The Elder Scrolls II Daggerfall – Easy Start Guide for Beginners

Privateer’s Hold

Ok so this is gonna be a little different from the arena quick start guide. I want to be as descriptive as possible so people don’t get lost or confused so I will be going over parts that could get you stuck. Also will be going over the first dungeon as its not as simple as arena.

The privateer’s hold is pretty linear you just move forward, explore some of the rooms, kill badguys and grab loot. There is a tutorial option in the game but I didn’t find it to helpful actually kind of basic and insulting really.

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Now moving on, the one spot I need to point out in privateer’s hold is by the throne room. As you move through the dungeon you will come to a large set of stairs. They lead up to a throne. Right next to the throne as specificed in the screenshot is a switch. By clicking the switch you will activate a lift that will take you to the upper level of the dungeon and allow you to escape.

The switch.

Now you can proceed and move on, be careful tho, the last room on the exit has 3 enemies a bat, a rat and an imp. If you go further in there’s some torture chambers as well as a skeleton (pretty risky enemy), sometimes they spawn near the throne so you may of already faced a skeleton.

In the room with the 3 lighter enemies and the exit, look out for this doorway.

This will exit you to the worldmap.

Before you start exploring or moving onto your next quest objective, there’s some things you should know. There are 2 quests that will happen on exit of the first dungeon. One is from a woman from the empire, the other you won’t get till level 3 so unless you were grinding like crazy in the hold you shouldn’t get this quest yet.

So, you will probably want to go back in the privateer’s hold, and grind out time and a level so you get these 2 notes. The notes will be handed to you automatically on rest. Jut go in, grind, and kill enemies till you either pass a months worth of rest or get to level 3. You can do this anywhere at your own leisure. You can proceed to a town, sell stuff etc, explore, whatever you want but for simplicity’s sake I opted to stay at the hold and level. And one bit of caution, be wary of diseases they are really bad in this just like arena. It would be wise to make a separate backup save and don’t haunt the hold to long as there are a lot of rats and diseased enemies.

Little advice on the hold and human enemies.

As you kill enemies in the hold, or anywhere, you may notice human enemies drop equipment. Now sometimes this equipment is random and can be very strong for your level.

My red guard.

Now you will see whenever you kill an enemy different options in the menu, one says info.

With this toggled you can inspect gear, its value, etc. If you are playing a heavy armor melee type the enemies will sometimes drop elven gear which is really good for this point and time. They can also drop enchanted items such as this flail I found with poison damage. Its a good idea to inspect items before you grab them to see what they are. Also useful if you don’t want to bog yourself down with a bunch of useless items.

So grind till you either get a months worth of rest, or level 3. Once you get the notes handed off to you, its time to start the main quests.

Starting the Main Quest and the Dreaded Disease

Since you will need to go to this town anyway, you might as well take a trip to Mermont, its in daggerfall

To get to Mermont type in Mermont into your map menu and it will ask you to fast travel to the location. Just like in the screenshots. To find your worldmap travel look in your keyboard configuration files in game. You can also set it to any button you want.

Mermont is in the daggerfall province where you start.

Now find this Inn

If you got the note from the imperial agent then this inn is the one with her in it. She looks like this.

If you got the note then you can talk to her and she will inform you of some things in the main quest. Also go to this inn as soon as you get the note, she can’t wait forever and will send you an additional note informing you the empire will brand you a traitor if you don’t respond.

This leads me to the next part of the game which I need to address before you do anything else.

DISEASES!

They suck, they are the bane of your existence in daggerfall. Depending on your race and class however, they can be either easily dealt with or a major pain. I picked a warrior so… Major pain for me yay.

There’s multiple ways to heal disease, potions, a temple npc, or a magic spell. Since I’m playing warrior I will go over how to heal a pure melee from disease since the other methods are super easy. You can also play an argonian they are completely resistant to disease. But since I’m playing a warrior redguard my methods aren’t so easy.

What a pure warrior type will have to do is join a non mage temple/guild. And rank up enough to purchase potions. You can rank up through paying them gold or quests. So…

I joined this temple in Mermont but I’ve read there’s better ones with lower requirements. The temple healers can also heal disease, but goodluck getting there diseased without dropping dead. Potions are the key to disease treatment with warriors and melee types.

So the temples will not sell your warrior potions unless you are of high rank, which means quests, or money. So you can just pay off this woman for a while until you raise rank once and then you can buy potions.

I dream of genie is an understatement.

But wait you have no gold you say? Well that is easily solved in Daggerfall.

Banks!

So go back to your world travel map and type in Tulune, go there and you will be in a city with a bank. You can ask around the location of the bank, or just go to this spot on your town map from the starting position.

If the bank is closed just loiter till it opens, you can only loiter 3 hours but you can do it as much as you want so it doesn’t really matter. After that talk to the lone npc in the bank wearing some fancy robes and claim about 50k. Or less sometimes you can’t hold that much.

What are the repercussions from not paying back the bank? You lose some reputation, that’s about it, course you can also try paying them back. Don’t worry they don’t send op enemies after you like Jagar did.

Now go back to the temple in Mermont, and feed that lady gold until she ranks you. She will inform you with enough gold that you can now buy potions. Also pay her in donations of 1k, sometimes you’ll get lucky and she will rank you at about 4-5k. Make sure and save before paying her tho, ranking can be a bit glitchy at times.

Go to this guy, be sure to check info on each potion, buy a few disease potions (won’t need many as disease is a big deal and if you get it you’ll wanna treat it asap).

Check the info on each potion to see what it does before you buy.

Once you have a potion in your inventory like this. Click the buy command and you should see a message like this.

And that’s disease taken care of for your warrior, it was expensive, but least you won’t die a miserable death now. Also be sure to buy a poison cure potion as well, poison is as bad as disease be sure to check your status you could be poisoned and not actually diseased and waste a disease potion. So be ready for both.

Alternately you can also do temple quests but eh.. This is a quick start guide.

So now that those are done, go back to the privateer’s hold, and get level 3 for the next phase of the main quest.

Back to Privateer’s Hold and Lvl 3

Now that you have a nice amount of gold, and access to disease and other helpful potions, its time to get level 3 so you can continue with the main quest.

As I’ve mentioned before PH has some nice elven gear off the humans if you can defeat them enough. So from Mermont, just type in Privateer’s Hold on the map in daggerfall and you will be transported there.

When you arrive you won’t be right in front of the dungeon, so it can be a little tricky to find at first. Look for an odd hill among a group of trees.

Can you make out the oddhill?

So go back in, kill enemies, and grind till level 3, while you’re at it you can also farm enough gold to pay back what you owe to the bank if you care to. If you do its best to do this while you’re in daggerfall cause once you move onto the main quest you are gonna spend a couple of weeks traveling and probably annoy the bankers.

Where do you sell all this gear tho? Well head back to Tulune, the same town you got the bank loan from and go here on the map. Since my screenshot doesn’t fit the whole town map simply move near the middle of the town where there is a central hub of shops.

Head to the place circled on your map in blue, he buys equipment. Which will get you the most gold, if you want to sell other stuff like materials try the building marked in red.

So from here I grinded till I was level 3 and also paid off my bank debts just cause you get multiple K from gear. Figured I’d pay it off just to be safe.

So once you hit level 3 after a short time check your inventory. You should see this.

A green letter in your inventory. Reading it you will find out about the next main quest path. Also you will not be warned or told about the letter like the imperial agent did so just check your inventory till you see the note.

Identifying Items and Soul of a Lich

If you’ve been grinding human enemies and grabbing gear you might notice enchanted rings, bracers, marks and other trinkets. You can identify these from a mages guild you don’t need to be a member or leave your current temple if you are using the potion buying method. And if you are making a mage type character odds are you are already a member of a mages guild.

So you can use any mage guild but since I’m already familiar with Tulune we’ll go there. You can ask around for direction, or you can just go extreme northwest and look for this building.

Now inside the building look around until you see this charming npc.

Unlike the other npcs in the building she will offer her services to any member of the public, meaning you. No need to join.

Simply click on your enchanted items and then click the identify tab, its super simple.

So back to the main quest, you will get a note from a woman named Morgiah, she will ask you to come to castle wayrest. So simply go to the wayrest province and type wayrest and go, the capital is named after the landmass so you will be right there. The city is large but there is a center walled in area like this.

Go inside the walled space and eventually you should see this structure in the center.

This is the castle building.

Inside go straight ahead to the throne room, be wary about speaking to the king however he will insist you do a delivery quest for him, which you can do if you want its easy. I’m not covering all quests in this walkthrough so if you’re interested look it up. The quest is timed and only gives you one day, but the city is so close by you can do it within that time very fast. Its up to you if you want to take his quest I needed no walkthrough for it and just did it before Morgiah.

Talk to this lady to get the directions to the next quest, and the next major dungeon.

Now simply go to the location she directs you to the Dragontail Mountains, the province is to the south, you should have the name in your journal its Scourg Barrow. Simply type that into the dragontail mountains and you’re there.

The next dungeon looking pretty ominous.

So go inside this structure, and you will see some coffins. Open the coffins by clicking on them, and jump inside. You will fall through to the main dungeon. Be careful the dungeon is full of zombies, undead, and all sorts of nasty enemies.

Also if you want to leave this dungeon but already jumped in the coffin, simply return to that room, look up, and locate the hole in the ceiling. Now push against the wall, you will enter climb mode allowing you to scale the wall and leave.

Well that’s it for my walkthrough. Now you have all the tools and knowledge needed to get through the game yourself, and maybe with a handy main quest walkthrough. I made this guide so people could enjoy this game without being lost in the start for hours on end, or ruin their game because of some disease or poison spell. So I hope this helps new players its a great game series one of the best.