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?

[Crushinator]

HC basically covered it as far as stealing/skillups goes. It's a fine Elder Scrolls tradition that only chumps pay for items, stealing/pillaging is definetely the way to go.

Regarding what different ingredients do, as you level you skill in Alchemy, then your character will be able to tell what the ingredients do just by looking at them (either when you look at them in the "real world" or check them in your inventory.) When you create your character, make sure you put alchemy as one of your skills, or just pay a trainer to level you up in it, and you'll start seeing the basic effects of the ingredients. As you level up more, then you'll see additional effects for each ingredient, I think each one can have up to 3 effects, and the magnitude of the effects in your potion also depends on your alchemy skill, and the quality of tools (mortal, pestel, etc) that you use to create it.

As far as quests go, like HC said, follow the path laid out by the main storyline to a degree, till you get a feeling for what you can handle. Do quests for the guild that are in your current area, but once they start asking you to take long tours of duty, its probably a good idea to get back to the main story quests and move on a bit till you're more powerful. Also, try to choose a house and guild that are appropriate for your class. I can't remember off the top of my head which was which, but the 3 big houses you can ally with (redoran, telvanni, and something else) each focus on one area, diplomacy, warrior/combat, and magic. So make sure you talk to the representatives of the house before you join so you end up with quests that are easier for your type of character to tackle.

Another important trick is to make an anchor and warp spell as soon as you are able. If you don't have the right skills naturally, just train up Mysticism and you should be able to wing it. That way when you get a quest, set the anchor for your warp near the quest NPC, then head out to the dungeon or whatever the quest required you to do, then when you finish it, just warp back instantly. It's also good if you get into a hot situation and need to blink out in a flash, but you can also use the Intervention scrolls for that.




Did you go with a custom class, or did you just use a preset one?

I just gotta say that Morrowind was one of my favorite game experiences of all time, and definetly my favorite RPG of this last gen of games. It's great to see you're giving it another go