duration and area, multiplied by the effect’s base cost. Range matters too. Target-range spells cost more than Self or Touch versions of the same effect.

Step 4: check cost against casting chance

The spellmaker shows the final cost before you pay. If your success chance looks low, cut the magnitude or duration. A spell that fails half the time costs twice as much magicka in practice.

Step 5: name and buy

Spellmakers charge gold based on the spell’s power. Choose clear names that sort together in the spell menu, such as “Lev 30s” or “Fire 20 T”, so you can find them quickly mid-fight.

Enchanting with the same effects

Enchanting uses the effects you know too. The soul in your gem decides how strong the enchantment can be. Cast When Used, Cast When Strikes and Cast Once enchantments use charge or a one-time cast. Constant Effect enchantments run all the time and need a large soul, which is where Golden Saint souls and the Soultrap trick come in. Professional enchanters in the Mages Guild do the work for a fee if your own Enchant skill is low.

Mods that change or extend spell effects

For this topic, the mods that matter either fix how the base effects behave or add new effects. Graphical overhauls don’t change anything here.

Morrowind Code Patch

The Morrowind Code Patch is published on Nexus Mods and installs by running its patcher against Morrowind.exe. You pick the fixes you want, then click “Install chosen patches”. The MCP version number then shows in the bottom left of the main menu. On the Steam version, MCP automatically redates your BSA archives so they load in the right order. Some MCP options change how mechanics work instead of just fixing bugs, so read each one before you tick it.

OpenMW

OpenMW has its own launcher that handles data files and plugins in place of Mod Organizer 2 or Vortex. You point it at your Steam or GOG data, then enable plugins in the Data Files tab. Version 0.51.0 lets mods add whole new magic effects through Lua scripts. Version 0.52.0 is in release-candidate testing as of November 2026, with clustered lighting as its main feature. OpenMW doesn’t run MCP or MWSE plugins, so pick mods built for the engine you use.

Tamriel Rebuilt

Tamriel Rebuilt doesn’t rewrite the effects in this list, but it changes where you find them. New mainland towns bring new spell merchants, new spellmakers and new temples and shrines for intervention spells. Install Tamriel_Data first, then load Tamriel Rebuilt after the official master files. GOG also offers it as a one-click install alongside its Morrowind edition.

Troubleshooting spell effects

Most magic problems in Morrowind come from one of a few causes: mixing up Damage and Drain, effects you haven’t unlocked, or conflicts between mods and engines.

Where to go next

If you’re new to Morrowind magic, start with the Damage and Drain difference and the base cost table. Those two explain most of what the spellmaker shows you. Players coming back to the game should plan a Tribunal trip early if they want Fortify Skill. They should also choose their engine (original with MCP 2.4, or OpenMW 0.51.0) before installing Tamriel Rebuilt, because that choice decides which mods you can use from then on.

FAQ

How many spell effects are in Morrowind?

The base game defines 136 usable effects across six schools. ID 126 is an unused editor slot. Tribunal adds Summon Fabricant, and Bloodmoon adds Summon Bonewolf and wolf and bear summons.

What’s the difference between Damage and Drain in Morrowind?

Damage lowers a stat a little each second and the loss stays until you restore it. Drain lowers it right away by the magnitude and gives it back when the spell ends. Lasting attribute loss always means Damage.

Where can you get a Fortify Skill spell?

The base game has no source after patch 1.2. In Tribunal, Nerile Andaren at Mournhold’s Temple and Laurina Maria or Crito Olcinius at the Royal Palace sell them. In Bloodmoon, Bronrod the Roarer in Skaal Village does. One purchase unlocks every skill at the spellmaker.

Can you make a Fortify Maximum Magicka spell or enchantment?

No. In the unmodded game it only comes from the High Elf and Breton races and the Mage, Apprentice and Atronach birthsigns.

Why do Mark and Recall cost so much?

Their base cost is 350 because they have no magnitude or duration to scale against. The cost is effectively fixed. The stock Mark spell still only costs 18 magicka to cast.

Do Almsivi Intervention and Divine Intervention go to the same place?

No. Almsivi Intervention sends you to the nearest Tribunal Temple. Divine Intervention sends you to the nearest Imperial Cult shrine, which is usually inside an Imperial fort.

Can you soul trap NPCs in Morrowind?

Not in the base game. Soultrap only catches creature souls, and Golden Saints are the best source of large souls for Constant Effect enchantments.

Should you use the Morrowind Code Patch or OpenMW?

Use MCP 2.4 if you want the original engine and mods built for it. Use OpenMW 0.51.0 if you want a modern engine, better performance and Lua mods, including ones that add new magic effects. You can’t use both on the same install.

Does Tamriel Rebuilt add new spell effects?

It mainly adds lands, merchants, spellmakers, temples and shrines. Those change where you buy spells and where intervention spells take you, but the base effects stay the same.

What changed

• Nov 13, 2026 First published.

About the article

NA

Written by Nico Albrecht

Nico covers RPG and action game mods, Bethesda games and the weekly trending mod roundups. He pays close attention to requirements and load order, so a mod list is something you can install without breaking your save.

• Fact-checked by Hollis Tremaine before publication.
• Published November 13, 2026

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