Frequently asked questions

• Why did Tamriel Rebuilt remake Firemoth?
• Should I still load Siege at Firemoth.esp?

Frequently provided answers

In short: Tamriel Rebuilt now bundles its own version Firemoth, completely overhauled from Bethesda's original plugin, Siege at Firemoth. This was done to bring its quality up to Vvardenfell's level, to provide a rebuilt Firemoth as a player stronghold in the Imperial Legion questline and to integrate it better.

If you want to play our version of Firemoth, you should not load the original Siege at Firemoth.esp or any of the fixed or bundled version available from the wider modding community. This will result in two versions of the archipelago loading at the same time, producing severly broken behavior.

If you don't want to play TR's version and prefer instead Bethesda's original plugin, download the optional TR_Firemoth_remover.esp plugin and load it after Siege at Firemoth.esp (or any of the fixed or merged variants from elsewhere in the Morrowind modding community). This will remove TR's version of the archipelago and associated quests, but will also fix underwater landscape conflicts that the original plugin has with TR's mainland.

Other mods that substantially overhual Firemoth's landscape will need a separate patch to be compatible with Tamriel Rebuilt, in order to address the above underwater landscape conflicts.

In detail: Siege at Firemoth in its original version, released in September 2002 even before the official expansions, was a fun romp through unending waves of skeletons and a ludicruously overpowered end boss, the lich Grurn. Much like the other official plugins, it was a great showcase of the power of the Construction Set and a fun personal side-project for its anonymous creator, which is probably the main reason the plugin was made in the first place. Consistent with that, however, the plugin was not made to the quality standards of Vvardenfell: see the paper-thin dialogue, the almost entriely bare and cookie-cutter interiors like the Great Hall, and the issues with Grurn's balancing. Hence why many people still prefer to play Morrowind without the plugin.

Bethesda's original Firemoth seen from above.

For Tamriel Rebuilt, some of the issues were also that Firemoth's huge footprint made the already-claustrophobic Inner Sea quite innavigable and required us to provide an extra compatibility patch for mainland landscape conflicts. All-in-all, we decided in early 2020 to make our own version of Firemoth with a more compact exterior, all-around better interiors and a less barebones quest.

That was finally released in version 24.12 "Firemoth Rekindled," where the wholly remade Firemoth is bundled directly into TR_Mainland.esm. Firemoth's main quest and all of its dungeons are all substantially improved, as we hope you will find. Should you wish, you can start the quest from Old Ebonheart in addition to Seyda Neen. After Grurn in defeated, an Imperial Legion player will also find a follow-on questline to restore the fort's former glory and to become its commandant.

Tamriel Rebuilt's new Fort Firemoth. For lore and technical reasons, the island itself is now called the "Saros archipelago," distinct from the Imperial-named fort.

By placing our new Firemoth directly in the main plugin and enabled by default, we will in the future be able to tie the location into other happenings on the mainland. One such tie-in quest is already planned for the upcoming Grasping Fortune expansion.

While we hope you try our version of Firemoth, we realize that this is not exactly everyone's cup of tea. Should you prefer to play the original official plugin, we have made that possible with a separately downloaded optional plugin TR_Firemoth_remover.esp, which will allow you to play the original Siege at Firemoth.esp or any of its fan-made derivatives that do not substantially alter the landscape.

So, what exactly does the optional plugin TR_Firemoth_remover.esp do?

• First and foremost, it fixes underwater land tears that occur when your run the original Siege at Firemoth with TR.
• Changes cellnames of the Firemoth cells to match the original Siege at Firemoth plugins.
• Includes a start script that sets the global variable that controls the stage of Tamriel Rebuilt's Firemoth quest to "-1". This disables scripted objects (including enemies) involved in the TR Firemoth questline, and blocks all of the relevant dialogue from appearing to the player.
• Removes all TR-placed references from the Firemoth cells that aren't disabled by the global variable and that interfere in some way with the original Siege at Firemoth (meaning most of the underwater detailing added by TR is preserved)
• Adds dummy, inaccessible cells named "Firemoth Legion Fort" and "Sulfurwatch Keep", and places certain items in them, to prevent certain scripts from erroring.

By loading the remover plugin, you can:

• Run the original Firemoth plugin (or any of its derivatives that don't make drastic exterior changes) alongside TR without landtears (but remember, load our patch after Siege at Firemoth.esp or its equivalents).
• Remove any Firemoth-related content from your game, if you can ignore the empty Saros Archipelago landmass.

The patch doesn't allow you to:

• Run any Firemoth plugins that make drastic exterior changes to the original without landtears. For example, Firemoth Reclaimed will work with TR if you would load this patch before it, but the landscape around it is going to be somewhat messed up. That would need a separate patch that makes more extensive landscape edits. Of course, this patch could be used as basis for that.
• Completely remove all traces of Firemoth from your game. Again, that would need a separate patch.

Again, the load order for the patch is Siege at Firemoth.esp -> TR_Firemoth_remover.esp. If you just want to remove the Firemoth content from your game, you can run this standalone.