Fallout and Daggerfall character creation

[villain of the story]

By the way, is it just me, or do seasoned Daggerfall players find a way to complete even large complicated dungeons in one or two minutes?

My (general) methods are a) ignore rooms, b) keep running down hallways and corridors, c) only open a door if it seems to lead to a large giant room or a ramp, d) if there is a high place you can reach by levitation, forget everything and levitate there first, e) if there is an underwater place, go there first, f) pull every lever, skull, or torch (even when they can't be used), and g) go through every teleporter. One modification - if the quest requires killing a special creature, only enter a room if you hear an unusual sound from inside. This general technique filters out all pointless running around, and seems to quickly direct me to the target. I give 75% of the dungeon a miss, and quickly get where I need to get.

Plus, I always use Invisibility and Feet of Notorgo. And Recall. Like everyone else, of course.

I used to go crazy (in a completely having-fun way) with several methods which eventually evolved into my rule of two thumbs:
(1) drop loot at any intersection you come upon, eg. a door in a corridor counts as one, an elevator by a corridor counts as one, any spot where there are at least two more ways to go counts as one.
(2) anytime you come full circle to a previous intersection (where you've dropped a loot), drop a second loot in a way easily discernible to point where you just came from, go back where you came from until you reach the previous intersection and drop a second loot there as well. Now you have just shut off an alternate route.

Now I know most layouts by memory. Boring :'(

 

[Average Manatee]

Try enchanting expansive jewelry with maxed out magic skills.

But you might be correct, in the end it could be that it's not any more expensive than vanilla items. Gotta see for myself again.

The question then becomes: who the hell wants to wait until they get maxed magic skills to make money in daggerfall? I'll take a letter of credit worth 1,000,000 gold as soon as I get out of Privateer's Hold, thanks.

From which obscure province? Menevia? Betony? If you become a criminal debtor in that province, it's going to cause problems, right? You may still have to do main quest missions in those regions, and then a dozen Nightblades will appear to kill you every time you revisit the place.

I just stole shit myself.

If you want to take out a loan though, almost half of the provinces are completely off the main quest line and no side quests will point to them unless you specifically go there to start one.

EDIT: Daggerfall wiki says that not paying back a loan only reduces rep by 5 anyway. Presumably it was supposed to lower rep by 5 levels, but apparently only goes down by 5 points (out of -100/100 scale). I just tried it and a year after I took the 1 million gold I walked around the same town, talked to the banker/guards and not a single person seemed to care. I was still at "common citizen" in the eyes of the law. A little too much like real world banking for my tastes.

 

[villain of the story]

Actually there are a few ways to walk free from the court after borrowing money, not paying back and getting caught. Little to no consequences

 

[Wyrmlord]

You know, with this whole "borrow and don't pay back" deal, you could spend 165,000 gold on training alone. That's enough to take all primary, major, and minor skills to 50%. I calculated.

With a little basic number-crunching, you can estimate that it's enough training to reach Level 24 without doing a single dungeon.

If you estimate that as 5 Attribute points per level, it is not unlikely to have about half your attributes at 100. With Luck at 100, you'll get all Daedric Weapons and Armour in no time. With the rest of the money, you can work up in the Mages Guild until you are of enough rank to build Magic Items and give yourself 100 in the other Attributes.

You could immediately start the main quest with a monster character who has 600-700 HP, assuming 25 to 30 HP per level, leaving you to run across levels without the care of dying from anyone's blows.

I can't believe these very obvious exploits never struck me the first time I played the game.