UESP Forums

1.) Do the class/race bonus' show up anywhere in game? I can't seem to find any increases as I level on the character sheet?

2.) This site says the weapon bonus' for Redguards & Wood Elves are switched? Is there anyway to verify this?

I think the only time and place where you can see the impact of class, race, and gender is when you roll the starting stats for your character. After that, there are no bonuses that show up as you level up-- just the differences in how many experience points it takes for the various classes to increase from one level to the next.

This would seem to be the case- but how then is it known that the bonus' for the two races are reversed if there are no observable numbers?

I've never seen any numbers related to weapons skills displayed anywhere in Arena, just as I've never seen any formulas that are used to randomly calculate the various stats or other things. But if you take careful and copious notes while playing the game-- such as about how many experience points you get by killing a certain type of enemy-- you can sometimes determine what formulas are being used. And I believe the formulas and many other details were published in the Codex Scientia, although I haven't seen that myself. According to the UESP Wiki, the Codex Scientia is included as a PDF in the GOG version of Arena, but I don't see Arena in the GOG store. I've just downloaded something which purports to be the GOG version of Arena, but haven't unzipped it yet. And in the Elder Scrolls discussions on GOG someone mentions that if you buy any Elder Scrolls game on GOG then Arena and Daggerfall will be added to your cart for free, so I might buy Battlespire and Redguard to see if that's true. Other than that, sometimes you can visually see the results of certain racial bonuses, such as being able to scale a wall faster, or not getting tired as quickly during prolonged swimming.

Bethesda released the disk version for free, Good Old Games gives you the C.D. version as well as Daggerfall I believe when you buy a Bethesda game from them.

My primary concern given that there's no visual feedback of class/race bonus' is which source is correct this site or the manual. I seriously cannot find any information about this online.

I don't know, but the Codex Scientia doesn't discuss those types of racial bonuses, so it's no help in this. You would expect the bonuses to be for bows for Wood Elves, and for melee weapons for Redguards, so if it's reversed in the game then it must have been some kind of IF-Then coding error. I honestly don't know whether you can see the difference in the bonuses on the stats screen, but that might be easy to determine. Create a Redguard character and buy a bow and a sword for him, then swap back and forth between the two weapons to see if there's any difference in the damage rating shown on the stats screen. Then do the same with a Wood Elf character. I don't know if that would help, but it certainly couldn't hurt and is easy enough to try.

Yeah, I had that same thought. Problem is Arena doesn't have a console to rapidly level up.

Edit
Alright, I did some testing with two Battlemage characters- a High Elf with no combat bonus' at level and a Redguard with +1 at level three. Both used their daggers against a single goblin. The Redguard usually took two hits to get the kill, but sometimes could do it in one. The High Elf always took at least two hits- sometimes three. So, the the site's information is incorrect that the Redguard bonus is switched with the Wood Elves. I suppose the Wood Elves bonus with bows could be borked but given the Redguard's is working I'm not inclined to test any further.

Further Edit
I went and updated the wiki.