My avatar has undertaken a variety of assignments, many of them convoluted dungeon crawls. On one such crawl he found Orchish gauntlets! He still hopes for Daedric, but Orcish is a definite step up from what he had been wearing. Just before I left him tonight he advanced a rank in the Mages Guild. This seems to be an interim tier that offers no additional perks. Next tier gains him assess to the teleporter.

He enchanted a Daedric Kantana with Paralyze and Featherweight to work his long blade skill. He has no real need to work long blade, it being miscellaneous. But Blunt needs no further improvement so why not? Speaking of enchantments, since enchanting his Tower Shield with Reflect Spell (when cast) to better survive Vampire Ancients not one single dungeon has contained them.

When you get around to Daggerfall you'll find the controls fully configurable. Mine are set very much as they are in Oblivion and Skyrim, and Minecraft for that matter. Arena's non configurable controls would likely bug me to no end today. Back when the game was new and shiny (and I myself less mentally decrepit) they seemed par for the course.

You remind me that I was a long-time holdout for arrow-key movement. I first learned WASD for Morrowind, then converted back to arrow-keys with my return to EQ2 (or was it EQ1?). I relearned WASD for Oblivion, and have stayed with it ever since.

I think I avoided WASD as long I did because I did not teach myself to touch-type until relatively late in life. In fact MMOs were a prime cause of my deciding to learn to touch type. I needed to be able to chat with fellow group and guild members while keeping my eyes glued on the screen. Couldn't do that as a two-finger hunt-and-peck typist.

Decrepit: yes I remember playing Everquest, which is MMO, and suddenly realizing I'd need to hook up a keyboard to my PS2. I was lucky in that I took a typing class way back in high school, one of the best classes I ever took in my life!

I had to configure Oblivion from WASD to arrows so that I could navigate menus more quickly. Tricky to explain, but if you can picture trying to navigate menus with a controller joystick ... With directional buttons this is much smoother.

Well it's good to hear DF allows more customization.

mirocu: Yes those Shield spells rock in Arena. It's interesting how they did this back then; other RPGs which featured shield spells would still allow damage while the spell was active, they'd just allow less of it.

Well, I don't have any new Arena updates for y'all but I'll be playing some this week. I think I'm getting to the end of Halls of Collussus.

My avatar has performed a number of tasks for varying organizations. None proved overly challenging survivability wise. He was at long last able to test his Spell Reflect enchanted shield against Vampire Ancients. They are indeed now easier to cope with. To be fair, that particular crawl was one in which he rapidly found his objective. The sample pool was thus not as extensive as we might have preferred.

He's currently on a mission for the Mages Guild to dispose of six mutated former guild members. It's one of those assignments where quest mobs spawn nearby during rests. It feels 'cheaty' to me to have my avatar enter a dungeon, then rest over and over at the entrance until all targets have spawned and been defeated. What he usually does, unless on a very tight time schedule, is wander the passageways and rest naturally as he needs to heal and/or replenish magicka / stamina. Only . . . this dungeon is so easy he never needs to do those. What we'll prolly do is let him practice spell casting, resting between rounds to replenish magicka loads. He can certain benefit from such practice, a number of his spell schools still being in the mid twenties. (Restoration, the only spell school that counts toward his leveling, is an exception at circa 75, with Mysticism at circa 42.)

He's still at a dead end with his primary mission. We're not sure what to do about that at the moment other than go about our mundane affairs and hope he eventually receives further instructions.

My avatar got to a puzzle-door in Halls of Collossus, and I think I know what the answer is, but I had to stop gaming for the day when I got that far. Anyways, this is probably my favorite Arena dungeon so far. We're supposed to



I like HoC because it's different than other dungeons in TES 1. I didn't expect there to be any variation at all like this.

Isn´t it great we can still have so much fun with these old games? Glad you got pleasently suprised by the dungeon, Renee

@Decrepit - Hopefully your avatar gets the info that he needs soon. In the meantime, it might be good to practice on some skills

Fredas, 9:01 AM, 18th of First Seed, 3E 392



Renee Gade the first, born in the town of Amol, in the province of Skyrim, is now in the town of Tenmar Forest, in Elsweyr. It's been a long journey for her: from Skyrim to Cyrodiil to Valenwood, and now here, in this dinky little town. The air is pleasant because it's springtime, and Renee has just emerged from a 10-day stay at the Howling Daggar. 10 days in any one place is rare for Miss Gade, but she mostly did it so she could have her adamantium longsword and Round Shield of Personality (her two favorite combat items) repaired.

As usual, she had merely discarded all the pieces of leather armor she had worn into this shop several days earlier, all over its floor. With an average of 20,000 gold, she can easily afford a brand-new set of armor, all of which are common & unenchanted. As she returns to the Elite Weaponry Shop, she sees that the armor she'd worn into the place is now hanging neatly on a floor dummy. The smith explains that as her fame has grown, and people begin to know who she is, being able to place the very armor which Renee had worn into Halls of Collossus is going to increase his business. The leather is worn and beaten, and many men would pay a small fortune to have it, but this set of armor is not for sale.

The smith also explains that her sword and magic shield are not ready yet. Drats. One more day. Back to the Howling Daggar. Rumor has it that the place she had dreamed about several days earlier, the Crystal Tower, which is supposed to contain the next piece of the Staff of Chaos, is somewhere in the Summerset Isles. Renee looks forward to this journey, as always.

Neat that the smith put her armor on display to enhance his business. But does he at least give Renee lower prices too?

Awesome that you included a pic, Renee! You are hereby required to do so in every update from here on out!

Who´s ms. Gade´s follower btw?

Nice, huh? I didn't post any Kahreem (or anybody else) this week so my creative thoughts went elsewhere.

She doesn't have a follower; that pic in the top left is a glitch. Renee rescued somebody awhile back who looked just like her, ever since then that pic has been there.

All that stuff about the smith & increased business is my overactive imagination. In case you play this game someday, it aint like that. Matter of fact, if you put items on the ground, it will respawn out of the game as soon as you leave the shop.

Arena just got insanely hard. I'm at Crystal Tower, and all the sudden there's vampires. Even if there's just one of these, it's like instant death. This game might just b34t me, instead of me b34ting it. Over half the doors are locked too. Since RG1 can't lockpick, she is forced to bash these doors with one of her weapons, which means they eventually wear out.

On the other hand, she's got some cool items I've forgotten about. Like this Ring of Far Silence, and these Bracers of Opening. Heh heh heh....

My character scoffs at vampires. Then he kills them


I hope ms Gade da First makes it through!

How? How is he ridding them? ... Fortunately, I haven't seen any more of these in Crystal Tower. Crystal Tower gets really interesting too. There's a section which has .. well I don't want to spoil it for ya. Then again, you're not doing the Main Quest.

With spells. He´s immune to theirs and has quite some powerful ones himself, one hit is enough to kill anything.


Whoa!

I would like to see some pics right about now

Can you give some examples? I was using a reflect spell but maybe it's not powerful enough.

I think I took some pics. I'll have to post 'em later.

Hmm, I´ll have to enter the game and look them up. Most of them are low on effect though and you have to add the numbers up since they grow with each level. My character has a reflect spell too but he never uses it because it kills whoever attacks him instantly and he wants them to fill up his Magicka first

Rene Gade 1 is in Crypt of Hearts, which is #6 out of 10 steps during the Main Quest. I've been playing Arena occasionally, but not talking about it. Anyways, I'd thought I'd post a few Arena pics, okay?

Village Scene

Red Skies at Night

Hubba Hubba -- ( I assume she's supposed to be a dark elf, hard to say. Could be Argonian. Races aren't as defined visually as they are in later games).

Tropical Rainstorm -- (I assume this is in Black Marsh)

Psychadelic Shrine

Creepy Pixelated Forest

I am having an awesome battle right now in this game. I guessed the answer to the puzzle correctly, and there's two fire daemon in the room where the staff is found. Fire daemons apparently do not take damage unless you've got a mithril weapon or better. RG1 has an adamantine sword which she's been carrying around forever. I'm not sure if her weapon is good enough. Seemed like it wasn't harming the daemons much.

Then we decided to try some other ideas. In the next room there are a lot of pits. RG1 can levitate, so she starts levitating over the pits, moving away from the daemons (which cannot follow). She breaks out her Ring of Ice Storm to begin sending cold magic their way. Then she casts a Spell Reflection, and that's what did the trick.

As the one daemon started hurling fireballs at her, it eventually died because here we've got a 10% chance of having each spell reflect back to its caster, but there's also a +5% chance per level. RG1 is level 17 right now. She wrote this spell a long time ago, probably when she was Level 3 or 4, so it's really 55% or 60% chance that spells reflect.

She drank a Resist Fire potion to eliminate taking any damage that isn't reflected, then she drank a bunch of potions (restore health and magicka). She moved in close to the first daemon, and touched it with a Damage Health spell, which causes 40 to 50 damage every 5 rounds (5 minutes in-game time). There is +3 to +6 damage per round with each additional level, and again, we're talking maybe 12 or so extra levels.

She took a huge chunk of damage when she went back into that room with the staff piece. The second daemon was hiding in there and he got her. But then he too began throwing spells, and pretty soon he was history.

Reading about such battles reminds me of Baldur's Gate where a lot of spells were leveled dependent and if you planned things ahead, some tough battles quickly became much easier.

Good that she dealt with both daimons, she's not far from finishing the MQ, right?

Awesome updates, Renee! Cool that you´re still on the MQ. And I really liked the pictures, keep em coming!


Those daemons... All my character needs to do is sneeze and boom; destroyed

Thanks mirocu, I will update more frequently this summer since I'm not playing Skyrim all summer. I also REALLY want to get to Daggerfall. So I've been playing Arena maybe once or 2x a week lately..

Lopov: Yes, I think there are three more steps to the M41n Kw3$T. I can't believe I've been doing the MQ in this game for over 2 years. How do people get it done in hours?

We found the seventh staff piece! It was found in Black Marsh, the in the dungeon of Murkwood. This dungeon was surprisingly easy. It consisted of two levels: the first is an outdoor maze. The air was foggy, but the enemies were nothing we hadn't seen before. This maze was easy because most of it was foliage (bushes & trees), so as soon as we found a stone structure, we knew to go inside of it.

Came to a door. The question was this...


I tie and hold, capture and bind,
yet both knights and knaves crave me.
I faithfully enslave all within my grasp, whether or not they seek me.
Yet those who have never felt my unmerciful hand, are pitied by their fellow man.

and I went through 8 guesses before I got it right!




After guessing that one, we went down to the next level, which was simply a large room full of caged golems. All we had to do was jump across one chasm, and the staff piece was right there behind a door! This time it took me just TWO guesses to get it right. After guessing wrong the first time, the cages opened, and all these golems might have attacked Renee Gade the first if she hadn't cast an invisibility spell.

I run smoother than any rhyme,
I love to fall but cannot climb,
I tremble at each breath of air,
And yet can heaviest burdens bear

I think this one is so easy I won't even post the answer. Who wants to guess?

It sounds like water to me.

I agree, sounds like water.


Nice update, Renee! So now, ehm, Renee, has all the pieces but one? That dungeon sure sounds easy, no false passages or hidden rooms at all. I think it´s to let your guard down for the final dive...

Yes, the answer is water, very good you two.

Yes mirocu, it seems like the early Bethesda team (which was like... two people, + Todd as a beta-tester!) didn't feel like putting much energy into Murkwood. Or maybe they decided to make Murkwood so easy, they were thinking most gamers would assume "how can it be so easy? There must be some trick." Whatever the case, I hope I am done with Arena soon. I really wanna try Daggerfall this summer.

Fredas, 7:11 pm, Second Seed 11, 3rd Era 393

Renee Gade I

Level: 17

ST: 62, Int: 60, WP: 78, AG: 77, Spd: 50, End: 66, Per: 48, Lck: 64



In the town of Narsis, in Morrowind now, Renee Gade walks at night, knowing at some point a minion of Jagar Tharn is bound to show up soon. And tonight is the night. It is a vampire who faces the Nord Battlemage on the very streets of this town. Tharn tells her so, during a quick, omnipotent moment of time.

The vampire immediately begins throwing some spells at Renee, fireballs mostly. But she is quick. She counters by immediately casting a spell of her own: one which will reflect most spells. She grabs into her magic bag, and grabs a potion which will also resist fire. After these two simple moves, the vampire hasn't got a chance in Oblivion.

After the vampire's dismissal, she begins her search for an inn to spend the night. She may spend several nights in this inn, for her gear is in need of repairs. Things must also be bought, identified, and sold. She had managed a good looting back in the dungeon of Murkwood, in the province of Black Marsh.

She is pleased to find an inn literally on the same block the vampire's ashes had fallen. As she rents a room, she muses upon the last words spoken by Ria Silmane, the spirit she had been conferring with over the past 4 years. Ria hold told her to come here, to Morrowind, and as usual she would need to ask the locals if they knew anything about the place Ria had mentioned, a place called Dagoth-Ur.

Ooh, things are getting tight now! The staff is almost complete and Renee will soon face the final battle. May the Force™ be with her and... Oops, wrong universe

Renee has almost beaten the game! Thrash it like a red-haired stepchild.

Ha ha you don't know how much I want to beat this game! I can't wait for Daggerfall. I have a feeling I'll get stuck in a Daggerfall / Morrowind phase for many years to come.

Fredas, 1:01 pm, Mid Year 4, 3rd Era 393.

King Cosik, the leader of the town of Ebonheart, in the province of Morrowind, was surprised to see the lady he'd been hearing so many things about walk into his court. Cosik was expecting some sort of hulking she-man, a very physically-developed matron of warfare, or some such, but the lady before him was nothing like this. She was smallish, for one thing. And dressed in common leather, not some shiny armor suit.

"Might this be her? The one everybody's been referring to? She looks nothing like I'd imagined."

King Cosik's nearest page agreed, but said nothing. This page had heard plenty of things too. How a Nord (a Nord!) was the one who'd managed to collect all the staff pieces which had been scattered by Jagar Tharn, one in each of Tamriel's provinces.

Finally, the page spoke. Nobody ever said he couldn't speak...it was just something not commonly done. And besides, he thought he might be able to inform the king directly.

"Sh--she is not really a just warrior, milord, she has magical talents too. She is said be able to disappear from sight in the blink of an eye, walk over pits and rivers without falling into them, and cast the deadliest magics seen since the days of Uriel Septim III, under the banner ofTheodore Osbern."

"What did you say? Who are you?"

But before he could derive an answer, the Nord woman approached. And now that she was near, the king could see something about this woman before him. She definitely had the fire of a warrior in her eyes. But the air around her seemed charged, as well. Charged with magical energy, that is.

"By gracious," she spoke." "I am here to address the court on the matter of the location of a certain lair, known to your peoples as Dagoth-Ur."

"My name is King Cosik," he began, "and I have heard that you seek Dagoth Ur, the legendary home of of the Dwarven people. Perhaps we can help one another. I have in my possession", he rambled, "the Anvil of Mithos, greatest of the Dwarven blacksmiths. Only one object was strong enough not to shatter when used to shape metal upon the Anvil, the Hammer of Gharen."

"And I think I can guess the rest..."

"It is said that the ring of the Hammer upon the Anvil speaks to the user, telling him the entrance to the Mount of Dagoth-Ur. With the raw metals present within the mountain, my blacksmiths will be able to fashion the finest weapons and amor in the realm!"

"You want me to..."

"Recover the Hammer for me."

"Thought so."

"It was supposedly lost in the dungeon known as Black Gate. I will show you where this dungeon can be found. You will be rewarded for this deed with the location of the entrance to Dagoth-Ur. You can then journey there and explore it to your heart's content. Do you agree?"

"Of course I do."

... that was how King Cosik liked his subordinates, ready and obedient. And before him was the very queen of subordinates.

"You do me a great service, Renee Gade, one that I nor my people will easily forget."

And then, the lady before him, Renee Gade, the once demure nobody from Amol, in Skyrim, did the most amazing thing.

"Where-- where did she go?"

"As I said, milord, she has great magical talents.

King Cosik fretted a moment, unsure of what made him more uncomfortable: the lady warrior-mage disappearing, or the fact that he was now engaged in a conversation with one of his .... not so great subordinates.

In my personal ranking of the five main TES releases in their virginal unaltered vanilla states, Daggerfall has long been tied with Oblivion for top honors. (Disclosure, I use and recommend Daggerfall Setup, which includes unofficial patches and corrections as well as additional content. But, its fixes and patches do not fundamentally alter any aspect of game play. There is one optional add-on that, after further study, I decided is a bit 'cheaty' and won't use again.) Add mods into the mix and I give Oblivion the nod, though Daggerfall remains a reasonably close second. In a sense I'm being unfair to Morrowind and Skyrim become I played those games at or near release pre-expansion/DLC and only lightly modded.

I really ought to return to my stalled Daggerfall playthrough, which I've not visited since early this year.

Interesting I didn't know there add-ons for Daggerfall. I'll be playing it soon, I hope.

We did find the final staff piece in Arena, now all I gotta do is figure out the final word-puzzle. It's completely stumped me, but sometimes these things take time. Anyhow, soon we'll be messing around with Jagar Tharn up-close, hopefully.

Oh, man. You´ve come a long way now, Renee. You´re actually gonna beat Arena!!

When you made the jump, keep in mind that two big differences between Arena and Daggerfall are that...

...unlike Arena, Daggerfall's controls can be modified to closely mimic what's we're used to in Oblivion and Skyrim.

...Daggerfall has, imo, the best custom character creation sub-game in the entire TES series ... discounting body/face customization of course. You can create super gimped characters, ultra OP uber characters, or anything in between. (My current avatar is rather gimped magically, and sufficient but not uber as a warrior.) Takes a while to learn the ropes. There are, or were, a number of guides for this online, but my experience is that most of them assume you want an uber avatar who sails through dungeons with his or her eyes closed. Not my thing, but to each his or her own.

I could and might later list a few creation pointers, but part of the fun is blundering your way through your first few builds.

My avatar was tasked to find and dispose of a traitor to the Temple of Kynareth. He traveled posthaste to the Dungeon of Paristair, where said villain was said to hold up, traversed its many corridors, and at last unearthed the heretic within a vast chamber not terribly far from the entrance. Unpleasantries out of the way, he made his way back to the entrance (having forgot to cast ANCHOR), returned to Daggerfall City, took cart to the local Temple, and reported his success. He then sold his few collected spoils (the dungeon was inhabited almost entirely by ghosts and other spirits), banked, walked to the Knights of the Dragon, and was about about to ask for an assignment when I left him.

Absolutely. I have this idea that I'll probably go back to my old character stats sheets from my DnD days, and try to recreate these guys & gals in Daggerfall as much as I can. Looking forward to this game.

I still haven't guessed the final word-puzzle in Arena, but I had a bunch of ideas, and wrote all of these down on a Notepad page. Next time I fire Arena up, hopefully one of these words will be correct.

My avatar took credit for having disposed of a ghost for the Knights of the Dragon. The dungeon where the spirit holed up, which shall remain nameless, proved most perplexing. Unlike the vast majority of dungeons, this one consisted almost entirely of two humongous rooms of vast height, containing enclosed narrow stairwells and exposed stairways for passage between its numerous levels. Such side passages as existed soon petered out.

Yet we had a heck of a time finding our target. We were all but convinced that the mob was glitched and the quest unfinishable. Then, on a hunch, we 'revisited' a room reachable only via levitate. There we found and killed the ghost. Turns out it was a second unreachable-save-by-levitate room, more or less identical to the first.

In any case my avatar is back in Daggerfall City. He arrived too late in the day to sell and bank, so will spend the night in the Fighters Guild and handle those chores on the morrow. If standard quest rotation order is adhered to, as it likely will be, he will next solicit an assignment from the Mages Guild.

The above dungeon was full of high level undead, including many Vampire Ancients, the bane of our existence. I am happy to report that my avatar handled them extremely well this crawl, certainly more so than during prior like scenarios. I credit this to item enchantments made (at the Mages Guild) not long prior to my Daggerfall hiatus. In particular, one Daedric armor piece provides a long lasting REGEN when cast. A Daedric katana is enchanted with paralyze, which oft (but not always) reduces of even prevents Ancients' ability to do damage. (Those with sufficient magicka pools need not rely overmuch on enchanted items. My avatar, however, has the innate magicka of a turnip.)

My avatar disposed of an atronach for the Daggerfall City Mages Guild. This found him exploring yet another labryinthian dungeon full of casters, both humanoid and undead. Wouldn't ya just know it, his target ended up being in the last remaining unsearched dungeon passage. We were sweating it for a bit, as the quest had a tight time limit and, due to battling casters, required numerous rests to replenish magicka. It all came out okay in the end. More than okay actually. Those human casters dropped something like six Daedric weapon, plus two Adamantium weapons, making for a very profitable haul.

Back in Daggerfall City, my avatar, in addition to selling loot and banking, practiced spell casting, gaining expertise in Restoration and another school that now eludes me. I left him poised to grab an assignment for the Fighters Guild.

It´s nice to have someone in Daggerfall whilst we wait for Renee to arrive

The Daggerfall City Fighters Guild tasked my avatar to dispose of a gargoyle. In a dungeon of course. A dungeon inhabited to Vampire Ancients (and a few common vampires). I tend to save after every encounter if possible (it usually is except for multi-mob engagements) when dealing with those creatures. My avatar now handles Ancients far better than before he created good quality enchanted gear, but delayed saving just isn't worth the risk.

This was a particularly twisty-turny dungeon. Despite that, our target was eventually found and dispatched. Though he'd set an anchor-point at the dungeon entrance, my avatar elected to make his way back on foot, to hone his pathfinding skills. Piece of cake. He reached the exit in no time flat. (This is usually the case, though an occasional tricky dungeon throws us for a loop.)

Back in Daggerfall City, he identified several (crappy) looted enchanted items at the Mages Guild, reported success at the Fighters Guild, sold loot and banked. He's thinking to solicit a merchant quest, or maybe one from a noble.

Someone needs to hold the fort until the cavalry arrives.

I like reading all your accounts Decrepit, keep 'em up! I'm getting really excited for Daggerfall.

Problem is, I am stuck in Arena, on that last word puzzle. Look at this list of answers I have tried so far... all of them wrong.




I really want to get this one without cheating. I feel like I'll eventually get it.

I would have looked it up on the internetz about five minutes after my first wrong guess.

WOO HOO!!!!! I didn't know you were playing Arena!!! Awesome!!!








Ditto!

When you get to Daggerfall, you may find that some of the tools for applying the mods won't run. You may have to run those under DosBox, as well as the game itself. That's true for my playable Orcs, for example.

What you want when it comes time to install Daggerfall is DaggerfallSetup.exe. With all its fixes and additions in place the game is very stable. Certainly more so than my modded Oblivion install. You'll still fall through the world every now and again, but Bethesda provides a handy means to escape that predicament (ALT-F11 pressed until you return to the spot just prior to the fall) so long as you apply it soon enough. Doesn't correct the occasional sound glitch triggered by proximity to light sources. Just move away from the offending source when this happens. In my opinion most of the fixes and additions are worth installing, except for foreign language packs if not needed (duh!). One exception: DagSkills. The Daggerfall Setup page describes this add-on as "fix skills and attribute rising". While it might well (or might not) do so, it for sure raises the limits from 100 to 200, which seems "cheaty" to me. It, like most of the alterations, is electable and easily ignored if you prefer to least the limit at 100. In any case DaggerfallSetup.exe makes installation a no-brainer.

I'll provide one bit of advice, a clarification some Daggerfall LPers don't pick up on. Once out of the starter dungeon and shopping/selling in town, as will eventually happen, you will at some point notice both a horse and a cart for sell. Be aware that the cart comes with its own horse. You need not buy a horse for it. (I'm not saying you will or won't want/need a separate horse, only that the cart does not require it.)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I wonder if I solved the final Arena puzzle without help back in the day? My mind was less muddled then, and I used to enjoy puzzle/riddle solving. I was gonna look up the riddle and give it a go, realizing I'm almost certain to crash and burn nowadays. But the one site I found that doesn't display the darn answers in plain view apparently doesn't list the puzzles in chronological order.

Since last report, my avatar performed one meaty assignment, which saw him search for someone lost in a dungeon and return him to the Daggerfall City Temple of Kynareth. For once my avatar had a stroke of good fortune in that he found the fellow reasonably early on. He again thought to reach the exit on foot, but part way there said to heck with it and cast recall.

He also did three Daggerfall Castle Royalty fedex delivery runs and one civilian escort commission. The latter proved most rewarding. The Dark Brotherhood attempted to interfere. Dispatching their thugs netted my avatar four or five Daedric sabers and one pair of Daedric greaves, which sold for a pretty Septim back in Daggerfall City.

Can you get Emma to make you a Vilja in Daggerfall mod?

Oh yes, I've been playing for 2 1/2 years now.

Thanks for you all's help with starting up Daggerfall. I just had some major headaches trying to get Fallout 3 going (because this game apparently is not made for any OS beyond Vista? so I'm looking forward to getting DF going as smoothly as possible.

Chances are I won't mod it much (thank you ghastley) because I'm getting the feeling the base game will have tons to offer all by itself.



I was gonna ask if you played this game back in the mid '90s, when finding an answer wasn't just a google search away?

I'm the type of gamer who gets mad at herself if she looks up an answer, and then realize the answer was sooo obvious. Argh! OTOH, finally getting the puzzle right is quite satisfying. So far, there has only been one puzzle which I would never have gotten, not in a million years, because it had some sort of math equation for the question.

Not much to report, RL endeavours having taken precedence over my ability to observe invents in Tamriel these past some days. My avatar has not been totally ignored. The Daggerfall City Mages Guild recently tasked him to retrieve ectoplasm from one of the Kingdom's numerous dungeons. I watched him navigate its many twisty hallways and several huge rooms until the ingredient was found, at which point he teleported to the exit and returned to the Guild Hall. Back in Daggerfall City he received credit for completing the mission, sold loot and banked, practiced spell schools but formally and informally, and is now poised to accept an assignment from the Fighters Guild.

One bit of luck: The Ectoplasm Dungeon contained no foe worse than Ancient Liches. Made it seem almost a holiday compared to battling Vampire Ancients as he all too often does these days.

While watching a YouTube Daggerfall LP episode the other day, the presenter mentioned that his progress with the main quest had been stalled for a long time, and that he had only just recalled being given an oral clue as to the whereabouts of a certain point-of-contact following an early MQ quest completion. Boy did my eyes light up! My avatar's main quest progress has likewise been at a standstill. What's more, I too forgot about this point-of-contact reference, which leaves no trace in LOG or inventory. Since then, my avatar has journeyed to the contact, completed her mission, and is now in the process of returning to her, goods in hand. The dungeon she resides in is full of the those bloody Vampire Ancients. Not looking forward to clearing those again but hey, it's a living.

Gotta pay attention when you game, Decrepit


At least you can make progress again now