Seriously, what was Bethesda (If they even made it at the time) thinking? You can't even take a 4 steps in the Starting Dungeon without getting taken down by a rat! A rat of all things! Is there any way to make the game easier?

First of all, back in those days games just tended to be a lot more difficult. A lot of NES games were true nightmares.
The most popular example of this is Battletoads. Now THAT game is hard. Other games are Megaman, Contra (oh god no!) and Super Ghouls N' Ghosts. There are a lot more very hard games out there. Most of them old.

Second, if you level up a couple of times in that dungeon, the game will be a lot easier later.

it hard to begin with but once you get used to the game controls and stuff then it get much easier

Now you see why people are complaining about games nowadays being "dumbed down".

I see. I guess I could try playing it again.

Personally, I don't find it to be that hard. These games nowadays...they worry about the players, give them warnings, milk them until they are acquainted with the rules. Sometimes, that's good. Yet most of the times it simply ruins the atmosphere and doesn't get you immersed enough--you know it's a game because it constantly whines about how strong some opponents are, the controls and in-game mechanics. The worst part is, the difficulty doesn't increase much, if at all, throughout the entire game.

With Daggerfall, Arena and even Morrowind (though not as much), things are different. Don't you love how you are thrust into a dark, spooky dungeon whose labyrinth hallways and despicable rodents make you feel nauseous? Come on, several reloads (or even recreations of the character) are a small sacrifice compared to what you get. Perhaps that's why these oldies have stuck around all these years; I'm sure no one would want to be a by comparing Oblivion and Daggerfall graphics and saying the latter still provides more in the terms of realism and roleplay despite it's visuals.

Oh and, to help maintain this post's original course and stay on topic, here's a small tip: don't just stand there and swing around at those goblins and rats - try moving forwards, quickly attacking and retreating. Over and over.

I see. I guess I could try playing it again.

It's really not hard...I didn't think so back in '94, either. Just challenging. Keep your weapon drawn, quickly find and face your enemy, and move that mouse around like there's no tomorrow. You will beat the rats and goblins.

Yeah, I didn't play it back in '94 but I don't think it's the hardest game ever either. Merely...unforgiving. Not that hard to beat someone up but let your guard down and you'll end up ten feet under just as easy.

I've been watching the Sopranos .

I don't find arena or daggerfall that hard, both are perfect for me because I like a challenge with no hand holding. Back when Daggerfall and Arena where released gamers were a different breed, gaming wasn't as mainstream or popular as it is now, especially on the pc with MS-DOS.
DOS required you to be a bit of a nerd to get the majority of games running, trying to squeeze out a few more kilobytes of ram The majority of games I play now are all older games because I don't find any challenge in most of the newer games.

Just make sure to rest and level up every now and again and you'll eventually make it out of the dungeon.

...

The only starting dungeon in a game that annoyed me from being too hard was the one in BG2.

Admittedly, Privateer's Hold is a bit easier than Arena's starting dungeon, though.

I'm not really fond of starter dungeons as a whole, though -- not in these kinds of games. I'd rather be thrust into the world instead of into a dungeon. It makes things annoying to replay. Morrowind's ship sequence takes all of three minutes to do, really. Oblivion's dungeon thing goes on forever.

Going off topic for a moment, has anyone else noticed that Arena, Morrowind, and Oblivion all involve getting out of Jail at the start of the game? (I don't know about Daggerfall because I've never played it's full version.)

Yes, and I love it. It's a little quirk about the main TES games that you start out in Prison (it says something to that effect in one of the Oblivion previews. I think on IGN.....). Daggerfall you started in a dungeon after a shipwreck and you're basically a Blade (agent of the Emperor). The Dungeon is called Privateer's Hold, but I've heard it called Prisoner's Hold (by accident/assumption and on purpose)

I'm gonna be pissed if TES V doesn't start in jail.

~TK.R

Daggerfall didn't start out in a prison.


Arena started out in the same prison as Oblivion, IIRC.

I know, but many players feel like it does. Like I said, I've heard it called Prisoner's Hold before.

And yes, Arena is the Imperial Prison too. There's even a loading screen in Oblivion saying "No one has escaped the Imperial Prison since the days of Jagar Tharn's treachery" (or something like that), alluding to the Eternal Champion's escape.



~TK.R

I loved reading that.


Anyway, I never saw privateers hold as a prison, but I did find it peculiar that you ended up in a cave, nowhere near the sea after your journey on a ship.

That's where the exit was, not the entrance .

OK, so I started playing Arena, and I was doing alright, deciding to do that "kill one enemy then rest" strategy. Then, out of nowhere, comes an enemy that looks like a Human, and it defeats me in just a few hits. I was told that there were only rats and goblins in the prison. What was that thing?

That wasn't so hard.
I don't find the Arena or Daggerfall dungeons to hard either. Oblivion's was just long and tedious.
Morrowind was different from every other of the games, as it didn't throw you right into the heat of something, you were practically just let loose somewhere relatively safe.
I found Arena to be a bit hard in the beginning, but that was just because I wasn't used to the controls, same with Daggerfall (which I had some problems with installing in the beginning), but once I got in to them I found them both to be really enjoyable, however the way smiths works in those games is just... blargh (repairing armor). I see they were going for some kind of realism thing, but that was just tedious, and pretty annoying if you suddenly got some kind of timed MQ thing in DF.

Hehe.
What did you love about what I wrote?

And ChildInside said, the exit to the Hold is a different place. The location you start in was a small cave that you swam into during a storm.

Quoted from http://www.imperial-library.info/intros/daggerfall_intro.shtml







A lot of players liked the timed quest. I made it seem more real that a lion in someones house (a common FG quest) would likely to be killed within a week. If not, the contract was given to another FG member that would finish the job.
Also, it didn't give the 'hand-holding' effect of Oblvion, which lots of people hate. You could actually fail the mainquest and go "Oh crap!!! I just wasted 6 hours!". But then you just start over and it's just as fun, so no biggie



~TK.R

Failing the main quest in Daggerfall was most typically from a bug or from the complete lack of balance in the later quests.

Bugs making a quest incompletable are an inexcusable offense, no matter if the quest is repeatable or not.

That's because they were forced to complete the game and get it sold. Lots of games, and even consoles do that. The Xbox360 was put out, and ended up getting a lot of them recalled because they put it out with bugs and problems.

Unfortunately, Bethesda wasn't able to fix all of the bugs Daggerfall had. But the lastest patch 1.2, does fix a ton of them (try playing an unpatched version, it's killer)



~TK.R

Then, out of nowhere, comes an enemy that looks like a Human, and it defeats me in just a few hits. I was told that there were only rats and goblins in the prison.

Arena has two types of encounters: random and seeded.

Seeded monsters are placed in MQ dungeon locations by the devs. In the starter dungeon, only goblins and rats are seeded. As you go along, of course the variety and difficulty of seeded monsters increases.

In a random encounter, you will meet a challenging but not-too-hard levelled creature. These can be anything, including the human you met.

If you rest on a raised surface, you will never have a random encounter. If you rest on a non-raised surface, you stand a very good chance of having a random encounter.

I see. Thanks for the tip.

Whew. I finally did it. I finally got out of the dungeon. So...What do I do now? I had a dream about some kind of staff, but I accidentally skipped the scene.

Talk to people on the street. Ask them about Rihad, i believe it is. It will under places, and at the very end of the list. Pay attention to what they say.