Arena - Who's still playing?

[IgorVonDame]

Linkuya, when you say "hard to get into" do you mean the game's ability to keep your interest? The difficulty of learning the controls, or the difficulty of the first dungeon?

Aside from each individual's level of patience and ability to focus, with a few 'hints' and an approach that relies on diligent saving, it is not too bad. The class of character you choose is a very important factor.

I've been playing it for about a week now, just creating characters to explore and do research for the wiki, but I would offer the following advice:

1) If you are using DOSBOX, push F12 until your screen performance is around 18,000 this will greatly improve the responsiveness of your movement.

2) Go to the wiki pages for the different races and classes and spend some time with the descriptions. Understand what the strengths and weakness of each race is and which classes are best suited for each race. Sometimes there is more than one answer. Make a note of what abilities are important for each race type. When you choose to 'select' the class, the game will tell you what two characteristics are important for that class to succeed. Write it down.

3) Don't just take the first set of statistics for your abilities you get from the game. If you click on 'Done' it will give you to option to 'Reroll' ... do so a few times until a) you get more than 12 free points to spend and b) the starting high statistics are in the two abilities the game told you were important for your class. Be patient.

4)Right after you create your character, before you move anywhere ... press F1, then 'Next Page', find your weapon and click on it. That will equip the sword/dagger/staff you were given. Escape and click done, then make sure there is a sword or staff showing on the right side. Practice click-holding the right mouse button swinging the sword around. Try all directions and get an idea how to get it to poke, slice, slash and stab the opponent before you face them.

5) After you get the key, stand in front of the locked door, push the ESC key and SAVE your game (I usually call it Imperial Dungeon Start). If all goes badly, you can always start from here.

6) Open the gate, step into the dungeon and turn to the left (you may find the arrow keys easier than the on-screen arrows/mouse controls). You will see a pile of loot on the floor, hit ESC and SAVE again, this time as 'Before Gold' or something like that. Once it is saved, click on the loot and see what you won. If you don't like it, hit esc and load the file you just saved and try again. Once you get what you want, hit ESC and SAVE as 'After Gold'

7) So, when to save... Before a loot stash, after the loot stash, once you are healed 100%, anytime you are uncertain if an enemy will be behind the next door, when you are about to walk into the blue light and exit the dungeon (dungeon-End), and just after you pass out of the dungeon into the new city (even if it is dark, save first, look for an inn afterward).


If you find yourself getting lost (and you are looking at the map as you go), there are links in the wiki to an image of the dungeon you can print out ... and write on. Use all the help you can.

When it is daylight (or at night if you find the Priest or the two gals in the red-light district) put your sword away and stop an NPC. Click 'where is?" and make a list of every Inn, Temple, and Store in the town ... and the Mages Guild. Now start at the upper left (NW Corner) and go to every building on the map that has a Brown square sticking out from a maroon door square. That is a Sign for an Inn or Store or Temple. Visit everyone, and note the location on the list of names you got from the NPC. Now go to an inn and talk to a Bartender and get a mission to Work on. Do the delivery missions until you have lots of gold to buy some potions of freedom, health, cure disease, and complete your set of armor (including a mace/flail for skeleton killing). once you have yourself prepared ... go out of the town and look for a red X where a dungeon is and explore. The dungeon will give you more XP so you level up. You will need to have higher health and stamina to travel more than one town away (more that 3 days).


But have fun. I hope this helps a bit and encourages more to give the game a try, it is really a lot of fun if you are patient.

[Zelafrein]

Just decided to give this game a second try, this time I chose battlemage. Although I'm newb, personally I find it more fun to play with as few saves as possible, like only 1 save at the beginning of the dungeon and 1 save at the beginning of the new day near the inn. Being low on mana I'm forced to fight with my sword and defend with the shield spell, still its possible to survive. And I get gold by stealing items from mages, lol. If you can cast invisibility and reach the mage with your mouse you can safely rob them without ever being noticed by the guards, and if caught just turn and exit through the door. No saves required. And invisibility is not required too, it just makes things safer. If you hug the door you can turn and hop out before the guards get their chance to kick ur ass.
~
Xellos, Lvl 6 human battlemage

[deathm00n]

One heck of a guide.

Wow, thanks for this man, now I have the courage to try this game again, never have ended the initial dungeon.

[skullclutter]

But have fun. I hope this helps a bit and encourages more to give the game a try, it is really a lot of fun if you are patient.

As a complete newb, It will definitely help me!

[OblivionDuruza]

Of course there are. It's a country-sized province. Even jungled up Elsywere has more then one city.

All I'm saying is I preferred it as a metropolitan province and not yet another race-specific "homeland." Just a matter of opinion!
I do like what they did with the Imperial/Nord relationship in Skyrim though. I guess it was sort of worth the change for that?

I think I kinda get what you're saying. In Arena, the Imperials weren't a playable race, more an idea, and although perhaps there were multiple small towns in Cyrodiil, etc., there was only one real major city, but it was massive. It really felt like a mixing pot, rather than another province.

I agree, a lot of the lore, which seemed really eccentric and out-there, was stretched to make Cyrodiil very much generic fantasy for Oblivion. One commentator puts it well when he says it's as if Bethesda saw Cyrodiil in the middle and thought 'normal' rather than the mixing-pot it seems like it was originally intended to be (and still is in many senses in Oblivion).

[deathm00n]

Finally I've scaped the imperial dungeon! Freedom!!

But I'm having a hard time with the local map, there is no way to scroll it so I can see the whole maping without moving to another location? And is there any other way to mark important buildings on your map aside from talking to a NPC when you are near of one inn/store/temple?

[IgorVonDame]

But I'm having a hard time with the local map, there is no way to scroll it so I can see the whole maping without moving to another location? And is there any other way to mark important buildings on your map aside from talking to a NPC when you are near of one inn/store/temple?

There are a few choices:

1) You can use the compass directions to scroll N-S-E-W and 'see' the rest of the town. There is no in-game ability to view the entire town, however.

2) You can use Ctrl-F5 to take screenshots of areas of the map as you scroll using method #1, then use your favorite graphics package (gimp/photoshop) to glue them all back together into a town map. You can then print it out and write the names of the buildings on the map.

3) You can just be patient as I'm working on clickable maps of all 400 towns in Arena with all the Inns/Temples/Stores marked for easy reference. A large project - it will take a while (currently working on Hammerfall)

Here is the process I use:
A) Create an abbreviation for the race/class/subclass of character - RWW for Redguard Warrior Warrior as an example
B) Create a subdirectory for that character - in my case it would be C:\DOSGAMES\RWW (I actually create RWW1 through RWW9 so I have many places to spawn. There are 32 towns, I can only save about 5/character)
C) Install TES:Arena in that directory
D) Launch and play Arena, get through dungeon and see what town you spawn in, Save. Use Ctrl-F5 to take screenshots of the town map. If it is day, stop any NPC and ask "Where is...?" and make a list of all the Inns, Temples and Stores in the town. If it is night, find an Inn and heal sleeping until light, or find either a lady-of-the-night, or priest, or monkey in town to talk to and get the same 'Where is...?" info (killing mobs as you go).
E) Heal and use Shift-M to ride to as many nearby towns as you can, saving each time you arrive.
F) Now go back to the towns you saved during the day and start in the upper left section (1A) visit any building with a little brown block sticking out and record the location after the name on your list. It could be 1A9 as an example. I number doors left-right, top - bottom so I know which building I am in. After you visit all the ones with signs, check if you have any more on the list without a location noted. Ask an NPC and follow directions until you find it. Some buildings have no sign and look like a warehouse with a locked door - only the NPC can guide you. I also have found a town with a missing Temple, NPC sends you to an open field - very frustrating.
G) Go back and modify the map by coloring the buildings according to type, I use yellow/Inn, Purple/Temple, Green/Store, Orange/Mages Guild, Blue Palace, Grey/City gate - but you can use whatever you want. I find it helps when you come back from an external dungeon and all you want to do is get to any Inn as fast as you can.
I) Once the maps are uploaded I'm planning on adding little clickable numbers to the buildings to cross reference from a list and to zoom you to the interior floor plan where I mark the location of the Bartender/Wizard/Smith for you as well.

Lots of work. The joy of Wiki's

Glad to justify the effort with users looking for the info already.

[deathm00n]

This seems a lot of work Igor, and thanks for the help with the compass, that was what I was asking for.

So are you going to do it like those custom google maps? I didn't know that the world was generated according to your race and class...

[IgorVonDame]

So are you going to do it like those custom google maps?

I didn't know that the world was generated according to your race and class...

Looking into the Google map option but it may not be appropriate because most of the game content is randomly generated (everything outside of the towns). For now I'm just gathering the information.

The World is not generated any differently according to your race and class ... you just start/spawn in your chosen race's Province. It is 'easier' to create new characters in various places than to lose days travelling great distances. At the moment I'm still trying to determine if the distance allowed without dying is based on your max fatigue (which limits distance by level) or just random.

I obviously enjoy reverse engineering ... reminds me a lot of my old Animal Crossing research ... sigh.

[Lost_in_Hyrule]

I'm playing Arena for the first time! Igor's passion compelled me to join this forum and offer to help. So, would you like a collaborator in documenting Arena?

[DwemerInSpace]

Wait wait wait, hold up. I thought Arena's maps others than main quest dungeons and the Imperial City were all randomly generated every game. Are y'all tellin' me that Arena's town layouts are the same every time??

[Lost_in_Hyrule]

I do believe that's what Igor has seen. I haven't made more than the one character yet (Argonian Nightblade), but this seems to be the case. The names of stores and their locations seem to be consistent, at any rate!

[IgorVonDame]

Wait wait wait, hold up. I thought Arena's maps others than main quest dungeons and the Imperial City were all randomly generated every game. Are y'all tellin' me that Arena's town layouts are the same every time??

Well, from what I have seen in experimentation, the answer is yes, the towns seem to have all the Inns/Stores/Temples and layout the same every time. I've created about 10 different installs of Arena with characters spawning in different towns each time, but if I travel to the same town with a different character on one of the other installs, everything looks the same.

I wanted to verify it before I took the giant leap into this project, because it will be a lot of work for a game that, by design, lives for randomness. The other comfort in this evaluation process is that there is a database on this site of all the weapon types and where to buy them. That tells me that the user who did that research was able to reliably prove that the same store would be in the same town and have the same initial inventory so they would record it. I think I checked one location (Skaven) and the same store was listed as cited in the database (see the weapons section of the Arena section of the wiki).

[Lost_in_Hyrule]

I want to look into the inventory aspect, actually. The store was in the city, but the listed item wasn't. Unless I was a derp and couldn't actually equip it! But I'm fairly certain it was a bracer.

[IgorVonDame]

I can't really comment on the inventory of each store, I haven't tried verifying it.

My original purpose for this whole map thing was as an aid in doing all the delivery quests. I wanted to know where everything was so I could do as many deliveries in a day as possible.

By nature I'm more of a crafter/explorer than a mighty warrior. I like to fight when I know I have all the superior gear/spells and it will be easy for me. Otherwise the game just causes more stress than real life. After you turn about 35 or so, your view on 'fun' vs 'stress' changes, lol. And I'm as old as the Frisbee ... so I saw no point in shopping for new gear when I knew I didn't have enough gold for ebony everything anyway.

[Zelafrein]

Hey guys, I've got a question. Won't I have any problem if I max out every stat with Ogma Infinum? Like unable to close stat window on lvl up until all points are distributed, or somethin like that? I'm at lvl 17 now and have all maxed out save for endurance and want to make sure, cause I dont want to do lots of backtraking if I get stuck. You know the game is pretty glitchy afterall..

And btw are there any magic leather armor for a battlemage? Ive not found any yet.

[IgorVonDame]

And btw are there any magic leather armor for a battlemage? Ive not found any yet.

I believe the only armor you can enchant is Plate armor, so I would assume there is no magical chain or leather armor. Someone else who has 'found' or 'bought' chain or leather armor that was magical jump in and correct me, please.

You might want to pop onto IIRC and ask that question there.

[deathm00n]

Did you all see that Arena got age rated for a release in Australia? http://www.classification.gov.au/Pages/ ... %253d%253d I hope they release it again as an windows compatible release, without the need for DOSBox.

Talking of wich I'm having problems setting the right cycles. I have very bad lags on the outside, in indoors it's fine, I'm in skyrim so I think it's because of the snow. I've set the cycles at 18000 I think.

[Zelafrein]

I've set the cycles at 18000 I think.

I played with 30000, no lag.

I believe the only armor you can enchant is Plate armor, so I would assume there is no magical chain or leather armor.

Yeah probably. Just finished the game, no better armor for a battlemage found. On the other hand what kind of a mage needs it anyway?
The game was a piece of cake, my custom shield was equal to over 20000 HP, I could be invisible to most enemies forever and kill anyone with a single shot (maybe save for lich, didnt try). I could open doors without keys. Playing mage really felt like cheating.

[Lost_in_Hyrule]

Playing mage really felt like cheating.

I think there's a series of books about that. If someone can fundamentally alter the rules of the universe, of course they'd destroy people by the hundreds! Thus, whole armies only need one mage. If you can defeat the enemy's mage, then you win, period.

Can't remember the name of those books...

[deathm00n]

Playing mage really felt like cheating.

I think there's a series of books about that. If someone can fundamentally alter the rules of the universe, of course they'd destroy people by the hundreds! Thus, whole armies only need one mage. If you can defeat the enemy's mage, then you win, period.

Can't remember the name of those books...

The Heritage (Eragon and etc..) talk about this and how tense a fight between 2 mages is, one must destroy the mind protection of the other so they can predict what the other will do. Or you meant a book inside TES?

But yeah, I think the only game in the series that don't have mages so powerfull is Skyrim.

[Lost_in_Hyrule]

Apparently, the series is called Malazan. It's a real world book series, not in TES.

As for Arena playing, it's been slow lately since it's the last 2 weeks of the semester. But I did some checking on travel times. They are wildly inconsistent!

[IgorVonDame]

But I did some checking on travel times. They are wildly inconsistent!

Was the date of the travel the same?

I noticed that travel in the initial month of Hearthfire is faster than a few weeks later. The times factor in the 'weather' which may be random or may be fixed for each date.

As an example a 120km trip took 2 days early on, but a few days later the 120km trip now takes 3 or 4 days.

[Litmanen]

I'm playing it for the first time ever!

p.s. Nice to meet you all!

[Tikikata]

I was finally able to get this game to run on my computer and I have to say that this is just as addicting as the first time I played Morrowind! I picked a Khajiit Thief (based on my Khajiit OC, Duma); currently trying to navigate my way out of this starting dungeon. This game runs smoother than Daggerfall, but maybe because I like the look and feel of this game more. I will be trying to get Daggerfall to run again on DOSBox (since Windows 7 was so picky when I tried to run the game by itself).

Anyway, I might add this game to my (physical) collection next if I don't stumble across Redguard first (been dying to play Redguard, actually -- might head over to the Redguard boards and see if I can get some information on stability on Windows 7).