The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall

I decided to pop in the Daggerfall CD for fun on an older PC running DOS and it seems like the installer hangs at a certain point. Is it supposed to do that? And I'm installing it on the smallest size. I ended up waiting 20-30 minutes while it was at 18% before I gave up and reset the PC.

I later tried it out on a w98 PC with the cd files on a USB drive and that installed much, much faster. I don't think it's a CD issue since other games install very fast on the same system. Did anyone have similar issues back then? I might just install these on a faster system then transfer them.

And yes before anyone asks yes I know you can install DFU on a modern PC...

Just like it says. Daggerfall fighters guild has me having to fight a ranger but because he owes money I'm not to kill him. Somone help me with this. I'm a high elf with a steel claymore and an ebony dagger on Steam. Do I need a spell or what? Oh and I'm level two.

Hey everyone. I decided to finally fully explore Scourg Barrow and came across the portcullis at the end of the canyon. I can't seem to find a lever anywhere nearby. Any advice?

My character Shana Malon was taking on some generic guard duty quest offered by a tavern girl. I figured, how bad could it be? I just have to be in a certain house for 3 hours at night.

The first time I did it, I vaporized the assassin in one hit but the quest didn't progress. DFU things.

I reload, and wait outside the quest house. An assassin spawns behind me outside the house, and gets me with a poison that drains like half my stats. I see that health isn't going down. Maybe I'll have time to cast my cure poison spell. Haha no, you're dead.

I reload again, wait again, assassin is outside again. DO NOT USE LEVITATE WHILE POISONED. Health suddenly got drained like 50 times in a second and I'm dead.

Reload again. Go inside and start the quest. 2 assassins show up inside a room I had locked myself inside. A third walks through the damn door without unlocking it. FAILURE. Guess the Mythic Dawn was active a few years earlier than I knew.

Repeat about 5 more times, except without the locked door.

I finally finish the quest after a half hour or so of frustration. They still managed to poison me. There's no alchemist or temple in the town and it's too far to ride a horse to the nearest city. Death via lumpy tavern bed instead.

I reload again. Complete the quest again. This time the poisons drained Willpower and Agility. I can live with this. I fast-traveled all the way to Daggerfall City because it's the only one I know for certain has alchemists. I get on the horse, go to the nearest alchemist, get cured.

The potion cost more than the quest reward.

I go back to some dungeon, collect some religious dagger thing that's worth 2500 gold. I return to Daggerfall, buy the spells for curing disease and poison. They have like 15% chance of working and use all my magic. I can live with that. Maybe.

I just started to play the game and after trying some builds with daggers, I decided to use Long Blade to beat the game for the first time.

UESP says the skill governs the hit chance, but… I don’t think I should be wiffing twice as much compared to the time I tried using daggers, specially since I had put all my points into wrong attributes with the daggers!

Hello

My character is lvl 12 and is really strong

but sometimes i just got one shot by a disintegration spell cast by various monster in the game (lich , orc shaman etc...)

I make a magic item that *cast on held* magic resistance but seem s not enough

also i have magic item to absorb spell and also natural spell absorption

is there over way to mitigate this spell ? (all main stat are maxed at 100 via buff )

should i put some shock resistance ? fire? or there is magic school that would improve my resistance?

thanks you

Hey guys so I got hit by a Werewolf just one time (0.6% chance btw) and got infected. I have already obtained the The Hircine Ring and am now being pursued by the Werewolf hunter. He has already sent his Knights at me, but I killed them. The problem is every time I rest in a tavern (training magic so resting a lot rn) they keep coming.

Will they always attack this often? Is there anyway to stop them for good? Apparently they are only supposed to attack once a year. This has been going on for a few days now.

Also being a Werewolf is kinda op... at first I was upset because I made my character immune to disease so naturally I was a little peeved that I got infected but apparently Lycanthropy doesn't actually count as a disease or some shit. As long as I can solve these guys coming for me every other rest I won't mind being a Werewolf. Also this game is pretty dope

Good evening! I downloaded the Unity version of the game and would like to play as a Paladin.

As my Major skills, I thought of going with:

Blunt
Restoration
Destruction (Maybe this is more of a cleric thing, but I don't like being limited to weapons)

What would you guys choose for the rest?

I'm asking because I don't want to get to mid game and realize I wasted a lot of time on a character that will be severely underpowered and not fun to play

It's only now dawned on me that I have not gotten a continuation for the main quest. I think I recall receiving a letter but for the life of me I'm not sure what happened from there. Is there a means to get back on track or have I somehow soft locked myself?

To me, when everything is set to high res and it's all super sleek - that takes me out of the immersion a LOT. It feels far less mysterious and abstract, there's no space left to fill in the blanks with your imagination. It just kinda ends up looking like Minecraft, and that'd be cool, but I'm not here for Minecraft, I'm here to play Daggerfall and it didn't really look like that. In fact, it wasn't until I made that change that the game finally "clicked" for me. Daggerfall looks so dreamlike and full of soul when in low res. The skybox fits and really makes me think I'm in a foreign land. The 2D NPC and foliage sprites finally don't look out of place next to the higher res houses. Even if you download a mod to retexture all the characters and things, it still doesn't really fit since they're still flat sprites and not 3D. I'm sort of a purist to begin with and enjoy low resolution graphics, but I do think something is lost in the transition (although I do love the new lighting).

https://preview.redd.it/bbq579yjoowd1.jpg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=55884c345fa149a46d50fb0931708291b7a943c7

https://preview.redd.it/3dad6isloowd1.jpg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c1d8508ce64c1369418545a485270e5e487862fd

https://preview.redd.it/vae3k7cpoowd1.jpg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b98493771b41a55f538bf757b32e7343c0f4ff26

https://preview.redd.it/d24xy62roowd1.jpg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2b03b8001e135a31aa14202dfffd02095abdad9b

https://preview.redd.it/pvd9fgo0rowd1.jpg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=95d0129f26f324eba9459c33417ac07828e045a2

https://preview.redd.it/0wign962rowd1.jpg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d1a86c778ec50b39d63233e0b27d480fc3dda8b9

https://preview.redd.it/ty6fh0i8rowd1.jpg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0d95e22dbf153058735759358ba121bae37c9e79

https://preview.redd.it/v4an57barowd1.jpg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1b1b04d34f4e32d5a99e9195bede701cf0c72310

So here is where I stand: I have "completed*" the game twice. I'm level 20+ with all-Daedric armor and near maximally enchanted items, key stats and skills maxed out, etc. I don't really fear death so much as one of my followers (using the languages expansion) dying. Baring a suggestion from others as other challenges to undertake, it's time to start over.

*Quotes because I'm not going to do the Journey to Aetherius quest a second time.

This time around, I'm looking for ways to keep the game both fresh and challenging. Here are some thoughts I've had about self-imposed constraints which I think might help with that (please review and critique, suggest alternatives/additions, etc.):

1. Select limiting character traits -- short sword and leather rogue-type instead of full-plate and katana battlemage. Maybe a hammer-weilder or martial-artist. Maybe even potions instead of spells (or mix and match depending on school).
2. Likewise no 'gaming' of character creation build system -- no high elf with susceptibility to poison&magic, no susceptability to paralysis and immediately pick up Free Movement spell, etc.
3. Turn back off magic item repair -- making enchanted weapons/armor/casting items more ephemeral to make getting the second of each type less underwhelming. Also means I won't enter every dungeon using every item.
4. Pick skills to slow down levelling -- I'm keeping the time limit off the main quest, so I really have all the time in the world. No sense in rushing towards feeling overpowered.
5. Look for Mods with new adventures, or other things to do/focus on/etc.
6. Not optimize enchantments and spells -- knowing the math behind them can really let you make everything you cast or have be just that much more powerful than having to guesswork your way through it all.

What are other ideas? Any mods people like for keeping the gameplay fresh? Other thoughts?

Thanks in advance!

To the Esteemed Scholars of the Mage’s Guild,

What I present here is not the work of idle speculation, nor is it the result of mere happenstance. It is the product of an experience so strange and profound that I still struggle to fully comprehend its implications. What I have witnessed is, to my knowledge, unrecorded in any known treatise on the arcane. It is not a discovery in the traditional sense, but rather a glimpse behind the fabric of reality itself—a brief, terrifying, and exhilarating vision of the mechanisms by which the world we inhabit may be constructed.

I do not claim to be the first to witness what I have seen. In fact, I suspect that this secret, this etheric foundation of reality, has been known to others—perhaps for millennia. But if this knowledge exists, it has been carefully concealed, stored away in the darkest and most inaccessible corners of magical lore. In this manuscript, I will recount my experiences with as much precision and clarity as I can muster. It is not my aim to draw conclusions prematurely, but rather to provide a thorough record for those more learned than myself to consider and, perhaps, expand upon.

What I have discovered—if one can call it that—exists in an etheric state, a liminal space where the rules of the physical world do not apply. I hesitate to name it, for no proper term exists for this void I have encountered, but for the purposes of this manuscript, I will refer to it as the "Void Between"—an apt descriptor for a place that exists between reality and non-reality, between the physical and the metaphysical.

This work is for advanced scholars of the arcane only. It presumes a deep familiarity with the theories of dimensional manipulation, planar existences, and the fundamental principles of magical structure. Those who have not delved deeply into these areas will find little of use here and will, perhaps, fail to grasp the true magnitude of what is being discussed.

Aldmerius Mara II
Conjurer of the Mages Guild

------------------------------------

It began, like so many great discoveries, by accident.

I was exploring an ancient dungeon beneath the Dragontail Mountains, a structure of such complexity and ruin that I had been delving into it for days, documenting its various chambers and the peculiar nature of its enchantments. The dungeon was no different from many I had explored before—damp, cold, filled with the lingering stench of decay and rot. It was a place of no remarkable magical significance, or so I believed at the time.

During my exploration, I came across a particularly peculiar wall. I had seen walls like it before—rough, jagged stone, poorly maintained and crumbling from centuries of neglect. Yet this wall gave off a faint aura, a residual hum of energy that caught my attention. A pulse of energy surged from the wall, not outward but inward, and before I could react, I felt myself being pulled into it—not through it as one would pass through an illusion or an open portal, but into it, as though my entire being was suddenly sinking into the stone.

Panic seized me for a brief moment as I felt my body lose its connection to the dungeon’s physical plane. There was no pain, only the disconcerting sensation of my essence shifting. My first instinct was to pull back, to scramble away from this unknown force. With effort, I managed to extract myself and retreat, but the experience left me shaken—and intrigued. Something within that wall had defied all conventional magic. I felt compelled to understand it, no matter the risk.

It was not long before my curiosity overcame my caution. I gathered my focus, and approached the wall again. This time, I willed myself to phase through it, consciously surrendering to the strange force that had earlier drawn me in.

What I found on the other side was nothing short of astonishing. The sensation of moving through the wall was as though I had passed through a thin veil between worlds. When I emerged, I found myself standing in complete blackness. Not darkness, mind you, for darkness implies the mere absence of light. This was something else—a void so complete that it was as if the very concept of space itself had ceased to exist. Yet, paradoxically, I was still physically present, standing on solid ground.

I looked around and saw nothing but empty blackness stretching in all directions. For a brief, terrifying moment, I thought I had entered some kind of void-realm, a space entirely separate from Mundus and the known planes. But then I saw it—a floating section of the dungeon I had just been exploring, suspended in midair as if held by invisible threads. It was real, physical, just as I had left it, yet it was also completely dislocated from the dungeon proper. More astonishing still, it was surrounded by other blocks of the dungeon, scattered like fragments of a puzzle.

The black void that enveloped these fragments seemed to be a kind of etheric storage space—a place where reality itself was deconstructed and stored. It defied all known magical theory. The pieces of the dungeon existed in isolation, as if held in reserve, waiting to be slotted back into place in the physical world. Each fragment hovered in the blackness, fully formed but incomplete, like parts of a great machine laid out before assembly.

It was then that I noticed movement in the distance. At first, I dismissed it as a trick of the void, but soon it became clear that something was alive in this place. From one of the fragmented dungeon sections came a rat—an ordinary dungeon rat, the type one might encounter in any crypt or ruin. It moved as if unaware of the strange environment in which it now existed, scurrying along the edge of its disembodied section of dungeon as if nothing were amiss.

I watched in amazement as the rat approached the edge of the floating stone, then simply turned around as though oblivious to the void surrounding it. It acted as if the walls and corridors of the dungeon were still intact. I followed its path as it scurried across a crumbling stone floor, the section abruptly ending in the black nothingness. There was no fall, no descent into the void—just a simple reversal of direction, as though the rat could not perceive the boundaries of its reality had collapsed.

Soon, I saw more creatures—bats, insects, the kind one would expect to find in any dungeon. All of them appeared completely unaware that they were not in the dungeon proper. It was as if they were trapped in some etheric echo of the real world, bound to their existence in this space but unable to comprehend the shift in their environment. Could these creatures have been drawn into this void by accident, or were they placed here by design? I had no way of knowing.

As I ventured further into the void, phasing between fragmented sections of the dungeon, I began to formulate a theory—one that, even now, I hesitate to put to parchment. What if the dungeon, like all physical structures, exists simultaneously in two states? What if there is a hidden layer of reality where the foundations of the physical world are stored, a kind of etheric template upon which the material world is built?

This space—the Void Between—seemed to serve as a kind of repository for these etheric fragments. Perhaps it was here that the magical architecture of the dungeon was maintained before being projected into the physical world. I began to suspect that what I had stumbled upon was a glimpse of the Aetheric Lattice—a theoretical construct described in only the most obscure magical texts. The Lattice, as the theory goes, is the underpinning structure of all reality, an invisible web of energy and matter that holds the world together.

What I had witnessed were the fragmented pieces of this lattice, the etheric building blocks of the dungeon, held in suspension in the Void Between until they were called upon to assemble themselves in the material plane.

After what felt like hours of exploration, I decided to return to the dungeon proper. I had seen enough—perhaps more than I could fully understand. The return journey was surprisingly simple; I merely willed myself back to the dungeon wall, and with a sensation akin to stepping through a thin veil, I found myself standing once again in the familiar, decayed halls of stone.

The experience left me with more questions than answers. What was this Void Between, and how did it connect to the physical world? Were the creatures I encountered native to this space, or were they somehow trapped within it, caught in the etheric transition between worlds? And most importantly, how many such places exist, hidden beneath the veneer of reality we take for granted?

I cannot claim to have all the answers. What I present here is merely the beginning of a line of inquiry that could take generations to fully explore. But I believe I have glimpsed something of profound importance—a hidden truth about the very nature of the world we inhabit.

This is no simple conjuration or illusion, no mere manipulation of the elements. It is something deeper, something fundamental. And it raises a chilling question: If reality is built upon these etheric foundations, what happens if they are tampered with, or worse—broken?

I leave this record not as a definitive study, but as a starting point for those who come after me. The Void Between, and the etheric architecture it holds, is a mystery that I have only begun to unravel. I urge those with the knowledge and skill to continue this research, for the implications of what lies beyond the veil of reality are far-reaching and potentially dangerous.

May this manuscript serve as a beacon to those brave enough to follow where I have dared to tread.

Aldmerius Mara II
Conjurer of the Mages Guild

How much reputation is gained/lost from these enchantments? (Good Reputation and Bad Reputation respectively)

Edit After an exhausting amount of digging (I dug through the game's code 🫠) , It appears that it raises or lowers reputation by 10 for anyone else who wonders this way. Happy to be wrong if someone else has anything different, but otherwise sorry for asking a question and then answering it for myself.

Hello, all! So I want to focus on increasing my rank in the Fighter's Guild and Knight Order that I'm in, and I also thought I would do so in between the various quests in the MQ. I don't quite know how long it would take to get to the highest rank possible, though (I've been working on it and, so far, it hasn't cost me too much time). I also would like to know if I can continue increasing my rank after completing the MQ.

Going into the various dungeons is fun, even if my strategy is just to run around, collect loot and fight enemies, then teleport to where the enemy is and out again lol.

The title says it all really. I just recently received a letter to join the thieves guild, but I'm not really that interested. So what? Are they going to send goons after me? Steal my stuff?

As the title says, I'm wondering about the viability of playing certain classes in crpgs and dungeon crawlers in general. Why am I posting this here, then?

Well, my question is more focused to Daggerfall in particular, as I feel that many of the classes from its extensive list, many of which are inherited from D&D, are simply of no use in a singleplayer crpg (i.e, games where you play as one single character and not the whole party for example), game mechanics were not designed with these classes in mind, rendering them inefficient.

You can choose to play as a Healer, a Bard, a Ranger but, for what? You don't have companions to buff or cover.

I don't know, let me know what you guys think. Also, if there are any mod recommendations for Daggerfall Unity to enhance classes with varied gamestyles, I'd love to hear about those.

Total noob - is it normal to be resting after every other mob for hours at a time just to heal? Or am I rolling a shit character and not knowing it?

I've been playing daggerfall nonstop for the last week, ever since I found out about the unity mod. Finally I can play this game without losing my mind over the controls! I just wanted to post here to cover some of the dreaded spell creation screen. It's not very clear and no matter what I try to search up there's no understandable explanation on what the heck I'm looking at. Nothing in game helps besides ofc looking at other spells and piecing it together.

Duration: Daggerfall uses rounds to determine the duration of a spell. Each round is 5 seconds irl. 1 round = 5 seconds, 6 rounds = 30 seconds, 12 rounds = 1 minute. What does this mean? Well your first number is the base number of "rounds", and the second number is the number of extra "rounds" you get for advancing your character level. This could be every character level, every other character level, every third character level, and so on. This is the third number here, it's after (per). So a spell with a duration of 12+12 per 1 will last a minute + a minute for every level you have. You may notice the cost of casting such a spell is out of reach for your character so you may want to reduce the duration, or even increase the level required for your second number to effect your first.

Chance: I find spells with chance as an option cost quite the sum of spell points, none the less... Your first number is the flat % of the spell succeeding. The second number is the additional % you get at each level interval of your choice (Which is your third number, just like duration). So a spell with 10+3 per 1 level has a 40% chance of succeeding for a level 10 character. A level 20 character will succeed 70% of the time. At level 30 a character has 100% chance of success. What success means for each spell may differ.

Magnitude: This is probably the most confusing, but fear not, I've ate that horse. Your first number is the minimum the spell will do (Healing, damage, etc). The first number is the minimum, while the second number is the maximum. When a spell with magnitude takes effect It chooses a random number between these two numbers, like rolling a die. The next two numbers works exactly like the first two, but these variables are what's added at each level interval of your choice. The last number is just like every other last number, and denotes at which level interval your second set of variables are added to the first set variables. So a spell with 1-12 + 5-5 per 1 level will deal a random number from 1-12 and an additional 5 for every level you have.

This very topic had me scratching my head for a few days, so I hope this helps someone around here.

No mods so I think I might try and make them myself . Thoughts On traits ?

unfortunately, there's only daggerfall.

well.. there is Arena, which is pretty similar, and I just got it.

anything I should know going in? is there anything like DFU that fixes the game or anything like that?

thanks!

i managed to get the skeleton key at level 6, was super excited to get my hands on it, but everytime i use it it gived me the message: "lock to powerful" ...FOR THE SKELETON KEY!?! i cant tell if this is a bug or not, unless every store door in the illiac bay suddenly became magically sealed, i dont understand how its not working as advertised, the only thing i can think of is that im under leveled(every other playthrough i got it at was in the double digit levels)