User:Timmeh/Sandbox3

Keepers

These are the keepers for the Daggerfall Cheats, Traveling, Hints, and Combat

Daggerfall:Combat

Much of the game of Daggerfall relies on successfully surviving through a combat situation.

Melee

All melee weapons, one handed or two handed, axe or sword, work the same way. Equip one, and then unsheathe it. Attack by holding the left mouse button and moving your mouse in a direction. The direction you swing your weapon does more than just look nice. It determines your accuracy and damage.

Attack Style	Damage	Accuracy
Diagonal Slashes	Increased Damage	Moderately More Difficult to Strike
Horizontal Slashes	Base Damage	Base Accuracy
Vertical Chops	Highly Increased Damage	Extremely More Difficult to Strike
Thrust Forward	Lowered Damage	Increased Accuracy

Archery

In order to shoot an arrow, you need to press the right mouse button. Your speed will change how fast you can shoot another arrow Once you shoot, you'll hear a sound and, if you hit, grunts of pain. Arrows can be shot through doors. It's often possible to position yourself behind an object such that you can hit your opponent without your opponent hitting you (assuming they can't shoot you). For instance, if you hide behind a shelf in a store, the guards can't hit you but you can hit them.

There are only two types of ranged weapons: shortbows and longbows. There appears to be no difference between the two other than damage.

Magic

Magic is one of the most powerful ways to defeat your opponents. To cast a spell, select it in your spellbook (default hotkey is backspace). If your spell is "on self" or "in the area around self", you will cast it instantly. If your spell is "on target" or "on touch, you'll have to press spacebar when you are ready to cast it.

Daggerfall:Hints

General Gameplay Tips

SAVE OFTEN: The most important one, save before and after quests, before entering dungeons, frequently while in dungeons, and after something 'big', like a level raise, big bank deposit, etc. It's also a good idea to have a good structure to saving games: keep one slot for the regular save, like every 15-20 minutes in a dungeon; The other slots are for 'backup' positions, a time when you have no quests and are outside, and are saved just every once in a while. It's also a good idea to backup save games in case something really bad happens. The following is a list of good times to save your game.

1. Before and after receiving a quest
2. Before beginning a new dungeon
3. Before and after resting
4. Before and after traveling
5. After leveling
6. After attaining ANYTHING daedric
7. After attaining the quest objective
8. After "training" any skill
9. Arriving at a new location

Traveling: Travel cautiously most of the time, resting in inns, as this will allows you to get fully rested before arriving at i.e. a dungeon and lets you practice spells before leaving. Being a member of a knightly guild allows you to stay in inns for free. When time is of the essence, traveling recklessly gets you there much faster, although you might have to climb over the city walls at night.

Take advantage of the Recall spell: Cast recall just inside the entrance to a dungeon which will allow a quick exit if you find the quest item or simply to load up your wagon. Don't forget to re-cast the anchor.

Exploring dungeons: This can be a hairy experience in Daggerfall, especially if 'dungeon crawling' is not your forte. Being a veteran RPG and CRPG gamer, I enjoy dungeon crawling and have a few tips...

1. Follow the right hand wall method. Start exploring the dungeon by following the right hand wall. I find this method extremely helpful in exploring a great deal of a dungeon. I don't usually enter teleports/shafts/water until later, although I make note of them. I explore doors on either side of hallways, entering rooms, but only following right hand passages.
2. Following the right hand wall method will still leave many areas unexplored. After exploring as much as I can with this method, I switch and follow the left hand wall. I check my map often now, looking for unexplored areas and secret doors.
3. This still may leave some shafts, water, and teleporters unexplored. I do these next, following similar rules as above.
4. If you still haven't found what you're looking for, you will have to start again at step 1, but check the map often for unexplored passages and secret doors.
5. Dungeon crawling can be tiring...if frustrated after several hours of exploring, take a break; watch TV, read a book or check some Daggerfall pages for spoilers.

Common Bugs

1. The soul gem bug most definitely causes crashes. These are manifested upon scene changes (like entering cities, ships, buildings). I had to backtrack several days worth of playing because I made some "super items" with this bug. Before I made the items, there were no problems. After, I was lucky to go 5 minutes without a crash.
2. The repair bug - this is triggered by any item enchanted with repair, causing error 2 upon entering a ship, or error 117 when an item repair event occurs (about every 2 minutes). It doesn't happen all the time, so there's probably some other factor involved. (Fixed in early patch)
3. The $spellname cheat seems stable, but the !spellname cheat no longer works. Be aware that editing the STR or END statistics seems to cause problems with stamina "rolling over" when you sleep (goes to zero / negative). [Neither $spellname nor !spellname works in v2.13]
4. Falling through elevators can be avoided by continually jumping while on them. Don't access your inventory / character sheet while riding one as the platform is still moving, but you will remain stationary while in the other sheet, causing you to fall when you return to the game. [Not a problem in v2.13]
5. Many have experienced the bug known as the 'void'. This occurs when you 'fall' through the floor or walls in a dungeon. You can move around in the void by casting levitate (I think) and can actually kill monsters with spells and arrows with impunity. To return, casting recall will get you back to your recall anchor (assuming you have one). Several people have used this to circumvent various 'puzzles' in main quest dungeons.

Stat Decreases

Problem: I had my Wisdom drop from 62 to 34. I have no diseases, no "spell Icons" are on my character sheet and if I look at my wisdom score in an editor it shows 62 still.

Answer: I had the same thing happen to me with my personality. I figured it out: I was using a personality ring and saved the game while wearing it. When I loaded my personality was equal to my original unmodified value. When I took off the ring...poof! My personality dropped about 20 or 30 points. I had to re-load from the previous save game (luckily I had one). You could always use the edit program to put it back...

Answer: Maybe you have been hit by spell? Try a "Heal Wisdom" custom spell. This option in the spellmaker seems to imply that there is a way to have a "damaged" attribute!

Answer: Early versions of the game had a problem with the poison / disease part. If you were hit by a nightblade and you were poisoned, a cure poison spell didn't work and several attributes dived towards 0. After 12-24 hours or so the 'poison' changed to witches pox, a deadly disease. Then a cure disease spell worked. It turns out that casting cure disease when you are poisoned in this case heals you. This is fixed in the v1.79 patch I believe.

Answer: This problem was addressed in The (In)Famous Beginner's Guide to Daggerfall by Mark Stinson on page 47. It's not clear whether this effect was a bug or a 'feature.' However, this problem does not seem too uncommon. Basically, an attribute may fail to return to normal after unequipping an attribute-boosting item that was worn for long periods. (So consider removing such items before traveling or extended periods of sleep! Besides, this saves these items from wearing out too fast.) The sudden drop in attribute may be up to half of the original value. But there are two methods of fixing this in-game. One is to get healed at a temple. The other is to create and use a custom Heal Attribute Restoration spell that's specific for the damaged attribute. (However, I've been wearing these items for long periods in v2.13 and I have yet to be bothered with this problem.)

Information on Switches

One switch I found yesterday is the torch switch that is on the wall. When you click with the 'grab' icon readied the switch will slide from left to right. My switch opened a secret wall (there was a corridor with a dead end to the left of it and when I pulled the switch the wall opened). MOST of the time the switches will reveal something near it but not always. In the random dungeons a rule I use is always pull every lever and switch you find, as sometimes two switches pulled will open those floor doors you have seen. One human skull I have seen that hangs in mid air is a teleporter. Another skull with "fangs" that come out the side is a lever that I was able to pull from top to bottom. I think that most secret levers are on the wall.

Not all switches are obvious. Some are invisible and obscure. In the Privateer's Hold dungeon I found that by grabbing the podium in the middle of the room, a bookcase in the corner moved to reveal some hidden treasure piles. (See Starting Dungeon Spoilers below.)

Also, in one random dungeon I found a room with four pillars with flames. I went around grabbing each one and after grabbing the fourth one I was suddenly teleported to a secret room with treasures. And yet, in another random dungeon I tried the same thing, but nothing happened. So sometimes being curious and thorough pays off.

Item Maker

While playing around in the Item Maker and reading guides, I decided to try out the Potent vs. powers. In particular, I wanted to see if Potent vs. Undead, Humanoid, or Daedra would be at all affected by the Multiple Low Damage Vs. Side Effects Trick. (See section on the Daggerfall Cheats page.) So after making several tests out of Daedric Katana and Daedric Long Bows, I headed off for random graveyards and dungeons to test them out. I tried three versions of these weapons: One without any enchantment, one with Featherweight, Potent vs. Undead and Vampiric Effect When Strikes, and one with the multiple side effect Low Damage vs. Animals, in addition to those powers.

I eventually found a Vampire Ancient and saved the game. I reloaded and tried each weapon in turn. Each time I carefully counted the number of blows it took to finish the dangerous fiend off. Result? It took between 4, 5, and 6 blows to kill it. I repeated this many dozens of times with each weapon, making well over a 100 blows in total. (There were a couple occasions where it only took 3 blows, but I assume this was a Critical Strike.) On average... each weapon took 5 blows. I could tell no significant difference.

Not convinced, I continued until finding an Ancient Lich and saved again. Again, I repeated this many dozens of times with each weapon. It took between 3, 4, and 5 blows to finish it and, on average, each weapon took 4 blows. No difference. So, I started over again with a plain Daedric Katakana and one with Potent vs. Undead as the only power or side effect. I went to a graveyard, found a Zombie and saved. It took between 3, 4, and 5 blows to finish it and, on average, each weapon took 4 blows. Both weapons fared the same!

Thinking that perhaps this was just Vs. Undead, I repeated that experiment with using Potent vs. Humanoids instead. I tried them out on a Rogue. Same thing: After many dozens of blows with each I'm quite confident that each weapon took 4 blows on average. In other words, despite claims to the contrary all four of the Potent vs. powers are worthless (at least in v2.13)! Note that I have not been using buggy cheats, game editors, or any hacks. My game is 100% original and very stable.

I find that the Vampiric Effect When Strikes is extremely useful. (Tip: Adding Cast When Strikes: Energy Leech is also useful, particularly for characters without Athleticism or an Endurance of 100. It saves from having to rest all the time between fights.) It makes, for example, fighting Barbarians, Vampire Ancients and Ancient Liches bearable as my character recovers almost as much health as the fiends can dish out. Curious as to what Vampiric Effect At Range might do (since it costs twice as much), I made test items of two Daedric Longbows and headed for nearby graveyards. Finding some Rogues and Bards, I saved and proceeded to turn them into pincushions. After dozens of blows with each, I can safely say that while Vampiric Effect When Strikes works fine, Vampiric Effect At Range does not seem to do anything. I repeated this with two Daedric Katana with similar results

Other notes on Hints

What to do with this page is kind of uncertain. Theres certainly information, some of it needs to go to cheats, some to other pages, some deleted. I'll have a better idea when I'm not feeling sick/tired.

Daggerfall:Travelling

Fast-Travel Loophole

I have found an interesting loophole (or Bug if you like) involving fast travel in the game Daggerfall. There are two methods for fast travel : reckless and cautious. If you choose reckless, it will take less time, but when you arrive at the destination, your health points, fatigue and magicka will be the same as what you have when you left. If cautious is chosen, it may take twice as long to travel, and you always have your health, fatigue and magicka fully charged. Also, if you are not a vampire, you will always arrive during day time. The loophole here is that if you are inside a town, you CAN fast travel to the town you are already in! By choosing cautious, and fast travel to the town you are in right now, you can fully recharge yourself of health, fatigue and magicka. If you fast travel during the daytime, the game clock will advance about one minute; if it is night time, you will arrive the next morning. So, you can have practically unlimited magicka during the daytime outdoors. There is only two drawbacks. First, you always arrive at the edge of the town. So if the town is huge, like the daggerfall city, you need to run around town again. Second, you can not fast travel when there are enemies nearby. However, you can always run to the other end of the town, lose the enemy, and then fast travel to recharge yourself.

This is ideal for training your magic skill. I have seen certain hints saying about custom practice spells. After you used up all spell points to practice the six schools of magic, you rest in a tavern to recharge the magicka. You don't have to! Just make sure it is still day time, fast travel to the same town you are in, choose cautious, and you will arrive fully recharged, ready to practice magic again. If you have a couple of quest pending, and can not waste time staying in tavern, this is the trick. After discovered this trick, I rarely use the inn or the fighter Guild for resting.

When you have high skill levels in the six schools of magic, you REALLY need this trick to get enough spell points to practice spells. If you are the type who swear never to cheat, here is a small variation. Run outside the town toward any direction. You can also view some scenery along the way, right ? Then fast travel back to the town. It will take less than one hour in game clock, and you will never recover the same amount of magicka by resting one hour.

Another use for this trick is for dungeons. If you happen to arrive during the daytime, you can use the trick to strengthen yourself. You can cast all kinds of spells on yourself to fortify the attributes, fast travel to the same dungeon, have magicka fully recharged, cast more spells, repeat until satisfied. If you do it quickly, the spells you just cast will not expire until you are deep in the dungeon. Then, you can rush to the dungeon door, with all kinds of spells active, AND with FULL magicka. My favor spells for this occasion are : Troll's Blood(regenerate health), Orc Strength, Jack of Trades, Shield, Invisibility, etc. Hey, you have "FREE" spells for use, use them all! This will make you very powerful and "brave" during the first few minutes inside the dungeon. I also strongly suggest a custom made health regeneration spell. Long duration is more important than large magnitude, since you can carry it "FREE" into the dungeon. There is only one drawback. Since you must do this outside the dungeon, you better know where the dungeon door is after you fast traveled. Otherwise, all your spells will expire before you step inside the dungeon. It is still a good exercise though.

Relative Speeds of Travelling Modes

Just a few interesting things I was measuring.

• Running Speed = 19 m/h
• Walking Speed = 10 m/h
• Sneaking Speed = 4 m/h
• Running Horse Speed = 20 m/h
• Running Cart Speed = 15 m/h
• Levitate Up/Down Speed = 2 m/h
• Levitate Up While Jumping Speed = 4 m/h
• Speed Cheat Running Speed = 120 m/h
• Speed Cheat Walking Speed = 72 m/h
• Speed Cheat Sneaking Speed = 36 m/h

Please note that these are the lower speed limits as I calculated them and are approximate only. For example, the speed cheat running speed could be as high as 160 m/h (faster than a speeding arrow, able to jump city walls in one bound)!

On a realistic note, the running/walking speeds are a bit on the high side. A world-class 100m sprinter might reach as high as 25 m/h. A usual walking speed is more around 2-4 m/h. Try sneaking around a town and see how long it would take to get around... certainly not plausible in the game.

PS: This was measured with a speed of 100 and a running/stealth skill of 100%.

Getting Directions

Need to map out a town? Easy. Pick on someone, and if they say "go east", for example, then keep on asking them. Eventually they *will* mark it on your map. If they say "I don't know", they really don't know. This way, I have completely mapped all locations in a provincial capital (Glenumbra I think) after asking just 3 people.

Non-foot Transportation

A Cart costs 150 gp base cost that can fluctuate with Mercantile skill and the type of store you enter. This type of transportation also includes a horse, but it rides more like a mule. Still, it seems faster than walking and it costs very little Stamina. An added bonus is you can now store all your precious belongings in a much bigger space.

A Horse costs 1000 gp base cost that can fluctuate with Mercantile skill and the type of store you enter. In my opinion, a horse is much faster than a cart when you want to flee the city guards over slight misunderstandings (I've had plenty of them). Plus, little cost to your Stamina levels. Unfortunately, a horse is much noiser sound-wise than a Cart. You may be a bit annoyed at the clip-clop-clip-clop of the hooves.

A Ship can't really take you anywhere in the City, but!... you can go to your ship, rest in it to recharge your batteries, then click on "Ship" again and you are back in the City. Thus, you can still stay in the city and rest without getting arrested for Vagrancy. An added bonus is you can store your precious inventory here without taking up space in your Cart. A Ship can be bought through a bank for 100,000gp or 200,000gp in any port city [near a body of water]. "Sentinel" the capital city, is a good example.

All these Modes of Transportation can be access by simply pressing "T" on the keyboard. "Foot" requires more specific definitions: "J" for Jump, "P" for Run If you dislike any of these keyboard commands, customize your own through clicking CONTROLS on the Save/Load game box [press ESC to bring this window up].

• For locked doors and magically locked doors, there are a few solutions; try picking the lock, cast an 'open' spell (home-made or standard both work), cast a spell like fireball, or just use your hands/feet to bash the door open. If you use the last, use either a low material item (like iron or steel) or your hands and feet. Using a weapon wears it down fast.

• Water can be overcome with a water walking/breathing spell, or, in some cases, completely avoided if the quest location is not past the water.

• You can find traps if your walking along and your vision starts to sway and you don't have any monsters in the passageway/room/etc and either your health or magicka are drained. If you don't have a 'levitate' spell, don't go on.

• Red brick doors have a few possibilities, but before even going NEAR one you should ALWAYS SAVE. They can be in a doorway (where another part would connect) or can be in the middle of a room (these are activated by clicking on them. If you enter, you can be teleported, hurt, or nothing at all will happen.

• Trapdoors usually have a series of teleporters in the dungeon. To get through a trapdoor, go through the teleporters until you see a lever, activate it, and go through the teleporters until your back at the trapdoor. Go down with a levitate spell to avoid having broken legs at the bottom.

After you have played the game for a while, you will start to notice patterns to the dungeons. This is a by-product of the dungeon creation process. Daggerfall dungeons are modular. The Main Quest dungeons were painstakingly constructed by hand, but the random dungeons take pieces of the Main Quest dungeons and sling them together in various forms. This is why players get a strange sense of "deja vu" in the random dungeons. They really have been here before. Once you reach this point, finding quest objects becomes much easier because each module only has one or two object locations. For example, when I find myself with a series of teleporters, I know that there is a quest object location under the trapdoor and the trapdoor is opened by a lever in one of the teleporter locations. So I go through the teleporters until I get to the lever, pull it, and then keep going through teleporters until I appear over the trapdoor (hopefully with an active "Levitate" so I don't break a leg falling down the hole when I appear). Remember where you find quest objects and the next time you wind up in the same module, you'll have a good idea of where to look.

Other notes on Daggerfall:Traveling

Propose it for deletion. It isn't necessary as an article. Everything should be moved to a "controls" page or the hints page.

Maximizing Leveling Points

Save your game before resting. If you gain a level, and got less than the maximum 6 bonus points to distribute, or less than your maximum HP/level, reload your game and rest again. This maximizes the benefits of levelling and allows you to get the best out of your character.

The larger the range of possible HP/level, the less likely it is that both that maximum and the 6 bonus attribute points are gained. The attribute points are usually much more important, so how many reloads of that save game are worth the trouble to gain the maximum in both attributes and HP is an issue best left to the player.

Leveling Equation

Leveling is determined by the simple algebraic equation:

      (A - B + 28)/15 = level.

        where  A = All Primary Skills  
                   +The 2 Best Major Skills  
                   +Single Best Minor
               B = the starting value of these same skills.

What this means is that you must raise the total of these various skills 15 points in order to get a level increase. Any combination of raises in these areas will do as long as they total 15 points. Only the highest minor skill counts and miscellaneous skills do not count at all. The exception to this is when you only need two points to go from level one to level two (a gift from Bethesda). These raises occur after resting, when the program looks at the counters and does the required calculations.

Skill raises are a bit different. The program keeps track of how often you use a skill and increments a counter for each use (successful use, I believe, but am not sure). Once the counter reaches a predetermined number (10, I believe, although this may vary upward as you get better and it also depends on your level increase difficulty, the 'arrow' in character creation) it awards you a skill increase. Training results in incrementing this counter a random number (between 10 and 20 I believe) and thus usually gives you a skill increase of 1 each time you train. I believe that it is possible to get a skill increase of 2 after training if the counter is high enough when you receive training and the random number generated by the training is high enough to increment the counter to something over 20. After each increase in skill level the counter resets to zero and the process starts over. Once you reach 50% in a skill, you can no longer receive training and must increase your skill through use or magical means.

Cheapest spell for each school.

Cost	School	Spell
1	Alteration	Jumping (tie)
1	Alteration	Water Breathing (tie)
?	Destruction	Minimal Damage Health Spell
2	Illusion	Light
5	Mysticism	Open
1	Restoration	Free Action
1	Thaumaturgy	Water Walking

Skill	Guilds Where Skill can be Trained
Alteration	Mage, Akatosh, Julianos
Archery	Fighters, Kynareth, Mara, Akatosh, Dark Brotherhood
Axe	Fighters, Arkay, Stendarr
Backstabbing	Arkay, Thief, Dark Brotherhood
Blunt Weapon	Fighters, Stendarr, Thief, Zenithar
Centaurian	Zenithar
Climbing	Kynareth, Arkay, Thief, Dark Brotherhood
Critical Strike	Stendarr, Fighters, Mara, Arkay, Dark Brotherhood, Julianos
Daedric	Dibella, Mage, Kynareth, Stendarr, Akatosh, Mara, Dark Brotherhood, Zenithar, Julianos
Destruction	Kynareth, Mage, Akatosh, Arkay, Dark Brotherhood
Dodging	Kynareth, Stendarr, Thief, Dark Brotherhood
Dragonish	Akatosh, Mage, Kynareth
Etiquette	Dibella, Mara, Zenithar
Giantish	Fighters, Zenithar
Hand to Hand	None
Harpy	Dibella, Mage, Mara, Kynareth, Zenithar
Illusion	Kynareth, Mage, Dibella, Mara
Impish	Mage, Julianos
Jumping	Fighters, Thief
Lockpicking	Dibella, Thief, Julianos
Longblade	Dibella, Akatosh, Fighters
Medical	Arkay, Mara, Stendarr
Mercantile	Zenithar, Julianos
Mysticism	Mage, Julianos
Nymph	Dibella, Mara
Orcish	Stendarr, Dibella, Fighters, Mage, Zenithar
Pickpocket	Thief, Zenithar
Restoration	Dibella, Mage, Stendarr, Arkay, Mara
Running	Akatosh, Fighters, Kynareth, Dark Brotherhood
Short Blade	Fighters, Arkay, Thief, Dark Brotherhood, Julianos
Spriggan	Stendarr, Mage, Zenithar
Stealth	Kynareth, Akatosh, Thief, Dark Brotherhood
Streetwise	Dibella, Mara, Thief, Dark Brotherhood, Zenithar
Swimming	Fighters, Akatosh, Thief, Dark Brotherhood
Thaumaturgy	Mage, Zenithar, Julianos