So if you go to the pages for Redguard and Battlespire on the UESP, they have little guides to help get them running on DOSBox if you haven't seen it yet (It's under Technical Info on Redguard, and Misc. Info on Battlespire.

I don't know if you've seen it yet, but hopefully it helps

Oh, and Morrowind Rebirth's 1.8 release came out today if anyone cares.

Yes and no, at least for Redguard.

Can a VPC with a copy of Win95/98 get passed that point?

I started a game in Daggerfall, and I have to agree that much of what's cool about it is unrealized potential. And dungeons are a pain even with recall (which takes a ton of spell points), because you have to find the quest item/person before. I'm trying to ascend in a temple to get access the potion maker, to see how alchemy is in this game. Whenever they give me a dungeon quest I do the [] cheat, just like at the end of my previous game.

They totally ruined the dungeons, because they were so innovative. Daggerfall had the first real 3D dungeons ever, AFAIK (the Duke Nukem of RPGs), but they made the mistake of making them as maze-like as in traditional RPGs with flat storied dungeons. Even if Daggerfall had a higher resolution and you could rotate the map more freely, it would still be a mess.

You know what 3D game has the best dungeons ever? Tomb Raider. It doesn't have maps, and I wondered why. Now I can imagine they may have studied the concept and concluded that 3D maps were impractical. The levels in Tomb Raider take every advantage of the three dimensions, and they're challenging, but they're just simple enough that you can find your way after a while on your own.

In Arena, only two more pieces of the Staff to go. But the dungeon I'm now in (Mines of Khuras) is seriously hard, full of magic spewing monsters. And I'm not sure what kind of system Arena goes by, but armor class doesn't seem to matter, because I totally cheated to have four artifacts at the same time, but even the weakest monsters can hit me. But only the iron golems are dangerous in melee for me, and I can use my ring of forcewall. The biggest danger is magic, two lowly hellhounds can kill me in the open if I'm not carefull; I have spell shield in the ring of Phynaster, but I'm saving it as much as I can.

I may revisit Morrowind after this. I don't think I've played it enough to exhaust its entertainment value. I'll shop around for mods, now that I know what I like and what I don't.

Magic is broken indeed in Arena. Were you a magician, you could save a bit and buy an absurdly powerful version of shield, which increases in power as you level, rendering you virtually invulnerable. Heh, throw the no-clip spell and fly in the lot and you could walk in a straight line to the objective. TES up to morrowind always struck me as mostly 'let's put lots of stuff in the game and see how it comes out'. I guess that's why they are so fun.

In case it wasn't obvious, in Arena I'm playing a non magic user (knight). Kind of regretting my career choice, if plate armor (etc, summing up to -53) is as protective as being naked. And I'm stuck at level 17; I thought about exploiting a fire demon spawn point to level up, but I didn't after killing a dozen of them, I swear to God. Arena is a nice game for its time, but honestly I wouldn't bother playing it if it weren't an Elder Scrolls game (RPG isn't my only favored genre anyway).

Daggerfall has a great wow factor (for people who didn't play later TES games before it) because of the free roaming in a virtual world, and I can't imagine how much it had when it came out. But it looks unfinished in parts, and the dungeons can be a deal breaker. When I first played I tried very hard, it wasn't until very very late in the game that I decided to resort to the [] cheat, and I didn't even have the recall spell with that character. Now I don't have the patience to deal with dungeons any longer.

I'm looking into Morrowind mods, I'm trying to do my homework but it sounds like there are many things that could go wrong. Besides it seems I'd need the expansions, which I don't have at the moment. I've taken a look at Planet Elders Scrolls and I've made a first selection:

• Morrowind Comes Alive (thanks to TC for this)
• Guars
• Pegas Horse Ranch (I just want to be able to ride horses, and this is what I've found; not sure what this ranch thing is about).

Do you know these? Any of them has more bugs than features? They're highly rated but from some comments you'd think any of them has a number of significant glitches; or is that the tech support echo chamber?

Yes, I had noticed, I was just considering a hypothetical scenario with a magician. Actually, I was just pointing the flaws in the magic system.

About the mods, I never cared much about them, to be honest. I only used cosmetic ones, like one to have mana regeneration, and other which let me buy chests to the house. Never tried the major ones.

Well I don't know if this is the same for everyone, but with MCA, I got errors with the new characters' heads until I downloaded the full Westly's Head Pack thing, that might have been fixed, but if you start the game and get a huge load of errors while trying it, try downloading and installing the original Master Head Pack.

In Daggerfall spells cost less and less points the higher you train the respective magic school skill. At 95 almost all spells with a single effect already cost only 5 points.

For Morrowind it's a matter of choice which non-official mods to use, my (carefully informed about and selected) choice of those I always use is:
Balmora Apartment
IndyBank v2.4
Mr Big (big money stash merchant in Balmora, for easier selling of expensive / lots of stuff)
Rings of Roan v1.0 (some very strong, useful rings to buy, might be seen as close to cheat by some)
And of course all of those official ones from Bethesda, except Entertainers.

In Daggerfall spells problem was easy solved.
Collect money, go and buy all spells you want. I had about 30 spells.
Sadly i can not remember about presence of Levitate spell??

There was a message i hated much:
--You can not rest. Enemies nearby.--
Really i have no problems with the enemies.

Anyway i like this 5 games saga and i have ambition to play all of them.
Even i have to upgrade my videocard to at least 1 GB memory (now 128 MB).
One good improvement in Morrowind is that hero may left object on the ground which will not disappeared after a while.
And this spacious rooms, and nice graphic! Perfect job of the creators.
Hope Obvilion and Skyrim and future ?? will keep this direction.

No any mods.

the dark Elf aka the brave