Daggerfall Unity - Quick Start Sheet

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Interkarma
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Daggerfall Unity - Quick Start Sheet

Post by Interkarma »

Hi All,

I'm putting together a compact "quick start" page for Daggerfall Unity. This isn't intended to be an in-depth guide on character creation or game mechanics. Rather a brief 1 or 2 page sheet to help the freshest of new players get up and running.

I mainly want to cover the most common points of confusion encountered by new players. This includes things like saving, opening the fast travel menu, opening the settings menu, attacking, etc.

I'm looking for ideas from the community on some points you'd like to see here. If there's something that stumped you early on that could be explained quickly and simply, please let me know.

Cheers! :)

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MrFlibble
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Re: Daggerfall Unity - Quick Start Sheet

Post by MrFlibble »

Right, I'm happy to share the stuff that confused me, or wasn't obvious when I first played the game, a.k.a. newbie's errors and tips.

1. Don't try making a custom class until you know exactly what each skill does and how they work in-game. Many skills sound cool but might disadvantage you early on, or slow down levelling up. On your first try, stick with a good default class, Warrior seems like a good all-around choice (at least in vanilla DF, DFU might be different). If you want magic, Healer or Spellsword seem like more or less good beginner choices.

BTW, perhaps DFU should come with a few saves with balanced pre-generated characters ready to play, like the Betony demo did.

2. Never pick quick start when asked about character biography. Answer the questions and try to get useful skill boosts and items. Have a read of what each question does at the USEP Wiki.

3. When distributing attribute points during character generation, look to up critical attributes to round numbers.

4. Don't be shy to run away from a fight if it feels too difficult, get to a safe spot and rest (e.g. get back to the starting cave of Privateer's Hold).

5. When talking to NPCs, experiment with conversational tones to train your speech skills. If one tone does not work, switch to another. Ask many people for directions and other info, don't pester one NPC with infinite questions. Also, ask people for news and you'll sometimes get a random hint.

6. Switch to Info mode and then press use when looking at a building, you'll get info about it and its opening hours (if closed), and will also mark that building on your map.

7. Never ever have more than one active quest, beside the main quest, on your list. All quests are timed and will take an indeterminate amount of time to finish, so do them one at a time. To avoid accidentally agreeing to random quests, try not to talk to innkeeps via the talk option (renting a room and ordering food/drinks is fine), and decline any quests if a random NPC suddenly offers you one if you already have a quest pending.

8. Buy or sell items one at a time to train your Mercantile skill.

9. Pay attention to shop quality in the description when you enter it, as poorer shops have lower selling prices but higher buying prices.

10. Don't waste time on doing non-member quests for any faction. Join at least one faction appropriate of your class (Fighters Guild for fighters, Mages Guild for mages) and a Temple, and do their quests. Early in the game, prioritise advancing your career in the temple as this is the only way to get potions.

11. Once you have access to potion merchant, make sure to stock on Cure Disease and Cure Poison potions, and carry a few with you and in the wagon when going to dungeons at all times.

12. Save often, and have several save slots for one character (which is the default in DFU). Usually I have three slots: town, dungeon and quest. Town is when you're in the town (or wilderness, but that should not be very often) without any pending random quests; dungeon is, obviously when you're in a dungeon). And quest is for saving immediately after accepting a quest, so that you could fall back to the start should something go awry during the quest.

13. Remember that as you encounter more monster types, some of them are immune to lower material weapons. Each time you level up, visit shops and look for weapons of higher level materials than you've got.

14. Don't burden your character with useless items, like multiple sets of leather or chain armour, or low material weapons that you might pick in dungeons. There are not worth their weight because of the low price. However, pieces of plate armour and good weapons will sell for a nice sum even if your character cannot use them.

15. Before accepting a quest or talking to quest-giver when a quest is completed, make sure your character is not encumbered and you can carry more items: if you receive a quest item or a quest reward, it might disappear if the character cannot carry any more stuff (might not be true for DFU but is a problem in vanilla DF).

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DunnyOfPenwick
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Re: Daggerfall Unity - Quick Start Sheet

Post by DunnyOfPenwick »

MrFibble did a good job of covering much of the technical stuff, I would add something about player mindset.

Other games tend to lead the player along and inform them what happens to them, inviting a passive play-style, like watching a movie.

In Daggerfall the player should actively use their own imagination, imbue their characters with their own motivations and objectives, interpret events through their own lens.

They shouldn't be distraught over fleeing combat or failing quests, unless that is their character's personality.

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DunnyOfPenwick
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Re: Daggerfall Unity - Quick Start Sheet

Post by DunnyOfPenwick »

A few more technical notes:

Carrying gold increases encumbrance. Remember to periodically drop excess gold into a cart or a bank.

Don't be too obsessed with increasing character level. Getting a few more levels at the start increases health and overall survivability, but after that it is primarily used to unlock new content.

Regnier
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Re: Daggerfall Unity - Quick Start Sheet

Post by Regnier »

MrFlibble wrote: Mon Aug 08, 2022 1:39 pm

BTW, perhaps DFU should come with a few saves with balanced pre-generated characters ready to play, like the Betony demo did.
This is a good idea, totally ready to play characters for those who want them. ('better default classes' could be incorporated).

We could also have, for those interested, basic frames for character types but they still go through the creation process and add tweaks that they want.

The character creator is a pretty significant part of DF so it could be a suite of options

Could end up just editing the manual and fixing it lol

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Ralzar
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Re: Daggerfall Unity - Quick Start Sheet

Post by Ralzar »

I semi-regularly post some kind of introduction guide for a newbies that ask on reddit. Looking back through my post history:
Character Creation:
For your first character, consider simply choosing one of the premade classes. Many premade classes are pretty terrible and a rough start for new players. If you want a pure physical fighter, I would suggest a Ranger (alternatively Warrior or Knight). If you want a caster, go Spellsword.

The "true" way of playing this game is to make your own custom class, but that is pretty complicated and is hard to do before you know the game.

As for actually playing:
Daggerfall is not like most other RPGs. Do not care about always winning everything. Just go with the flow. If you take a quest and you fail it, just own it. The penalties for quest failure is low and there will always be more quests to generate.

Make sure you get access to either spells or potions for Cure Disease, Cure Poison, Free Action, Levitate, Water Breathing and Water Walking early on. Particularly Cure Poison and Free Action. If you are a non-caster you have to use potions which some temples offer their members. Roleplay&Realism adds potions to alchemy shops for easier access.

The Main Quest:
The Main Quest will mostly come to you. When it does, if it gives you a timer, respect it. If a main quest giver tells you that you have a month to complete a mission you should make damn sure before even leaving the city that the travel time will not be too long to get there and back. You can fail the main quest easily in this game. In fact, you very likely will, which is fine. No one plays this long term for the main quest. You are here for the adventures you create yourself.
Quick guide to making a custom class:

Select 1 melee skill for primary.

If you want to use magic skills, choose these for primary and major.

For the rest, just select stuff you think sounds fitting.

If you want to cast, add one of the INTxMagica advantages.

Do not go overboard with advantages. Just pick one or two.

Add some disadvantages to get the difficulty dagger down below the middle.

If tou are making a non-caster, add the disadvantages that stop you from using magic.

Now add HitPoint until the dagger is a bit below the middle or lower.

Edit your reputation for fun.

Good luck!


And finally as an aside: it might be an idea to improve the DFU tutorial. At the moment it is honestly sightly worse than the DF tutorial as the timers are even more awkward. DFU could have a tutorial with popups during character creation.

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BadLuckBurt
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Re: Daggerfall Unity - Quick Start Sheet

Post by BadLuckBurt »

Something of a more technical matter:

Maybe include a section about basic troubleshooting, ie how to find the player.log file etc. I find myself often linking to the post in the Installation thread in Help and Support so people can find their logs. I think that post deserve it's own pinned thread because it's kinda lost in there.

Anyway, including the bare minimum so people can at least post their logs when they make their initial report would save everyone some time.
DFU on UESP: https://en.uesp.net/w/index.php?title=T ... fall_Unity
DFU Nexus Mods: https://www.nexusmods.com/daggerfallunity
My github repositories with mostly DFU related stuff: https://github.com/BadLuckBurt

.

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jayhova
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Re: Daggerfall Unity - Quick Start Sheet

Post by jayhova »

A brief explanation of how the in-game tutorial works would be okay. The fact that the tutorial does not function like modern in-game tutorials can be confusing for the newbie.

Save immediately and save often. Use multiple saves to avoid the save of doom syndrome.
Remember always 'What would Julian Do?'.

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