[DinkumThinkum]

As Aelia Jusa said, the journal improvements are really nice: that, by itself, makes Tribunal and/or Bloodmoon worth installing immediately.

Check the fold-up instruction card with the expansions; I vaguely remember one or two other (minor) new features that were added with Tribunal (won't swear to it, since it's been a while since I've played). After installing the expansions and the latest patch, I'd also check the updated readme in your Morrowind directory for new features and bug fixes.

The expansions and the post-expansion patches also fix some bugs in the original game.

As others have said, you don't have to do anything with the Tribunal or Bloodmoon areas until you're ready from them. The surprises that show up after you install Tribunal are easy enough to bring to a halt: follow the instructions in your journal after the first surprise.

Notes:

1. Install the Tribunal expansion before installing Bloodmoon. If you install Bloodmoon first, you'll need to reinstall it after installing Tribunal.

2. After you install one (or both) expansions, get the patch from the download page on Bethesda's web site. Each patch includes all the preceding patches, but read the patch descriptions carefully, since the correct patch depends on which expansions and which game version you have installed.

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Also, if you use mods, you've probably already notice that a large number of them require Tribunal and/or Bloodmoon. The expansions add a lot of very useful script functions that weren't in the original game, and they make a lot of things possible for mods that can't be done without the expansions.