Arena: Thou Hast Gained an Eighth

Dude, we worked together for years. You've been to my house. I introduced you to your wife!

            

When we ended the first entry, I had just arrived in Riverpoint, a small town in Hammerfell. At least, it looked like a small town on the map. It seemed to occupy about as much territory, and to have about as many NPCs and shops, as the large city I had just left. It also had a palace and a king, and NPC dialogue talked about tensions between Riverpoint and nearby Roseguard. This dialogue suggests a certain amount of regional factionalism and warfare that wasn't present, at least not to this degree, in The Elder Scrolls III-V. 

    

But even if there's no distinction between a city and a town visually, the game and its NPCs make such distinctions. I was told to seek answers about Fang Lair in the cities of Hammerfell, and thus none of the NPCs in Riverpoint could help me. They simply repeated what I already heard in Shornhelm. It thus was not long before I was in Taneth, a proper Hammerfellian city, and then Rihad.

   

I owe the game an apology: I assumed the nature of its procedural generation would mean that the buildings and people were all the same. Not so. There was a lot of Arabian/Persian influence in Hammerfell, including dark-skinned residents wearing turbans, kufis, shalwars, and so forth. They had names like Cikam, Mison, and Nakim. The cities were sunnier, with sandy pathways, palm trees, and enormous cacti. The procedurally-generated business names reflected the new setting, at least in the sense that so many of them had the word djinn.

     

A street scene in Hammerfell. Those are some tall cacti.

       

In both Riverpoint and Taneth, I asked a lot of NPCs about rumors, and I got some leads on the artifact quests that commenters have told me about. Other comments just filled in bits of the lore. Some notes:

   

• There's a man at the Howling Djinn who will take money to reveal the location of the Key of Arrovan, a master thief. I don't believe the series uses Arrovan again.

• "The Elder Gods are coming, and Black Marsh will burn for its sins." Who are the Elder Gods?

•  "Some friends of mine went out searching for the Staff of Magnus." We will hear plenty about Magnus, and his staff, in the future.

• Someone else is selling the location of the Ring of Phynaster. Phynaster will also appear again.  

• "My prophet says Summurset [sic] Isle is doomed to sink beneath the sea." Either that happens in The Elder Scrolls VI or the prophet was wrong.

• The Afterdark Society, "nonhuman heathen," meets nightly in front of the Brotherhood of Mercy. I meant to follow up on this and did not.

• Multiple rumors that Prince Khajun of Riverpoint is possessed by the devil and/or an imposter, and possibly a cannibal, too. I visited the prince in the palace, but he just dismissed me. I don't know if there was another way to follow up on this rumor. I don't think that later Elder Scrolls lore has a concept of "the devil."

       

No signs of possession or cannibalism in our brief interaction.

        

The artifact quest that I decided to investigate further involved the Necromancer's Amulet. Two men were recently trying to buy information about it from someone at the Howling Djinn, but they didn't have enough money. I made my way to the location (asking locals for directions, slowly narrowing it down, finally getting someone to mark it on the map), wondering if I'd learn about the Necromancer's Amulet or the Key of Arrovan. I guess the game prioritizes the last rumor you heard, although what the informant told me about was not the Necromancer's Amulet but the Necromancer's Robes. The necromancer in question was none other than Mannimarco, who is at least mentioned in every Elder Scrolls game after this. Here, he's just a name, at least so far.

     

I get a lead.

         

The informant wanted 680 gold pieces, which I handed over. In return, he gave me not the location of the robes, but rather the location of a map to the robes. The map is supposed to be in the Fortress of Drunorath in High Rock, which appeared on my map after I got the rumor.

   

I  continued with the Staff of Chaos for now. In the city of Taneth, asking about FANG LAIR directed me to the city of Rihad, so I jumped there almost immediately. The last time I wrote about Arena, I contrasted the ease of travel in this game with the survivalist simulation element of Star Trail. I think that Arena makes it maybe a bit too easy. The game tells you the distance and time it will take to make each trip, but I don't think either variable has any meaning in this game. Perhaps it ought to have at least cost something, which would have incentivized the player to do local quests in between jumps. I don't know; maybe if it had, I would have felt that the game was too padded.

         

The game estimates my travel time while not attaching any significance to travel time.

        

It's worth noting that Arena invents the calendar system for The Elder Scrolls, in which the months are Morning Star, Sun's Dawn, First Seed, Rain's Hand, Second Seed, Midyear, Sun's Height, Last Seed, Hearthfire, Frostfall, Sun's Dusk, and Evening Star. Days of the week are Sundas, Mondays, Tirdas, Middas, Turdas, Fredas, and Loredas. Despite having played various titles in the series for years, I wouldn't have been able to give either list from memory, as knowing the specific time and day has never been necessary. Skyrim doesn't even vary the weather based on the time of year, which ought to be trivially easy.

   

In Rihad, the first NPC I spoke with told me that "some of the stuff recently uncovered in a keep outside the city showed the location of Fang Lair." He recommended that I check at the Palace. I visited Queen Blubamka there, and she agreed to tell me about Fang Lair if I did her a favor. The palace was recently plundered by a band of goblins led by Golthog the Dark. Among the loot that they stole was a parchment with "clues to decipher the part of the Elder Scrolls which spoke of the location of the legendary Fang Lair." This is the first appearance of the Elder Scrolls as a tangible artifact. Anyway, Golthog fled to an ancient fortress called Stonekeep, which she marked on my map.

    

And here's the first reference to the Underking. If Ultima's developers had planted so many seeds in the first game, they wouldn't have had to do so much retconning later.

        

Now I have to ask: Is this the way every quest goes in Arena? They're all two dungeons, the first necessary to find the way to the second? I really hope that's not the case. I've written before about the best ways to handle such "Disassembulet of Yendor" quests. I always prefer that the difficulty and effort associated with finding the pieces is varied. Some should be easy, some hard; none should ever be predictable. Amberstar and Ultima VI did it well.

         

A goblin attacks in Stonekeep's throne room.

       

I traveled to Stonekeep. It was a single-level dungeon, but very large, at least in comparison to the imperial dungeon. It had lakes within the indoor keep. I mentioned during the last entry that I didn't think the player had to explore every inch of the dungeon, but owing to my exploration pattern (follow the right wall, then fill in the middle), I ended up doing so anyway. The parchment was in one of the last places that I looked.

     

The first enemies I faced were rats, which barely do any damage and die in one hit. Goblins came next, but they're hardly any more difficult. Just as I started thinking the game was too easy, I met skeletons and wolves, who were deadly at first but easier as I leveled up. So were orcs. They were followed by ghouls, which never got easy at all. Neither did the giant spiders. Minotaurs and lizard men looked tough but died fast.

        

My first encounter with skeletons.

      

I have long argued that RPGs with action-based combat (and without a separate combat interface) often offer more tactics than the casual user appreciates. For instance, anyone who thinks of Skyrim as just a bunch of swinging and blocking isn't considering the use of sneaking, spells, NPC allies, summoned allies, shouts, potions, poisons, leading enemies into traps, knocking them off high areas, and making effective use of terrain (I have also often argued that you need to play on the hardest difficulty to really appreciate these things). Arena doesn't have all those options, but it's definitely a start.

        

The dead bodies are a bit gory.

        

I would particularly highlight the "terrain" issue, which is really half-tactic, half-exploit. I got through a lot of the battles in Stonekeep (principally with ghouls and spiders, also skeletons and orcs at the beginning) by doing things that start off fine and end ethically squidgy. Examples:

   

• Shooting at enemies from across a body of water, which they cannot enter. I used my "Fire Dart" spell when I had it, my Sword of Lightning until it broke, and two short bows until they broke. 

• Putting a piece of furniture or low wall between me and the enemy, and attacking them over it. Enemy pathfinding isn't great in the game. They get hung up on lots of stuff. Sometimes, if the furniture is small enough, you don't even need missile weapons to attack "over" it. The distance at which they'll start swinging is shorter than the distance at which the player can swing and hit.

      

Attacking a ghoul across a wall.

       

• Attacking from around a corner. The same issue with pathfinding applies to regular corners, too. If you approach from just the right angle, they'll get hung up at the corner and never quite round it, allowing the player free attacks until they die.

     

Trapping an orc at a corner.

      

I think you could make a case for the first and second options mirroring real-life tactics, but the third one is 100% exploiting the limited technology of the era. I'm not proud of it, but I don't think I would have beaten the ghouls any other way that didn't involve me leaving to go grind somewhere else.

     

The dungeon was about as atmospheric as Ultima Underworld. We're still a long way from RPGs offering completely immersive environments in which you'd gladly explore a dungeon just for its visuals, but we've definitely progressed beyond the "textures" era. Stonekeep has a logical layout with recognizable jail cells, bedchambers, storage rooms, kitchens, and a throne room. There are fun environmental touches like statues, benches, barrels, tapestries, carpets, coffins, fountains, iron maidens, altars, and remains of the former inhabitants. Alas, none of this stuff is in any way interactive.

     

The people of Stonekeep worshipped a freaky god.

           

Some other notes:

   

• I think I noted last time that although the music has a volume slider, you cannot turn it off. Even at the lowest setting, it plays faintly in the background—and I don't mind it. It provides a little atmosphere to dungeon exploration. So maybe the solution all along was not to turn the music off, but rather just to turn it way down.

• A couple of tapestries had Ultima-style Futhark runes, but they don't seem to mean anything. I don't think the one in the lower left is even a valid rune.

      

UNG? TSF.

       

• The game's use of sound effects—doors opening, monsters growling, swords clanging against armor, the character's echoing footsteps—is effective. Among other things, it helps determine if your attack hits the enemy. However, the game cannot play more than one sound effect at the same time, and it seems to favor monster sounds over other effects. That means that monsters are always moaning and growling in combat and thus obscuring feedback on whether your attacks are connecting.

• Many of the doors were locked, but they gave way to bashing. I didn't find any correlation between whether a door was locked and the value of what lay behind it.

         

It did not.

       

• There was an island in the middle of some water and a key on the island. I could not pick up the key for the life of me. 

         

Fortunately, I didn't need it.

       

• The game clearly doesn't spawn some enemies until you've crossed an invisible tripwire. I had them spawn behind me in completely empty rooms. 

• I went from Level 3 to Level 9 in Stonekeep. Experience is roughly doubling between levels. I have no idea if the game has level caps.

     

I forgot what this was about.

     

• Back when I was in town with a mage's guild, my attitude was that if I couldn't afford all the spells I wanted, I just wouldn't buy any of them until I could. That was a bad choice. I probably wouldn't have needed to use quite so many combat exploits if I'd expanded beyond "Light Heal" and "Fire Dart."

• I would pay real money for keyboard shortcuts for slashing and stabbing. The targeting in this game is not precise enough that it should have required the mouse, and the rest of the environment isn't as interactive as, say, Ultima Underworld.  

• I picked up everything. I did run out of inventory space at some point and had to start dropping less-valuable items.

• Every once in a while, while exploring, you suddenly hear a sequence of about a dozen drumbeats or chimes, as if a clock is striking 12 somewhere—except that it can happen at any time of day. Does anyone know what this effect is signaling?

        

About as much of Stonekeep as I explored. 

      

The dungeon had atmospheric messages left by the previous inhabitants of the castle describing the goblin invasion and their response. I thought at first that they were just atmospheric, but I realized later that they lead the player to the quest item: south through a bunch of tunnels, then north to a lake. On an island in the middle of the lake, now swarming with ghouls, the inhabitants made their "last stand."

       

One of several messages leading me to the right place.

      

It took me a while to clear the ghouls, but once I did, I was able to loot the central treasure chamber for some gold, items, and the parchment. I don't know whether it's possible to meet Golthog in the dungeon. I didn't, unless he was one of the many unnamed goblins I killed.

       

Seven hours into the first game, and I'm already dealing with an Elder Scroll.

       

I got the heck out of there as fast as I could, fast-traveled back to Rihad, arrived at night, and was immediately killed by a minotaur roaming the street.

    

On a reload, I made it to an inn, rested the night, and visited Queen Blubamka the next day. She studied the parchment and marked the location of Fang Lair on my map. It was in Hammerfell, near the border with Skyrim.

   

I spent a lot of time between the Mage's Guild and one of the equipment shops sorting through my accumulated gear. You have to pay at the Mage's Guild to identify equipment. (If there's any other way, please give me a hint, because it's annoying as hell.) You can tell by how much he wants to charge. If he only quotes a few gold pieces, you know it's not magical. Similarly, the shop will offer a sale price based on that item's real value, if identified, so if the armorer offers a large price, it's a hint to go have it identified. Unfortunately, the fee to identify some of my items (primarily crystals) was so high that I just sold them instead, as I wanted enough money for spells.

      

This one is probably magical.

          

The last time I visited a Mage's Guild, I only had about 1,500 gold pieces. This time, I had 7,285. I bought "Light," "Heal," "Invisibility," "Levitate," "Fireball," "Open," "Passwall," and "Lifesteal." I also experimented with the "Create Spell" option and ended up creating a custom "Shrug Off Spell" spell for 1,100 gold. To make a custom spell, you specify the effects, the target, the chance of success, the power, and the duration. All effects are available at the outset of the game, not just ones attached to spells you already own.

     

That casting cost is high now, but I figure it will be fine in a few levels.

       

Better equipped, I warped out of the city and straight to Fang Lair, apparently an old dwarven fortress. I prepared for steam pipes and automatons, but I guess those elements of dwarven culture hadn't yet been invented, nor did the term "dwemer" ever appear. The game portrayed the dwarves as typical miners, and their abandoned fortress had tracks, mining carts, and mine shafts.

      

Despite appearances, I found no upper levels to this fortress.

        

Some of the rooms in Fang Lair were connected by regular hallways, but to reach others, I had to drop down into a network of mine shafts that ran just under the surface. At first, I was worried how I would get out of these shafts, but apparently all you have to do to get out of a pit is face one of its walls and press forward, and the character slowly inches out. I'd already been doing it while swimming.

     

Skeletons, minotaurs, and giant spiders made up most of the enemies, the latter difficult enough that I continued to have to use tricks. The ones outlined previously were joined by another, common enough in games like Dungeon Master and Eye of the Beholder: Attacking while backing away down a long corridor. That wasn't really possible in the tight rooms of the first two dungeons, but this one had a lot of long, wide spaces. What it did not have (at least on the first level) was a lot of "raised" squares, so there weren't as many places to try the "over the table" trick or even to safely rest.

      

A couple of minotaurs attack me on a cart track.

       

My exploration pattern brought me swiftly to the southwest part of the first level, where I encountered a series of six locked cell doors, impervious to my bashing. There were giant spiders behind most of them. At the base of the room were another three doors, these labeled "Cell 1," "Cell 2," and "Cell 3." To their east was a locked steel door with a message that I would have to "prove [my] worthiness" to open the cell containing the gold key, which would unlock the steel door. 

      

How do you tell that a spider is hungry?

       

The door then gave me a riddle with the following clauses, noting that not all of them could not be true:

   

1. If Cell 3 holds worthless brass, Cell 2 holds the gold key.
2. If Cell 1 holds the gold key, Cell 3 holds worthless brass.
3. If Cell 2 holds worthless brass, Cell 1 holds the gold key.

      

The phrase "all that is said cannot be true" tripped me up. I spent a long time trying to logically work out which statements are lying. #1 and #3 are in conflict, as are #1 and #2. The problem is that if you decide that any one, two, or three statements are false, you're still left with conditional outcomes that seem obvious on the surface. If there is only one gold key and it is in one cell, it cannot be in any other cells.

        

I hope someone's writing this down.

     

The issue isn't that any statement is untrue so much as that if they're all true, then the key being in certain cells makes a paradox. To wit, if it's in Cell 1, then Cell 3 has worthless brass, but if Cell 3 has worthless brass, the key is supposed to be in Cell 2. Thus, it cannot be Cell 1. Similarly, if the key is in Cell 3, Cell 2 has worthless brass, but if Cell 2 has worthless brass, Cell 1 is supposed to have the key. Only by assuming that the key is in Cell 2 do we not reach any paradoxes. If Cell 2 has the gold key, both Cell 1 and Cell 3 have worthless brass. Statement 1 says that if Cell 3 has worthless brass, the key is in Cell 2. No statement says anything about what happens if Cell 1 has worthless brass. No paradox.

    

The riddle is made a bit easier by the fact that only the door to Cell 2 specifies that it is "magically locked"; the other two don't.

      

Since I got it right the first time, I didn't have to fight the spiders (a previous message warned that if I got it wrong, their doors would open). I wanted to fight them anyway for the experience, and also to explore their cells (which turned out to be smart, as two of the cells had a lot of treasure). Since I couldn't open the doors, I got past them with my new "Passwall" spell. This might be the best spell I've ever encountered in any game. When I bought it, I thought it would turn the character incorporeal and allow him to literally walk through walls. Instead, it allows you to permanently remove three wall "chunks" every time you cast it. I suppose it's inevitable that the spell would stop being available when designers stopped designing their environments in square blocks, but man would it be nice to have this spell in later Elder Scrolls games.

     

The "gate" squares even have gates on the sides.

    

It took a good bit of time to pick up the key in Cell 2. If anyone has any tips for that, I would appreciate it. I think maybe the trick is to click and hold the mouse button down for a couple of seconds. That seemed to finally work with this key, but perhaps it was just a fluke. I haven't run into any more keys since then.

      

Anyway, the key opened the way down to a second level, which was much more open than the first. A wide hallway led to a huge room with a big center island surrounded by lava. (I had to take a dip to see what happened and, of course, I rapidly died.) Skeletons popped up all over the island as I explored. There was a central chamber with a door and another riddle: "What is neither fish nor flesh, feathers nor bone, but still has fingers, and thumbs of its own." I've heard this one before (GLOVE), but I like to think I would have gotten it anyway.

     

The moment the door opened, two hellhounds on the other side roasted me. Fortunately, I had taken a recent save. When I reloaded, I cast my new "Shrug Off Spell" spell, hoping that the game would treat their breath as magic. It worked. Oddly, they died immediately after breathing. The first piece of the Staff of Chaos was floating in the air beyond. I went up and grabbed it.

     

Is it really a "staff" if it has a spearhead?

       

The first time I rested after gaining the piece, Ria Silmane again appeared in my dreams to congratulate me and give me the location of the second piece: Labyrinthian, built by Archmagus Shalidor in the frozen north. Again, I'm surprised by how much lore was right here in the first game.

     

Despite knowing exactly where it is, I suspect I won't be able to go directly there.

      

The second time I rested after gaining the piece, Jagar Tharn appeared in my dreams. "I don't know who you are, but you have made a fatal mistake," he threatened. "Ria Silmane and her feeble powers are no protection for you." He sent a couple of minions to attack me, but I made short work of them, mostly because I was able to attack them over elevated terrain. Enemies in this game have a real problem with stairs.

       

I  didn't even notice what they were called.

       

As I was preparing to leave, I noticed a river of lava disappearing beneath the wall. If it had been water, I would have been able to follow its path by swimming. I tried "Levitate," but the wall was low enough that I needed to be beneath it, in the lava, not walking on top of it. I wonder if the "Resist Fire" spell, which I didn't buy, would have helped.

     

Only an RPG player would say, "I have to see where that goes."

       

Instead, I used "Passwall" to carve out a path parallel to the lava river. It took me three or four castings, and I had to rest in between each one (which is why I got those messages from Silmane and Tharn so quickly), but the lava tunnel eventually led me to a treasure chamber with about half a dozen piles and at least one chest. It still didn't amount to much. Looted weapons and armor sell for more than you get from a typical pile.

      

The end of the lava tunnels.

       

It's worth noting that I didn't level up once in Fang Lair despite having leveled up six times in the previous dungeon. I found an Elven Sword but nothing else in the way of equipment upgrades.

       

I made some half-hearted efforts to explore the rest of the first level, but I eventually abandoned it before finishing everything. My last screenshot shows me arriving at the village of Markwasten Moor High Rock, so I imagine I planned to go for the Necromancer's Amulet or Robes before continuing with the main quest.

      

A pit stop to sell and identify equipment before taking on the next dungeon.

                 

I find myself enjoying the game quite a lot so far. As a game with a lot of procedural generation, it's hard not to compare it to Dungeon Hack (1993), where despite the lack of role-playing opportunities or tactical satisfaction in combat, I still had fun (for a while) charging through corridors, laying enemies low, and looting their corpses. While mechanically the games are very different, it still feels like Arena delivers what I was asking for at the end of that game: an action-oriented title that keeps the benefits of procedural generation but within the context of an evolving story with at least some handcrafted spaces. In the end, I suspect I'll conclude that Arena has too little handcrafted content (it would have been nice if some of the cities and NPCs were deliberately designed), but for now I like the relative briskness of the gameplay.

     

Time so far: 9 hours