Right, I've decided to start playing Daggerfall again.

It's been a while so I'm looking for some tips. First, what character do you suggest? My last one was a brutish orc, though I'm not so sure if this one is beginner-friendly. I want my character to make use of climbing, that skill is a one-of-a-kind.

Also, how would you suggest I spend my first few game hours? I remember going to DF and completing some Fighter's Guild quests, and anytime I ventured away from DF I would get killed quite easily

Cheers.

First, what character do you suggest?

Spellsword or battlemage. Strong fighting, strong magic. If you go custom, use those as your guide, i.e., don't specialize too much.

Also, how would you suggest I spend my first few game hours?

Run through Privateer's Hold a few times...it's what I always do.

I'd reccomend Thief (either vanilla or a custom variation). You get to do all the nice thieving things, whilst still being fairly competent in melee combat. Unlike Morrowind and Oblivion where magic is a bit more specialized, as a Thief you still have some utilitarian usage of magic (Open, Recall, Levitate).

Well two of you suggested two different things



What race would go nicely with a brute/mage?



Is being a thief an easy task in DF?

I wouldn't mind playing it as a thief as long as it's not hard, but fun. Also as I said having the climbing skill is a must.

Though a fighter/mage mix would be the easiest I reckon. Thoughts?

You probably don't need climbing to be any more than a minor or misc skill-- it still works good at low % and it goes up easily.

I think the standard tough-guy (read: easy) character is a high elf with at least longblade & 3xint with some thief skills for utility. I have always played custom so I have no experience with the standard classes.

After you get out of Privateers Hold, travel to the town 1 square to the south (I forget what its called), there are guild there and gives you a place to rest up safely.

Gothway Gardens.

Thieving itself isn't too great in Daggerfall (the legal reputation is buggy and ruthless) - but the class's versatility is great fun. I'm talking "climb over walls of Daggerfall at night and then jump from roof to roof while stabbing enemies on horseback" kind of versatile.

I always hit all the small crypts and dungeons that show up on the map, just to get more experience since the loot is pretty meager. It's a good way to "explore" the provinces. Instead of the Fighter's Guild, this time I'm doing tons of quests for one of the temples (Arkay, since those are my real life initials) as a change. They give me pretty good loot and XP and most of the quests aren't too hard for beginning characters.

High Elf using longsword and some magic while having a little bit of thieving skills is the one I'll create. I too never use standard classes. Thanks for the tips. Anything else you'd like to add just post it here

Is this the normal window size for DF?
http://i728.photobucket.com/albums/ww283/xuerebx/daggerfall.jpg


Created my char. Are these stats decent?
http://i728.photobucket.com/albums/ww283/xuerebx/df1.jpg
http://i728.photobucket.com/albums/ww283/xuerebx/df2.jpg
http://i728.photobucket.com/albums/ww283/xuerebx/df3.jpg

What race would go nicely with a brute/mage?

I've never paid too much attention to races, but I would think a male Dark Elf would be easiest.

Is being a thief an easy task in DF?

Not in my opinion. Lots of warrior classes use climbing as at least a minor skill, though. But if you want a magic primary/major/minor to go along with climbing, I think you'd have to go custom.

Though a fighter/mage mix would be the easiest I reckon. Thoughts?

You know, I totally agree with that. Make a custom class using some fighting skills, some magic skills, and stick climbing in there somewhere.

To be somewhat more helpful, I'll suggest that it's more fun if you can come up with a justification for why this spell-using fighter guy has to be good at climbing. Think up a backstory, then give him skills to fit the backstory.

That's a normal-looking window if you play in windowed mode. If you hit alt-enter it will go to full screen.

I'd reccomend Thief (either vanilla or a custom variation). You get to do all the nice thieving things, whilst still being fairly competent in melee combat. Unlike Morrowind and Oblivion where magic is a bit more specialized, as a Thief you still have some utilitarian usage of magic (Open, Recall, Levitate).

Actually, MW and OB are more magic-friendly to the thief classes than DF. The only thief class that has MU capability in DF is Nightblade. If you're any other thief class, you cannot do magic.

O' course, you can do what you like in a custom class. The depth of class customization is the biggest thing DF has over its successors.

I am not referring to what is on a Thief's plate in terms of class presets. I am referring to the fact almost any class can use magic to some extent in Daggerfall, and unless you want to be Gandalf the Gray, you needn't necessarily base your freedom in spellcasting on class.

Thief was my first class and aside from some...well..."misunderstandings" with the law of Daggerfall in the beginning, it's pretty good for me. Okay fine. My first character was a Nord Barbarian, but as soon as I got out of Privateer's Hold I got bored and axed him.

To make easy money at the beginning, using a Burglar can be very good too! Simply rent a room for the night, wake up at midnight and go unlock the shops' locks with your lockpick.
I've never used magic in Daggerfall since it came out. Maybe I should do a pure mage sometimes.

Thanks for the suggestions. I've chosen a High Elf Longsword-wielding mage. As Dr. Memory suggested, I've come up with a backstory for why this High Elf uses swords and magic at the same time.

Does heavy armour effect my magic potential like in Morrowind?



The whole point-of-view area doesn't show, the screen cuts off 1/5th of the screen, which happens to be the item bar. Plus everything becomes too pixellated

http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=844046 with some info on DF's resolution. Basically the game is 320x200, and can't be rendered any higher than that (that i've heard of). so when you go fullscreen it will be pretty pixilated, but the proportions will look better.
you might need to adjust something in your DosBOX config file. below are these are the sections from my config file:

and here's some info on custom class creation: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:ClassMaker

and there's also some of the same and other good info in the (in)famous daggerfall beginners guide http://tinyurl.com/a2dx6h

if you've read these and played a bit you can probably figure out how to make a really powerful character so i'd say learn at your own discretion.

i recommended the high elf because as a race they get immunity to paralysis which is pretty necessary if you run into spiders.

just as a note, I created my character as a high elf with critical weakness to paralysis, disease, and poison, with immunity to magic because disease and poison makes a magic check first before the poison and disease checks from what I've read. I've reached level 20 without ever having disease or poison. i can still get hurt pretty badly by ancient vampires & ancient lich's spells though.

fullscreen=falsefulldouble=falsefullresolution=originalwindowresolution=originaloutput=openglautolock=truesensitivity=100waitonerror=truepriority=higher,normalmapperfile=mapper.txtusescancodes=true

frameskip=1aspect=falsescaler=normal2x

Thanks for the information.

My monitor is 1024x768, so I guess I should write:

1.) fullresolution=1024x768
2.) Set renderer to OpenGL
3.) Set scaler to "normal3x"
4.) Set "aspect=true"

when I open Daggerfall in the DOSBox window, right?

Now with the sections of your config file you posted, should I set those after I set the above 4 steps in dosbox? Is the config file called z.cfg? Sorry, I'm not so knowledgeable using dosbox.

Thanks.

1) you should be able to use fullresolution=original,
2) the renderer you choose may or may not make the resolution different, it might effect the performance/framerate though depending on what you set it as.

the thread i linked was about someone trying to get it to force to run with a 16:9 aspect ratio (320x200 is: 320/200 = 16/9 = 1.6 it's a 'widescreen' resolution). with a monitor which is 1024x768 (that is 1024/768 = 4/3 = 1.33), if you were to keep the 16:9 ratio there would appear black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. in the thread i concluded that it doesn't look as natural in widescreen everything is shorter, its meant to be played at the taller 4:3 ratio, i mean, nobody had widescreen monitors in 1996 anyway.

3)you can choose any number of scalars from the list in the config file. normal3x gives sharper lines thatn normal2x, but is more resource intensive. you could even do 'none', but with an lcd monitor it is fuzzy looking because the # of pixels don't divide evenly.

4)i'm not exactly sure how the aspect setting effects fullscreen. i tried it right now and if i change it from false to true, it only makes windowed mode into the 4:3 shape, when it is set false, windowed mode displays the original 16:9 ratio.

oh and the config file i've been referring to is the DOSBox config file which you can get to from the start-menu folder for dosbox. if you look at the sections i posted, you might be able to see why it is cutting off the screen when you go to fullscreen. the examples i posted above are the settings i am using to play currently.

Well I just changed the configuration like yours, though I used the 3x scaler instead. In full screen mode (alt+enter) I still get the top and bottom parts chopped off, and the resolution is still too pixellated.

Added in

1.) fullresolution=1024x768
4.) Set "aspect=true"

and the game took 1 minute to start up, sound was very choppy and no picture! My computer can definitely handle the game, but damn! I think I might need to set aspect to false.

EDIT: I set aspect to false but the game still doesn't want to load up. It stays a black screen, though the window is bigger now. I edited both dosbox.conf and Daggerfall.conf to have the same configuration, since they're basically the same file with a different filename.

EDIT2: Replaced the 2 files with my backup files. So I'll start again, this time I'll only touch dosbox.conf. But I'm still getting the same results i.e. pixellated and missing top and bottom parts.

EDIT3:

Current dosbox.conf

fullscreen=false
fulldouble=false
fullresolution=1024x768
windowresolution=original
output=opengl
autolock=true
sensitivity=100
waitonerror=true
priority=higher,normal
mapperfile=mapper.txt
usescancodes=true


frameskip=0
aspect=false
scaler=normal3x

Results: Still quite pixellated when running 1024x768 by pressing alt enter, bottom top parts missing.

i think you can have multiple config files for dosbox which would explain having both dosbox.conf and daggerfall.conf files, but i don't have that. at least one other person here (user StoneFrog) has said he gets the black screen at startup also. i do too, and the fix seems that sometimes have to start it twice or all i get is black screen. sometimes i've noticed there is a temporary file left in my DOS folder something like DAGGERPH.AYL, if i delete it it seems to start up better but not always, sometimes it still hangs with black screen.

I see. See EDIT3 where I got the game running again, though still with some problems.

have you tried

fullresolution=original

yet?

and pixellated, yes, it's pretty much always going to be pixellated because Daggerfall doesn't render any higher than 320x200. DosBox can scale it larger to fit the window (that's the scalar) but it can't make it actually render any higher resolution. you can try some different scalars, like hq2x or hq3x, then DosBox will attempt to smooth corners but I thought it just looked a bit weird like that, i'm a fan of the old pixellated Daggerfall, I think it actually looks quite nice

It doesn't look bad really It's only a bit annoying sometimes. Thanks for your help, I'll play around with the settings.

Thanks again

Yes, I get that. It's variable. Sometimes it doesn't come up - usually when it does come up, it'll be gone after like 10-20 seconds. Otherwise restarting tends to fix it.

Yes, Jammer, I get miscellaneous files in the parent folder of my DAGGER folder (DOSBox\games\). Presently DAGGERUX.VSR, but I have seen DAGGERPH.AYL there as well (never tried tampering with them).

I play at 640X480, full screen with normal double scaling. Pixilization when I get close, but it's not bad from a distance, and isn't any worse than it was when I bought the game new.