Anime Elder Scrolls FULL PACIFIST RUN (NO KILLS) (Arena/Daggerfall/Morrowind/Oblivion/Skyrim)

[Lemming42]

Inspired by some discussion about the flexibility (or lack thereof) of the Elder Scrolls games in another thread recently, I thought I'd try to go through all the main games in the series with no kills.

THE RULES:
- No causing damage to another creature or NPC, whether through physical attacks or through spells.
- No recruiting companions and having them do the killing for me.
- As far as possible, no use of Frenzy spells or anything else that would make me obviously directly responsible for violence.
- If someone dies because of their own aggression toward me - for example, casting an AoE spell at me that causes the caster to be killed in the blast - that is acceptable.
- IMPORTANT FOR ARENA: NO USE OF SPELL REFLECTION! I'll explain shortly but this makes the entire game into a total joke and the only way to make it interesting is to forbid myself from using this spell. In later games, I might reconsider its use.

PART 1: ARENA (the first few screenshots are shit because I captured them with DOSBox itself, they get better partway through).

In this part, we roll a believable and down-to-earth character, meet a ghost and ignore her advice, solve a challenging puzzle, get sexually assaulted by rats, drown, and learn of the mysterious Shift Gate.

ARENA

And so on and so forth. I'll sum it up: Tamriel fucking sucks and is so filled with violence and death that the people who live there have nicknamed it "The Arena", hence the title. On to the plot.

Here's the gist: Patrick Stewart has been consigned to a nightmare dimension by a drag queen named Jagar Tharn.

Tharn uses illusion magic to impersonate the Emperor and usurp the throne. His understudy, a woman named Ria Silmane, figures out what's happened but Tharn murders and vaporises her before she can raise the alarm. He then starts summoning monsters and turning them into "twisted versions of the Imperial Guard". Nobody finds this, or Ria's disappearance, suspicious enough to investigate, apparently. Unfortunately for Tharn, Ria's magical skill enabled her spirit to remain in Mundus, and now she's planning to contact a hero (me!) to reveal Tharn's plot.

Anyway, here's the best character creation music of all time:

If you've never played Arena, there's a bunch of differences from later games which I'll explain here. First is that you can't make a custom class (which is what will trivialise all the later games up til Skyrim removes classes altogether). You have to pick from a list of classes, some of which are very obviously better choices than others.

We're going Mage as our class and Altmer as our race, for obvious reasons (Altmer get 3x INT spell points). The character's sex doesn't matter - I think Nord men (and, apparently, Argonian women) get a paltry starting bonus to strength that a female character can easily overcome during char creation, so it's mostly cosmetic. You'll generally want to pick female because all the male face choices are horrible, but I'm picking male this time because I always play women and it's time to shake it up with some testosterone.

With the help of an Altmer name generator, here is our hero:

(Yes, that is genuinely the least ugly head option for a male Altmer)
INT is the most important stat by an absolute mile, as it determines spell points, which are going to be the crux of pretty much the whole run. Agility is marginally important for picking locks and such, but really, INT is all that truly matters on this one.

RPGs are, of course, always more fun when you create a bit of background for your character, to figure out who they are and what their place in the world is. I've created a short backstory for Lovillon which I think everyone will agree is pleasingly low-key and mundane, a pleasant change of pace in a post-Critical Role world of special snowflake characters:

Lovillon was born five thousand years ago to an Altmer mother and a Tiefling father, who were both Planeswalkers. The child's innate magical genius was apparent from a young age, and terrified the powers that be. Fearing persecution, his mother stole him away one night and threw him into a Stargate, which sent him to the distant future of the 24th century. Growing up on board the Enterprise, Lovillon's talents for mathematics, astrology, science and medicine all became quickly apparent, and then-captain Jean-Luc Picard personally recommended Lovillon for the role of Star Admiral Of The Galaxy, Starfleet's highest position. But fate would intervene once again as Lovillon was sucked into a black hole during a mission, depositing him right in the middle of the Blood War (this is where he lost both his horns, which is why he has none now). For centuries he fought, before eventually overpowering and outwitting the devils and returning to his homeworld of Tamriel, where he let himself get captured by the tyrannical Tharn in order to begin uncovering his dark plot from within.

Lore-friendly and fits right into the setting. Let's play! We're napping in our cell in the Imperial Dungeon when suddenly, a ghost looms horrifying above our heads.

Do not fear for it is I, Ria Silmane. (Player's Name), listen to me, there are no others left to carry on this fight. You have been left in this cell to die. Jagar Tharn, Imperial Battlemage of Tamriel has taken on the guise of the true Emperor. He does not see you as a threat, being only a minor part of the Imperial Court. In that act of arrogance, he has made his first mistake. Look to the north wall of this cell. You will find a ruby key which will unlock the door. Take it and make your escape. The passages here were once used by Tharn to hide treasures he had stolen from the Emperor's coffers. If you wish, you can gather enough to support yourself away from the Imperial Seat. Be careful, there are many creatures which inhabit the sewers now, vile rats and goblins. It is too late for me, for I am already dead. Only my powers as a Sorceress keep me between this life and the next. That power however is waning. Do not succumb to greed or you may find these tunnels to be your final resting place as well. I can still work my magic to a certain extent. If you travel west from this cell, then south, you will find a Shift Gate. It will transport you far enough from the center of the Empire that you should be safe. If you survive these sewers you will see me again. Remember, (player's name), Tharn has taken on the guise of the Emperor. No one will gainsay his word for yours. I will come to you again in your dreams, so it is imperative that you rest from time to time. In that way I will be able to communicate with you and lend my aid. You are entering a dangerous arena, my friend, one in which the players are beings beyond your mortal comprehension. I do not envy your role. There is however a power within you as yet untapped. Look for me when you have gained experience in the world. You are my last and best hope.

This is Ria's plan, to appear as a fucking ghost right above your head, staring down at you with her Clint Eastwood glare, and tell you not to shit yourself. Madame, this is the most scared I have ever been. (By the way - Ria pronounces Tamriel as "Tam-real", rather than the "Tam-ree-yel" used in later games - I prefer the way Tamreal sounds, honestly. More trivia for you - the lady with a load of toilet paper strapped to her portraying Ria is Jenniffer Pratt, a programmer for the game - one of only three programmers working on the project! Game dev teams were small as fuck back in 1994).

For this playthrough, I shall harness the powers of AI to achieve a new level of interactivity with the game. It's time to speak to Ria directly.

Shut it, Ria. Invisibility is my best friend and absolutely is a solution for everything.

Only one snag. I can't cast it! So, if you've played any TES games after this one, you'll know of the stupid skill-by-use system. Want to become a master at stealth? Hide in a corner, go AFK for an hour, come back to see that you now have 90 Sneak. Want to become a master of Illusion magic? Make a spell that costs 1 mana and cast it over and over. And so on.

Arena doesn't work like that - it has an XP system. There are only three ways in the whole game to get XP - killing enemies, collecting pieces of the Staff of Chaos, and doing procgen'd fetch quests for NPCs in towns. That last option is going to be our only way of getting to a high enough level to actually cast Invisibility so we can start collecting Staff pieces. But first, I need to get out of the Imperial Dungeon - unarmed, with no spells other than Light Heal, and without violence.

We're locked in a cell! But wait - a key on a plinth in the corner. Hmm... what if... no... but maybe...

What if we put the key... in the door...?

Incredible! The first of many brain-twisting puzzles in the Elder Scrolls series. If we can handle a puzzle of this magnitude, we're sure to excel at the brutally difficult "can you put the three symbols in the order we're directly telling you to put them in" Claw Door puzzles in Skyrim.

There's a few considerations here. First is loot. We need to find magical items - Marks, Bracers, Crystals, or Rings - to sell in town so we have enough money to start abusing the Spellmaker and making our stupid custom invisibility shit. Another consideration is this:

This is a minimap of the Imperial Dungeons. I'm the pink square; enemies are yellow. You can see that the game exists in a quasi-grid-based system, where actors take up one square on the grid. This is important because it means that our hitbox, and enemy hitboxes, are one square wide. This means enemies can and will block narrow corridors. This happens a lot. There's a workaround, but again, we need to get out of here if we're gonna be able to access it. Note that the exit door, in the southwest corner, is at the end of one such narrow corridor, and even a single enemy in that corridor will block it fully. You'll be pleased to learn that an enemy is set to spawn right there.

However, nil desperandum - there's another thing to know about Arena. It can only spawn one enemy type at a time. The map is also divided into invisible spawn zones. If you move too far away from the already-spawned group of enemies (like if they're trapped in another room or something), a new group spawns when you cross over into a new spawn zone. However, if enemies are in viewing distance of you, new enemies won't spawn. This is extremely helpful because you can, say, get a harmless rat to follow you into a spawn zone that would otherwise be spawning Liches and other deadly shit. For the Imperial Dungeon, our best bet is to get a rat to follow us as far as possible, preventing the more dangerous Goblins from spawning and also preventing a new enemy from spawning in the exit tunnel.

GOBLINS ATTACK. This is 1000x more tension than you'll find in any modern videogame. They butcher me, forcing me to load my save. ;(

Second attempt fails a similar way. You can see that this corridor is one square wide in both directions and I'm flanked by rats on both sides (you can just see the tail of the one to my right). I can't move, they eat me to death. Back to the start. To impress upon you how difficult and annoying this is - Goblins will kill you in about three hits; rats in four or five. They also hit about once per second.

AND NOW: BETTER SCREENSHOTS

I take to the waterways. This is cool because it lets me avoid the main corridors where enemies lurk. This is less cool because it drains your stamina and you die if it runs out. It also means I have to slowly climb up out of the water when I find a ledge, and if enemies see me, they'll beat the shit out of me before I'm even able to move again. This happens, and I'm back to the start again.

This little motherfucker is our best friend, despite the fact she's trying to gnaw my cock off. By guiding her along with us, we can prevent the gobbos from spawning.

During the scramble to escape, I chance upon magic items. Despite Ria's dumb warning to "not succumb to greed", I am absolutely guided by greed and it's paid off big-time. We can't tell how much they're worth because they haven't been identified yet, so we don't know what spell they're enchanted with, but with luck, we'll get enough gold to get the custom Invisibility spell we need. (By the way - if you really want to cheese it, you can just move away from a loot pile, save the game, load the game, and it'll regenerate its contents)

See that? That goblin's gonna whack me as I swim past him. And he's gonna get like three hits in while I can't move or do anything because I'm in the water. Watch my health bar, I'll show you exactly how much health "Light Heal" restores at this point, and how much mana it costs.

There you go. Half my mana gone for a fraction of health. Brilliant.

The Shift Gate! And look how much health I have remaining, with a rat literally biting my ass as I hurl myself through the gate! Will I make it?

Yes! Lovillon leaps through the gate, and roars the roar of FREEDOM! (With so little health left that you almost can't see it on the bar)

The roar of freedom from the stupid man with rat claw marks all over his crotch startles an Altmer lady, who quickly shuffles off down an alley to the right.

Enough for now, first dungeon done. Next time the nightmare of procgen radiant quests begins.

 

[NecroLord]

I like what you are doing, my good man, but isn't it all a bit too restrictive?
I suppose the no kill/no damage to enemies and npcs rule is out of the question when facing main story bosses?

 

[Lemming42]

I'm 100% certain that Arena can be finished with no damage dealt to any NPC at all. Daggerfall is a bit more complicated and you have to kill at least one zombie and one Lich during the main quest, as well as a Werewolf unless you have a patched version of the game, but there are some workarounds (enemies take fall damage in Daggerfall and there's a lot of steep elevator shafts...).

Morrowind will be very difficult because you've got to kill several people, and deal damage to Dagoth Ur himself. The amount of spellmaker/enchantment abuse and incredibly glitchy AI should make it possible to figure something out though.

For Oblivion, the only part I can remember that could be a challenge is where you have to fight Terence Stamp's character in Paradise; otherwise the rest of the main quest doesn't involve directly killing anyone except the Blades ghosts but there's an easy way around that. In both Oblivion and Skyrim, the wonders of Radiant AI might just make it possible to get a lot of people to cause their own deaths while I just sort of stand innocently nearby.

 

[NecroLord]

I'm 100% certain that Arena can be finished with no damage dealt to any NPC at all. Daggerfall is a bit more complicated and you have to kill at least one zombie and one Lich during the main quest, as well as a Werewolf unless you have a patched version of the game, but there are some workarounds (enemies take fall damage in Daggerfall and there's a lot of steep elevator shafts...).

Morrowind will be very difficult because you've got to kill several people, and deal damage to Dagoth Ur himself. The amount of spellmaker/enchantment abuse and incredibly glitchy AI should make it possible to figure something out though.

For Oblivion, the only part I can remember that could be a challenge is where you have to fight Terence Stamp's character in Paradise; otherwise the rest of the main quest doesn't involve directly killing anyone except the Blades ghosts but there's an easy way around that. In both Oblivion and Skyrim, the wonders of Radiant AI might just make it possible to get a lot of people to cause their own deaths while I just sort of stand innocently nearby.

Conjuration?
On second thought, doesn't it violate the "no recruiting companions" rule?

 

[Lemming42]

Conjuration might make it a bit too easy, yeah - there'll probably have to be individual rules for each game to prevent the most easy ways of technically not killing anyone (like luring people into guards in Oblivion).

Although come to think of it, there might not be any other way around the Terence Stamp fight. I was thinking something like Reflect Damage since there's a ridiculous way to get 100% damage reflection in that game, but otherwise the only way would be either Conjuration or somehow getting the two other people in the battle to turn against the boss.

 

[Lord_Potato]

What an interesting trial! I am going to follow your adventures with great interest.

Also, after you complete your no violence TES run, you should try the same with:
- Fear and Hunger
- Dungeon Rats

 

[Lemming42]

Welcome back. We pick up where we left off - Lovillon is covered in festering septic rat scratches and staggering through the streets of an unknown settlement somewhere in Tamriel.

PART 2: HUNT FOR THE OGHMA INFINIUM
In this part, we become a FedEx worker for minimum wage, we meet a notably peculiar person, Ria Silmane gives us a gender crisis, we go through a boring-ass sidequest dungeon, we use a forbidden tome to unlock the secrets of the cosmos and glimpse beyond the veil of reality itself, and after all that, we finally get round to visiting the first actual dungeon.

ARENA PART 2

Here we are on the streets of some random place in the Sumurset Isles. Here's the deal. We go up to people, we ask for rumours about work. Unfazed by our deathly visage and general rat-piss smell, a woman chats with us.

Aha! A notably peculiar person. Interesting. This notably peculiar person might be the sort of notably peculiar person we're looking for. A man like myself is in the market to chat with a notably peculiar person, and the fact that there's a notably peculiar person at this nearby tavern sounds promising - maybe this notably peculiar person has some notably peculiar work for us.

Down the street, a different woman, who agrees that this Sir Lililia is a notably peculiar person, tells us the name of the tavern.

While trotting around town, I go to sell the magical Crystal we found earlier.

FUCK! That's nowhere near enough money! We're fucked! We need at least, like, 3000. I'll have to get the money somewhere else. After selling all my equipment, haggling, and counting up the money I got from loot piles, we're at just over 1200 gold.

Anyway, at the Flying Serpent, we meet a notably peculiar person.

He wants us to escort his sister, Cymbana Jorbinder, to a local temple. He will give us the princely sum of 16 gold. The man is a cunt and this is below any conceivable minimum wage, but we're in it for the XP more than the gold.

Jorbinder hangs out in the top left of the screen now.

We go to the location. We speak to someone there.

That's the quest. That's literally it. I got 200 XP for this, look (you start the game with exactly 700. Why? I have no idea):

Not enough to get us to level 2 yet, but not bad either. Strap in, because we're doing this for the next fucking hour.

Stood a bit close to his mate, isn't he? Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Eventually...

Here you go. Level 4, took probably about ten of these shit-ass quests. I'm now strong enough to go get my custom spells made at the Mage's Guild!

It's very basic stuff right now, but it'll work. I also buy Passwall. If you've never played Arena, here's the deal with Passwall - you can use it to destroy (almost) any wall in the game, thus creating new passages and letting you bypass whole areas. Very useful for us for a number of reasons. Another note: there's a Calm spell (called "Designate as Non-target"), but it's useless. It essentially works identically to invisibility in that enemies will just freeze in place and be non-hostile, except unlike invisibility, it inexplicably lets magic-using enemies continue to attack you. No reason to use it over invisibility.

Ria, who has been watching and laughing at my pathetic progress, finally deigns to contact me again.

(by the way, isn't the music in the background during the Ria dreams fucking amazing? Here it is in full.)

I see you have strengthened your arm, and your mind. It is time we began this journey. This is the Staff of Chaos, the one item that can open the door between this world, and the dimension to which the Emperor has been banished. Tharn used this item to destroy my corporeal form when I tried to warn the Council. He knew that the Staff of Chaos was nigh indestructible, having been made from the essence of the Land itself. But in that he found the key. As the land is split, so did he shatter the Staff into eight perfectly formed pieces. These he scattered across the realm. I have been able to divine the location of the first piece, a place called Fang Lair. It is said that Fang Lair was originally built by the Dwarves of Kragen. Legend has it that a Great Wyrm drove the Dwarves from their home in the Dragon's Teeth, and took the Lair for itself. I only wish I knew the exact location. Perhaps there are sages, or scholars who would know of this place. Somewhere in its dank depths lies the first piece of the Staff of Chaos. I wish you well. I do not think Tharn knows of your escape, but I can do little else in this form. I have tried to obscure your identity with a spell, but I do not know how well it will hide you. Take care for Tharn may be searching. Go forth with the blessings of the true Emperor, and myself...

With a primal roar of masculine fury, Lovillon forces himself awake, out of Ria's pervy dream-grasp. He juts his jaw out as far as he can and furrows his brow like a Neanderthal as he springs out of bed, grunting and snarling, reaffirming his masculinity (even though he is now seen as a petite Bosmer woman by everyone he meets).

Ria may be a dodgy nonce, but she's right about Fang Lair. The hunt is on. We must travel to the city-state of Rihad in Hammerfell and meet with Queen Blubamka.

Welcome to Rihad, (player name). I am Queen Blubamka, and I agree to tell you about Fang Lair, for a favor. You see, not too long ago a band of goblins, led by Golthog the Dark attacked this stronghold. They carried away with them much treasure, including a parchment which held within its writings clues to decipher the part of the Elder Scrolls which spoke of the location of the legendary Fang Lair.

Golthog and his goblins fled to an ancient and ruined fortress called Stonekeep, outside the city. I fear that a large band of mercenaries or soldiers will be unable to find them. A single person however, would be much more successful. Perhaps your arrival is fortuitous. If you would agree to try and recover this parchment, I will inscribe the location of the Stonekeep onto your map. If you are successful and return with the parchment, I will be able to decipher the location of Fang Lair. I promise to give you that location as reward for your help.

Despite this thrilling bit of plot, there is no such Goblin leader in the game. Stonekeep is the same as any other dungeon - go to the target, pick up the item, get to the exit. Perfect for us, since we SHALL NOT KILL anyway.

But I don't think we're ready for that just yet. We need to become stronger, sharper, better... we need... the OGHMA INFINIUM. That's right, rumours abound of a magical tome which, when read, will imbue the owner with extraordinary power. Let's ask around to see if anyone's heard of it. We pick up some other interesting rumours:

No, don't worry, he's just been replaced by a drag queen.

I fucking love the rumours in this game, but especially this one. Who are they? What do they want? Why are they gathering? We will never know.

Eventually, we meet someone who's heard of the Infinium.

I love all the weird-ass lore in this game. Oh, yeah, the Reavers of the frozen wastes of Skyrim who go round enslaving people, yeah.

Alright, let me tell you about artifact quests in Arena. You can only have one artifact at a time, most artifacts wear out (the Infinium is just a one-use item, obviously). To get these artifacts, you have to go through two rather boring dungeons of four floors each - the first dungeon contains a map which reveals the location of the second dungeon, which holds the artifact. There's a fairly small number of layouts which it picks from. To record my adventures in these places would be a waste of time, because no enemies at this point can see through my invisibility, and so each dungeon floor just consists of me walking past everyone and going straight to the exit. So I'll just show you a screenshot of a stupid gormless Orc not seeing me as I go invisible and walk past him.

And here's one of Tharn's stupid minions failing to see me. The enemy encounter rate in these dungeons is low and the corridors are always wide enough to walk past people; getting to the Infinium without violence is utterly trivial.

And here we go, the Oghma Infinium! Lovillon opens it and his mind is torn asunder, rended by the secrets of the cosmos. He howls as his psyche is shredded, then reshaped into a new form. All knowledge in the universe is accessible to him now - he even knows where to find Caius Cosades, and that he must Equip The Ring. When the madness fades, he is a new person. He has 100 Intelligence. He has become... an INTJ.

He tips his fedora as he chuckles at the irrationality of his former self. From now on, logic is his sword, reason is his shield, and empirical peer-reviewed evidence is his armour. En garde! With that, we're off to Stonekeep.

Here's Stonekeep!

Join me next time for the easiest dungeon in Elder Scrolls history.

 

[NecroLord]

Those AI talks with Ria Silmane were pretty hilarious.

 

[Lemming42]

PART 3: FANG LAIR
In this part, we argue with a door, convince some dogs to commit suicide, meet our greatest admirer, and play another Skyrim re-release.

ARENA PART 3

Stonekeep is an absolute piece of piss, even for non-pacifists. The dungeon is a single floor (a second floor exists in the game files, but is unused, for some reason). To make life even easier, there's a secret passage in one of the bedrooms near the start that leads more or less straight to the goal. You can complete the dungeon in about a minute.

Here's the route we're taking - you can't see the secret passage too well on the map, but I'll show it in the game.

No enemes in this place can see through invisibility, so we can walk past everything. Here's some wolves who are meant to stop you, but just stand there dumbly as I walk by.

Here's the bedroom in question. You can stand on the bed and jump into the passage.

In the middle of the island is the chest containing the scroll Blubamka needs. Go back out the way we came, and we're done. The island contains Ghouls, the strongest and most dangerous enemies we've seen so far (who can also inflict Diseased on you with melee attacks), but they don't even know I'm there.

There's a lot of treasure along with the parchment we need, but loot doesn't actually matter to us at all in this playthrough. Money isn't a concern anymore because I can turn invisible and walk into any palace on the continent and steal everything. The only things we could really find in loot piles are enchanted items (which don't matter because we already have all the spells we need), weapons and armour (useless to us), and defensive charms (which don't matter because I intend to never get hit).

Blubamka uses the parchment to translate the Elder Scroll, whatever the fuck that is, which reveals the location of Fang Lair.

The dungeon artwork in this game is fantastic. Look at that weird statue, the one of the dragon between the two spires. I'm guessing that's where the Imperial symbol from Morrowind onwards is taken from (I can't immediately think of a time it appears in that context prior to MW).

The deal here is that it's a mine with a shitton of underground tunnels. Getting through this is as easy as everything else we've faced so far - turn invisible, walk to the finish line.

As always, it's a simple case of walking past everyone while invisible.

In the end room, we find this:

But aha, there's a sentient door. Can you figure this shit out?

The answer is 2, but it doesn't actually matter - you can brute force it by just giving all three answers. The cells containing the spiders will open, but if you're invisible, the spiders will just stand completely still inside their cells.

On the bottom level of the dungeon, three skeletons spawn together. They block the corridor; here's where Passwall comes in handy.

I carve a path past the skeletons (who don't notice or react to the wall next to them vanishing before their eyes).

The first piece of the Staff of Chaos is inside this room. One problem - there's two hellhounds in there, powerful enemies with a deadly fireball attack. Invisibility will protect us from them, but they're blocking the way into the room, and Passwall can't help because the walls are immune to it. (By the way, the door has another riddle, one so utterly easy that I'm not even gonna write it down here)

There's two ways around this. One is to use the same trick I used back in the Imperial Dungeons - rest until a rat spawns, get the rat to follow me over to the door, and the hellhounds won't spawn.

But there's another, even more appealing way. That fireball attack the hellhounds use is an AoE attack. If they fire it at me while I'm stood right in front of them, the blast will kill them too. That means I get a massive stack of XP - the player is rewarded whenever enemies die, regardless of whether or not the player actually killed them. The only issue is, of course, that I'll take a bunch of fireballs to the face. You roll WIL whenever you get hit by a spell in this game, and sometimes take no damage at all. Let's hope!

I open the door and boldly rush in!

I completely eat shit!

Second try.

You can see here that one of them is a pile of bones on the floor, killed by his own attack (which got me too, but Light Heal spam saved the day). The other continues to attack me, but he soon suffers the same fate. Here's proof that the plan worked as described - I got the level up the instant the last Hellhound died, and you can actually see the fireball exploding against my face:

The XP from the Hellhounds sends me straight to Level 5, but that's not all. The first Staff Piece floats in the air before me:

That's another big load of XP, and we're straight on to Level 6:

Let me tell you about magic in Arena - it's utterly broken. BIG COCK INVISIBILITY, my custom invisibility spell, becomes cheaper to cast and more powerful with each level. Already, I can cast it like 25 times before running out of mana, and it now lasts for somewhere over a minute. The game is already pretty trivial at this point, and there's only really one major obstacle waiting for us, but we'll get to that later.

Picking up the staff piece draws Tharn's attention and, for the first time, he speaks to us directly...

I do not know who you are, but you have made a FATAL mistake. Ria Silmane and her feeble powers are NOOOooOooOo protection for you. I should have DIS-CORPORATED her when I had the chance. I will not make the same mistake again. I will use the same D-R-R-R-REAAAAAAAM bridge that she uses, sending my minions across time and space. Already they arrive, ones worthy of the attention you deserve. They will relieve you of the burden of the STAAAAFF piece you now hold. Give it to them and I will order your death painless and quick!!! R-R-R-RRESIST, and I shall see you in such suffering that you will grovel for the sweet release of death...

Sadly, I have no idea who the voice actor is. Probably they couldn't reveal his name because he'd be drowning in dangerous levels of pussy if the world knew of him.

Getting out of Fang Lair is as easy as getting in. Ria comes to us in our dreams again...

It seems that you were well chosen. I see that you have won the first piece of the Staff. That in and of itself is not a simple task. Tharn, it seems, is not as concerned with you as I had thought he would be. Perhaps he thinks you dead or lost in the sewers from which you escaped. That is well, for I have discovered the second piece's location. There was once a great maze, built by the Archmagus Shalidor to guard what he called Glamorill, the elven term for 'The Secret of Life'. I know not the location of the great maze, which was called the Labyrinthian, but somewhere in its twisted corridors lies the second piece of the Staff of Chaos. Shalidor, according to the old texts, made his home in the Fortress of Ice. He would not have built the Labyrinthian far from his home. I would search to the north for such a place. I wish you well on your journey...

The next piece is in Skyrim. We head to the College of Winterhold to learn more. Here's the map...

Click to travel, and...

Join me next time where I'll probably pick up the pace and beat about half the game.

 

[orcinator]

Those AI talks with Ria Silmane were pretty hilarious.

With the power of ai enhanced conversation, Ria Silmane can get the character development she needs, no longer a simple guide for the hero, she is now a Munchausen-by-proxy Ghost Mom.

 

[Lemming42]

PART 4: SPEED-ARENA

The method for beating Arena from this point on doesn't change - Invisibility and Passwall, that's about it. So, let's fast forward and I'll only stop to write if there's something interesting to do or difficult to overcome.

In this part, we pick up the pace and start making major headway, make an unlikely alliance with Jagar Tharn, meet the one threat that can see straight through our invisibility, and get vored by a pretentious tree.

Spoiler

Our first stop is the Fortress of Ice. The flimsy story reason we're going here is that, yet again, an "Elder Scroll" holds the location of the next staff piece but the means to translate it have gone missing.

You'd think people would keep better track of precious one-of-a-kind tablets that can translate the legendary (albeit largely unexplained) "Elder Scrolls". While I'm here at the College of Winterhold, I buy a stack of Restore Power potions, and also the Shield spell. Shield is essentially just temporary HP, but it doesn't wear off until it's lost through damage, so you can cast it on yourself, then sleep or travel halfway across the continent, and it'll still be there. Obviously very useful, even though ideally I'll never get hit in the first place.

The Fortress of Ice is a joke of a dungeon and I'll show you why.

Thanks to Passwall, this is our route through the first floor.

The second floor is a bit trickier - there are some narrow corridors which can trap you if you don't have the mana to cast Passwall. With Restore Power potions on standby though, it's no real issue. On this floor, you can find a cell with two Hellhounds in it - worth getting them to commit sodoku like the ones in Fang Lair, for the XP boost.

Just keep spamming Light Heal while they AoE themselves to death, and you're good to go.

The only problem in this dungeon is that there's an Ice Golem in the room with our objective. You can either use the good old rat trick to prevent him from ever spawning, or simply go un-invisible, lure him out, go invisible again (which freezes him in place), then walk past him and take the loot. I went with the Rat Trick, though in this case, it was a Dumbass Trick. Here's my anti-Ice Golem dumbass:

After returning to the College of Winterhold, I buy a few more mana potions plus some potions of Free Action, just in case I get my dipshit self paralysed.

Next up is Labyrithinian. This is a wonderfully-designed dungeon that involves descending into a massive lower floor to retrieve two keys which you then bring back to the smaller first floor to open a central tomb. Great dungeon though it is, it's as trivial as everything else in this run - I go invisible, I walk and Passwall my way to the keys, I get them, I return. There isn't really anything I can show you from this dungeon, it's just me walking past everyone again.

We'll get to come back here when we play Skyrim! Anyway, like I say, the dungeon is a non-event when you're invisible. Here's me walking past some fools.

Anyway, another Staff Piece. It's enough to get us to Level 7:

Ria calls me again and tells me to get my fat pathetic ass over to Valenwood, where the queen of Eldenroot (which is meant to be a big tree or something in the lore?) has further info on the next staff piece.

The success in Skyrim really razzes Tharn off.

(I literally cannot praise Tharn's voice actor enough. "Such things as to make your very heart FR-R-REEZE!")

Like the other provinces, there's a pre-dungeon in Valenwood and then the main dungeon. The pre-dungeon is Selene's Web, a spider-themed dungeon (where a "spider queen" named Selene lurks, though like the Goblin chief, she's not actually in the game and it's not clear what she's meant to be). The first floor of Selene's Web is trivial, there's nothing to it. Go invisible, walk to the stairs down. If you want to save a Passwall (which there's no reason to do at this point since I'm loaded with mana potions), you need a key. And here it is:

Yeah. It's there, keep looking. I like this game's visuals a lot but this is fucking awful. Pixel-vomit bullshit and if you didn't know you were looking for this key there's a good chance you'd just not find it.

Now, the second level has a massive, massive problem. There's a locked room in the centre which requires a key. In the room with the key are Wraiths. Wraiths can see through invisibility, and they will shoot a volley of fireballs that hurt like fuck.

That's right, in Arena, the devs actually put a drawback to invisibility in the game! You have exactly one weakness. Todd saw fit to remove this entirely from Morrowind onward, making invisibility godmode. But here, we have an Achilles' heel. The only real option here is to bite the bullet and rush toward them like with the hellhounds, hoping they murk themselves.

Those two red floating slits are its eyes, and you can just see the ghostly skirt it's wearing beneath the text there. They're hard as fuck to see and usually the first sign that one of these pricks has spotted you is a fireball hurtling toward your face. It's worth trying to get the two in this room to kill themselves just for the XP, but otherwise, luring one of the spiders from the corridor outside in through a Passwall-created gap will prevent the Wraiths from spawning. I manage to do the former, and it's enough to get me up to Level 8. My Agility is now nearly 100, which is purely for lockpicking (retrospectively, a total waste of attribute points). After that, I'll focus on Willpower for magic saves.

Elden Grove is Valenwood's main dungeon, and it's an interesting one. It's outdoors!

It's a giant hedge maze, essentially. There's no great challenge to the surface level, just go to the little temple thing in the southeast corner and descend underground.

There are these ghosts, though. They can see through invisibility too. They won't hurt you unless you enter melee range, but they will hit you with a mana-draining spell, meaning you're fucked if you don't have enough mana potions to keep your invisibility going.

Near the goal, there are Wraiths about too, so despite being fairly straightforward, this dungeon can be dangerous as fuck.

The underground though is very interesting.

Boats! These things control like fucking Ferraris. Other than going faster and not spending stamina in water, there is no logical reason to get in one of these things. You're likely to be sniped from beyond the darkness before you can even see what's hit you.

This dungeon contains our greatest challenge so far. The next staff piece is on an island filled with Wraiths. There's no real way around this one, no rat trick. Our only option is to swim to the island while under fire, climb up onto it as fast as possible, and rush the Wraiths, hoping that a) we survive their attacks, and b) their attacks successfully kill them through AoE damage. I was killed about six times here, but eventually:

That's a Wraith suiciding after firing at me.

I make it to the Staff Piece, guarded by two more Wraiths. Same again.

See that shit?! Both at once! That's enough to get me to Level 9, and the third Staff Piece is ours.

Oh no!! The grove itself is sentient, and has trapped us inside itself by growing a wall of twisted vines! Only a genius can figure out the riddle to open this!

The answer's "time", obviously. Fuck's sake.

We leave with ease, awaiting our next messages from Ria and Tharn.

Join me next time when we start collecting Staff Pieces like Pokemon cards and prepare to make our decisive move against Tharn.

 

[Lemming42]

Still working on the next part (which will probably take us right up to Dagoth Ur, the penultimate dungeon in the game) but check out this new innovation. This is 2024, this is the Age of AI, we should be using more AI.

Some of you may have played games like Watchdogs, Dishonored, or Sniper Elite 5, which give you little tidbits of backstory for each enemy. You know, like, you'll be about to shoot some Nazi soldier, then it'll be like "HANS BECKER: REALLY HATES THE NAZI PARTY, JUST WANTS TO GO HOME TO LOOK AFTER HIS COWS", and you'll be like "ahhh, I can't kill him" and just sneak past him or knock him out. Or in Watchdogs, it'll say "Furry Forum Moderator", so you'll fire without hestiation. This is a superb mechanic.

To give some real texture to the world of Arena, I've made a new chatbot with the sole purpose of generating exactly these types of tidbits for any enemies we encounter. I type in a quick description, the AI does the rest, and we all enjoy a richer Elder Scrolls world. Let's go!

Look at this lady, who would be stabbing me through the skull if I weren't invisible.

Let's fire up the AI. I type in "valenwood spellsword", and:

Ah, see? Thought the game didn't give you any reason to be a pacifist? Well, now it does! You don't want to hurt good old Adara do you? Fear not, Adara. By the mercy of the noble Lovillon, you shall live, and one day tell your friend how you feel.

Around the corner, a spider.

I type "giant spider" into the AI:

Firstly, I'm loving this nonsensical naming convention for spiders. Secondly, good lord.

As you can see, this objectively makes the universe of Arena far richer in a highly lore-friendly way. It also gives us way more motivation to be a pacifist. Kill Brontius? Never. I only regret that there's no mechanic that allows me to take a bullet for her.