Enjoying Morrowind On Linux - Part One: The Original Engine Revisited

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Some time ago, I wrote about using WEM to more easily install and run the original Morrowind executable on Linux via wine. Recently, WEM has seen some feature additions that enable making most of the steps fully automated. Read on to see how installing games with WEM has changed!

→ The New Way: wem get

wem get is a powerful new subcommand that allows one to download a fully configured, curated env for various games and software. Here's how you use it:

  1. Download WEM from this page; click the button at the top or run the download commands in the "Quickstart" section.
  2. Run wem get-list to view all available curated envs
  3. Optionally view information about a curated env by running wem get-view --show-env $ENV_SLUG_HERE (or by going to the URL shown via wem get-list)
  4. Get an env by running wem get $ENV_SLUG_HERE
  5. You will be prompted for any required fields, such as the directory that contains the installation media

→ Prerequisites

First you must ensure your system has a couple things available:

  1. Install WEM and put into $PATH.
  2. Install winetricks, the one from your system package manager should be fine.

→ Preparing

Before we can install Morrowind, we need to download a couple things in advance and put them into a directory that we'll give to WEM as our InstallWorkDir:

You're ready to proceed when you have a directory containing these three files:

  1. setup_tes_morrowind_goty_2.0.0.7.exe
  2. Morrowind Code Patch-19510-2-4.7z
  3. MGE XE Manual Install-41102-0-18-0-1731358584.7z

As an example, on my laptop this directory is: /home/hristos/games/MorrowindInstallFiles.

→ Installation

Getting the env and using it to install everything is two commands:

  1. wem get morrowind-gog --install-workdir /home/hristos/games/MorrowindInstallFiles
    • This command will download the curated env for Morrowind from GOG.com and set the InstallWorkDir variable to the directory that contains all three installation files noted above.
  2. wem install morrowind
    • This command will install DXVK, Kron4ek wine, Morrowind, Morrowind Code Patch, and MGE XE, then run each of those tools so that they can be manually setup via their respective GUI.

The following are all run automatically via the wem install process:

→ Morrowind Code Patch

The game executable needs to be patched so that MGE XE and MWSE can work, Morrowind Code Patch does this. Run it like so: 

wem run morrowind --exec "Morrowind Code Patch"

Feel free to browse the various patches that are possible to apply or go with the defaults, then click "Apply chosen patches" to patch the executable.

→ MGE XE

Now we'll run the MGE XE GUI to configure graphics settings: 

wem run morrowind --exec MGEXEgui

There's several tabs with things you'll want to check out:

→ MWSE

Finally, we'll run the MWSE updater: 

wem run morrowind --exec MWSE-Update

This is fully automatic and usually finishes quickly.

→ Play The Game

With all of that out of the way, now may now play Morrowind by running wem run morrowind. You may have to set VirtualDesktop = "1920x1080" in order to run the game at your display's native resolution (don't worry about setting the right resolution here; MGE XE should do the right thing). If, when you run the game, it appears as a small window in the corner of your screen, you should do this.

If you wanted to run the Construction Set with CSSE (Construction Set Script Extender, for making mods), simply run: wem run morrowind --exec "TES Construction Set"

I hope you find the new "get" downloading feature useful, be sure to check out all available curated envs at https://wem.hristos.co/get/.

This page was last modified on: 2025-09-03