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Today I finally broke 100,000,000 XP! Yes, that's one hundred million. I need to get 110,324,038 XP to get to Level 26, so it shouldn't be very long now.

And I need only 1 more random dungeon in Morrowind to fill out the map with 16 dungeons (14 random dungeons plus the 2 for the main quest), after which I'll go to Dagoth-Ur to complete the Staff of Chaos.

Today I finally got noticed by the local royalty. So, I'm on my way for the main quest...oh I was given a rumor to start an artifact quest - travels to dungeon - oh, my inventory's full and I don't want to drop anything - goes to local town, visits the palace..King finally asks me to do something....SURE!. "Wait..what quest am I on?"

"You can call me (forgot the name), I am a thief....I mean; I am a chef." I think you should get your story straight, chief. (see what I did there..."chef"..."chief". huh?..huh!?)

I know most of the names are random, but what about Rulers of cities and the names of Major Dungeons on the world map?

Apparently if you name your character with a space like "FirstName LastName", many of the in-game text sources will only read the first name. So apparently now my name is just "Sir".

Apparently Necromancers were tolerated a bit more during this time. Well a king sent me to meet a representative of the necromancers at a specific mages guild...but come to think of it...I was attacked by a bunch of mages along the way....so maybe not.

In Elswyer there is a city where the people claim to mark the location of the Palace on my map, but it never happens. "Ein Meirvale" in the center far west of the map. I've tried a few different characters and no one will actually write "Palace" on my map. "...Curiouser and curiouser."

If the palace is along the eastern wall of the city, the word "PALACE" won't be written on the map-- or else it is written, but you can't see it; I'm not sure which.

I'm not certain, but I think you might be able to pick up an artifact even if you've already got 40 items. At least, I think the pieces of the Staff of Chaos are counted separately, as are any keys and any individual you happen to be "carrying" with you.

Thanks. I was really hoping you could confirm that about the Palace, and that it is consistant with other "East" places.

I don't really have much to add today, but I wanted to mention about your previous post.
[100,000,000 XP!]. That's pretty amazing. I have to admit that I felt a little small after seeing that. I don't know if I will ever see anything close to half of that or experience nearly as much of the game.

Kudos!

As far as the palace, I know that when you scroll the map, a label will disappear as soon as its first character scrolls off the visible portion of the map-- meaning the map itself, not the window it's drawn in. This can be handy if there are multiple buildings close together and their labels overlap, making it difficult to read them; if you're able to scroll the map far enough, you can hopefully make some of the labels disappear so you can read the ones you're interested in. That doesn't always work, since you might not be able to scroll the map far enough. But my best guess is that the label for the palace is written on the map as expected, but doesn't show up because the first character is outside the visible portion of the map.

Regarding XP, don't worry-- if you keep playing with the same character long enough, do enough quests, and kill enough monsters, your XP will climb up there in no time! The enemies you meet in random dungeons seem to be chosen based on your level to a certain degree, so eventually you'll be running into medusas, stone golems, iron golems, fire demons, vampires, and liches all the time-- plus the usual humans, orcs, spiders, and so forth.

Vampires and trolls are the worst as far as being "worthless," in my opinion, because if you only "mostly kill" them then you don't get any XP for it, and killing them "for good" is so difficult to do-- plus, vampires can give you diseases that permanently reduce some of your stats.

I was watching a Spanish streamer play Arena today, and he(?) found the Oghma Infinium, which gives you 50 points for increasing your stats. When he went to his character screen to distribute the points, I was amazed at how many of his stats were at 100. It was humbling to see that, since his character was "only" at Level 20, whereas my character is at Level 25 and has only one stat at 100. I'm sure he must have been boosting several stats with a belt, bracelet, torc, and amulet, and probably with magical armor, shield, and weapon as well; but it still made me feel inadequate!

As I mentioned in another post (and another thread?) I have a system of naming my save games with lengthy strings, such as

(that's an actual example), consisting of the name of the city or dungeon, the province, as many spaces as needed for padding, and the date and time in YYMMDDhhmm format. If I update a save in the same location, I just cursor all the way to the end to edit the date and time as needed.

Except, today I accidentally hit the END key, and the cursor conveniently jumped all the way to the end of the string. D'oh! I don't know why I'd automatically assumed that the programmers hadn't accounted for the END key like that, but it's so nice to know I've been needlessly making my life more difficult than necessary. Color me red-faced.

Thanks for making me laugh....and giving great hints. I wasn't aware of using the <end> key like that. I'm sure it will come in handy.

I have a curiosity question. I've learned that I can't tell if something is magical when I look at it inside a loot pile or a corpse, but when I bring it to my own inventory, it will highlight blue. Because these are more valuable, I've started taking everything and then dropping what isn't magical. I wonder if originally you couldn't tell at all until you went to a wizard and asked him to "tell" if it was magical; but because that was so frustrating, they made it a little easier. I now treat it as though I can't tell it's magical until I "examine" it, by putting it in my inventory. I can "sense" it's magical, but can't determine in what way.

My question is about items your character can't wear. These show up in red, both in loot piles and in your inventory. I guess it's more of a confirmation than a question. Is it correct that if you can't wear it, you have no indication if it may be magical or valuable until you try to sell it or determine with the help of a wizard? As a secondary question; are there any items that are never magical?

Only Plate armor (which includes Plate armor made of higher-quality materials) can be magical, so there's no need to pick up Chain armor or Leather armor to see if it's blue, because it never will be.

I think weapons and shields of any type can be magical, so check those.

If you pick up a magical item, sometimes you can figure out what it is.

If you equip it and it shows up in your Use list, then it lets you cast a spell, so you can Use it to see if you can figure out the spell it casts. If nothing obvious hapoens, check your Status to see if there's a new active effect showing up.

If you equip it but it does not show up in your Use list, check your Character stats to see if one of them got boosted. If none of your stats got boosted, check to see if your Armor Rating got boosted.

Today I hit 110 million plus XP and got to Level 26.

I've got all 8 pieces of the Staff of Chaos but still have 2 or 3 cities in Morrowind to visit before heading to the Imperial Province and the Imperial City.

I can't remember if the game ends once you beat Jagar Tharn and rescue Uriel Septim VII, or if you can still wander around Tamriel doing random quests and exploring, so I'm thinking about just wandering around exploring outside the Imperial City before heading to the Palace to face Jagar Tharn.

Once I'm done with this playthrough, I'm conflicted about whether to start again with a random character, or start playing Daggerfall for the first time. Of course, I could always do both.

I decided to go defeat Jagar Tharn after all, rather than wander around a bit first. I think this was only the second time I've completed the main quest. Jagar Tharn was pretty tough to beat; it seemed like my Ebony Katana of Luck wasn't doing any damage, so I ended up switching to my Longsword of Life Steal and casting Life Steal at him over and over until he finally cocooned himself in a blue stasis field, or whatever he did.

I'm now the Eternal Champion, and am back to wandering Tamriel in search of random fun. I want to investigate all of the houses to map them, but since I can't bash their doors in and can't pick all of their locks, I'm looking for a Mages Guild that has an magical item of Opening to see if that helps.

Would a "pass through walls" do it? [loads game to try it] Nope! I have a "Mark of Passwall" but when I tried it in the city it simply said "failure". I didn't try it on a Wilderness building, but I assume it only works in dungeons. I thought it would literally let me walk through walls. I've read where you could get stuck in certain situations. (I was thinking of a board game Hero-Quest. My friend cast a walk through walls spell and kept going even though he was running out of movement because he was sure there was treasure on the other side. The spell wore off and he was trapped inside and died. Because the other characters made it out {could remember where he died}, we let my friends new character use another walk through walls spell to go and loot his old body.) Apparently Passwall physically removes the wall. I didn't think you'd be interested in possibly destroying the thing you were trying to map, but it is the ending of your game. Apparently it doesn't work anyway.

I found one webpage where the guy was talking about how he couldn't defeat Jagar with any weapon, but found he could punch him rather effectively. You talked about removing gauntlets to allow punching without crashing - I figure this is the balance on the other side. Might be fun to try. Kind of a Harry Potter, mother's sacrifice, skin to skin kind of thing.

Game Crashes when talking to NPC's: I have a theory, but I only have anecdotal evidence. I've noticed this crash many times, and i think you mentioned it was one of the reasons you saved before doing certain activities. I've also noticed several comments from those who played in the 90's without having "freeze" issues.
Other things I've noticed:

• DOSBox default sound card is SoundBlaster 16
• Arena Demo has SB16 same as SBPro option - Later moved SB16 with SB option
  
  EDIT:
  • ver1.07 returns to combining SB16 with SBPro
  • ver1.06 INSTALL adds sbdig.adv and sbfm.adv for SB16 to Arena.bat
  • ver1.07 INSTALL adds sbpdig.adv and sbp1fm.adv for SB16 to Arena.bat
  • drivers with identical names are identical between 1.06 and 1.07
    :End EDIT
• Although Arena offers SB, SB16 or compatible it doesn't offer the full settings for SB16
  
  • SB16 has a "High" DMA as well as a "T" setting. I don't know what the "T" is. It's possible that the "H" and "T" settings are just settings for the midi, but the default for "T" is "6" which is the IRQ usually reserved for the floppy disk drive. It didn't seem to match since the regular Sound Blaster just uses the same settings for both sound card and midi device.
  • Technically a SB16 should have no problems with backwards compatibality
• Original Sound Blaster has a sampling rate of 22050 (often rounded as 22kHz)
• Arena copies from Bethesda come with DOSBox settings using 22050
• DOSBox default settings use 44100 for the sampling rate
  
  • DOSBox Wiki for sound settings list that the SB1 uses 22kHz, while both the SB2 and SB16 (and pro) can use 44kHz

My Anecdotal Evidence: After changing my DOSBox *.conf file to 22050 instead of the default 44100, I haven't noticed any crashes.
I can't "force" a crash consistently, so I haven't "proved" it to myself, but I played for a long while without any crashes and when I switched back to 44kHz to test, I was able to crash 3 times.

doxbox.conf

[mixer]
rate=22050

[sblaster]
oplrate=22050

#Should change any other listing of "44100" to "22050" to avoid conflicts.

I'd already discovered that the Passwall spell doesn't work in cities, back when I encountered cities where the palace gates were blocked from access by houses, stores, or other buildings. I should have mentioned that.

But I bought a Mark of Opening from the Mages Guild in Elinhir, Hammerfell, so I've been using that to get into houses if I can't pick the lock. It doesn't have many charges, but I've got so much gold that getting it repaired won't be an issue, and maybe I'll be able to find a Bracers of Opening that has a lot more charges.

That's interesting about fighting Jagar Tharn with your fists. I've got a saved game from just before I went to the Imperial City for the final showdown, and I've been thinking of restoring it so I can explore the Imperial Palace more completely, as I left a lot of it unexplored-- not because I was looking at online maps to see the shortest way to go, since I didn't use any online maps during this playthrough, but just because I didn't finish exploring each level once I found the stairs going down to the next level. Once you defeat Jagar Tharn and rescue Uriel Septim VII, you get transported back to the entrance of the Imperial City and can't get back into the Imperial Palace because it's "undergoing renovations" to repair the damage done to it during the epic battle with Jagar Tharn.

As for your findings about the sound card settings and the frequency of crashing, those are the kinds of important details you should document in the UESPWiki.

I decided to archive my just-completed playthrough and start a new character.

To make things more interesting, I used a random spinning-wheel picker to select my character's class, race, gender, name, and appearance.

I'm Silla Ingmansen, a female Nord healer. I'm looking forward to learning how to use the spellmaker-- but I'm not looking forward to being unable to wear plate armor and use all weapon types.

I mentioned that theory about the sound card settings causing the lockups. You mentioned that would be something that should go on the Wiki. Well, I was kinda hoping that someone would say; "I tried it and still crashed" or "That works better". Like I said, I hadn't quite proven it to myself yet. .... After reading your comment, I loaded up my game with my "improved" settings.....and crashed. "sigh" I still feel like it reduced crashes, but it didn't seem to eliminate them.

In the meantime, I discovered that my main game had somehow gotten buggy. When talking to certain NPC's, they would give the dialogue, but it would cut off part of it. "I'm a hunter. I brought fresh wild beasties to the ." I decided that I would test sound card options, while going through previous saves to find one that wasn't buggy.

While doing that, I found a new way to crash. So now every once in a while, instead of just freezing, it crashes to a DOS screen filled with computer language and freezes, while the music still plays. It basically is the same crash when talking to NPC's, but just crashes differently. The computer language is actually part of the main Arena "exe" file.

During this, I discovered that ver1.06 "INSTALL" sets a Sound Blaster 16 up as a standard Sound Blaster (Uses sbdig.adv and sbfm.adv). However, ver1.07 "INSTALL" sets a Sound Blaster 16 up as a Sound Blaster Pro ( sbpdig.adv and sbp1fm.adv). Funny thing... sbfm.adv and sbp1fm.adv are for the OPL-2 synthesizer chip, but the SB16 has the newer OPL-3 synthesizer. The file that uses that chip is sbp2fm.adv. It's included in the files but NO settings in either INSTALL program will set up using that file.

I feel like I must be getting close...............................but then I crash it using every possible combination and fix I can think of and it feels like it just crashes all the time now. "Calgon....take me away!"

"SIGH"

I think I'm going to have to do a clean start / use a consistent save-game system and save often / and stop playing with bugs.

There's information in the UESPWiki about dialogs that get cut off, but I don't remember the details of what causes it.

About the sound settings, I sometimes dabble with DAWs (music recording software), MIDI, soft synths, etc., and you can definitely experience buggy behavior if a program is trying to use audio settings that your sound card and sound driver settings don't support. I know you said you were experimenting with different things to get better sounding music, so you might have done something that's causing a conflict.

I know that when you are in a store, mages guild, etc., and then leave and start walking around the city streets, the music changes from one theme to another, and as it's switching the game will freeze for a second or so, then resume once the new music begins. This is just speculation, but if there's a problem with your sound settings, or if there's a resource file that the game is having trouble loading to play the new theme, maybe that will cause a crash?

"Calgon... take me away!" I love it! I used to throw up my hands and say that all the time, but I hadn't thought of it in years.

I ran into a serious bug tonight, which I think is the same one you'd encountered where the dialog gets messed up. It comes from asking a blacksmith to repair your armor without unequipping it first, and it can cause a variety of buggy behavior:

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Arena:Glitches ... repair_bug

There's no known fix other than to restore to an earlier point before you gave your equipped armor to a blacksmith to repair. I don't think I'd never run into this before, since I almost always play a Knight and don't need to have a blacksmith repair my armor for me.

I'm still early on in my current game, so I think I'm going to restore all the way back to when I first woke up in the Imperial Dungeons. That might seem a little extreme, but this is my first time playing a spell-casting character, and I think I want to do some things over again now that I've gotten a little bit of experience with it.

Ouch! Sorry to hear that. My bug is similar, but much less extreme....and I fixed it. That answer is at the bottom.

Game locks when speaking to NPC’s - Final comments:
Well the end of the story is; “Yes…yes it does.”

Things I learned along the way:

• It has little to do with the sound card settings.
  
  • Turn off all sound options in DOSBox and load Arena without sound options and the game crashes approximately the same amount of times.
  • Though SB16 may sound better with newer games, Arena doesn’t have a separate SB16 option and SB16 is known to have backwards compatibility issues when using SBpro drivers. For games like DOOM you will get a punchier bass and stereo that you won’t get with SB16. Though it probably makes little difference with Arena, I’ve gone with the SBpro2.
• It has little to do with [cpu] core= / cputype= / or cycles= .
  
  • However I did learn that Arena runs in “real-mode” rather than “protected-mode”, so those suggesting to use “dynamic” core options probably aren’t helping out much.
• It has little to do with [dosbox] memsize= .
  
  Having more than the default (16) doesn't cause it to crash less often. The requirements for the original game was 4mb, so 4 times that seems plenty. I have only found anecdotal evidence on the web saying; "More memory is better". In my testing, you're simply going to crash long before you get to any of the standard reasons for wanting more memory.
• DOSBox is very personal to YOUR specific hardware.
  
  • All of the sites and posts that say "This is the best setting", are really only talking about what was best for THEM. Your results will vary, and will probably vary GREATLY.
  • [sdl] and [render] settings are going to have the greatest impact on your games performance. (specifically output= and scaler= )They are also the ones that are going to be the most personal to YOUR machine. You could generally leave everything else as default, but learn about these settings and test until you find what works and looks best for you.

Final things:
I bought an original Arena CD. Why? I'm not really sure anymore. I didn't pay big bucks, I just bought a used CD in a Jewel case. It looks like the DELUXE version came with a red CD while all the others are black. My black CD has the voices and is ver1.07. I haven't located a CD version that isn't 1.07 with the voices. I remember that being a thing back in the day though. I had a copy of Battle Chess. and then Battle Chess CD came out with CD music and voices. I think it was more promotional than anything else, and CD drives were still the NEW thing. ARENA doesn't actually have CD music or anything, but considering how many floppies you needed just for the basic game, it makes sense that you would only put that out for the CD version to hold all the large voice files.

I finally got the DOSBox notification window working right. You have to go through some hoops on a MAC, but I can see the error messages now.

I fixed my buggy game. There was some things on UESP about incomplete messages, but that was when you tried to repair an item that you were still wearing. As a Knight, I haven't repaired anything. Also the missing info was more with monsters in dungeons, where my missing info was when it listed an inn while talking to an NPC and asking who they were. I narrowed it down to when I picked up my first artifact. Before - no glitch. After - glitch. I can't say if it was the artifact or something else I did while in the dungeon or nearby town. The fix? ...Travel to a different town and travel back...save and restart. Now my inns are listed like they are supposed to.

Just a guess, but it sounds like you might have had a save-game glitch while in the dungeon getting the artifact. As long as you don't need to restore from the save slot that was affected, you should be okay. But if one of the files for that slot didn't get written, restoring from that slot will cause that file to be out of sync from the rest of the files for that slot, leading to any number of glitches depending on which file is out of sync. If that's what happened, it would explain why loading an earlier save from a different slot removed the glitches.

As for my own glitched game, I'm not upset about losing my progress and going all the way back to the beginning, because now that I've completed the game-- for the second time ever-- my primary reason for starting a new game of Arena instead of moving on to Daggerfall is to work on maps and other types of documentation, so I'm less concerned about making any progress through the quest(s) and more concerned with doing certain content or actions over and over again to determine things about it.

Just as an example, the other night I was experimenting to see how far away I had to go from a corpse for it to be removed or despawned by the game.

And I've also noticed that you seem to get XP for taking a swim in the Imperial Dungeons, so I'm trying to narrow that down. I know you get 700 XP just for waking up (or receiving your initial vision from Ria Silmane, or something) after creating your character and beginning the game. I was watching a Twitch streamer and they gained a level after jumping in the water to escape some goblins and started to swim away, causing them to wonder aloud if you get XP just for exploring new territory or words to that effect. (Answer: No; at least, not in general.) And the other night I was swimming through an underground channel while mapping the Imperial Dungeons and suddenly gained a level, so it seems like you must get XP for entering certain areas (hidden regions of the Imperial Dungeons, perhaps?), and I want to narrow down where this occurs and how much XP you get for it.

My biggest hurdle right now is figuring out why my screenshots on my new computer aren't nice and crisp as they were on my old (and unfortunately deceased) computer, because for the last year that's been keeping me from throwing myself into the mapping process. The edges of the enlarged gamescreen pixels are colorshifted (for lack of a better term), apparently to help make graphics look "prettier" or whatever-- less sharpened, more softened and dithery. I don't think it's DOSBox doing it, because I should be using the same DOSBox settings as on my old computer; so I think it must be the graphics driver or graphics settings on the computer itself, but I can't seem to fix it to my liking.

EDIT: Yay, I fixed my blurry screenshots! It was DOSBox, after all. In the [sdl] section, my configuration file was set to "output=overlay," which worked perfectly on my old computer but not on my new computer. I found a website that suggested changing it to "output=openglnb," and that got rid of the blurry pixels; now my screenshots have ginormous pixels with nice, crisp edges.

I think I found the same post that you did. "Openglnb" is also what works best for me. For full screen, I go with fullresolution=original / output=openglnb / scaler=normal3x. On my Mac that gives me the same crisp pixels, but I can switch to full screen and get a larger screenshot without any editing. The "scaler=" option doesn't seem to effect my window mode when I give "fullresolution=" a specific size. I tried using the screen capture from DOSBox, but it's always 320x200. It's clear, but kinda small. (Technically you can use [doxbox] machine=vgaonly and get a 640x400, but that's still too small.)
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Aw man….now you got me paranoid.
So I ….””fixed””….my game and the local inns were now written in the NPC dialogue, but to be safe, I thought i’d go back to a save that didn’t have that problem. Well, in my testing I had gone back to a previous save (without the problem) and made it through the dungeon, collected the Ring of Phynaster and made it to my “testing” city of Rihad and saved. —No glitch when testing the save— I like to play in full screen, but I save a lot and now that I can monitor the error output, I went with a large WINDOW so I can keep an eye on things. I went a little too far and learned how to change the <space> in “Sir Edmund” to make it “Sir_Edmund” so that it shows up correctly in all the dialogue.
Now Finally, back to playing. First I have to take care of some business. I detect some magic, sell some items, get blessed by a priest (because I can), and I spend the night in an inn and save the game. “I’m going to test the save, just to be sure.” ….-GLITCH-. I tested all the things I could remember doing and couldn’t “force” the glitch. I don’t know when or why it occurred. I re-read your posts where you talked about the “save error” glitch. I haven’t seen this yet, but what if I glitched my game much earlier and this is a by-product that randomly happens in all my saves. However, it “does” often take talking to 20 or 30 people to even “test” if I have the bug or not. And doing a simple travel fixes it. Maybe this is a normal bug, but not many people are going around trying to ask 50 NPC’s who they are. — Then again…..what are the odds, that I would encounter this twice in a very short time, where you haven’t noticed it in two play-throughs? “sigh”

Fresh install - Window mode with eye on error screen - multiple detailed saves- thinking of going [&@%!] and archiving my saves as I fill up the slots. (EDIT: That's so funny. I used the slang for being analytical retentive and I got censured. - Technically, "analytical" isn't related and has a different root word; "ana". So much for Sigmund Freud.) I seem to excel with redundancy…and lengthy explanations. I play the CD version and everyone has you to <mount> the same ARENA folder as both your C and D drives. (CD version must be started from CD. This was the security that replaced the question at the end of the Imperial starting dungeon.) I know it makes no difference, but I write protected a specific CD folder and now mount that as a separate CD drive.

Came out of the Imperial dungeon at lvl 4 with no glitch and no save glitch. Fingers crossed!

Well, just to clarify something, I don't think I've ever tried to talk to 50 NPCs in a town-- probably fewer than a dozen.

I figured as much, but it can show up on the first person you talk to. When I have the glitch, it shows up on every person I talk to, but only if they have the right job and specific dialogue that lists an inn. That's why it often takes talking to 20 NPC's before I find one that can show me if the inn location is missing from the text.

I've collected one artifact, killed one beast and ran several errands in less than 20 towns. I really wasn't giving up much. Now that I'm watching the Error output, I'll be better able to determine if that's the cause, or perhaps eliminate it as the cause. (I actually hope that it is the cause, then I would already have documentation for independent testing for listing the glitch on the wiki.)

Talking to 50 NPC's was what I found worked for testing the game freeze issue. I would start from a save outside the city gates. I would enter the town and then go along the outer wall talking to as many NPC's as I could, while going around the city clockwise. By the time I made it back to the city gates I would have talked to 45-55 NPC's. That's really boring, so if I made it all the way around without crashing, I stopped and did something else for awhile. It would sometimes crash as early as talking to 3 NPC's, but generally it would be after talking to 15-25. (Only asking who they were and moving to the next.)

Experience:
You were talking about testing about getting experience from exploring or swimming. Way earlier you mentioned going after certain monsters because they gave you more experience. Do you know of any site or location that mentions how experience works? It seems like we actually have little common knowledge about what really happens. I know we have the charts about how much experience is needed to gain levels based on class and such. Also the general information in the Players Guide about certain classes having greater or lesser experience gain from activities. Do you know if I get more/less/same experience killing a goblin at level 1 than I do at level 10?

That seems like a very large topic to explore, so I'm probably not going to spend too much time on it. However, I found something I didn't expect and thought I'd pass it on to you. While trying to understand something about the start of the game, something else caught my attention. With a Female, Dark Elf, Mage, I would get different amounts of experience from killing goblins. I had a save at the beginning of the game and for the very first goblin, the experience gained from killing was anything from 65 to 100 experience gained (so far).

In the process of playing with that, I discovered something else. To make the process faster I tried to create a save right before meeting the goblin. However, starting from this save caused me to ALWAYS get the exact same amount of experience each time I started and killed him. When exiting my cell and picking up my armor, I can save there and get different experience from the goblin just to the right of my cell who opens a door. However if I save too close to that first corner on the right, the goblin always gives me the exact same experience. If I kill that goblin and keep going straight (North I think - taking a right after exiting my cell and going straight), there is a second goblin close by. Even if my first goblin gives me the exact same experience the second one (farther away) gives me random amounts.

It's not all that useful, but basically it appears the amount of experience you get is determined when the goblin spawns in.

The amount of XP you get from each type of monster is given in the UESPWiki under the details for each monster:

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Arena:Monsters

There's also a table on page 33 (or 40) of The Elder Scrolls Arena Codex Scientia (page 33 according to the page number on the page, or page 40 according to the page number within the PDF file).

I'm not certain how the formula works, though-- let's call it "XP + bonus/HP," where the XP and bonus(?) are different for each monster. It would appear that "/" must mean "per," not "divided by." And I guess the HP refers to the monster's HP, not the player's HP.

Before I ever saw that information, I once started to keep track of how much XP I got from different enemies, as well as what loot they dropped. I didn't get very far, but I did manage to come up with my own formulas for a couple of monsters:

Goblin = 60 + 5*D8; gold = 3*D11 - 3
Rat = 35 + 5*D6

Thank you. That was driving me crazy. I was sure I had seen that somewhere, but I was getting it confused with the chart for the monster's experience. (Sometimes the way others explain things, doesn't make sense to me. It's like I first have to learn their special code or language. -- Between the errors in the Arena Player's Guide and Codex Scientia and things like "/" for "per" and "HP" for Health points or Hit points and Hit Die....ahhh, senility.)

Thanks to your formulae, it makes sense to me now.

GOBLIN

HP: 1-8
XP: 60 + 5/HP (65-100)

Matches your
So, 5*HP gives you XP: 60 + {5-40}=(65-100). This also works with the rest of the monsters.

When comparing the Codex Scientia (chart on pg33) to the UESP section on monsters, it looks like UESP "HP" matches the "Hit Points column with a few changes. (Goblin is 1-8, but Codex lists as 3-12.) In the formula {XP: 60 + 5/HP (65-100)} it appears to me that the "60" is actually the "Experience Points" column from the Codex. I don't think a single one actually matches, but when you look at all the values as a whole, it's pretty convincing.

Zombie/Ghost/Hell Hound/Ghoul
Codex= 2500/2000/1500/1250
........UESP= 2000/1500/1250/1000

(EDIT: i'm a little slow....that's pretty much what you already said.)
Thanks again for helping me out.

Your "?" on "bonus" caused me to be curious.

Ghost

HP: {60 .. 80}
Damage: {5 .. 25}
XP: HP × 25 + 1,500 {3,000 .. 3,500}
XP: HP × 25(bonus) + 1500(monster_XP?)

I really think this is (at least originally intended to be):

Ghost

XP = HP(Monster_Hit_Points - ranged value determined at spawn) × 25(Monster_Max_Damage) + 1500(Monster_Experience)

When I look at the "bonus" value and compare it to the UESP and Codex info, it feels compelling. Looking at the "discussion" section makes me think I should verify the info on the page. Hopefully I can use the OpenTESArena info to have a reference rather than just testing. It's probably fine, but I'd like to know for sure.

....................Codex........UESP.........."bonus"
...................Damage.....Damage.....Max Damage
Rat.................1-4...........1-4...............5
Goblin.............1-5...........1-5...............5
Lizard Man........1-8...........1-8..............10
Wolf................1-10.........1-10.............10
Snow Wolf.........1-12.........1-12.............10
Orc.................2-12.........2-12.............15
Skeleton...........2-16.........2-16.............15
Minotaur...........3-18.........3-18..............20
Spider..............1-20.........4-20..............20
Ghoul...............2-20.........5-20.............20
Hell Hound........3-25.........5-25..............25
Ghost...............5-25.........5-25..............25
Zombie.............5-30.........5-30..............35
Troll...............10-30........10-30..............35
Wraith.............10-30.......10-35..............45
Homonculus......10-30........10-35..............45
Ice Golem.........10-30.......10-35..............55
Stone Golem.....10-30........10-35..............55
Iron Golem.......10-35........10-40..............65
Fire Daemon.....10-35........10-40..............65
Medusa............10-40........10-50..............75
Vampire...........10-40........10-50..............75
Lich................10-30........10-75.............100