Just finished my first DF session in ever so long. I'd saved near a dungeon exit, my avatar tasked by a Daggerfall City merchant to rid the place of harpies. He'd combed most of the joint when it dawned on us that he might have completed his mission prior to my departure those many earth months ago. I should have been able to find out via my handwritten DF quest log. Alas, I no longer recall where it is.

We eventually agreed that he might as well return to the City, check with the merchant, and hope for the best. Turns out, he indeed finished his primary mission during an earlier session. What we both forgot until too late is that he had also received a note from the Fighters Guild, asking him to search for a certain missing person while in the dungeon.

His efforts were well rewarded by sells of the numerous Daedric armor and weapons collected during the crawl. He found one non-Daedrec item for his home collection. After banking he traveled there, receiving quite a shock upon discovering that his attic is now totally bare! All that yummy loot gone, including some valuable one-of-a-kind quest items. I've absolutely no idea what happened. Thankfully, nothing else seems amiss. He certainly isn't hurting for money!

Big news on the Daggerfall front. GOG now offers, free of charge, an all-in-one heavily modded DF-Unity download/install! It includes, but is far from limited to, most of the mods I run.

(link) Here's the GOG modded DF-Unity page (link)

Speaking of mods, I planned to update my now somewhat outdated Unity install. Turns out, one graphics improvement mod I like a lot is currently incompatible with recent Unity versions. I'll stick with what I've got for now.

Wow, that is big news. What is the incompatible graphics mod that you use?

"Numerous Daedric weapons and armor" wow you must be good at this game.

What happened to the attic though? Sounds like a glitch.

Splat Terrain Texturing, which supplies many of the ground textures seen in my second DFU YouTube video, linked a few posts ago. I prefer it over any other DFU ground textures I'm acquainted with. Prolly not a big deal for most, but for now I don't want to be without it.

My DFU avatar has been busy. Since finishing that long-neglected Merchant quest, he has polished off four guild quests in rapid succession.

First up, the Mages Guild gave him an easy one. All he had to do was travel to another town, cast Sleep on a local resident, then return to the Daggerfall City Guild Hall for his reward. Given 17 days to accomplish this, he was there and back in no time at all.

Next up, Knights of the Dragon gave him his one lengthy assignment, kill a named orc in Castle Woodcroft. We began to worry when extensive searching turned up no orcs whatsoever, just lots of wraiths and ghost and an occasional minor vampire. Eventually, he found his mark holed away in a closet-size room far from the entrance.

The Fighters Guild sent us to the Hole of Balul to dispose of a Lich. This was another huge dungeon. In that case, following his usual practice of taking all left-hand turns, he chanced upon the target in less than 15 mins.

Temple of Kynareth sent him to a nearby town to terminate an undead haunting a local residence.

None of these gigs earned him much in the way of money or loot. That's normally not an issue. However, with his household item collection vanished without a trace, he has a lot of asset-rebuilding to do, which didn't happen this round.

I suppose I should mention that my DF avatar rarely cherry-picks guild assignments, taking whatever is first offered. He does, however, almost always turn down those that seem in any was "shady".

Other than accomplishing his various assignments, he continued his long-established practice of working spell skills prior to each travel. This netting him increases in two schools, Mysticism and Thaumaturgy.

I must say that, even after my very long absence, it's easy to get back in the DF groove. There was some awkwardness during the Merchant quest, mostly with forgotten key assignments. But already it feels as if I was away no time at all.

Good old Daggerfall magic. Some good advice i was once given, do not go adventuring without; Mysticism (for Open, Soul Trap and Teleport) and Thaumaturgy (for Levitate and Water Walking).

Nice to know you're still Daggerfalling, Decrepit!

Since my last report, I've watched my DFU avatar . . .

. . . Rescue a merchant's daughter. An easy one. Go to a private residence in a local town, retrieve target, return to merchant, accept reward. No fighting was involved, not always the case with these missions.

. . . Fetch mummy wrappings from Tomb of Baroghoth for a mage in the DFC Mage Guild hall. Despite this being a medium size dungeon, this took a while. After much time spent combing and recombing what we assumed was the entirety of the dungeon, my avatar spotted one door he had not opened. This exposed a new-to-us dungeon section. Our target was found within that section. Even then, he needed to levitate through a passageway ceiling hole to reach the corridor that led to a room housing the mummy.

. . . Kill a Lich in Yeomcroft's Guard for Knights of the Dragon. Another longest crawl.

. . . Rescue a lost scholar from Tower Buckinging. Being a super large dungeon, we expected a lengthy stay. Turns out, the scholar was found in around five minutes.

. . . Kill a Necro at Ashcroft Graveyard for the Fighters Guild. Another easy one. This was a true graveyard. All my avatar needed do was kill zombies and skeletons prowling the graveyard until the necro left the crypt to investigate.

My avatar has made a small start replenishing his lost attic armor / weapons/ items collection. This time he will collect only better-grade armor and weapons, enchanted items excepted.

The strangest thing happened yesterday afternoon. While in Baroghoth, my phone rang. It was a call I needed to take. (An out-of-stock chainsaw bought at Home Depot a month again finally came in.) That done, I returned to the game. Ever since then, I've stunk at Daggerfall's mouse-movement combat. There's no explaining it. Yes, DFU lets us switch to "modern" mouse-click combat. But I've always far preferred DF's original swing-base weapon combat. And always been good at it. Until that phone call.

I might actually give it a go! I was going to try Unity anyway.

On that note, there's now also Daggerblivion! The zombies are certainly taking over... Although Daggerblivion is still in alpha and apparently far from complete. I would go with Unity for now.

Oh my goodness; Daggerblivion?

As crazy as it sounds (although not at the same time) I think it's a really cool idea! Can we expect Arenablivion too?

Well, they started with Morroblivion. Now there's Daggerblivion. I would not discount anything at this point. (Redguardblivion? )

Daggerblivion looks really shiiiiiiny, though.

It does! If I wasn't so heavily invested in Oblivion, I could definitely see myself playing it!

There's nothing stopping you... It's the same game!

Lothran could take a detour from Bruma and veer off North a bit.

Besides this DFU return driving home the point that my mind simply isn't as quick as it once was in the heat of battle, I've something positive to report. Having played the game off-and-on since it was new and shiny, I believe today is the first time I ever successfully created a proper Destruction Training spell. Not for lack of trying. All previous attempted ended in failure.


It's small-radius area-of-effect combining two functions; weak damage-fatigue with heal-fatigue of equal strength. My DFU avatar dare not cast it outside his DFC home, for fear of harming innocents and/or alerting the law. I suppose he could do so out in the wilderness, but would need to be careful. Dungeons are of course out due to mana-pool drain.

Too much time has passed to recall details of individual assignments my DFU avatar tackled since last report. He's completed two complete cycles: Mages Guild, Knights of the Dragon, Temple of Kynareth, Fighters Guild, Civilian/Merchant. In between the two, he attempted to grab a Royalty task at DFC Castle. No one of rank there had anything to offer.

Both Civilian/Merchant tasked were super simple . . . guard a civilian in her DFC home from 2100-2400 that evening. Kill a few poorly-trained assassins. Wait out the remaining time. Leave. Report to where the task-giver is located in during the day. Claim reward. That's it.

During two dungeon-crawl assignments, my avatar resorted to something he almost never does, use teleport to return to the exit once the target was killed/found. Both were super large dungeons with lots of levers that had to be manipulated. At some point, he decided enough was enough and teleported.

My avatar has amassed a decent selection of Daedric Armor and Weapons for his home attic collection. During one of his two most recent assignments, he finally found a Daedric helm, given him a full set of Daedric in storage. He still has a way to go before acquiring as much Daedric as it wants, especially when armor variants are taken into account.

Of other materials he collects, he's doing surprisingly well considering how little time he's been at it (since his original attic collect mysteriously disappeared).

He recently leveled, spending 4 of five points on WIS, the last on LUCK.

He's gone up 10 points in Destruction since creating an effective low-mana Practice Spell from that school.

Despite collecting rather than selling most Daedric finds, my avatar now has over 20mil in the Bank of Daggerfall!

Since last report, my DFU avatar has completed missions too numerous to chronicle. A bit before I left him tonight, he reached level 31, earning 6 level-up point. Four were used on LUCK, bringing it to 65. He is now considered Lucky. The remaining two points went to SPEED. He's still three points shy of a classification milestone there. Next up on quest rotation, a civilian/merchant mission. He had not yet found anyone in need of assistance when I departed.

Congrrat on reaching Level 31.

The level-up caught us both totally unaware. He really plowed through level 30 at warp speed, without either of us realizing it. Then again, he's always busy. Quest after quest after quest, with much of the relatively short down periods he allows himself between assignments devoted to skill/spell training. Quite different from my Obliovin avatar who is these days content with leisurely road patrols that net him little beyond the satisfaction of knowing that the roads of Cyradiil are (relatively) safe for common traffic. That and eating three square meals a day. And getting a good night's sleep. And occasion swims with his ward.

Yesterday evening's final DFU task was the retrieval of a Daedra Heart from Hold of Hawkcroft, for DFC ToK. My avatar traversed the entire dungeon in great detail, never finding his objective. We went over the map with a fine-toothed comb. Neither of us spotted any overlooked passages or doorways, secret or otherwise.

It was eventually decided to do something neither of us is keen on, use "tele2qitem". We have self-imposed restrictions placed on its usage. He can not simply grab/kill the objective, then work/TP his way back to the exit. Instead, once at the objective, we open the map and study the room's location. I then reload the save made prior to the command. He again attempts to find the room conventionally.

This ended in failure.

I once again used "tele2qitem", which BTW landed him in a water-filled room. Breaking tradition, he this time left the room and attempted to explore that section of map until unearthing a connection with already-trodden territory. Our thought was simply to see what he'd overlooked. I'd then reload. We'd accept the quest as a failure.

This didn't work either. Despite our best efforts, we found no connection between the objective and the rest of the dungeon. That settled, he returned to the objective, grabbed the Heart, and TP'd the exit. Not finding it on his own being, so far as we can ascertain, no fault of his, it was decided that he'd be allowed to keep / turn in the Heart and consider the mission a success.

It's bugged me ever since. If this is indeed a game glitch, it might be the first of its type experienced in years. My decrepit mind tells me that there has to be something we overlooked. I'll talk with my avatar when next we meet and see if he's willing to revisit that dungeon, for the sole purpose of putting my mind at rest on the matter.

In other DFU news, thanks to frequent spell-casting practice, all "schools" are now at 75% or more. Restoration is highest, maxed at 100%. Destruction might be next, at 77%. One, I forget which, is 76%. The others are 75%. Destruction saw the largest increase, having sat at 51% for ages until at long last figuring out how to create a proper practice spell. It's a mixture of Restoration and Destruction, both affecting Stamina. One effect negates the other. He must of course be very careful when and where it's cast.

That's got to be very frustrating. Just a guess but it sounds like a missing teleport door. Hopefully it's just a one-off sort of thing and doesn't happen again anywhere else.

My recollection of the original game was that there were dungeons where the topology was in two unconnected sections, so if the objective was in the wrong one, it could never be reached. If DFU uses the same data then the dungeon would have the same issues.

There's a good article on UESP that explains how they work. Since the objective location is selected from a list, the dungeons with disconnected sections still have a good chance of letting you reach them. so you'd never experience the problem. Although it doesn't say so, I think I read somewhere that the teleport links operate within a block, not between blocks, as they're not the same as the "doors" on the block faces, and there would be no way to guarantee random blocks would link.

My DFU avatar returned to the dungeon with the seemingly unreachable objective. He didn't stay long. It soon became obvious that, if there is indeed a connection between the objective and the rest of the dungeon, it isn't as easy as finding a wall-torch that might, when activated, open an otherwise concealed passageway. One of those would have been in an obvious location in relation to the unreachable dungeon segment. Neither he nor I were willing to go over every square inch of what is a sizable dungeon, in hope of spotting a level or teleport we missed first time round. (We found one TP that first time. It is inactive. It makes sense that there should be at least one more TP somewhere within the dungeon. Maybe within the objective segment? Not that it matters if that one reachable TP is dead.)

We used to encounter the occasional unreachable dungeon objective back in the DOS DF days. I believe this is our first (assuming I'm current) since DFU has matured. (Bear in mind that the DFU version I run is now over a year old.)

In other DFU news:

Had quite a shock at the very beginning of a recent quest-crawl. The dungeon entrance/exit is a roughly square room with one visible (closed) door at left, near the back wall. Behind that is another room. It contained two Vampire Ancient, both of which immediate launched an attack. Those things are no laughing matter, even at my avatar's level (31). Still, he's handled three at once plenty of times and came out on top. Two shouldn't be much of a challenge, so long as he keeps his wits about him.

At this stage of his career, he often takes a VA out with three solid hits of his Daedric Katana. Very rarely two. One if backstabbing. He positioned himself so that the VAs had to attack via the doorway. Thus, he dealt with only one at any given moment. That first VA took forever to take down. Seven or eight hits, I'm guessing. That done, my avatar launched a lighting-fast attack on the second. The idea here is to hit hard enough to stun, then get in a few more blows before it has a chance to recover and fight back. It didn't work. Instead of being thrown off balance, the VA itself launch a series of fast attacks. All connected. Next thing i know, the DF funeral/crow video appears onscreen. It's the first time my avatar has gone down since early this play-through, quite a few RL years ago! After reloading, he handled those first two with relative easy, and had no trouble with the remainder of them. (He will, of course, never know of his brief demise, since it isn't saved.)

His most recent crawl saw him tasked to dispose of an orc. It was a fairly large dungeon. He cleared almost the whole of it ere reaching his objective. Not a minuted after doing so, a "dream sequences" appeared, heralding his potential infection with vampirism! Neither he nor I will tolerate that sort of business. Here, I didn't need to come to the rescue. He keeps several bottles of Cure Disease with him, for just this sort of emergency. He downed one, then cast his self-made cure-disease spell for good measure. The dungeon being not far from DFC, he broke precedence, TP'd to the exit, stepped outside, did a quick spell practice session, TP'd to DFC, rode his cart straight to ToK, and asked its healer to cure him. He was told he has no disease. Hopefully, this settles the matter. Another DF day needs to pass before we know for sure.