So it kinda annoys me when people toss out exaggerated remarks about Daggerfall. Things like "the game world is the size of Great Britain!" and "it would take you 2 weeks real time to walk from one end of the map to the other!" I prefer to have some real numbers about the game.

Thankfully, our dear Zingar Baltus took care of that game-world-size issue, cleverly calculating the game map to be about 127,000 km² (which is more like the size of Mississippi, and almost the size of England). It would still be interesting to know what portion of that area is actually landmass as opposed to sea, but I'm not complaining. I myself took care of the two-week-trek issue, and calculated that it would take less about 25 hours to run across the map diagonally (still, that's quite a long time!).

And now, I'd like to present some numbers concerning the locations in the game. I spent a few hours on the DF Cartographer, and have this to show for it:

Dungeons: 3450
Graveyards: 744
Homes: 4345
Taverns: 1614
Temples: 1532
Towns: 3443
TOTAL: 15158 locations in the game.

Over 15000 locations! Even if you narrow it to just towns and dungeons, which concern most players, you still have almost 7000 locations among the 44 kingdoms of the bay. http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y217/Jormungandr83/DFLocs.png. I just think that's pretty awesome.

Finally indeed. Thanks!


I've even heard people say it was twice the size of Great Britain. :hehe:

Our world is really big, if you compare it.

Hmm, maybe it would be nice to go through and determine how many small/medium/large dungeons there are for each kingdom. If there was a region with a higher percentage of smaller dungeons, that would be a good place for new players or those who are intimidated by the larger labyrinths. DF Cartographer has towns, temples, and houses divided by size; dungeons, however, are classified as labyrinth/keep/ruins, and I'm not sure if that has anything to do with size. Have to see, I guess.


Yea, not sure where you're going with that.

I wonder just how many locations have never been visited before.

Hah, a lot I would guess. There are a number of regions I've never really set foot in. Especially because, outside the main storyline, quests never send you outside the original kingdom. There are a few characters I've had, especially newer ones, that I try to make a point of going to new kingdoms and trying to stay away from the more popular locales. Just to make sure I'm going somewhere new.

He means that God's computer must have one hell of a processor installed.

Weren't most of those remarks created by Bethesda and their gaming press?

Good numbers, me likey.

well it might be kinda easy to determine the amount of small, medium, and large duengeons but it would require you to step into each deugeon at least once from tehre just record how big the minimap is to determine size htough it would be a massive undertakement by even a large group of ppl

Each dungeon is arranged using RDB blocks on a 2D grid. While each dungeon block is a variable width*height in world units, we can at least get a fast approximation of the total dimensions of all the dungeons by adding their block dimensions together. I wrote a small program using DFConnect to do just that. The results are:

Total number of regions: 62Total number of dungeons in all regions: 4232Total dungeon blocks wide: 16157Total dungeon blocks high: 16366Press any key to continue . . .

Note the discrepancy with Jormungandr's dungeon count - this is because DF Cartographer doesn't count dungeons in non-dungeon locations (such as Daggerfall city and Wayrest city). My newer library counts these dungeons as well.

With a bit of effort, it would be possible to completely span out the dungeon grid in world units, but then we get into a problem of volume. Two rooms may be the same length and depth, but have different ceiling heights. Complex features like staircases would reduce the interior volume accordingly. I'm not sure my sanity (or math skills) would be up to determining the total interior volume of all dungeons. It would be theoretically possible however, and not that huge an undertaking for someone with the right skill set.

Indeed. I recall some press from Bethesda saying they tested the two-weeks thing and that Daggerfall was roughly twice the size of Great Britain. This makes me wonder if they were either using different metrics or if some of these claims fit an older build of the game.

The huge number of dungeons has always pleased me. I just don't like doing crypts or reading quest dialogues for an hour just to find a new one. Morrowind and Oblivion do that part of the gameplay right. Finding a dungeon while wandering is awesome.

Hah, well, I wasn't so much looking for the total dungeon area for the game, but just the number of dungeons of certain size (eg, how many 1-2 block dungeons in kingdom X, how many 3-4 block dungeons, etc.)

Can you tell me if the DFC dungeon categories (ruins, keeps, labyrinths) are based on size (# blocks) ?

When I want to find a dungeon, I travel on the wilderness... And *BAM*, new dungeon.

That's especially true for the more crowded provinces, like Sentinel or Daggerfall.

Then you should count yourself exceptionally lucky. With DaggerXL, despite the fact that the view distance is much longer, there's currently a free levitation spell, and the "horse" travel speed works while flying, I still find it an utter pain to stumble across dungeon locations. If it's hard to stumble across dungeon locations while performing the mystical equivalent of flying a helicopter on a reasonably clear day, I can't imagine having better luck on the ground at slow speed in perpetual fog.

Buy a horse. It helps.

I made some experiments, and I can usually cross half of Sentinel in one day of game time.

DFC (Dungeon Fried Chicken, yum! ) uses the "location type" byte that is set for each location in MAPS.BSA. This byte tells us the category a location falls into and what colour to use for its dot on the world map. A full list of these location types can be found http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:Location_types.

Some locations, (such as Daggerfall city with a "city type" of 0xa0) also contain a dungeon map. Alas, DFC isn't smart enough to enumerate these dungeons and doesn't list them. It wasn't until later that I worked out how to pair dungeons and locations correctly, regardless of location type. I will be releasing a tool soon to explore locations (pretty much DF Scout with another name) that will be more useful than DFC.

I don't think you can tell by the name. Awhile back I played a game in which I did a whole bunch of dungeon crawling in the Wroth. mts. I visited or found maps to 183 dungeons that started with the word "Ruins". Of those I explored I noted down the size (most of the time). My results:
Small: 26
Medium: 30
Large: 29

Glancing through some other categories (i.e. Towers, Castles, Strongholds, etc.) I see approx. the same distribution, with 1 exception. Those dungeons with a single name (e.g. Yehoth, Azvor) were either small or large, there weren't any medium. (5 small, 7 large)

So you could walk diagonally across Mississippi in 25 hours Somethings not right here...

HAH! I wonder what the real-world equivalent of 100 SPD and 100 Running skill are. Unless my math is way off, the 25hrs to run across the map is about 14 mph running speed. That's faster than the best time for the Boston Marathon.

Not counting that your horse sprints all the time like in a race. It would be exhausted well before you have gone past 50ft.

Most traveling would be done at a slow, cautious pace.