Morrowind, blast from the past, yeah Options

[unitself]

Have any of you played and/or finished Morrowind?
I bought it years ago, never got very far, got frustrated and put it away. Well, I took it out over the weekend and made a new character and started over. I am only a few hours into it so I have only completed a few Fighter's Guild quests. I am on "Find me a Code Book" quest for them right now.
Basically, does anyone have any pointers?
1) Is there a good way to spend money on weapons and armour? Does a weapon type have an advantage over another?
2) Is there a way that I can find out what herbs and animal parts do what? For example - What is Rat Meat useful for or what does Moon Sugar do? And how does my character find out?
3) Is it better do join a guild and do all of their quests, then join another guild and then do all of thier quests, repeat, repeat... or roam around and pick up quests along my travels? I am curious because during my last game, I FREQUENTLY got caught by much stronger opponents when I just roamed the roads.

Anyways... any tips?

[HC82]

It's good to stick to the main quests in the main town, jumping from each person back and forth. The fighter guild and thieves guild don't get along with each other, so as you progress in one, you can't fully complete the other.

Buy... weapons and Armor???
Stealing is the shizzle in that game, why buy stuff when you can steal it? Just don't EVER get caught. Save your game and make sure you're out of sight. Learn to increase your sneak if you're melee. The fastest way to do it is to pay trainers to increase your sneak, then once you get it up to a high level, you can just level it up by sneaking behind people back and forth. The sneak icon will change colors to let you know if you are or aren't being seen. You can only level it up if your behind someone and they DON'T sense you. You can be fairly far away and still be considered sneaking. Different trainers are more or less skilled in certain areas and can train you up higher then other trainers in certain areas.

You can get the same "sneaking" affect by using spells that make you go invisible, so even a mage can be a killer thief. Some of them break free when you do something, others stay on you regardless, so you want the one's that don't break free. You can also use telekenesis to steal from a distance. You need to be a fairly good mage to get the better versions of the spells to steal well.

Whenever you level-up, your stats increase depening on what skills you raised up in. If you did more sneaking, then you'll get an amplifier in the stat that governs the sneaking ability(check instruction manual for the stat to skill relationship). The more skills you raise up before you go to sleep to level up, the more stat amplifiers you'll get out of the level up. You can only get a max of a 5 times amplifier to a stat per level up, but you can do this in many stats(accept luck).

The skills that you made your major will natural have a stat-giving amplifier when you level up. What does that mean? That means you'll get a naturual stat amplifier in the areas that govern the skills of your major when you gain a level up, even if you never used them. So if Long Sword is a major, you'll get a strength multiplier when you level up, even if you barely used it. Although, you must level up in your majors to gain levels.

Also, consider checking gamefaqs for further breakdowns of the game.