Hi I just restarted Morrowind on PC ( I had tried to play it a few times on my xbox and gave up)

One of the main reasons I quit was every time I got busted for what ever reason they took everything away that I had stolen etc including diamonds since that was part of a quest.


This time I am afraid to take anything but I am having a hard time with money I need to know if say containers etc around Balmora for instance are safe to loot or how do you know if your stealing or if it's open game?

Is there maybe a mod to fix this so that only stolen items at the time are taken or will they always just take everything you have ever taken?

Thanks

Unfortunately, if you take one item it forever marks all of those items as stolen

All the containers in the streets of Balmora are perfectly safe. No Ownership on them.
This is not the same in other cities, so beware.

Follow this rule: If it's inside a house or someone is nearby, then it belongs to someone.

It is really annoying how the stolen items function, but it's also quite easy to never have a Bounty, and therefore the guards have no reason to search your pockets.

There is no mod or patch to fix the way stolen items get flagged. It's in the code, and not even the Code Patch has been able to find a way to fix it yet.

if you save your game before going on a pilfering spree then if you accidentally get a bounty on your head you can always restore your game back to the point it was beforehand. Alternatively, restrict your looting to caves,dungeons,ruins and corpses . in other words respect the property of the good people and do as you wish with the property of the bad which may be viewed as legitimate plunder.