I really enjoyed playing this game. I was going at it one time with intent to see it through. However, I got caught up in a quest to get some wand or something and got stuck poisoned in a dungeon. So whenever I try to fast travel out of there (the only way to leave), I'd die during the journey. I kept looking around the dungeon hoping to find a poison cure somewhere but I never did. Gave up after that. Need to get back at it.

That's very similar to what happened to this guy. I think he got diseased in both Stonekeep and Fang Lair. Luckily, when leaving Stonekeep, he made it back to town alive. However later, I think he had to redo Fang Lair, because he wasn't so fortunate..

Fang Lair! That was the place, actually!

I need to try this! I've got Daggerfall, Oblivion, and Skyrim. (Still need Morrowind. Maybe I'll grab it on Steam tonight.) Daggerfall is pretty cool.

I've restarted the game, and changed my race and class to a dark elf spellsword from Morrowind. That should make things a little easier. In previous attempts, I was struggling as a mage, with only a staff to defend myself. I'm looking forward to wandering around in Fang Lair (with a couple of cure poison potions bought from the mage's guild.)

BTW, I couldn't see Arena on the steam website. However, you might find the Arena wiki pages enlightening, including their files page.

Arena's not on Steam. Neither is Daggerfall, both of them being free.

Here goes...

Aaarrggghhh.....you guys tempted me! I'm also starting this game again....

(I was busy with emulation.)

I managed to survive Fang Lair, and get the first piece of the staff of chaos. A note of caution: I've noticed that there's something wrong with the mapping feature. If you add annotations to it, they disappear later. This is very frustrating, as you can't effectively label anything. At least that's what happened to me, with the CD version 1.07. I tried using very short descriptions for everything, but that didn't solve this problem.

Huh. I don't remember having that problem. Then again, I remember using the feature, however I don't remember if I used it all that much.

The person I mentioned earlier in this thread doing a "lets play" of this game on youtube mentions it.

Another bug I discovered is when leaving stuff for repair with a smithy. When you return to collect it, it's not there. This glitch is mentioned in the Arena wiki page. This is frustrating, because I was using smithies to store my items, for sale later. I wasn't too sure which items to keep, and which items to sell, so I thought I'd just leave them for repair until I made up my mind.

I'm currently in the fortress of ice. Anyone know what the best strategy is against ice golems?

Malik wrote:

Aaarrggghhh.....you guys tempted me! I'm also starting this game again....

(I was busy with emulation.)

How's it going? 😀 I think I'm getting the hang of this game. I have cheated however. Well not too seriously.

1) I used this webpage (Arena Wiki) to find the location of some useful weapons.
2) And I used this webpage (Elder scrolls Wikia) to solve some of the game's riddles.

However, I haven't cheated in terms of adding any gold pieces or any other items to my inventory, and I haven't altered any of my game character's statistics.

Onwards...

Please note that my posts about this game contain spoilers, such as screenshots and general hints.

I've managed to get the fourth piece of the staff of chaos. It was located in the Halls of Colossus, which I found quite easy. I think I've worked out how to successfully play this game. What you need is plenty of money - or rather gold pieces. Once you have enough GP, you can buy the right equipment - being weapons and spells. And you can pick up many other useful items along the way if you meticulously work your way through all areas of each dungeon you explore. That's the other important thing to do - thorough exploration will give you items you can use, and also items to sell when you return back to a town.

I found that one of the best "basic" spells to use is Invisibility. It's good because some of the enemies can be quite tough - for instance trolls, various golems, and even monks! IMO, it's not worth wasting your health and the condition of your weapons and armour on them. They don't yield much loot. I've found that it's easier just to avoid them.

retro games 100 wrote:

The person I mentioned earlier in this thread doing a "lets play" of this game on youtube mentions it.

Another bug I discovered is when leaving stuff for repair with a smithy. When you return to collect it, it's not there. This glitch is mentioned in the Arena wiki page. This is frustrating, because I was using smithies to store my items, for sale later. I wasn't too sure which items to keep, and which items to sell, so I thought I'd just leave them for repair until I made up my mind.

I'm currently in the fortress of ice. Anyone know what the best strategy is against ice golems?

Were any patches ever released to fix the bugs? I would think that would be something that would have been caught not long after the game was released and fixed.

If there's no patch to fix the disappearing items bug, then I wouldn't consider it cheating if you were to edit your inventory to give you those items back when you are ready to sell them since you did earn them legitimately.

AFAIK, the game can be upgraded to version 1.07 using the official patch, and no other version (official or otherwise) supercedes it. I am vaguely aware that Bethesda's games are considered to be somewhat buggy.

I see what you are saying about the "inventory edit" suggestion. However, I now have over 100K's worth of legitimately* collected GP, alongside an arsenal of top quality weapons and armour related items, and so I don't require any further assistance in this regard.

*If you consider killing anything that moves and stealing from their mangled corpses "legitimate". 😉

I'm about to venture forth in to the bastion of sorcery! I read in this Arena wiki page, under the Spellmaking recommendations section at the bottom of that page that "[one of] the most powerful effects is Spell Reflection [which will] kill any spell-casting monster, even fire daemons." With that in mind, I've prepared my own home-brewed spell reflector using the spellmaking equipment at a local mage's guild. I hope it's powerful enough..

I'm currently searching for the sixth piece of the staff of chaos. A mage (from I forget where) has asked me to retrieve some artifact for him, located in the Mines of Khuras. I thought I'd "glue its map together" as a screenshot, to show you the size. That tiny yellow arrow roughly in the middle, where the blue dot is, is my current location. And that blue dot represents a ladder down to level 2..

When I was wandering about in these mines, I noticed messages scratched on to the walls. I've marked them as "m", just in case they mean something, and I need to return to them to re-read them.

I've just discovered something else with the game's mapping system. If you walk up to any "trade door" in any town (such as a store, temple, inn, etc) and right click on it, not only does it tell you what the name of the building is (eg Discount supply store), it automatically labels your map with this name too.

I have yet to discover if these "automatic labels" disappear over time..

Contains spoilers.

I've managed to complete the game. It's good, but its overall design is flawed. IMHO, it feels too much like a slog. I hope to play Daggerfall next, but I'm worried it might be even longer, bigger, and ultimately just another slog..

Going after piece 6 of 8 of the staff of chaos:

The dullest of the game's levels:

Going after piece 8. Contains exciting battles with Liches, and also the final boss fight. This is where you need to understand how the spellmaker system works. It's useful having the ability to paralyse your opponents, and to reflect your opponents spells, and also I wonder if it's worth investing in a "sanctuary spell" too...

Boss fight. Once he's taken too much damage, he cacoons himself so you can't finish him off.

But you can win by unlocking a door and getting a jewel. Once that's done, the boss burns up and dies.

Game over.

9.9 million experience points.