DAGGERFALL - Hints & Tips (2) From Brian Burke @~Continued from Issue 46 QUESTING, Questing, everyone's doing great.. Quests - I wasted about 5 hours gameplay early in the game on a Dungeon Crawl, and many more since, by taking on a Mage Guild quest that I was too weak to complete. Having killed, after numerous restores, all the minor baddies, I couldn't finish off the big baddie (who you just sort of come across randomly once you've killed all the minions).If you fail in a quest you are a loser man. So it's restore back to BEFORE I got the quest. I'd had loads of increases (not in Levels but in minor skills though) as well - sob! Keep early quests simple. Doing jobs for the locals is less strenuous. Just ask for `Work' and follow the instructions. Fighter and Mage Guild (guard duty) quests are recommended. When on guard duty talk to the guard, not to the person you're sent to guard. You'll need to break down doors to private houses occasionally, try knocking first though. If you do break in get in and out quick before the guards come. Best to save before you carry out the action. Acquiring the `Open' spell helps you to gain entry silently and keep the guards at bay. Picking up treasure requires that you bend your head down and click on the pile of swords, gold or dead body etc. What you pick up bears little relation to what you see. Holy Daggers and Books are great, worth a lot. As you gain levels so the treasure you find improves. Successful completion of quests enhances your reputation in the related Temple or Guild. At some point you'll be promoted. Note the added benefits that each increase gives you. These are shown as text on screen at the point of rank increase. In the Mages' Guild for instance - you are permitted to buy & sell Magic Items, to gain access to the Item Maker where you can use Souls that you have captured in Soul Gems. Note that you need to have reached a rank that allows purchase of Soul Gems and secondly either have the ability to cast Soul Trap (before killing a monster) or, alternatively for non Magic-Users, have a magic item that casts the Soul Trap spell. At the higher levels you can summon Daedra, from whom you can obtain major Artifact quests. If someone's too powerful for you get an Invisible spell and just walk past them. You can make your own spells in the Mages' Guild, a sort of weaker version than the standard ones you can buy. One friend has combined a spell from each of the spell disciplines, creating two spells to cover the 6 options, then casting these before resting. When searching Dungeons for treasure or people you'll find that they can't easily be found. Sometimes they're in a normal room but likely as not they're down a pit in a corridor (that requires use of the Levitate spell to access) between main floors, or that you need to find a lever that opens a trapdoor. Once, on impulse, I spotted a narrow ledge in a cave and climbed up and round to find the item I was searching for. Even when you've think you've searched everywhere - you probably haven't. Orc and Daedric armour and weapons are in a class of their own. Better than Ebony though heavier. Get one of these in each weapon type and kick some butt! SOS - SAVED GAME STRATEGY You definitely need a SAVE position before asking for a quest, just in case you find yourself in my position described above. At an early stage of the game I put those lost hours down to experience! There are six save positions available, so use `em. You may wish to take the precaution of transferring Save 0 to floppy every now and then. MAPS - WHERE AM I? When viewing the overhead map in a dungeon, look for little spurs off a corridor. This indicates a hidden door. Initially I didn't see this unless a monster started attacking through a wall. If you drill down the map levels (Right Mouse button) you can identify the secret places, that you find intermittently when exploring Crypts and the like, by their being Orange coloured on the Dungeon identification screen. The map is the only place this is recorded. The info doesn't appear in your log, so you need to write it down if you want to record it. Otherwise just switch off all the other map filters and they're easy to see. Incidentally when you travel to some of these places and it's too foggy to see where to go, then it's a matter of luck as you quarter the area. I've wandered, got lost, and then re-travelled a couple of times now. Sometimes the door to Dungeons will be hidden under a small mound and you need to be facing the right way to see the door. Inevitably you just need to walk WEST to find the entrance. Red Brick Doors - most of the Dungeons I've been in that have these, I cannot get past `em. But in one place I actually teleported elsewhere. In fact the use of them was essential to finding my quarry. Turning a wheel at one point altered the teleport destination (I think!). But they do appear to be random and, often as not, do not offer teleport ability. Levers and Wheels may open trapdoors or move walls/open up corridors. Some levers are wooden and obvious, others may be a skull on a wall. Some need use of the Levitate spell to access them. MONSTER BASHING - MAKE MY DAY Spiders are a pain at present, Scorpions even worse, they can Paralyse you, without enough spell points to cast Free Action it's game over time, unless you've bought a Potion or six. Just keep trying to avoid their sting. As suggested above use the Invisible spell to walk past really tough guys. Go for Mage Guild quests that give magic items as rewards and use `em. Spell Reflection or Absorption are good for Liches and Vampires. MOVEMENT - EXERCISE IS GOOD FOR YOU Climbing's better if you raise your head, not only to see if there's a hole you can climb through (saves Levitation spell points). Be persistent, you don't start climbing immediately. You need to be careful you don't climb or Levitate out of a room, it's easily done and you can lock the game up. Make sure you get back quickly into the/a room. Daggerfall is a BIG city so I ran (up arrow+P) everywhere until my stamina was nearly exhausted and then rested in a Tavern. After a few increases, acquired after resting, there's a noticeable difference in speed of travel. If you feel lazy and you've a horse or a wagon - use the `T' key to select one of them. You must dismount to enter a building or Dungeon though. Look for levers as you go through Dungeons etc. If you're running too fast you won't see them. They can be up a wall aways sometimes. Climb or Levitate up, using view up/down to move your cursor over the handle. This may be a wooden lever or something else. Skulls standing proud of the wall, at the end of small rooms or corridors, at body height level are teleports. Try jumping down from not too high ledges to aid Jumping skill, or just hop up and down. If time is of the essence and you have a limited time to complete a quest, travel `Recklessly' instead of `Cautiously'. I haven't noticed the `Inn' or `Camp' offering much reduction. You can regenerate once you arrive. This usually takes 8 hours or so and you'll have saved at least 16 hours if not more, depending on the distance. Have a working holiday by travelling to other provinces to take in a change of scenery. SWIMMING - TAKE A DEEP BREATH Under water movement needs 2 spells - Water Breathing and Water Walking. With the latter you stride along, otherwise you travel at a snail's pace and use up all your air. BE REAL CAREFUL OUT THERE! A word of warning to prevent you falling into the trap I encountered once. In my travels round the Graveyards & Crypts I was hit by something nasty. I know not what. As I continued the game and rested I noticed that I'd get a message `You feel somewhat bad" which I ignored! I then began to notice that I was being killed far too easily and that I soon became overloaded. It was at this stage that I went to look at my stats - horror of horrors - all but my Intelligence stats had decreased alarmingly. I was being penalised each time I rested. There may be a way to restore all the lost points, they were displayed in a different colour, Potion or Cure Disease spell comes to mind, but as I didn't have the potion or the spell (it probably costs more points than I'd got available anyway, I restored. Thinking back I could have gone back to Daggerfall and bought a potion from an Alchemist. So two lessons here - 1. Carry your medicine kit around! Potions can be bought from Temples. The Shops just carry Ingredients. 2. If you do get cursed, poisoned or saddled with the Plague, pop along to an Alchemist, or relevant Guild/Temple, to see if a Potion will cure you. It also seems to me that staying pure and clear and following the path of goodness and light is going to be very difficult. The Dark Brotherhood threatens you at every turn and there's always chance of being bitten by the Werewolf or a Vampire. Ah well - "being good isn't always easy, no matter how hard I try" to quote the Dusty Springfield song. WHERE WOLF? WHERE MY SILVER BULLET? Lycanthropy - it appears that at some point in the game this problem is going to be a problem to any gamer. Werewolves bite back and you catch the disease. You know when this happens as you receive a dream of the Moon, when resting - "You dream of a man who is not a man." Your stats will change alarmingly, some even reaching 100. You'll find an extra spell in your spellbook called Lycanthropy. This can be toggled between human and Werewolf form. For instance if you wander into town as a Werewolf everyone disappears - amazing! You can't then satisfy your lust for blood which involves you killing a citizen. Don't do this in a town or you'll always be a criminal, even when you're cured. Hang around, in human form, outside a town, select your victim and run. Check your citizen status (click on the clock in F10 mode) to check your status the next day. If you don't kill `innocents' your Lifepoints plummet to 4 and stay there! After a while a hunter will approach you and offer you 12 days in which to complete a cure quest. Concentrate totally on this and you'll restore to normality once it's successfully completed. I have no idea if you can catch lycanthropy again. DON'T BELIEVE ALL YOU SEE IN THE PAPERS.. Should you see any walkthroughs for the game you should treat them with caution. The random elements in the game mean that no two players are going to get the same quests in the same order, let alone have the same character options. Only the main quests info is probably relevant. I haven't done any yet (want to do the Artifact quest first) but I hear the graphics are even better in those dungeons. FINALLY Although it's a matter of choice, and whilst I'm not averse to exploiting a bug, I've always avoiding using `Hex Editor' cheats or even cheat codes within a game. Far from enhancing play I think it ruins it. There's already a number of these on various Internet sites. If you want to ruin a perfectly good game and waste Thirty quid........ In conclusion, I'm having fun so far. I hope you do too. - o -