0. Legal Stuff and version history This document is (C) 2014 Itemloop. All rights reserved. Only Gamefaqs.com is given permission to host this document. Do not remove this tag under penalty of law. 06/28/2014 - Version 1.0. First version of FAQ submitted. 1. Intro Ah, Daggerfall. Many people have problems with it nowadays, for it doesn't hold your hand or make it hard for you to fail. But that doesn't mean that there aren't ways to make it easier on yourself. Said ways are right here in this file. This is not a walkthrough, it is just a collection of things you can do to die less often and maybe have more fun with the game. Use Ctrl+F and the search code in brackets to get to the section you want. 2. Table of Contents 3. How to not make a crappy character [CHAR] 4. Combat Tactics [TACT] 5. Things you should probably try to get [NEED] 6. Useful Glitches And Oversights [UGAO] 7. Outro [OUT] 3. How to not make a crappy character [CHAR] Daggerfall has, even to this very day, one of the most complex and flexible character creation systems among video games. With it, you can make a PC that utterly dominates every situation he or she is thrown into, or have a weenie that can't cast magic ever and keeps perishing in the very first dungeon. In order to make the PC you want, however, you need to know what things do and what tradeoffs give the most benefit. Before you start making your character, however, you should ask yourself one very important question: What will my PC be spending most of his or her time doing? Will he be caving in skulls? Will he be sneaking up behind them and sticking sharp pointy things between the ribs of his foes? Will he whip out a bow and make pincushions? Or will he be casting the spells that makes the peoples fall down? It sounds obvious to augment the things your PC will rely on to see him through his trials and sacrifice the things that are not, but knowing what those things are is another matter. Fortunately, you have me to guide you through this step. :) Stats: Your raw physical and mental ability. The higher numbers you have in these, the easier the game will be for you. While you cannot level high enough to have 100 in all attributes, you CAN buff them to get the same benefits as having actual points in them (with one exception). Strength: Makes you hit harder with all physical attacks, carry more stuff, and have more Fatigue. One point of Strength is one of Fatigue. Even mages will not want terrible Strength, if only so they can carry more magical items with them and not burn precious Spell Points or quest time recharging Fatigue. That said, unless you're going to spend your time waltzing up to baddies and rearranging faces, you don't really need a lot of Strength, at least not at the start of the game, Speed is better for your DPS anyway. Intelligence: Lets you have more Spell Points to fling around. Increases the benefit from Increased Magery advantages. Pretty straightforward, yes? This fuels the flashy hocus pocus you can throw at foes. I suppose you can just rely on items, but where's the fun in that? Willpower: Determines your magic resistance. Getting fried by a spellcaster's Shock salvo is one of the quickest ways to die in this game. You'll be wanting buffs that help protect from hostile magic, obviously, but Willpower adds another layer of protection, one that never times out and works on everything. Don't neglect this stat. Agility: Makes you more accurate with your physical attacks and helps you evade enemy physical attacks. Affects all physical attacks regardless of type. Missing sucks, and so does getting nailed. That said, this stat isn't as helpful as it sounds, believe it or not. While having high evasion (you get more evade from better armour, higher Agility, and higher Dodging) will let you laugh at weaker enemies, the truly strong ones are very good fighters and will not have problems walloping you. Proper Combat Tactics (see below) will do more to keep you alive than relying on the dice. Speaking of which, even if you have terrible Agility, you can still hit foes reliably if you train your relevant weapon skill, as it is said skill that makes the most difference in deciding whether you strike squarely or not. Getting a weapon of a better material helps too, of course. :) Endurance: Your true Endurance (that is, not affected by any buffs) determines how much bonus Health you get whenever you level up. Determines how fast you heal your Health, Fatigue, and Spell Points when Resting. Lets you have more Fatigue; One point of Endurance is one of Fatigue. Determines how often you get poisoned or stricken with disease. GET THIS STAT TO 100 PRONTO. You will want to have more durability in and out of combat, and you will also get more recovery from each hour you Rest. The extra poison and disease resistance is icing. Personality: How much people like you and therefore the prices you get when buying and selling, and in general how loose lips are when gathering information. Utterly forgettable. Personality does not help you in combat, you should have no problems making fat cheddar or moving along the main plot even with terrible charisma, and it's not hard to farm reputation, especially the reputation of the Guilds you're a member of. Which is the only reputation you should be concerned about, really. I suppose this stat might help out any legal matters you get yourself into, but if you keep getting hauled in front of judges, then there is something very wrong with the way you play. Besides, you can always buff this stat if you need to win someone over just long enough to get what you need out of them. It sounds sociopathic, but it's true. Leave this stat for dead last. Speed: How fast you move, nock arrows, and swing weapons. The other really important stat. More Speed means you can outrun more enemies and attack more often. This means faster killing, more and safer kiting, less time spent crawling dungeons and moving around town, and just saves you time. You can't go wrong maxing this out after Endurance. Luck: Affects the quality of loot and all skill checks. Like Agility, Luck looks more important than it really is. You're better off making your own luck with better skills, gear, spells, and enchantments. And don't worry about loot; by lategame you'll be swamped in Daedric stuff even if you're star-crossed. Race: Doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. :p High Elves immune paralysis and Nords resist ice, but other than that your race and gender makes absolutely no difference in game difficulty. Since you can get and keep cheap buffs, and get built-in immunity/resistance to your class, it's not like the High Elves and Nords have huge, great advantages either. Pick what's pleasing to your eye, it's what you'll be staring at whenever you open your Inventory screen and character sheet. Skills: You live or die by your skills in most Elder Scrolls games, and Daggerfall is no different. What skills you put into your Primary, Major, and Minor slots will all influence how fast you can level up, what you need to do to level up, and the starting values of the skills you have. Increasing your skills, and therefore your level, is straightforward - just keep on using them - but getting the opportunites is another thing entirely... The list of skills is sorted by relative ease of increasing them, from simple to difficult. Magical schools (Alteration, Destruction, Illusion, Mysticism, Restoration, Thaumaturgy) A PC's skill in a specific school is increased by casting spells that have effects belonging to that school, and having those spells hit a target. Casting a spell with three effects all belonging to different schools will count towards the increase of all three said schools. The magical arts is hands down THE easiest and quickest to grind up, simply because you just need to cast a spell containing their effects. It doesn't matter what the spell does, as long as it hits something. This something can be you or an enemy. Needless to say, it's not hard to make a cheap harmless spell that affects Self and just keep casting it over and over. If you want to shoot to max level ASAP, just put one school in one of your Minor slots, two schools in two of your Major slots, and the rest as your Primaries. Unless you gave yourself an inability to use magic in both darkness and light, in which case you'll never hit maximum level and your growth will be stunted. You ninny. Combat arts (Axe, Blunt Weapon, Archery, Backstabbing, Critical Strike, Hand-to-Hand, Long Blade, Short Blade, Stealth, Dodging, Medical) All of these skills are used because there are things trying to pillage you or eat your face. While they are not as mindlessly grindable as magic, they are not hard to raise at all, given the sheer amount of combat in this game. Medical is the odd duck, exercised when you rest, but all the others are trained with the (unwilling) help of hostile critters. To get these skills up, just find enemy ass and kick it. The more ass you kick, the better you'll get at kicking ass in general, but it's how you kick the ass that increases certain skills. Getting close to enemies undetected (don't run up to them!) trains Stealth, hitting their backs trains Backstab, enemies attacking you but not hitting trains Dodging, and hitting back trains your skill in whatever weapon you used (or your Fists, if you used them) as well as Critical Strike, too. Note that it literally does not matter how much damage is done, the only thing that matters for Dodging and weapon skills is whether they miss or you hit. Hence, you want to dodge many weak attacks and land many weak hits instead of dishing out - and taking- strong hits. It's the reason why you can use the King of Worms' personal undead cohorts as training dummies without being hit back (see tip R under Useful Glitches And Oversights). Punching bags are out of the question, however, as Fists ignore material immunities. Being criminal scum (Pickpocket, Lockpicking) Find locked doors and try to pick them. You can pick at them once per map visit without getting the attention of guards, so make the rounds at night. Pickpocketing is best done in dungeons, where the local zombies and rats can't bring Johnny Law down on your head. Training both these skills will get the attention of the Thieves' Guild, though, so decide in advance if you want to be a member or not. Movement skills (Climbing, Jumping, Running, Swimming) Run everywhere, initiate climbing many times - you want to keep seeing the game engage Climbing Mode - bunnyhop lots, and go to your local dungeon's pool and start swimming underwater without the aid of Water Walking or Breathing. It's best to do these as you go about other things. Otherwise, you'll be bored to tears. Social skills (Etiquette, Mercantile, Streetwise, Centaurian, Daedric, Dragonish, Giantish, Harpy, Impish, Nymph, Orcish, Spriggan) Finally, we come to all the skills that use words and gestures! It's a good thing that almost all of these are quite worthless, as social skills are the most horridly grindy skills to train up period. You can safely ignore these (with the possible exception of Daedric), but if you really want to level them up... Etiquette and Streetwise are trained by talking to people in a Polite or Blunt tone, respectively. As a bonus, you'll also start to get a thick skin while you do this. Mercantile is trained by buying and selling things. You don't need it to strike it rich, but it's there. The language skills are - again, save for Daedric - all useless, as it's easier to kill the critter or use stealth or invisiblity to avoid the fight. On top of that, you have to remember to sheathe your weapon, or else you get a big penalty when you're trying to convince the thing not to mount you on its wall. The fact that they only affect one kind of critter makes them even more useless (Orcish is technically four, but will you really care?), especially as you gain levels! Daedric, as mentioned before, is possibly the only language skill worth learning, as it affects FIVE kinds of monster, all of those monsters are some of the strongest foes in the game, and they see through Illusion magic. Being able to pacify them can save your hide, or at least save you several hours of rest. A word on Light and Darkness For clarification, "Light" means you are outside during the day, and "Darkness" means you are either outside during the night, or inside a building or dungeon. You will be doing the vast majority of your fighting inside dungeons and buildings, so unless you habitually pick fights with guards in broad daylight or break soulbound items or something, you might, if applicable want your advantages to function in darkness, just to help minimize the cost in levelling speed. The Difficulty Dagger This is the little dagger you see on the sliding meter, the thing that tells you how much more or less you need to use your skills to increase it. This doesn't affect your level cap in any way, but depending on what you want out of your character you should try to get your levelling speed to match your playstyle or the nature of your run. After the name of every Special Advantage and Disadvantage will be a number. This number is the amount of points the Difficulty Dagger will move when said (Dis)Advantage is selected, taken from uesp.net. This should give you a much better idea on what to take and what to avoid taking. Special Advantages: These give you perks of varying usefulness in exchange for driving up your difficulty slider. Some are worth it, others... not so much. Immunity/Resistant (10/5) To Fire/Frost/Shock/Poison/Magic/Disease/Paralysis. Makes you either invincible to the relevant element or status effect, or make it less likely to kill you. Either way, you can get away with not having any innate protection from any of these if you keep your buffs up and can cure disease (or teleport to a temple). They're nice to have, but they do take up an advantage slot and ascend the dagger. I recommend you pick something you really need instead, if you don't already have it. Spell Absorption, general (14) darkness (12) light (8) Makes you able to nullify the effects of hostile magic and turn them into extra Spell Points. The chance of doing so is equal to half of the sum of your Intelligence and Willpower, if doing so would not exceed the maximum Spell Points your PC can have. The amount of Spell Points you get from absorbing spells is the same as the last spell you cast. Extremely useful, especially since you have some control over how much Spell Points you get from enemy magic. Just being able to nullify the many dangerous spells flung your way is worth the dagger increase. That said, you can get this as an active buff or from enchanted items, so don't feel like you MUST get this advantage. Rapid Healing, general (4) darkness (3) light (1) Like it implies, you heal faster when Resting. Not really worth it when you can just fix yourself with magic or items. Regenerate is a buff you can put on yourself anyway! Regenerate Health, general (14) darkness (10) light (6) in water (2) Doesn't heal fast enough to matter when you're either resting proper or you're going to Restore or Regenerate your Health back anyway. Avoid! Amusingly enough, you can pick this to work while underwater, which is as useful as it sounds. Bonus to Hit, Daedra (3) Animal/Humanoid/Undead (6) Your physical attacks are more accurate and will do more damage on the chosen class of creature. While picking Animals is of dubious use, the other three classes can be a good way to cover weaknesses in your build or pack on even more raw power if you can spare the slot and levelling speed decrease. Having trouble deciding? Animals are just that: beasties that hang around in dungeons for no discernable reason. They include things like bears, slaughterfish, and giant scorpions. They are only dangerous to young PCs and tend to be open to all sorts of nasty magic, so you do not need a Bonus to Hit against them. No, the fact that rats and bats can rarely make you sick is not reason enough to need said Bonus. :p Humanoids are actually a very good pick given that literally every single class enemy (enemy humans named after the preset classes you can pick) is humanoid, and it also counts things like Nymphs, Giants, and Orcs. Since the preset class enemies level with you, and the other humanoid foes can be quite common, you can get much mileage out of this advantage. Or you could just use paralysis or invisiblity to set up Backstabs, that'll work a treat too. ;) Undead are nasty customers. While Skeletons are pretty weak despite taking half damage from edged weapons. lots of them can inflict bad diseases on you, cast powerful magic, and of course just plain hit hard. The fact that all of them except Skeletons and Zombies have material immunities, only Zombies don't see through invisiblity, and three of the game's most dangerous monsters (Ancient Vampires and both variety of Lich) are Undead means that a Bonus to Hit against them will definitely not be a wasted slot - unless you never physically attack anyway. Daedra are a mixed bag. On the one hand, all of them are powerful foes who are immune to weapons that aren't Mithril or better, and they see invisible. On the other, they are also not that common, only affects five monsters, AND you can avoid fights with them if you practice your Daedric. It's up to you. Athleticism (4) You do not use so much Fatigue when running, jumping, climbing, and swimming. Restore Fatigue is a very cheap effect and you shouldn't have Fatigue problems if you pimped your Endurance, which you should always be doing anyway. Forgettable. Increased Magery, x1/x1.5/x1.75/x2/x3 (2/4/6/8/10) Your Spell Points have a bigger multiplier than the default half your Intelligence. Worth every penny unless you plan on not casting magic ever. Triple your Intelligence is the gold standard; having as much juice as you can never hurts, especially if you're rocking Spell Absorption! Adrenaline Rush (4) I can automatically buff my fighting skills, but first I have to be dying? No thanks, I'd rather not be at death's door in the first place. Expertise In (2) Your chosen weapon type does more damage and is more accurate. Never a wasted pick (especially for how cheap it is on the slider), even if your starting skill for that weapon sucks. If you're having trouble deciding, though, you should favour Long Blade, Missile Weapon, and Hand to Hand over Short Blade, Axe, or Blunt Weapon. Long Blades have six weapon types to choose from and arguably have the best base melee weapons to boot (Katanas Are Just Better!). Hand to Hand is outright deadly at high skill levels, ignore material immunities, is always weightless and indestructible, and you always have your Fists with you. Bows, of course, have the unique distinction of being the only ranged attack in the game that is also physical, and therefore benefit from the same things melee attacks do. Acute Hearing (1) Lets you hear enemies from further away. Given the potential for confusion (you may have to go all the way around the other side of the dungeon to get to that Vampire you hear!) and the fact that you can usually hear enemies before you see them (and they see you), it's safe to say that this advantage isn't all that helpful. Special Disadvantages These are intended to make your life harder, but they will lower the difficulty dagger. Like Special Advantages, some you won't even notice (depending on style of play) while others can be crippling, even fatal, depending on circumstance. If a disadvantage is the direct opposite of an advantage, then you cannot have both at the same time (for example, you can't be both resistant and have critical weakness to fire, but you can have shock resistance and critical weakness to poison). Inability to Regenerate Spell Points (14) Just that. You won't get back magic juice whenever you rest. There are other means of getting back Spell Points (like Spell Absorption), so this by itself won't shut down spellcasters, but if you need to rest a lot... Damage, from Holy Places (6) from Sunlight (10) All temples and Fighter Trainers (Fighter Guilds in Hammerfell) are holy places. Damage from holy places are not actually that bad, since you can always throw up a Shield or Regenerate Health effect before entering (or just keep healing yourself manually). It's only dangerous if you're of lower level, in which case you should only be in there long enough to do whatever it is you need to do. Damage from Sunlight, however, is a doozy. Townies are only out during the daytime, and city walls have their gates closed at night. This means you can't get information from them at night, and you'd better be able to climb or fly over the walls if you want to enter the city during the night. What's more, you can't Fast Travel to or have the Mages Guild teleport you places during the day if you have this disadvantage (WHY, Bethesda?). If you're playing Daggerfall for the first time, do not take Damage from Sunlight. Phobia (4) The inverse of Bonus to Hit. When physically attacking the affected class of enemy, you deal less damage and miss more often, and you do not dodge that enemy's blows as often. Needless to say, Animal is likely the only good idea to have this disadvantage against, given how weak they are, but you MAY be able to get away with Daedra IF you get boss Daedric (and remember to put away your weapon!) so you don't have to fight them. Humanoid and Undead are NOT recommended unless you like pain. Light/Darkness-Powered Magery, lower ability (7 dark/10 light) no magic (10 dark/14 light) This makes it either so you have less Spell Points (lower magic ability) or have no Spell Points (unable to use magic) in darkness and light, respectively. If you must get one, pick Darkness-Powered Magery, as most of your combat will take place in buildings and dungeons. You can get both, but don't - you'll either have your Spell Points permanently hobbled or you won't be able to cast magic at all. Forbidden Weaponry (2) The opposite of Expertise In. You cannot wield the forbidden weapon type. You can loot, sell and drop it, however. You can go ahead and forbid the weapon types you know you're not going to use, but if you want suggestions, I recommend Axe, Blunt Weapon, and/or Short Blade. These types just don't have as much going for them over Long Blade, Hand to Hand, or Missile Weapon. Forbidden Armor, Leather (1) Chain (2) Plate (5) Like Forbidden Weaponry, except it's for armour. The types you can pick are Leather, Chain, and Plate. Plate is hands down the most useful - Daedric Plate is the most protective while Ebony is less so, but weighs the same as leather! If you're going to be trading blows you'll want to wear Plate. Forbidding Leather and Chain don't have much effect, but if you weren't going to wear them in the first place... Forbidden Shield (1) Now it's shield types. You have Buckler, Round, Kite, and Tower. Tower is hands-down the only shield type worth equipping. Feel free to forbid the first three. But Tower Shields are so heavy! you say. Slap on Featherweight, or use Leather/Ebony Tower Shields (identify by their weight). The armour bonus shields give are the same regardless of material, by the way. Forbidden Material The difficulty decrease is not what you'd expect. Each material has their own decrease that varies wildly. In the below list the number in brackets is the decrease in points when that material is forbidden; you'd be surprised! If you want to forbid materials, you need to know what you're missing out on. If the answer is "not much", you may want consider it. My opinions on the materials: Iron: One point on the dagger! Woohoo. They are so weak that they can be used for training weapon skills even if you are very strong - and remember to use thrusts. It's not even worth wasting the disadvantage slot. (1) Steel: Not much better than Iron, performance-wise, but it's very common. Granted, this is only relevant at the beginning when you don't have better materials immediately available; forbidding this is pretty safe, and gets a surprising amount of points. (10) Silver: High enchantment potential. Able to hurt quite a few things Iron and Steel can't. (6) Elven: Doesn't have as much EP as Silver does, but it's lighter and able to hurt Nymphs. If it comes down to forbidding either Silver or Elven, choose Silver. (9) Dwarven: Able to hurt Harpies, and superior to Elven in every way. One of three materials with a weight multiplier of less than one, and there are no weapons made of Leather. Highly recommend not forbidding this material. (7) Mithril: The first material able to hurt both liches, all Daedra, Ancient Vampires, and Gargoyles. Tossup between this and Adamantium; Mithril is cheaper, but Adamantium is more durable and has more EP. (6) Adamantium: Actually has the same accuracy/damage/armour modifier as Mithril. Pick one of the two. (5) Ebony: Lightest material a weapon can be, and that is reason enough not to forbid it. (4) Orcish: Very rare, rare enough that you can forbid this without making the game harder on yourself, believe it or not. (3) Daedric: ...come on. Really? (2) In summary, the best materials to forbid are Steel and Orcish, followed by Silver and either Adamantium (if you pay people to repair your weapons) or Mithril (if you are enchanting a lot of weapons). Dwarven, Ebony, and (of course) Daedric are the worst materials to forbid. Low Tolerance/Critical Weakness (5/14) To Fire/Frost/Shock/Poison/Magic/Disease/Paralysis. The opposite of Immunity/Resistance. You take more damage/are more likely to be affected with whatever you pick. Disease can be cured, and buffs can protect you from the others, so if you keep your barriers up this can actually be rather safe! IF you keep your protections on, that is. Without them, these will really hurt. Hit Points per Level: You get, upon levelling up, anywhere from half this number to the shown number, plus Endurance modifier. It is one point on the dagger for every HP above eight, and minus two points for every HP below eight. You need health to live, so this can get pricey; it's better to prevent damage, true, but it's not always possible. Reputations: Doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. Quests are your means of getting into the good graces of whoever you want to like you, so this only really affects the start of the game. 4. Combat Tactics [TACT] Being an old game, Daggerfall's enemies are of the simplistic sort, shooting when at range and swinging (and blowing their Spell Points on Touch spells) when closing in for melee. This doesn't mean you have also have to be simple about the way you conduct battle. There are some beneficial habits you should get into when fighting that can serve you well. First of all, go for the backstab if you can. You get bonii to accuracy and damage when you strike at an enemy's back (modified by your Backstab skill), and this not only kills the enemy sooner, but it puts less wear on your possibly enchanted weapon and gives your target less time to kill you back. Remember, chivalry is for scrubs. It does not matter what weapon you backstab with; fists, bows, and blunt weapons can all get sneak attack damage. Second of all, always go one-on-one. The more enemies that engage you, the more free swings and spells they'll get in on you and the more likely it is that you'll die horribly. Make use of doorways, pits, cliffs, and even furniture to separate enemies so you can take them piecemeal. Paralysis works too if you can use it. If you can't separate enemies, then punish them for it; Area around Caster spells is good just for this purpose, and getting them in one big stack will let you hurt them all at once (yes, even with physical attacks). Third, keep your protections (especially Spell Resistance) on at all times. Spellcasting enemies cast Touch spells INSTANTLY, meaning that weaker mages (such as Imps) get a shot at free damage if they touch you, and high level spellcasters with a lot of Spell Points like (Ancient) Liches may very well atomize you the moment they get close enough to you. The AI is also fond of Paralysis spells too, which is why it's so important to be protected from it - if you're not already immune, keep Free Action up, from an item if need be. It's a very cheap buff that can save your life. Fourth, until you get your relevant weapon skill very high (around the eighties) always use thrust attacks (move your mouse forward). Thrusts are the weakest attack you can perform, but it's also the most accurate. After all, the enemy won't die any sooner if you keep missing. As a bonus, since you're getting in more hits, doing this trains your weapon skill, Critical strike, and if applicable Backstab better. This does not apply if you are firing a bow, for obvious reasons. Fifth, try using Paralysis on enemies. Paralysis is just as nasty on enemies as it is on you; a paralyzed foe not only cannot attack you or move, they cannot even turn around. This means free Backstabs! Be liberal with it - you'd be surprised at what is vulnerable to this debilitation. Last, always have an escape plan in mind, even if it's just teleporting out of there. Even if you don't need Spell Points you kind of need both Fatigue and Health to live. Clear out a small room so you can rest in it, and close the door too. Try to remember where the dungeon exit is at all times. Unless you know what you're doing, you should kill everything you meet, as if nothing else they can stop you from resting. If you can't, consider getting out and not returning until you are stronger. Don't worry about failing most guild quests as the worst that happens is a hit to your reputation, but quests of the game's main storyline you only have one shot at. Don't accept them until you are ready. 5. Things you should probably try to get [NEED] All of these things are technically optional, but are so very useful, and dungeons so very long and dangerous, that they could mean the difference between a routine crawl and great rage. A) A Ship A Ship is like a house that you can carry with you and access anytime you are outside (if that made sense). With a Ship, you can store things below deck and Rest for free. You can also travel by Ship for free (obviously) but that's trivial compared to the true benefits of owning a portable house. The only real drawback of a Ship is that they cost a lot of money, but admittedly that's only relevant for new PCs. Older PCs should have no problems raising the required funds for a ship, if they don't already have the money. By the way, you buy ships from any coastal city with a bank, and you access it with the Transport Menu. B) A Wagon You have very limited space in your inventory to begin with, even if you've maxed out your Strength, simply due to weight of your gear and contingency items (and considering the nature of Daggerfall, you WILL want answers for emergencies!). In this game, money takes up valuable space, too, and it's not obvious - you cannot amass a fortune if you don't make use of Banks and the financial services they offer. Your Ship (you did get one, right?) can hold your stuff for you, but you first have to get said stuff to the Ship in the first place. You can't do that if the game won't let you pick up stuff. Enter the Wagon. With its capacity of 750 and the ability to access it from a dungeon's exit without leaving said dungeon, the Wagon is your key to amassing loot and the benefits thereof. Even better, you can Sell items directly from your Wagon to merchants, meaning you need fewer transactions as well as (if the gold would overencumber you, granted) making the merchant write letters of credit (which like any other item can be stored on your Ship or Wagon), which are far superior to actual gold. Well, unless you need to stop at Inns and pay for ship fare, but they aren't that expensive and high ranking Mages Guild members will be teleporting all over the Bay anyway. Buy Wagons from General Stores. c) Items for emergencies Dungeons are filled with things that can kill the unfortunate or careless; monsters can straight-up kill you dead of course but they can also inflict poison or disease. The latter especially is a death sentence if a cure or teleportation to a temple isn't handy. Terrain such as pits, cliffs, and water is treacherous, too. Even your own body can get you eaten should you faint right in front of an enemy. You will want to carry magical items to deal with these dangers. If you can only choose one, pick something that casts the Recall spell, and always refresh the anchor to a safer place such as a city. At least there you can make use of the local temples and taverns to cure what ails you. But Recall isn't the only spell effect that can save you from having to reload. Cure and Restore effects are superior to temples if you have them on hand. Free Action stops Spiders, Scorpions, and enemy spellcasters from putting you on their menu. Water Walking eliminates the need for the Swimming skill (despite its name and what it does in later games, the effect in Daggerfall just lets you move through water at your normal speed) and Water Breathing, obviously, helps prevent sudden death from water-related activites. Shield is almost like having another lifebar and can buy you time if you're getting pounded. Spell Resistance bar none is THE buff for making enemy magic much, much less painful. Levitate bestows flight, while Jump and Climb together is almost as good for getting around in dungeons. Regenerate can save you if you cast it before going into melee. You can buy or find items that can cast these spells for you, but it's better to enchant your own. At least then you can stick whatever spell you wish (and Featherweight) onto Daedric whatever. D) Backup weapons Weapons break when used too much. Following Murphy's Law, they will tend to break just when you least want them to. Therefore, carry replacements so you aren't stuck punching them. (Not that fists aren't powerful in their own right - they are certainly far stronger than in Oblivion and *especially* Morrowind - but your PC may not be sufficiently trained in the fine art of brawling, and fists can't be enchanted anyway.) To be more specific, carry a weapon that is Mithril or better, just so you don't run into something you cannot slay. This doesn't mean you need to carry Daedric all the time, but it will suck if a Lich is between you and your goal and you can't cut it down. If you're concerned about weight, consider taking weapons of Dwarven or Ebony; they are naturally lighter than other weapons due to a weight modifier of less than one. Mithril is the cheapest material that can harm any foe, and it is literally half the base price of Adamantium items while being just as damaging. You may even wish to enchant Featherweight on your backup weapons. E) Endurance The most important Attribute there is. Endurance is valuable because its sole function, and everything it does, is to help prevent you from dying. More Endurance means more Fatigue period (and less fainting), more Health from level-ups, more healing when resting, and less getting sick and poisoned. Even if you never take a swing at an enemy, you should not neglect Endurance, as less dying is never a bad thing. (Yes, this is important enough to write about twice!) F) Speed Possibly the second most important stat. Speed measures how fast you can swing weapons and fire bows, not just how fast you can move. Faster attacks means more attacks, and more attacks means more damage being done and more cast-on-strike spells going off, if applicable. It is for this reason that Speed, not Strength, is better for raw damage output, even if you miss half the time. 6. Useful Glitches And Oversights [UGAO] Daggerfall is rather famous for its bugs. Some of the bugs are not good for you at all. while a few others are annoying at worst. The coding mishaps listed here, however, are ones that you can actually exploit to ypur advantage, and while you do not have to use them, you can think of them as features, not bugs, that will enhance your gameplay. Hey, it's not a multiplayer game; nobody will judge you if you choose to use these potent powers. A) Use Cautious Fast Travel to fully heal yourself, and no time will pass The intended drawback of choosing to travel Cautiously is that the trip will take twice as long, to balance that fact that it will completely fill up all three of your bars. What the developers didn't take into account is that you can Fast Travel to a place you're already at! If you do this, almost no time should pass, and you arrive at the landmark fully healed. This means that you can refill your Spell Points as much as you want (making training magic literally free), or top up your Health and Fatigue before heading into a dungeon. This is even more useful if you can't recover for some reason (you're a vampire that has not fed, your quest deadline is looming, you're a Sorcerer and there aren't any spellcasting enemies). Obviously, this isn't useful if you can't fast travel, so be aware of enemies and plan accordingly. B) Create Item makes permanent items The spell description of the Create Item effect lies. The items summoned are permanent and are completely normal; there is literally no difference between a Steel Longsword made by Create Item and a Steel Longsword you looted off of that Knight you just slew. You can abuse this to make infinte amounts of any item Create Item will let you make. It's just a shame that the list is unnecessarily limited and the material and style of the items summoned are random. The duration of the spell, by the way, is not how long the item lasts but how long you have to wait until you can make another item by casting the spell again. If you recast Create Item when the spell hasn't expired, you get no item at all and the cooldown is extended (see below). Therefore, always set the Duration of your Create Item spell to 1 + 1 / 20 levels, which is the shortest length of time you can set a spell to and it minimizes the Spell Point expense. C) Super Long Lasting Buffs Cast any buff spell before it times out and you extend its duration. Unlike later games where recasting the same spell replaces it, casting the same spell effect will increase its duration. This means that if you cast Free Action over and over again, it will last much longer than usual and depending on the Duration of the spell and how many times you cast it, it can last for days, weeks, and in extreme cases even months of game time. This means you never have to rely on equipped items for your buffs ever again. Take the time to buff yourself up before you enter a dungeon with whatever you desire. You can be more free and flexible, and you can actually have different icons for your buffs instead of the same boring white sparkle pic. :) D) Open works on any outside door Casting an Open spell on any locked outside door, no matter how weak the spell is, will never fail to open it. This is useful for burgling shops (see below), but it also lets you break into houses that you need to enter for quests. The icing is that using Open spells in this manner will never catch the attention of the guards. Doors that are inside houses are a whole other kettle of fish, so don't get cocky. E) Plunder and pillage shops and certain taverns Break into a shop after it closes, and you can steal anything you want without fearing the fuzz. Enter and exit your ship, and the shop will restock instantly. Before you email me, yes you can plunder the tavern at Daggerfall's Rusty Ogre Lodge. Go upstairs, and loot the boxes at the feet of the beds. You would be pleasantly surprised at what the boxes yield. Saving and reloading will restock the boxes, too. This calls the cops, unfortunately, but they can't make the hairpin turn at the stairwell and can't get to you. When you're done, you can either kill the guards or teleport out. It's not the only tavern you can do this at, either; uesp.net has an entire list. F) Make any spell cheap If your relevant magic skill is about 110% or more, all effects of that school regardless of cost will be reduced to 5 Spell Points each. Discounted spells, like the special spells vampires get, can be reduced to ONE. You can only get such high skill - without using an editor - by making and wearing items enchanted with the relevant skill enhancements. If you get all six schools that high, then all spells will be that cheap. G) You can run in any direction Hold down the run key when moving backwards. You will run backwards! This works with strafing too. Anybody can use this, but archers and mages obviously benefit from this the most. H) Your ship laughs at Johnny Law If there are enemies present when you are outside, you can't fast travel but you can change modes of transportation. This means you can board your ship to get away from the guards. Even better, you can go below deck and punch your door to summon guards to your ship! The game thinks that you are breaking into your own ship, and any reputation damage you take is done to High Rock Sea Coast, where your ship physically is. Said coast has no towns or people and therefore, no matter how many magical guards try to arrest you, there will be no detriment to your game. You can get in weapon practice, or just get some loot. You can even use this to get a Dark Brotherhood invitation. I) Turn the Mages Guild inside out If you're high enough rank in the Mages Guild to use the teleport guy, you can ask him to teleport you someplace. When the map comes up, immediately exit. This makes the entire building act as though you're outside! You'll see and hear weather effects, be able to ride your horse, and ask your guildmates to mark specific buildings on your map just like townies can. Guildmates, however, can do this at night. giving you a practical use for this glitch. Do not enter your ship, for when you leave you'll be inside the Mages Guild building on the outside map! Fast Travelling is also not recommended when inside the Guild (except by teleporting, of course). J) Buy a generic enchantment, get a Daedric item for free If you're of adequate rank in the Temple of Julianos or the Mages Guild, you can buy magical items from the Magical Item Merchant. In additional to Soul Gems (which may or may not already be filled) he also sells weapons, armour, accessories. and clothing that already have a generic enchantmnet applied to them, like those you find in dungeons or get as quest rewards. However, there are two quirks that make this an oversight you can abuse endlessly: - First, the base price before adjustments (like Mercantile skill) is determined by the enchantment the item has, not what the item is or its material. That means that a Shirt of Undeniable Access is worth exactly the same amount of cash as a Wand, a Cuirass, or a Tower Shield of Undeniable Access. - Second, the material of weapons and armour, no matter their enchantment, is scaled to your level if there isn't a cap on it. When you're of a high level, the metal weapons and armour you find will likely be Daedric (but not always!). Put two and two together, and you realize that this means the merchant is selling you top tier stuff for a MASSIVE discount! Daedric Dai-Katana can be bought for a few thousand gold! The catch is that the items already have enchantments on them so you cannot use them at the Item Maker, but if you just want something to beat fools with and don't need a weapon with a billion effects - which you should never need - or complete your suit of armour, then this is a very good way to get awesome stuff on demand without getting taken to the cleaners. The merchant himself has two quirks. First, the stuff he sells is dependent on what town he's doing business in. Daggerfall will have the same wares always, and so will Sentinel. Second, he restocks whenever you elect to buy stuff from him unlike most merchants. If you know where to buy your favourite items, and if you have the gold, you can purchase tons of it at once and little game time will pass. The only hard part is knowing where everything is. Since the Mages Guild is much more beneficial to join than the Temple of Julianos, and because uesp.net has a short list, here is a link to a page where said short list is at the bottom: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:Store/Item_Locations Note that your mileage may vary. K) Shield protects from almost everything The Shield effect absorbs health point damage until it breaks, times out or gets dispelled. This affects anything that directly hurts your green bar: Getting smacked, roasted, chilled, shot, or bitten, sun/holy place damage if applicable, falling damage, traps, and the like. It does not protect you from getting arrested (even though you don't act as if you got hit, your rep will still go down), status effects like paralysis, the attribute damage and eventual death caused by disease, drowning, or fainting and possbily getting eaten due to running out of Fatigue. Still, having a strong and long lasting Shield up will make you much harder to kill. Consider making a custom spell with it and using tricks A and C. L) Wagon Tricks: Replacing your personal inventory If you go to a merchant's sell screen, or cast an Identify spell, and click on the Wagon button it shows you your Wagon contents, right? If you then leave the screen without clicking on any inventory tabs, you'll find that whenever you bring up your inventory your wagon will be on the left inventory column and not your personal inventory. By doing this you've tricked the game into thinking that your wagon is your personal inventory and with it comes quite a few tricks that you can mercilessly exploit. Just by doing this you have direct access to your wagon no matter where you are. This means that stuff you pick up goes into your wagon directly, making the game consider the space of your wagon rather than your character. Hence, this little glitch lets you pick up far more loot than you normally could! It also means that you can Use potions and magical items from your wagon as well. M) Wagon Tricks: Your own portable Bank! Actual gold is always put into your character inventory, unless it would exceed the character's max encumbrance. In that case, it goes into your character inventory as a letter of credit. The thing is, the game always considers the space of your current inventory when deciding if the gold needs to be turned into a letter. However, since your inventory is replaced by the wagon, you'll be able to pick up the gold anyway. That means that the pile of cash will become a letter in your own inventory - your wagon is essentially being your own personal banker, for free! Do keep in mand that letters have weight, though, and you get one for EVERY gold pile you pick up if you use this glitch. N) Wagon Tricks: Weightless Gear Put the stuff you want to wear into your Wagon. Use trick L. Directly equip your gear from your Wagon. Said gear will be worn or wielded normally, but the Wagon will still be bearing their weight, not you. Handy if you want your PC to carry more actual stuff. One word of warning: Taking gear off equipped with this method will return it to the Wagon, NOT you, so think ahead. O) Wagon Tricks: Swap n' Dump Cast Identify or go to any shopkeeper. Access your Wagon. Take items out of the Wagon and into the identify or sell list. Instead of confirming, either click the Clear button or simply Exit. This immediately transfers all the stuff you took out into your inventory. You can use this to trigger trick M above, or if you need to sell a lot of junk, you can use this to sell said junk all at once instead of having to shuttle between your Ship and the shop repeatedly. One more thing that you can do is sort the stuff in your Wagon through your PC's own inventory tabs - handy for separating say, weapons and armour from alchemy ingredients. Speaking of which... P) Don't bother mixing your own drinks. From Morrowind onwards the art of Alchemy is powerful, letting you churn out potent brews that with one dose can turn the tide of any battle, heal any ill, or just be sold for cash. In Daggerfall, however, it's more trouble than it's worth. See, even being able to homebrew requires sufficient rank in the Dark Brotherhood or any temple except Julianos and Kynareth. Then you need to bring your own ingredients. You can throw whatever in the pot and if the game accepts it it will be a Potion of Unknown Effect, and even if you know what it does you can't rename potions anyway. If you want the potion's effect to be known and have its name reflect this, you need a recipe, which is random loot in dungeons. Eugh. Add in that consumables don't stack (arrows are reusable ammunition, they don't count) and you have one massive pain in the ass. And for what? A buff or heal that you could cast yourself, or enchant an item to do it for you, even if you don't use trick C. You're better off enchanting your own items and slapping on Featherweight, and selling the ingredients you find. The latter will help fund the former. Q) Suckling magic from a stone (or anything else that needs a target) Say your blue bar is half full or thereabouts. Say you have a handy Bracer of Lightning on you. Use the Bracer from your inventory, and when it waits for you to fire, abort the spell. 
Your blue bar should be less empty now.

The game doesn't manage the interaction between spell cost and item durability 
properly. In other words, while you can abuse this for refueling, your poor 
Bracer will keep getting damaged until it breaks. Though, depending on 
circumstance this can be a winning trade.

Note that you can only do this with items that wait for a target, and thus can 
be aborted. A Mark of Heal, for example, won't work.

R) The King of Training Dummies

Scourge Barrow is a plot dungeon that has you go see the King of Worms. In the 
room where he dwells, he has two Ancient Liches and an Ancient Vampire with 
him. However, unlike the vast majority of monsters, they will not attack unless 
you hurt them.

Attacking them with say, Dwarven weapons will not hurt them. But if you are 
hitting them, that still counts towards training your relevant weapon skill. 
That's right - you can unload on them all you wish for easy weapon skills! 
Except if you are training Hand-to-Hand, as fists are always capable of 
smacking whatever you're up against.

Firing a bow that they are immune to will have your arrows pool into their 
inventory as usual. I'll let you decide if the dubious task of destroying 
top-tier enemies just to reclaim ammo is worth it. :)

S) The staff of royalty has very high turnover

The cities of Daggerfall, Wayrest, and Sentinel all have one thing in common: 
they have an actual dungeon in them. With enemies you can fight, kill, and 
loot.

These dungeons are none other than the castles in said cities, the ones where 
you meet with important NPCs. However, because primitive game engine and all, 
you can just waltz in and murder their guards without any legal or quest 
consequences whatsoever.

And since reentering dungeons cause enemies to respawn, you can do this as 
often as you like! How many dungeons have a functional town waiting right 
outside them, eh?

T) Absorb your own spells

Get the Spell Absorption advantage, preferably General. Select any Area at 
Range spell from your book, Catch yourself in the blast. The AoE will go off 
as normal, but you will tkae no damage and have your SP refunded!

Enjoy blasting!

U) Leave summoning to witches

Each Daedric Prince has their own special summoning day, and the Summoners of 
your Guilds will only summon them on that day. This means that you:

- Need to be a member of that guild
- Need sufficient rank in that guild
- Need to see the summoner on that day

in order to get the quest the Prince offers and therefore the Daedric Artifact.

This is a gigantic pain in the ass.

Instead, seek out a witches' coven (uesp.net has a list of them) and see what 
Prince they'll summon today. It's random which one they'll dial up, and you 
still need to have the money, but it's far, far better than having to work 
your way up a guild and wait for one day in an entire year.

7. Outro [OUT]

That's it for this document. Hopefully, this is of help to you, and can make 
your game easier on you. In a game like Daggerfall, every little bit helps.