Just how random is Arena?

[SeaGtGruff]

I've read that Arena generates its outside world randomly, but from having started over several times and visiting the same cities, it appears that the external world isn't random in the vicinity of the cities. Is there some particular distance that you must walk away from a city before things are generated randomly? I'd like to map the exteriors of the cities, but I don't want to waste time trying to map beyond the non-random areas.

Also, there's an interesting glitch that lets you enter the cities without going through the city gates-- although there's nothing inside but terrain. If you walk around the wall outside of a city, you'll eventually come to where the gates to the palace are, except it's just an empty opening into the city. If the city's at the edge of a body of water, you can also swim into the city. Since there are no buildings or people inside, I like to think of the city's interior as being phase-shifted into a slightly different plane or dimension that's accessible only by going through the city gates-- sort of a magical protection against would-be attackers.

[MrFlibble]

TBH this is the first time I hear about wilderness being randomly generated, but it is likely that the source where you read this wanted to say that the landscape was created by a random generator as opposed to manually during development, not that it is procedurally generated each time the game is played.

I think this is the case with most randomly generated content in both Arena and Daggerfall: randomness only refers to the method of their original creation but does not imply that the locations will be different each time you play. I'm not 100% sure on that though.

[SeaGtGruff]

Yeah, I'm not clear on this, either, which is why I asked.

Each time I've started playing a new game, it appears that the towns are always laid out the same as before, the houses always have the same floorplans as before, the same merchants always carry the same items as before, and even the environs outside the towns are the same as before-- I'm not sure whether there's some randomness in the placement of trees, but the automap looks the same.

However, the UESPWiki seems to imply that the towns are randomly generated each time. It doesn't say that in so many words, but it basically implies that there's no point in posting maps for the towns because they're randomly generated, which implies that they're randomly generated each time.

And I've seen forum posts (possibly at other sites) that seem to imply that the outside world is randomly generated on the fly, such that you could wander aimlessly to find new dungeons to explore outside of a town, then turn around and the town will still be nearby no matter how far you went away from it.

Neither of those things are matching up with my own experience.

I wondered if perhaps the towns are randomly generated when you begin a new game, but are "frozen" when you save a game, so now whenever I start a new game I delete the entire Arena folder and do a fresh install, yet still the towns are always the same.

I do see that there appear to be save game files in the installation package from Bethesda-- i.e., the first slot has a funky "123" entry (although the save game files for that slot aren't there); and there seem to be "backup" save game files, if that's what they are (the files with 64 added to their extension numbers).

So I'm not sure whether the original game, as installed from diskettes or CD-ROM, would have had those same save game files included, and if not, whether the towns would still be the same each time or would indeed be randomly generated the first time the game were played? Perhaps that's why the UESPWiki seems to imply that mapping the towns would be pointless because the towns are randomly generated?

On the other hand, if the version of the game which is available on Bethesda's website will always have the same town maps and so forth, then it seems like mapping the towns and enumerating the wares that each merchant carries would be a useful thing for whoever is still interested in playing Arena.

Little Kid: "My parents said I should follow my dream and do whatever I want when I grow up, so I want to completely map out and document The Elder Scrolls: Arena."

Man in Suit: "Sorry, kid, no one plays that game anymore."

Little Kid: "But my drea...!" (Cut off by dramatic theme music.)

Anyway, I've started working on mapping each town-- inside for now, but I've mapped the outsides of a few towns-- including the floorplans of each building. And I'm making a list of what each merchant carries, because I think it would be helpful to know where to go to buy specific magical items. Obviously, this project will take a long time, and I'd rather not spend a lot of time on it if it turns out that it wouldn't be helpful due to the randomness of the game.

[KShrimp]

Monster encounters, quests and loot are completely random.

Cities, dungeons, shops, shop owners, shop inventories, the wilderness, inns and dungeons in the wilderness are fixed.

[SeaGtGruff]

Thanks! That's what I thought.