If you're still playing Arena…

…as you should well do (I'm doing it), and you have ever wondered about the racial modifiers of the races, I've taken the time to process and collect the information from the official hintbook. Here goes:


Nord

M: +10 STR, +10 END/ -10 INT, -10 WIL, -10 AGI

F: +10 LUC/ -10 INT


Khajit

M: +10 END/ -10 WIL, -10 AGI

F: +10 LUC


Redguard

M: +10 AGI, +10 LUC/ -10 INT, -10 WIL, -10 END

F: +10 SPD, +10 LUC/ -10 INT, - 10 WIL, -10 END


Breton

M: +10 INT, +10 WIL/ -10 STR, -10 END

F: +10 INT, +10 WIL/ -10 STR, -10 END


Argonian

M: +10 AGI, +10 SPD/ -10 END

F: +10 STR/ -10 END


Wood Elf

M: +10 AGI, +10 SPD/ -10 LUC, -10 END

F: +-0


High Elf

M: +10 INT, +10 WIL/ -10 STR, -10 END

F: +10 INT, +10 PER/ -10 STR, -10 END


Dark Elf

M: +10 STR, +10 INT/ -10 WIL, -10 PER

F: +10 INT/ -10 WIL

Thanks! This will come in handy when I finally get around to playing Arena.

How in the world do male Khajiit get a -10 to agility, though? That doesn't seem right to me.

inorite

seems to be just a balancing issue. The male Nord also gets +10 endurance and -10 agility.

I should say though that I haven't tested this to see if it's consistent. But AFAIK the hintbook was written in-house at Bethesda… IOW not a Prima strategy guide

I can understand Nords being penalized agility. One can say that nords are strong, hardy but not too agile. Khajiit though? You would think they would be the epitome of agility. Weird.

How is Arena by the way? Good game? I'm interested in that and Daggerfall once I'm finished playing Morrowind. Never really gave them a shot yet.

Originally Posted by Fluent
How is Arena by the way? Good game? I'm interested in that and Daggerfall once I'm finished playing Morrowind. Never really gave them a shot yet.

I'm not exactly qualified to judge Arena as I've never played very far, but I'll say you need a high tolerance for how dated it is. I tried playing it about 4-5 years ago, and the degree of pixelization on a modern monitor and overall clunkiness was more than I could bear.

Daggerfall looks and feels a lot better imo, but it's still too dated for me at this point. I'm still hoping that DaggerXL project will actually get finished someday, but I'm not holding my breath.

Originally Posted by Fluent
How is Arena by the way? Good game? I'm interested in that and Daggerfall once I'm finished playing Morrowind. Never really gave them a shot yet.

I like it a lot. Yes it has pixels as big as my fist, but some of the art is still nice if you're retro-minded.
Arena is very easy to jump into, make a character, grow a few levels, and take a look at the world. You don't have to worry about factions much, or anything, just take some quests from patrons or go dungeon-romping.

It's also interesting to see where TES started. Personally I think the leveling system where you manually assign points to stats is head and shoulders above the later iterations, where you don't choose the character you want but try to assemble a combination of skills that won't screw up your attributes entirely. Yes there are trainers in the later games that mitigate this problem… but that's more of a flaw too if you ask me. Trainers make you not play the game but gather money to pay them, which is a very dubious design decision.

They never really achieved the class distinction they wanted in the later titles. Say… I have an idea of a paladin I want to play, so I want to have great melee skills, an ok dodge/ block skill, and a minor Restoration skill. Ok, but with trainers, why not raise my Restoration skill more quickly? Speaking of which, why not make Restoration one of my major skills so it will raise more quickly by use, too? And then… why only Restoration? Let's add Destruction as a major skill, too. It's not like all skills are equally useful, anyway.
In Arena, being a healer achieves exactly that - you have medium armor, ok weapon selection, and you can buy/ cast all defensive spells more cheaply (and offensive spells are more expensive). Plus you get a nice bonus on your healing rate. This class distinction makes for fun multiple playthroughs. Some may say this doesn't reflect in-game player choice very well, but I'd rather have a system that works than one with a lot of loopholes.

Then, there's no stealth in Arena. Something I'm fond of, in fact, as I don't enjoy characters very much who are stealthy all the time. Instead, thief classes have a chance to land critical hits (3x damage). So, they play much like a warrior class in combat, just with inferior weapons and armor. You can use thiefly skills outside of combat though, like picking locks, pockets, shoplifting, and sneaking into rooms in inns. I like it, and I think they may have made stealth a bit too much of a focus in later games, esp. Skyrim. TES was never about stealth, it's about exploration, combat, and generally messing with the power structures of a fantasy world.

Then… lore. Arena doesn't have much, just the flavor that you get from reading the manual and short in-game descriptions, like those of special holidays. Also, NPC's from different regions use different wording, which is a nice touch. Which is another thing I actually prefer about Arena compared to later games. Yeah, Daedra, artifacts, yadda. There are artifact quests in Arena, you just don't get a lot of lore to go with them. To me, that makes the world feel more open, if that makes sense. You just don't know everything about the world and its higher powers.


I'm planning on replaying all TES games only using pre-set classes and no trainers just to get a better experience sometime, and Arena is always a good place to start.

tl;dr Arena is a fun little dungeon romp with nice music and art direction (esp. in dungeons) and worth your time, especially if you want to do some TES research.

It sounds great! I will definitely give it a shot in the future.

Graphics don't bother me these days. I still love playing old games. A lot of those games have some great concepts and good gameplay that I can still enjoy.

Originally Posted by Sacred_Path
It's also interesting to see where TES started.

If you want the complete history lesson, play Ultima Underworld. I think it's safe to assume that without UU, there wouldn't be TES.

~ Lapoon!