I am pleased to announce that I am now the proud owner of The Second Elder Scrolls Title, Daggerfall, in what must truly be the find of the century. I went out the nearby shopping center this afternoon to get some stationary supplies for my coming maths exam, and in an electronics shop there was a bargain bin of "old games". I had a look, expecting to find maybe the first 'X' game, maybe Ages of Empires I, but lo and behold, there was Daggerfall, for a mere $20! Obviously, I was amazed and quickly bought it. So now next to my copies of Morrowind and Oblivion I have Daggerfall sitting proudly

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone here in the dark depths of the Past Games Forum had some advice to help me get the most out of Daggerfall, as well as tips in regards to classes, skills etc.

Congratulations on finding a copy. It might have been sitting there quite a while...

My first tip is to not start playing this until after the exam. Heh heh.

There is so much to discover about the game that you should jump into it then come back with specific questions. You will enjoy these discoveries so much more if you find them yourself instead of reading about them on web sites.

An easy class for a beginner to play and get a good feel for the game is a Spellsword. I almost always play custom classes but it is fun to take a stock class character and see how far you get with them as they are usually far more limited than custom characters.

Heh...I have no intention of even installing it until after my exam, I cant afford to fail it.

I was just having a look on UESP at the number of skills and....well...GOOD GRIEF!

HAHA. svckers at that store.

i too found mine a local bargin bin. Thought it was wonderful. got mine for only $10 though.

Ah! Good job. Yeah, don't even touch it until after the exam.

A few tips, in order:

• Do well on your exams. Then you can feel justified spending so much time on Daggerfall as a "reward for doing so well."
  
• Go ahead and play around with the class creator for your first character if you wish; I have *never* taken a base class in any TES game aside from Arena. (which doesn't have a class creator)
  
• When making your first class, I'd advise caution, and make your first character well-rounded. Some of those expensive perks may look good, but the disadvantages you'll have to take on to afford them can present too much of a challenge to someone who's played Morrowind and Oblivion, but not Daggerfall.
  
• Be advised that unlike later TES games, (and even Arena) Daggerfall's difficulty is RATHER brutal; it's very easy to slip up and get yourself killed. (also, diseases are invariably fatal within a few days if not cured)
  
• First thing you do once you once you finish making your character is save the game. An untold number of characters that someone spent hours crafting were killed within a couple minutes of starting, lost forever.
  
• Be careful of that ^%&%*%@& imp that's inside the first door once you reach the long, winding hallway. That kills new players around 90% of the time. And most of the time, they hadn't saved.

That's about all I can KNOW you should need right off. You'll learn more later, particularly more questions, so you can ask them. As for now, that was a nice find; congradulations.

Yea, be certain to save. All the time. Save a lot. Try to keep a save game slot that you only use when you have no active quests, things like that.

EDIT:

I just thought of some advice that is actually worth listening to, so hopefully you're still reading this thread.

My advice is to do the Lady Brisienna (sp?) quest then move to another province. Choose a small one with very few dungeons, I suggest the Gavaudon (it's on the far right of the world map). It has all of the guilds, several temples, but no knightly order. Anyway, it has only about 4 dungeons. The shops might not be great but you can travel to a major centre to do your shopping (Dwynnen city in Dwynnen is good for buying stuff).

Playing in Gavaudon (or other province with few dungeons) will let you get to know a few particular dungeons well, and the modules that make up all the dungeons in the gameworld. This will make normal dungeon crawling quests easier, and prepare you for the trickier and bigger dungeons of the main quests and the hundreds of other dungeons in the game.

Start small, start out raiding crypts. Then take dungeon crawling quests.

Playing in a province with many (some provinces have literally hundreds of dungeons) makes it hard on the player to learn where anything is. There are probably dungeons in DF that no player has ever visited. I really wouldn't be surprised if that is true. I remember back when the game first came out, many players NEVER left Daggerfall province before they stopped playing the game. Others only went to other provinces following the main quest... and the main quest only leads to 8 or so (memory fails here?) provinces. There is just no real reason for anyone to set up base in Santaki or Myrkwasa.


I thought of this today as I started playing a game where I am based on the Isle of Balfiera. This would not be a good place for a beginner as it has a tough dungeon you should stay away from until later. But you won't know these things about many of the provinces. Which is good!!

congrats on your find, i too am a proud owner of TES2, i have had it for about 8 or 9 years,

but finding it in a bargain bin, now thats lucky. Study for your exam first! the game is extensive.

Use multiple saves for each character. If you run out of slots, you'll have to move them around into other folders for storage, but believe me you don't want to lose a character because it got corrupted. I use a "now" slot, one for just before I accept a quest (especially those of the Main Quest, in case they get bugged and ruin it all), and one for a backup that I use every few days with no quests active. Yes I've had to use the backup before.

Make sure you patch to 2.13. It should be easy to google.

Explore dungeons by sections; it's easier to stay organised. You'll notice different wall types, architecture, etc. Explore one section before moving on or you'll never get back to find that door you passed earlier.

Once you learn the game fairly well, play in-character. A thief should steal, a wizard should blow things up and probably shy away from dungeons until he's REALLY good at it, etc. It's easy to make a expert-at-everything character, which is good to start but doesn't play to the strengths of the game.

I also suggest not loading the game anytime something bad happens. I recently got a lycanthropic wizard by pure luck, and had a lto of fun with it. If I'd been obsessed with perfection and loaded when I got diseased I never would have discovered the character.

Skills:
Dont get any languages. They're useless.
The weapons are well balanced, but Long Blades are the easiest to find (and technically the highest damage, but not by large enough to matter much). Short blade perhaps is the wimpiest because it has no 2handed versions, but if you use a shield that wont matter.
Don't get skills like jumping or running as a class skill because they'll level you unexpectedly (bad if one hits 100 because then you can't level anymore).
Take some kind of weapon skill. There's far too much smacking things to get by without one, even for a wizard. Just take short blade, or only use staffs, or w/e to force your wizard to use magic. It's easy to pick up a sword and hack everything you see and miss a lot of the character options.

:huh: Well, I made a custom-spellswordish class and played a bit of Privateers Hold. I saved the game, but when I try to load it, I get a little messagy thing saying. "You drop to the ground, completely exhausted. You awaken one hour later". Then the game basically freezes. Does this mean that its been corrupted the first time I saved the game?

That's not a corruption it's a problem with running the game on newer systems. You using dosbox? It happens to me a lot but fortunately without the game crash. Perhaps a search would be more helpful I know it's been talked abotu before but can't find any of the threads atm.

Nice find, Robbio.

Yeah, I use Dosbox (theres another way to play the game? :blink: )



Thanks Gstaff


Anyway, I did my maths exam, and I dont feel too confident about it :nope: But at least I have 3 weeks of holidays now to soak-up some Daggerfall goodness. (Although when Crysis Warhead gets released in Aus my attention goes to that I'm afraid)



Hm....I tried to use that FIXSAVE thing. But when I try and load it, it just tells me to put the disk in the drive. I put the disk in there, and it still gives me that message. :nope:

I've bought mine for about three dollars or something like that (two euro's)... had to pay for shipping, but hey, that's gladly paid !

That's a message occurring when you have exhausted your stamina. Your character has a special trait called Adrenalin Rush. Characters that do not have this, will die when exhausted.

SAVE THE GAME BEFORE EVEN BATTLING THE RAT. AND USE AT LEAST TWO SLOTS.

I think that's a bug, to be honest. Once I saved my game just as I was about to collapse from stamina loss, and when loading, I couldn't play. This was in a town, by the way. If only I had my horse.

Rather then make a new thread ill jump in this one and announce that i too recently (well not so recently, a good few months ago) bought daggerfall full box and manual, from ebay tho for ?27 quid but still.

I'm planning on playing soon as i finish up with fallout 3, i have the game installed and running on dosbox quite sweetly and smooth, so everything is ready i think.. ill keep an eye on this thread for new player tips however, is there a patch for the game? i remember hearing about bugs and such but i haven't installed any patches yet..

http://uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:Files, you can find the Daggerfall patches among other things.

Get "DAG213.EXE" and "ADDQUEST.ZIP", if you want more quests. Consult the stickies in this forum to get it running right. Good luck!

Thanks!

i found my copy for $5 in an electronics store in 2000 i think, the box manual and cd case is still immaculate, anyways nice find i havent seen daggerfall at any store since then.