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 cast 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 piece of 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 

Realms of Arkania: Star Trail: Summary and Rating

 

What moment from the game do you think this box image was trying to recreate?

      

Realms of Arkania: Star Trail

Original German name: Das Schwarze Auge: Sternenschweif ("The Dark Eye: Star Trail")

Germany

attic Entertainment Software (developer); Fantasy Productions Verlag (original publisher); Sir-Tech Software (U.S. publisher)

Released 1994 for DOS

Date Started: 8 January 2026

Date Ended: 21 April 2026

Total Hours: 60

Difficulty:  Moderate (3.0/5)

Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)     

   

Summary:

     

This sequel to Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny (1992) uses the same interface —first-person dungeon and town exploration, overhead world exploration by menu, combat on a grid with an axonometric perspective—with a few improvements. Thematically, it's quite a bit different, requiring the party to visit only a small number of locations in its small world, offering only a couple of side quests and dungeons.

   

The plot concerns the recovery of an artifact called the Salamander Stone, which will help unite the Elves and Dwarves against the orcs, who seem to be conquering everything. The plot seems to lose its way a few times, and both it and the game world are difficult to interpret without external sources covering Das Schwarze Auge setting. The game has a lot of logistical considerations, particularly when it comes to overland travel, which sometimes created satisfying moments strategically and sometimes just annoyed me. In general, though, the game offers a full, sophisticated set of RPG elements, including detailed character creation, meaningful NPC interaction, tactical combat, inventory logistics, and a meaningful economy. In each of these areas, it regrettably has a number of negatives that balance its positives.

    

****

    

On a reload, I was able to win the final battle without losing anyone. I chose the quickest option, just re-fighting that battle, this time understanding how it worked. (It helped that one of my warriors had the Dragon Slayer equipped, which did a lot of damage.) My characters were still dying of thirst as I exited the dungeon, but I trust that doesn't carry into the next game or, if it does, that I'll be in a city when the game begins.

     

"All of you, this time."

       

As for the rest of it, there were a lot of things that worked well and a lot of things that didn't. The game has solid RPG elements, including its use of skills, the utility of leveling, tactical options in battle, a number of special encounters with role-playing options, and the survival elements. On the negative side, I think it was a bit sloppy in the way that it revealed story and lore to the player; inventory upgrades are few and far between; the translation from German is a bit wonky in places; and I never really warmed to traveling across the game world by menu.

      

You have my comments on combat from the last entry, and with apologies to those who disagree, I simply don't think the spell system works very well. It has the same problem as skills, really: Until you've played for a while, you don't have a strong sense of what will actually be useful. With skills, you get so many points that it isn't as much of a problem. With spells, so many start deep in the negatives (and in many schools, you can only advance by one per level) that you really need some experience or spoilers to know what to focus on. On the plus side, I do like that many spells have out-of-combat uses.

       

My mage's spell values at the end of the game. That's a lot of negatives.

         

Then you have a bunch of stuff that's simply weird, annoying, or both:

      

• A party created in Star Trail spends the entire game getting to the same experience level as an imported party. 

• You're told not to loot anything in the first dungeon, which would be absurd if taken literally, since the Girdles of Might are practically essential. Plus, I think you need to take some items to get through the dungeon.

    

There are only about six recipes in the game, and here are two of them—but, apparently, I wasn't supposed to take them.

     

• You can create new characters at any temple but can only add them to your party if you go all the way back to Kvirasim. (Some reviews made it sound like it was possible to create and add characters elsewhere, but if it is, it never worked in the places that I tried it.)

• The subtitle of the game refers to a side quest that cannot be completed. 

• The party irrecoverably loses all its equipment (except magic items) midway through the game.

• The main quest is for the Salamander Stone. After finding it, the party has it stolen in scripted encounters at least three times.

          

Adding insult to injury, I still don't know who this jackass was.

        

These are just the major ones. I think my entries documented a lot of minor annoyances, such as a chest that could only be opened with a specific interface setting, a series of deadly traps that there is no way to avoid, characters throwing tantrums and injuring themselves on locked doors, and an encumbrance system that's absurdly punishing given all the stuff the game wants you to carry for survival purposes. 

      

I've played plenty of games with difficult doors. This is the only one where my characters were this uncool about it.

          

But I'll end with some miscellaneous pluses: an excellent automap, a helpful diary (that I under-used), a welcome auto-combat option for easy battles, and an economy that never stops being relevant, particularly with the ability to donate to temples for favors. 

         

The game manual's screenshot of the diary makes a joke about reading the manual. This is getting too meta.

        

I don't know what the GIMLET will show, but it feels to me that Blade of Destiny was a better game. Star Trail makes definite interface improvements, particularly in combat, but Blade had a more sensible plot, more side-dungeons and side-quests, and better reasons to explore its large game world. I would expect Star Trail to come out a couple of points behind.

   

On the GIMLET, I give Star Trail:

   

• 4 points for the game world.
• 6 points for character creation and development.
• 5 points for NPC interaction.
• 6 points for encounters and foes.
• 5 points for magic and combat.
• 4 points for equipment.
• 6 points for the economy.
• 4 points for quests.
• 6 points for graphics, sound, and interface.
• 5 points for gameplay.

   

That gives us a total of 51, which to my surprise is 7 points higher than Blade of Destiny. Looking through my final entry for that game, I guess I had more complaints about its mechanics than I remember.

          

This doesn't strike me as the most competent of ads. You really have to struggle to see the name of the game.

       

If you have any experience with my GIMLET, you know that a score of 51 puts it in the top 10% of games rated so far, which may seem to be at odds with the tone of some of my entries. This has happened before, and it generally happens when the game could have scored higher in some of its categories if not for an equal number of flaws. "Character creation and development" is a good example. I'd love to give the game an 8 in that category. Classes are well-differentiated; class composition truly matters; leveling up feels rewarding; the large variety of skills gives you the chance to create unique "builds" for characters; there are (albeit limited) class-specific dialogues and encounters. All very positive. But then you have things like arbitrary caps on the number of times you can allocate skill and spell points per level, the chance of "failing" each allocation and wasting half your skill points, skills that aren't used, random rolls that give you only 2 hit points per level, and numerous irrevocable choices about swapping points that can't possibly be understood until you've already played the game. And so the game gets the same score (6) as, say, one of the Gold Box games, which don't do anything particularly spectacular in character development but also don't give me anything to complain about. Some games, in short, reach a 6 by simply adding; some reach it by adding and then subtracting. Those latter games are going to offer more sources of complaint.

        

Those fans upset with my coverage of the game would really take issue with some of its contemporary reviews. Here's Petra Schlunk from the December 1994 Computer Gaming World: "To say that I had fun would be inaccurate; to say that I cursed and raged against this game, yet could not stop playing it, would be closer to the truth." She goes on to complain about encumbrance issues, getting kicked out of NPC conversations, boots that always wore out, and the length of combat. ("Actually hitting an opponent or successfully casting a spell is a rare thing," she says in a nice moment of solidarity.) In the first star rating I can ever remember seeing in CGW, she gives it 3/5 stars. "Extremely aggravating in spots . . . For the hard-core only."

      

These bastards are going to live in my head rent-free for a while.

         

I don't know why I still bother to consult Dragon magazine, which never knew what it was doing with computer game reviews. It would stop reviewing computer games entirely within a couple of years, and at this point in its life was offering them in an "Eye of the Monitor" section that featured an annoying back-and-forth between two reviews (Jay and Dee) instead of a single coherent review. Here, they thought it was too logistically complex and difficult, but they praised aspects of the interface and combat system. I'd like to hang my hat on some choice quotes (""Why can't a game be challenging without being whimsically evil?"), but it's clear they didn't make it far out of the starting city, and it's hard to respect that. 

      

Before moving on to the European reviews, I should mention that at least one western source, the February 1995 PC Gamer, felt a lot better about the game: "Everything diehard roleplaying enthusiasts have been waiting for." While it allows that the game might be confusing to newcomers, and that "its complexities can take a bit of practice to master," it promises real rewards for players who "invest enough time to master its wonderful subtleties."

      

A wonderful subtlety.

      

German sources rated it generally more positively, including 86% from the June 1994 issues of both Play Time and PC Games,  87% from the May 1994 Power Play (which also gave it RPG of the Year), 90% from the November 1993 PC Joker, and 92% from the July 1994 ASM. It's impossible not to suspect a certain amount of native pride in those reviews, but they probably also benefit from playing the game in its native language with a baseline understanding of Das Schwarze Auge setting. There's also the stereotypical German affinity for logistics, to which this game particularly caters.

    

The Dragon reviewers mentioned playing with the cluebook. I was interested in taking a look to see whether, as with many games of the era, it provided a bit more lore and background. It doesn't, alas. It's a very workaday cluebook, with maps of all the areas and a "walkthrough" that gives simple instructions without explaining anything. It elides most of the optional areas and encounters in the game, although it does take the party through the entire Star Trail episode, which I believe was optional. However, the cluebook does have an interesting interview with attic co-founder Guido Henkel. He relates how he,  Hans-Jürgen Brändle, and Jochen Hamma founded the company in 1990 after their previous company, Dragonware Games, folded. Their first productions were Lords of Doom (1990), Die Drachen von Laas (1991) and Spirit of Adventure (1991). As fans of the tabletop Das Schwarze Auge, they dreamed of developing a computer game in the setting but were too nervous about approaching the owners of the rights. Eventually, those owners came to attic rather than the other way around.

     

According to MobyGames: "The image [of the] Elvenking during the end scene was inspired by David Bowie. There was a contest about this image. The first player who would send the correct answer to the designers could win a prize."

          

Henkel seems to regard Blade of Destiny as particularly flawed and is proud of the ways that his team fixed its problems in Star Trail. He is also particularly proud of the automap and in-game journal. The company went with Sir-Tech for American distribution on the strength of the Wizardry history; Henkel was playing Crusaders of the Dark Savant (1992) at the same time they inked the deal.

  

We are early in the life of the Dark Eye setting. Realms of Arkania III: Shadows over Riva (1996) will be with us in a couple of years. I don't think we'll be seeing a group of mobile-only games in the early 2000s (e.g., The Dark Eye: Nedime - The Caliph's Daughter, The Dark Eye: Secret of the Cyclopses), but assuming I survive that long, we'll definitely see The Dark Eye: Drakensang (2008). In the 2010s, there are several games under the Blackguards label, Demonicon (2013), some titles that MobyGames classifies as adventure games, and of course the 2015-2017 remake of the first two Arkania games using the Unity Engine. As of 2026, the latest PC game in the setting is The Dark Eye: Book of Heroes (2020). There's a later iPhone game called Forgotten Fables: Wolves on the Westwind that sites list as part of the universe.

       

Combat in the 2017 remake of Star Trail. It keeps the tactical grid, but you can zoom around and rotate it.

           

Alas, attic Entertainment Software wasn't around for this resurgence. Shadows over Riva was their last and only game after Star Trail, although they did publish games from a few other developers, including one that we may see: Druid: Daemons of the Mind (1995). In interviews, Guido Henkel said that the licensing costs for The Dark Eye prevented the series from being profitable for the developers. He left attic in the late 1990s, and the company closed in 2001.

      

Henkel went on to work at Interplay, where he produced Planescape: Torment (1999) and apparently modeled for the cover art of the Nameless One. He reportedly lives in California now. He dabbled for a while in mobile games and now works as a film restorer. Johchen Hamma remained in the games industry. He was the executive producer of ArcaniA: Gothic 4 for Spellbound Entertainment. He's also listed as a consultant on the Blackguard titles (2014-2015). Hans-Jürgen Brändl went to work for Blue Byte Software and worked on the Settlers series of city simulators. He died in 2005.

 

Despite my rocky experience with Star Trail, I am authentically looking forward to its sequel, and I don't think there's any chance I won't select it for the primary list in 1996.  

      

****

    

Previous entry in this series

 

For further reading:

     

My coverage of attic Entertainment Software's other titles:

    

• Lords of Doom (1990) 
• Die Drachen von Laas (1991)  
• Spirit of Adventure (1991) 
• Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny (1992) 

04/26/2026 

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