The Elder Scrolls looked a lot different during its first foray into the world of gaming with its first two titles, Arena and Daggerfall. While still first-person adventures with a sprawling, open-world background and lands of fantasy to explore, the games are low resolution and feature a bunch of oddities.
Some of these are more noticeable than others, for example, Orcs being unplayable and the complete lack of Imperials. While Arena simply set the stage and Daggerfall built up much of the lore we know and love today, there’s still a lot of information that players will miss by not playing these iconic games.
10 Mephala’s Dark Brotherhood
The mysterious and shrouded organization of assassins, the Dark Brotherhood, is well-known and loved in the Elder Scrolls games as a ‘fun guild’ that you can join. They date back to Arena where they cannot be joined but may be involved in quests — either as allies or enemies.
In Daggerfall, however, they are more fully formed. The assassins’ association with Sithis was always present, but the second game had them religiously worshipping Daedric Prince Mephala. This detail is missing from the future games, where the Night Mother is far more revered — though some may argue that she is Mephala herself. As always, Elder Scrolls lore is a bit convoluted.
9 Holidays And Celebrations
One curiously missing feature in later games is the presence of holidays. All Elder Scrolls games keep track of the date using their own calendar and the first two games took advantage of this to invent special Tamriel-specific holidays.
Not only are these holidays mechanically useful, with some being used to summon Daedra and alert the player to cheaper drinks at bars, but they also add a lot to the worldbuilding. Feast days, celebrations of the new year, and marking special anniversaries is such an innately human thing that their omission is really felt in later titles.
8 The Underking’s Identity
This may be something of a controversial one. While a popular recurring book in the games, The Arcturian Heresy, makes a lot of claims about the identity of The Underking, Daggerfall appears to make it really obvious. When you find the Totem of Tiber Septim, each of the game’s political factions vies for your favor, with The Underking outright admitting that he used to be Tiber Septim’s battlemage — Zurin Arctus.
While the lore is muddier today, what with the different accounts of The Underking’s life, it was a much simpler matter in Daggerfall. Perhaps The Warp In The West did more damage to the timeline than we thought.
7 Pesky Artifacts
A gameplay feature from Arena might actually go some way to explaining a curious fact about the entire franchise. In the game, you can collect various artifacts that would go on to appear in future games. They are powerful but limited — once their abilities have been used a number of times the artifacts break, disappearing and then reappearing somewhere else in the world.
What seems to be a gameplay balance choice may go some lengths to explaining how so many artifacts end up acquired by different player characters across the franchise. These magical items seem to have minds of their own, so it makes sense that they’d end up traveling across Tamriel to be found by the next hero or heroine.
6 Unauthorized Biography
One of the more infamous series of books that you can find in the Elder Scrolls games is The Real Barenziah, a biography of the Dunmer queen that speaks very frankly about her past deeds. In Daggerfall, not only can you meet up with Barenziah but you can get a quest from her regarding the book — volume VI specifically.
The quest involves stealing the book from a rival faction (either the Orcs of Orsinium or some necromancers) and returning it to her. Nothing is stopping you from reading the book yourself, though, and finding out all the juicy secrets that Barenziah wants erased. No matter what happens, the book ends up remaining popular and famous in future games so yeah, bad luck Barenziah.
5 Places Of Importance
Arena’s main quest is notable in that it will take you all over the continent of Tamriel — no province is left untouched. What this means is that much of the continent’s map was planned out right from the very beginning and along with cities, many landmarks were present in the lore from the start.
You’ll even end up visiting three very important places that pop up in later games. Not only must you delve into Dagoth-Ur (also known as Morrowind’s Red Mountain), but you’ll even explore Labyrinthian, the famously annoying dungeon from Skyrim. Most egregiously, the final quest takes place in no other place than the Imperial Palace, a very important location for Oblivion. Arena really did set the stage for the future of the franchise.
4 Dead Deliveries
Couriers can be quite an expense in Tamriel, can’t they? Well, they must be, as Mannimarco the King of Worms seems to do away with them completely — perhaps literally. As one of the faction leaders in Daggerfall, he must send messages to the player sometimes, but his methods are… unique.
At some point, the player will be attacked by a random zombie that has a note stuck to it. This is how the King of Worms lets you know he has a request for you. Outsourcing your courier services to the undead feels a little cheap, Mannimarco.
3 Schools of Magic
The mages of Tamriel really can’t seem to make up their mind about the nature of magic and how to categorize the various spells and enchantments they can use. Modern players may remember the removal of the Mysticism school of magic during the period between Oblivion and Skyrim, but this is not the first time a school has disappeared.
Thaumaturgy was once one of the seven main archetypes of magic. It contained such important effects as Spell Reflection, Levitation, and Charm, all of which would find themselves moved around come Morrowind. It seems the Mage’s Guild cannot make up their minds.
2 Bretons Can Party Harder
One feature of Arena is purchasing drinks from bartenders and the ability to get drunk. As a gameplay feature, it’s a simple calculation based on your endurance and the number of drinks bought: once it crosses a threshold, your character is drunk and receives some stat buffs and penalties.
What the code reveals however is that the Bretons are actually quite resistant to alcohol. It takes them more drinks to get drunk and therefore can drink a lot before they end up passing out from alcohol poisoning. You’d think it would have been the Nords, surely.
1 Soul Binding
The concept of using Soul Trap to fill up gems with the souls of your foes is one that is now well-established in The Elder Scrolls. Nowadays, larger souls fill larger gems and the largest gems provide the best enchantments — simple enough.
In Daggerfall, however, the choice of the soul could actually provide very specific enchantments to equipment. These non-human souls can be very useful in creating fantastic enchantments at the cost of extra disadvantages. For example, using the soul of a Ghost to enchant an item will make it weigh almost nothing, but at the same time that item will deteriorate in holy places and not do much damage against the undead. Experimenting with souls is a fun (if morally questionable) hobby for any adventurer.
NEXT: Things You Didn’t Know About The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall
