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]

I just started a new Morrowind campaign myself (not entirely uninspired by your own new one, Scu ) on the GOTY edition, so although I'm not high enough level yet, I'll definetly report back when I start hitting up the expansion content.

I've already gotten a little tangled up in one of the expansion's plots when one night I was resting and I got attacked by an assasin (in awesome armor) from the Dark Brotherhood. Apparently they have it out for me, and I have to return to the mainland city of Mournhold to figure out what's up.

I decided to go a totally different route from my previous characters for this game, and so far its proving to be a great exprience. My first 2 times thru the game were as a "Dragoon", basically my morrowind take on Kain from FF2. Main focus was spears, medium armor, athletics, acrobatics (Take my HIIIIIGH JUMP), etc. My 2nd was a "Ninja" with the obvious ninja trappings, ranged weaps, short blade, stealth, acrobatics. As a dragoon I was pretty neutral and just did whatever came my way, since it was my first time through, and as a ninja i was pretty evil, stealing, killing, joining bad factions.

This time I made a Nord (female!) "Paladin" with my focus on Heavy armor (goddamn its so slow when i started ), Long Blade, Blocking (first time using a sheild effectively), Restoration, Mysticysm, Speechcraft, and Athletics. I'm also playing the game "To character" by joining the Imperial cult and legion, doing all quests in the most positive manner, sparing everyone's lives, being very religous, etc etc. It's been an awesome change of pace, and it's totally psyching me up for Oblivion