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So, I recently tried to play Daggerfall, and I keep diyng at the tutorial dungeon.

...

Okay. Now that you are done with the laughter. I think I figured out how to attack well enough, but I just... Kind of keep diyng. More specifically, I keep diyng against the first humanoid opponent I encounter, a Archer. No matter how much I toy around with different angles to my attacks, they simply hit too hard and kill me far before I can get to kill then.

Because I am OBVIOUSLY doing something wrong but I have no idea of what I am-Actually-Doing wrong... Does anyone here have any tips?

I haven't played Daggerfall yet, but in Arena ranged attacks can be overpowered and it's not uncommon to get one-shot even if your armor rating is excellent. Usually the best strategy in Arena if you don't have a good shield or any defensive spells is to try to close the gap as quickly as possible so you can kill the attacker in melee.

I actually have been succeeding at closing the gap itself well enough. The REAL problem is that I simply cannot actually kill then before they kill me. They deal way more damage to me then I do to then.

If it helps, I am plaiyng a Norse Spellsword.

Two things for now:
1. The first dungeon is VERY challenging. You don't have to fight everyone--you don't have to fight anyone! Just bust out of there as quickly as possible (assuming you know the route or looked one up). Once outside, you can travel to a town and get some proper gear and spells and stuff.
2. Daggerfall actually benefits from some clever footwork in combat. Close in fast, hit a few times, then backpedal just before you expect them to attack, and laugh as they swing at the air where you used to be. Then repeat until dead. With practice you'll learn to recognize the little pause they make before attacking and you can dodge their attacks with ease.

First off, Daggerfall can be quite tough to get into. It is advisable to carefully study the skills that your character has, and their governing attributes. So when you distribute your attribute and skill points during character generation, you maximise the stats that will help you survive the first dungeon.

For example, I have found that if you play a Spellsword, your starting spells will be pretty useless in combat, unlike Morrowind's Spellsword. So you need to maximise your combat skills. Strength, Agility and Speed are crucial here. If you pick long blades, Agility is more important than Strength, and vice versa is you go for axes or blunt weapons. But at any rate, try to get most of your starting stats to at least 50 to avoid negative bonuses, and maximise those that you'll need most.

The same goes with skill points, but here you need to be careful because levelling up depends on how fast you train your primary and major skills. Sometimes I distribute the skill points evenly between the primary skills to get a level starting point.

Also never skip the background questions using fast start, answer them all instead to get bonuses to the skills that you need, as well as the Ebony Dagger for some of the characters like the Spellsword.

Jormungandr wrote:2. Daggerfall actually benefits from some clever footwork in combat. Close in fast, hit a few times, then backpedal just before you expect them to attack, and laugh as they swing at the air where you used to be. Then repeat until dead. With practice you'll learn to recognize the little pause they make before attacking and you can dodge their attacks with ease.

This is a very good advice. You will soon learn to move in and out of the range of enemy attacks to efficiently fight them while taking moderate damage at most. Also you can always run away, unlike Morrowind where escaping combat is deliberately made complicated for the player. Here you can zip as far into the dungeon as you can (like to the starting cave), rest and recover, then come back to hit them more.