Yeah, I had to rent it twice (several months apart) before I suddenly understood how to play the game. During one of my rentals I got this crazy idea to just go see the Telvanni. I started on my crazy ass journey walking across the entire world. I had some frickin' great adventures. That's when I finally realized the genius of Morrowind. Just go crazy.
I saw a really good guide on GameFAQs a long time ago about stats. They did all the calculations and whatever. All I really remember is that I think you can't max out all your stats but the best way to max out your stats as much as possible is to consciously skill up your skills so you get the maximum amount of multiplier when you level up (which stat the multiplier is given to is determined by which is the stat of the skills you skilled up in order to level - I think you can have a max of x5 multiplier in one level). This is what I remember off the top of my head, but it was a long time ago and I might have some stuff wrong - don't quote me on any of this.
you get the main quest at the very beginning pretty much. you talk to the guard right before you get to go out freely into that first town and he gives you a package to take to some guy named caius. there are a half dozen quests just in that first town, probably even more in which you have to come back to talk to certain people. but the main quest takes you to the city of balmora, which if you didn't figure out can be reached by taking the big spider-like silt striders.
caius is in the far NW corner (i think) of balmora. just sorta go from door to door in the corner farthest from the silt strider until you find his house. he pretty much just tells you to goto one of the guilds in the city and do missions and get your guild rank up. depending on the type of character you made you can pick from like 5 at least different guilds just in balmora. doing the quests will give you at least some sort of structure.
as far as the stats go, i think they cap out at like 5k or something, but some of them like speed you don't want to go past 200 anyways because you'd lost control of yourself going so fast, or break all your weapons every time you swing them from being so strong... but i doubt you'll have to worry about that unless you glitch your stats up. there's guides for pretty much anything you might have questions on.
just wander around and mess with stuff, thats the fun part. you'll start to see more interesting monsters as you level up. make sure to read some guides on character creation, as you'll be stuck with your character for a long time.
Yea I went to balmora and some jerk tried to kill me so I punched that fag in the face and he died. Then they told me to go somewhere else and I have no fucking clue where to go.
Which is my problem, they keep telling me to go places when I have no fucking idea where it is. I'm not used to such an open-ended rpg I guess. Is there a final boss or something? So much freedom with no consequences makes me want to kill everyone I see lols.
there is consequences for killing people, it just depends on who you kill. its usually not a good idea to kill someone because chances are they're connected to some quest in the future. reduce your slaughter to people who attack you first. there is a final boss, it just takes doing the quest i talked about. usually they tell you the location of places to go like east or whatnot from a certain city or key location that you can just find on an already completed map from somewhere. roadsigns help too. the map i had with my strategy guide showed all the possible modes of travel in a big spiderweb. you can basically reach anywhere by mixing a little bit of silt strider riding, mage guild teleporting, sailing, and plain old walking. a good strategy guide would point out the exact position of every quest.
I haven't killed anyone and then saved teh game. I just go on a killing spree and then quit.
I killed the dark alliance or w/e's leader in the darkest cave i've ever seen in a game. Now I have to find some stupid informant..... blehhh quests suck. WHERES JUST THE MINDLESS KILLING.
dark caves + torches or lanterns laying around town = not so dark caves. there are also light spells/potions. when stealing, i only take stuff thats valuable or useful, including lights. if you want mindless killing just look for caves or bad guy hideouts.
Morrowind gets boring fast for me, I can only play for like 30 mins then get bored. :| And GD IT, the fucking design for the temple in this one city is fucking retarded. It's hard to find where I'm trying to go. At least I'm getting a hang on where to find ppl tho.
My two cents: don't even bother too much with the main quest. I easily played more than 200 hours and never even got past the quest that Caius sends you to the thief hideout to get the Dwarven artifact. Instead I became head master dude of every possible guild and the Telvanni and I just killed people in caves and explored and stuff.
If you want mindless killing leave the city and find a cave with people or monsters in it. 95% of the time the people aren't essential to the story and you usually get some nice loot out of it (some of the best weapons and armors in the game are found in random caves).
Bah, the Morag Tong was a let-down for me. It's supposed to be all assassin and shit but for most of the kills I just walked up to the guy and slapped him with my gigantic... err... claymore. Then again, it was one of the last guilds I completed and I had all the pimped out gear and spells and stuff so I probably had it easier than if someone joined the guild at the start of the game.
i don't believe in using guides to get items. i think its a little more adventurous to go by what you've got. that way theres more thrill in finding stuff randomly. using guides to do quests is different.