Alright, so I've downloaded Arena and DOSBox and can play the game easily, but how do I create a shortcut to the game on my desktop, so I can click that and bypass the DOS commands? Also, can I do this and have it so the frame rate is always at 15,000 or so?

While playing Arena, I noticed my compass has gone missing (at the top of the screen). Is there any way to get this back? Did I toggle it off or something?

Are towns and dungeons in Arena randomly generated? Will the dungeons (not including the first one) be different for everyone who plays? I know this happens with Daggerfall in some cases (?), but is this the same for the towns too? What about your starting town? Is it random? Are all of the towns always laid out the same way (houses/doorways/NPCs) and is each location always located at the same place? e.g., the doorway you'd enter in X town would lead you to an Inn on one file, but might be a tavern or armor shop on another play-through.

I might have more questions but would appreciate any help, thanks

EDIT: Also, are Daggerfall, Battlespire, and Redguard available for download for free, or do I need to purchase them? How about the games for the cell phones?

First create an Arena config file for DOSBox called Arena.conf or something. So first make a copy of DOSBox.conf and call it Arena.conf, and then change cycles=auto to cycles=15000 and add the DOS commands needed after the [autoexec] line.

Then create a shortcut and let the command line say something like "DOSBox.exe -conf Arena.conf -noconsole".


From the doc file included with the free Arena package;
F8 Compass on/off toggle


I belive dungeons are random, except the main quest dungeons. The starting town depends on what race you play as. The towns always look the same.


Nope, not of those games are available for free. You need to use ebay or similiar services to get the older PC games. For the cellphone games you need to find some service/operator that still sell them.

Instead of making a new topic, I may as well ask my question here. I managed to get Arena working in Dosbox, but the trouble is that the NPC's move around too fast (more specifically, the random generated people in and around towns). It's like their stuck on fast forward. I don't ever remember them moving this fast, but my memory could be hazy. I tried lowering my CPU cycles, and the NPC's slowed down, but so did the FPS. It was just lagging way too much compared to before. Is there any way to keep Arena running smooth without the super speed NPC's around? I know this seems a bit nitpicky, but it's really been bugging me.

Thanks for the answers Freddo - that really helped

Like Kextra I too have this problem. Anything you can advise to make the people walk slower without reducing the framerate?

Also, why do I get the message "you see a _______" (enemy) AFTER I kill that enemy? For example, a skeleton will come near me, I'll kill it, then loot its corpse, and after I take items from it, the message will appear "You see a skeleton..." Is that supposed to happen?

Thanks again.

I don't think so. Before the 3D graphic cards arrived, 10 FPS for a game was considered to be good. And I guess Arena was designed to be around there somewhere.


Yeah, that's normal.