The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall (Unity Version)

[one-armed dwarf]

This game has been undergoing a bit of a renaissance recently cause of the unity fanport and I figure I've played enough that I feel I want to type words at the internet about it. It's a version of the game which fixes tons of bugs with the earlier DOS version and allows you to run it at a high framerate, and in typical TES fashion supports tons and tons of mods which drastically change the experience. Version 1.0 came out just last year.

 

https://www.dfworkshop.net/

 

It takes place in the kingdoms of High Rock and Hammerfell (the latter I've not seen yet). You're on this quest for Emperor Uriel Septim VII, the same guy who gets murdered in the opening to Oblivion. You're solving a problem for him, something to do with a letter to some queen with some private matters in it, and the ghost of a vengeful king.

 

 

None of that matters too much cause it's more about navigating this huge unyielding world (larger than Great Britain in its scale). This is a very different Elder Scrolls than the ones after it cause it's this procedurally generated universe, maybe less than 0.1 percent of the world is authored content. So cause of that it means that they can have thousands of towns, but they are all populated by the same looking buildings and NPCs, just laid out differently. Which is a fairly repetitive, but it is designed as a sort of abstract RPG framework rather than an open world game with RPG elements. Like the world is all there, you can spend years of your real life exploring it but it's not the point (and is insane)*. The point is way more on how you build a character to tackle dungeons, and how the different reputation and skill systems in the game interlock to allow you progress through the world's regions, main quest and factions/dungeons.

 

The sort of 'RPG framework' thing comes into play with the character creator, which is the part that impressed me when I first tried and failed to get into it after Morrowind. There's so many skills in this, beyond the ones that later TES games have. You have all that restoration and blades stuff and you also have the cool levitation skills from Morrowind. But then there's 'climbing', which rolls a dice anytime you push against a wall and does a sort of BOTW style climb against it, and you will slip if your stats are bad at it. This has obvious potential for immersive sim solutions in some dungeons and you can use it to climb over the walls of gated towns at night. Which you might want to do cause you will get arrested if you try to camp outside or will get attacked by ghosts if you loiter. There's languages in it, like the Orc language or Dragonish. I don't really know what they do yet. There's things in it like 'ettiquette' and 'streetwise' which do dice-rolls in your interactions with NPCs, which you have to rely on to find directions to the guilds and churches or specific quest NPCs. My speech skills are really low so a significant amount of time is spent trying to extract the most basic of directions from NPCs. Which is pretty grating, but in a sort of immersive way. When I get enough magicka to cast charm it will be way easier I guess. Stuff like faction and regional reputation seems to play a part in this also, which could have the side effect of pushing you to stick to certain regions and make questing more frictionless cause people might have heard of you and be more willing to help you out.

 

 

The meat of the game is in this questing, whether it's main quests or sidequests for factions or oddjobs or whatever. There's a timing mechanic to them, go to this dungeon, kill this cunt and come back within 28 days. Or go to some guys house in the town a couple days over and kill the tiger in his bedroom (???) and come back in 14 days. The world is not designed to be traveled in real time so you open a map, type in the area they tell you and it will tell you it took you 5 days to get there, or maybe less if you travel 'recklessly' (which seems to mean you will be unrested on arrival). Then when you're in the dungeon, the dungeons are huge, you mainly seem to rely on using the rest mechanic to heal health, fatigue and magic. Which also counts into that timer. So it's about time management and having ways to save that time really help, like the recall spell or restoration magic. I guess potions could help later but I haven't been able to tell how to get them or make them, they seem incredibly rate in this. Also the dungeons can have locked doors which might be blocking your objective, so not having alteration or lockpicking could cause issues.

 

In terms of deep stories and lore there's not a lot there, it's more about this systemic approach to difficult problem solving in a role-playing context, I think. It's a really difficult game and the tutorial dungeon is designed to kick your ass with a combination of enemies and obstacles in a way to make you reconsider your build, or your approach, or just even playing the game at all.

 

I don't know much about this particular youtuber but he was apparently one of the most popular TES content creators and disappeared for ages, anyway he came back with this vid which maybe explains the game a bit where he does a weird challenge run showcasing the game's systems

 

 

 

*That hasn't stopped modders from trying to turn it into that kind of game tho, the mods on nexus are really interesting

[shinymcshine]

That was my Elder Scrolls entry point back in 1997 when I got it on PC along with the hint book - Daggerfall Chronicles - which was more of set of broad guidelines rather than a walkthrough.

 

I also recall downloading a patch on a 3.5" floppy at University as I didn't have home internet at the time - albeit the game itself was CD-Rom.

 

Can't recall if I ever finished it though - remember you use to get letters occasionally by messengers that nudged the quest forwards every so often - and there was a bunch of stuff around various witch covens too.

[one-armed dwarf]

Earlier I completed a quest which got started by a letter to go talk to some queen in Waycrest, who seems to want to give her first born to the King of Worms or something which sounds a bit evil but a quest is a quest, gotta pay the bills somehow

[shinymcshine]

Yep - and, spoiler free, I think there a bunch of different ways to get to an ending of the game too.

[Sly Reflex]

I played the hell out of this back in the day. I wish they would reintroduce stuff like climbing and languages. Completely fucking up a quest line because you tried to be streetwise and get your cover blown can happen in this game.

 

I feel like TESVI sort of has to look into stuff that was originally part of the game that was only doable then because it was all procedural generated because now we're seeing those mechanics being built into normal games and we have for quite some time now when you think about it. I know it's not a thread about TESVI, but to know where you are going you need to look where you have come from, and scouring over II, III and IV are something that really need analysing. Especially III.

[one-armed dwarf]

One thing I've just learned is something I didn't know cause I went with the premades, but when making a custom class the leveling curve is governed by 'advantages' and 'disadvantages'. Advantage makes you level slower but you have certain bonuses like more magic or whatever, disadvantages are things like being poisoned more easily or being scared by orcs or something, or not being able to wear certain armour. People recommend picking custom classes for this reason, as an example my battlemage has a disadvantage of only being able to equip leather armour. Ruh roh.

 

Time to really invest in the schools of magic which give spell absorption and shield, and rank up in the mages guild so I can enchant stuff. Maybe that'll help, who knows. Should probably dogpile the endurance stat for a bit cause it's one you want to level early.

edit and I failed two mage guild quests in a row and got demoted, damn, it's still the squishy die in two attacks from a zombie life for me it looks like

[one-armed dwarf]

I've reached a point where I'll probably put the virtual bookmark in this for a bit. Reached a highish rank in the mages guild and got access to enchantments, which is massive for my build cause I can't use plate or chain armour. So I have armour enhanced clothes and stuff which can unfuck my shit personality stat and get directions more easily, with side effects like it burns in the sunlight or hurts if I wear it every day. The side effects allow you to have more 'energy' to enchant better effects, sorta like the advantages/disadvantages system for leveling up.

 

I do enjoy the game, but I need a short break from dungeons what look like this, one of of the simpler layouts also

 

 

How does the Kingdom of Sentinel maintain its prison when its hallways are spaghetti. What it also doesn't show you is the crazy switches and gates puzzle I had to brute force, I refuse to gamefaqs it (for now). Anyway I went spelunking in there, found a Wraith and captured its soul for the King of Worms who told me a bunch of things about Tiber Septim, here's some TES lore for you. They tell you this stuff and you have to screenshot it cause there's too much to remember, and the journaling system is not as good as Morrowind's. It doesn't capture everything in it.

 

Spoiler

 

 

The mysterious Numidium, yes. Hmm (don't know what that is). Thanks for the pauldron I can't equip

 

In a more interesting main story quest which also concerned the kingdom of Sentinel, I found out some dark backstory for the brother of a prince. I liked that one. There's a lot of intrigue here, lots of backstabbings and secret fucking going around in the Iliac Bay. Games of Thronesy it is. I like playing these old games and actually developing a picture of what Tamriel is like and how they mapped out its history across these games, I think this and Redguard are the games where that supposedly came together.

 

Spoiler

 

The main thing I'm trying to do right now is level up my rank within the Benevolence of Mara, so they will allow me to eventually craft potions. I have a wagon weighed down by Daedra hearts and dragon scales and bits of grass and shit I don't know what to do with. It could come in handy.

 

In terms of the difficulty I've definitely hit a plateau where it's settled into a routine, so I do hope there's some sort of curveball in there to mix things up. My character has a regen healing spell which lets me tank lots of encounters, and I've been leaning pretty heavily on an enchanted Kajhit suit I found which gives spell absorption, so it's pretty easy going now.

 

edit I just figured out also that if I talk to the nobles, they give me quests now. Some are obviously proc-gen but others feel more unique and weird. I think you have to level up and get decent rep in the realm for them to not be disgusted by you I suppose