UESP Forums

Hi people, im playing again Arena. My last game was years ago with a warrior and picked the game again now but felt the need to start out and build better my new character. Its a knight now i just couldnt ignore anymore that paralysis immunity... i wanna make it as strong as possible. Someday will try Bard and Sorcerer in that order.

Well back to topic, I just noticed when i go outside of city walls the map still draw stuff and can find buildings: houses, dungeons, crypts. I can even see generic npcs walking, planted corn.
The question is: the dungeons and crypts are used in quests like some npc ask me go outside of city and visit that place or all the quest who require dungeons make you instead open the world map and visit stuff from there?

I left the starting dungeon at level 4, managed to make some good money since i found 1 non enchanted ebony helmet bartered and sold it for like 36K and got some more money of some marks and rings i dont needed. The funny thing was when i got teleported from starting dungeon to Neugrad Watch (Skyrim) it gave me a huge messsage and at the end told me all magic stuff is half price. I noticed shops had all their potions at half price so i bought bartering a metric ton of useful potions and now im set.
To the southeast of outside town walls i found a interesting small crypt, its pretty close to visit and on my first visit i got deleted by a hellhound so now im using fire resist potions if i manage to spawn one of these when i enter.

Unfortunately, none of the crypts, keeps, or dungeons outside the cities are used in any quests. However, they can be good sources of loot and experience; I spend most of my Arena playtime going from city to city and exploring the area around the city. If you wander too far and can't find your way back to the city, you can use the world map to fast travel to the city.

The local map for the wilderness outside the cities can be confusing, because it doesn't show the actual buildings. Instead, it shows the pavement or stone (displayed in brown) and the water (displayed in blue). However, after you become used to the wilderness map and have explored a good bit, you can start to recognize which configurations represent farms, graveyards, groups of houses, temples, inns, and settlements surrounded by walls. The entrances of the crypts, keeps, and dungeons are displayed as red dots, so you can also spot those locations quite easily, and you'll soon be able to distinguish which ones are crypts, which are keeps, and which are dungeons.

Oh, as i expected they arent used at all in quests sadly. Would have been amazing if that were possible, it give the game more depth.
Maybe im asking too much for a first game in the series.

Its cool to wander the outside of cities to find unknown buildings, much more fun than the typical quest who just gives you instantly a small cave icon in the world map. That make the cities feel more alive.
Probably due to time and technical problems they skipped doing that method, we got part of that with the missions of bartenders who send us to visit other place in city interiors.

After grinding a little bit some dungeons, keeps, crypts included the formerly mentioned tutorial dungeon i noticed loot tables arent that random, i have the feel depending the type place you visit you tend to get different stuff dropped.
In starting dungeon i managed to see helmets and longswords up to ebony quality and some low quality ones with attribute enchant. The rest of weapons, armors were more rare to see and only dropped mostly on the first 2 tiers of quality as much.
In a crypt close to Neugrad Watch (Skyrim) i only find low quality stuff mostly but now instead im seeing broadswords, pauldrons of better quality than anything i managed to see in starting dungeon.

Level of character affect loot tables of piles of gold and weapon/armor too?

I'm not sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if it does. I think I read that the various types of monsters have different loot tables, so maybe that's also part of it.

As far as finding good gear to equip yourself with, don't overlook the houses. Getting in can be difficult if you don't have an open spell or high lockpicking skill, because if you fail to pick the lock or have to start bashing on the door then the guards usually show up. If you do need to bash the door in, it's best to unequip your weapon first and just use your fists-- but take off your gauntlets so the game doesn't crash-- otherwise you'll wear out your weapon. If you loot houses a lot, you'll get to where you can recognize whether a given house is good for looting, or good for sleeping, or both, or neither, just by looking at the first room when you enter the house.

Not possible to break in houses and steal stuff, im trying to stay as good as possible on my knight. Will try that on Bard or Sorcerer on future.

I noticed the only lootpiles who reroll when you load a save are the ones in starting dungeon. The rest have fixed content once you find it.

Also there is some weird glitch/bug with encumberance penalty. I had a character with a load of around 112 kilos and moved pretty fast, then loaded something to reach around 130-140 and now moves noticeably slower. Then loaded it more and more up to around 190 kilos and now moves faster like when he was 112. Seems like its badly implemented.

I don't think the movement speed is tied to encumberance, although I don't actually know. As far as I can tell, movement in Arena and Daggerfall doesn't slow down even if you're carrying your maximum capacity, and getting rid of everything you're carrying never speeds up your movement.

Any variation in movement speed seems to come from how long it takes the game to draw each frame. As you might have noticed, in Arena you can see reflections in puddles of rain water, and you can also see through keyholes in doors as well as through the little gaps in hedges. That means the game apparently draws objects which are further away, then draws nearer objects. The reason you can speed up the game by reducing the Detail setting is because Detail determines how far away you can see objects. Backdrops such as distant mountains are always visible-- and never get any closer no matter how long you walk toward them, since they're just backdrop images rather than objects in the game's three-dimensional space-- but actual objects such as buildings, city walls, loot piles, city dwellers, and enemies are drawn only if they're within the distance that's determined by the Detail setting. Reducing your view distance lets you move faster because the game's graphics engine isn't needing to draw as much.

Any weather conditions that affect the graphics will also decrease your movement speed. For instance, fog has a tremendous impact on movement speed because the game needs to take the raw or natural graphical appearance of everything-- colors and surface textures-- and alter them by applying the clouds of fog to them. If the clouds of fog were just "solid objects" you can't see through then they could just be drawn in front of other objects, but instead they are clouds which vary in thickness and which you can (sort of) see through, therefore the game needs to overlay them on top of the other objects, not simply obscuring those other objects but actually changing the colors and textures which you see. Rain and snow don't have as much of a dramatic impact on your movement speed because the graphics engine doesn't need to do as much "number crunching" as it does with fog. At least, that's my best guess; I haven't looked at any of the game's code to see how it all actually works.

Are you really sure about that? i did notice a slowdown in movement when i got more weight in my character.
Playing on 1.07 from UESP.
I tested it with different characters on my old warrior save and my new knight save on that same crypt first room mentioned earlier. When i got over around 112 kilos it started to slow down and when i was near max carry weight it started to move fast again. Its pretty odd. Never dropped stuff here in case that causes slowdowns over time too.
If instead of picking stuff to fill the character ignored it speed would never change, its the moment it pass certain threshold, and is noticeable the extact moment it happens after picking item.
Im well aware of fog and stuff but on that interior its always the same.
Just playing in default level of detail.

As I said, I don't think encumberance affects movement speed, but I don't actually know for sure, as I've never looked at the program code. So, no, I'm not really sure about that; I'm just telling you what my own experiences playing Arena and Daggerfall have been.

In my experience, you move just as fast when you're carrying your maximum encumberance capacity as you do when carrying nothing at all.

In fact, I know that in Daggerfall you can actually carry more than your maximum capacity and still move normally, and I think that's probably true in Arena as well. You can't pick up more than your maximum capacity, so the only way to go over your maximum capacity is if you temporarily boost your Strength and later it returns to normal, or if something happens (such as getting certain diseases) that reduces your Strength and therefore your maximum capacity as well.

In Daggerfall, you can also go over your maximum capacity by picking up loot from your wagon, because anything in your wagon shows up as having 0 weight when you look at it while it's in your wagon. You can still move around as usual, but you can't pick up anything new.

If you're slowing down inside a dungeon, it's probably due to something in particular that's being drawn, such as if the graphics engine needs to draw more blocks than usual due to there being an extra level, such as a floor that has a lot of pits or tunnels in it, or that has channels or pools of water.

Well its a mystery then.
I bring that info because i was testing loot tables on that particular place so i was entering and leaving after looking for the first pile at the start of crypt. I could pick at certain point stuff but when i got enough weight it started to slowdown, then it recovered the movement speed when was almost full of kilos. The slowdown never go away until i filled the character of stuff. I tried leaving entering multiple times the crypt and slowdown stay, tried reloading and it stay. Loaded a save before the exact moment the slowdown happens and character moves normally. If i did that cycle of entering-leaving for a long time and never picking up stuff the slowdown never happens.
What surprised me is it happened at the exact same way on my old save of a warrior on that same crypt.
Maybe someday someone will find the answer in code.

Yeah by the history of comments you have played a lot this game, thanks for the help if i find some question i will post them on this forum again. Its a very old game but is still fun.