I got Daggerfall working with Dosbox yesterday but I'm encountering some problems regarding saving and loading. I started a game yesterday, but after I tried saving for a second or third time after going though the saving process once before, the game appeared to freeze. On the save screen, it tells you to enter a save name. I kept it the same (I named it 1), and then either pressed enter or clicked on the "Save" icon. A second cursor came up, with the first one stuck on the save icon, and the second one able to move around. I tried clicking on the text box saying to name the file several times, and on the save icon, but nothing worked. It seemed frozen or something. So used CTRL F10 to unlock the mouse and exited Dosbox. I then restarted, thinking I could just reload my first save file. I got to the load screen, clicked the save file and the "load" button. A text box reading "You drop to the ground, completely exhausted. You awaken one hour later" appeared. I waited a couple seconds, thinking it was loading. But after several seconds, nothing happened. I tried clicking the textbox, the "load" icon, several times, to no avail.

So I just decided to create a new character. Things seemed to be working well with the saves and loading, until the latest time I tried to save a few minutes ago. It got stuck on the save screen again and I couldn't continue playing. I quit dosbox then restarted it and the same thing as before happened. The text box came up, but the file wouldn't load. So now I can't play at all unless I create a new character, and I'll very likely experience these problems again soon and never get to even get out of Privateer's Hold.

This is rather frustrating. I went through all the trouble of getting the game to work on DOSbox, but now I've got this problem. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Have you got the http://www.uesp.net/dagger/files/dagfiles.shtml#official patch installed? The patch fixes a lot of Daggerfall problems.

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yes. I found an earlier thread about this topic, so I'll see if it will answer my questions.

The "fall to the ground exhausted" message is generated when you try to load a corrupt save. I get 'em too.

Daggerfall has some bugs. Try NOT to save over your last, good save (one that let you save then returned you to the game world). When you try to save over the good one, if the game gets corrupted you lose them both. At the very least alternate between two saves. That way you always have a good one to go back to.

As long as you have one working save (one that doesn't bring up the exhausted message), you can keep playing without starting a new character.

You get six save slots. I'd suggest using them all!

(Also, just cuz I *really* don't like starting over), from time to time (new dungeon? major accomplishment?) I exit Daggerfall completely and save all the saves in a backup folder or as a zip file. That way I can always copy save 3 or whatever back over the one in the "live" folder. It may be paranoid, but it keeps me playing after all these years!)

Where do you access the save files in your game folder? There are folders that say SAVE [number], but they're empty.

The folders are each one of the save game slots. When you look at the save/load screen, they're arranged like this:

[Save 0] [Save 3]
[Save 1] [Save 4]
[Save 2] [Save 5]

If they're empty you either haven't saved anything in that spot yet or you tried, but the save didn't work and is corrupt.

It looks like you'll have to start all over again, which svcks.

When you do, **as soon as the intro is over and you can save a game** save it one of the six spots and name it "Start" Then, a couple minutes later after you kill the first rat or leave the first room or whenever you want, SAVE AGAIN but use one of the other save places. You can call it 1 or Temp or whatever you want.

I usually keep using about four of the slots when I'm in a dungeon. I call them things like "Good" (after I rest and have all my HP back), Scary, Hurting, stuff like that. I hate replaying, so I try to save before I do something that I might not want or like to do, such as take an elevator or go for a swim. I don't like being stuck without a save that will get me back to someplace I'm familiar or comfortable with.

After you make two or three saves IN DIFFERENT SLOTS, you can exit to DOS and inspect the contents of the Save folders. They should have something in them. Those folders, and not what's in them, are what I backup.

That's odd. I usually save at two times. One is when I get back from a quest and have sold all my loot and deposited the gold in the bank, and possibly dropped off cool items at my house/boat. The second is after accepting a quest and arriving at the quest dungeon. I sometimes play an hour before saving but they've always been there.

If you're in Vista, make sure DOSBox is running with admin privileges or it might not have enough access to save to the directory.

I started over and have been alternating saves and so far have not encountered any problems with saving or loading. I haven't been able to get fixsave to work yet. I tried renaming the path in the z.conf but vista won't let me save the file after I do that. Hopefully I won't need to use fixsave and alternating saves will be enough, otherwise I have to find out a way to get fixsave to work. Thanks to all who replied so far, it's been helpful.