From about 1999 to 2007 this address hosted TES: The Essential Site, a Morrowind-era fan site that started as Andel Crodo’s Fashion Gallery. That site no longer runs here. This page covers the same subject for today’s players: clothing and fashion in The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, including how the clothing tiers work, where to buy the best pieces, unique items worth hunting, and the mods that change how Vvardenfell dresses on current PCs.
Key takeaways
- Morrowind clothing has four tiers: Common, Expensive, Extravagant and Exquisite. Higher tiers hold far more enchantment.
- There are no Exquisite gloves, so Extravagant is the best glove tier in the game.
- Elegnan in Tel Mora sells a full Exquisite set, according to the UESP wiki.
- Better Clothes Complete replaces the segmented vanilla clothes. It’s built for Better Bodies, and other body replacers only fit if they follow the Better Bodies body-slot scheme.
- Tamriel Rebuilt 26.08 adds a lot of clothing through Tamriel_Data. It won’t load saves from older versions.
What clothing does in Morrowind
Clothing in Morrowind gives no armor rating. Its real value is how much enchantment it can hold. A plain shirt is a cosmetic item, but a high-tier robe or amulet with a strong enchantment can be one of the best items in your inventory. Clothing also weighs little, so a mage, thief or merchant can carry a full enchanted set without being slowed down.
The game uses separate equipment slots for shirt, pants, skirt, robe, shoes, belt, left and right gloves, amulet and two rings. A skirt takes the place of pants. A robe goes on over everything else and hides most of the outfit, armor included, so a robe has always been the easy way to look like a scholar while wearing a cuirass underneath.
Slots and who can use them
| Slot | Clothing types | Conflicts and limits |
|---|---|---|
| Upper body | Shirt | Hidden by robes |
| Lower body | Pants or skirt | Only one at a time |
| Over everything | Robe | Covers shirt, pants and much of any armor |
| Feet | Shoes | Argonians and Khajiit can’t wear shoes in vanilla |
| Waist | Belt | None |
| Hands | Left and right glove | Can’t be worn with gauntlets on the same hand |
| Neck | Amulet | One at a time |
| Fingers | Two rings | One per hand |
Beast races matter most for anyone building a fashion-focused character. Argonians and Khajiit can’t equip shoes or boots in the unmodified game, so their outfits stop at the ankles. Some mods change this, but in the base game you design around it.
The four clothing tiers
Each base clothing type comes in four quality tiers, and price and enchantment capacity climb steeply from one to the next. The UESP wiki gives a working rule: a clothing item holds about half its gold value in enchantment points.
| Item | Tier | Value (gold) | Enchant points |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shirt | Common | 4 | 2 |
| Shirt | Expensive | 15 | 7.5 |
| Shirt | Extravagant | 60 | 30 |
| Shirt | Exquisite | 120 | 60 |
| Amulet | Expensive | 30 | 15 |
| Sapphire amulet | Extravagant | 120 | 60 |
| Amulet | Exquisite | 240 | 120 |
| Belt | Exquisite | 80 | 40 |
UESP item pages don’t always agree on exact enchant figures, and its older enchanting hints page is marked as outdated. If you’re planning a precise constant effect build, check the current UESP page for that specific item.
Worked example: why tier matters for enchanting
Compare a Common Shirt (2 enchant points) with an Exquisite Shirt (60 points). The Exquisite version holds 30 times as much enchantment. The same spell that won’t fit on a cheap shirt fits easily on the expensive one, and constant effect enchantments in particular eat capacity fast. Spending 120 gold on the shirt is trivial next to the cost of a Grand Soul Gem and a good soul.
Amulets and rings are the slots most worth upgrading. An Exquisite Amulet holds 120 points in the table above, twice as much as an Exquisite Shirt.
Did you know?
According to the UESP wiki, Morrowind has no Exquisite gloves at all, so a pair of Extravagant gloves is the most you can enchant in the hand slots.
Common tiers vs top tiers: which to buy
How much the tier matters depends on your character:
- New characters should buy Common and Expensive clothing for looks and save their gold for training and gear. Low-tier enchantments are rarely worth the money early on.
- Enchanters and mid-game mages should buy Exquisite pieces only in the slots they plan to enchant, usually the amulet, the rings, the belt and a robe or shirt.
- Roleplayers can ignore tier completely. Plenty of the best-looking vanilla outfits are Common or Expensive pieces.
Where to buy clothing on Vvardenfell
Clothiers and traders stock different tiers. The top tiers sit in the towns you reach later in the main quest or the Telvanni and Tribunal content.
| Location | Merchant | What to expect |
|---|---|---|
| Balmora | Milie Hastien, Fine Clothier | Wide everyday range, a good first stop |
| Ald’ruhn | Bivale Teneran, Clothier | Listed by UESP among the Exquisite clothing sources |
| Tel Mora | Elegnan | A full set of Exquisite clothing, per UESP |
| Mournhold, Great Bazaar (Tribunal) | The Clothier | Stock includes Exquisite Shirt and Exquisite Shoes |
| Pelagiad | Mebestian Ence | General trader who buys and sells nearly anything, useful for selling loot |
Merchant stock in Morrowind restocks only for certain items. Something you see on the shelf in one visit may not be there next time, especially single pieces sitting in containers rather than in the merchant’s restocking inventory.
Modder's note
Buy Exquisite base clothing first and enchant it yourself, or pay an enchanter NPC to do it. Pre-enchanted shop items rarely match your build, and a blank Exquisite piece is the best starting point you can get.
Unique clothing worth hunting
Unique clothing items are named, pre-enchanted pieces placed by hand around the game world, and UESP keeps a complete list of them. Some are quest rewards and some are loot. These are some of the better-known ones:
| Item | Base type | How to get it | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zenithar Whispers | Exquisite Amulet | Unique loot | Worth 2,400 gold, cast when used enchantment |
| Malipu-Ataman’s Belt | Expensive Belt | Given by Sul-Matuul during The Path of the Incarnate | Main quest, Urshilaku Camp |
| Belt of Northern Knuck Knuck | Extravagant Belt | Worn by Godrod Hairy-Breeks in Ulummusa | Taken from its wearer |
| Stendarran Belt | Expensive Belt | Unique loot | Worth 300 gold, cast when used enchantment |
| Amulet of Admonition | Amulet | Upper level of Tel Fyr | Transports the wearer to the Daedric ruin Magas Volar |
UESP pages disagree on how you get the Belt of the Armor of God (Crassius Curio’s Hlaalu Hortator route or Sul-Matuul’s quest line), so check its current entry if you want it.
Did you know?
The UESP wiki notes that the Amulet of Admonition, found in Divayth Fyr’s tower at Tel Fyr, sends anyone who puts it on to the Daedric ruin of Magas Volar.
How to play Morrowind today
The easiest legal way to get Morrowind now is the Game of the Year Edition, which includes the Tribunal and Bloodmoon expansions. Steam (app 22320) lists it at $14.99, and GOG sells the same edition DRM-free at the same regular price. Both stores put it on sale often. Bethesda’s Game of the Year Edition is the build that all the major mods expect.
You can run it in one of two engines. Which one you pick decides which mods will work for you.
| Original engine (Morrowind.exe) | OpenMW | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Bethesda’s 2002 executable | Free, open-source rewrite of the engine |
| Current version | Patched with Morrowind Code Patch 2.4 | 0.51.0, released 19 June 2026 |
| Script extension | MWSE (Morrowind Script Extender) | Built-in Lua scripting API |
| Strengths | Runs every classic MWSE mod | Modern renderer, wider resolutions, actively developed |
| Limits | Old engine limits, needs community patches | MWSE-only mods won’t run |
Original engine plus the Morrowind Code Patch
The Morrowind Code Patch, maintained by Hrnchamd (UESP also credits Psyringe), fixes hundreds of engine bugs by patching the executable directly. Version 2.4 is the current one. Its Nexus Mods page says it doesn’t work with OpenMW, the Impulse/Gamefly release of Morrowind (because of DRM), or FPS Opt 2.0. Steam and GOG copies both work with it.
OpenMW
OpenMW reads your Morrowind data files and replaces the executable entirely. Version 0.51.0 added a new Load context to the Lua scripting API and let modders create new magic effects through scripts. On 2 November 2026 the team started release-candidate testing for 0.52.0, which brings clustered lighting and removes the old per-object light limit. Until 0.52.0 is out, 0.51.0 is the current stable release.
The two big mod families covered on this page both work in OpenMW: mesh and texture replacers like Better Clothes, and plugin-based content like Tamriel Rebuilt.
Clothing mods that change the look of Vvardenfell
Clothing in vanilla Morrowind is built from separate segments for the chest, arms and legs, and those parts show visible seams and gaps on modern displays. Clothing replacers fix this by swapping in single-piece models. The clothing pages on Nexus Mods are some of the oldest and busiest sections of the Morrowind modding scene.
| Mod | What it does | Requires | Author / credit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Better_Clothes Official Version | Replaces vanilla clothing with non-segmented models | Better Bodies | PsychoDog Team |
| Better Clothes Complete | Updated Better Clothes package covering most vanilla clothing | Better Bodies | Credits PsychoDog Studios |
| Darknut’s Better Clothes Textures | Higher-resolution textures for Better Clothes | Better Clothes Complete | Darknut |
| Finishes Better Clothes | Adds Better Clothes versions of shirts the original missed | Better Clothes | Community add-on |
| Tamriel Rebuilt | Mainland Morrowind expansion with new clothing via Tamriel_Data | Tamriel_Data 26.08+ | Tamriel Rebuilt team |
Better Clothes Complete
Better Clothes Complete (Nexus Mods, Morrowind mod 47549) replaces the models and textures of most vanilla clothing with non-segmented versions made for the Better Bodies body meshes. The original Better Clothes and Better Bodies came from the PsychoDog team, and the Complete package collects later fixes, including a fix for Nordic shoes and a bundled set of Darknut’s textures. Several texture mods list it as a hard requirement, Darknut’s Better Clothes Textures and Better Clothes Retextured among them.
The trade-off is that Better Clothes is built around Better Bodies. Other body replacers can work, but only if they follow the Better Bodies scheme and leave the left-leg body slots free, because Better Clothes uses those freed slots. If you use a body that breaks that scheme, or the vanilla body, you’ll see gaps and clipping at the wrists, neck and waist. Pick your body meshes first, then choose clothing to match them.
Install steps
- Back up your save folder and note which body replacer you use now.
- Install the Better Bodies meshes your clothing pack is built for.
- Install Better Clothes Complete with Mod Organizer 2 or Vortex, or add its folder as a data path in the OpenMW Launcher.
- Install optional texture packs such as Darknut’s after it, so their files win any conflicts.
- Load a save near a clothier and check robes, shirts and skirts for gaps.
Tamriel Rebuilt and Tamriel_Data
Tamriel Rebuilt is the long-running project to build mainland Morrowind. It is one of the biggest sources of new clothing because it uses Tamriel_Data, a shared asset library that UESP documents in its own clothing section. The latest release is 26.08, “Poison Song”, from 23 August 2026. It adds a joinable Great House Indoril and parts of the Alt Orethan region around Almalexia. A bugfix build, 26.08b, went up on Nexus Mods on 1 November 2026. For the first time, the mod is also available as a one-click install through GOG.com.
Before you install
Tamriel Rebuilt 26.08 is highly incompatible with saves made on older versions and needs Tamriel_Data 26.08 or later. Start a new game or keep a separate profile.
Mod managers and load order for clothing mods
Clothing replacers are mostly loose meshes and textures with no plugin, so the order in which their folders are installed matters more than plugin load order. The mod installed later wins any file conflict.
- Mod Organizer 2 keeps each mod in its own folder and shows overwrite conflicts in the left pane. Place body meshes above clothing meshes, and clothing meshes above texture-only packs.
- Vortex supports Morrowind and asks you to set file rules when two mods ship the same mesh. Set texture packs to load after the mesh packs they retexture.
- OpenMW uses the data paths listed in the launcher’s Data Directories tab. Lower entries override higher ones, so the same order applies: body, clothing, then textures.
Modder's note
If a robe suddenly shows the old segmented sleeves after you add a new mod, another package is overwriting the Better Clothes mesh. Look for the conflicting file in the manager’s conflict view and move Better Clothes below it.
Common problems and fixes
| Problem | Likely cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Gaps at wrists, neck or waist | Better Clothes used with the vanilla body or a body that doesn’t follow the Better Bodies scheme | Install matching body meshes, or remove the clothing replacer |
| Some shirts still look vanilla | The original Better Clothes didn’t cover every item | Add Finishes Better Clothes or use Better Clothes Complete |
| Purple or missing textures | Texture pack installed without its mesh pack | Install the required Better Clothes Complete base first |
| Khajiit or Argonian can’t equip shoes | Vanilla beast race restriction | Expected behavior in the base game |
| Crash or broken world after updating Tamriel Rebuilt | Old save loaded on 26.08 | Start a new game on 26.08 with Tamriel_Data 26.08+ |
| Code Patch won’t apply | Running OpenMW or the Impulse/Gamefly edition | Use the Steam or GOG executable. OpenMW doesn’t need the patch |
Uninstalling clothing replacers safely
Pure mesh and texture replacers are safe to remove from an existing save because they only change how items look, not what the save records. Disable the mod in your manager or remove its data path, and the vanilla models return. Plugin-based mods that add new clothing items, like Tamriel Rebuilt and Tamriel_Data, are different. Removing them leaves missing references in any save that touched their content, so treat them as permanent for that playthrough.
Final takeaway
If you remember one thing from this page: in Morrowind, a character’s looks and a character’s power come from the same place. Buy blank Exquisite clothing in the slots you plan to enchant, put it on a clean, seam-free model with Better Clothes Complete, and choose your engine (Code Patch or OpenMW) before you build the rest of the mod list around it.
FAQ
What was TES: The Essential Site?
It was an Elder Scrolls fan site hosted at this address in the early 2000s, during the Morrowind years. It began as Andel Crodo’s Fashion Gallery and grew into a more general entertainment site. For reference material on the series today, the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages at uesp.net is the main community wiki.
What is the best clothing tier in Morrowind?
Exquisite is the highest tier and holds the most enchantment, for example 60 points on a shirt and 120 on an amulet. Gloves are the exception: they stop at Extravagant.
Where can you buy a full set of Exquisite clothing?
According to UESP, Elegnan in Tel Mora sells a full Exquisite set. The clothier in Mournhold’s Great Bazaar, added in Tribunal, also stocks Exquisite pieces.
Do clothes give armor in Morrowind?
No. Clothing has no armor rating. Its value is in enchantment capacity and appearance, and robes can be worn over armor.
Does Better Clothes work with OpenMW?
Better Clothes is a mesh and texture replacer, and OpenMW loads mods of that kind through its data paths. In either engine it still needs matching body meshes: Better Bodies, or another body replacer that follows the Better Bodies scheme of free left-leg body slots.
Is the Morrowind Code Patch needed with OpenMW?
No. The Code Patch modifies the original Morrowind.exe, which OpenMW doesn’t use. Its Nexus page states that it isn’t compatible with OpenMW.
Can you add Tamriel Rebuilt to an existing save?
You can add it to a save that has never used Tamriel Rebuilt, but the 26.08 release notes warn that saves from older Tamriel Rebuilt versions are highly incompatible. If you’re updating from an earlier version, a new game is the safe choice.
Which edition of Morrowind should you buy?
The Game of the Year Edition on Steam or GOG. It includes Tribunal and Bloodmoon, which most clothing and content mods expect, and both versions work with the Code Patch and with OpenMW.
What changed
- Nov 13, 2026 First published.
About the article
- Fact-checked by Hollis Tremaine before publication.
- Published
