Things that Arena did better then Daggerfall

[dutchovenfarts]

Arena had way better NPC enemies. you could tell their toughness by their armor they are wearing, and what weapons they are using. They'd actually use a mace if they were carrying a mace, wear a shield if they had a sheild. Mages would use staves or daggers along with their spells.

Enemies could ambush you as there wasn't static spawn points for a lot of encounters. also enemies could swarm, like lots of rats at once.

NPCs actually had a background, and personality.

Mages Guild was more useful selling potions, spells, and magic items.

Towns could be dangerous at night.

Classes were better in Arena - they didn't translate well over to Daggerfall with the skills. Like Knights no longer could repair, and Rangers no longer did extra damage. Critical strike no longer did x3 damage for theif classes. Restrictions on weapons made more sense as it was per weapon.

[Werewolf]

Arena had way better NPC enemies. you could tell their toughness by their armor they are wearing, and what weapons they are using. They'd actually use a mace if they were carrying a mace, wear a shield if they had a sheild. Mages would use staves or daggers along with their spells.

Enemies could ambush you as there wasn't static spawn points for a lot of encounters. also enemies could swarm, like lots of rats at once.

NPCs actually had a background, and personality.

Mages Guild was more useful selling potions, spells, and magic items.

Towns could be dangerous at night.

Classes were better in Arena - they didn't translate well over to Daggerfall with the skills. Like Knights no longer could repair, and Rangers no longer did extra damage. Critical strike no longer did x3 damage for theif classes. Restrictions on weapons made more sense as it was per weapon.

One thing in Daggerfall that I find to be totally ridiculous and that I hope mods fix is only being able to buy potions at a high rank at some guilds. In Arena you could buy potions at the Mages Guild at any time but in Daggerfall you have you be a high rank. In Daggerfall such an RPG staple as potions bizarrely being a mid-game feature is not even a case of it being outdated because Arena had the ability to buy potions the moment you leave the starting dungeon and go to a Mages Guild. It’s just such a baffling design choice though it probably is not actually a design choice but rather a result of such a massive game with so much content and features being rushed.

Someone should make a mod to have general stores sell potions

[jayhova]

I actually finished Arena. The story drove me along better and I felt more engaged. I also like the fact that there were farms around the cities in Arena. In Daggerfall you kinda had to imagine there were farms. Unfortunately with DFU the problem gets worse. Cities are dropped in random terrain. This puts port cities often times halfway up mountains as Daggerfall did not use terrain generation to create river basins and so by extension that simply don't exist in DFU.

[imsobadatnicknames]

One thing in Daggerfall that I find to be totally ridiculous and that I hope mods fix is only being able to buy potions at a high rank at some guilds. In Arena you could buy potions at the Mages Guild at any time but in Daggerfall you have you be a high rank. In Daggerfall such an RPG staple as potions bizarrely being a mid-game feature is not even a case of it being outdated because Arena had the ability to buy potions the moment you leave the starting dungeon and go to a Mages Guild. It’s just such a baffling design choice though it probably is not actually a design choice but rather a result of such a massive game with so much content and features being rushed.

Someone should make a mod to have general stores sell potions

I agree that being unable to obtain potions unless you're a member of certain guilds is one of the weirdest choices in Daggerfall. For what it's worth, there are several mods that try to fix that. Hazelnut's mod Roleplay and Realism - Items allows you to find potions for sale at Alchemist shops (I always found it weird how alchemists sell ingredients but not potions in the base game )

https://www.nexusmods.com/daggerfallunity/mods/61

Additionally, my mod Travelling Alchemists randomly places alchemists you can buy potions from in taverns in cities, though they will only be carrying 3 potions at a time. My mod Banditry and Travelling Merchants allows you to find alchemists (along with other types of merchants) when travelling through the wilderness. (However, I'll have to release a fix for these two mods sometime in the near future, as I forgot to add something to disarm the quest action I use to charge money to the player. This didn't cause any issues back in 10.24 when I first released them, but at some point with the later updates it started causing the game to occasionally charge you multiple times for the same potion)

https://www.nexusmods.com/daggerfallunity/mods/163
https://www.nexusmods.com/daggerfallunity/mods/159

[dutchovenfarts]

I actually finished Arena. The story drove me along better and I felt more engaged. I also like the fact that there were farms around the cities in Arena. In Daggerfall you kinda had to imagine there were farms. Unfortunately with DFU the problem gets worse. Cities are dropped in random terrain. This puts port cities often times halfway up mountains as Daggerfall did not use terrain generation to create river basins and so by extension that simply don't exist in DFU.

oh yeah! in Arena, port cities were actual ports! and there were canals and ponds.

[Werewolf]

One thing in Daggerfall that I find to be totally ridiculous and that I hope mods fix is only being able to buy potions at a high rank at some guilds. In Arena you could buy potions at the Mages Guild at any time but in Daggerfall you have you be a high rank. In Daggerfall such an RPG staple as potions bizarrely being a mid-game feature is not even a case of it being outdated because Arena had the ability to buy potions the moment you leave the starting dungeon and go to a Mages Guild. It’s just such a baffling design choice though it probably is not actually a design choice but rather a result of such a massive game with so much content and features being rushed.

Someone should make a mod to have general stores sell potions

I agree that being unable to obtain potions unless you're a member of certain guilds is one of the weirdest choices in Daggerfall. For what it's worth, there are several mods that try to fix that. Hazelnut's mod Roleplay and Realism - Items allows you to find potions for sale at Alchemist shops (I always found it weird how alchemists sell ingredients but not potions in the base game )

https://www.nexusmods.com/daggerfallunity/mods/61

Additionally, my mod Travelling Alchemists randomly places alchemists you can buy potions from in taverns in cities, though they will only be carrying 3 potions at a time. My mod Banditry and Travelling Merchants allows you to find alchemists (along with other types of merchants) when travelling through the wilderness. (However, I'll have to release a fix for these two mods sometime in the near future, as I forgot to add something to disarm the quest action I use to charge money to the player. This didn't cause any issues back in 10.24 when I first released them, but at some point with the later updates it started causing the game to occasionally charge you multiple times for the same potion)

https://www.nexusmods.com/daggerfallunity/mods/163
https://www.nexusmods.com/daggerfallunity/mods/159

Awesome mods. I speculate that not being able to buy potions unless you’re a high-ranking member of certain guilds is moreso a result of being rushed then an intentional design choice. Daggerfall was essentially incomplete in various ways, like for example the language skills only pacify enemies and feel underdeveloped. Critical strike only increases your chance to hit despite the manual claiming a critical strike does more damage.

Having potions at alchemy shops and possibly general stores should be a setting you can toggle in vanilla Daggerfall Unity

[dutchovenfarts]

magic items were better in Arena too - half your jewelry had a choice between protection or increasing attributes, an the other half were for spellcasting. similarly plate armor had a decent choice between going with a higher material, or using a plain enchanted one instead, which often was the better choice. of course there was enchanted plate of better materials, but those were either extremely expensive or extremely rare. Daggerfall's magic items were mostly crap, practically pushing you into the mages guild or Julianos to make better items, since you can't buy magic items for the most part.
Same for potions, basically join either a temple or the DB to get potions and make your own.

class restrictions were handled better for weaponry, as it was per weapon instead of a class of weapons. Like mages could only use a dagger or a staff. In Daggerfall, mages could use warhammers lol.

spellcasting felt a lot better. x1.5 and x2 spell points were sufficient unlike in Daggerfall. This was due to how spell cost related to level, and it drastically decreased the costs early on, along with boosting spell power - by level 5 spell cost was 20% of the original cost, and level 10 only 10%. The skills in Daggerfall didn't decrease spell costs enough, making spell casting crap in comparison until much higher skill levels or using exploits.

also minor note, the faces for races were a little better in Arena - more variety, less same looking.

[Werewolf]

magic items were better in Arena too - half your jewelry had a choice between protection or increasing attributes, an the other half were for spellcasting. similarly plate armor had a decent choice between going with a higher material, or using a plain enchanted one instead, which often was the better choice. of course there was enchanted plate of better materials, but those were either extremely expensive or extremely rare. Daggerfall's magic items were mostly crap, practically pushing you into the mages guild or Julianos to make better items, since you can't buy magic items for the most part.
Same for potions, basically join either a temple or the DB to get potions and make your own.

class restrictions were handled better for weaponry, as it was per weapon instead of a class of weapons. Like mages could only use a dagger or a staff. In Daggerfall, mages could use warhammers lol.

spellcasting felt a lot better. x1.5 and x2 spell points were sufficient unlike in Daggerfall. This was due to how spell cost related to level, and it drastically decreased the costs early on, along with boosting spell power - by level 5 spell cost was 20% of the original cost, and level 10 only 10%. The skills in Daggerfall didn't decrease spell costs enough, making spell casting crap in comparison until much higher skill levels or using exploits.

also minor note, the faces for races were a little better in Arena - more variety, less same looking.

Seems that Arena was easier because the game was balanced better possibly as it was moreso just a dungeon crawler with an overworld whereas Daggerfall attempted to be a fantasy life simulator (giving more time to balance the gameplay and loot) Daggerfall with not being able to buy potions unless you’re at a high rank in some guilds and poor magic items and insane dungeons was more difficult for lower-level characters. In particular not being able to buy potions unless you’ve ranked up in some guilds is such an insane design. At low levels potions are super important but only allowing the player to buy them if they’re a high rank at some guilds makes zero sense. Seriously, Daggerfall Unity should have alchemy shops and possibly general stores sell potions by default as not having that is just broken.

[violetnred]

i like how dungeons virtually never had significant dead ends.
also how getting back to the exit was easier in an organic way - not because someone explicitly placed a one-way shortcut tunnel.
lots of "tactical" pits, cannals, lava pools and wall cracks. i don't recall Daggerfall using those in exact same way - as a minor obstacle during combat.
ambushes! i love ambushes! talking specifically about areas that spawn enemies after you cross them.

[dutchovenfarts]

oh yeah, a shield's material affected the armor rating, so there was a point to using a dwarven or ebony bucker for the AR.