I'm an obsessed and lost soul who's new to Daggerfall.

Discuss Daggerfall Unity and Daggerfall Tools for Unity.
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mruncreated
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I'm an obsessed and lost soul who's new to Daggerfall.

Post by mruncreated »

I guess I've been at this for about a week, maybe longer. I've re-rolled about 20 times. :lol:

I tend to play games in an obsessive way (not knowing how else to put it). I do a lot of research and try to think of the best way to play a game before I start. In this case, I mean best "class" to play. And in this game, this is not an easy thing to figure out.

For starters, there's a lot of incorrect info lurking out there about this game. For a new player like me, this has been nothing but confusing, and kind of annoying. Lots of guides and threads from all over have claimed that Willpower makes your spells harder to resist, that Critical Strike affects damage, etc. Things like that.

Well, I checked over the source code at GitHub (at least for Willpower) and I found nothing to suggest that Willpower makes your spells harder to resist. Though it would've been nice if this were the case. And with Critical Strike, I've found threads here that cleared that up. Critical Strike only affects your chance to hit. I'm fine with that. At least it does something useful.

I guess now I just don't know what type of character to play. I usually like thief type characters, but it looks like lockpicking and pickpocket are notoriously terrible skills in Daggerfall.

I had considered a mage-type character, but now that I know I can't make my spells more effective, and even rats are dodging fireballs at a regular rate, it looks like Destruction might be more trouble that it's worth. I could be wrong. I'd appreciate some commentary from someone who's played a Destruction mage (and was happy with it).

Actually, any kind of build that is fun would be good... I'd appreciate some help with this, as I'm tired of starting over.

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Jay_H
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Re: I'm an obsessed and lost soul who's new to Daggerfall.

Post by Jay_H »

Welcome to the forums :)
mruncreated wrote: Sat May 29, 2021 1:58 am Well, I checked over the source code at GitHub (at least for Willpower) and I found nothing to suggest that Willpower makes your spells harder to resist. Though it would've been nice if this were the case.
You can see it in FormulaHelper: https://github.com/Interkarma/daggerfal ... per.cs#L92

Code: Select all

        public static int MagicResist(int willpower)
        {
            Func<int, int> del;
            if (TryGetOverride("MagicResist", out del))
                return del(willpower);

            return (int)Mathf.Floor((float)willpower / 10f);
According to the code, it grants increasing spell save power per 10 Willpower.

I'm certain some other members will have good advice for a build. I've heard the Ranger class is good generally for a starting player, and others say the Barbarian.

mruncreated
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Re: I'm an obsessed and lost soul who's new to Daggerfall.

Post by mruncreated »

Thank you. :)

Yes, I did find that particular function, the one which returns willpower divided by 10 as magic resistance. But as far as Willpower increasing your own spells' difficulty to be resisted (a claim which I have run into many times across the internet), I could find no such evidence of this anywhere. So I'm guessing it's not true, though many seem to believe it.

I guess you could say that Daggerfall is rather unique, in that it has been sort of a chore to find the correct info about how this game actually works. Critical Strike doing extra damage and Willpower making your own spells harder to resist are two falsehoods that are interwoven throughout... it makes me wonder just how many more untruths exist out there about this game. I've been bashing my head against the wall over it for a time.

This actually made me think of an idea while playing the game. What if there was a little '?' icon on every attribute, and on every skill, etc. and when you click the '?' you get a pop-up explaining not only what it does, but what it doesn't do. A kind of DFU non-classic feature, maybe that can be enabled or disabled in the setup page? Just a thought, anyway...

And I have never tried a Ranger, actually. I haven't even tried archery yet. I have read that bows wear out very quickly, and arrows are tough to find. That's the main reason I have avoided it.

Is it really true that lockpicking and pickpocket are useless/abysmal skills? Very difficult to level, or just plain not worth it? It's a shame, I would've liked being a thief. The guards seem to have even stronger ESP powers than Oblivion's guards, and that's saying something. Like they literally live inside the cracks of the walls, and under the floorboards. Maybe there's another dimension in there where all the guards stand around talking about septims.

Tkia
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Re: I'm an obsessed and lost soul who's new to Daggerfall.

Post by Tkia »

The way I've always done it in each TES game is start by rolling a Spellsword. It's a jack-of-all-trades sort of class that can do a bit of everything. Play that up a few levels to get the hang of the mechanics and give you an idea of which things you prefer then you can roll the sort of character you've discovered you like best. Once I've got the basics down I usually move straight to custom classes (reproducing my favourites from other games mostly) but that's just me.

Do your initial exploration without mods to discover the worst annoyances for you and then go look for mods to add to fix them. For instance, there's a new Thief mod linked on the forum that's currently in testing here which is getting rave reviews from the people testing it. I don't do thieves much so haven't tried it myself yet. Just be aware if you load it that it is in a testing state, not a release.

My bible for all things TES for over 20 years is https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:Daggerfall It's not 100% accurate (what is?) but it's never really failed me in all these years. It has a section documenting the major differences between classic ~Daggerfall and the Unity release.

Yes, Daggerfall can be hard work at times. It was made back in the days when gamers were happy to spend time playing and exploring a game rather than using easy mode to get to the end content as fast as possible, as seems to be the norm today. But, if you're prepared to make the effort it is incredibly rewarding. Look at this forum. 25 year old game and we're all still playing it. It must have something! Take your time and Enjoy!

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Hazelnut
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Re: I'm an obsessed and lost soul who's new to Daggerfall.

Post by Hazelnut »

mruncreated wrote: Sat May 29, 2021 9:07 am And I have never tried a Ranger, actually. I haven't even tried archery yet. I have read that bows wear out very quickly, and arrows are tough to find. That's the main reason I have avoided it.
That's true, for a bow main you do need a couple of bows to see you through a dungeon and to buy arrows when you see them in shops (up to about 100 ish) If the fragility bothers you, then you could use Roleplay and Realism: Items mod which increases the durability of bows significantly. You can switch off all the modules if you don't want them, just so long as the mod is enabled.
See my mod code for examples of how to change various aspects of DFU: https://github.com/ajrb/dfunity-mods

mruncreated
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Re: I'm an obsessed and lost soul who's new to Daggerfall.

Post by mruncreated »

Tkia wrote: Sat May 29, 2021 1:50 pm The way I've always done it in each TES game is start by rolling a Spellsword. It's a jack-of-all-trades sort of class that can do a bit of everything. Play that up a few levels to get the hang of the mechanics and give you an idea of which things you prefer then you can roll the sort of character you've discovered you like best. Once I've got the basics down I usually move straight to custom classes (reproducing my favourites from other games mostly) but that's just me.
I've done something close to this. I started out immediately creating a custom class (based on videos I've watched on Daggerfall), but the class I made was very close to a Spellsword by default.
In my longest play (which I ditched after an argument with my girlfriend), I had something like this:

Primary Skills: Destruction, Long Blade, Stealth
Major Skills: Backstab, Illusion, Mysticism
Minor Skills: Alteration, Critical Strike, Dodging, Restoration, Running, Thaumaturgy

I found myself practicing these skills regardless: Climbing, Jumping, Swimming, Etiquette, Streetwise.
They were Misc. skills but I felt that I needed them anyway. They weren't too difficult to train, at first. Swimming in puddles in towns (which I got a disease from a few times, or so it would seem--either this, or a rat's bite took forever to manifest), climbing the walls, and generally jumping around. Asking people "Where am I?" and "Any news?" with a polite or blunt tone seemed to work well, for a time, but it became a real grind later (post 40s in skill).
Two things I didn't practice were pickpocket and lockpicking. Well, I practiced those when I could in dungeons, but the opportunities to do this seem rare. And I don't know how to deal with the guards or the crime system in this game. I have read that as long as you don't get hit by a guard, and you run away, you'll be fine. But I don't know if that's really true. I could just kill them all, but I don't know what will happen from this.
Anyway, I guess my problem is: I want to be able to do EVERYTHING, like I typically am in every Elder Scrolls game. It's possible, but tedious. Yet the game rewards you for the extra work, if you are willing.
Do your initial exploration without mods to discover the worst annoyances for you and then go look for mods to add to fix them. For instance, there's a new Thief mod linked on the forum that's currently in testing here which is getting rave reviews from the people testing it. I don't do thieves much so haven't tried it myself yet. Just be aware if you load it that it is in a testing state, not a release.
The only mod I tried was DREAM. I was a bit thrown off by the mod, so I reinstalled the game without it. I'm not sure I'm ready for mods yet.
My bible for all things TES for over 20 years is https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:Daggerfall It's not 100% accurate (what is?) but it's never really failed me in all these years. It has a section documenting the major differences between classic ~Daggerfall and the Unity release.
That's the place I go to, even going back as far as Oblivion. Not sure if it existed back in the Morrowind days.
Hard to believe Morrowind came after Daggerfall. I remember Morrowind like it was yesterday.
Yes, Daggerfall can be hard work at times. It was made back in the days when gamers were happy to spend time playing and exploring a game rather than using easy mode to get to the end content as fast as possible, as seems to be the norm today. But, if you're prepared to make the effort it is incredibly rewarding. Look at this forum. 25 year old game and we're all still playing it. It must have something! Take your time and Enjoy!
I was a teenager back then. Yet somehow I missed this game. I had a crappy 386 at that time. Booting up into Windows literally took over 20 minutes. Now I have an SSD and Windows boots up in seconds. How far we have come...
I understand what it is about the game that makes it so... alluring. And it's not nostalgia, as some would claim. It's the spirit, passion, etc. Something which is lacking in the current time... I actually wish Bethesda would return to their roots, and make something like Daggerfall today. But I doubt this will ever happen. It's kind of the same with something like Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn. That game had a certain "something" that is simply missing these days. So I'm grateful this team has revived Daggerfall. You never know, it could spark a sort of game development revolution or something. :lol:

mruncreated
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Re: I'm an obsessed and lost soul who's new to Daggerfall.

Post by mruncreated »

Hazelnut wrote: Sat May 29, 2021 2:05 pm That's true, for a bow main you do need a couple of bows to see you through a dungeon and to buy arrows when you see them in shops (up to about 100 ish) If the fragility bothers you, then you could use Roleplay and Realism: Items mod which increases the durability of bows significantly. You can switch off all the modules if you don't want them, just so long as the mod is enabled.
In all the shops I've frequented, I've not seen more than a few arrows for sell at a time. I didn't know you could buy them in the 100s. I may have to give this a try.

Speaking of shops... do these even refresh their inventories? I swear I've seen the same things in them, unchanging, at least in my last game. Even from Gothway Garden on my first day out into the world, and months later (in-game months, anyway) the shops had the same things, or so it seemed.

That reminds me: Do NPCs (the ones wandering around outside in towns) respawn? Because it seems to me--and I could be wrong about this--but it seems to me that random NPCs are generated literally every time you enter and leave a building in a town (or save and reload, even). I was concerned about becoming a werewolf, or joining the Dark Brotherhood, because I didn't want to kill someone permanently. But if they're just generic on-the-fly spawns, I won't have a problem slaughtering them so much. Hilarious...

Yes, always more questions in my head...

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Hazelnut
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Re: I'm an obsessed and lost soul who's new to Daggerfall.

Post by Hazelnut »

mruncreated wrote: Sat May 29, 2021 11:35 pm
Hazelnut wrote: Sat May 29, 2021 2:05 pm That's true, for a bow main you do need a couple of bows to see you through a dungeon and to buy arrows when you see them in shops (up to about 100 ish) If the fragility bothers you, then you could use Roleplay and Realism: Items mod which increases the durability of bows significantly. You can switch off all the modules if you don't want them, just so long as the mod is enabled.
In all the shops I've frequented, I've not seen more than a few arrows for sell at a time. I didn't know you could buy them in the 100s. I may have to give this a try.

Speaking of shops... do these even refresh their inventories? I swear I've seen the same things in them, unchanging, at least in my last game. Even from Gothway Garden on my first day out into the world, and months later (in-game months, anyway) the shops had the same things, or so it seemed.

That reminds me: Do NPCs (the ones wandering around outside in towns) respawn? Because it seems to me--and I could be wrong about this--but it seems to me that random NPCs are generated literally every time you enter and leave a building in a town (or save and reload, even). I was concerned about becoming a werewolf, or joining the Dark Brotherhood, because I didn't want to kill someone permanently. But if they're just generic on-the-fly spawns, I won't have a problem slaughtering them so much. Hilarious...

Yes, always more questions in my head...
You get stacks of up to 20 arrows in shops. I was suggesting buy any you see unless you have over a 100, then you can stop and just buy when you need to restock. Shop inventories change every day. The townsfolk are randomly generated, but guards don't take kindly to their murder.
See my mod code for examples of how to change various aspects of DFU: https://github.com/ajrb/dfunity-mods

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