Star Trail: Won!

       

I won Star Trail in a long, frustrating final session in which I had to peek at spoilers a couple of times. I do not entirely blame the game for it being so long and frustrating. If there's one thing that Star Trail has hammered home over and over, it's that the player must Be Prepared. Granted, I didn't know at the end of the last session that I was about to embark on a six-hour, three-level dungeon adventure, but the moment the wall closed behind me, I should have recognized the possibility.

   

I had prepared a little bit by ensuring that I had plenty of rations and what I thought was a reasonable number of herbs and potions. But knowing what I know now, I should have left Ingramosch's house and done the following:

     

• Stashed a bunch of my exploration gear at the warehouse. That's clearly what it's for. There's no need to carry all the outdoor gear into the dungeon.

• Bought a lot more arrows for my one missile character, Toliman. He only had about a dozen left when this session started.

• Figured out Lyra's weapon situation. I had been putting her combat points into "polearms," but she hasn't carried any kind of polearm for most of the game. She had a quarterstaff at one point, but I think it immediately broke. I had her equipped with a cudgel at this point, for which she had a skill of -3.

• Bought an extra weapon or two, particularly for Gnomon, as his favored weapon (the axe) is hard to find.

• Spent the 500 ducats I was carrying for no reason on even more potions. If I was worried about space, I could have traded regular healing potions for their "strong" variety.

• Doubled or tripled-up on waterskins.

        

This felt like enough.

       

Instead, I foolishly pressed forward, trusting that the Dungeon Would Provide. Dumb.

      

What the game called the "Vault Beneath Tjolmar" began with a puzzle. After the battle in Ingramosch's foyer, I had recovered a document that read "2L, 4R, 4L." This seemed to refer to the walls of the small room, which were covered with foliage decorations that could be manipulated. Manipulating the second wall to the left of the entrance resulted in a grating sound somewhere. I then tried the fourth wall to the right of that and got nothing, which reset the whole puzzle. It turned out that all three of the directions were based on the entrance, not each other. Once I worked that out, I got the three walls in the right sequence, and the way forward opened.

   

Only one step into the new area, the wall crashed shut behind me. That should have been my cue to reload.

     

"I'm sure it will be fine." — some idiot who has played far fewer than 573 RPGs.

           

The Vault was a large level in which I had to find multiple keys to advance through the corridors. Movement was strange in this dungeon. Even though I had continuous movement turned off, the game kept moving the party in half-steps. Some encounters:

   

• A "tree" of thorns and spines concealing a key. While trying to reach in and get the key, both Gnomon and Toliman were pricked and poisoned by the thorns. Fortunately, Lyra was able to cure them.

     

I should have put more into dexterity.

       

• An elevated area in which we were trapped by a door crashing behind us. There were some death's head murals that allowed us to manipulate some kind of mechanism, but nothing I did got the door open. I had to look this one up. The solution involved splitting the party and sending one person to lift the grate while someone else manipulated the mechanism. Even though several puzzles have required it, I never really came to grips with party-splitting as a puzzle-solving mechanism.

• A chest offered writing utensils, a brass mirror, a lute, a net, and an Elixir of Wisdom. I tried to imagine an encounter that this was possibly setting us up for. Nothing really came along.

• A chest at the end of a hallway was guarded by a chained troll. The troll stood up and broke his chains as we approached. The resulting battle was pretty easy. We just cast "Lightning" to blind the troll, then hacked him to death. 

    

This spell is almost unfair.

      

• A couple of other chests offered blue rings, green rings, and a red amulet. I never really found out what they did. They didn't seem to affect our statistics.

• There was a room in which several pillars had the face of Hesinde on them. Running into one of them led to an encounter in which Hesinde asked if we would sacrifice four points of astral energy permanently. We said no. Oddly, Mahasim leveled immediately after that. If he hadn't, I wouldn't have noticed that we got about 1,000 experience points just for saying no to the question. The thing is, this was repeatable. We could have stood there, bumping into the pillar, saying no, until we hit the game's maximum level. I resisted the temptation and moved on.

     

The game makes it clear what I'll lose, but not what I'll gain.

      

• A block of ice next to a water basin. There was a key in the basin and a warrior woman encased in the block of ice. Lilli had the "Melt Solid" spell at Level -2 (I had never put any points into it), but she cast it until it worked. Out of the ice came a Level 5 fighter named Helen. We welcomed her into our party. She stayed for a while but ran off when we went down to Level 3. 

      

Him may not have a name, but apparently Him at least has a sex.

        

• There were shields hanging on a lot of the walls. If we walked up to any of them, the game asked: "How about hitting it a really hard blow just to see what'll happen?" If we said yes, most of the shields rang out like gongs, but nothing happened. One of them made only a soft thud, and we had the chance to investigate it further, but the game kept saying we didn't find anything worth noting.

      

What was the point of this?

      

• We met ghouls in a hallway. Mahasim failed some attribute check and fled the party in a panic. We had to find him after killing the ghouls. 

• A flame key opened a chest with a "Dragon Slayer" sword. It was a two-handed sword, which in this game's classification system is a "two-handed weapon" and not a sword, so none of my characters were proficient with it.

• Multiple secret doors, including one that led to a large black statue with a small black statuette (a replica of the larger one) in a compartment. I never found out what it did, if anything.

     

What are the downsides?

       

• A stairway going down was a fake. Instead, it scattered the party across the previous dungeon level. I had to reunite them and find the real staircase, which was behind a secret door. 

            

There were numerous battles with cultists, warriors, and cave spiders. In combat, early in the level, the battle started with only a single cultist. I nailed him with "Lightning" in the first round and then put the battle into computer mode to finish him off. To my surprise, three of my characters ended up dead. I reloaded and tried again, this time in manual mode, and it turned out that additional enemies joined after the first round. I can't remember that happening elsewhere in the game. Anyway, Xamidimura hit Level 6 after that battle, so at last, in this final dungeon, my characters reached the levels they would have had if I'd just imported a party from Blades.

       

One of the more difficult battles during this session.

       

At the end of the level, I went down to the next one, and the name of the dungeon changed to the Temple of the One Without Name. I continued having the same sorts of encounters, plus undead (skeletons and zombies). A well early in this level was the first and last water I found in the dungeon. 

       

The skulls are a nice touch.

      

It wasn't long before I reached a stretch of corridor in which I got the same message multiple times:

        

Not only does the game insult me for failing to avoid an unavoidable trap, but it also insinuates that we're drunk.

      

With most traps, you have a chance of detecting and disarming. Not this one. I tried every possible spell to boost detection or to protect the party, but nothing worked. A few of these messages could kill several of my characters, so I ended up having to sleep for practically a week in the middle of the corridor in order to get through. Oh, and triggering these traps didn't disable them. They were happy to keep shooting if I had to go back through the same stretch of corridor, or indeed even if I stood in the same square too long. 

   

On the other side of these traps was the way down to the third level, but it was protected by a door that wanted a four-part key to open. These four parts—amulet pieces—were each carried by skeleton warriors in a maze in the southwest corner. The kicker was, the pieces disappeared from my inventory and reappeared with the resurrected skeleton warriors if I let too much time pass. By the time I had initially recovered all four pieces, I checked my inventory and only had two. By the time I re-recovered those two, another one had disappeared. Finally, I got all four at once and was able to head downward.

     

The battles themselves were pretty easy.

      

At the bottom of the stairs, in a scripted event we could do nothing about, some hooded jackass managed to lift the Salamander Stone from Lilii Borea's backpack. He gloated that we "should have brought the Salamander Stone to Lowangen" (which we absolutely were in the process of doing when it was stolen the first time). He further explained that "it would be against [his temple's] interests for Elves and Dwarves to ally." His master, he concluded, wanted the stone for himself. He then disappeared. I guess maybe it was supposed to be Sudran Alatzer, the "wealthy businessman" who gave us the alternate quest to find the Salamander Stone after Elsurion Starlight asked us to find it for the Elves.

      

Of course. Whatever. Sure.

       

We had no choice but to keep moving. At the bottom of the stairs, we found a message on the wall that read: "Close in—I can hear your pounding hearts." Nearby was a large battle with cultists and druids. On their bodies, we recovered a piece of paper that said CULT. Finally, we hit a secret door with a combination lock, looking for four digits.

      

I think this is a direct quote from Hannibal Lecter.

      

I almost figured it out. I guessed correctly that the piece of paper and the message on the wall must mean something. I noted that the letters in CULT were also in the message. But I rejected the idea that the answer could have anything to do with the position of the letters, since the first three letters in CULT are right at the beginning of the message, "C" and "U" appear multiple times, and then the "T" is somewhere between positions 31 and 42 depending on whether spaces and punctuation are to be counted. If the combination were five digits, positioning might work. I thought it might be the number of each letter and tried 2311 but didn't get it.

      

I don't know what Toliman is so happy about.

         

I had to look it up. Apparently, it was the positions, only just in the relevant word and not in the message as a whole. What I didn't appreciate is that while "C" and "U" appear more than once, they always appear at the same position in their words. I thus wanted 1325. But wait! The hint I looked up said that 1725, 2325, and 2725 were also acceptable, I can't figure out the logic behind these. There aren't even seven letters in the first word. [Ed. Right after I published this, I figured it out. The alternate numbers are if you count from the beginning of the line rather than the word.]

  

More battles with undead, cultists, druids, and sorcerers followed in the subsequent sections of hallway. One of them cast "Iron Rust" on Gnomon and destroyed his axe. Lyra's cudgel also broke, but I think that one was wear-and-tear. I had no weapons to replace Gnomon's axe with; he was better by far with "Unarmed" than with two-handed weapons, so I didn't give him the Dragon Slayer sword. I kept hoping I'd find a replacement axe to no avail.

         

"Don't 'Fulminictus' me, bro!"

      

We reached an area with demonic visages on the pillars. Four of them had two-letters: AR, OR, ND, and KA. A fifth wanted the "name of the lord of these walls," which  the very title of the dungeon had been telling me was nothing at all. But I guessed correctly that the demon was looking for some combination of those syllables. I guessed something like KANDORAR the first time and had to fight two fire spirits. After that, I saved and reloaded if I got it wrong. It took a few more guesses before I got it right with ARKANDOR.

        

This would have been a better riddle if the answer had been a blank.

       

The way opened to the final area, in which I had to navigate a series of teleporters. The only major encounter in this area, other than the teleporters and battles, came when we found a magic helmet and a 500-year-old dragon claw. Lilii Borea started to freak out for some reason and threatened to leave the party. We had some odd role-playing choices.

     

None of these sound very nice.

        

It was right about this time that I started to get messages that my characters were dying of thirst. I had found no water after the fountain mentioned earlier, and each character had only brought one waterskin. I rested too often between battles and after that disastrous trap corridor. The worst part was, there was no way I could go back at this point. Resting would have killed the entire party, and I didn't think at the time that I could make it back through that "Good show!" corridor without resting. Later, I realized I probably could have made it with potions, but for now, I just kept moving forward, hoping I'd find water somewhere.

   

There were more battles with cultists, druids, and some kind of demon called a "heshthot." Finally, I reached a large chamber. In the middle, I was taken to what turned out to be the last battle. Once I realized what was happening, I reloaded and prepared a bit by chugging healing potions (why don't they do anything for thirst?) and magic restoration potions. I thought I had a lot of the latter, but they weren't enough to restore more than about half of my magic points. That had ramifications for the final battle.

         

That should be worth one more spell.

      

This final area depicted a cavern with stalagmites jutting from the floor and a large stone mound with the bones and equipment of previous adventurers at its base. A robed man who I assumed was the same one who stole the Salamander Stone, stood in the center alongside a petrified version of what turned out to be Ingramosch. The robed man gloated: "Huh, you must be thinking you cornered me? Far from it! You have walked into my trap. Arkandor will take care of you!"

       

The man disappeared in a puff of smoke and an enormous dragon crawled out of the dark corner of the cavern and perched himself on the mound. "How sweet," it roared. "Fresh meat!" The battle began.

        

You're not going to find it very juicy.

          

(I should mention that with the speech pack, the cultist's and the dragon's speeches are fully voiced, and the dragon's voice is particularly well done. I'd encourage you to watch it on YouTube: Here's the beginning of the battle, and here's the end, only I experienced it without the relentless pulse of inappropriately upbeat music practically overwhelming everything else.) 

    

We've already covered all of the mistakes that I'd made up to this point. My party was on death's door from thirst (although admittedly this didn't have any effect yet on our statistics); Gnomon and Lyra had no weapons; Toliman had only a few arrows; and my mages were all at half-mast with their astral points. Then it turns out I made three more major errors before and during the battle:

   

1. I don't know how much of a difference the Dragon Slayer sword would have made, but it was in Xamidimura's possession. Her regular weapon was a longsword. She carried a shield in her left hand. Someone will tell me if I missed something, but I don't think there's any way to change from a one-handed weapon to a two-handed weapon in battle. If you try to simply switch weapons, the game says you can't do it with something in your other hand. There's a "Drop" command, but you cannot drop what's in your left hand, only what's in your inventory. You can switch the shield in your left hand for something else, but that still doesn't free up both hands. The only way it would work is if you switched the shield for something you could then "Use," leaving the hand free, but I had nothing that would work for this purpose. Thus, I fought the battle without Dragon Slayer.

       

Aaaargh!

       

2. I assumed Ingramosch was the dragon's ally. I mean, after all, this temple is under his house. I also didn't perceive that he was stoned/paralyzed/whatever. So I wasted time and spell points nailing him with "Lightning" for several rounds before I realized he was inert. When I tried to turn him to my side with "Evil Eye," the game told me that he was already on my side. I guess there was probably no way to cure his condition during battle, but I could have at least avoided wasting time on him.

     

Toliman adds insult to injury.

        

3. I didn't understand how targeting worked for the dragon. During my first few rounds, I cast "Lightning" and damage spells at the dragons, and fired at it with Toliman's last few arrows, by just clicking the dragon's center mass. But this was obviously out of melee range. It looked to me like there was only one square, way to the right, where a character could get into melee range of the dragon's tail. Only after the battle was half over did I realize that any character adjacent to the mound could target the dragon, but only by clicking on a square that was adjacent to the character (so it looks like he's targeting the mound), not the dragon's center mass.  

      

Xamidimura attacks from what I originally thought was the only square from which he could be attacked.

       

Because of these errors, two of my fighters essentially did nothing for the first dozen rounds while the third inched her way over to what I perceived as the one available melee square. Toliman, Lyra, and Lilii Borea cast damage spells on the dragon and did quite well, hitting it for a couple dozen points with each casting. But they were soon out of spellpower.

      

That's not bad for a regular arrow.

       

The dragon, meanwhile, had a fire breath attack and a smoke attack, both of which did surprisingly pathetic damage to the characters he targeted. When Xamidimura finally reached that square next to his tail, he started swatting her with the tail, but it also seemed to do very little damage.

      

Arkandor uses his breath attack.

       

Eventually, I figured out that I could target the dragon by targeting the mound, and I brought all the other characters up to adjacent squares. Unlike most enemies, the dragon seemed to be able to parry multiple times per round. Even with this, the party seemed to be doing well for a few rounds, but all of a sudden, the dragon got a lot more effective. Instead of six or eight points, he started doing like 40 points of damage with his attacks. One by one, my characters started to fall. Three of them died; two fell unconscious.

    

Then, all at once, Mahasim struck the final blow. Not the killing blow; the dragon just decided to concede: "You are fortunate, but you are honorable fighters. You shall be allowed to live." And with that, he withdrew. We got precisely nothing from the battle except experience.

       

"And by 'you,' I definitely mean the single form."

       

Three of my characters were dead, two unconscious, but for some reason Ingramosch was now in the party—and somehow he had the Salamander Stone in his possession. He had no words of explanation (I think he was still stoned or something), so we just poked around looking for the way forward.

      

The aftermath.

          

We found a stairway upward. At the top, we were met with the game's closing cinematic. In it:

   

• Elsurion Starlight, the brother of the Elf King, who had given us the main quest during the first session, came running up to us. He said the town was in "turmoil," but he had charted us a boat to escape in.

      

What about the three of us who are dead?

     

• During the boat trip, Elsurion healed Ingramosch (who he called a "prince"). We gave Ingramosch the Salamander Stone, and Ingramosch asked to see the Elf King.

• We switched from a boat to a carriage and rode into an Elven settlement in the forest. It seemed to consist of treehouses.

• More Dwarves and Elves arrived over subsequent days. 

     

Something about this image cracks me up. The dwarves just look so petulant.

       

• Two weeks later, Elsurion told us that the Elves and Dwarves had reached an agreement to attack the orcs "next year, or the year after at the latest."

• We had a big banquet in which the Elf King thanked us and announced to everyone that we were under his personal protection. "Our lands, the mountains, the rivers, and the unending forests, they are all open to you for as long as you shall live."

      

This would be more meaningful if the final game didn't take place in a single city.

      

• After the final congratulations screen at the top of this entry, we were prompted to save the game a final time. 

      

Obviously, none of this feels particularly satisfying with three of my six party members dead. Since it would be nice to have a hale party to import into Shadows over Riva, I'm toying with doing the final battle again. I think it would require me to backtrack to the last source of water. Assuming I can make it through the "Good show!" area with healing potions, and that the length of the journey doesn't make us die of thirst on the way, I can probably safely make it back. A more extreme measure would be to restart from before this session, do a better job preparing in town, and playing the entire dungeon again. A less extreme version would just be to re-fight the final battle with the characters dying of thirst but knowing how to properly attack, and having one of my characters equipped ahead of time with Dragon Slayer.

         

An appropriately Tolkienesque-looking king.

       

I'll think about it, but in the meantime, let's deal with a question that's nagging me: . . . What?

     

This question has several parts:

   

• Was the mage who stole the Salamander Stone Sudran Alatzer? If not, who was he?

• Where did he go before the final battle began?

• Why did Ingramosch have the Salamander Stone after the battle?

      

I don't even know who you are.

       

• If the cult went to so much trouble to steal the stone from us multiple times, why just let us walk away with it in the end?

• What is this cult all about, anyway?

• If the god is the "One Without Name," why does he have a name? Or is Arkandor not the god?

• If Ingramosch wasn't a part of it, why did he live in the house that had an entrance to its temple?

• What was the purpose of the black statuette and the dragon claw? 

      

While you work on those, I'll work on the "summary and rating."

     

Time so far: 60 hours

 

Arena: Unreal City

Entering shops gives you a title card specific to the season.

         

Note: for symmetry purposes, I so wanted to offer a posting here titled "Arena: Star Trail." I tried to think of any way I could thematically work that subtitle into an entry on the game, and I came up with nothing. The outdoor scenes don't even show stars at night. 

 

Let's take a deeper dive into Arena's cities. I covered them a bit in my second entry, but I understand them better now. Perhaps the  most important thing to know about Arena's cities is that when you're analyzing them, it doesn't really matter what city you cover. They're pretty much all the same. But if it helps, the city that makes up all the screenshots and examples below is Lillandril on Summurset Isle. Let's first talk about how I got here:

   

• When I rested in the Halls of Colossus after finding the fourth piece of the Staff of Chaos, Ria Silmane appeared in my dreams to tell me that my next stop would be "an ancient stronghold of sorcery called the Crystal Tower." All she knew about it was that you could see the southern tip of the Dragon's Teeth from it. The Dragon's Teeth stretched from High Rock to Valenwood, Since I had already found the staff pieces in Valenwood and Elsweyr, it seemed likely that the Crystal Tower would be on Summurset Isle.

• I tried to travel directly from the Halls of Colossus to Summurset Isle, but the game warned me that given "my condition," I might not survive the journey. Apparently, I had gotten diseased at some point and not noticed. 

     

Thanks for the heads-up.

     

• Thus, I traveled to the city-state of Senchal, practically next door to the Halls of Colossus in Elsweyr. Jagar Tharn appeared in a waking vision shortly after I arrived and sent two nightblades to kill me. I made short work of them.

     

Aw, thanks. You seem cunning and worthy yourself.

       

• I got cured at a temple, then fast-traveled to Skywatch in Summurset Isle. (The game shows the character riding a horse, even though it's impossible to read the island purely by horse.) There, I sold my excess equipment, bought a "Cure Disease" spell at the Mage's Guild, and started asking around about the Crystal Tower. A couple of NPCs said they'd heard something about it in conjunction with Lillandril, on the far western side of the island.

    

Let's talk first about:

   

The Province

 

Summurset Isle is a province in the southwestern part of the empire of Tamriel, the only province not attached to the mainland. It's actually an archipelago of several islands; later Elder Scrolls lore will call the province "Summerset Isles" and will make Summerset Isle the largest of them. The manual says only that it's the home of the High Elves. Fans of later Elder Scrolls games know it as the seat of the Thalmor Empire, but that's a long way in the future.

    

Major cities are Lillandril, Firsthold, Skywatch, Dusk, Sunhold, Alinor (later, the capital), Shimmerene, and Cloudrest, Minor towns (which, it must be reiterated, are no smaller than major cities when you actually visit them) are Archen Grangrove, Belport Run, Corgrad Wastes, Ebon Stadmont, Glenview, Graddun Spring, Holly Falls, Karndar Watch, Karnwasten Moor, Kings Haven, Marbruk Brook, Marnor Keep, Old Falls, Riverfield, Riverwatch, Rosefield, Sea Keep, Silsailen Point, Silverwood, Thorheim Guard, Vulkhel Guard, Wasten Coridale, West Guard, and White Guard. I might have even missed one or two.

      

The islands and cities of Summurset Isle.

      

That's a bizarrely large number of cities, and it doesn't take a particularly savvy player to realize that there's no way a 1994 game was going to populate three dozen cities in a single province with anything approaching meaningful handcrafted content. But I'm not sure that, as a 1994 player, I would have suspected that none of the cities would have meaningful handcrafted content.

   

No mainline Elder Scrolls title has been set in the Summerset Isles, so the only thing a player of Daggerfall through Skyrim would know about them is what's written in books and spoken by a few NPCs. I understand, though, that you can visit the province in The Elder Scrolls Online. After I wrote that long list above, I assumed that the game (as it did with Skyrim and Morrowind) kept the major cities but ignored the minor cities. I was surprised to see how many of these names were, in fact, put to later use. I suppose as names, they're good enough. They're a lot like American or British city names—a mixture of descriptive toponyms, pleasant-sounding portmanteaus, eponyms, and references to history or lore that would require some later (retconning, of course) explanation.

    

The City 

     

It takes me 16 days to reach Lillandril from Skywatch. I arrive in the month of Sun's Dusk, towards the end of the year. I am greeted as I enter the city by this title card:

     

Is there a mechanism by which I could "challenge your land"?

      

The player gets a similar title card when he enters any city, and the only things that really change are the dates and the final lines, which never say anything truly unique about a city. A sample from other cities:

   

• "The village of [village name] seems quiet, unaware of your arrival. The people here seem very friendly."
• "Although weary from travel, you find the place seems to beckon for exploration."
• "The streets seem strangely quiet."
• "Know that the guards hold this city, and will fight any who challenge to keep it."

        

Sometimes, the title card gives the name of the current ruler, but not here. Occasionally, I've gotten a message to the effect that some festival is happening in town, but if it has any effect on gameplay, I haven't noticed.

      

Note the building shapes.

       

The player always starts by the gates of the city. The cities are all very large, at least 100 x 100 if the game used tiles. There are about 100 buildings in each one, most simple shapes like rectangles and Ls, some vaguely circular, a few very odd. They're all procedurally-generated, of course, but with rules such that the Mage's Guild is always a fairly complicated building with a courtyard and some surrounding walls. The nature of the procedural generation allows for large, open areas, parks, waterways, and of course elements such as lamp  posts, statues, fountains, wells, and trees. The specific "furnishings" and overall textures are province-specific.

     

A city scene with trees, a river, and mountains rising in the background.

       

Each city and town has:

    

• One Mage's Guild
• One palace
• Around 10-20 inns 
• Around 3-6 temples
• Around 8-15 equipment stores

           

A shingle designates this location as an equipment store.

        

These locations all have shingles hanging out front and are open during the day. Inns are open 24 hours. Every other building is an unnamed place that is never open during the day, but you can burgle it day or night. 

   

The Inhabitants

    

NPCs in each city are randomly generated. Their names mash together prefixes and suffixes, with different races drawing from different libraries for both first and last names, and different sexes drawing from different libraries for first names. For instance, in Elsweyr, I noted that Bara, Sol, and Za were among the prefixes, and davi, kar, and spoor were among the suffixes, so you could have Baradavi, Barakar, Baraspoor, Solkar, Zaspoor, and so forth.

    

Like . . . furry stuff?

                

Also drawn at random are NPC professions and then a little tagline they give to themselves, appropriate to that profession. These elements are all combined when you ask, "Who are you?" These are the results I got from the first ten random NPCs I spoke to in Lillandril, all of whom were probably supposed to be High Elves:

First	Last	Job	Tagline
Morlia	Gaeire	Interpreter	I speak thy language fluently.
Vallisephona	Caemius	Servant	I used to be a successful merchant myself.
Sarullan	Spellian	Fieldhand	I have calluses the size of saddlebags on my hands.
Lilina	Highthar	Mercenary	I move around a lot, but right now I'm working for the king doing odd things.
Vallisephona	Highal	Nomad	I mostly travel around, doing odd jobs.
Lilimia	Larethor	Poet	I don't have very many friends.
Saurtha	Thromwatch	Bodyguard	I am one of the king's private bodyguards.
Andrasara	Larethorin	Thief	I was thinking about picking this Breton's pocket. [I'm sure this changes based on player race.]
Cana	Silinor	Weaver	I hope to be hired to make a new tapestry for the palace.
Andrasara	Ador	Guildmaster	You know, I had to kill a lot of people to get where I am today.

      

If you ask NPCs for their information a second time, they get snarky. 

      

Burn.

          

There are five types of NPCs:

   

• Outdoor wandering NPCs. These make up most of the NPCs in the game. They regenerate every time you leave the city and return (or go in and out of buildings). They wander all over the city, quite fast. They're only around from around 06:00-20:00.

• Outdoor fixed NPCs. These guys don't move. I think their presence is tied to specific buildings; for instance, you might find a fixed wizard outside the Mage's Guild or a priest outside a temple. Other fixed NPCs include jugglers, beggars, and alchemists. They stay where they are even at night, which makes them a nice resource for finding an inn if you happen to arrive in the middle of the night. Their introductory lines are a bit different than wandering NPCs; some of them don't give their names, for instance.

     

A fixed priest on the streets of the city.

     

• Shopkeepers. These NPCs are found inside special buildings and have options related to their services, as below.

• Tavern patrons. Inns are full of patrons who stand in one place and only offer one line of dialogue, usually rude.

• Rulers. Found in palaces, these kings and queens are the only NPCs whose names (I think) don't change. They usually offer a paragraph of platitudes about their cities, unless they're giving you a quest. 

   

Outdoor NPCs have three dialogue options:

  

• Who are you? That's how you get the combinations in the table above.

• Where is... Here, you can ask about the location of a specific store or service or the location of "the nearest" one. The only reason you'd ask about a specific one is if you got a random quest to go there. Either way, if you're very close, the NPC will mark it on your map. Otherwise, he or she will tell you to go in the general direction and ask someone else. This mechanic is drawn from Legends of Valour (1992), incidentally. 

• Rumors. This option subdivides into "General" rumors, which at best will get you a useless bit of "lore" drawn from a random database that has no consequences for actual gameplay at all, and usually doesn't even tell you anything real about the game world. "Work" is how you get leads on randomly-generated local quests or, occasionally, artifact quests.

     

At first, I thought information like this meant something. It does not.

         

Except to follow a string of them to a destination (e.g., the nearest inn), there's never any reason to talk to more than one random NPC per city. The game really dropped the ball here. They could have subdivided the utility of NPCs by their professions, the way Morrowind does.

   

Wandering NPCs disappear as it gets later, and monsters start to replace them. There's no explanation for how orcs and minotaurs are getting into these walled cities just because the sun goes down, but I guess that's why the land is called "the Arena." 

       

Inns

     

Inns are for drinking and sleeping. Lillandril has ten of them: Dancing Jug, Flying Chasm, Green Castle, Green Giants (ho, ho, ho!), Haunted Goblin, Haunted Helm, King's Eagle, Laughing Jug, Red Griffin, and Thirsty Goblin. As you can tell, inn names are always just random selections from two word lists, often nonsensical, although so is "Elephant and Castle." Entering an inn gives the player a title card that varies a bit by location and season:

   

Inns are always constructed to have a large common area with two wings of rooms, storage, or both.. Some have second floors with more rooms. The common area is populated with drinkers (fixed NPCs) who say nothing but rude things.

         

"Upwind?" In an inn?

        

The innkeeper is always standing at the head of the common room, wearing an apron and polishing a glass. If you've been given a rumor as to the availability of work starting in an inn, someone (off-screen) will interrupt you as you're about to speak to the innkeeper.

   

Otherwise, the innkeeper offers four options:

   

• Buy drinks. You can choose from a menu of drinks. It's a complete waste of time and money. Drinks don't make the bartender more or less likely to give you tips, and don't change the price of the room. If you drink enough drinks (way more than in real life), you can get drunk, which increases strength, willpower, endurance, and luck, but decreases intelligence, agility, speed, and personality. The amount of the increase or decrease depends on the number of drinks you've had (if you keep drinking, then can go to 0 and you can die). Even if there weren't better ways to manipulate your statistics, the effects don't last long enough to make any difference. They always wear off when you fast-travel, which is the only way to get to a dungeon for the next quest.

       

It's a cute pun, anyway.

       

• Get a room. Lets you rent a single room, double room, suite, or king's suite for base prices of 10, 20, 35, and 50 gold, respectively. (There's a haggling mechanic, but it would be such a waste of time to bother with.) The quality of the room is supposed to affect heath and mana regeneration rates, but even in the cheapest, both regenerate so fast that you don't notice the difference when you pay more. Once you pay, there's no way to tell which specific room is "yours." You hit the "Camp" button and wake up in one of them.

• Sneak into a Room. You can avoid paying by just entering a room and going to sleep. If you literally try to do that (e.g., walk your character into the room and hit "Camp"), it doesn't work. You have to do it through this menu option. Curiously, if you fail, you're attacked not by guards but by monsters like zombies.

• Rumors. It's the same as asking an outside NPC.

   

I spend a lot of time in inns because I often arrive in town after dark, and there's nothing to do while waiting for shops to open in the morning.   

 

Temples

     

There are a limited number of temples in the game, their names drawn partly randomly. There are three in Lillandril: the Brotherhood of Temperance, the Conclave of Charity, and the Order of the Golden Tomb. There are three temple types ("Brotherhood of," "Conclave of," and "Order of the") followed by about a dozen possible objects, including Baal, Charity, Faith, Golden Tomb, Gideon, Justice, the One, Red Rose, Riana, and Truth. I don't think that some combinations exist, though; for instance, I've never seen Gideon appear with anything but a Brotherhood, nor the Knights of Hope appear as anything but an Order.

   

Temples are perhaps the most jarring element of Arena if you have foreknowledge of future games. The developers had not worked out the "Nine Divines" religion. Daedra are also absent. This leaves us to wonder who Baal and Riana are and why they never reappear (Gideon is not a person, but rather a city in Black Marsh). 

       

That's more ankhs than an Ultima game.

         

Temples are easy to identify from the outside because they have stained glass windows. Inside, there's no sign of those same windows. Instead, they are weirdly full of ankh crosses and tapestries. A single priest works the main hall. He offers healing, curing, and blessings. It would be absurd to go to the temple for healing. Now that I have a "Cure Disease" spell, I'll never need them for curing again. As for blessings, you're asked to donate some gold, after which the priest says, "Receive our blessings." You get this message no matter how much gold you donate, so I'm not sure how to tell when you've actually received a blessing. I'm told online that a blessing doubles your chance to hit for 24 hours. If so, a) it's never been reflected in the "To Hit" statistics on my character sheet, and b) big whoop, because it takes more than 24 hours to get to the next dungeon from just about any city 

 

Stores

     

Lillandril has Cyrellon Gaeaire's Tool Store, Elite Equipment Store, Lovimon's Quality Equipment Store, New Supply Store, The Basic Provisions, The Practical Tool Store, Unearth Sundries, and Unearthed Weaponry Store. Again, you see some combinations of random words. The names mean nothing; all stores have the same services and sell the same types of items.

   

Inside, all proprietors are burly, shirtless men working a forge. With them, you have options to buy, sell, repair, or steal. The items you can buy are always very basic gear, never magical, and thus a bit underwhelming. [Ed. Apparently, shops do sell magic items. I just didn't find any when I was scoping them for this entry.] They are the only people who buy your looted equipment, so they're invaluable for "sell." As with rooms in inns, you can haggle on the prices, but there's too much gold in the game and too little time on this Earth.

      

In the modern era, this guy would be on YouTube selling his "Anvil Fitness Plan."

      

If you try to repair something, he'll ask to take it for 10 days. You can negotiate this, down to a single day, but at a significant increase in the cost. You can similarly object to the cost and get a proposal for a longer time frame. 

 

"Steal" has a chance based on your attributes and class to deliver a random item to your possession. Perhaps to make it more of a risk, you can't save the game inside shops. 

  

Stores are primarily valuable for selling and repairing, and I find myself visiting the one nearest to the Mage's Guild often.

  

Mage's Guild

     

The game sometimes gives this location without an apostrophe and sometimes the way I have it in the title, but never the way I'd do it with the apostrophe after the "s." In any event, there is only one of these per town. As with temples, the building is quite visible from the outside, as its walls are covered in arcane symbols. It's also inevitably one of the more complicated buildings in town, with walls or hedgerows making it difficult to see and access the main entrance.

      

The mage's guild from the outside.

        

I would say the Mage's Guild is the most important building in town. Here, you can:

   

• Buy potions. As I mentioned last time, since potions are cheap (relative to the amount of money you make) and have no weight, they are almost a game-breaking mechanic. Maybe not even "almost." 

     

I could buy 785 of these.

       

• Buy magic items. This is primarily how non-spellcasters get magic abilities, though the selection is always small and it may take several visits to find what you're looking for.

• Buy spells. Buy a selection of pre-created spells like "Light," "Heal," and "Levitate." 

• Detect Magic. This is the only way to identify magical items in the game. 

• Spellmaker. This is how you make your own spells, which can combine effects and make use of effects that aren't available under the "Buy Spells" option. More below.

• Steal. Does the same thing here as inside shops, although you have to choose whether you're going for potions or other magic items. I've clicked it accidentally a couple of times.  

   

After every expedition, I typically go to the Mage's Guild first, identify things I'm not sure about, and then go to the nearest equipment store to sell them.

  

As for spells, the following conditions are available:

 

• Cause: disease | poison | paralyzation | curse
• Continuous damage to: health | fatigue | spell points
• Create: shield | wall | floor
• Cure: disease | poison | paralyzation | curse
• Damage: health | fatigue | spell points
• Designate as non-target (make enemies ignore you)
• Destroy: wall | floor 
• Drain attribute: strength | intelligence | willpower | agility | speed | endurance | personality | luck
• Elemental resistance: fire | cold | electricity | acid | poison
• Fortify attribute: strength | intelligence | willpower | agility | speed | endurance | personality | luck

 

Here, you see me breaking up a long list with a screenshot.

       

• Heal: fatigue | health
• Transfer attribute: strength | intelligence | willpower | agility | speed | endurance | personality | luck
• Transfer figured attribute: health | fatigue | spell points
• Invisibility
• Light
• Lock
• Open
• Regenerate
• Silence
• Spell absorption
• Spell reflection
• Spell resistance 

      

It's an impressive list, foreshadowing the spellcrafting and enchanting options in later Elder Scrolls games. That said, it's hard to imagine that anyone has ever wasted time creating spells that, say, drain an enemy's willpower or cause curse instead of just damaging him. You'd also have to be quite a min-maxer to bother with "Regenerate" instead of just casting "Heal." Maybe some players find some value in locking doors to prevent enemies from chasing you, but I don't think I'd use it unless I was going for a pacifist run.

     

Spells have both an economic cost (when you first create them) and a casting cost (in spell points) dependent on the power and (sometimes) the probability of success. 

     

One of two spells I created this time.

        

There are notably no spells that cause a specific type of damage (e.g., fire, cold, shock), making me think that the pre-created spells that sound like they do (e.g., "Firestorm") are just generic "damage health" spells with cool-sounding names. Do enemies in the game actually have resistance to damage types? I'd have to go online to find out.

  

During this visit, I bought "Spell Absorption," which some of my commenters have opined is practically game-breaking, as well as "Destroy Floor" just because I want to see what that does. 

 

Palace

    

The palace is curiously never part of the main city map, so you never see it from the outside. Instead, you access it from a gate in one of the city walls. 

     

The palace gates.

      

As you enter, a title card reminds you of the name of the ruler (in this case, King Corridalf), which is not procedurally generated. What is randomly generated is whether the city is at peace or war with its closest neighbor. In my case, Lillandril is at war with Alinor.

     

I imagine all this intra-province warfare didn't happen when Uriel was around.

        

The palace always consists of a long hallway, flanked by guardsmen standing at attention, leading to the main hall. The ruler stands at the apex of the main hall. He or she usually says something generic about the city and then cursorily dismisses the PC. I understand that rulers sometimes give side quests, but I haven't experienced it yet.

     

Approaching the king.

      

Palaces have "restricted areas" off the main hall. In the case of Lillandril's palace, there is a wing with cell doors and deep pits in the middle of the cells. I assume that if you explore these restricted areas enough, you'll find treasure rooms or something, but I just keep getting swarmed and killed by armored guards each time I try. 

 

Conclusions    

      

It's hard not to be a bit impressed by the results of the procedural generation: hundreds of large cities with unique layouts and enough buildings and NPCs to mimic real-life locations. I don't know what Daggerfall is like, but nothing in the later Elder Scrolls games comes close. Naturally, however, since so much is procedurally-generated, the actual experience of "exploring" the cities leaves me uninspired. Not only are they thematically boring, but they're also geographically boring—all perfect squares, no hills, no unique monuments or architecture. For all the effort that Bethesda put into them, they may as well be menu cities.

   

It's still an interesting experiment, and one that continues to this day. Varied content is one key to replayability, and a little randomness isn't always a bad thing. Other games have used it for years with the spawning of monsters and the distribution of treasure with no complaints. I enjoyed some of the radiant quests of Skyrim and Starfield. It's likely that in the future, AI will be able to generate random NPCs with characteristics that aren't simply plucked from a database table but rather offer some real depth, hard to distinguish from handcrafted NPCs. It will also likely offer unscripted NPC dialogue that responds to exactly what the player has the character say, creating experiences unique for each player. I don't know if I'll like the result, but I do want to at least see what that looks like.

    

Finishing This Session    

      

The head of the Mage's Guild, Corim Ashlen, gave me the beginning of the quest for the next piece of the Staff of Chaos. The Mage's Guild was recently sacked by followers of the Mad God, who made off with an important diamond. The diamond will allow its user to see the location of the Crystal Tower on a special map. I agreed to go find it, and Ashlen marked the location of the Temple of the Mad God on my map.

     

The series uses so many of the seeds planted in this game, I was surprised to find that we never hear about Zaraphus again.

       

But rather than head right there, I was tempted by the thought of going on another artifact quest. I left the Necromancer's Amulet for repairs at the Practical Tool Store and began asking around for hints. The first hint I got was for the Lord's Mail, which I don't think I can wear. I kept asking and got a lead on the Oghma Infinium, a "book of incredible power."

     

A reference to the reavers of Skyrim two decades before Dragonborn.

       

A few minutes later, I was in the Haunted Helm, buying a tip from an informant. He gave me the location of the Catacombs of Skulvor in Skyrim, where I'll supposedly find a map to the artifact. Whether I want to prolong the game by going for the artifact is something I'll decide next time.

   

Time so far: 22 hours