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I'm finally starting to get bored with ESO, so I went back to playing Arena. (I haven't stopped playing ESO, but I'm no longer playing it for as many hours each day.)

I started a new character-- again-- and spent a long time in the Imperial Dungeons, resting in the open in order to spawn random enemies. I slowly fought my way up to level 9, collecting the best weapon, shield, and armor I could find along the way.

In the process, I left pile after pile after pile of discarded loot cluttering up every available grid cell of certain rooms and corridors. I think it may have overloaded the game somehow, because it got to where I'd go into a room where there's always loot, click on the pile, and get a message saying "There's nothing usable left here" or some such, even though it was the first time I'd visited the room. The pile of loot wouldn't disappear, either! Then, later on when I was about ready to finally leave the Imperial Dungeons, I was in one of the rooms and clicked on one of those piles of loot, and all of a sudden it had gold and items in it! So then I had to make a circuit of all the rooms again to click on those piles to get the gold and see if there were any goodies in them.

I finally left the Imperial Dungeons because I literally couldn't pick up anything else, so I headed to a town (Cloud Spring) to get all of my magical loot identified, sell off whatever I don't need, and resume work on mapping the game.

I'm not happy with the game's auto map, because there are little ways it could be improved. For instance, when it shows water there's no way to tell which parts of the water (if any) are covered, or "underground" if you will, and that makes it difficult to tell whether a room is accessible via a particular branch of the sewer system or whether the waterway is under the wall. I'm thinking of modifying my maps to show underground water in a darker shade of blue. That means I'll need to start a new character again just so I can tell which grid cells of the sewer system need to be shaded.

Okay, I played through the Imperial Dungeons again and modified the map as follows:

- I added a stick figure to indicate the player's starting location.
- I lightened the raised areas where it's (usually) safe to rest.
- I added an icon for the Ruby Key.
- I modified the cell doors to have a grid shape.
- I added a stack of gold icon to indicate the locations of treasure.
- I changed the shade of the secret doors to a brownish red.
- I changed the shade of the underground waterways to a darker blue.

The original map-- which I'd edited slightly to simplify the colors-- along with the modified version, can be viewed at the following URLs:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/fs58y607gzq8b ... 9.png?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8r8acuzcrmax7 ... 9.png?dl=0

If anyone has comments, please post them here in this thread (rather than on Dropbox).

Oh, that second map is cool. I've had my own makeshift map on where the treasure piles are (made with the Paint program, lol), but that is so much nicer. I was working on adding treasure pile locations for all the main dungeon maps for personal use, but I haven't worked on that in a while. Still, I have managed to get around 75% of Stonekeep mapped out, and have only found 14 treasure piles, 10 of which are around the very first area. Stonekeep is just so stingy for it's size.

Stonekeep aside, I love your version of the map, as the water on the normal map has always annoyed me for the reason you stated. Also the same with the tunnel system, especially noticeable in Labyrinthian. Obviously the normal maps in the game as useful (imagine how much it'd suck if the game decided the dungeons didn't need maps), but it's nice to see a professional take on a guide to where the treasure in a dungeon is.

Hey, thank you very much, I'm glad someone finally commented about it!

I was thinking that some slight color changes for the underground passages would be good, and maybe to better distinguish between the underground tunnels and raised tunnels. (I think there's already a slight difference in color for those, but it's so slight that it's hard to tell them apart.)

I'm mapping the cities right now, but I've done only a few so far, and they're incomplete-- meaning just screenshots, without additional labels to indicate the locations of the Mages Guild and the various inns, temples, and stores. At one point I was also mapping the interiors of the houses and other buildings, but I want to start over because I didn't show the locations of treasure piles. Since the cities are basically assembled using what I call "city blocks," I'm thinking the best thing to do would be to create a map of all the possible configurations of the city blocks, on the assumption (which I need to verify) that the houses and other buildings in a particular city block configuration are always the same as far as their floor plans. I'm thinking it would be possible to have maps of all the cities, with the locations of the inns, stores, etc. clearly shown, and be able to click on each city block to zoom in and be able to click on the buildings to see their floor plans. That way you could easily tell which houses are likely to have the most treasure in them.

I'm cutting back a little on how much time I spend playing TES:Online, and have started playing TES:Arena again.

One thing I've done is update my modified map of the Imperial Dungeons to show (1) where manacles hang down from the ceiling, (2) where roots hang down from the ceiling, (3) where roots hang down over the water, and (4) where the two piles of trash (barrel and sacks) are located. In the case of the roots over the water this is mainly for effect, but for the others it's meant to be practical, since you can't drop anything from your inventory in those spots. You can see the updated version at the second link above.

I also made careful notes of how many experience points I got whenever I killed something, and any loot found on the corpse. I didn't deliberately sleep out in the open to trigger the spawning of random enemies, so the only enemies I ran into in the Imperial Dungeons were Goblins and Rats. Based on my notes it looks like the experience points and loot are as follows:

Goblin
XP = 60+5*d8 (i.e., 65, 70, 75, 80, 85, 90, 95, or 100)
Gold = 3*d11-3 (i.e., 0, 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24, 27, or 30)
Loot (if any) = Staff, Dagger, Buckler

Rat
XP = 35+5*d6 (i.e., 40, 45, 50, 55, 60, or 65)
Gold = 0
Loot = nothing usable

This more or less agrees with what the UESPWiki says, except the formulas (or formulae if you prefer) which I've given are more specific, since as far as I've seen so far the XP for Goblins and Rats is always a multiple of 5.

The UESPWiki says that Goblins can drop 2-20 gold pieces, but from what I saw it was always a multiple of 3 between 0 and 30, so I've given the formula as 3*d11-3 (although there's no such thing as an 11-sided die). Another way to say it is "either 0 gold pieces or 3*d10 gold pieces," which might be better since a 10-sided die is a thing and common to RPGs. I didn't actually see all possible multiples of 3 between 0 and 30 come up, but the ones that I did see fit the formula; they were 3, 15, 21, 24, 27, and 30.

I'm not suggesting that Goblins only ever drop a Dagger, Staff, or Buckler, but those were the only items I saw this time around.

One other thing I can add is about the "Bugs" on the "Escape From Prison" page, where it says that "Ria Silmane's second vision to you does not trigger outside the dungeon as she says. It seems to occur after 12 hours or so have passed. If you spend enough time resting in the dungeons, you may get the first dream involving the Staff of Chaos."

http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Arena:Escape_From_Prison

Also, on the page for Fang Lair it says that "The first time you go to sleep after escaping the Imperial Prison, you will be contacted in your dreams again by Ria Silmane."

http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Arena:Fang_Lair

In my experience, Ria Silmane's second vision occurs the first time you rest after having gained Experience Level 2. In fact, Ria herself seems to imply this at the beginning of the second vision: "I see you have strengthened your arm, and your mind."

If you simply made a beeline for the exit and tried to avoid the Goblins and Rats as much as possible, then it's possible you might not attain Level 2 and trigger the second vision until after you've escaped the Imperial Dungeons.

But if you explored every nook and cranny of the Imperial Dungeons and bravely vanquished all enemies, then you're more or less guaranteed to attain Level 2-- and very likely Level 4 or higher-- before reaching the exit. So as long as you rest at least once in the Imperial Dungeons after attaining Level 2 or higher, you should trigger the second vision before you've escaped.

It's interesting that when you first wake up in your cell, you've already acquired 700 XP. I don't know if this was always true from the first release of TES:Arena or if it was added in a later update, but to me it feels like Bethesda decided to give players those initial 700 XP in order to help them attain Level 2 more quickly, presumably to help them improve their stats a bit as soon as possible so they have a better chance of surviving. Without those free 700 XP, it seems very likely that you wouldn't attain Level 2 while still inside the Imperial Dungeons-- unless perhaps you spent a lot of time sleeping in the open to deliberately trigger the spawning of random enemies, which is tricky because the random enemies tend to be much tougher opponents such as Nightblades, Rogues, Mages, Skeletons, etc. So perhaps in the game's original version Ria's second vision wasn't expected to occur until after the player had escaped the Imperial Dungeons, but the free 700 XP were added later-- or maybe before the game's first release, as a result of game testing?

This is really interesting, and I may join you in documenting my travels across Tamriel in the glory days of cRPGs! The UESP could most certainly use updated info about Arena and Daggerfall; if you would like, I've an account on the wiki, too (see left), so I can add this information as you acquire it. Also, in case you're wondering, merchants have fixed inventory (I believe it's set by the devs, meaning that it's the same for everyone, but it could be set upon first loading the game, meaning that it would be different from player to player, but not character to character; also, all Mages' Guilds have an infinite stock of every single potion for all characters, as well as an infinite stock of every single prefab spell (minus a few that are documented in the player handbook/manual, but not actually sold, such as Gods' Fire) for Mages and Mage-sub-classes), and the names and positions of stores, services, and houses are also fixed (position is definitely created by the devs, so is set in stone for all players, though names may follow similar patterns to merchant inventory, with stores that use a local race name (e.g., Julius's Quality Gear Store in Black Marsh, just as an example name) possibly being randomly generated from the regular pool of race-name-parts, either from character to character or player to player, meaning that one person might encounter it as Julius's Quality Gear Store, while another might see it as Alexandros's Quality Gear Store; it would be the same store inside and out, with the same inventory, just that someone else might own it). Not sure how far along you are now, but you will notice that everything except inns and taverns (for obvious reasons) close down for the night. Speaking of night-time in Arena, being in a city at night is a great time to hunt monsters (you can thank Tharn and his replacing all the mortal guards with disguised Daedra for the monster infestations in towns at night). As dusk dawns (get it?), look for a nearby inn/tavern (there's no difference between the two in Arena and Daggerfall), and pace around outside of it; chances are you'll come across a monster or two. When your health gets low, quickly duck into the inn, buy a room (in my experience, there's no difference in recovery rates between a simple Single and a luxurious Emperor's Suite; the only difference is between a high or a low Endurance (END), but please let me know if you do find a difference, though!), then, during the day, shop around for what you need (some enemies can only be harmed by weapons of a certain material-grade or better (whether or not the weapon is enchanted doesn't matter until you start playing Morrowind; without activating the enchantment, an Iron Longsword of Firestorm will be just as ineffective at dispelling that ghost as an unenchanted iron longsword); most notably, the three golems can only be harmed weapons made of Dwarven metal, Elven metal, Mithril, Adamantium, or Ebony, and that's just for the lowest-level golem; the highest-level enemies in the game can only be harmed by Mithril, Adamantium, or Ebony); loot is completely random in Arena: I've gotten Ebony gear in the very first loot pile right outside your cell in the Imperial Prison! In fact, the Imperial Prison seems to be the best place to try to get all Ebony gear; it has a significantly higher chance of dropping there than anyplace else! This can still take quite a bit of time trying to get lucky with the loot piles when playing either a Warrior, Knight, or Ranger, since these are the only three classes that can wear heavy plate-mail armours, meaning they need many more slots filled than all other classes, since light- and medium-weight armours only come in leather and chain, respectively (no special metals are used to make chainmail in Arena and Daggerfall; likewise, ESO is the first TES game to feature leathers other than cowhide or netch). Also, don't bother with blessings at the temples; nobody knows if they work or not, or even what they're supposed to actually do, for that matter. Again, if you do find that temple blessings actually have any benefit at all, please let me know; I'll get the information on the wiki ASAP!

Well, that's all I can think of for now! Btw, did you mention any details about your current character? I always start with a male Nord Warrior; they have quite-high health, excellent damage, plus can use all the equipment in the game, making them extremely adaptable, as well as excellent for documenting merchant inventories. It should be noted that different race-sex combinations do have different attribute bonuses.

Hey, thank you for replying! I meant to respond sooner, but my response got kind of lengthy and I ran into problems trying to edit it into a state of perfection ('cause I'm silly that way), so I put it aside and suddenly 2 whole weeks have gone by. So I'll try to give a short(?)-'n'-sweet version.

First off, now that Summerset is out I've been playing ESO a lot again. And now that I'm occasionally crafting gear for people, I've resurrected my first ESO character and finally got my third ESO character off of Firemoth Island (he'd been hiding in a corner of the rocks behind the slaves' building for several months)-- not because I want to play with those characters, but because I also finally got enough crafting writ vouchers to buy a 30-item chest for storing stuff in, and I want to use my two alternates for storing excess inventory as well. Unfortunately, this means I now seem to spend half of my time logging on and off so I can shuffle stuff between my three characters, using the storage chest to pass things back and forth, since each of my two alternates has specific types of items that they store. What a nightmare!

Also, I've finally started to play the Special Edition (or whatever it's called) of Skyrim, but only when the ESO servers go offline for maintenance and I can't play ESO. In any case, I haven't played Arena at all during the last three weeks, but I do intend to get back into it and work on my project some more.

I do have a UESPWiki account, so I can update the Arena pages, but I've been reluctant to post anything there yet, mainly due to differences of opinion about screenshots, how the information should be presented, and feeling nervous about learning how to post things in the proper way as far as scripting (if that's the right word) and embedding links and whatnot.

Regarding screenshots, my preferred DOSBox screen resolution for playing Arena is 1280x800, which is an 8:5 aspect ratio, but the guidelines or requirements for the Arena pages say that all screenshots (except maps) should have a 4:3 aspect ratio. I know that 4:3 was the norm for monitors back when Arena came out, but I think the drawings in the introduction, not to mention the maps, look like they were scanned with, or designed for, square pixels rather than rectangular pixels. And since the graphics mode used had a resolution of 320x200, stretching it to a 4:3 image adds extra rows of pixels which make the images look yucky to me-- especially any screen where text is displayed-- unless your monitor has enough scan lines to display a 1600x1200 DOSBox window (mine doesn't), since 1600x1200 allows all DOSBox/game pixels to be equal in size. Anyway, the vast majority of CRT monitors let you adjust the horizontal and vertical dimensions and positions of the displayed image, hence it was certainly possible to play Arena with square pixels by reducing the height of the display.

And as for the information about the shops in the towns, my inclination is to use the names which are given when conversing with people in town, which are always the same even though the actual names of certain shops are generated randomly. So for those shops I would list them with the names that appear in conversation, but note that when you visit the actual shop the name of the shop's owner is generated randomly.

Hahaha this is fun!

Well, my lvl 23 Redguard Assassin is spending some quality time between the 2 levels of Murkwood to farm XP from those Iron Golems, in a solemn protest against not getting XP for killing vampires and Liches in melee.

Not sure if this is where to ask this... but can anyone confirm what I read in these UESP pages about Racial Bonuses being inverted for Redguards and Wood Elves? Specifically, that the lvl / 3 to melee hit and damage would be for WE while for bows would be for RG... thanks!

I've been playing Arena a lot lately-- almost daily for the last year or so. On most days I log in to do my daily crafting writs and other "must do" activities in ESO, then log out as soon as possible to play Arena. My current game began on February 20, 2020-- that's the date on the initial save game file-- but prior to that I'd been experimenting for a few months with characters of various races and classes before deciding to go back to playing a Breton knight.

I find knights attractive to play because they repair their own gear and are immune to paralysis. They can't use leather armor, which is supposed to be a "disadvantage," but I don't see it as disadvantageous given that leather armor provides the least protection and can't be magical. Players who prefer lighter armor due to weight considerations and encumbrance can still wear chain armor while playing a knight, but I find plate armor to be most preferable because it gives the greatest protection and is the only base armor that can be magical.

And without a doubt, magical items are very important for classes that have no natural spell-casting ability. Players who prefer to-- or who must, due to their chosen class-- wear leather armor or chain armor can still use magical weapons and magical shields, as well as potions and other types of magical items. But considering that there are seven different pieces of body armor, choosing or being able to wear magical armor significantly increases the number of magical spells or magical bonuses that are available to non-spell-casting classes. Furthermore, magical armor, magical weapons, and magical shields that give the ability to cast specific spells-- as opposed to boosting specific stats-- carry far more charges than other types of magical items, and they automatically recharge as they're repaired by knights. In contrast, other magical items that give the ability to cast specific spells-- that is, marks, bracers, crystals, and rings-- carry fewer charges and can't be repaired by knights, so they must be taken to an equipment store to be repaired and recharged.

By the way, I've observed that if you ask an equipment store to repair a magical item that's only partially depleted of its charges, the store will happily take your gold and spend the next 10 or so days repairing your item as requested, but when you go to pick it up you'll discover that it still has the same number of charges as before-- that is, none of its depleted charges have been restored. Consequently, the only way you can get equipment stores to fully recharge magical items is if they have no charges-- that is, are "broken"-- when you hand them over for repair. I assume this does not apply to magical armor, magical weapons, and magical shields which are left at equipment stores for repair, but I can't test this assumption on my current character since he keeps his gear repaired and equipment stores won't accept it for repair.

As for Bretons, I'm just attracted to them the most for some reason-- although the fact that they take half damage on magical attacks, or no damage if they successfully roll a save, is definitely a major plus.

My current character's name is Rodyrick Masterton. I've taken to looking through the UESP wiki's lists of racial names and surnames from each game to pick "lore-friendly" names for my characters. Arena has some rather cumbersome given names and surnames, but "Rodyrick" and "Masterton" seemed like reasonably "sane" choices to me! He's up to level 25 and has 88,524,185 XP. It will be a long road to level 26, which-- if I've calculated correctly-- requires 110,324,038 XP. I'd originally hoped to increase all of my stats to 100 through leveling up, but I've realized that this might be impossible considering how many level-ups would be required and how much XP it will take to reach each level. I'm wondering if there's a limit on how much XP you can earn before the number either rolls over, freezes, or maybe even crashes the game.

What I've been doing is trying to visit each city in each province before moving on to the next province, although I'm sure there are some cities I've skipped over. Aside from visiting the local Mages Guild and all of the equipment stores in each city to see what they have to offer, my main purpose for visiting the cities is to see what the local rulers need me to do. If I remember correctly, you get 12,000 XP for each job you do for a local ruler [edit: although I suppose the amount of XP earned might vary according to your character's level], so that can be an important source of XP if you're trying to grind levels. Of course, killing enemies is the best way to earn XP, and you quickly learn which enemies reward the most XP when you kill them. If I hear a fire daemon, I immediately try to find and kill it, and feel cheated if I leave its area and cause it to despawn while I'm searching for it. Iron golems and stone golems are also must-kills, whereas a vampire isn't worth the trouble since it's so hard to truly kill and there's a chance it might give you a disease that will permanently lower some of your stats.

From what I've seen, there are a maximum of 16 dungeons that can be added to the map of each province, two of which are related to the main quest, so there are 14 dungeons per province related to local rulers' quests. Once you've got all 14 of those dungeons added to a province's map, the local rulers will start sending you to one of the already-mapped dungeons. I'm not sure whether the names of the dungeons always remain the same or can change. Sometimes the local ruler doesn't name the dungeon when giving you a quest, just gives a vague description of the direction in lies in, so if all 14 dungeons have already been added to your map then it can be next to impossible to be sure which dungeon you're supposed to go to-- assuming it actually makes a difference.

I've also taken to exploring the area outside each city to look for dungeons there. The dungeons outside of cities are typically at least twice as large as the dungeons associated with the local rulers' quests, so they are the most interesting and most rewarding dungeons in the game aside from the dungeons related to the main quest.

I need only one more piece to complete the Staff of Chaos, but I'm still exploring Morrowind and trying to get all 14 of the miscellaneous dungeons added to the map before heading to Dagoth Ur. This will be my second completion of the main quest, but during my first playthrough a couple of years ago I didn't try to do the local rulers' quests and ended up trying to fast-track several of the dungeons by referring to their maps in the UESP wiki, so this is actually my first "mostly complete" playthrough of the game. I haven't visited and explored outside of every city in the game, which I'd like to do in a future playthrough, but for the most part I've explored every nook and cranny of every dungeon, with the exception of the upper level of Murkmire due to its excessively open nature. I'd much rather explore a dungeon consisting of a million narrow, twisty corridors than one where the entire map is nothing but empty space except for an occasional hedge!

Interesting reading in here. This is also my break from ESO. And your second map is wonderful. This is my first "actual" attempt to play Arena. I've started a few times, but just glanced at the manual. It seems I had forgotten how actually reading the manual was not only a way to learn what you were doing, but actually helped to draw you into the game. It was a rocky start, but I finally remembered to SAVE...and OFTEN, and before long the nostalgia started kicking in. I decided to go ahead and map out the sewers and now I'm on my way. Thanks for all your comments and information.

I'm glad you like my modified map of the Imperial Dungeons. I've often thought about making similar maps for the dungeons and other locations-- the interiors of houses, mansions, keeps, towers, mausoleums, etc. A lot of those places have a specific number of possible floorplans, so it might seem silly to map them, but I'd love to contribute to a database of maps so people can see where a pile of treasure might be located in a house or dungeon; they aren't always there, but the locations where they can be are always the same. And the in-game mapping doesn't distinguish between open water and a waterway that's under rock, which can be confusing when you're exploring a dungeon and the map is making it look like a location is readily accessible when in fact there's a wall in the way.

I just checked how much XP I received by turning in a local ruler's quest, and it was 12,500-- 500 more than the last time I'd checked. Since I was Level 24 then, and am Level 25 now, you apparently receive 500 XP per Level just for turning in a quest.

IIRC there are basically six types of quests-- rescue someone, capture someone, slay something, escort someone, deliver something, or retrieve something-- and half of those involve exploring a dungeon.

Given that you hopefully kill a lot of enemies and monsters while exploring the dungeon, doing dungeon quests can be an important part of grinding XP to increase your Level.

And since the other half of the quest types involve little more than traveling from one city to another, even those quests can be a quick and easy source of XP-- that is, as long as you don't fail.

I had one retrieval quest where people kept taking the item from me before I could deliver it safely to the ruler, and no matter how often I restored my game it kept happening. I think I finally restored to before I accepted that quest and ended up receiving a different quest that I was able to complete, because failure just wasn't an option!

The Most Terrifying Thing in Arena

Last night after some of your comments and a few more web searches and tests, I finally got Arena to where the citizens aren't running around, yet the text box fade-ins don't slow down to a crawl.

I was lost outside the city, but came across a creepy mausoleum. If you don't think you can get a jump scare or creepy feelings while playing a DOS game; you're not playing it right. I had a few jump scares when my health would start getting low and I'd look for a place to rest and just when I thought I was safe, something else would attack me. I'm starting to learn the art of drinking a potion with one hand and swinging my sword with the other. ...I fell in a hole. "What!?! Is this an instant death? I didn't know there were holes. When did I save?" I finally realized they are just like the sewers but without water. Still...VERY dark. I started thinking about how I was finally allowing myself to be "in" the game and not just "playing". I started thinking of the jump scares and creepy things. And then I realized: the most terrifying thing in Arena!

The rats can open doors.

Spiders... you forgot about spiders; they can open doors, too. Although I suppose that makes a bit more sense than rats being able to open doors, since the spiders are larger than the rats and have long legs-- or are they arms?

As for staying alive when you're low on health, my preferred strategy is to rest for 1 hour at a time, saving before and after each 1-hour nap. (Once your health gets high enough, you'll probably forego saving after every single nap, but unless your HP is high I recommend saving after each nap.)

Some people apparently think this is "cheating," but I don't think so; I think it's just common sense, or a "smart strategy." I mean, honestly-- if you were exploring a danger-filled location and couldn't find a "safe spot" to rest in, are you telling me you'd simply lie down and try to fall into a deep sleep lasting several hours, or would you instead try to catch brief "cat naps," sleeping with one eye open and waking every now and then to check your surroundings and make sure you were still safe? Don't mess with mah immurshun, and don't call my immurshun cheating!

The reason I find this to be a really good strategy (aside from just being more logically consistent with immersing yourself in the game) is that when you successfully sleep for a given amount of time, your health goes up twice-- once before or during the text that indicates how many hours are passing, and once more after you clear the "You wake up" message. If your sleep gets interrupted by something attacking you-- or just by a noise in a nearby room or corridor-- then you don't get that last little health boost upon waking up. So if you sleep successfully for three 1-hour cat naps, then have your fourth 1-hour cat nap interrupted, you regain a bit more health than if you try to rest until fully healed but get interrupted after 4 hours.

Besides, if your sleep does get interrupted and you get killed, you'll have a better save point to restore to, since you'll have a little more health each time you save between cat naps.

And speaking of saving, you should be aware of something I've noticed that might help explain why Arena appears to be buggier (crashier) when running under DOSBox than it was when running under the normal operating system of older computers. Every once in a while I get a warning message in the DOSBox command window about a file not being able to be written when I save a game. It's not a particular file; it could be any one of the many files that contain your current game and saved game data-- that is, the files with the number extensions, ".64" (which store the current state of your game) and ".00" through ".09" (which are the backups of the ".64" files that get written when you save your game in one of the 10 save-game slots).

If you try to restore a game that didn't get fully saved due to one of the files not being written as expected, you are more likely to experience a game crash (at worst) or weird symptoms (at best) when you restore that particular saved game, such as having the map of the city you're currently in be for some other city (despite whatever name appears at the top of the map), or other odd game behavior.

Once I noticed those warning messages in the DOSBox command window-- which, by the way, I wouldn't have seen if I'd been playing in full-screen mode, so it's lucky that I like to play in windowed mode-- I got into the habit of positioning my game window toward the right edge of the screen, and positioning the DOSBox command window toward the left edge of the screen, so I can hopefully see these warning messages when they occur.

I think I'll see whether I can change the text color to bright red so those messages stand out and attract my attention better, because sometimes I'm so involved in the game that I don't actually notice a warning message until later on, in which case it might be too late to remedy the situation by simply saving the game again as many times as needed-- which is usually just once-- to save without getting the error.

If the error occurs when saving to a particular slot-- as indicated by the file's number extension; for instance, ".02" would mean the error occurred when you'd saved your game to the third slot, since the 10 slots are numbered from 0 to 9-- but later you save successfully to a different slot, then you're okay as long as you don't try to restore from the save-game slot that didn't get fully saved to.

But if for some reason you'd wanted to be able to restore back to that particular earlier point, you won't be able to do so successfully or safely; instead, you'll need to restore back to some other earlier point where there was no error while saving.

And finally, if I do get this warning message about an error while trying to write a file, I usually save my game again successfully, drop to DOS, quit DOSBox-- which my batch file is set up to do automatically when I exit Arena-- and then start the game again, so I won't have any older warnings in the window and making it more difficult to notice when a new one appears.

Sometimes it isn't preferable to quit and restart like that, such as if you're exploring a dungeon, due to the annoying way the quality of your automap degrades slightly whenever you restore. That drives me crazy, because I like to hug the walls of a dungeon as I'm exploring it-- I think of it as running my finger along the walls as I'm walking-- so the boundaries of the walls will be fully darkened on the map, as this makes it easier to see whether I've been inside a given room or walked down a given corridor yet. If I could change one and only one thing about Arena, it would be to remove the routine that smudges and degrades your automap when you restore, and especially when you get killed and must restore. Anyway, if I don't want to quit and restart because I'm in a dungeon and don't want to ruin the pristine quality of my automap, then I'll usually try to wait until I'm finished and out of the dungeon before quitting and restarting.

I think trying to get that warning message to display in bright red text is going to be more difficult than I'd expected, maybe even impossible. It's displayed by DOSBox in the DOSBox status window, not by MS-DOS in the command prompt window.

Do you know if there is a way to "create" an error so a message shows up in that box?

Since my Mac is my desktop, it's easier to view and run tests, but I want to make sure what I see or don't see, isn't because of my setup. When I find something, then I can investigate further using my PC laptop. If I can reproduce the error, then I can know I'm looking in the same place you are describing; and not watching some static box expecting something to change. "NOPE, looks good to me!"

(Besides - now that you mentioned it, I really want to be able to watch out for it in MY game.)

About the only thing I can think of would be to change the file properties on one of the files for a specific save game slot, so the file is write-protected and can't be modified, then save your game to that slot so you can see the warning message about the error.

(Apologies if this is off-topic.)



When the game saves the automap view to disk, each group of four map squares is packed into a single byte, to save space. However, when the automap is reloaded from disk (such as when you restore a game), the four squares in each group are erroneously unpacked in the reverse order, resulting in the degraded look.

Fortunately, the fix is pretty simple. I can't post a link to the patched executable, so here are the instructions to follow if you want to apply the patch yourself.

It says it was only tested with 1.06, but do we know that this is also a problem with 1.07? Changes between 1.06 and 1.07 seem to be largely undocumented. I'm trying to create a list and verify those changes. (At least, observable changes). As well as bugs that aren't commonly listed elsewhere, that relate to both versions. I apparently haven't played long enough to notice the degrading maps in 1.07.

I checked version 1.07 and it contains the same erroneous code, so I assume it is also affected by the degrading automap bug. I forgot to consider though that the bytes to be changed differ between versions, as things get moved around in memory.

For version 1.07, the bytes to edit are at offset 0x281e9, and should read as follows:


They should be changed to:

No, not at all!



Wow, that is a revelation! It also presents me with a quandry, since I prefer to play unmodded plain vanilla TES games. But perhaps it would be possible to un-degrade the map by using that behavior against itself, so to speak: Save the game, restore it (thus corrupting the map), then save the game again, and restore it again (thus "corrupting" the map back to its proper appearance)?

To be honest, I always assumed that the "degradation" or "smudging" of the map was deliberate for some reason, perhaps similar in intent to the way some old games would give you the option to be resurrected a limited number of times if you died, but at a cost, like being dropped into the game somewhere other than where you were killed, but having your possessions dropped back into the game at a different location so you had to go hunt for them, or however that used to work. I forget which (text?) adventure game(s?) did that, but I always thought it was a bit of a dirty trick to play on the player, so I always preferred starting over from scratch to being resurrected.

So I just tried my idea, and it works beautifully!

My character was already parked at the entrance to an outside-world dungeon, ready to begin exploration, so I ran along a few walls to map them, checked the map to see how nice it looked, and saved.

When I restored, the map was corrupted by the bug, so I saved again, restored, and it was restored back to its nice, neat appearance!

The interesting thing is, if you save and then drop to DOS, the next time you start up the game and restore your last save, the map doesn't get corrupted, so it would seem that the routine for restoring a saved game after startup must not be the same one as for restoring a saved game from within the game, similar to how the routine for creating a new character after startup seems to be different than the one for creating a new character from within the game.

Wow - this is great information from both an internal fix and an external work around. Thank you both for sharing.

"What did you do in Arena today?" ME: Today I learned Unix.

Okay, far from it, but playing on a Mac I've been using a pre packaged 1.07/DOSBox combo app. But I want to ensure that when I'm testing, I'm absolutely using Vanilla .06 and .07, so I've been trying to learn how to set up my own. I was so..(frustrated, flummoxed, humbled - one of those words) to find that my arch-nemesis was trying to create a batch file for Mac. I've finally got that working and I'm on my way again.

An interesting find after learning some new Unix-fu:
I discovered that my prepackaged app had the script (batch) file set up to suppress error messages. Which applies to a slightly earlier topic. No wonder I couldn't figure out how to see error message.

Yeah, I'm so happy that I can now restore my games while in dungeons without fear of corruption. I've already used the save-restore-save-restore workaround several times today as I explored a few dungeons in the vicinity of Riverbridge, Morrowind.

Thank you so much, @ArgonianAccount, for explaining what was happening and providing instructions on how to hack the 1.06 and 1.07 executables to correct them! Even though I'm using a workaround rather than correcting the executable, I wouldn't have been able to come up with a workaround without your explanation. And one of these days I may get over my slavish allegiance to plain vanilla, at which point I'll definitely make the corrections to the executables.

Unix is an interesting beast that I had to learn in the early days of my last job. My familiarity with using MS-DOS commands came in handy, although Unix and MS-DOS are definitely different animals. I can't say that I miss those days very much, but they'll come in handy if I ever decide to install Linux on one of my old computers.

Okay...forgive me. I feel like I should be talking about what I did "IN" the game not what I did to get started to play, but I'm almost there .....really!

So today was about setting up my DOSBox conf files and starting from my script. I even have the bones in place to to just click separate batch files and load different versions of the game for testing on the fly. (I'm pretty happy about that.) It was interesting how the default DOSBox settings differ from the Anthology version (same as the current Bethesda free download). It really is machine specific for some of the tweaks, as to what will work better on each machine. I would assume the most universal setup would be what DOSBox comes with and probably what Bethesda tried to do with their's as well. Meaning it's probably best to see if something other than the default will give your personal machine better results. I set mine up using the Bethesda default, and could really tell the difference in the sound setup. Definitely brought back some DOS with PC speaker memories. It wasn't "bad", it was just very familiar and harkened back to the days that I bought my first brand new hard drive and renamed it "MegaDisk". I think it held an impressive 32MB.

So I started the game, listened to the music, created a new character....hmmm...what's the day. Morning Star!?! What!?! This is a fresh install and my first character! Back to the drawing board. ------ Actually there was one tiny thing I did. Before creating my character, I clicked LOAD SAVED GAME just to look at the empty list, I suppose. But yep, just "looking" at the load screen will also start your characters in Morning Star.

The empty load screen wasn't exactly empty either. The first save slot is named "123empty" instead of "empty" like all the others. The NAMES.DAT file isn't exactly pristine. What's even more interesting is the NAMES2.DAT which contains some previous saved game names.
00 Scott 1 / 01 Scott 1 / 02 empty / 03 Julian's test slot 1 / 04 Julian's test game slot 2 / 05 Foroozan 1 / 06 empty / 07 Jen's slot 1-Do not erase / 08 Jen's slot 1-Do not erase / 09 Foroozan 2
Nothing that special, but a fun peek at the past. This is also in my 1.03 copy and has a file date of DEC 24,1996 11:32PM. I think someone opened their present just a little early.

EDIT - I almost forgot - On one mission for the King, I was supposed to kill this wraith. I've never done that before. So I'm creeping through the dungeon and all of a sudden a door opens right beside me and "POOF"; Ria Silmane mourning my death. "Am I really that weak?" So I picked up a my silver sword and tried again and won without much effort. I'm guessing that when the wraith opened the door the first time, I must have gotten my finger caught in the hinge and just bailed. "Nope. That hurt...I quit!"