I've tried many times in the past to start Daggerfall. Each time failed. My character would be weak, I would get an insane quest and get stranded in a dungeon. I just need general help. What character do you feel is best for a new player to Daggerfall to start out with is? What guilds are easy/hard? Any tips for dungeon diving so that I will be able to survive the crawl? What is your control scheme? I try to use WASD, but this makes some keys difficult to access.

Basically: I am new to Daggerfall, and I need tips.

- For a first character, I'd go with the good ol' Warrior of Skyrim. Magic is more difficult than Morrowind (More spells, less game manual information) and is waaaay more developped than Oblivion's basic magic system.

- Refuse quests if you think they will be hard. The world is so huge that it won't affect your reputation permanently. Don't accept a certain quest where someone wants you to go fetch a magical scroll... it's a VERY bad idea for a starter characters. (

- If you want to join a guild, I'd go with the Fighter's Guild. They only have combat-oriented missions and the first missions will help you get the basics of combat.

- When dungeon diving, make yourself a save at the entrance and a save only for dungeon crawling. So if you are stuck because you are lost, or because of a game breaking bug, you can revert to your backups. And sometimes in dungeons, you WILL need to cheat by using a neat cheat that teleports your character to the last steps he made. (You need to use alt-F11, but I'm not sure. Somebody correct me on this?) So if you pass through a wall and you fall in the darkness, use the code to get back to your last position.

- Don't forget to use the 3D view of your dungeon map, it's very helpful.

- My control scheme is a mix between Oblivion and Morrowind. I use the Mouse to turn and view my environment, I move with WASD (Not that complicated). I activate with spacebar and jump with E. I sheathe my weapon with F, sneak with CTRL, access my map with TAB, run with SHIFT, etc.

- For better immersion, if you use the mouse view, turn off the HUD at the bottom in the options, it only shows you your health, magicka and fatigue.

- If you can, take a look on the UESP in the Holydays section and time your travels with the holyday dates. Sometimes you can get free cure disease or free inns.

- Avoid the city of Daggerfall at night... or die trying.

- Accepting quests from merchants and inn keepers is a good way to make quick money. But watch out, some of those quest givers can be tricky men. Read between their dialogue lines..

- If you want free inns, join a Knight Order. But their missions are a bit more difficult than the Fighters Guild.

- Another way to do quick money is to visit the royal families, many of them offer "Fed Ex" quests.

- Last tip. SAVE!!! The game is really buggy! And make a few backups too, just in case the game crashes while saving..

Rest well this night, for tomorrow you'll sail for the kingdom, of Daggerfall. (THE line I'll forever remember. )

bretons are a great beginner's class, as they have good magic defense.

a knight order is a great way to build reputation. doesn't pay with quests, but you get armor at promotions, and free inn stays. highest rank grants you a free house inn a city.

the fighter's guild is good for early money and cheap services. quests are simple enough at first.

temples are great for easy access to some of the more arcane services without being proficient in magic.

The easiest character will be a battlemage Breton type.

Skills would be:
Longsword
Destruction
Mysticism

Alteration
Dodge
Critical Strike

Restoration
Etiquette
Medical
Mercantile
Climbing
Swimming

Those last few don't matter as much, you can pick what you like there. Get the increased magery x3 and restrict yourself from using all weapon types you don't have in your skill list.

Join the Fighter's Guild for quick money, cheaper repairs (won't need repairs much until you get good equipment), training, and free beds (you can sleep from anywhere in the building). Do the mages guild next once you have a mostly steel suit of armor. Do a few quests where you get magical items (get them identified too) so they can help you do harder quests and carry more loot. Make sure you get a cart early on. Drop a recall anchor IN the guildhall when you do a quests if you aren't the type who drops stuff in the cart all the time. At the beginning you should probably put everything in the cart, but later on you should only take the highest quality stuff. Beware the teleporting walls and teleporting floating skulls! They will screw with you early on and get you lost as hell. Join a knightly guild once you are prepared for some harder quests. They don't directly pay better, but you usually find higher quality gear in the places they send you through and the prestige is nice.

Get the plan of Castle Necromohagan tattooed on your arm. Stendaar is a good temple to join, but they don't have many temples in the Daggerfall province, I think Gothgate has a good one. Also know that not all guildhalls are the same or have things of the same value. Once you get a high enough level in the Mages guild to buy magical items, travel to every mages guild you can find and see if they have quality stuff to buy. Mages guilds will sell quality enchanted daedric armor to you for a good price earlier than you can regularly find it in the game. Don't be afraid to create your own spells either.

You will need slowfall and levitate if you are going to poke around in the void (cast slowfall before you cast levitate if you are already falling or you will take falling damage). Quests for nobles in the castles are usually good paying, hit them up for work too.

Definitely follow this advice. I made the mistake of getting it on my back, and there isn't a mirror in my office.

Clever!

STOP[/b[b]]!

This is representative of the worst way to give advice about DF that I have encountered in years. Everything is scatter-shot, subjective and personally biased.
Here are three quick examples.
1. What makes Stendar a good temple to join? No explanation is given, and a good reason to avoid it is given.
2. What Mage's guild quest? There are many of them.
3. Dropping a teleport anchor inside a Mage's guild is a horrible idea. Recalling to the inside of a Mage's guild traps the character there. :thumbsdown:

on the note of stendarr's temple, did the resurrection ever work?

Here are some basics that will most likely give you plenty of choice and allow you to experiment:

-Make a character that knows how to cast spells and is able to use a weapon. Any type will do.

-Make sacrifices in terms of weaknesses and forbidden material types so that your character is able to level up fast enough.

-Make increasing agility, speed, intelligence, and endurance priorities.

-Join a guild to gain access to training and resources and to establish a reputation.

-Destruction, restoration, medical, dodging, and critical strike are skills that you should consider adding to the higher tiers of your character's capabilities.

This is a much better way to offer advice, well done CrossL.

I personally think that destruction and medical are very easy self-train skills, and are best left as secondary skills. But that depends upon one's style of play, and for beginners may be more of a priority.

Stop as in go back and unpost?

Most advice is. Take it or leave it.

That was said mostly to keep him away from Kynareth if he was going temple, I was going to let him find out if he wanted to about the temples. If he blindly follows my advice (Orzorn is naturally suspicious of me ) he won't be in a bad temple for his character type.

Why would I tell him which quests to do?

There was only one time I teleported into a guild and got stuck. I teleported while riding my horse through the countryside. Every time I have teleported to a mages guild while not on a horse, I have had a 100% success rate. I have done this thousands of times over the last decade plus of playing this game on many machines. Can you tell me of any conditions that would have made this bug happen to you?

I haven't seen it, but the next time I play the game I will get high ranked and get myself killed over and over until it does.

Magic in TES games is the kind of thing that if you aren't all that good with it to start it is difficult to raise in that being better at it lets you cast the spell more times with less a chance of failure. I find leveling magic skills of any kind from the minor skill category to be like pushing a chain uphill after a certain point because of how finite magic is in the game.

I personally think that destruction and medical are very easy self-train skills

Agree on destruction (but only if you use the exploit), but medical...I find that to be very slow to train. I will go so far as to say I would never choose that as a levelling skill unless I was trying to make a challenging character.

My best advice for the uninitiated is to use the character generator to make as physically tough a character as you can, but give him weaknesses that won't really hurt too much. The problem, however, with that vague advice is that one's play style will dictate what weaknesses are crippling and which aren't a big deal. For my part, phobias are things that do not cause undue problems. Also, limiting weapon types, limiting armor types, and limiting metal types are a good weaknesses as long as you don't mind not using those weapons/armor/metals.

Making a character without magicka is IMO a bad idea, but only because you'd be missing out on a really neat part of the game. They're definitely playable, though.

If the character generator is too difficult to understand, making a battlemage or a spellsword is a good idea. High Elves, Redguards, Nords, and Bretons are all good starter races.

Shades,
The stop was a remnant of double-quoting the post, then not editing everything out. I also mis-read what you wrote about the mage's guild; I had it my mind that you wrote do "the" mage's guild quest, sorry. I don't usually worry about specific temple benefits, the benefits common to all are fine with me, making Kynarth just fine.

And I always have ended up stuck inside if I teleport into a mage's guild, or any building that can be locked against me. This may have been a foible of the computers that I have used, but others have reported the same issue.

Doc.,
Medical gets checked every time that you rest. That has always seemed enough for me.

I played a Dark Elf, Assassin custom class. I can say that Critical Strike is/was a life saver. Like someone else stated, don't cruise around DF at night. The ghosts will get you. If you are starting out and camp outside the city, typically you can get a nightblade to attack and then raid the body for loot. Climbing is a cool skill...or maybe it's just that I miss it. If you join the mages guild, in DF, you will get an early quest to stop some thieves. Save, rest until midnight and you will see them sneaking into the guild. There are usually three of them, hit em hard and fast. They also, usually, have some good loot, worth some money. Just don't run out of the mages guild until sun up. Always check the stores. You never know when they will have something sweet. Dai=Katana's were my choice weapon. In terms of how to play, Keyboard to move, mouse to swing, basically is how I played. It felt the most natural to me. Magic is underpowered and a pain in the neck. Hard steel worked much better for me personally. Hope this helps. BTW, whatever you do, play through the MQ and DO NOT read any spoilers. To this day, I still feel it's the best MQ of any game I've ever played. Turns, political intrigue, folks using you, multiple endings....it's just an awesome story to go through, especially if you don't know what's going to happen next.

I'd think the easiest class would be a custom spellsword with access to heavy armor (as for the most part, only plate can be enchanted and provide you with veeeery nifty bonuses). Shun materials that you won't find much anyway : orcish and less markedly adamantine tend to be a lot less common than others. Iron could be a good choice too for a plate armor bearer as it's quickly outclassed by steel and better but I wonder if I didn't get trouble equiping some relatively useful items because of that.

Melee weapons are the easiest way to deal as much damage as needed, but magical healing and utilitarian spells are a blast. I always found bows to be pretty non durable and the arrows a bother to carry around given just how many fights you'll need to have to explore a typical dungeon.

Diseases can be pretty nasty, once you've tasted them a bit you may want to haul around a weak cure spell to recast until successful in case you catch something ugly too far from civilization.

You'll want to access the Mage's Guild Spell & Item Makers someday, so pay interest to some skills of choice that they dig, but be sure to stick to your own sweet spot between just making things easier and sheer brokenness, when using them (yeaaaah, near-perma sunscreen for a vampire character lol).