The Elder Scrolls: Arena: Summary and Rating

 

It's a good thing this is a single-character game, because three of these people would be fatally distracted in combat.

       

The Elder Scrolls: Arena

United States 

Bethesda Softworks (developer and publisher)

Released 1994 for DOS

Date Started: 9 March 2026

Date Ended: 29 April 2026

Total Hours: 43

Difficulty:  Moderate (3.0/5)

Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later) 

     

Summary:

   

The first Elder Scrolls game lays out a surprising amount of the series' geography, history, and lore, including the races and provinces of Tamriel and the basic history of the empire united hundreds of years ago by Tiber Septim. Now, Emperor Uriel Septim VII has been kidnapped and sent to an alternate dimension by his evil BattleMage, Jagar Tharn. To rescue him, the player has to find the 8 pieces of the Staff of Chaos, each hidden in a dungeon in a different province, then confront Tharn in the imperial palace.

    

The game has all the trappings of a modern CRPG, including attributes and leveling, a full set of weapons and armor, a detailed spell list (and the ability to craft your own spells), monsters with various strengths and weaknesses, NPCs, side-quests, and a robust economy. Despite these assets, the experience mostly falls flat, likely because the developers relied too much on bland procedural generation of most dungeons and  NPCs and all cities and towns. The first-person graphics and free movement are decent for the era, but alas they don't age well. Overall, Arena tries to build on its famous predecessors—primarily Ultima Underworld (1992) and Legends of Valour (1992)—but fails to equal them, let alone surpass them.

   

****

    

I'm glad they didn't give up after one game, but Arena is a bit of a misfire. It is more impressive (from a programming standpoint) than fun. Roguelikes show that procedural generation can work when done well, but it has to be coupled with solid mechanics and logistics. Bethesda made a good effort at both but didn't quite clear the bar. The company will continue to struggle with the balance between handcrafted content and generated content straight into the modern age, and many of the complaints I have about Arena are the same ones I have about Starfield (2023).

    

Arena's handcrafted content is limited to its 18 main quest dungeons. The problem is that few of those dungeons are terribly interesting. Even the "handcrafted" locations feel like they started with a procedural base and then just added title cards, welcome messages, furnishings, and riddle doors. Even in this regard, I feel like they got less interesting as they went along. The cities and NPCs, meanwhile, have no character at all beyond some skins specific to their provinces. If I had been a consultant on Arena, I would have advised them to handcraft at least the capital cities of each province, and to sprinkle them with a dozen or so non-generic NPCs.

     

This, for instance, is a "handcrafted" level. As far as I can tell, it may as well have been procedurally-generated.

        

On the other hand, if the mechanics had been better, it might have been a pleasure to explore a few more side-dungeons, gaining a few more levels, finding a few more artifacts. There are modern games for which I wouldn't mind the occasional procedurally-generated level at all. The Infinity Engine games come to mind. If Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale had featured some optional, repeatable dungeons with random selections of enemies, particularly ones that you don't get to fight often in the main campaign, I might never have started this blog.

   

As for those mechanics, Arena almost always has a good base but doesn't go far enough in some areas and poorly balances others. The equipment system (likely influenced by Might and Magic III-V) offers not quite enough variety, particularly for certain classes. The economy is just a bit too generous. Combat goes on just a bit too long against not-quite-enough enemies who are not quite interesting enough to hold my attention. The combat interface is innovative but gets a bit exhausting. Graphics occupy that unfortunate valley between the best of the previous primitive age and the worst of the forthcoming immersive age.

        

I meant to include this shot from Ebonheart in my last entry. That volcano is visible in the distance from everywhere in Morrowind.

       

My repetitive uses of "a bit" and "not quite" are poor English, but they work for a game that landed just shy of the threshold of victory. I've always tried to follow Strunk & White's recommendations to eschew negative verbs and adjectives (e.g., "did not respond," "not unattractive") in favor of positive ones (e.g., "ignored," "pretty"). But Arena almost begs for the former.  It's not a bad game; it's just a not good one. I don't necessarily not recommend it, but I don't really recommend it, either.

   

In the 1980s, I established a rating of about 35 as my "recommended" threshold, but by the mid-1990s, I think it needs to be up to 40. A score of around 40-43 would reflect the way I feel about the game. Let's see what happens.

     

GIMLET 

Category	Assets	Liabilities	Score
1. Game World	A detailed backstory with history and lore.  An intriguing map with interesting place names. Evocative names and historical tidbits dropped into conversation, quest messages, title cards, exploration messages.	A laughable explanation of the game's name.  Most of the name drops are just names; later games will flesh them out but Arena doesn't deserve that credit.  Races in this early game are mostly fantasy archetypes.  Outdoor areas completely wasted. Forced fast-travel.	4
2. Character Creation and Development	Fun, Ultima-like character creation process. Character classes are well-differentiated and create unique gameplay experiences.  Class-based roleplaying options for thieves and spellcasters.	Leveling is boring, involving a simple allocation of 3-6 attribute points with consequent increases in health and mana.     Awful character portraits.  No roleplaying options for fighter classes.	4
3. NPCs	Towns are full of them and you learn a fair amount from them.	They're almost all randomly-generated with no personalities.	3
4. Encounters and Foes	About 20 monsters with some strengths and weaknesses. I found the riddle doors a fun diversion but others will want to subtract more for that.	Monsters are a bit boring. No major variance in tactics necessary to defeat them. No other special encounters.	3
5. Magic and Combat	Spell variety offers most of the tactics in combat. Other tactics found in use of terrain.	Combat is otherwise a bit boring. Different types of attacks don't seem to make any difference. Ranged combat under-developed.  Most of the "use of terrain" tactics feel like exploits.	3
6. Equipment	Lots of equipment slots. Easy to understand relative offensive/defensive value of items.  Items mostly randomized in game world.  Almost anything can be enchanted. Variety of potions serve as a money sink.  Powerful artifact items.	Not quite enough variety in equipment to put in those slots, particularly for certain classes. Limited to one artifact item at a time unless you use an exploit.	5
7. Economy	Several ways to make money: selling looted items, side-quests, thievery. Lots of things to spend money on.	Economy gets a bit generous by the halfway mark.  Silly haggling mechanic. Treasure in dungeons weirdly limited to 99 gold pieces.	5
8. Quests	Clear main quest. Artifact quests. Side-quests with various levels of complexity in each town.	Main quest stages are overly repetitive and predictable. Side quests are boring and don't reward enough to bother. No different main quest outcomes.	4
9. Graphics, Sound, and Interface	Almost everything on the screen has a keyboard backup. Decent sound effects. Limited voice acting is good. 3D continuous movement.  Nice automap and journal.	Graphics are good for the era but ugly by the standards of even 5 years later; do not age well. Dragging mouse to swing weapon in combat gets a bit old, particularly where precision isn't required.  No ambient sound.	4
10. Gameplay	Geographically nonlinear. Replayable to experience different classes.	Narratively linear. Otherwise not replayable. Repetitive nature of main quest process gets old. Game is a bit too long.	3
Other/Total	Lots of procedurally-generated content	Lots of procedurally-generated content.	38

      

That final score is a bit lower than I expected, but not so much that I think something's wrong with the rating. I really wanted to like Arena, which infused some of the enthusiasm of my early entries, but it showed all its cards early. By the time you've found the third piece of the Staff of Chaos, you've really experienced all the game has to offer.

       

Why would you not include a single shot of combat?

            

Scorpia's review in the May 1994 Computer Gaming World echoes many of my own thoughts about the game. "Everything eventually becomes mechanical and repetitious," she says, referring to the interchangeable towns, NPCs, and dungeons, as well as the limited number of enemies. She points out, more than I did in my coverage, how utterly useless the entire outdoor experience is. Bethesda spent a lot of time on pretty outdoor maps with structures, dungeons, monsters, even weather effects, and there's no reason whatsoever to ever experience these things.

   

On the other hand, she liked the combat a lot better than I did: "It's the most natural way of fighting that I've seen in a first-person game." She also spends more time talking about the side quests (I guess some had unachievable time limits) than I spent playing them. Her final comments are almost prescient:

   

The game is impressive as a first effort. Most of the pieces of a good CRPG are there. What is needed now is a tightening of the code, a little polishing up of the basic engine, a little scaling back of the size, and the inclusion of some real role-playing elements . . . with a solid storyline. These are well within Bethesda's abilities, and their addition to future products would make The Elder Scrolls a dynamite series.

    

I'm glad she was still around to review Daggerfall two years later. Despite her misgivings, the Arena won CGW's "Role-Playing Game of the Year" award.

       

According to MobyGames's roundup of reviews, the game's best review (in its age) came from the March 1994 Joystick (a French magazine) at 91%; its worst from the May 1994 PC Zone at 62%: "The cities are dull. The interaction is dull. The playing area is too large. The quests and money-earning too laborious. There is no wit." The mode is around 80%, or a B- in my profession, which makes sense to me. 

       

Just a shot of me fighting a fire daemon. I liked it, and I didn't get to use it earlier.

       

What strikes me about almost all the reviews is the mention of size. None of them seem to have caught on that Arena's supposed vastness is completely illusory. Maybe some of the European magazines that I can't easily translate covered it, but nowhere in the English reviews did I see any acknowledgement about the extent of procedural generation. Maybe they weren't aware of it. Maybe the idea was just too new to them.

        

A ton has been written about both the game and the Elder Scrolls series. I like to try to synthesize everything in these "Summary and Rating" postings, but this is one of those games for which there is far more content out there than I have time to assemble in a single entry. Here are some highlights of what I've found elsewhere:

    

• The Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages confirms what commenters contributed to my last entry: The original conception was for the PC to be the ward of General Talin Warhaft, leader of the imperial guards, also confusingly named "Talin." This explains why in the manual, Ria refers to the PC as "Talin" while the cinematic shows Talin Warhaft being captured along with the Emperor (and the original endgame cinematic shows him being returned). There's even a cut slide from the opening narration that explains this.

   

The cut content.

      

• I only experienced a small percentage of the types of random quests available. They include delivery, retrieval, and escort quests (which always take place in towns), and dungeon quests in which you rescue a captive, capture a criminal, or slay a particular creature. I didn't experience any of these and indeed questioned whether they existed. I suppose you could have fun with the game without ever doing the main quest. Although the times I was given were always generous, apparently you can be given a deadline that's impossible to achieve.

• If you fail a palace quest, for some reason the game changes the entire palace and ruler, with males always switching to females, and vice versa. Those are some serious consequences. 

• There are plenty of people online who claim that if you're willing to put in the time, you can walk from one city to another. They claim it takes dozens of hours. I'd like to have some confirmation of this, but I'm not willing to put in the time.

      

Any volunteers?

      

• The full list of artifacts are Auriel's Bow, Chrysamere (two-handed sword), Ebony Blade (katana), Staff of Magnus, Voldendrug (hammer), King Orgnum's Coffer (gives gold once per day), Necromancer's Amulet, Oghma Infinium, Ring of Khajiit, Ring of Phynaster, Skeleton's Key, Warlock's Ring. They all appear again in subsequent games. I think Skyrim has them all except the Warlock's Ring and King Orgnum's Coffer.

• Bethesda began an expansion pack to Arena set in Mournhold in Morrowind. It morphed into The Elder Scrolls II before its setting was for some reason changed to Daggerfall. 

• Unused or cut content for the game includes art for beholders and balrogs, a slave market, and support for up to four party members at once.

        

I'm sorry we didn't get to see this guy.

       

The official cluebook for Arena was called Codex Scientia, written by Judith Weller and Ted Peterson. I didn't learn a lot from it, but here are some tidbits:

   

• "Resist Fire" lets you swim in lava. I suppose I should have guessed that, but I never tested it.

• Different classes have different casting costs for different spell types.

• The experience table in the cluebook goes only to Level 20. From what I read on various web sites, if you make it to Level 27, you get enough attribute points to max out all attributes at 100, which makes further leveling impossible because you can't leave the "level up" screen until you've distributed new points.

• There are apparently 16 annual holidays in Tamriel, each with effects on the local economy. For instance, on the New Life Festival (first day of the year), ale is free in the taverns. On Second Planting (7 Second Seed), temples heal for free. These are cute bits of world-building, but the odds that you'd be in town to enjoy the benefits of a particular holiday are lower than the likelihood you'd even need their benefits, given the generous economy. It's impossible to imagine a player saying, "Well, I need to buy a new sword, but I think I'll wait until the Merchant's Festival" (when all prices are discounted 50%). It's too bad that later Elder Scrolls games didn't implement them, though. It would have been fun to enter Whiterun or the Imperial City and find a different arrangement of NPCs, as Jester's Day would have required, or to find all NPCs mute, as Tales and Tallows requires.

          

Shots from the hintbook. The emblem on the cover reminds me of something I've seen before, but I can't place it.

       

I struggled with whether to include the game in my "Must Play" list despite the low score. The list includes the first games in a large number of series, including Ultima, Wizardry, The Bard's Tale, Might and Magic, Pool of Radiance, and Hero's Quest. I have so far not included any sequels in series whose first titles were not on the list. I think The Elder Scrolls is going to be a "first" in that regard. While it undoubtedly had a certain legacy for its own series, it's hard to detect a general legacy for Arena. Please let me know if you know of any games directly inspired by it, but my own search came up short. (There was notably no explosion of procedurally-generated content in the later 1990s.) Finally, in those earlier cases, I honestly think the first game of the series was a superlative example of that series. This is not true with Arena.

      

But I am certainly grateful for the series it spawned, which we'll have a chance to re-engage in a short time with The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall in 1996. And we might have a little more follow-up on Arena specifically. I have been in touch with developer Ted Peterson, who didn't have a chance to answer my questions for this entry. When I receive his contributions, I'll post a follow-up.

   

***

 

Previous entry in this series

 

For Further Reading:

 

The two primary influences on The Elder Scrolls: Arena:

 

• Ultima Underworld (1992)
• Legends of Valour (1992)

 05/06/2026

     

Game 575: Arena of Death (1991), Game 576: Darkhold (1987), and BRIEF: Buio! (1984)

 

Why does my sword have a blue tip?

      

Arena of Death

United Kingdom

Hibbs Creations Limited (developer and publisher) 

Released 1991 for Commodore 64

Date Started: 1 May 2026

Date Ended: 1 May 2026

Total Hours: 2

Difficulty:  Easy (2.0/5)

Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)     

     

Arena of Death is so simple that it's barely a game. You start it.

      

You allocate 100 points among three attributes: strength (damage done), stamina (health), and skill (accuracy).

            

You select the best weapon that your strength will support, plus a backup weapon in case you fumble it.

      

I can take a broadsword or anything below.

     

You select armor if you want. Different types of armor have different protective values but also subtract form your skill.

      

Those rings aren't available to the player, but you encounter enemies who have them.

      

You enter the arena. The game tells you what kind of enemy you're fighting, what kind of weapon he wields, and what kind of armor he has.

      

Prepare to die, salamander!

      

Each round, the game rolls for initiative. If you get the initiative, you can charge, swing, thrust, change weapons, surrender, or check your status.

  

If the enemy gets the initiative, you can parry, dodge, retreat, change weapons, counter-attack, or check your status. 

    

Defense options.

        

Once one of you has taken sufficient wounds, the battle is over. If you win, you get between 0 and 2 points added to your three ability scores, your character heals, and you return to the main menu, where you can select different weapons and armor or, absurdly, save the game.

 

Win 5 times, and the game tells you that you win the match "and your freedom." At that point, saving the game (which is absurd) becomes possible. 

   

Win 10 times and you win the game and get listed in the Hall of Fame.

           

This was unexpected.

      

For my first character, I chose 40 strength, 40 stamina, and 20 skill. I equipped a broadsword. I won every match and had won the game 20 minutes later. My opponents, in order, were a lizard man, a "Chester," a centaur, a lizard man, a kobold, a goblin, a centaur, a dwarf, a bugbear, and another Chester.

   

Since what happens during battle is invisible, I have no idea which attacks and defenses work best, or whether the best strategy changes for different opponents or different opponents' weapons and armor. I similarly don't know whether certain weapons work better against certain opponents or certain armor.

        

The character status screen.

      

The points you get for each victory aren't really sufficient to have achieved a new weapon level by the end of the game, so the "development" isn't worth much.

   

Enemies I encountered in subsequent passes through the game include gnolls, warlocks, and warriors.  

        

"Like, I was fighting myself . . . or . . . something?"

     

In the rare case that you die, there's a chance of a resurrection. 

      

It's a good thing I didn't die or surrender often, because if either thing happens, the game asks for a disk (I don't know whether it wants the main disk or a save disk) and then refuses to accept anything that you insert. 

     

The game is sort of an all-text Darkwood (1992) but without the inventory upgrades that game offered in between matches. It gets a 9 on the GIMLET, nothing rising higher than a 2, 0s in "Game World," "NPCs," and "Economy."

    

Arena was created by Patrick Hibbs of Hibbs Creations Limited. No other games seem to be associated with him. I don't know if it's the same company, but a company by that name has four free apps on the Amazon app store, all from 2021: Different Types of Tea, History of Lifted Jeep Wrangler, How to Renovate Your Bathroom, and Advantages of Swimming. All appear to be text only; none have any reviews.

    

***** 

     

     

Darkhold

United States
Softdisk (developer and publisher); published in Loadstar magazine

Released 1987 for Commodore 64

Date Started: 1 May 2026 

Date Ended: 1 May 2026

Total Hours: 2

Difficulty:  Easy (2.0/5)

Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)     

    

Darkhold is an action game in which one or two players joystick their characters (a warrior and/or a wizard) around a dungeon, kill enemies, and collect treasures. It was created by frequent Loadstar contributor John Mattson, whose work we saw previously in Questwriter (1990), Labyrinth (1991), and Knight's Quest (1991).

    

The dungeon has four levels. Each level has rooms arranged in an 8 x 8 grid, wrapping, for a total of 64 rooms on each level and 256 levels in the dungeon. The characters navigate the larger dungeon corridors and then poke their heads into the individual rooms. Each room can contain some combination of:

   

• Stairs up or down.
• A monster (specters, basilisks, manticores, trolls, harpies, fire newts, dragons).
• A treasure chest.
• A healing fountain.

       

A basilisk blocks the way to a treasure chest.

    

Despite their names, both characters are pretty much the same in combat. They both have missile attacks activated by the joystick button, but enemies close the distance fast. As soon as a character touches an enemy, they're presumed to be in melee combat. It's over fast.

      

The wizard melees with a troll.

       

The goal of the game is to find four pieces to a medallion. They are stored on the four levels in random treasure chests. Treasure chests otherwise contain gold, which adds to each character's score. Collecting chests in rooms that have them is the only way to "clear" those rooms. If the room only has an enemy, with no chest, there's no reason to fight him, as you get no special benefits from killing enemies. If you pop into a room, see only an enemy, and immediately leave, the room is considered "cleared."

     

Hey, I'll take the W.

        

Various notes:

   

• Some enemies have ranged attacks. Harpies are the worst enemy in the game, as they have some kind of "magic field" that damages you as you spend any time in their presence.

• Healing fountains heal 30 hit points with each visit, and they're good for multiple visits. At some point, the healing fountain will disappear and the room will become a standard monster room with no chest.

• When two players play at once, one of them controls the "party" as they move around the dungeon. Once inside a room, the players can operate independently. But battle is over quickly, and enemies are optimized for a single character, so I can only imagine it was a boring, frustrating experience. Both characters have to independently leave the room using the same exit to continue. 

     

The two characters together in a room with a healing field.

      

• If you use the "fire" button on the joystick while outside a room, the game thinks you want to drink a potion. I never found a potion anywhere in the dungeon. It's possible I missed some documentation.

• Similarly mysterious are the "items" section of the main screen, which never show more than one item (the character's weapon upgrade). 

• If you just stand around in the corridors, enemies "ambush" you and draw you into a temporary room, though you can just immediately duck out, the same way you can in regular rooms. 

• Both characters can upgrade their weapons on the first level. They make a minor difference in battle, and the task is accomplished quickly, so it's not a huge part of the game. 

           

Wandering the hallways between rooms. The checkerboard rooms are unexplored; the ones with the blue wavy lines have healing fountains.

     

It's not really an RPG—no character development—but it was over fast and it was diverting enough for an hour or so. The levels are generous enough with healing fountains that you're never in any serious danger. It only gets a 7 on the GIMLET, lacking any real RPG elements.

 

 ***** 

        

      

Buio!

"Darkness!"

Italy

Editoriale Video (developer and publisher)

Released 1984 for ZX Spectrum

Rejected for: Insufficient character development 

     

Until I found a few entries in a ZX Spectrum database, I thought that Time Horn: Il Corno del Tempo (1991) was the first Italian RPG. It may still be. Buio! is yet another adaptation of The Wizard's Castle (1980) or Monster Combat (1980), and a relatively uninspired one at that. The only relevant statistic is the character's forza ("strength," but more accurately, "hit points"), which goes up and down based on luck more than experience or skill.

   

There's no backstory. The character is cast into a 16-level tower, randomized for each new game—a process that seems to take forever even accounting for the year and platform. Each level has 10 x 10 squares. Each square offer some combination of monsters, treasures, and special encounters. To get to the next level, you have to accumulate 2500 x L gold pieces, where "L" is the level you're currently on, then find the "key," which automatically teleports you along. Why they didn't just make the key a stairway is one of the many mysteries of Buio!

      

Starting out on Level 1 with no gold, 8000 hit points.

       

Combat is with generic mostri; the game doesn't even bother to pull from a database of different monster names. As combat begins, you have to decide whether to go for a leg (G), body (C), or head (T) attack, and hold down the appropriate key. Some monsters are particularly resistant to some attacks and vulnerable to others, but unless I'm missing something, the only way to tell is to try one of the options and see how fast the monster's health depletes. Meanwhile, your own health is depleting quite rapidly, even at era-accurate speeds. I had a tough time making my initial 8,000 hit points last the level. The only other option in combat is to run (R).

   

The combat screen. Nothing to do here but hold down the key.

        

Special encounters include piles of treasure, weapons that add to your health (there is typically only one of these per level), merchants who will sell weapons, teleporters that take you to random places, and enchanted rooms that raise and lower your strength. 

    

An "enchanted place" saps my strength.

       

A map of the level can be accessed every time you defeat five monsters. It shows the locations of rooms with monsters (M), weapons (A), keys (+), and special encounters (#). Monsters can wander into any room, though, so the "M" isn't really helpful. Movement is with the 5678 keys. It's probably an emulator issue, but I found the game to be horribly unresponsive to my keypresses.

       

The level map. I guess there are 496 monsters remaining.

        

I made it to Level 2, but no way am I wading through 15 more levels of this just for the inevitably brief congratulazioni! at the end. 

    

As a side note, I've never had any formal lessons in Italian, but my general familiarity with the language from food, music, architecture, wine, and Dean Martin songs, coupled with my knowledge of French and Spanish, means that I can almost always "triangulate" the language. Like if you know "woods" is bosque in Spanish and bois in French, it seems inevitable that it's bosco in Italian. Given that, the translation of Buio! surprised l'inferno out of me. It was on my "upcoming" list for weeks, and I just assumed it meant "wow!" or something. It has no cognates that I know of in the other Romance languages. Google says that it comes from a Latin word for reddish-brown. Imagine if there was an English language game called Reddish-Brown!

Arena: Won!

It sounds like Bethesda originally intended for the PC to be ported into later games.

        

I was somewhat bored with Arena by the end of the last entry, so I just raced through the last few dungeons without doing any extra side quests or anything. 

    

The last few dungeons are real time sinks. Not only are some of the levels extremely large, but the player is also encountering much more difficult enemies, including liches, iron golems, stone golems, and fire daemons. These enemies might individually take five minutes to kill, even if the battle goes well.

    

I thus adopted a few tricks to make the process go faster. Down stairways show up on the automap in blue if you get anywhere close to them. So I didn't have to explore every inch of the rather large final levels, I bought a large stack of Potions of Invisibility and used them to just race around the levels, maximizing coverage, until I found the blue stairways. Even on the bottom levels, where I had to explore more carefully to find quest items, Potions of Invisibility helped ensure that I didn't have to stop to fight every battle. Unfortunately, wraiths, ghosts, vampires, and liches can see through the invisibility.

     

Fortunately, wraiths die fast.

         

Other strategies:

   

• Commenter Vince is correct that "Shield" and "Mana Absorption" are a powerful team. You can create spells that call upon them for fairly low casting costs. Cast it, run around the level, let your shield absorb magical hits from creatures while simultaneously restoring your own mana bar, then cast again.

• I found a Mithril Longsword of Firestorm so I could take advantage of this powerful spell without having to constantly switch my weapon to fight higher-level enemies. If there's any enemy Mithril can't hit, I never found it.

• I also bought a large stack of Potions of Strength to enhance damage.

• I was much more liberal with "Passwall," allowing me to explore levels more systematically. 

 

Even with these tricks, I spent far more time on the game this week than I should have, particularly where it's the last week of classes and I'm behind in grading. One of these days, my students will find out about this blog, and I don't know if they'll forgive me.     

          

The Conclave of Baal kicks off the final quest.

     

The quest for the seventh and eight pieces were, as usual, split into two parts: one dungeon to find the map to the second dungeon, the second dungeon to find the piece of the Staff of Chaos. As this session began, I entered the Vaults of Gemin to find the map to the Murkwood. The thin excuse for this quest came from the Conclave of Baal in Stormhold. The priest told me that an initiate, "thinking to impress his masters," cast a destructive spell that caused the Vaults of Gemin to collapse. A tablet that held the map to Murkwood was lost.

   

The Vaults of Gemin were a two-level dungeon in Black Marsh. I think the first level was probably the single largest dungeon level of the game (maybe it was tied with the first three levels of the Mines of Khuras). If Arena were a grid-based game, the first Gemin level would be something like 100 x 100. The map occasionally had some piles of rubble to go with the "collapsed" story.

        

Yes, clearly some foul magic brought this whole place down.

       

Enemies included homonculuses, wraiths, hellhounds, ghosts, stone golems, and skeletons. Honestly, by this point in the game, almost all dungeons had almost all enemies, so listing them all doesn't make a lot of sense. I'll just focus on the new or particularly ubiquitous ones.

   

I got a bit lucky on the first level. The last few dungeons had located their stairs from Level 1 to Level 2 towards the center of the dungeon. Here, then, I just made a beeline straight down the middle, occasionally using "Passwall" instead of backtracking too much. Since the stairway was in the south-central part of the map, I saved myself hours of enemies (and, admittedly, experience points) over my usual strategy of following the outer edge first. 

     

I was prepared for a larger dungeon, but the second level was the last. It was large, but a lot of it was water, with about a dozen large islands, connected by bridges, each holding one or two large rooms. There were a lot of ghosts, wraiths, and homonculuses on the islands, and I made significant use of "Levitate" to get around the level quickly.

    

And yet I took only this pathetic screenshot.

        

Fortunately, the room with the tablet had a riddle on the door. For some reason, I didn't write it down or take a screenshot, but the answer was ONION and the riddle had something to do with peeling off a silk layer and crying.

     

I say "fortunately" because I don't think I would have noticed the tablet on the floor if the riddle hadn't informed me that there was something important there:

     

That really blends with the floor.

      

Back in Stormhold, the Conclave of Baal marked the location of Murkwood on my map, and pretty soon I was there.

      

I don't much care for the idea of an Elder Scrolls game in Black Marsh, but this area would be cool with modern graphics and sound.

        

Murkwood was two levels. The first was very large in total space, but mostly open, with occasional hedgerows. Fog made it difficult to see far in the distance. Wolves, homonculuses, medusas, and fire daemons made up most of the enemies.

   

The center of the level had a small hedge maze that brought me to a door. As you might guess, it had another riddle. The last two lines were enough for me (LOVE).    

     

Note the homonculus coming out of the mist.

         

The second level was very small, consisting of a kind of island with a pit around it. It looks intimidating, but pits are easy to jump over and cause no damage if you fall into them. (It occurred to me belatedly that fall damage isn't a thing in this game at all.) The central room, with the staff piece, had yet another riddle:

      

It's funny how they took pains to make some riddles rhyme and then just said "screw it" with others.

        

This one took me a few guesses. I was so sure it was RIVER that when I got it wrong, it threw me, and I went down some weird paths before remembering what rivers are made of.

   

The central island also had six "cells," each with an iron golem. If I had felt it was necessary, this would have been a great place to grind. Six iron golems are worth about 180,000 experience points, and to reset them, I just would have had to go up the stairs and back down. I just grabbed the staff piece and got out of there, though.

     

That would be the golems busting out of their cages.

            

"You amaze me with your tenacity," Jagar Tharn said when he appeared in my dreams. He, instead of Ria Silmane, told me that the final piece was in Dagoth-Ur in Morrowind. Morrowind fans will know that the later game retconned the name of the mountain as Red Mountain. Dagoth-Ur is the name of the game's villain, who lives in the mountain. Nonetheless, it's a mild retcon, and you could see how the name of the inhabitant could be conflated with the place. Anyway, since it's so prominent (and visible from every city in the province), the game had to pretend that the specific entrance that I needed was hidden, not the mountain as a whole.

     

I should have stopped here and posted this as the winning screenshot.

          

More important, when Ria Silmane did appear to confirm the final location, she said: "The entrance to that fabled mountain has disappeared with the Dwarves that mined it." The disappearance of the dwarves—later called Dwemer—is probably the biggest mystery in the entire Elder Scrolls setting, and here they've already referenced it in the first game. Amazing. 

       

Ria Silmane plants a seed that will spawn a forest.

           

My first stop in Morrowind was in Ebonheart, here on the mainland side of the province, not on the island of Vvardenfall (as in Morrowind). I got lucky with that choice, as that's where I found the quest for the map to Dagoth-Ur. In the palace, King Casik told me that he had the Anvil of Mithas, "greatest of the Dwarven blacksmiths." But he needed the only item that could shape something on the anvil without destroying it: The Hammer of Gharen. It was to be found in a dungeon called Black Gate.

       

Arena is like Star Wars: Every single character and place later gets an extensive history in the expanded universe.

        

Black Gate took over five hours, or almost half of this entire session. The stairs from Level 1 to Level 2 were neither in the center of the level nor along its outside edges; they were in the southwestern quadrant, but away from the walls. As such, I had mapped almost all of the rest of the level before I found them. (I did continue to avoid many of the battles with Potions of Invisibility.) 

     

That doesn't make a lot of sense, but at this point, I'm not going to question it.

          

The second level was almost as big, and the Hammer of Gharen was in a room surrounded by three locked doors, each requiring a different key. I realized later that any one of the keys would have been enough (the doors are three options, not in sequence), but somehow I had the idea that I would have to find all of them, so I ended up mapping basically the entire level. The place was lousy with iron golems, which are huge, so sometimes I had to fight them just to get past them. 

   

There's not much else to report from this five-hour process, which I suppose is a big part of what's wrong with the game. I finally found the keys, got into the chamber, picked up the hammer, and returned it to Ebonheart. The king pointed me to the entrance to Dagoth-Ur. I stocked up on potions and had my blades repaired before heading off. 

       

This just makes me want to play Morrowind.

           

Dagoth-Ur was a three-level dungeon with, as you might expect, a lava theme. It introduced the first new enemy in a while: vampires. These bastards cast powerful fireballs, regenerate hit points in the middle of combat, and have to be killed with spells. If you kill them with weapons, their sprite changes to a skeleton corpse with tatters of their robes hanging on, but they soon pop back to life (fortunately, not at full health). Spells like "Fireball" and "Firestorm" end them permanently.

     

A "dead" vampire.

        

I reverted to my "right wall first" exploration pattern, which was fortunate, as I found the stairs to Level 2 before exploring more than a quarter of the level. Level 2 took a bit longer, as the stairway from there to Level 3 required me to pass through five doors locked with different types of keys. Four of them could be bypassed with "Passwall," leaving only the diamond key—which was, of course, the last one that I found. In between was a large level of lava tunnels and pools, vampires, fire daemons, and medusas.

       

Arriving in the final area.

      

The final level consisted mostly of a huge lava chamber peppered with islands, most with foes like homonculuses and stone golems. The final piece of the Staff of Chaos was in a depression surrounded by high walls. I had to climb up and then drop down.

      

This feels like a trap.

         

As  I reached for the last piece, I got a riddle:

   

From the beginning of eternity,

To the end of time and space,

To the beginning of every end,

And the end of every place . . .

    

This one took me a while. You may get it faster. By way of hints, I'll say that it helps to have experience with cryptic crosswords and I was very interested to hear how this riddle was localized in other languages. Then I looked it up and it turns out Arena only ever had an official English release. That must have saved them some trouble, not just with this riddle.

    

That's a lot of burning and brightness and cold and strength for a staff drained of its power.

          

After I found the final piece, Jagar Tharn popped up in my dreams to deliver the twist: "Have you discovered what I have known all along? The Staff is drained of all magical potential. I did it myself before scattering the pieces . . . It is a useless stick . . . Come find me if you dare."

   

So the entire quest for the Staff of Chaos was for nothing according to the game's own lore. It's still necessary, as mechanically you can't get into the emperor's palace without having finished it, but still. It's one of those tropes I hate.

        

I'm coming to kill him. Why would I let myself be "turned away"?

       

I never saw Ria Silmane again, which surprised me. Maybe the power tethering her to Mundus finally ran out.  

    

The final showdown took place in the Imperial City, the only city that the player can visit in the central Imperial Province. Imperials do not exist yet, so the populace is a melting pot of other races. I know some Elder Scrolls fans were upset when Oblivion retconned the Imperial Province to have a rather bland European climate rather than the jungle described in some early sources, but those sources post-date this game. The wilderness around the Imperial City is pretty standard northern-hemisphere forest, snow-covered during the winter months.

      

The jungles of the Imperial Province.

       

There's also no White Gold Tower in Arena, but rather a more standard palace accessible from a southern gate.

    

The Imperial Palace.

      

As I entered, a cinematic showed Jagar Tharn ripping off his Uriel Septim VII disguise and then taunting the character:

     

I have watched you as you blundered your way to this place. At one time I even considered approaching you with an offer to lead my Imperial Guards, but it is plain that you are not worthy of such a position. Be not fooled by what you would call success in your journey across the Empire, for you have never faced a being as powerful as I. Your death shall be slow and torturous, a suffering that shall span the millennium. Come, I await you in the dungeons below.

          

Great. An offer to have the job I already had 18 levels ago.

     

The Imperial Palace had four levels, but it was a bit unique in that a) the first level was fully mapped in my automap, b) there were multiple stairways between levels, and c) there wasn't a single locked door or riddle. Accordingly, it didn't take very long to get to the end, even though the creators loaded the dungeon with the toughest enemies, including a new one: liches. They can see invisibility, cast a ranged shock spell, and regenerate. When I had to fight them, I mostly spammed "Firestorm." When possible, I cast "Shield/Absorb Magic" and ran past them.

       

These liches may be undead, but they have strangely full-bodied hair.

            

It didn't take me long to reach the fourth level, another huge lake of fire surrounded by corridors that force you to go around the entire perimeter before you can enter. Fortunately, they were wide enough that I could just blow past most enemies.

   

Jagar Tharn, looking not much different than a vampire, was by himself in a structure in the center of the lava lake. I got my buffing spells up and attacked as soon as I entered. I soon discovered that he was completely immune to all physical weapons. He casts a variety of spells. I had to defeat him by casting my own spells, but by this time, I had plenty of my own, plenty of Potions of Restore Magic, and plenty of items capable of casting spells. I just had to keep up with Potions of Healing. As with the liches, I mostly defeated him with my sword's "Firestorm."

    

Hey, I'm a BattleMage, too!

      

Technically, he never died. He just stood still and stopped attacking. I was confused about some things later and checked online, and I guess he was supposed to surround himself with a protective bubble, but I never saw that. I just saw him stiffen and go inert. I took the opportunity to scout the area. His little building had four cells, two with treasure, one with a Mithril Key, and one (opened with the Mithril Key) with a heretofore-unmentioned Jewel of Fire.

       

Mondain's Gem . . . uh, rather, the Jewel of Fire.

       

The Jewel of Fire was apparently the key to defeating him, as when I touched it, I got a little cinematic of the jewel itself, then the congratulations message at the top of this entry.

       

This is all I got from the endgame cinematic.

       

It turns out, I was robbed somehow. This video shows what I was supposed to see: the aforementioned cinematic of the character approaching the Jewel of Fire, Jagar shouting, "You must not! The Jewel holds my lifeforce!" before melting, a portal opening, and Uriel Septim VII returning to thank the character for his assistance and naming him Eternal Champion. On a reload, not only did I not get any of that, but the game didn't even show me the first part of the cinematic. It just jumped from me touching the Jewel of Fire to the final message above. Must be some video setting.

       

Part of what I was supposed to see.

       

A few final notes:

   

• Apparently, you don't even need to fight Tharn; you can just run to the key, grab it, unlock the gate, and touch the Jewel of Fire.

• The ending I was supposed to get is from the CD-ROM version of the game. The original floppy version had a different cinematic, in which Uriel is shown portalling out of Oblivion with his guard captain, Talin, who I thought I was supposed to be. That's definitely how the manual begins. I haven't been able to find a version that does not begin that way, but I presume that one exists.

     

The original game also has thanks from the guard captain.

      

• The voice of Uriel Septim VII in the CD-ROM version is uncredited, but it sounds plausibly enough like Patrick Stewart (who did the voice in Oblivion). The two versions of Uriel look quite different, of course.

• I was Level 19 when I finished the game, about one million experience points shy of Level 20. 

• After the winning message, my character was returned to the Imperial City, where I could keep playing.

• It would have been nice to have a closing message from Ria Silmane, just to bookend things. 

• I somehow have 9 pieces of the Staff of Chaos in my inventory. 

          

This screenshot also shows how much I overdid it on potions.

        

I look forward to rating this one. I don't expect it to do terribly well despite its landmark status. While it set up so much for later games in the series, the gameplay that it offered was relatively bland. I enjoyed it a lot better in the opening stages, when dungeons were smaller and individual battles quicker.

   

Final time: 43 hours 

 

***

 

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05/06/2026