The Daggerfall Preview was the first of three demos released in the months before Daggerfall's release, and first appeared in late 1995. It was distributed on preview CDs included with Game Magazines, though it was soon replaced by a second demo, which was perceived to be less buggy and a superior experience. These releases were followed by the rarer Betony Demo.
Features include an animated bestiary, character generator, dungeon demo, and examples of the SpellMaker, Item Maker, and Potion Maker. The dungeon crawling demonstration takes place in a dungeon called The Pit of Jagadha, and provides a pregenerated 16th level Spellsword character to play.
NotesEdit
There are a number of notable differences between the demo and the final release:
- The deities listed in character creation are Akatosh, Arkay, Mara, and Julianos from the final game, though they are joined by "Notorgo, the Messenger God", "Ephen, God of the Wild", and "The Bandit God" (Bajdit, who eventually became Baan Dar). More in-depth info on these gods could be found in various files from the beta demo:
- The beta version of FACTION.TXT has some entries have been removed or changed in the full game:
- Raen (#20), with the temple called The Conservatory of Raen (#80), and the associated knightly order The Knights of the Field (#81)
- Notorgo (#23), with associated temple called The Temple of Notorgo (#86), and a knightly order under the name The Order of the Wings (#87)
- The Bandit God (#28), Brotherhood of Bandit (#96), The Wharf Rats (#97)
- Jeh Free (#30), The Society of Jeh (#100), The Encyclics (#101)
- Vir Gyl (#31), The Communion of Vir (#102), The Tide (#103)
- Q'Olwen (#32), The Sodality of Q'Olwen (#104), The Order of the Key (#105)
- Ephen (#34), The Fellowship of Ephen (#300), The Wildlords (#109)
- Xedoc of Oblivion [retail copy only] / Secret of Oblivion (#977), [Xedoc spelled backwards is Codex]
- The Agliostrics (#800), a Mages Guild subfaction
- FALL.EXE has references to a few divines that were removed from the final product:
- Raen: God of Agriculture
- Notorgo: Messenger God
- Shandar: God of War
- Vigryl: God of the Sea
- Q'Olwen (wisdom?)
- Ephen: God of the Wild
- FALL.EXE also has a number of knightly orders, some in reverence of certain figures, and these strings from the demo were kept in the final game:
- Temple of Theodorus
- Knights of Daggerfall
- Order of Nyeraad
- Gryphon Knights
- Order of the Lance
- Knights of the Isle
- Border Knights
- Crusaders
- Dreadknights
- Order of the Lamp
- Knights of the Field
- Order of the Forge
- Order of the Wings
- Battlelords
- Order of the Hourglass
- Knights of the Mind
- Order of the Fox
- Knights of the Book
- Knights of the Tide
- Order of the Key
- Order of the Heart
- Knights of the Mind
- Wildlords
- Some additional info about the removed deities can be gathered from TEXT.RSC:
- You will find that for the next forty-eight hours, Raen has blessed your navigational skill.
- You will find that for the next forty-eight hours, Notorgo has lessened your chance of having unwanted encounters.
- You will find that for the next forty-eight hours, Shandar has blessed your best weaponry skill.
- You will find that for the next forty-eight hours, the Bandit God has blessed your best thieving skill.
- You will find that for the next forty-eight hours, Jeh Free has blessed all your language skills.
- You will find that for the next forty-eight hours, Vir Jil has improved the weather on the Iliac Bay.
- You will find that for the next forty-eight hours, Q'Olwen has blessed your lore skills.
- You will find that for the next forty-eight hours, Ephen has blessed all your relations with animals, in combat or otherwise.
- Several references in TEXT.RSC, apparently in bards' rhymes:
- Shandar, excuse this bard's rude rhyme!
- Shandar, let me tell this tale well
- Ah by Shandar, was there ever such a scene?
- Notorgo Altar (v213)
- The beta version of FACTION.TXT has some entries have been removed or changed in the full game:
- A document entitled REDGUARD.TXT provides early drafts of Redguard lorebooks, including the unreleased The Song of Divad.
- The following books are present in the game files, though it is not known if they can be read within the demo:
- The First Scroll of Bajdit
- A Tale of Kieran
- Fragment: On Artaeum
- The Wild Elves
- Redguards, History and Hero
- Ark`ay The God
- The Faerie
- Oelander's Hammer
- The Pig Children
- The Old Ways
- King Edward, Parts I - X
- Ghraewaj
- A Scholar's Guide to Nymphs
- The MemoryStone
History (Excerpt)Edit
Viewed from the salty air above the dark spires of Castle Daggerfall, the city of jutting gables and forked alleys resembles a hive of bees. Daggerfall is one of the three royal city-states on the Iliac Bay, that irregular blue border that separates the Imperial Province of High Rock from the Imperial Province of Hammerfell. Few other locations in the Empire of Tamriel have a longer history of warfare and rebellion. Rare is a king of the Iliac Bay who is completely loyal to his overlord the Emperor, but such a king ruled Daggerfall.
When King Lysandus of Daggerfall died during a senseless war of attrition with the city-state of Sentinel, the Emperor grieved for his friend and ally. Then, on a moonless night some months later, Lysandus returned. In his right hand he wielded a spectral blade and behind him followed a host of phantom soldiers who bellowed, like their lord, for revenge. The city and court trembled in fear as their finest warriors joined the infernal legion. Even tonight is Daggerfall so haunted by her former wise and merciful king.
Far to the east of Daggerfall, where the Iliac Bay meets the mouth of the Bjoulsae River, lies the royal court of Wayrest. Beautiful and rich, Wayrest is a city of merchants. Flowers and gold and music fill her courtyards and bazaars. Wayrest remained neutral in the recent war between Daggerfall and Sentinel, concerned with numerous threats to its well-being from within and without. The orcs of the Wrothgarian Mountains have made home in the foothills to the north of the kingdom while the heirs of Wayrest squabble and plot to claim the land of their elderly parents.
On the other side of the Iliac Bay from Daggerfall, a jutting peninsula is home to the city-state of Sentinel. Sentinel is an exotic land where the air is rich with spices and the ruins of ancient Redguard fortresses occasionally pierce the modern city's streets. From her jade-colored palace, Queen Akorithi rules the land and her dwindling household. Her husband was killed in the war with Daggerfall and her daughter has married the heir of Lysandus to ensure peace. These kings and queens do not control all the power.
The guildmasters, mages, Dark Brothers, witches, fairies, temple orders, knights, nobles and thieves of the Iliac Bay vie for influence and control. Some of these groups are well-known, their motivations plain to all. Some are secret societies composed of inhuman creatures with alien intentions. Power is the only truth to the people of the Iliac Bay, and a few know that the balance will shortly be upset. An elusive primitive force hides somewhere in the Bay that will bring final victory to whomever finds it. And where do you fit into all this? Daggerfall the adventure begins even before you begin the game. Character Generation allows you to create your background story in its entirety: the reason for you venturing to the Iliac Bay, your childhood friends and enemies, special training you have received, your personal fears and your secret dreams. Your character's story is uniquely your own. Your goals likewise are your own. Even more than a game, Daggerfall is an experience that rewards curiousity, experimentation, and the idiosyncracies of the individual player.
About the Game (Excerpt)Edit
••• IMPORTANT NOTE ON DEMO •••
In order to minimize the size of this demo copy of The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall, we had to make some tough decisions about what to include and what to leave out. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. The outside world in the actual game, the hills and valleys, swamplands and deserts, are roughly twice the size of Great Britain and therefore we had to exclude them from the demo. The world of Tamriel is not just a dungeon hack. In an attempt to placate those of us who complained just that, sample versions of the Character Generator, SpellMaker, ItemMaker, and PotionMaker were thrown into the demo. The Bestiary was added to appease the anxious artists, and the History section was added to spotlight the unsung brilliance of the project writers and designers.
As for the sample dungeon, The Pit of Jagadha may look huge, but it is actually a lot smaller than many of the other thousands of dungeons and tens of thousands of unique locales in the complete Daggerfall game. It is not meant to represent more than just that. After all, nothing short of the game itself would do justice to the size, detail, and depth of the world. We hope you understand that in order to have a demo small enough to meet magazine and on-line service requirements, certain major cuts have to be made. That being said, if you enjoy the taste, you will love the meal.
•••
Welcome back to the world of Tamriel. The second chapter in the award-winning computer role playing series, The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall is both a sequel to The Elder Scrolls: Arena and a totally stand-alone product. Set in the unique world of Tamriel, TES: Daggerfall takes you on a special mission on behalf of the Emperor to quell a potential uprising in the royal court of Daggerfall. Your participation in this major quest is not required: as in TES: Arena, you may choose to follow any path or career in the vast, beautiful and dangerous world. If the player chooses to investigate the court of Daggerfall, stories of madness, unrequited love, dark sorcery, seduction, betrayal, and a plot to recreate a powerful force from thousands of years past will be revealed. It will be up to the player to help the side that should wield such a power, for the fate of Daggerfall and the Empire of Tamriel hang in the balance. Thanks to the new, full 3-D, texture-mapped engine, TES: Daggerfall brings a whole new look and style to The Elder Scrolls legend. Special new features allow players to:
Explore a fully-contoured landscape! The world of Daggerfall has mountains to climb, rivers to swim, cliffs, sand dunes, rolling hills, swamps, underwater abysses, plateaus, most any kind of terrain you can imagine. Interact realistically with other characters, both in dialogue and action!
In Daggerfall, what you say and do is reacted to and remembered by others. A kind word may prompt additional information from a friend; the son of a woman you saved might rescue you from prison; an enemy whose plans you have thwarted may plot to discredit you among the guilds and nobility. Involve yourself in a complex world of constantly evolving political intrigue! You may never see a tenth of the deals, wars, alliances treacheries, bribes, and manipulations between the known and unknown forces. Through spying, questing, or just being at the right place at the right time, you can push the balance of power. Act wisely, for the contenders are seldom only what they seem to be. Own property, ships and crafts, participate in the politics of guilds and other organizations, and trade goods and services -- even smuggle!
Some organizations in Daggerfall are efficient dynamic hierarchies, some are fractious morasses of political in-fighting, most are a little of both, and all are open to persons of exceptional skill, talent, and reputation. As you advance through a guild, you will be awarded with honor, information, and power. How you choose to use your connections is up to you, and most anything is possible. Create even more unusual and powerful spells than the much-praised, original TES: Arena SpellMaker could handle! There are dozens of new spells and spell effects available, from telekinesis to charm to item creation. Face a large, new menagerie of monsters and enemies!
There are over forty new opponents to face, from giant scorpions and eels to monks and nightblades to the nightmarish dreughs and daedra. Created using Alias in Silicon Graphics machines (the same software and hardware used in the movie Jurassic Park), all are frighteningly real. Add in a sophisticated Artificial Intelligence engine and a capability to do more than fight you if you can speak their language.
Customize a unique class of character! Daggerfall features the original eighteen character classes of Arena, plus an added optional feature allowing you to create the exact sort of character you want to play. You control everything from starting strength and agility, to finest skills, to health points and their rate of increase. You can even give your new class special advantages like weapon expertise and the ability to regenerate, special disadvantages like forbidden armor or sensitivity to fire, and reputational adjustments so your friends and enemies are defined by your new class, even before you begin the game. Character generation even creates a unique background story for your character, and you have the opportunity to control how the story develops -- what sort of friends and enemies you have from your childhood, what speical skills you have developed and which you have neglected, what sundry items you have picked up in your early career, and more! Listen to the advanced, multi-channel, digitilized sound effects and music!
Imagine walking through the woods, hearing the crunch of autumn leaves under your feet, the trilling of insects and birds, and, off in the distance, the roar of a waterfall. As you near the waterfall, the roar becomes louder and now you can hear something else -- a growling coming from a copse of trees. The revolutionary realistic handling of sound adds much to the drama and believability of Daggerfall Participate in an infinite number of large-scale, complex quests! Daggerfall is not a simple place, do not expect the goals to be simple. You may be, for example, asked by a village mayor to stop the orcs from attacking his land. There are as many different ways of accomplishing this as you can imagine, from straightforward slaughter to tacit diplomacy. You may even uncover something about the mayor in your investigations that brings new light to his motivations, and opens new possibilities and additional quests based on the original one. Treachery can occasionally be quite profitable.
Create potions and magic items, as an extension of TES: Arena's SpellMaker! The SpellMaker allowed you a revolutionary degree of control over the weaving of magic. In Daggerfall, you can create the exact potion and magic item you need, experiment with power combinations, bind spirits with blessings and curses, and invent something completely your own. Perhaps a blade bound with a fire spirit or a potion that lets you breathe underwater like a fish!
'Import' your TES: Arena character intact into TES: Daggerfall! If you have a saved game with your original Arena character, he or she can continue to adventure in Daggerfall with all or most of his or her original equipment, experience, treasure, spells, and power. If you character is beyond the challenges of Arena, let Daggerfall try its worst! Play the game any way you want, as many times as you want. The multiple beginnings and resolutions make for replayability far beyond any other RPG published!
Daggerfall is a living, breathing world where anything can happen, and the most seemingly insignificant action can be the catalyst for something greater. No course of action will have identical results, no conflict will be identically resolved. And, as in Arena, 'winning' the game does not mean that it is over. You can continue to play the game indefinitely. Prepare yourself, for this is the world of limitless possibilities you always hoped an RPG would be.
Bestiary (Excerpt)Edit
SprigganEdit
Location: Woodlands and rural areas are of the Imperial Province of High Rock.
History: These reclusive creatures are considered by some scholars to be in the genus Illyandi [sic] or part of the Sylphim or Faerie chain. They are all but immune to physical attack, in fact capable of gaining power from such offense.
ScorpionEdit
Location: The Alik'r Desert and the blighted Dak'fron of Hammerfell.
History: The Giant Scorpions are aggressive, intelligent hunters that have fallen like a plague in the Alik'r Desert. They avoid human settlements, but have killed many a lone traveler.
VampireEdit
Location: Everywhere
History: Cruel, cunning, and immortal predators, vampires hunt the night, sometimes singly sometimes in packs. To what degree they have infiltrated human society, spreading death and the dread disease vampirism, is best lift unimagined.
OrcsEdit
Location: Everywhere, particularly the southern Wrothgarian mountains near Wayrest.
History: Universally reviled for their belligerence and savagery, orcs are particularly common in the Iliac Bay where they are rumored to be rebuilding their ancient capitol.
Ice Daedra, or Frost DaedraEdit
Location: Oblivion
History: Little is commonly known about the ice or frost daedra and its brethren. They are emissaries and assassins of the Daedra Princes of Oblivion and are as cold in their murders as the infernal mist that surrounds them.
DreughEdit
Location: The Abecean Sea, the Iliac Bay, lakes and rivers.
History: The grotesque Dreugh is primarily an aquatic scavenger, though it does seem to have amphibian capacities. According to legend, the Dreugh are the cursed remnants of a once proud civilization.
CentaurEdit
Location: Forests and patureland throughout the Bay.
History: Ancient and mysterious creatures, alternately worshipped and despised, centaurs are said to be followers of the Old Ways of Tamriel.
Fire DaedraEdit
Location: Oblivion
History: Little is commonly known about the fire daedra and its brethren. They seem to be most commonly used by their masters, the Daedra Princes of Oblivion, as agents of destruction in its least subtle form.
DaedrothEdit
Location: Oblivion
History: Little is commonly known about the Daedroth and its brethren. The Daedra Princes of Oblivion, who command the Daedroth, often employ them as guards or on simple assassinations when brute strength and fortitude is required.
List of NamesEdit
The RSC file contains an odd list of unique names that do not appear in later iterations of the file. What these were intended for is entirely unknown. And the names are not copy pasted from name generator, though they do follow racial naming conventions. The list is as follows:
Forbryd Traeffesen, Ygredor Vembriksen, Eremit Klokkesen, Afblad Maensen, Tobak Rektorsen, Janesseh Polassar, Kalech Osiah, Samuramat Naziah, Khazar Shaddad, Denderra Retu, Sajhu-ri, Napameth, Engdor, Merikara, Gyrald Halebrook, Leira Cliffe, Angelica Bradstreet, Fyrdock Wolfstad, Charold Bentrild, Alybrius Claudian, Glyceria Jarus, Tibericles Stantius, Herseus Oepicles, Livilla Decius, Melf Silverwind, Carnil Greenthorn, Taleth Riverwell, Gingla Bluehollow, Lorellan Lightwood, Delimyra Cyrithar, Oresson Graywatch, Kelkemmen Dorith, Garrangoin Klemons, Asrailla Merikara, Nelanthah Ris, Kirith J'yrmir, Psythor Z'morag, Boethyrs Ghur, Cloethmys Ankhir, Lillendril Caernim, Balrazad Vakh, Lancaster Barr, Palantra Knarssen, Hargo'th, Koptiki, Turath Vir, Jocasta Iconicles, and Avellir.
