And even though there were rare things like that in Daggerfall, there were so very many different rare finds that it kept things interesting. You really never knew just what weird thing you'd uncover next. It was great fun.

Speaking of fun, one of the most entertaining things I found in Daggerfall was simply walking up to a walled city at night and having the gates closed so that you were stuck huddling outside, hoping that the ghoulies didn't swarm you. (Well, unless you just used one of the many skill/spell options to get yourself inside where it was safe.) That was greatly entertaining, in an almost evil sort of way. Too bad no other TES had similarly sticky predicaments.

Daggerfall keeps me guessing. I'm never quite sure if I'm going to get a crazy twist or another cookie cutter. Love it. With as huge as it is and as many places to be and cities to settle, it would be a lot easier to play through again and again. Randomization also makes sure I never am a hero without a job. Daggerfall is pretty darned cool. I haven't played Arena. I would like to. I follow the rule though. Morrowind is my first and favorite. Seems like going backwards people are always okay, but going forwards people get disappointed.

Hear, hear! Motion seconded, ratified & carried forward.. Now, who TF we gonna conscript into doing it, dammit? *lol* I'd pay for a licensed copy.

I remember my Thief arriving at Daggerfall with the gates shut. She was fairly low-levelled at the time. I tried to fast travel away but there were enemies nearb. I heard "VENGEAAAAAAANCE! and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

Rather than be left for dead, I tried several times to climb the walls, to no avail. I nearly had a heart attack when one of the ghosts hit me from behind. I destroyed him (just barely) and then began to scale the walls once more as Wraiths closed in on my position. Good fun. I laughed when I reached the safety of the city walls. Then I used the "jump towards a slope" exploit to fly roof-to-roof until I reached a tavern. It was like something out of a movie. And I still do that, and just love it.

Complexity doesn't always correspond with user friendliness.

True...but it's still the way to bet. And in this case the bet is won (don't know about the NES).

You really have to be hard-core to get into DF.

Okay, I'm running Daggerfall now.

Maybe it's just my computer or something, but combat is impossible. The swinging is so very inaccurate. And I'll end up being killed by a rat or a bat because I can't aim down or up. Are you really expected to be able to fight every monster in the first dungeon? The second enemy you encounter is immune to all attacks.

I really want to enjoy this game, but there's so many irritating things going on with the gameplay.

That was always the most fascinating about Daggerfall, no one told you what to do and where to go, it was like being totally free in your decisions!
And for your aiming problems: change from cursor to view based movement. You can find the options under "control->mouse"

i liked arena better than daggerfall, maybe because arena was a better experience. daggerfall has guilds with quests, a more involved storyline, larger dungeons, and better character progression, but is essentially the exact same play as arena.

The two kind of contradict one another...

It depends on your character. You can easily create a character that can kill every creature in the first dungeon, but others might have difficulty. If you didn't choose to receive an ebony dagger or a silver staff from the Emperor when you answered your career questions during character creation, then you won't be able to attack the imp unless you get lucky and find a silver or elven weapon in a treasure pile or on a monster (probably won't happen unless you have a very high luck score). Today I decided I was tired of switching from Mac OS X to Windows XP every time I wanted to play Daggerfall, so I installed Daggerfall on OS X using the Boxer program, and the first thing I did when I finished installing it was to start it up and create a new character, a Nord bard. This character started with an elven dagger so he was able to attack the imps, but it was always a close fight because it only took a few of their spells to bring him within inches of death. Even after advancing to level two and killing every other creature in the dungeon, I found that I could not kill the three skeleton warriors in Privateer's Hold with this character, so I had to just forget about them and leave the dungeon without killing them. Other characters I've played have had no problems dispatching the skeleton warriors.

I think that's one of the truly great things about Daggerfall, that it can be so unforgiving in terms of difficulty. Heh, I remember the very first time I went through Privateer's Hold with my first character, a Breton healer. I was so proud of myself when I first fought my way out of Privateer's Hold and came out of the dungeon to greet the open sky above. Then I tried traveling to Daggerfall, but something strange happened. For some reason, I would drop dead every single time I attempted to make the trip. At first, I figured it must have been some kind of bizarre bug. What the hell is going on here, I thought. It took me some minutes to find out that my character had contracted the plague from one of the rats in the dungeon, and only had a few days to live. There were no towns within a few days' distance of Privateer's Hold with a Temple where I could heal myself, and apparently I had spent a lot of time in the dungeon anyways so by the time I got out of Privateer's Hold the disease was already in its advanced stages and I was about a day from death, so even if there was a town with a Temple nearby it is doubtful that I would have made it. Probably the first rat I encountered gave me the disease. Under those circumstances, I was pretty much forced to start over again with another character.

To this day, that remains one of my fondest Daggerfall memories. I hope that, in the course of playing this game, you will gain many similarly fond memories as well.

Daggerfall is incredibly ruthless in the start.

You will die should you choose to fight the Imp down the hallway and lack the Ebony Dagger or Silver Staff.

Otherwise...

You will die in the last room that has 3 or 4 monsters.

Otherwise...

You will arrive at Daggerfall for the first time at night, and King Lysandus' ghosts will pound you into submission.

Otherwise...

You will decide to venture into the streets of Daggerfall at night, and King Lysandus' ghosts will pound you into submission.

Otherwise...

You'll not go to meet Lady Brisienna before the deadline. Goodbye Main Quest.

The best part is that many an unfortunate player has not saved. Saving as soon as you start is a MUST, especially if you worked hard to make a custom class.

That's what makes DF such a great game for me. I love the fear of not knowing what I'm going to come up against next. I can be sneaking through a dungeon turn a corner and be killed instanty without knowing what it was that killed me
In my latest game I've caught the plague twice! been accused of stealing a ruby by the local shopkeeper the minute I walked into the store, asassin's have been trying to kill me and my reputation is hated lol!

Okay, I've been able to get further in the dungeon after creating a Barbarian, picking the Ebony dagger, and changing the controls to something usable.

Now I just need to figure out how to not piss myself from hearing those freaking scary noises all the time.

Edit: I'm out of the dungeon... and I'm really liking this game now. Hoorah.

Okay, I've been able to get further in the dungeon after creating a Barbarian, picking the Ebony dagger, and changing the controls to something usable. Now I just need to figure out how to not piss myself from hearing those freaking scary noises all the time. Edit: I'm out of the dungeon... and I'm really liking this game now. Hoorah.

I envy anyone who experiences an ES game for the first time.

you can kill imps with steel weapons (why steel i dunno), sometimes you can find one in the first treasure pile you come across.

my first experience with daggerfall was the daggerfall dungeon demo, which was a terrible demo. i played arena first, so i wasn't unaccustomed to the TES universe, but from all the hype built up from daggerfall right after arena was released, the demo just showed off an amateur ultima underworld like dungeon with unkillable enemies and tons of junk inventory. however all of the promo stuff was far more interesting, like the beta character creation, and the beastiary.

aside from the character progression and guilds, arena plays exactly like daggerfall. i had a lot of fun with arena, though daggerfall i found myself not as interested as my initial impression wasn't nearly as grand as the hype suggested. it did keep me occupied for about a year until i've pretty much experienced every quest and seen about every iteration of building blocks.

This is one of the most enduring memories for me, I think, and a major contribution to what makes this game world so inviting. It's pretty staggering how well they integrated the soundscape using such rudimentary (by today's standard?) toolsets. Between the music & the FX, the aural atmosphere of this installment of TES is arguably the most compelling even now, IMO.

Glad to read you've gotten good & well started. I've been having minor frustrations no unlike the kind of thing you've dealt with, in my bid to re-enter this era of Bethesda's ES world after 12 years of absence. It's all good fun, though..

As an aside, I am shocked and amazed that I actually still have (and was actually able to find quickly) after 12 years & 2 residential relocations (from Dad's house, to my own townhouse, to my current house), my copy of the Prima guide AND the original Daggerfall Chronicles. I gots me some readin' to do..

I feel like an idiot for having never thought of how important that ebony dagger may have been in char creation, but I've only rarely found myself unable to defeat that imp. Just yesterday (or the day before), one of my new builds got him with hand-2-hand.. Admittedly, it was touch and go from my health standpoint, but I got him and then rested.. I guess I've just been ridiculously lucky in being given usable weaponry at startup for the most part..

I have consistently struggled to escape Privateers' Hold in general, though. It's never been completely -easy- (unless I want to purely run the heck through it and get out).

No, but Morrowinders are. LOL. I played the games in (sort of) the order they were released (with the exception of Arena, which I only recently played when it was released as freeware). I was like 15 when DF was released and had never heard of Arena. I picked it up and immediately fell in love with the game. I didn't think of it again, however, until MW was released. Upon playing that game, TES became my favorite RPG series. (Hell, it's my favorite video game, period.) I'd have to say, I personally liked MW better, but that's just me. DF is an excellent game (good luck getting it, or getting it to work) and worth playing if you like TES. I wouldn't say it's the best, though. I don't think there is a best. They're all good for their own reasons. It is, however, much much much much "times 10 to the 23rd" better than Arena. I still say Arena needs to be re-released with both lore and gameplay fixes that make it match. It's kinda' the oddball of the series.

daggerfall has a lot more content than arena, though misses some of the intricacies, but is fundamentally the same. kinda like wolfenstein 3d to doom, in that doom has a lot more content, but misses some of the finesse of wolf3d, but they play the same.

morrowind and redguard were the high points of the series for me. nowadays with enough mods, morrowind can essentially be daggerfall in all but wilderness.

Very good anology. I'm a big fan of Wolfenstein 3D and it has many intricacies (I mean come on id software, was it so hard to put some tables or chairs on the moonbases - some alpha shots have that kind of stuff, even locker rooms and marines playing cards) DOOM left out.

also wolfenstein 3d have guards on patrol roaming about, and you could sneak up or past them.

apogee's blake stone even further expanded on this and was possibly one of the first FPS that had decent stealth elements, and interaction with actors and environment. i wish the blake stone franchise could be redone, it was part james bond and part duke nukem, and it did make for a pretty fun experience.

I played some Apogee episodes back in the day and can't for the life of me remember what they were called.. If memory serves, they had a 16-colour palette (yeah, NOT 16-BIT, but 16-COLOUR, for those initiates who weren't into it all back then). There was some transdimensional stuff going on with demons & the like.. What the heck was that series??

Apogee is like the precursor to id Software.

I thought I remembered the possible mention of Carmack, but the whole thing is a very fuzzy memory.. So, is it possible I'm screwing up my timeline and I played these things BEFORE Doom was initially available? I honestly have no idea at this point.. (I'm beginning to recant my idea that they were 16-colour and go with 8-colour instead, but that may be stretching it a bit)

Carmack was around as early as Wolfenstein 3D, as far as I know, and that was 256 color.

EDIT: Oh wait...COMMANDER KEEN?