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