It's a hack and slash game. The game is very big. When i first played it i really loved it. After about the 20th dungeon i explored the game got really redundant. There seems to be about 12 or so different dungeons in the game plus or minius a few. After you get use to all the dungeons the game just gets borring. I'm that type of person that has to explore every little thing in a dungeon. It just seems this is how Daggerfall is..


Talk to npc
go to dungeon to kill this or collect this
Explore dungeon for 2 hours
talk to npc
talk to another npc
go to dungeon kill this or collect this.
explore dungeon for 3 hours
talk to npc

every now and then you get a quest to kill something in some random house but really that's the main reason every time i think about daggerfall i just get drawn away from it. Is it only me? If not tell me how to like Daggerfall more then maybe i'll start playing it again.

I will say this i really like the idea of exploring a dungeon for 2+ hours but the thing that bothers me is that after you know what pretty much all the dungeons are like then you get borred really fast b/c you already know this dungeon or that dungeon. And are all the dungeons the same in each state? Like if i went to a different sub area of the province are those dungeons different or the same? b/c i only really explored the starting area of dungeons.

The layouts are mainly the same but the skin of the duengeon is different for each area from my experience

The other issue is that the dungeons aren't very interactive. Arx Fatalis or Ultima Underworld or something... those have a lot of little puzzles and interesting things to find and fiddle around with. The extent of puzzles in Daggerfall is that !@#%able teleport maze and... sometimes you get switch flipping puzzles, which aren't interesting and don't seem to work right half the time. Well, I mean, the story dungeons had things in them, but the story dungeons are sort of the minority in terms of DF dungeons.

I'm assuming from your avatar that Morrowind's your favorite one of the ES games. Mine, too, and I can tell you at least, from my perspective, that a good RPG is one that provides a nice, blank canvas for your imagination.

Needless to say, 90% of the stuff that happens in any video game I play only happens in my own head, which is why i don't mind the excessive dungeon diving so much, because I spend so much time outside the dungeons, just roleplaying.

Daggerfall is really a blank gameboard for you to do whatever you want in. The reason you're constantly dungeon diving is because you're so used to these modern games where the obvious route is the only route to go.

You see, Morrowind is the absolute best modern RPG, but Daggerfall is a different beast entirely from the RPG's we're used to.

I guess the jist of what I'm trying to say is that you should stop just asking for work and taking quests. Just roam around and see what happens to you. And try to get into your character a little more, because while Morrowind is mostly about the gameworld, Daggerfall is about the character itself.

In short,
Morrowind: exploration
Daggerfall: character customization
They're both different beasts with different strengths and weaknesses.

EDIT: And except for this one dungeon that still haunts my nightmares, I spend, on average, 30 to 40 minutes in any dungeon. Maybe you need to refine your system for exploring them.

The dungeons are built from a limited set of different blocks. They are arranged randomly. All the big dungeons should have a unique layout. I've never found two the same. Indeed they would be more interesting if there were more interesting things to find. I still find new layouts after doing several dozen, though. You can easily tell when the blocks change by when the textures suddenly change. For example, you may start in an area covered in brown bricks and tiles. On one side will be connected an area with gray bricks on sloping walls. On another side will be caves. I tend to map out one block and then pick another one and explore that. I make note of where the various blocks connect. Dungeon exploring usually goes fast this way.

I don't stay bored of the dungeons for long. I guess I just like wandering repetitive corridors.

What is there to do in Daggerfall outside of dungeon diving?

And how do you roleplay in a game that doesn't respond to roleplaying, anyway?

Personally, I'd like to take over one of those cute little farmsteads dotting the countryside and use its revenues to fund a personal militia to overthrow the local King, a la that one bad guy in Gothic 2. Except I can't, because you can't buy farms, buy a personal militia, or overthrow the king (even if the last one had been a planned feature at one point in time). I can, thereotically, roleplay that I'm doing that. Like, pretend that all the dungeon diving I'm doing is to get money for that eventual purpose. Except I can never achieve said goal, so... why bother?

And I think providing a blank gameboard for the player is lazy game design. It's like handing someone an empty notebook and telling them it's a novel where they have to fill in the blanks. It just doesn't work like that.

That's what i probably like most about the game is the first 10 minutes when you create your character lol Creating a master hand to hand fighter that also masters in the school of restoration. Creating a cool character like that is always fun in Daggerfall.

Daggerfall does sometimes feel like a huge gameboard that could use a few more pieces. I like that whole militia idea. Somehow I don't think taking over one farm would ever do it. You'd need to build some kind of farming empire. Besides, I think I'd rather go Robin Hood and ambush nobles.

Having different sorts of characters does enable different styles of dungeon crawling. I really like that aspect. Dungeons can get really hard if you don't let yourself levitate.

Maybe try out the "hardcoe character" idea. Once a character dies, make a new one. That way you're making more new characters more often. I like decorating them, too at the clothing shops.

I think, that if the only reason to explore a dungeon was to complete a quest, that I would also get bored quite easily. Fortunately I'm a collector and imo Daggerfall and its' dungeons are a Collectors Paradise. There are 180 different weapons, over 250 different pieces of armor, 16 Daedric prince artifacts, and (I think) 12 Knightly artifacts. I usually stick with these items but there are also other collectibles.
My favorite thing to collect, though, are the 14 witch covens. You can discover 1 of these through a Noble quest, another by becoming a vampire or werebeast, but the rest may only be located (without cheating) by finding a map giving their location. A couple of guilds give out a few maps but, other than that, the only place to get a map is from random loot. Of course the most random loot is found in dungeons. I love dungeon diving.

I only ever found reagents and clothes in dungeons :/ And even that was pretty infrequent.

I've taken to clearing dungeons just to get maps to more dungeons.

What are these maps you speak of. I only get gold and armor.

How often do you have to frequent dungeons before you have a decent chance of finding the rarer loot?

Sometimes, enemies carry maps on them that give the locations of other dungeons.

Sometimes they also appear in treasure piles. This happens even in the little crypts. I once found two maps in a row in a dungeon. Both of them were on monsters in the same area. They look like regular pieces of parchment. You have to read the info box to know they are maps.

I've found as many as 7 maps in a single dungeon. But there have been plenty of dungeons where I haven't found any. The average seems to be between 1 and 2 maps per dungeon. You do, though have to go through the entire dungeon. I've found maps in the last pile of loot or on the last enemy.
The maps always give (except in very rare instances) the location of an heretofore unrevealed dungeon location. There is also a chance, depending on the total number of unrevealed dungeons, of the map showing the location of a witch coven (if the country you're in has a coven).