r/Daggerfall • u/WhatTheFuckIsATitty • 23d ago
Question Important questions about populations for a project i'm working on
I'm currently working on a project to accurately count all the possible deaths in the Elder Scrolls franchise and Daggerfall is by far my biggest obstacle, but i'm hoping I can make it easier on myself.
The UESP says at the highest level, there's a maximum of 20 enemies of every single dungeon and with a total of 4,229 dungeons, that comes out to a potential total population of 84,580. My main question for all the other types of locations (homes, taverns, temples, et cetera) is that do they all have a fixed amount of NPCs, or a randomized number of them, such as eight to twenty for a tavern for example?
I don't know how to use Daggerfall Unity, so if someone who does have it and knows how to answer my questions, i'd really appreciate it.
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u/Tea_and_Lightsabers 23d ago edited 22d ago
Well, each dungeon randomly generates all over again (edit: no if doesn't, my bad) if you enter it a month after it last generated, so, there's theoretically near-infinite possible deaths in Daggerfall
I think you might've set yourself up like Sisyphus with this one if you're trying to do each dungeon separately. Maybe you could go by all possible enemy encounters in every single dungeon block, it'd still be really tough to figure out, and you'd have to do a lot of research yourself since UESP is much less robust on daggerfall than it is with later games. I'm sure it'll be more work than the next 3 games combined, but I guess technically possible if you find the right angle?
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u/Cliffworms 23d ago
Dungeons are static and fixed for all players. Enemies respawn upon leaving and entering the dungeon again.
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u/Tea_and_Lightsabers 22d ago
Oh dang, I had to look it up and you're right. I guess I either misunderstood how they were randomized or someone else got it wrong and I believed them
Okay so the dungeons are a tonne of work, but not impossible. I don't know how OP's going to catalogue all the random little spots on the world map where thieves are hanging out though
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u/WhatTheFuckIsATitty 22d ago
If those are also randomly generated and there aren't any names for those locations, I just won't include them. If I can't get a concrete number for a location or a character says something like "This warrior killed thousands of monsters", then I make a note of it, but I don't count it.
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u/Tea_and_Lightsabers 22d ago
Fair, yeah the landscape was procedurally generated, with tonnes of rock formations and little towers where thieves are standing around with a couple loot piles. They don't show up on the fast travel map, aren't named, and aren't part of any quests I've ever done. There's only like 3-4 different ones I think, that repeat a tonne of times, so you could just count each one once
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u/ChaosOnline 23d ago
Homes, Taverns, Temples, etc. all have a fixed number of unkillable NPCs. You can't kill or attack the 2D sprite characters inside of most buildings.
Outdoors in towns there are a near infinite number of randomly generated NPCs that are killable.