Elder Scrolls: Arena #3 - Indulging and Drowning Valley

The Queen of Rihad is smokin'. She could tell me where Fang Lair is, but first I have to do something for her. Unfortunately, it isn't sexual favors; it's another dungeon called Stonekeep. Turns out that each of the main story dungeons has another dungeon you have to do to unlock it. Generally the key dungeons are much easier than the main dungeons, with a couple of exceptions. So each dungeon has its own Nappa dungeon, more or less.

Originally Posted May 2014, now remastered for 2025

Stonekeep is marked on the fast travel map. She also says something about how I need to slay a Goblin Lord who resides there, but... there's no Goblin Lord, nor do I need to slay it. Just need to find a parchment and bring it back here.

 At this point, I simulate the Real Life experience by trudging through snow towards Stonekeep. Fast travel? Psssh!

 Soon night turns to day, and I continue trudging. Then I remind myself that the miles of randomly-generated terrain are completely unnecessary to trudge through at all in this game for any reason other than roleplaying, and fast travel to Stonekeep in three seconds.

They can hype up the size of the game world, but when most of it is randomness that isn't necessary for the game at all, it doesn't really count. For the most part, this game consists only of the towns/castles/dungeons on the map, and the area between them is essentially empty. Fast travel rules the day. Even though Arena covers the entire land as opposed to a province, it looks to me like it's the smallest of the main five Elder Scrolls games in terms of actual content.

Stonekeep is... a keep. It's full of goblins that pose almost no threat at this point. Disappointingly, this place has the same music as the intro dungeon. As far as I can tell, it's the only dungeon theme in the game.

The biggest challenge that I've faced so far in this game is picking up keys. ...Seriously. It's WAY TOO DIFFICULT. Due to the inexplicable design choice of having the cursor turn into a movement arrow when it gets anywhere near the edges of the screen, you can't pick up anything in the foreground. It's inexplicable because unlike later games, you can't actually look up or down. And keys, unlike most things you'd be clicking on, are tiny. You have to back up until you can click on the key with a regular cursor, but you can't back up too much or it'll be out of range. And they're hard to even see to begin with. So you end up bumbling around a lot; very frustrating and needlessly so.

Stonekeep is large and complex, but if you have a map and directions it really isn't bad at all. I use the unwieldy jump feature for the first time to climb through this "window" and take a shortcut, and I reach the end of the dungeon pretty quickly.

This place introduces some new undead enemies, like skeletons that attack en-masse.

The part of the dungeon with the parchment is home to another new enemy: Ghouls. These things are quite nasty, and actually pose a threat.

 There it is. Now the game should bounce me back to the overworld, yeah?

.........

...............nope? And I don't have any kind of Exit/Warp/Outside type spell. Not sure if such a spell even exists. So it looks like I'll be hoofing it out of every dungeon. Ouch. That basically means I have to traverse every dungeon twice. At least the way back is easier since I'll have the map filled in by then.

I return to the Queen and get the location of Fang Lair, yada yada. I wonder if this "peculiar behavior" means anything to the story... nope, doesn't look like it. Arena doesn't have much of a story besides "find the staff pieces and defeat Jagar Tharn". Rather than the abundance of sidequests featured in the later games that have actual stories, this one only has randomly-generated sidequests that are all basically the same fetch errands.

When you buy/sell items from shops, you can haggle over how much money you spend or receive. Be warned though, the shopkeepers will often balk at your requests and respond by insulting your items. Generally, if you aren't too greedy, it's quick and easy to talk merchants up or down by 40-60 G or so. It adds up.

Time for the third dungeon and the first "major" one. This is an old Dwarven keep in the mountains. It gets its own portrait screen and everything. If ES6 is in Hammerfell like people think, I wonder if this'll be a major dungeon in that game. It should be there in some form, along with Stonekeep.

Since Fang Lair is an old dwarven mine/castle that fell into disrepair and got taken over by orcs, it's basically the Mines of Moria.

There are two levels, and the exit from one to the next is in the southwest corner of the map. It requires going through a bunch of claustrophobic mining tunnels. Gotta say, dungeon-crawling can be a lot of fun when done right, and this game does it right. You're never in any particular danger of getting stuck or losing progress. It should really warp you out once the dungeon is finished, though.

At the end of the first floor is a riddle. That riddle?

 ...this. It's a weird one, but it isn't actually very difficult. Follow the three statements to their dead end and there's the answer. Protip: Go backwards.

Now to actually pick up the gold key. IT'S...SO...DIFFICULT

AHHH THANK GOD

The second level is full of lava, which is why you bring Resist Fire potions.

A lava-filled side tunnel leads to a room FULL of treasure. Like five randomly-generated piles of it. This is super-easy to miss, glad I had a map.

I find a bunch of magic items in there, one of which has a massive Luck bonus. And I mean massive. Going from 55ish to 75ish in a game where the cap is 100 is a big deal. As for what Luck does, it apparently affects your combat abilities in general, giving bonuses to critical hits, hit rate, and dodge rate. I may be wrong; it's the most mysterious of the stats. It does have an effect, though, and a bigger one than you'd expect.

Now to get out of here and appraise all of these items to find out what spells they have on them. If I'm lucky, there will be something useful. Either way I'll make bank by selling the ones I'm not equipping.

I also get a magic Longsword that is a slight upgrade to my Dwarven Longsword and has an as-yet undetermined magic effect. Nice.

This one had me stumped until I googled it. I'm not much for riddles. Gollum would have killed and eaten me.

After opening the last door, you face off with a pair of Hell Hounds. This is the closest thing to a boss so far, but they aren't that much worse than the enemies I've been fighting. That is, once I close the distance on them. From a distance, they shoot fireballs that do a lot of damage.

Here's the first of the eight staff pieces. It was a tough fight to get here, but now the game is off and running. It isn't nearly as difficult as the internet led me to believe. Maybe it's because of my class choice. Knight isn't only resistant to stuns, they also auto-repair their items. That or their items don't degrade in the first place. Hard to say. Means that I can use any weapon I get as much as I want without worrying about it breaking or needing to go back to town for repairs. This is insanely convenient. The class is also quite good at fighting.

Jagar Tharn appears in a vision, and he's pissed. He manages to teleport some of his minions to my location to stop me from leaving, but said minions were just regular spiders. I was really hoping for a Balrog or something. Oh well.

With that, Hammerfell is down. That was the first of eight staff pieces that I need to go to the Imperial capitol and take on this guy. I'm a lot more than 1/8th of the way through these posts, though. Now that I've got the game all figured out and my character totally set up for success, I should be able to cruise through the rest.

Onward to Skyrim, the next part of the game.

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