I installed Daggerfall with great success, and I want to make a custom character. Now, I want to be a pure mage, so my primary and main skills are all the magic-based ones.

Aside from that, I have no idea what would be a good character setup. What magic-skills would be better to have as primary ones? I would want to have a weapon as backup, but only for that. What kind of weapon would you reccomend? Also, what usefull minor skills should I choose, and what advantages/disadvantages would be worth it?

Well.

Someone else will give you better advice im sure, but for starters, Im sure you will need 3x int advantage.

I'd definitely go with Restoration and Destruction as two of the primaries. The third I'm not so sure. Alteration (for Shield) would be my pick, but the other three have their uses too.

Blunt for your weapon choice. It's got staffs (the typical mage weapon) and is the only weapon type to do normal damage against undead. Skeleton Warriors in particular will give you trouble in the beginning, so blunt weapons will come in handy when you square off against them. However, if you're planning on using ranged spells, you might want to go with archery to complement your attacks. Arrows get kinda cumbersome, but at least you can recycle them over and over again from fallen targets. It might just be me, but bows seem to break pretty quickly.

For minor skills, I'd throw Dodging in there since it will help you live longer, Mercantile for better prices, Medical for a little boost in mana regen, Stealth to help you get the first hit in, your weapon type, and Running for a quick leveler. Critical Strike could be thrown in somewhere if you want, but it would be very situational for you.

Advantages: 3x Magery for sure, and I'd highly recommend Spell Absorption (just watch out for mana overload). Rapid Healing if you want quicker mana regen. Expertise in your weapon of choice and immunties are also options.

Disadvantages: Critical Weakness to Poison since it's pretty rare and you should have a Cure Poison spell if you do get poisoned. Critical Weakness to Disease and lower resistance to disease in your bio if you feel like exploiting the game. If not, just leave out the answer in the bio or select low tolerance to disease since you should have a Cure Disease spell. It could get pretty annoying, though, so this one's pretty iffy. Phobias if you really want to handicap your melee capabilities and get killed quicker. Fill out the rest of your list with shield types and armor types that you won't use. Which armor types depend how difficult you want the game to be.

Hope that helps a bit!

Is hand-to-hand actually competent in this game? For example, can it do normal damage against undead and high level creatures, does it damage only fatigue, etc.

Here's my standard character layout:

Primary skills

Destruction
Restoration
Critical Strike

Major skills

Mysticism
Thaumaturgy
Weapon

Minor skills

Alteration
anything else that looks fun x 5 (Rythe has some great suggestions, although I'm not exactly sure that medical affects mana regeneration)



If you choose to play a High Elf you can select "Critical Weakness to Paralysis" as a disadvantage with no consequences, since your race is constitutionally immune to paralysis. If you're playing a mage, you might want to ban Plate and Chain as armor types. Banning silver as a material has for some reason a very large effect on the difficulty dagger with very little in the way of in-game consequences, since silver is rare and even elven is a better material. I often ban mithril as well because it's redundant and you can find ebony and orcish very shortly after it becomes available.

If you select Rapid Healing (recommended) or Spell Absorption (highly recommended), take them "in darkness." "In darkness" = inside as well as "at night". Your character will do virtually all his/her adventuring underground, and you almost never need these abilities when you're wandering about town during the day.

There's a glitch in the chargen screen that's a bit of an exploit, but I'll let that be for now. Ask if you're curious.



Rio:

Hand to hand works great in this game and can really be used. You can also kick and, if you jump and then kick, you can even execute flying leap kicks, which are like, totally sweet! It does regular damage, not fatigue damage, and you can strike any creature regardless of their resistances. As your skill in hand-to-hand increases, you can deal out damage easily equivalent to weapons at the same level. In addition, and this a very nice trick, you can in fact go around with a bow in one hand, and simply shift from hand to hand as needed, thus eliminated the wait time which usually accompanies weapon-switching.

P.S: Alway remember: Ninjas are mammals.

Ah, thanks. What is that exploit? I wouldn't do it (exploits made me lose interest in Morrowind), but I'm curious.

When you're setting up your eight stats, jack them all up to 75 and then hit the u key. It sets the number of points to be distributed to zero. Instant 200 free stat points! Inversely, lower all your stats to 10 and press u for a super weak character.

And Svin is probably right about Medical. I just assumed it affected all three bars. :shrug:

In addition, there's a glitch in the game engine, such that before checking to see if you've been poisoned, paralyzed, or infected with a disease, the game checks to see if you've failed your magic resistance roll. What this means in practice is that you can select immunity to magic and your character will also be immune to disease, poison, and paralysis -- even you select critical weakness to these effects as disadvantages. So: immunity magic combined with critical weakness to disease, poison, and paralysis will bury the difficulty dagger at chargen with virtually no cost to your character. It allows you to take a whole range of other advantages, plus a righteous hit point bonus, and still play "normal" difficulty.

Oh I see. I already created a character (4 times, lol) and finally got past the dungeon. For first impressions, combat seems to be like in Morrowind. The place is monsterously huge. The city of Daggerfall actually seems big enough to be a city (or a small town, but definitely more than a few houses). I went on a short crime spree just to see what would happen and I got my ears, well you know, by the constant shouting of the guards. Then I sold my dungeon loot and bought a weapon. Once again, I tried going on a crime spree by first trying to kill a merchant, and then by stealing his stuff. I failed and as I tried to run, I got a CTD.