MORROWIND
(for dummies)
 

GENERAL TIPS2.
How To's and What is?
 

Quick Search.
Earning a Living.
Guilds and Houses.
 

Where do I live?

Deciding where to lay your head at night can be
a tricky business.  Remember what I said about consequences?
Well, here they come.
You can find yourself a nice house somewhere, lots of storage, close 
to major centres with transport and services laid on, kill the inhabitant 
and move right on in.
Trouble is, a lot of those seemingly boring folk now living in your 
favourite abode have this nasty habit of turning out to be needed later on 
when you're trying to accomplish some task.
There's no way to learn about this teeny pitfall, other than through trial 
and error, so you just have to live with your decision.

You don't have to have a house; you can carry your worldly goods 
with you and sleep in hostels etc, but you'll eventually find that you 
have so much stuff that your inventory begins to look like a chain store catalogue 
and finding anything becomes exceedingly tiresome. 
So a house of some kind becomes essential.

If you store your items in crates out in the open, be aware that some 
crates randomly re-generate their contents and in doing so they'll 
eat your hard-won loot.

Best advice would be to find a house where the owner is outside,
somewhere within view.  Break in sneakily and stealthily, pick the lock 
and run away if you have to.  Pay the fine. 
Now you have a house you can use and no one to yell at you when 
you don't pick up your socks! 

Another note:  Each house on XBox is a 'cell'.  Within each cell there's 
a limit to how much stuff you can leave lying around in the open. 
This is why you need a home with crates and chests. 
If you leave a ton of swords on your bed, you're gonna come 
home one night and find that something called an 
Overflow Loot Bag has taken up residence. 
Some people love them, others, who prefer to do their own home 
decorating, hate the things.
Everything you leave in the house will get dumped in the Bag 
the second you close the door behind you.

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Making a Living.

Here is where your own preferences really kick in.
Sure, you're encouraged to learn the art of thievery at the beginning of 
the game and robbing the Balmora crates can net you around 
1000 gold, enough to keep body and soul together. 

However, it is possible to make an honest living with the minimum 
of stealing and killing, should you so wish to.
(Be an alchemist, join Temple etc)
It actually makes the game harder and more complex to play this way, 
but murder is unavoidable at certain stages of any gameplay.

Lucky for you the quest-givers are pretty good at justifying their requests, 
so your conscience can remain fairly clear.

But the good stuff has to be stolen, most of the time. 
Especially if you want money to have enchantments done, to buy 
good weapons and to pay for training.
I'm not including Quest items as part of this.  You learn about them as you 
go along and a lot of the items you're asked to retrieve, you get to keep. 
But they're not the kinds of things you normally 
want to part with, so there has to be another way, right? 

I'm not going to tell you, step-by-step, how to steal things or what to steal. 
I will just quietly point out that there is one thing that I find essential 
in order to turn my turtles into upwardly-mobile yuppies.
It is called the Amulet of Shadows.  and it gives the wearer 
80% chameleon, which means you can sneak into 
and steal from, just about anywhere and anyone.

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What Do I do Now?
 

Okay, you've learned the lingo, scoped out the lay of the land, 
now it's time to join . . . something.  But what?
There are Guilds and factions and Houses. 
You can join 'em all if you want.  Or can you? 
Yes and no. 
You can be a member of Temple, Legion, Mages Guild, 
Fighter's Guild, Thieves Guild etc. etc.
Theoretically, you can join all of the above, except for this 
problematical  little concept known as 'conflict of interest'.
For example, the Thieves Guild and the Fighter's Guild are 
at odds with each other.  The bosses of the Fighter's are 
in league with the Commona Tong, arch-enemies of the Thieves. 
There's a quiet little war going on; watch your step! 

There are also factions in Morrowind. 
You can't join the Dark Brotherhood or the Commona Tong. 
You can however join the abolitionist group, Twin Lamps and you can become
a professional assassin for the Morag Tong; all you have
to do is find them.

There are three Great Houses; Telvanni, Hlaalu and Redoran. 
Once you've joined a House, you can get kicked out, but 
you can not join another, rival House.  Ever. 
So choose wisely.

Telvanni are the mages, the ancient wizards, some of them are 
quietly, gloriously insane, but they have cool mushroom houses!
The Telvanni believe that right prevails; therefore, 
if you have a dispute with another Telvanni and kill them, 
you must have been right!  Handy that! 
Doesn't mean you can run around willy-nilly knocking them off, tho'. 
Telvanni are also wily.
You can join Telvanni in Sadrith Mora.

Redoran are the Honest Joes.  Stalwart and upright . . . mostly.
Doesn't mean they're boring, though.  Their houses are like 
the ones you'll find in Ald Ruhn.  Redorans are warriors and diplomats, but 
there are some shady ones.  You should fit right in.
You can join Redoran Under Skar in Ald Ruhn.

The Hlaalu do 'business'.  They trade, they deal, they get 
the job done, whatever it might be.
They're a memorable bunch of characters, the Hlaalu. 
You'll never forget your first meeting with 'Uncle Crassius'.
Hlallu can be joined in Balmora at the Council House 
on the rich side of town.

Now, once you've made your choice, the House folk give you jobs to do. 
Duties or chores.  By doing these successfully, you can 'advance' 
in rank in your chosen House. 
After a while, someone will mention a 'stronghold'. 
This is your own little piece of Morrowind, your new home, and you 
have more jobs to do in order to get it built.
Now those descriptions I gave about the various house types 
start to make sense, eh?
Check your map.
Redoran will build for you at Bal Isra, north of Ald Ruhn.  Hlaalu is 
on the Odai Plateau, downriver from Balmora and the Telvanni stronghold
is charmingly located at Urvith's Grave, out in the middle of the Ashlands, 
west of Sadrith Mora, on the mainland.

Most of the tasks and quests you're given in House and Guild are level-specific. 
That's me-speak for you get the easy stuff first to suit your low level 
and it gets harder as you go along. 
If you find a task too difficult to do, leave it.  Go away, have a minor 
adventure elsewhere, learn new skills, level-up, come back and try again. 
The characters don't care how long it takes you to accomplish something, 
they just want a successful result . . . eventually.
 
 
 

You have some cash, information about what you can do 
and somewhere to live.
Now it's time we moved on to those general tips known as 
'Commonly Asked Questions',  maybe even a few that are not 
so commonly asked, but handy to know anyway....

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