Strategy Guide Wiki - The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

When the game manual tells you that you can do just about anything you want to do in this game, it wasn't lying. Of course, quite a few things you might already be thinking about happen to be illegal in the world of Morrowind, and are naturally punishable by law. This section is dedicated to exploring that intricacies of that law, which is just another way of saying that I'm going to help you break it.

When dealing with the law in this game, there is primarily one thing to keep in mind about it: everyone else besides you in this game is very, very stupid. A little common sense will allow even the most brazen and blatant criminals to walk amongst the masses with barely as much as a slap on the wrist. And here you probably thought it was amazing when OJ got away with killing those two people.

Morrowind's legal system is fairly simple. Every character has a bounty, or a current price on his or her head. Naturally, this value is usually zero. Whenever you do something illegal and someone reports you for it (you'll know when this happens as the game will inform you of it), this number will rise by a number proportional to the crime comitted. If your crime was witnessed by a law enforcement official, he or she will run towards in an attempt to confront you about it. Be sure to let them talk to you before wandering too far off, because they tend to get extra nasty if you leave and then come back.

When you speak with any manner of law enforcement with a bounty on your head, you will be instructed to pay that bounty, go to jail, or resist arrest and fight it out. Fighting usually isn't a good idea, since it just makes your bounty go up even more, and most guards can kick your ass. Dealing with your bounty is kinda important, because once it reaches a certain point, guards stop politely asking you to pay your fine and start trying to just fucking kill you instead. In other words, it works a lot like the legal system in our world.

This leaves us with the options of paying your fine or doing jail time. In either event, compensation will be taken from you in addition to your fine. Compensation is just another way of saying that anything you're carrying that happens to be stolen (in my case, just about everything I own) will be taken from you. This is obviously a very unpleasant thing to have happen, but it is also a very avoidable event, as well. For while stolen objects will be removed from your inventory, nobody bothers to check that huge pile of stolen stuff at your feet that you dropped just before you were arrested. Again like the real world, law enforcement individuals are often a lot nicer to you if you strip naked when they approach- especially if you happen to be female and sexy.

Since the fine is rarely a significant amount of money, you're best off just stripping naked and paying off the fine whenever faced with dealing with the law. In the unfortunate event that you are inable to pay your fine, your only remaining option is to go to jail. Doing time is especially unpleasant in this game, mainly because each day spent in jail will lower your skill level in a random skill by 1. It also doesn't help that once they kick your ass out of jail, the law is never nice enough to give you a ride back to wherever it was that you were arrested in the first place. To avoid such a situation, try to always have at least a minimal amount of gold (at least 40 drakes) on hand.

Of course, when comitting crimes, the golden rule still applies. And in case you forgot it, the golden rule is "don't get caught in the first place". Unless you need to kill someone in plain sight or steal something under the watchful eye of a city guard, this actually normally isn't much of a problem. Most people, when attacked or stolen from, stupidly try to fight you (and will usually lose) rather than report you. There are still those who will, however. Shops, guilds, and temples, specifically, are really keen about reporting your ass for whatever crimes you feel like comitting in their presence, so try to avoid that whenever possible. Random NPC #368, however, usually won't give you too much shit when you decide to walk into his house, steal all of his valuables, and then kill him.

Of course, this raises the question of the hour, "what in this game can I get in trouble for doing?" Well, I'm glad you asked. Nine times out of ten, it should be pretty obvious that randomly assaulting people in the middle of the street and stuffing your pockets with other peoples' valuables is probably illegal. It doesn't take a fuckin' rocket scientist to figure this shit out. There are a few crimes, however, which aren't as obvious. As you might expect, unlocking any locked door or container is illegal, though the fine assessed is minimal and it's curiously perfectly legal to, say, walk right on inside a house after paying the fine levied by breaking the lock on the front door. The other lesser-known crime is sleeping in someone else's bed, which is a nearly impossible crime to be caught doing in the first place. This is mainly because as long as you can lie down without anybody seeing you, you don't have to worry about someone noticing a strange forienger taking a 36-hour nap in their bed.

As far as fines go, I've said several times already that the majority of them are ludicrously minimal. Don't expect to pay more than 40 gold for such petty crimes as breaking and entering, hijacking someone else's bed, or murder. There are two biggies that you should watch out for, however. The first is, curiously enough, theft. Should you be caught stealing, your fine will be proportional to the value of the object you were caught stealing. An object with any remote level of value whatsoever will most likely run you a bigger fine than a mere 40 gold, and a Dreugh Shield is probably enough to send you into death warrant territory. The other, more obvious way to rack up lots of fines is to go around killing lots of guards.


Last Update: December 11, 2005	Contributors: BTB