TGDB.net - Game news, cheats, solutions, walkthroughs, trainers, saved games and much more!

without this skill, because of the Water Breathing and Water Walking spells.
Non-spellcaster will have to develop this skill or rely on potions for
underwater movement.

Thaumaturgy - Levitate is an essential spell and so is Spell Reflection. The
latter is very expensive to cast, so it may be better to make a magic item
that casts the same spell instead of buying the spell itself. There's not
many spells in this field. Levivate is available in potion and magic item
form. Decide whether you think you want to have this spell, unless you want
to have it for roleplaying purposes for your character.


IV. Starting out

So you've gotten out of Privateer's Hold, and now you don't know what to do
with yourself. First things first, within the few weeks you will receive a
letter from Lady Brisienna asking you to meet her in a random tavern in a
random town. Even if you wish not to do the main quest, go talk with her
anyway. She tells you about King Lysandus haunting the street and about the
missing letter. She also says that you should speak to the people in Castles
Daggerfall, Sentinal, and Wayrest. You should only do this if you want to
continue with the main quest. After speaking with Brisenna, the main quest
comes to an indefinate halt, unless you follow up the next few letters you
receive from nobles from either Wayrest, Daggerfall, or Sentinal.

While you wait for Lady Brisienna's letter, you'll need a town to hang out in
and do some quests. The best town at the beginning of the game is Gothway
Garden. It's right next to Privateer's Hold. Gothway Garden is a great town
for a few reasons:

-It has a Fighter's Guild, Mage's Guild, a temple of Zen, and a temple of
Kynareth.

-There's 5 general stores, one of which is of "Rusty Relics" quality.
It's called First Class Supply Store. This is a great place to unload
some of the items you found in the starting dungeon, and you can buy a
horse or a cart for real cheap.

-There is a bank in town.

-The city is not walled, so you can travel here recklessly and not worry
about not being able to get in.

-There is a Glenmorial Witch's Coven in an orange house directly south of
Gondyn's Quality Supply Store. You can't take advantage of their
daedra summoning yet (plus they only summon Hircine, so if you aren't a
were-creature he won't help you much), but you can do quests for them
if you wish. Some of the witch quests are pretty hard for low level
characters so be careful.

-It's a small to medium sized town, so any in-town quests you take (i.e.
kill the creature that got into someone's house/shop from the Fighter's
guild) won't take too long to do.

Depending on what kind of character you are, you should join a guild. I
personally don't start doing dungeon quests until I'm about 3rd level, but
it's up to you. Warrior-like characters can probably handle dungeons at low
levels. Consider exploring Privateer's Hold again. Every dungeon resets
after you leave them, plus you won't get lost because you've probably explored
most of the place. Graveyards are good training grounds as well, since they
are so small.

Vancroft Wood in the Daggerfall province has a "rusty relics" pawn shop and
weapons smith. This is a great town for unloading your goodies.

Those are some tips to get you started. Now I will go indepth for each of the
three types of characters and give some pointers.


V. What Do I Need to be Successful?

Each of the three types of characters (magic-based, fighters, thieves) have
their own advantages and disadvantages. In order to be successful, it is
vital that you know your own disadvantages and try to do something to remedy
them. This section will describe them.

Fighters:

Any weapon-based character (Warrior, Paladin, Ranger, etc.) falls into this
category. The obvious benefit is that they are good at bashing enemies with
weapons and are given enough hit points to be able to stand up long in combat.
Dungeon quests are slightly easier for these types of characters. Having a
higher amount of hit points lets you wander dungeons without having to rest
all the time. No creature is immune to a weapon strike, although some require
certain material weapons to hit (Imps require steel or better weapons to hit).
As long as this type of character has good weapons, the fighting aspect of
dungeons should not be too hard.

Where should a fighter gets his or her quests from? The Fighter's Guild is
the obvious choice. In addition to a free room to sleep in, the guild gives
you a discount on repairs based on how high your rank is. Quests at the
Fighter's Guild range from killing animals that have gotten in local houses
to hunting Daedroths at the bottoms of dungeons. All the quests are usually
combat based so do these quests to improve your skills.

You might want to consider joining a Knight's Order. You'll get a free armor
piece at every rank and free stays at all taverns in that Order's region.
Eventually, you can earn the right to free travel by ship, free stays at any
tavern in the game, and even a free house at the top rank. All Knight's Order
quests invovle dungeon crawling so make sure your character is ready before
signing up.

If your class allows you to wear it, always be on the look out for plate armor
made of good materials. Humans, Orcs, and Centaurs are creatures that often
carry weapons and armor, and occasionally they will have a decent piece of
armor or a good weapon. The stuff made of better materials is dependant on
your level, so don't expect to find Daedric stuff at low levels.

You've got some problems if you choose a fighter class, though. For one, your
access to magic will be very limited. Although it is possible to train like
crazy and improve your magic skills to respectable levels, there comes the
problem of spell points. Unless otherwise noted in the class advantages, all
characters will have .5 INT in spell points. Considering that the average
fighter has around 50 in INT, your spell point pool is going to be low (A max
of 50 spell points is possible with a character like this).

Without magic skills you can't join a Mage guild. This is no big deal except
that it bars you from using their Item Maker to create magic items. The only
other place to use this feature is at a Julianos temple, and their required
skills are not slanted toward weapon skills. Why is access to the Item Maker
so important? Well, it's an easy way for non-spell casters to make items that
cast useful spells like Recall, Open, and Spell Reflection. Without this
access, your only hope is to come across magic items in dungeons.

What you can do to help out your character is to join a temple or
The Dark Brotherhood for access to buying and making potions. Potions of
healing are essential to almost any character, and so are potions of levitate
and cure poison. If you don't have any moral problems with joining The Dark
Brotherhood, they offer the potion maker at the lowest rank (rank 3 I think)
of all the guilds in the game. Temple of Zen lets you buy potions at rank 1,
but fighters may find going up ranks difficult since the only required weapon
skill is Blunt Weapon. Temple of Stendarr has Axe, Blunt Weapon, and Critical
Strike among their required skills, and it may be the better choice.


Magic users

Spells are your best friend. What you lack in weapon skills, you can more
than make up for in magic, provided you develop your character correctly.
If you are going to be using Destruction as your primary attack method, you
are going to have to have a variety of spells available. There are plenty of
creatures out there that are immune to one or more forms of magic. Be
prepared for anything. Some of the first spells you should consider buying
are Fireball, Lightning, Frostbite, and maybe Toxic Cloud. This gives you
a wide range of attacks to pick from. As far as I know, there isn't a
creature that is totally immune to magic. Casting attacks spells over and
over again costs a lot of spell points, though. Train your Destruction skill
up to reduce casting cost or bring plenty of Restore Power potions on your
adventures.

Some of the premade magic classes have Short Blade as a weapon skill. If you
choose to answer your background questions yourself (which you should always
do), always take the Ebony Dagger option if it's presented to you. It's
great for magic-based characters, and it will even the odds a little in
combat at lower levels. Besides this, weapon combat will not be a good idea
unless you have to. As far as armor goes, wear the best possible and maybe
invest in a Shield spell or create a magic item that strengths armor.

Spells that every magic based character should know:

Open
Recall
Levitate
Soul Trap (only if you are serious about making magic items)
Heal (a magic item with this power is preferrable)

Later in the game you will need a Spell Reflection spell to even attempt
fighting the Vampire Ancient, Lich, or Ancient Lich. With your low health,
you will be fried in a few seconds. If you can't get a Spell Reflection
spell, Spell Absorption or Spell Shield might work.

On the topic of Spell Absorption, you can often buy rings from the magic item
seller in Mage Guilds that absorb spells. These actually kind of useful.
While they do not absorb spells all the time, it will do it occasionally if
it is equipped. It's worth while for a mgae to have, since it's pretty common
for your character to not have full spell point reserves while adventuring.
Absorbing that occasional spell can be helpful, especially if it's a damaging
one.

Developing magic skills is very easy. In the Spell Maker, create practice
spells that are cheap to cost (around 5 sp is ideal). Next, go into your room
and repeatedly cast the spells and rest. You can really improve your skills
quickly this way, and therefore gain levels fast. It gets boring after awhile
but its' the easy way for a mage to gain levels.


Thief characters:

I think these are the hardest classes to play, or at least complete the main
quest with. Thieves will have low hit points, not much armor they can use, and
little to no magic. That being said, they do some things quite well. For one,
Stealth is a cool skill to have. You can avoid a lot of combat if your skill
in Stealh is high. Backstabbing is a complement to Stealth, and it allows you
to do large amounts of damage to opponents.

How can you develop these skills to even the odds? Your Stealth skill is
checked everytime you get close to an opponent. Probably the safest way to do
this is to hangout in graveyards and clean out any critters that are there.
The chances of encountering a major enemy in a graveyard are slim, so you can
practice sneaking up on things that are not very threatning.

It is advisable for every thieving character to join a temple of Julianos.
Two of their required skills are Lockpicking and Short Blade, basically two
skills that all thieves should have access to. You won't get potions at a
School of Julianos, but instead you will have the ability to buy and create
magic items once you have risen to the appropriate rank. To really augment
your theiving, create a magic item that casts Invisibilty when held or when
used. This makes dungeon crawling, if you have to do it, a lot safer.

Joining The Thieves Guild is a must. You will get an invitation after
pickpocketing a bunch of times or when you successfully break into a store
via lockpicking. What's nice about Thieves Guild quests is that no dungeon
crawling is involved. Instead, you are typically asked to steal or smuggle
some item. Be careful about getting arrested; you don't want your legal rep
to go down a lot. The further down it goes, the more likely guards will
arrest you for Criminal Conspiracy. This makes traveling throughout the
province quite hard.


VI. Final Thoughts

Now that you have an idea about what you should do with your character, feel
free to explore the world. Although, I usually end up staying in the
Daggerfall province in my games, it's great fun to do adventuring in other
provinces. I prefer Daggerfall mainly because I know which towns have the
best items to buy and which towns are good for selling my stuff in. Do
explore and see what's out there. The game world is big enough for you to
never run out of places to go and people to see.


For the absolute definative guide for Daggerfall go here:

http://www.izhtex.com/tes2/

It's the website that I use a lot. It's very through in it's details. Also
has a complete walkthrough for the main quest.

Any questions or comments, email me at snipebob@attglobal.net

Copyright Erik Scheets 2004

This may be not be reproduced under any circumstances except for personal,
private use. It may not be placed on any web site or otherwise distributed
publicly without advance written permission. Use of this guide on any other
web site or as a part of any public display is strictly prohibited, and a
violation of copyright.