Daggerfall:Dungeons

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Dungeons are an essential part of the game-play. Most quests demand the player to enter a dungeon and find a quest object within which can be an item, monster, or NPC. If one is to kill the quest object then this must be done as well.

At the start of the game, only Common Cemeteries and Privateer's Hold are known to the player's character and visible on the fast-travel map; all others must be discovered.

Dungeon location discovery may be done in one of three ways:

1. Exploring the wilderness, which can take several days with no guarantee of success.
2. By reading dungeon maps which can be:
   • Found on the bodies of fallen enemies or as loot in treasure piles.
   • Received as the reward for a completed quest (almost exclusively for the Fighters Guild)
   • Received as a guild promotion reward (see Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood).
3. Being told of their locations in the course of quests, which is the most common way.

The process of finding a quest object in a dungeon is called dungeon crawling, since the location of a quest object is determined randomly and in most cases it is necessary to thoroughly search the dungeon-step-by-step. The only exceptions are objects in Main Quest Dungeons, in which the quest item is statically defined and therefore never changes.

[edit] Features

Dungeon interiors consist of one or more blocks defined in BLOCKS.BSA and referenced (per-dungeon) in MAPS.BSA, which are glued together to create the appropriate scene. Dungeons may have up to (and including) 32 of these blocks, each of which may have two passages connecting to other blocks in each of the four cardinal directions, hence the mating octupi term.

[edit] Dungeon Entrance/Exit

The dungeon's entrance/exit as it is shown within a dungeon

Regardless of its dimensions, all dungeons have only one entrance but sometimes more than one exit. One such dungeon is Palace Sentinel. The entrance and exit are always the same location, but if there are two exits, the player will always enter the dungeon at the entrance/exit location. The second exit can not be used as an entrance. The entrance/exit is displayed as green square on the dungeon's overview map and as a green tag on the detailed 2D/3D dungeon map. If a second exit exists, it is not visible on the map, thus it can only be found by exploring the dungeon.

[edit] Quest Locations

Because Main Quest Dungeons are hand-crafted, the location of quest objects is always the same, hence it is possible to give a guidance how to find them.

The remaining dungeons pose a more difficult challenge since the location of quest objects is determined randomly from the dungeon's list of quest locations, depending on the dimension of the dungeon and the used modules. One or more treasure piles can be found at every quest location and the quest object will also be at one of these spots.

Regarding this facts, the only way to definitely find a quest object is to search the dungeon step by step. That process is called Dungeon Crawling. The spot where a quest object is located will remain the same until the quest is over, so repeated exiting and re-entering a dungeon will not alter this location but will respawn all other monsters and treasure piles.

The quest locations of a certain dungeon-module are always the same, so if one has explored a lot of dungeons during their adventures one may remember where these locations are, thusly making the exploration slightly easier. One can also use a Cheat to cycle through the various quest locations of a dungeon.

[edit] Dungeon Types

[edit] Dungeon Maps

Standard dungeon automap display, 2D map circled. The position of the player is shown within this layout as a red dot and the exit as a blue dot (not visible in the screenshot because the red dot overlaps with the blue dot).

Two types of dungeon maps are available within a dungeon. The dungeon overview map (2D) gives an approximate two dimensional overview of the dungeon's layout, with the player's location shown as a red square. The more detailed map (3D) displays the player's location as a red arrow and shows details of the explored areas (e.g., corridors and rooms) as they are seen through the characters eyes, complete with all textures and other details. As one explores the larger dungeons the detailed map may become increasingly confusing, but one may click an area of this map to disable display of that area. When one leaves a dungeon all map information is lost; the map is reset to its initial, unexplored state.

[edit] Assembling of Dungeons

Schematic of a dungeon consisting of two internal blocks (purple) and border blocks in orange.

As stated above, a dungeon consists of up to 32 blocks, each of which may be connected to any (or all) of the four cardinally adjacent blocks since there are two connecting passages in each of the four cardinal directions, and thusly there are eight paths leading out of each block. While most dungeons may appear to be a random conglomerate of different modules, they were hard-coded in the release media and thus are never-changing. These were most likely generated via a pseudo-random program of some type, but Main Quest dungeons are an exception, because these were all hand-crafted.

While Main Quest dungeons may be of the biggest dungeons in the game, it has been commented by some that even the least of the random dungeons are logically too large for the majority of quests. It has also been voiced that because the number of blocks in the source material is limited, most dungeons lack diversity/variance and hence all dungeons tend to look like eachother.

[edit] Dungeon blocks

Dungeons are built from blocks by assembling them together side-by-side on a 2D grid. Of these blocks there are two types of blocks: internal and border.

Internal blocks

These provide the meat of the dungeon where most rooms and corridors are placed. Every internal dungeon block has two door openings in each one of her fours sides, one above the other. Each door opening is used to link to a nearby internal block or to an external block.

Border blocks

These are used when it is necessary to close the side of an internal block. These are primarily composed of a single corridor which reflexively leads back to the same block of their origin. These are most often used to seal a dungeon's peripheral blocks, but could be used to create isolated areas within a dungeon. Border blocks do not contain any quest locations.

[edit] Dungeon Block Details

The majority of each of the models defined in BLOCKS.BSA appears to be defined in four variations: one flooded (denoted by W in the source material) and three dry (denoted N in the source material). One model (the double moats) has only two (flooded) variations because the moats are never dry. Three models (the stone arch bridge grotto, the tower of crossroads, and the checker board cellar room) never flood; they have only the usual three dry variations.

The gaps in sequence for the specials are perfectly normal. There are no special settings left unaccounted.

The specials usually provide a unique setting for the dungeon entrance and for the location of a quest object inside the dungeon. The rest of the interior is drawn from stock pieces in b*.rdb, n*.rdb, and w*.rdb. A couple, Privateer's Hold, Scourg Burrow, and Shedungent rework common settings with different treasure drops/foes.

[edit] Place

[edit] Castles

[edit] Dungeons

[edit] Ruins

[edit] Footnotes

1. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h i} Never floods.
2. ^ ^{a b c d} The pieces of the "H" are corridors, with the eastern arms ramping to upper levels, usually with a small room bridging the crosspiece of the "H".
3. ^ ^{a b c d} Clockwise and anticlockwise square ramps winding around the perimeter of the block.
4. ^ ^{a b c d} There always seems to be a caged pig in a connecting room in the lower levels of this straight forward block.
5. ^ ^{a b c} The one with a high open area and a naked elevator platform that rises up through empty air to a single shaft in the roof. It also has a tricky combination of levers, turnwheels, shafts, and sliding walls to open a grate blocking access to the pinnacle rooms.