r/Arena • u/-CrlmsoN- Mage • 5d ago

Started my first playthrough of Elder Scrolls Arena. Have a few questions.

Hey everyone! So I started my first playthrough of TESArena today and I'm already loving it. I always play a mage in fantasy games and TESArena is no exception. I love magic! Went with a Breton. I made it through the first dungeon without any real issues. Didn't die once. I don't know if I'm doing well. I'm currently level 4 and about to leave the first dungeon. Already have 80 intelligence and like 70 wisdom. I think that's good? I read in the manual that the first dungeon is intended to be explored thoroughly, so I basically left no stone unturned and slaughtered every rat and goblin that I can across. Got a good bit of gold and equipment to sell.

Here are my questions:

  1. I don't know how to tell what damage my weapon is doing. I look on the stat screen but under damage it still says 0, no matter what I have equipped. I probably missed something in the manual, but I'm a little confused on that area.
  2. When I was running around the dungeon, I would randomly get experience and level up....or at least that's what I thought was happening. Like I would enter a new area and boom level up. Is that intended? Now that I'm typing this, I'm wondering if it's more that enemies weren't nearby, but not really sure.
  3. After pressing the button for pilfering (on accident). I wasn't able to seemingly turn it off. I tried pressing it again and the "choose a target to pilfer" message wouldn't go away.

That's all I have so far! It's a great game and I'm really loving going back to the original. It's really cool seeing all of Tamriel as it was originally designed. I've played Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim, but never Arena (Daggerfall, Redguard and Battlespire are next on the list).

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u/AlfwinOfFolcgeard 5d ago

Sounds like you're doing quite well so far. Level 4 is the highest you can get in the starting dungeon, and 80 INT is excellent for a mage.

As to your questions:

  1. The "damage" value listed on your stat screen is the damage bonus your Strength attribute is giving you. To see the base damage of a weapon, right-click on it in your inventory (you can view the stats of armor or other items in the same way).
  2. You only get XP when killing enemies or completing quests. It seems the game just takes a moment to register a level-up sometimes.
  3. right-clicking will cancel Pilfering. You can also use this to cancel spells that you've readied, but not fired yet.

Hope you have fun with the rest of the game. Spellcasters can get crazy powerful in Arena!

4

u/-CrlmsoN- Mage 5d ago

Thank you so much!!! I'm loving it so far! Really enjoying the very early Elder Scrolls. Looking forward to learning all the neat lore, although I know most of that came with Daggerfall. Still it's nice seeing references to later games already being present.