Arena: First Seed

Alduin the World-Eater?

         

As this session began, I had recovered four pieces of the eight-piece of Staff of Chaos. I had the quest for the fifth. But owing to an exploit by which you can get more than one artifact quest if you temporarily divest yourself of existing artifacts by leaving them for repair, I had a lead on a second artifact: the Oghma Infinium, which of course will play a big role in Skyrim.

   

I decided to go for the artifact. It turned out to be a good choice. Like all quests in the game, it was two parts: I first had to explore the Catacombs of Skulvor, in Skyrim, to find a map to the Oghma Infinium, then explore a dungeon in Summurset to find the artifact itself. Each dungeon was four levels. 

        

I haven't mentioned the journal much. It definitely helps you keep track of the location of the next quest.

        

Nonetheless, it only took me about half an hour. Random dungeons always generate stairs in the same locations, and the object of the quest is always on the fourth level. Thus, once you enter the dungeon, you can just zoom from staircase to staircase, using "Passwall" if you want to make it even faster. I don't think I used "Passwall" here, but random dungeons are open enough that it's easy to find your way even if you have to run around a few walls.

   

Here's one thing that didn't help: the "Remove Floor" spell. I had hoped it would allow me to just drop to the next level. Unfortunately, it just removes the literal floor tile, usually revealing water underneath. I suppose it might be useful to stop an enemy reaching you, but it doesn't help with navigating the dungeons more quickly.

      

"Remove Floor" performs quite literally.

       

The artifact was definitely worth the trip. "All who read the Infinium," the game said, "are filled with the energy of the artifact which can be manipulated to raise one's abilities to near demi-god proportions. Once used, legend has it, the Infinium will disappear from its wielder." Sure enough, when I found it, the game let me allocate 50 points to my attributes, as if I'd just leveled up 10 times. 

        

Worth the trip.

      

With that quest accomplished, I recovered my repaired Necromancer's Amulet and then turned to the next piece of the Staff of Chaos. The Mages' Guild had asked me to recover a magical diamond from the Temple of the Mad God (an early appearance of Sheogorath?), which was in Summurset. The Temple was two large levels with a "catacomb" theme. There were numerous rooms with gravestones and markers. Enemies included ghosts, snow wolves, and for the first time, monks.

   

I got a bit annoyed with how quickly the monks destroyed me, particularly after just infusing myself with 50 new attribute points. The difference was essentially unnoticeable. A monk could still kill me in three or four kicks. The game still isn't hard because the generous economy means I'm traveling around with 100 or more healing potions at any given time, but I do keep making the same mistake. An enemy will knock my health meter down to, say, one-third. I figure I can take one more hit before I need to swallow a potion. And then it turns out I was wrong; I couldn't take one more hit. Soon, Jagar Tharn is mocking me again.

        

A monk kicks me in the face.

       

While I'm on annoyances, here's another couple. First, I defeated a lot of enemies this round by spamming "Firestorm" from my Longsword of Firestorm. I also had to frequently use Potions of Healing. To use any magic item, you have to click the "Use Item" button on the interface. But if the game is in the middle of its own thing, like playing a monster animation or sound clip, it won't register your click until it's finished. It then registers your click based on where your mouse is at the time. So if you click on the "Use Item" button, then move the mouse a bit to the right, by the time the game gets around to addressing your click, it thinks you're trying to camp. I can't tell you how many times the "you can't camp" screen has come up while I'm trying to use an item.

   

Like so.

      

Second, here I am, hours into the game at Level 16, and the game still really isn't playable as a pure mage. Any offensive spell I cast takes at least 20% of my mana bar, probably more. Five offensive spells barely gets you through one battle (though that may change when I get "Paralysis"). Meanwhile, the "Restore Magic" potion that you can buy at the Mages Guild only restores about 10%. You need a metric ton of them. Good thing the economy is so generous. 

  

Level 2 of the Temple of the Mad God had a "prison" theme, with lots of barred cells and chains hanging from the ceiling. I met a new enemy for the first time: the iron golem. It took forever (and a lot of healing potions) to kill, and once it died, it remained standing upright, its body pitted with holes where I presumably hacked away its armor.

    

This guy is intimidating. In a later game, he'd be a centurion of some type.

        

The diamond was behind a door with an easy riddle ("What flares up / and does a lot of good / and when it dies / is just a piece of wood?"). Before long, I was back at the Mages Guild in Lillandril, getting the location to the Crystal Tower.

   

The Crystal Tower had an interesting description: "This bastion of sorcery seemingly transcends normal human conceptions, existing in many planes other than this." It sounds a bit like Stephen King's Dark Tower.

     

I really enjoy these dungeon title cards.

        

The four levels of the tower were reasonably large, but they also had a lot of wide hallways and big rooms, which had the effect of making them seem smaller. There were a lot of trolls in the hallways, plus other enemies that I'd already faced, including snow wolves, hellhounds, ice golems, and wraiths.

     

There was a high density of trolls in this dungeon.

        

Level 3 had an interesting theme, with about two dozen small cells with a single enemy in each, labeled at the cell door with the type of enemy and information about it. Examples:

   

• "Snow wolf. Warning, specimen has a breath attack."
• "Ice golem. Warning, this specimen has a damage aura."
• "Medusa. Warning, gaze attack. Do not stare." (Despite the warning, she never paralyzed me.)

        

Arena gets the award for the most non-sexualized nudity of any game so far.

       

One ominous cell had my name on the cell door. "It seems someone has been expecting you." I didn't enter. 

 

There was an iron golem in a treasure room, and a new enemy near the stairs to Level 4: a fire daemon. He killed me a couple of times before I defeated him with "Resist Fire" and various magical attacks. I had to fight him on the way back out, too, as levels respawn.

     

The most difficult enemy in the game so far.

       

To get to the staff piece, I had to find a couple of diamond keys, then answer another riddle:

        

The "within a fountain crystal clear" part threw me off.

        

This one took me a few minutes (EGG). 

   

As usual, Ria Silmane congratulated me and said that the next piece was in the Crypt of Hearts. She didn't know where it was, but "only three provinces remain." Jagar Tharn didn't appear until several days later, when I was wandering into a city. This time, he sent a fire daemon and an ice troll after me.

         

I'm starting to like this guy.

        

I tried Black Marsh first, visiting the city of Gideon. As noted in my first entry, Argonians here are just humans with gray skin and Romanesque names. They directed me to High Rock, which I could have sworn already had a piece, but I guess that's just where I emerged from the prison.

         

There's a big gulf between these folks and the Argonians of later games.

         

In Daggerfall, I was told to try in Camlorn. NPCs there directed me to the Brotherhood of Seth. The priest there said that one of their members, Barnabas of Tethis, had recently gone mad, "raving that the Emperor had been captured!" Seeking pieces of the Staff of Chaos on his own, he went to the Mines of Khuras and probably died there, taking a valuable map with him. If I return the map, the priest will tell me the location of the Crypt of Hearts. 

   

While I was in Daggerfall, I visited the king, who gave me a quest to go to the Black Wastes "to the west" and find a representative of the Dark Brotherhood in the Mages Guild. He would give me a writ that I needed to bring back to the king within a month or so. "The UnderKing will try to stop you," he warned. 

       

The UnderKing tried to stop me.

       

Sure enough, every time I tried to rest at an inn during this quest, enemies appeared to attack me. Tough enemies, including two iron golems at once. I eventually completed the quest and got 7,500 gold pieces and 8,000 experience points from the king. While I was in Black Wastes—which is, incidentally, to the east of Daggerfall—I did a quick fetch quest that got me 800 experience points and a few hundred gold pieces. In comparison, one of those iron golems is worth 29,170 by himself. A fire daemon is worth 42,425.

        

Question: Do any of the random quests ever send you to a random dungeon? Or is it only artifact and main quest stages that involve dungeons? 

      

Arriving in the Mines of Khuras.

      

The Mines of Khuras were two enormous levels, clearly designed by an insane person. It took me about five hours. The levels had a volcanic theme, with numerous lava pools and fire-oriented monsters like hellhounds and fire daemons. (Other enemies included homonculuses, zombies, and a new one: stone golems.) I had to jump across a lot of lava pools, and half the time the jumping would fail, and I'd plunge into the pool.

     

Part of the absurdly large first level.

      

I almost always approach dungeon levels by finding an outer wall, then following it counter-clockwise until I've mapped the edges. Then, I fill in the middle by slowly nibbling away at its edges. If I find a stairway during this process, I generally take it, although sometimes I have to return to the earlier level to find a key or something.

     

A new enemy makes an appearance.

     

These levels seemed designed specifically to screw someone using my exploration pattern. The stairway to Level 2 was deep in the middle of the first level. It was practically the last thing I found. The body of Barnabas of Tethis, on Level 2, was also towards the center, and behind a secret door besides. 

          

Poor guy. Maybe Ria Silmane should have helped him.

       

Several hours and two character levels later, I was back in Camlorn. The priest of the Brotherhood of Seth took the map and marked the location of the Crypt of Hearts.

   

Instead of heading directly there, I left the city and started exploring the wilderness. I hadn't done much of that since the game began. The developers put a lot of effort into the process of procedurally-generating territory around each city, assembling each map out of a series of pre-defined "blocks," but you could easily play the game without ever experiencing it. No fixed or even random quest ever asks you to do anything except fast-travel directly to the destination. As we've discussed, you can't even reach destinations by trying to walk there the "slow" way. The game keeps generating new wilderness blocks but the character's world location remains fixed at the last fast-travel point.

       

Enjoying a bit of the wilderness.

               

I made my way through mist-covered forests and across rivers before finding an island with a dungeon in the middle. Until now, I didn't realize that random dungeons could appear on the wilderness map. I entered and found a small, single-level dungeon with a "crypt" theme. It had some treasure in every room and just a few ghouls and skeletons. It struck me as hand-crafted rather than randomly-generated. I wonder how many more of these small dungeon "templates" the authors designed.

       

This small dungeon felt hand-crafted, though I'm sure its appearance in the world was randomized.

       

While outside, I verified the recollection that the sun in Arena rises in the west and sets in the east. I think that if the creators wanted to make the world seem more "alien," they should have left the sun alone and had people live in, say, giant crustacean shells or something. 

           

In retrospect, I guess this screenshot doesn't mean anything if you don't know that it's 06:00 in the morning.

          

With that little side-adventure out of the way, I fast-traveled to the Crypt of Hearts. Like all other locations with a piece of the staff, it had an evocative title card:

      

What is that beast?

         

And a welcome message as I entered:

         

Manacles in the entry hall. How welcoming.

         

It also had the relief on the entry wall that you see at the top of this entry. The dungeon was four levels, the first easily as large as the two Mines of Khuras levels, perhaps even larger. But my exploration pattern served me well. I arrived in the northeast corner and found the stairs to Level 2 in the middle of the northern wall, about five minutes after I arrived. I missed 90% of the rest of the level. 

    

On Level 2, the same pattern brought me to the stairs after exploring only about a third of the level. Same with Level 3 to Level 4. I began to worry that I would eventually need a set of keys, one from each level or something, but fortunately this dungeon didn't require any such thing.

    

A couple of homonculuses attack in a hallway.

       

Level 4 broke the pattern. The staff piece was in the center of the dungeon, so I had to work my way around the entire perimeter and then move inward. Still, it didn't take very long. The door to the central room had, as usual, a riddle:

   

There is a thing, which nothing is,

Yet it has a name.

It's sometimes tall

And sometimes short

It tumbles when we fall

It joins our sport,

And plays at every game.

   

Not only had I heard this one before (SHADOW), but I was also pretty sure I'd heard it in this exact format. I couldn't find it in a search of the blog's text, though.

        

That analogy doesn't really make sense.

         

Two fire daemons flanked the inner doorway and killed me the moment I entered. I had to reload and do a bunch of the level again. No matter how often that happens, I still save less often than I should. I don't know what's wrong with me sometimes. 

   

Enemies in the dungeon were harder than most—homonculuses, stone golems, hellhounds, iron golems, wraiths—with multiple enemies sometimes attacking at once. I ended up chugging a lot of "Restore Magic" potions and keeping "Mana Theft" (which works unreliably) and "Shrug Off Spell" going almost all the time. 

     

Every time I killed a stone golem in this area, another appeared on a different platform and started firing spells at me.

      

I used "Passwall" to facilitate my exit from the dungeon. As usual, Ria Silmane appeared the next time I rested to tell me that the seventh piece would be found in the Murkwood, "the dark forest that ever moves," I guess a fusion of Tolkien's Mirkwood and Fangorn Forests. She pointed out that the only two provinces left were Morrowind and Black Marsh, although if I were Tharn, I'd fool the hero by disrupting the pattern and putting at least two pieces of the staff in a single province.

      

Maybe Tharn should stop sending exactly two guys to attack me every time I find a piece.

          

Before I go, let's talk about equipment. I haven't had a real "upgrade" in a long time. Battle mages can only wear leather armor—cuirass, helm, left and right pauldrons, boots, gauntlets, and greaves—and leather armor never seems to have enchantments attached to it. For other classes, I've never seen anything other than chain and plate, but because I can't wear those items, I haven't been identifying them. I think additional materials might be revealed with identification.

   

For weapons, I've seen regular (iron), steel, elven, dwarven, mithril, adamantium, and ebony varieties of just about every weapon, which includes one-handed (e.g., daggers, maces, longswords), two-handed (e.g., war axes, claymores, dai-katanas), and missile (e.g., short bow, long bow). If there are levels above ebony, I haven't found any. Certain monsters can only be hit by certain weapon levels.

     

A wraith guards a couple piles of treasure. I think they might be immune to iron and steel weapons.

            

I've been carrying an ebony longsword for as long as I can remember. One of the game's quirks is that items aren't leveled; you can find some of the best equipment in the first dungeon.

    

Weapons can be enchanted with attribute-buffing charms (e.g., Dwarven Mace of Speed, Steel Dagger of Luck), resistances, and spells that cast when the item is used (e.g., "Paralyzation," "Lightning"). I've seen these enchantments on most levels of weapons, but never so far on ebony. Enchantments can only be used if the item is equipped. I have an extremely useful  Steel Longsword of Paralyzation and an equally useful Longsword of Firestorm, but some enemies are immune to their metals (not their spell effects), so I have to go into the inventory and switch weapons to finish them off if the spells don't do it. Again, it would have been great to have weapon hotkeys.

       

It's nice that he's paralyzed, but now I have to switch to my other sword.

       

(On the subject of enchantments, I should emphasize that all items in the game have to be purchased or found with the enchantments already applied. Arena doesn't offer any way of enchanting items yourself.) 

      

There's no dual-wielding in the game. If you have a one-handed weapon, you can put a shield in the other hand. My guy has been limited to bucklers and round shields; other characters can carry tower shields and kite shields. Shields seemed like such an afterthought to me that I haven't been identifying them, and I didn't learn until this session that they can also be made out of different metals and enchanted.

      

Some of my current equipment.

            

In addition to weapons, armor, and shields, a character can wear or wield one set of bracers, one crystal, one mark, one ring, one amulet, one belt, one bracelet, and one torc. Bracers, belts, torcs, and amulets only seem to have attribute-boosting enchantments while the other items only have spellcasting enchantments. Bracers, belts, torcs, and amulets also come in different metal types (e.g., elven, dwarven, mithril, ebony), and here again I've never seen an item that was both made of ebony and enchanted. I've mostly been sticking with the ebony stuff because it lowers armor class a lot, and I apparently need that badly. I feel like a character of my level shouldn't still be threatened by skeletons, but here we are.

   

At this point in the game, the only items that I regularly change out are crystals, marks, and rings, discarding or selling them as their charges run out. In general, selling magical items is how I make most of my money. 

    

Magic items for sale. Note that there's just an Ebony Belt and a Belt of Luck, no Ebony Belt of Luck. I don't know whether that exists.

      

Characters can carry potions of various types (e.g., healing, restore magic power, free action, invisibility, strength, resist fire, resist cold), and since these items a) don't need to be equipped, b) stack, and c) don't weigh anything, they're a real money sink. I don't know whether there's a limit on the number of potions of a single type, but if so, it's more than a few hundred. As long as you can afford them, potions can compensate for almost anything. This means that they break the game a little, although I think a player who over-relied on them would soon run out of both potions and money.

      

This must be a powerful amulet, but it won't be more powerful than the Necromancer's Amulet. I can sell it without any angst.

        

Finally, as we've seen, the game offers artifact items of various types. My Necromancer's Amulet gives me -9 armor class to all body parts, meaning I sell every other amulet I find. I don't know what all the others do (I'll look it up for the final entry), but I've heard rumors about Auriel's Bow, Chrysamere (a sword), the Ebony Blade, the Ring of Khajiit, the Ring of Phynaster, Skeleton's Key, and of course the Oghma Infinium, which is a bit different since it disappears after you find it. Players of later Elder Scrolls games will recognize many of these names, along with many places (cities in each province, Dagoth-Ur, Labyrinthian), people (e.g., the UnderKing, Mannimarco), and organizations (e.g., the Dark Brotherhood). Oh, plenty of things will later be retconnned of course, but it's still amazing to me how many seeds they planted so early in the series, without any idea of how they would pay off.

    

Time so far: 32 hours