I recently got around to installing Daggerfall on my laptop, using Dosbox. However, it's somewhat tedious having to mount the game to the drive every time I want to play it. I'm not very experienced in dosbox, but surely there's a way to write a batch file so that Daggerfall can be started using a single, simpler command?

I like to add the mounting commands to the [autoexec] section of the DOSbox.conf file

mount c /DOS/ -freesize 1000
c:

And then put batch files in my DOS folder for each of my games.

df.bat
fall.exe z.cfg
Then I just start DOSbox, type df and hit enter. BOOM daggerfall time!

Making a batch file is easy: just make a txt file, type in the commands, and then rename it to whatever.BAT

I tried a few different things to try to make this work, but other than directly mounting DF and the DFCD to the drive at startup, nothing will work. I don't want to mount everything at startup, as I use dosbox for a few other games. I used the step by step installation instruction given in Bethesda's download to install the game on Dosbox 0.74, is there anywhere where I can get step by step instruction for making a batch file to run it too?

OK, tell you what. You post what commands you use to mount it all up and run Daggerfall (that work), and I'll tell you exactly what to put in the batch file.

mount c c:\dosgames -freesize 1000
mount d c:\dosgames\dfcd -t cdrom -label Daggerfall
c:
cd\dagger
dagger

Thanks in advance, I'm terrible with these things.

OK, open up your dosbox.conf file and add this to the very end, in the [autoexec] section:

mount c c:\dosgames -freesize 1000c:

(This just makes it so that when you start DOSbox it automatically mounts your games folder for you)

Now make a blank text document, open it up, and paste the following into it:

mount d c:\dosgames\dfcd -t cdrom -label Daggerfallcd\daggerdagger

Then rename the file to DF.BAT and place it in c:\dosgames\

When you start DOSbox, it should automatically mount C and start you with a C:\ prompt.
Type DF and hit enter, which should start Daggerfall for you!