I think that it's understandable that Daggerfall is a hard game - so many have said it is. Other than Overlords, Andyfall improves some graphics and and changes weapon stats around a little bit at the high end.The only 'enemy' he creates is the Overlord. So i wouldn't say his mod specifically makes the game harder, I think the game is hard and his mod makes it 'different' rather than harder still. After all, as you don't need a new game to install it, you could technically argue that it would be the players fault or installing it too early or too late! Certainly, in a dungon full of hard as nails zombies, the Overlord didn't seem that out of place. After all, I had to run away from the zombies too - and they aren't part of Andyfall, but just what makes vanilla Daggerfall 'hard'!.

Humorguy:

Re: Overlords

I think Andy noticed that once you get to a certain level in Daggerfall you become something of a God; none of the in-game monsters have much of a chance against you. So he set out to try to fix that by adding something tougher, and there ain't nothin wrong with that, per se; I would like to see a few more tough, high-level creatures myself. But his solution was to introduce a single creature -- the Overlord -- that's immune to magic and virtually unkillable. A dungeon full of Overlords will wear your fingers to the bone. They have no weaknesses (that I could find) other than hard steel. Whop him about a hundred times -- fast, before he hit you! -- and he'll die. Then you have to do it again in the next room, and the next -- it gets real old real fast.



LOL.

I don't think so. You should be glad that you survived long enough to hit him a few times.

On the other hand, I disagree with mingoran: most of the user-made extra quests are great, and add a lot of variety to the game. Use em, I say!

For someone who is starting to know the tricks he needs to play Daggerfall comfortably is always a risk. The compuserve extra quests are ok (can be downloaded from uesp.net) but i found that installing many quest packs together will make the game unstable.

It's also possible you hit a bug that happens occasionally that messes with dungeon population. One time while doing an earlier main quest, the dungeon i was supposed to go collect some letters was full of ancient vampires. Had to rest 6 times to kill just one of those things and there was a dungeon full of them. Got out for for 3 days and returned later and the dungeon reverted to it's normal population. I guess the ancient vampire party was over by then.

Yes, I agree with you, that the dungeon population must be a random thing, within certain parameters, that can be circumvented by re-loads, if you have enough time!

On the other hand, I got the quest where you get a letter from the Acolyte of the temple in Daggerfall, where he/she says a noble is in grave danger. The first two times I did this quest I went to the noble and then went to get the Oracle who sorted it out. This time I decided to go and rescue the kidnapped partner, which was the reason for the noble not being willing to leave the house and go into hiding. In any event, the dungeon was full of sabre toothed tigers and bears with the odd imp, orc and lots of bats. In other words, it was like being in Privateer's Hold again! I found the kidnapped suitor and hit Recall out with no resting needed and a strength bar that was only 10% from maximum, after all those creatures! It certainly is refreshing and shows you how far you've come! In fact it means more because the game is so hard!

Also, I did a quest where after I got the item I got a letter from the Dark Brotherhood, telling me to deliver this item to them rather than the Mages Guild, and how I would rue the day if I betrayed this evil organisation! I took the item to the Mages Guild anyway, but I have been thinking about that letter since. This is also part of how a hard game like Daggerfall works better. I am worried if, on a dark night somewhere, I meet a Brotherhood Assassin or something, because the Daggerfall world is a dangerous world and you can be forced to face an enemy who can kill you easily. In other games, where enemies are not that dangerous letters like this would seem ridiculous and you would never think about things like that,likeyou would in Daggerfall!

I'm kinda frustrated, right now.

I can't get the hang of these terrible awkward dungeons. Some of these are so huge, I used to be in there for 8 long hours in a row.

It's the first game where I caught myself cheating (teleportation cheats, to be precise).


EDIT: Argh. I turned "Pond Scum" from one minute to the other. How could that even happen? I was a common citizen before, and lost only 1 quest.

yes, dungeons, I am sure, are the killer for lots of gamers who drop this game like a hot potato. But as told to me, a follow the left or right wall as much as possible is a good hint, and once you have spent a couple hours looking and not finding,I think the treasure room cheat [ (open square bracket) becomes perfectly feasible, and I regard it as a spell, rather than a cheat, because of the way you get so little help given how huge the dungeons are. So I call the [ cheat my 'treasure finding spell' which, unfortunately,cannot be used until a dungeon is 'perceptibly' searched 100% !!

Glad to hear I'm not the only one utilizing that "spell".

Thinking of it, it's not even the huge dungeons. The main issue is the auto-map. If it was 2D (like the ones Oblivion had, I recall), it would be far less complicated to solve a dungeon.

Yes, I said the same thing, except I said they could have taken a leaf out of a game out before theirs, X-Com, which does the 'what you can see at what level' perfectly!

Well, sometimes Daggerfall does just that. But that seems even more confusing, somehow.




I'm creating a new character, what do you guys think of the background?


The Prince

The Prince is a dark skinned Dunmer. No one seems to know his real name or if there is even such a thing as a real name.

He is one of the finest members of both, the Thieves Guild and the Dark Brotherhood ("fine" by their standards. The law and moreover the common citizen might consider him foul, cruel and reckless). Abiding by his membership, he is seldom seen in full daylight. In fact, there are rumors that he is a vampire.

He recklessly killed and robbed many individuals over the past 20 years. He brought mighty lords to their deathbed, burned down houses and didn't even stop before the eyes of the church.

The Prince may be considered one of the biggest threats in Daggerfall, and one may think he is some sort of Daedra (hence his "title")

I am scared of him already! Got a feeling at some point in my game I will meet his brother!

Probably my most interesting Daggerfall day yet. Did a quest for the Order of the Hour in Blackgate (dedicated to Akatosh) where I had to exorcise a boy of a Daedra. Spoke to his guardian, spoke to him, went to another town to get a required religious item from a sage to perform the exorcism, went back to the boy and did the deed, after which he left with the item, thanking me, and leaving me to deal with an enraged daedroth. Went back to find his guardian, and some random girl was there instead, telling me the guardian stole the religious item and ran off. So I had to track her down and take back the item before going back to the temple.

During all this I also was dealing with the Mummy's curse...I was given a mummy's finger by an innkeeper who was at wit's end, so every night from 12 to 1 AM I was visited by the mummy, attacking me for its finger. AND with my argonian mage's darkness-powered magery, I was forced to stay in an inn until nightfall to go to the guardian's house and unlock the door (not enough spell points during the day). After doing the temple quest, I found a sage who told me that to end the Mummy's curse I had to go to its tomb and destroy it once and for all. Took a break from all other quests to do this...took a week of game time.

Afterward I went to the Mages Guild and enchanted my Elven Staff to be a Frostshade Staff, which gives me extra spell points in winter, is featherweight, and gives me shadow form while held.

PS: I found out that even if I end the Mummy's curse, my reputation still drops 2 with the questgiver and 1 with related factions. So unfair! They should be happy that I ended the curse.

Cosmar, I got th mummies curse too! (Although when I posted about it, I put it in a black spoiler bar to not spoil it for others, hint hint!:)) I didn't have the negatives you had so I could just go straight to the dungeon! What was annoying was twice Ifaced the mummy and I was not in the dungeon for 48 hours, or two midnights!

Don't feel bad about using the teleport cheats, everyone does it. Dungeons are just too big. If I don't find my target in 30-45min and can't find anywhere else to go, I use em(for random dungeons, not main quest). And sometimes I find out the damn quest monster did not even load!

I also use the speed cheat to go from one end of the city to the other. Hey, I got lazy. Long as you don't use the infinite health cheat, you're good!

Ok.

I'm pissed again.

Started my new life as an assassin, this morning.

I got as far as the initiation quest for the Dark Brotherhood when the auto-map broke. How am I supposed to find the residence now? I can't talk to no one and as the auto-map won't fill in the gaps, I don't even know if I ever was or was not in this specific building.

That's a strange glitch Blinx.. never happened to me.

It is, however, one of the reasons why you should always save your game before beginning a quest...

Well. Under normal circumstances, I would do just that. However, 5 of 6 save-game slots are inherited by my other character.


I found a way to solve that glitch, btw. I couldn't enter the building before anyone marked it on my map ("There is nothing of value" blah), so I raised my reputation quite a bit, so that people would talk to me. After that, it was a piece of cake to find someone marking the right location on my map.

Me too! There is nothing more annoying than arriving in Daggerfall on the east side after completing a Mages Guild quest and trudging across the entire city in real time. And I can't stand the sound of the horse. So....it's the fast walking cheat for me. I don't use the health cheat either but it doesn't bother me at all to use 1 and [ (but only if I can't complete the dungeon on my own).

I rather have a 3D map I can turn around and zoom, than a 2D map of a 3D environment, where the upper floors totally block the lower ones.

TES3 and TES4 dungeons are pieces of crud imo.

In TES2, just follow the left or right wall, as you would do irl.

From Daggerfall I have a really great memory for mazes and things in games. In World At War zombie mods where you're in a maze with moving walls, I'm the one who remembers where everything spawns and where everyone should head. The dungeons in the new games are just wimpy and lame.

The Prince's personal kill-count:

Guards of Penbrugh: 30
Innocent citizens of Penbrugh: 20
Members of the Mages Guild: 1
Ex-assassins: 3



I'd say he's on the right way to become a good assassin.


He also joined the Thieves Guild today.


The only thing he still lacks now, is a black coat. Is there some way to dye cloth pieces? At this very moment, he looks more like Little Red Riding Hood, than a cruel and monstrous nemesis.


EDIT:

Here's an actual picture of him.

http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/4233/picture3lez.png

assassin's have to blend in and look normal, not stand out. So if you were the only one with a black cape....... And look how many red capes you see being worn.....


Oh and I completed the Prince Helseph quest and made the mistake of reading the letter! Just about got out!!!! Didn't for the life of me think the game would see that and make a deal out of it. Modern games wouldn't!!!

That might well be.

But red is a signal colour. I don't want the guards to recognize me at night. I need a black cape, to blend with the landscape.

And I don't really care how I look in daylight. Everyone who sees me at daylight, saw the last daylight at all.

Did some more jobs for the Dark Brotherhood. The most interesting one was sneaking into the Palace Of Ipshead and assassinating a seductress thereafter.


Oh yea, and I did some little testing with my new laser mouse (Sharkoon Fireglider, 3.600DPI). Dang impressive. Slaying local guards had never been easier than with this mighty tool

I am currently doing a couple quests that will get me more information about Daggerfall politics and the King's letter! Very interesting, all the shenanigans! The quests must be getting harder, as I have gone from level 4 to level 6 a lot quicker than I went from level 2 to level 4!!

I was so incredibly disappointed when Morrowind was released and I first saw those teeny tiny "dungeons" -- actually, I don't think they even deserved to be called dungeons. And don't get me started on the blandness of the egg mines. I'm really hoping they will add at least a few major-sized dungeons to the next TES title.

I think the Daggerfall map is actually quite easy to use and functional when you get the hang of moving it up and down.