Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall (PC, 1996)

IT BEGINS. The second game in the series, which might well be the largest videogame ever made in landmass, scope, and amount of content. No joke. Hard to believe they released this two years after Arena, given the five+ year development time on every game since. Join me as I do tons of character creation, and a minor amount of actual playing!

Originally Posted: July 2014, now remastered for 2025

 This game begins just like the previous one. You choose your homeland, etc. However, most of these places aren't actually playable in the game. This transpires in Iliac Bay, which consists of High Rock and a small amount of Hammerfell.

Wonder if they're planning on giving Hammerfell its own game ala the four south provinces (...at least, I think/hope they're on the way). That'd bring the total to ten games for this continent. Hammerfell is barely covered in this one, but they might consider it done anyway.

I go with High Elf for the innate paralysis resistance, since I'm not going to be a Knight this time. Since these first two games are stun-happy, I'm not even going to try to play as a character weak to paralysis.

The class list has the same 18 classes as the first game. This is a bit odd, I was expecting a few new ones. Not that it matters much, because the best choice here is Custom. THAT is new, and lets you create your own class.

There's a lot to take in. First and foremost, the stronger your character, the more work it'll take to level up (up to 3x). The weaker, the less work to level up (as little as 0.3x). The 18 regular classes all have baseline level up rates, as far as I know. A character with 0.3x will level up NINE TIMES faster than ones with 3x. Too bad I'll be turning this guy into a demigod and burying him deep in the high exp requirement range.

You get to name your class, and I use this to its full advantage.

Where you put skills determines how fast they level up. You're not limited to the skills you pick, but since they'll have an advantage as you go, making the right choices is important. You can also increase or decrease stats as much as you want, but you need to balance it out. If you add 20 to one stat, you have to take 20 out of another. I take 30 out of Persuasion (which is a non-combat stat) and put those points into other stats.

You can also increase the HP you get per level, up to 30. The only downside to this is that it increases the exp requirement by quite a bit. It's still absolutely something every player should do, since 30 dwarfs the default HP/level of 8. The difference between having 80 HP at level 10 and 300 HP at level 10.

Super-Protip: Apparently pressing U resets your distributable stat points, so I up all stats to 75 (the starting max) and reset it. It isn't as big of an advantage of punching in a Konami code, and chances are I would have had my stats up to this level before too long anyway. This just gives me a much easier time getting started.

An interesting part of character creation is that you can give your character advantages/disadvantages that affect their leveling speed one way or another and give them innate passive abilities. Disadvantages can be anything from weakness to fire to inability to equip a certain kind of armor.

Some of them are completely crippling and should be avoided completely. The only reason I could see someone going for something like this is if they're role-playing a vampire. I'm sure a few people did that back in the day.

 I went with inability to wear leather (since leather is pretty much noob armor in these games and replaced quickly), weakness to paralysis (since I'm innately immune to it which overrides this), and weakness to disease/poison (since those disadvantages are bugged and do nothing). Also, inability to use an axe or use the weaker shields. I would have also blocked all the other weapon types since I'm sticking with two-handed swords, but this is the maximum amount of disadvantages that you can have.

In retrospect an hour later, I wish I'd given myself another weapon or shield disadvantage and allowed leather armor. Noob armor or not, it drops WAY more frequently than anything else early on.

As for advantages, there are several insanely good ones. Increased Magery literally increases your mana pool by SIX TIMES. Expertise in Long Blade is for two-handed swords like the ones I'll be sticking with. Regenerate Health isn't that great, but it lets me slowly regen in the field. Rapid Healing means it takes less time to rest back to full health. Immunity to Magic makes me immune to non-elemental spells (I think) while Immunity to Shock makes me immune to electric spells, the most commonly-used spells in this game. Spell Absorption is another awesome one, and sometimes (10% of the time, or so) completely nullifies an incoming spell while giving me mana.

In retrospect an hour later, I think I made good calls here. Not sure about Regenerate Health, but the others have all been useful right from the start.

Finally we get back to skills. Long Blade is my weapon of choice, while Destruction and Restoration are your basic damage/healing type spells. I'm trying to go full battlemage type character here, but given the perks he's already much stronger than a Battlemage or Spellsword would be.

After Primary skills, I went with some rogue-ish skills. Stealth reduces the chance of enemies detecting me, which helps with getting the jump on them and helps with times that I need to beeline through an area. Critical Strike and Dodging are self-explanatory. The first four Minor Skills are the other four schools of magic; all spells are important to me, but utility and whatnot aren't as important as damage/healing. Backstabbing allows for very powerful opening attacks when walking up to an unaware foe, and Medical... I'm not too sure, but I think it diagnoses status ailments when you rest.

In retrospect an hour later, I wish I'd made Backstabbing a major skill, probably switched it with Dodging. It's surprising how many enemies I get the jump on. Also wish I'd dumped Medical and put Running there instead, since runspeed starts out a bit low.

Even after that, the game doles out some more points randomly. I reroll until I have bonuses across the board and give my stray points to Str/Int/Agi. The only downside to my uber-character is that nearly all stats are important to him. It'll take a WHILE to power him up.

255 mana at level 1 is borderline broken in this game. Most of the premade classes that use magic start with like 50.

Also get to put bonus points into skill levels. This is the first Elder Scrolls game to increase skill levels as you use the abilities, something lots of other open world games would copy after this.

My God, how much customization is there? Not sure what the deal is with the reflex settings, so I just leave it on average. Apparently turning it down to Very Low makes the game slower and easier, but also deducts from your leveling rate. Making it Very High speeds up your leveling but makes the gameplay fast and furious.

We get a sweet FMV video as the game begins. 1996! CD-ROM drives!

Now that the character creation is done, I can actually start the game. Elder Scrolls is the only series where character creation can take up an entire post.

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