The Elder Scrolls is a video game series spanning generations of PC and gaming consoles. Beginning with The Elder Scrolls: Arena in 1994, several games have been created for the series, some notable and others not so much. Personally, I have put probably 100-150 hours in each of the numbered games of the series, excepting Arena itself. The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, released in 1996, to me represents the peak of the series, and in many ways the peak of immersive RPG gaming. I just picked up the game again recently and decided to write a bit about it for those who may be unfamiliar with the series or only took notice when it hit the consoles.

The basic idea of the game is that you start, D&D style, creating your player character from a variety of playable races. You answer questions that determine your experiences as a youth, which in turn decide what type of skills and strengths you have. You also choose a birthsign that provides its own unique bonuses and drawbacks. For those who are familiar with games in the series or RPG games in general, it is also possible to manually pick and choose skills and roll for stat points. You begin the game in a notoriously difficult starter dungeon, and once you are finally out you are no longer playing the same game as anyone else - the immense open world is yours to explore any way you want, whichever way best suits your character.

Daggerfall is simply massive, with over 62,000 square miles of territory - compared to TES3: Morrowind's 10 square miles and TES4: Oblivion's 16 square miles. It takes many hours to cross from one side of the world to the other. The scope of the game is only possible due to random generation of non-essential dungeons and locations, which can cause problems with nonsensical dungeons and broken quests once in a while. I find this to simply be a sign of the game being ahead of its time and lacking the resources necessary to make the world the developers set out to create. There are over 20 factions your character can join and perform quests for, and each has political interconnectivity with the others (some quests might pit members of one guild against another, and if you are a member of both your reputation will raise/lower accordingly if you've wronged your allies). There is just a ridiculous amount of depth in this game, including advanced crafting systems, spellmaking, a full calendar with holidays, law and order, a banking system, religion, and tons of secrets. To further steep the player in the lore of the world, there are many places one can go to read books in-game about the places and history of the world, including "fictional" tales and legends - all of which are very well-written by in-game flavor standards. The Imperial Library is a website that provides the in-game written materials throughout The Elder Scrolls series as well as synopses of the games' plots, so even if you are only interested in the new games (because maybe you're a wuss) that site provides some excellent reading material to soak up the game experience without having to put 100 hours into your Daggerfall guy (again, wuss). If you decide to take up the game, you will find a lot of helpful information at the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages' Daggerfall section.

If you've heard of Daggerfall at all, you are probably familiar with some of its shortcomings. The game's graphics are dated and not pretty to look at, although they were revolutionary and totally awesome when they came out. With the latest (213) patch applied, the game can be very buggy. Back when the game came out, many people used all kinds of various boot disks and utilities to squeeze out extra memory for DOS games and programs, and Daggerfall tended to hate all of this. Fortunately, these days it is possible and recommended to use a DOS emulator for Windows called DosBox. With DosBox I am able to play Daggerfall as it is intended in its native environment, except on a 46" HDTV with a PS3 Logitech Mediaboard Pro (which is now my preferred way to play it). As a matter of fact, Daggerfall runs far better on an emulator than it did on -eXu-'s Pentium 75 because it is not required to perform a lot of the hacking about that was required in those old days. However, it is still buggy and it WILL crash on you. If you decide to pick up Daggerfall, save a LOT, especially before starting quests. Before you quit the game, save, then move outside or to a different location and save there also. Once in a while you should back up the savegame folders in case one or more of them corrupts, which can happen from time to time. Here is a guide on the care and feeding of Daggerfall and how to avoid these issues.

Chances are if you're still reading the article I have sold you on how great Daggerfall is. Luckily, Bethesda Softworks, the creators of Daggerfall, released the game for free during the 15th anniversary celebration of The Elder Scrolls. Like any good game from the era, the installation is not at all straightfoward. I have created a guide on how to get up and running in no time.

Installation / First Time Config

1. Download DosBox from here and install it.
2. Create a folder for your DOS filesystem. I usually make it something like C:\Program Files\Games\DosBox.
3. Inside your DOS filesystem folder, create a folder called DAGGER. Following my example, it would be C:\Program Files\Games\DosBox\DAGGER.
4. Inside the DAGGER folder, create folders called SAVE0, SAVE1, SAVE2, SAVE3, SAVE4, and SAVE5.
5. Download Daggerfall from here.
6. Extract DFInstall.zip. You will have two folders - one called DAGGER and the other called DFCD.
7. Inside the DAGGER folder is a single file, DAG213.EXE. Copy this file to the DAGGER folder you created in step 3.
8. Inside the DFCD folder is another folder called DAGGER. Open the DFCD\DAGGER folder and copy everything inside it to the DAGGER folder you created in step 3.
9. Inside the DFCD folder is a folder called DATA. Open the DFCD\DATA folder and copy everything inside it to the DAGGER folder you created in step 3.
10. Inside the DFCD folder are three INSTALL files - INSTALL.EXE, INSTALL.SCR, and INSTALL.PIF (in Windows it just says INSTALL and has a shortcut arrow on the icon). Copy these files to the DAGGER folder you created in step 3.
11. Download DAGFIXES.ZIP from me.
12. Extract DAGFIXES.ZIP. There will be three files inside.
13. Copy Z.CFG to the DAGGER folder you created in step 3. The other two files, you will copy to the ARENA2 folder which is inside the DAGGER folder you created in step 3.
14. Open DosBox.
15. Type mount c "C:\Program Files\Games\DosBox" (or whichever folder you chose) and press the ENTER key. If you typed the path correctly, you will be informed that the drive has been mounted.
16. Type c: and hit ENTER, then type cd DAGGER and hit ENTER. Type setup and hit ENTER.
17. Press the down arrow to choose "Select Digital" and hit ENTER. Arrow down to Sound Blaster 16/AWE32 and hit ENTER. Hit ENTER four more times to accept the defaults and test the setting. Press the right arrow to OK and hit ENTER.
18. Press the down arrow to choose "Select MIDI" and hit ENTER. Arrow down to MPU-401 (in my opinion sounds better than the Sound Blaster 16 setting) and hit ENTER twice (or three times if you want to hear the sample). Arrow down to OK and hit ENTER.
19. Arrow down to OK and hit ENTER, then hit ENTER again to save the settings.
20. Type DAG213.EXE and hit ENTER. When prompted to update, press Y. You will be prompted again to press Y to patch a different problem. Press Y.
21. Type fall.exe z.cfg and hit ENTER to load the game. If you type DAGGER, as the patcher tells you to, it will ask for the game CD to be inserted and won't work properly.
22. Press and hold the ALT key and then press the ENTER key to make the game full-screen. This is necessary for the mouse input to work properly.

Playing the Game

1. Open DosBox.
2. Type mount c "C:\Program Files\Games\DosBox" (or whichever folder you chose) and press the ENTER key. If you typed the path correctly, you will be informed that the drive has been mounted.
3. Type c: and hit ENTER, then type cd DAGGER and hit ENTER.
4. Type fall.exe z.cfg and hit ENTER.
4. Press and hold the ALT key and then press the ENTER key to make the game full-screen. This is necessary for the mouse input to work properly.

If you have any questions about the game or getting the game running, feel free to leave them below! I liked Daggerfall a lot so I hope you try it out and enjoy it yourself.