So my community really wants me to do a Let's Play of Daggerfall. I've played Arena for quite a while (Gotten 4 pieces of the staff ) and in the end I found it to be rather lacking, and repetitive. It was a fun game for what it was, but I just couldn't play it to completion. Now my community is boasting about how Daggerfall is one of the best in the series, and I was just wondering why that might be?

If you could, give me some highlights as to why Daggerfall is great in your eyes, I'd like some insight on the subject.

Thanks,
Bashur

the insanely big dungeons...

seriously if you get lost in a DF dungeon your there for a good few hours.

Often I forgot about the quest item and just wanted to get the hell back out. I never used the mark/recall spell.. much more intense when you have to look for the exit.

The character creation is boss. You have a lot of control over your character, especially their special advantages and disadvantages. Of course, if you know what you're doing, it's easy to break it and make a super powerful character, but that can be fun, too.

The dungeons are huge, and unforgiving. However, while the game could be called a dungeon crawler, there is a lot of the game that doesn't ever require you to go into a dungeon.

The quests are infinite. They can seem repetitive to some players, because you can get the same ones multiple times, but I kinda like that. By refusing quests you can roleplay better certain characters (I'm a studious mage, not a combat wizard!). Also, the guild quests don't have any sort of overarching storyline, which is also good--you are doing little tasks for the good of the guild. None of the omg-so-epic crap. Overall, I find it more realistic.

Much of the game is randomized (enemies, loot, quests, merchandise), but NOT the gameworld itself. That's the same. Always.

Oh yeah, that's a major aspect of Daggerfall for sure. The first dungeon I did for a sidequest took me 8 hours. With time, I got the hang of it and reduced my time per dungeons to 2-3 hours, but they are still huge and randomly generated, so you never know what to expect. One dungeon will be a maze of narrow corridors and stairs, another will be a network of teleporters, all of them full of random monsters and loot. Imo, it's a dungeon crawler paradise.

The combat system for melee attacks use the "hold mouse button and swing around" method (which I like a lot). I don't know how different it is from Arena though.

Lots of different factions you can join (Fighters/Mages/Thieves guild, Knight orders, Temples, Dark Brotherhood), with different types of random quests available and different services lineup.

Large cities with tons of questgivers, shops and guilds.

You can buy yourself a cart to carry around lots and lots of treasures.

P.S: If you do play Daggerfall, be sure to learn the Mark/Recall spell. It will save you several hours of backtracking, which you might not want after searching the dungeon for 5 hours.

Daggerfall was great because it broke so much new ground. First RPG with a true FPS-type interface. Huge gameworld. Great vanity shots in your inventory screen, including the ability to dress up in fancy clothes that didn't help your stats at all. (Daggerfall is the game that got me started playing Barbies in computer games - one of my favorite parts of gaming to this day.) Levelling up by actually using your skills. The spell creator. NPCs that came to find you instead of just waiting somewhere to be found by you. This is just the stuff that leaps immediately to mind.

By modern standards, it is a thousand times more playable than Arena. That's still not saying much, though. Heck, I was never able to finish Daggerfall even back in the day. Good luck with your project.

Arena and Daggerfall are among the games I have loved most in my whole life.

Daggerfall's most striking feature is its Class Maker. As said above, you can create real demi-gods, but the bottomline is, you play what you want to play including choosing weaknesses, so it is up to you if you play an unbalanced class and find it boring . Thats what the disadvantages are for... That by itself is a huge achievement.

Then there is the sotryline. The plot behind the characters and so on... To many, this is just a detail you can easily pass to complete quests and advance, but they do add a lot to the spirit of the game. Some dialogues or acts are simply too funny - like eveything having to do with the Underking (at Scourg Barrows).

It is a game with consequences to your actions, choices... One quest had to do with some controversial book by a queen. One of my characters was a Wizard type, so intelligent, wise, etc... it was nowhere in his interest to 'disclose' its hillarious contents, so he turned it to the queen. But my chaotic Berserker found it too good an oportunity to pass and turned it to the enemy - of course, thats what a brute lustful slayer would do, with no regards to the consequences at all. And the consequences were dire....

You cannot enjoy DF at all if u r picky about graphs and all that 'cosmetic' stuff. I am not, so I can say in clear conscience that I rate DF and Arena above Oblivion, for instance. There is no doubt in my mind or heart. And my guess is, if you give it a good chance, chances are you will get addicted.

EDIT: I cannot emphasise how interesting the plot in DF is. I just found some important letter in a quest that sheds some light on why e.g. Orcs that were not playable in A and DF were playable in MW and OB. Reading the letters is actually a great part of the fun in this game, do not just turn them in as regular quest objects - just do not read if it is advised against ill consequences.

when you have been lost, and you realize you messed up the main mission...you can go to a castle and kill them all...and the next thing you know you open a door and a naked chick is attacking you...kill her...kill them ...daggerfall was only meant to be played by idiots.....the first dungeon is just a test of character

Being attacked by naked chicks is xxxtra-cool!

Ya when you get attacked by those naked chicks or go into the inns/temples and sometimes when robbing stores you can get framed pictures. You might want to block out those parts if your posting on youtube. Not sure what they'll do even with old graphics like that. Actually if I remember correctly there's a parental control thing you can turn on so you should be safe then.

As for why it's so awesome is not only the dungeons (which I think are one of the best parts) like the above people mentioned... Some dungeons might only take you 15 min to finish while I've had a dungeon take me 5+ hours of searching and keep finding new areas in it. At the entrance of every dungeon before you start exploring always cast a recall spell. It helps a lot for more reasons than just getting lost. Also there's only a few quest related dungeons that aren't random but most of them are. Some quests are like other rpg's where it's take item a to place b or go retrieve something. But it's also got some unique quests to it that you normally don't find in other rpgs.

I also love the huge epic world although during the game play unless you make it a point to do it you won't go to 80% or more of the places it has. When starting out make sure you at least start out with a silver or ebony dagger or you won't be able to kill some of the monsters in the dungeon without magic. When you buy the cart you don't have to leave the dungeon to put your item in it. Only need to go to the entrance unless you use the glitch to put the items directly into it when you pick them up. Another good buy is the horse as when traveling threw large cities like daggerfall which can take 5-10 min real time for a low level character with a low level to get from once side to the other.

Sadly you can only buy one house even though there's different kingdoms and ton's of cities for each one. yet there bank system is separated so you can go to one and borrow money and it won't affect the other kingdom so if you wanted you could borrow money from all the banks and become rich but then your reputation in that kingdom will be lowered to the point that guards will attack you on site if I remember correctly.

In addition to buying a house to store your stuff you can buy a ship. I love this part as when you go to your ship and drop your items you can return to where you were so if like your cart was full you could just exit the dungeon drop everything on your ship then go right back to the entrance to the dungeon and finish it up with no travel time involved.

Sadly I have to finish up some paper work so I can go home from work as my shift is almost over. If I remember I'll come back and finish this post if I don't then I hope this helped.

I love this game because it's huge! I just love the vastness. I remember playing this game in 95? Or 94? for a year and still not completing it.

And I love the maturity, like the blood and nudity. When I say nudity I'm not talking nasty. Think Conan the Barbarian 1981.

I have only seen vids but the ability to pick which attributes you want very high by taking points away from attributes you don't need to place the points in the attributes you want to be awesome at the start of the game. Why couldn't of arena had that ?



I forgot the ?

More importantly, why didn't Morrowind or Oblivion do that either?

I dare anyone to name a game that has as much detailed and unique character creation as Daggerfall. There aren't many.

you know what you are right morrowind and or oblivion should of had it.

I just started Daggerfall, I think I'm level 2 now, received my first quest. I'm amazed by CC. I wonder if Morrowind/Oblivion have a mod for that?

But as much as I am amazed by character creation, I am seeing some flaws in it. It is too early for me to say it though without examining all the details but selecting disadvantages that can be roleplayed is effectively cheating when that means to balance it you can also select advantages which are already cheats. So it's double cheating.

I'm not against cheating or something but for gameplay balance it seems wrong to me.

I think a better character creation:

should let the player start the game at any level. Like starting the game from level 25 directly, then having that class system will have a good purpose. What the hell a matured character doing at level 1?

Also remove the things that can be roleplayed, all the forbidden materials.

For level 1 characters, create some means to receive those disadvantages/advantages during the game. But don't connect advantages and disadvantages. They should be completely separate.

They could be received through quests and/or they can be included in a perk system like Skyrim's but disadvantages must be free so to speak so you can get as many as you want at any point. Some of them can be moved to game difficulty too.

I say a blank state level 1 is meaningful, custom characters can only be meaningful if their stats are reflected in their levels too, in my opinion off course. This is for better game balance.

I look forward to Skyrim's system, maybe these disadvantages can be included.(Bad thing about these disadvantages is, there can be so many of them. Like thousands of fan requested disadvantages, it is very hard to cater to all. Maybe it is best to leave it for modders but still some of them can be quest related and some may appear in game difficulty options.)

And easily broken - I have a level 2 char on 90 strength. Worst part is, that doesn't seem to affect him at all...

In general, it's a good game - but there are a lot of problems. Terrible level scaling that leads to paralyzing spiders murdering you instantly at level 1, Zombies that can 2-shot you at level 2, invulnerable enemies until you find a silver sword, and lack of quest rewards par gold. That said, I am finding it pretty fun, but it's nowhere near Morrowind or Oblivion.

I'm not sure I would call that a "level scaling" issue so much as a "game balance" issue. If it was a level scaling problem, those spiders would be murdering you instantly at level 50. You're supposed to be easily killed at level 1. For me, that level of difficulty is one of the things that makes Daggerfall so much fun. I enjoyed getting stuck in dungeons, surrounded by enemies I lacked the equipment or skill to kill, with no real plan for getting back to the surface. A core part of old school RPGs was fleeing like a coward when you got in over your head, working to get stronger, then returning and beating the formerly tough enemies. Daggerfall's "it's ok to fail" design philosophy really encouraged this type of play; it's something I miss from the modern games.

Agreed 100%

Darklands is the only one I can think of. Maybe a few indie roguelikes.

Probably this http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1057351-those-little-touches-that-make-daggerfall-extra-special/ will answer to why DF is so special.

In my opinion it is still the best TES game ever made so far, followed by MW, Arena and Oblivion in the last place. If only there had been other "hidden" places and other special secrets that you could find only exploring outside cities, well, it would have been the perfect game. It's a pity.