My first couple characters for Daggerfall had a tough time, particularly with getting lost in large dungeons and needing to rest to heal. This meant they could never make it back in time, and the dungeon crawl quests would always time out.

So, I thought I'd start a new player, join the Temple of Arkay, and get access to the the potion seller at low level. But here I am, after about 6 quests completed for Arkay already, I'm still a novice, and still don't have access to the potion seller.

Maybe I'm just doing things all wrong. So, anyway, is it a good strategy to use restore health potions in Daggerfall so that you don't have to waste time resting in dungeons to restore health? If so, where can I get a good supply of restore health potions?

Thanks!

I don't know whether or not you know this, but the guilds in Daggerfall do rank advancement in a very strange way. Once you acquire enough reputation to break the "threshold" and reach a new rank, it actually takes about a month from when you reach that reputation value for them to inform you that you've advanced. Keep at it, or, if you're impatient, fast travel to another province.

• Services at guilds come with rank, which requires enough reputation (successful quests for them), enough investment in the guild's favorite skills, and a minimum bit of time elapsed between promotions.

• Other basic ways to heal would be curative magic (probably the most efficient), or self-made potions (which require adequate rank in whatever guilds grant a potion maker). Later on when you've made a bit of money or found them in treasures, marks or other items of healing, regeneration, or weapons of vampiric striking. Unless your character is totally magic-dumb try to get a cheap healing spell to help things along.

• You can turn down missions when offered by the NPC with no penalty, so maybe learn to recognize the text templates that indicate dungeons quests and keep away from them until you're geared to tackle them.

Thanks, that's all good advice. I think I understand what it takes to get rank advancement in the temple, but the problem is I don't really know how far along my progress is. I've done about 10 quests for Arkay (I take mostly the quests to get rid of an undead from a house), but still haven't gone up one rank. I'll wait around for a while and see what happens.

I do have Restoration, and I can cast spells healing spells, but I still have to rest to restore my pool of magic after casting them. So while it helps, I still end up spending way too much time resting.

If you refuse quests you lose some reputation. So if you take the excorsism quests most of the time and refuse the other, it won't help. Otherwise, train your skills and take as many quests as you can. You'll rise eventually.

Really? The "Beginner's Guide to Daggerfall" says: "http://www.izhtex.com/tes2/quests/guilds.htm" and so did Catylyrn Zilmar above.

So, now I'm more confused.

Oh, I was sure there was! My bad then.

But I recall having being retrograded once because I refused a quest.... but maybe that was back in 1996 and I didn't have the latest patch.
Forget what I've said then.

I'm pretty sure you only lose points with a faction if you fail a quest, not reject it. At least, when my character was a fledgling, I rejected all quests from the temple until I got one that didn't involve dungeon delving. I recall no loss of rank.

Damn. I didn't remember this.
Oh well. This means I have to get that old and dusty computer up and running again and start playing Daggerfall again!

Only quest failures result in a loss of reputation (of 2 points vs the +5 of most successfully completed quests).

Potions are also a poor use of resources, in my opinion. Custom created spells are more versatile and are renewable. Potions are always one-shot deals.

The best healing spell that you can make for yourself is probably of the regeneration type. Keep it simple, using only the regeneration effect and set the magnitude to 1-2 pts. + 1-2 pts. per level per round. Set the duration for as long a period as you are willing to spend spell points on. If that doesn't seem to be fast enough healing: cast it again, the effects will stack. As you gain skill in restoration, your casting costs will go down, and you can create more powerful versions of the spell.

I hope this helps.

Also, train to improve your medical skill whenever you get the chance.

Just out of curiosity, what does the potion of "Restore Power" do? Didn't find the answer in the wiki or the beginner's guide.

Restores a measure of your manna. Very tasty, and the only potion you should ever bother making.



I am not sure that paying for training in the medical skill is such a good idea. It gets automatically used (self-trained) every time that you rest at anything less than full power. Training dodge, and avoiding some of the damage, would be more cost-effective.

Happy Easter everyone!

Makes sense, but when I used one, I didn't see any gain in manna, which was quite low at the time. I probably did something wrong.

like most potions, the effect is level-dependent. But you should have seen some benefit. :shrug:

A character doesn't generally rest as often as they dodge and for most fighter types dodging starts off at 15% or higher, whereas their medical skill is probably somewhere around 3 to 6%.