So I have Arena set up in DosBox and it runs, but like someone said it's hella laggy. Are there any options say, in the conf file, that I might be able to change to fix that so it runs AND is playable?

Open your DosBox config file with notepad - scroll down to where it says 'Core' and 'Cycles' change them to:

core=dynamic
cycles=25000

If the music starts skipping lower the cycles a bit more.

Also try core=auto and cycles=max.

I use a dynamic core and max cycles for Daggerfall and, a bit of laziness on my part, play Arena with those, though things are a tad faster than I'd want. A numerical value of cycles may also be better for Arena. I've been told that older games like Arena are better with numerical values, and max cycles should be reserved for later games like Daggerfall and Battlespire.

Now that's odd. It won't run at all now.

Edit : it says
illegal command a.
Re-edit : I had to reinstall it, but I think it's working again.

Post the contents of your DosBox config file and we'll take a look at it.

No, I tried replacing the config file and nothing changed. I reinstalled daggerfall and it worked. Now I played for about an hour last night, and this morning, without the config changing, daggerfall is giving me that same error. I thought maybe it had to do with a hard exit that it didn't like, but I didn't do that this time. Is it making a new file that's messing things up?

Edit : It has to do with the final line
arena z.cfg

it responds
Illegal command: A.

where it just ran the program last night.

arena z.cfg? Are you running the CD version?

What's with all this Daggerfall talk? I though you wre having problems with Arena?

lmfao oops sorry. I run both on DOSbox, just used the wrong name because I was hopping between configs to make sure everything was okay. I'm running Arena. Arena. Arena. Not Daggerfall. My bad lol

Also, no cd. Downloaded it from beth's site.

So where are you getting this z.cfg stuff from? You just run it by navigating to the ARENA directory and typing "arena".

It's something that was in my other configs so I assumed it was important. I've never had any other problems with it in other programs, and I seem to be able to run Arena once with it each install before these errors start happening. Maybe I'll take it out

Anyway, the first run after installing, typing arena works. But after that it says "illegal command : a." when i type in arena. I've tried it with and without the z.cfg before, and it doesn't seem to make a difference as to whether or not the game will start running.

It's managed to keep running a couple times, so I guess we can call this topic closed. Thanks.