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[PC] Free - The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall @ GOG

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Migrating Away From GOG Cut (December 14th, 2023 blog post)

If you play using the “GOG Cut” release of Daggerfall Unity, please consider this version is now almost two years out of date and comes preloaded with dozens of mods. It’s buggy, slow, and completely changes how the game looks and plays. The Daggerfall Unity development team did not assemble the “GOG Cut” release and in no way recommend it to play Daggerfall Unity.

Until GOG update the version of Daggerfall Unity on their store, the best outcome is to migrate away from GOG Cut to a standard and up-to-date release of Daggerfall Unity.

Get the up-to-date Daggerfall Unity (v1.0 released December 31st, 2023)

Daggerfall Unity requires a free copy of DOS Daggerfall to run. This provides all necessary game assets such as textures, 3D models, and sound effects.

You can get a free copy of DOS Daggerfall from Steam (or GOG) and a free copy of Daggerfall Unity from the Releases page. Then simply unzip the latest version of Daggerfall Unity to its own folder and point it to the DOS version. Daggerfall Unity will take care of everything else.

Here are a couple of links with more detailed steps to help you get started using either Steam or a cross-platform process.



EDIT: Daggerfall Unity – GOG Cut is ~5.3GB in size due to it being prepackaged with a lot of pre-selected mods/settings … if you would rather start with the tried and tested Daggerfall Unity install method (and selectively add ONLY the mods/settings of your own choosing, and thereby save some hard drive space), then my suggestion would be to follow/read these installation guides as an alternative:

Installing Daggerfall Unity and Other Information

  1. Using DaggerfallGameFiles guide
  2. Using Steam Release guide
  3. Other Install Methods guide -> Using DaggerfallSetup option
  4. Other Install Methods guide -> Using GOG option with the GOG version of Daggerfall

Get your copy of the Daggerfall Unity - GOG Cut:

Play a reimagined version of the all-time RPG classic from The Elder Scrolls series. Daggerfall Unity – GOG Cut brings this amazing experience to modern gamers. It has been made possible, thanks to the efforts of the GamerZakh, a gaming content creator with a love for classics.

The GOG Cut of Daggerfall Unity doesn’t require any special actions on your behalf. All you have to do is download the game and simply launch it. Thanks to settings and mods that were selected by GamerZakh you can explore the rich world of Daggerfall with enhanced visuals and gameplay.

YouTube video



Game description - The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall

The ancient golem Numidium, a powerful weapon once used by the great Tiber Septim to unify Tamriel, has been found in Iliac Bay. In the power struggle that follows, the King of Daggerfall is murdered and his spirit haunts the kingdom. The Emperor Uriel Septim VII sends his champion to the province of High Rock to put the king’s spirit to rest and ensure that the golem does not fall into the wrong hands. Daggerfall offers you an opportunity to adventure in total freedom within a world where you destiny is of your own making and consequence evolves from your decisions. A world of love and darkness, magic and sorcery. Whether you choose to follow a quest or to venture out alone, you will interact with thousands of people as you travel across an expansive land in a time of fantasy and imagination.

The much-awaited sequel to the critically-acclaimed Arena, Daggerfall builds on its predecessor in the all the right ways, bringing more content, more stories and more combat. The introduction of guilds and commerce provide you with the means to create your own political intrigue and extend your influence in the world of Tamriel. Also receiving rave reviews at launch, Daggerfall is a must-play for Elder Scrolls and RPG-fans alike.

  • Adventure through thousands of cities, villages, farms, ruins, dungeons, graveyards, shrines and castles
  • Interact with thousand of characters, both in dialogue and action
  • Customise your character, creating your own backstory, race and class
  • Participate in numerous large-scale, complex quests or venture on your own path
  • A multiple path story, with several different endings. You decide how the story plays and ends
  • Own property and ships, participate in the politics of guilds and other organisations, and trade goods and services

Related Stores

GOG.com
GOG.com

Comments

  • +7

    GamerZakh is a great dude who has proven to be a good resource for other older games (he basically taught me how to play some games I used to cheat through as a child, and they turned out to be really fun to play as an adult), so his involvement in this is a good sign.

    • +1

      The Caesar 3 fan mods are incredible, he showcased them too!

  • +4

    Still the best Elder Scrolls game ever made. Also the only title that has naked boobs waiting for you if you scale an Inn and go through a window. so make sure you're an adult. If not please close your eyes very tightly until the screaming stops and you're arrested.

    • Scaling an inn and climbing through a window seems like a lot of effort just to see some boobs in 2022, considering the other options available these days :P

      • +4

        Thank you! I'm going to be presenting this post to my wife as evidence! "See honey!"

      • +2

        To be fair when I did it the first time I was scaling the wall to escape an invulnerable wraith that was chasing me then dived through the window because the city guards heard me and then boobs. Still a greater discovery than a treasure chest in a dungeon.

        • +1

          This sounds just like the kind of story you'd desperately make up to explain to your wife why you were caught in a sleazy inn looking at some other woman's boobs :D

  • +1

    Ooh, I tried playing the demo of Daggerfall as a kid, only for a bug to crash the game immediately after character selection

    • +11

      Well yeah.. it is a Daggerfall demo after all. Gave you a good feel for the full game experience.

      • +2

        QFT!

        Daggerfall was one of the most buggy games I've ever seen.

        I remember two demos for the game one that started in a dungeon and a better one that started in the open world… the latter my friends all got a copy of somehow (they no longer had the install CD that got circulated), so I was always on the search for this one. Never did find it.

        • +1

          Yep, the dungeon one had the bug - I remember falling through the dungeon floor about 2 steps into the game, haha

      • Fallout 1 was the best demo ever. Turning people into a beautifully pre-rendered blood-sausage was sooo much fun!

  • +5

    Ai upscaling programs have been a great blessing to the gaming community, 2d spites and textures of 3d objects can be greatly improved. An example if the following mod for Morrowind: https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/46221 . Textures are upsized 4x, from 256 pixels to 1024 pixels in many cases. I wish Bethesda would release an official remaster of Morrowind; the 3d engine is poorly optimized and doesn't scale to modern GPUs. There is a community created replacement of the executable, OpenMW, but it doesn't incorporate the script extender and is thus incompatible with many mods.

    What annoys me greatly is modern games deliberately created with crappy early 1990s graphics, ugly pixellated blocks with a small colour palette.

  • One of the rarer elder scroll games where I didn't spent hundreds of hours customising my character.

  • Crashed twice for me, I can't even leave the starting cave… damn it.

    • This version or the original?

      • +1

        This version and it has frozen up 4 times in total now. Dammit, how is a middle aged man supposed to relieve his childhood!?

        I made it to the Thief in the first dungeon this time before it crashed, it seems to freeze around opening or closing inventory, books, or scrolls for me. It isn't very performant either, running very slow for such a simple game. Even if it is using Unity, Doom Eternal runs much better than this.

        • +1

          To fix the crash when leaving the first tutorial dungeon, go into the Mods menu and disable Fixed Dungeon Exteriors.

          However, I then get a crash when fast travelling to Daggerfall city. Not sure how to fix that one yet. :(

          • +2

            @vicerum: Cheers. I'll wait another year or so to retry, it will probably be patched a bit more by then.

    • +1

      If Daggerfall Unity - GOG Cut is causing frequent crashes for you, you may want to try Interkarma's forum thread's installation guide and options:

      Installing Daggerfall Unity and Other Information

      1. Using DaggerfallGameFiles (Cross Platform, Recommended)
      2. Using Steam Release
      3. Other Install Methods -> Using DaggerfallSetup
      4. Other Install Methods -> Using GOG with the the GOG version of Daggerfall
      • +1

        Thank you.

  • Tutorial dunegon beat me (creature was immune to my attacks). 10/10

    • Just run past them. You don't have to kill every enemy.

      • It followed me everywhere lol

  • The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind 20th anniversary blog post

    and a retrospective video on how ambitious The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall was for its time, given its release way back in 1996

  • After reading this detailed and informative forum post from the creator of one of the Daggerful Unity - GOG Cut's included mods (Darker Dungeons), it appears that GOG had inexplicably rushed the launch of the GOG Cut without having properly communicated with the group of dedicated and experienced DF modders, i.e. a lack of a heads up about the GOG Cut version, much less the opportunity to have these mod creators to revise/update their existing mods to work flawlessly with the GOG game update process.

    • That's a shame to hear, because this has apparently resulted in an initial release of the GOG Cut, where there are already folks experiencing technical issues in installing/playing and sending such GOG Cut-specific tech support questions to the DF modders - who have had no real say in contributing to the GOG Cut "modlist", and therefore find it difficult and time consuming to readily answer/resolve, given their much greater familiarity with the standard Daggerfall Unity
    • Hopefully, GOG can listen to, and better appreciate, these mod creators and improve the GOG Cut bundle going forward - e.g. whenever the core Daggerfall Unity program is updated by its developer(s), the various mod creators tend to fix/update their individual mods fairly quickly, whereas the GOG Cut package may have multiple breakages that take longer to fix
    • in light of this, I have updated my original post to include a viable alternative to the GOG Cut for the purposes of installing the standard Daggerfall Unity, and having the freedom of selecting ONLY those mods/settings that YOU want, versus GamerZakh's preselected modlist (resulting in a ~5.3GB sized download!)
    • +2

      GOG have pushed an update to the game which removes the two mods that were used without permission, and issued an apology to the mod authors.

      It's quite easy to install both removed mods manually from Nexus and keep using them however.

  • Migrating Away From GOG Cut (December 14th, 2023 blog post)

    If you play using the “GOG Cut” release of Daggerfall Unity, please consider this version is now almost two years out of date and comes preloaded with dozens of mods. It’s buggy, slow, and completely changes how the game looks and plays. The Daggerfall Unity development team did not assemble the “GOG Cut” release and in no way recommend it to play Daggerfall Unity.

    Until GOG update the version of Daggerfall Unity on their store, the best outcome is to migrate away from GOG Cut to a standard and up-to-date release of Daggerfall Unity.

    Get the up-to-date Daggerfall Unity (v1.0 released December 31st, 2023)

    Daggerfall Unity requires a free copy of DOS Daggerfall to run. This provides all necessary game assets such as textures, 3D models, and sound effects.

    You can get a free copy of DOS Daggerfall from Steam (or GOG) and a free copy of Daggerfall Unity from the Releases page. Then simply unzip the latest version of Daggerfall Unity to its own folder and point it to the DOS version. Daggerfall Unity will take care of everything else.

    Here are a couple of links with more detailed steps to help you get started using either Steam or a cross-platform process.

    With these two recent blog posts, I reckoned it was best to modify this deal post to no longer point directly to the Daggerfall Unity GOG Cut, but to the original Daggerfall (GOG version) game itself as a long-running freebie game, and revised the deal description to emphasize the up-to-date (and newly released v1.0) Daggerfall Unity as the recommended way to install and play Daggerfall on contermporary systems.

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