View the spreadsheet here: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vRc6npolU5iRSfzu8JToVGliR7oesLEaSlWrT23JS3I/edit?usp=sharing Hope you enjoy the video! Discord server coming soon :) Now to check out Skyggerfall ;)
Hey, this is an absolutely great resource, but have you considered trying to create a collection for these builds on the nexus? It would be neat to have these available as a one click install. I'm going to start installing some of these and give it a try myself. Any chance of a video on Skyggerfall when you do? That was actually my first experience with the daggerfall story.
@@vaelxn exactly. Raising the resolution without changing meshes just creates spme kind of uncanny valley. Houses look the worst as their weird shapes are even more exposed when everything is in HD.
@@flagassault9715 don't cut yourself on all that edge buddy. I mean, how dare Tomasz share an opinion in the comments, right? He's right though, D.R.E.A.M is good for those who enjoy it but many people (myself included) enjoy the oldschool feel of the original graphics so something like a slightly upscaled pack of the og assets looks and fits better to us. 🤷♂
I really wish you included "Vanilla Normal Mapped" in your Vanilla+ list. Its such a small change that adds soooo much graphically to a mostly vanilla list. I can't live without it
Yeah, I was umming and ahhing and whether it was "too far" for the retro look. I'll add it to the 'Optional Mods' section for those who want to add it though :)
Saving this for later. Unity version made the game incredibly accessible for me, made a dozen characters. Countless hours spent traveling and make their own adventures, these mods will likely increase those hours greatly. Thank you!
Same, I recently have been playing a High-Elf Spellsword, while I do like it, I think I'll probably start over, maybe as a full-mage build, the vanilla Spellsword class is severely lacking in Magicka (like 85 Magicka at the 4th level) 😆
Thanks for making this. A modern, modded Daggerfall is a dream game for me. Its vanilla jank is just a little too arcane for my tastes, so having some shining pillars of humanity mod the game into something smoother is wondrous to see. TES VI who?
Great vid, thanks for showcasing some of my mods. If you don't like the look of the Hotkey Bar, you can press 0 to access the in game settings to customise how it looks and functions. You can even just turn off the UI for it and still retain the functionality.
@@Jwlar Is the gog version unity? And is there a quest marker mod? What about one like the one for Morrowind that makes your attacks always hit thus getting rid of the shitty-ass dice roll bullshit?
@@iso-didact789 The GOG version is buggy and loaded with out of date versions of mods. You can get the updated Unity version from here: github.com/Interkarma/daggerfall-unity/releases I don't know if there are any combat mods like that, but you can always check the nexus: www.nexusmods.com/daggerfallunity?tab=popular+%28all+time%29 Hope this helps :)
Wow! Thanks for putting this together. I was looking through the forums trying to find mods for my future playthrough but you went ahead and did all the work for me! Looks like Vanilla Plus will do perfectly!
Careful with mods that spawn enemies and npcs through scripts (such as Warm Ashes). If they have not been updated to the latest DFU then weird stuff may happen (queuing hundreds of spawns if you fast-travel, for instance).
I've installed Daggerfall vanilla first and played some dungeons before messing with mods, because I never played this game (the only ES game I played was Oblivion). Although junky, I think it's pretty charming, with the soundtrack changing accordingly, personaly I love the tavern theme. Then I installed DFU and got a jump in quality of life features from the go. I opened your spreadsheet and started there, messing with load orders, downloading other mods I found on Nexus, checking this, changing that, completely astonished how a 9kb mod file can change SO MUCH in a game like this. I'm completely hooked. Didn't had this much fun with videogames in years, thank you! I'm subscribed to your channel now and I'll watch everything in gratitude for your hard work, and because I'm loving your content.
I stumbled into the pre-oblivion elder scrolls side of yt while watching skyrim challenge vids and this video and your daggerfall retrospective is slowly convincing me to play this game lol great stuff!
I've always thought this era of CRPG was the absolute sweet spot of immersion and intuitive systems without having to limit your scope due to more modern problems like voice acting, frame rate, and dev time. Morrowind even more so, but that whole engine is held together with duct tape and twigs, so it's understandable that we never saw a big TC scene. Really hoping this pulls people in, this could be a modding platform we haven't seen the likes of since Half Life, but for first person RPGs. Gonna give Daggerfall another shot too with some of this stuff installed. I played it as a kid and again when Unity came out, but the whole game always felt kind of generic and procedurally generated to me (even the handcrafted parts). Seems like people are addressing it, it's an amazing set of systems.
Holy crap this is so useful! Just jumped back into Daggerfall, because I saw your retrospective a week ago. I played the shiiiiit out of DFU when they finally hit Beta and had a blast playing with a lot of the mods that have really evolved since then, like Roads of Daggerfall and Tedious Travel. This game never fails to blow me away with how huge it is, and I absolutely love seeing this community fill that gigantic game world
At I thought this would be "Here's Mod 1, 2, 3" Turns out it's a compiled mod links for different stuff and scenario Thank you for the effort, help me tons!!!
More than any modern games have ever managed, looking at these mods made me actually say, out loud, "Wow". Having played the original Daggerfall, albeit through DOSbox, but having played the completely vanilla version, what people are doing to help realise what this game is so close to being is fanastic
If you ever modded Skyrim, you probably know about STEP. The work you have done here is just how i initially created STEP in 2011! Great job! I'm going for the Vanilla+ for the time being ;)
It's an interesting field exercise in aesthetics where changing one thing can undermine another, for example if you go too high in texture resolution upgrade you can make the underlying original mesh seem far too simple in comparison. It's subject to whoever volunteers time but you get into these conflicts of preference Ie. 4:3 versus Taffy-Vision style "spirited" debates.😅 It's tricky to update since Bethesda was still at a point where mixed media was employed since you have hand drawn pixel art, some CGI prerendered sprites, early mesh poly counts, and 3D/2D all combined to differing degrees of success. Not the same experience but Battlespire was a lot more refined in it's visual craft later on. With the character sprites I think the only universal way to upgrade them for HD is making CGI models of everything to not only increase prerendering resolution but also add more keyframes at this point in time. The polygonal mesh replacements are looking pretty good imo but I've only seen a few high resolution 3D models around that could work for prerendered sprites. I think the quality of life gameplay changes are a great addition, I wish a lot more retro games would embrace that since many have some really confusingly convoluted input systems. My only complaint is how they mostly seem to be all HD-only so they can't match the retro graphics they overlay, must be a way to employ the old HUD graphics into the new form.
In regards to your "Normal Morrowind Textures" statement: I think that's very fair. Many of the modding projects are high fidelity, but push it outside of intended art style. There is a compromise though, that I have found to be as Vanilla plus as possible. There is an AI upscale mod that take the original textures and uses AI to make them higher resolution. I use it in all of my installs of Morrowind, and I'd recommend you to give it a try if you are a purist, like me, when it comes to that game!
This is awesome. I play plenty of modded NV and fallout 3 but I have countless hours into them. I just decided to jump into daggerfall for the first time ever so I dont even know where to start for mods. I'm going to try vanilla plus that really looks perfect for my intro
My modlist is basically just "vanilla+" with some additional mods like the travel options, convenient clock, warm ashes, uncannys always hit, and paperdoll all in one vanilla (which basically lets you use custom character portraits for additional immersion).
Thanks! Putting all of this together served as a template for a busy guy like me to try and start this game. I followed your exact load order, minus 1 or 2 nonessentials. Unfortunately at the time of writing(5/6/23) the following mods act up- Mostly Magic Distant Terrain Wilderness NPCs I would love to see an updated video sometime, keep it up!
Thank you! Yeah, it’s a shame that some of the mods don’t get updated very regularly. I plan to make an updated video once the final stable version of DFU is released :) That way mods will have time to be updated without worrying about a new DFU version possibly breaking them again.
You've inspired this MorrowBoomer (can i be a morrowboomer at 27?) to try Daggerfall! I've decided for a Vanilla+ style as a newbie, as it seems the best way to want me to keep coming back to the game. Thanks for making a mod list too! :)
Liked, subbed commenting because of the great work you compiled. This is akin to the great works of art that we still cherish today from ancient times... Truly a masterpiece! *tips elegantly feathered hat*
As a new player this video and your spreadsheet have been extremely helpful. Just wanted to comment that Wilderness NPCs was continually respawning new enemies while I was in dungeons making it impossible to rest.
Oh man, thankyou so much for making this. I tried modding daggerfall myself but as someone who started on skyrim, what I should and shouldn't use was a little confusing. Excited to try this out
it would be nice if you did a Daggerfalls beginners guide, all the ones i found are outdated or just explain how to make the most meta type of character, but none of them explain in more detail things like what each skill does and how much each attribute influence a stat and so on, and maybe also explain the magic crafting in the game cause i still dont know what the numbers mean
@@Jwlar yeah, i've been playing daggerfall since yesterday, and there is a lot of it i still dont understand, i know its supposed to be a manual to read, but hey, even the manual is wrong about, sometimes, like how the weapon skills work, not increasing damage, so clarifying stuff like that would be really great.
@@Warmaster00 Exactly... for the number of channels out there that talk about Daggerfall, it's surprising to find how LITTLE they explain the mechanics in the game at all
You've done a fantastic job here! Favorite Daggerfall youtuber by far! I hope you come back to daggerfall maybe in a year for updates. But for now, sit back rest well with a job very well done!
Thank you so much! Im usually pretty cold about mods and prefer vanilla experience in the most of the games... But ancient Daggerfall on Unitiy kinda asks himself "MOD ME AS MUCH AS YOU CAN"
Thank you for the video! Definitely helped me see some of the mods I was curious about in action and add them ontop of the GOG Cut version I'm just started playing. I do wish there was some sort of inventory overhaul to make it a little more like later titles, maybe someday.
I remember watching update videos on DEU long time ago and thinking wow it would be amazing if it will be finished. And here we are. I personally tried playing UESP version of daggerfall and while I loved the idea of the fantasy life simulator, it was just feeling really old. Now I can't wait to play your build and enjoy this gem of a game
I completely agree about maintaining the retro visuals. While I do appreciate mods that make games look pretty... I personally enjoy the stylized aesthetics of older games like Arena, Daggerfall, and Morrowind. It also saves time when modding. For instance when building a mod list for Morrowind, I used to spend multiple days or a week setting up a mod list, Trying to make the game look as pretty as possible. but more recently I've gotten into the habit of just embracing the vanilla visuals, (maybe some light weight things like animations, character models, etc.) and spending my time instating mods that overhaul gameplay or adds new quests instead, it saves a ton of time.
it's even worse in a few cases, like the Baldur's Gate "enhanced" edition where the developers think they can dictate how we like the graphics in the game, classic menus/interface gone, and they put Bilinear Filtering on top of everything, making everything blurry, including the menus.... yuck
Perfect timing I been wanting to get into daggerfall tried out the steam version was a bit clunky so I got the unity and some pretty good mods but this is exactly what I needed to really get a good experience I don’t have much time on my hands so I’m just gunna install all the mods I want and play the game.
Thanks for your daggefall vids! Gonna be giving the game a try soon. But I have a note for your modlists. You clearly recommend travel option, but it "conflicts" with power struggle in a way. The constant conflicts make you stop during your travels OFTEN.
Thank you very much for this! The work you put into the spreadsheet and the video is immensely helpful. The hard part for me though is playing this on a gamepad with the Aya Neo Pro 2021
First time player of Daggerfall, I think I'm going to go against advice and go for the Complete Overhaul; or at least pick and choose a few mods from that selection. I'm a huge fan of Skyrim's Frostfall and survival mods, so those are certainly going in at least.
I had the original Daggerfall when it came out a million years ago. Over the years I have wanted to play it again as it was a fav of mine back in the day. Then I heard I could get a improved, free version that was very moddable on GOG. I downloaded immediately. I wondered if it would still be fun after all those years. I spent a while making a custom character and started my journey. I immediately noticed the graphics were much better than I expected. I didn't save immediately. I made my way through the dungeon and noticed my health was very low so I saved. I died over and over because I was used to how easy games are now and my save was destroyed because I didn't save immediately. If you read this "SAVE IMMEDIATELY!!!" This game is still hella fun and with the mods and improved graphics, it's better than ever. As you may can tell, I am not a purist. Bring on the higher res and improved graphics all day! I am so glad that this happened. It is very awesome but in a old-school way. I hope the modding community takes this into the stratosphere. Thanks to those that made this possible... for FREE!!! ⚔️
Despite being a huge TES fan, I have to admit that I've never even considered playing Daggerfall before, because it's just too old for my taste. However, this might change it! Edit: Technically, it's not too old for me to enjoy, since I love games which are even older. I guess dated is a better word.
It's not really even that dated either. It just trusts you to keep track of more information than most games do. Your loss, really, not the game's. The only aspect I would accept as truly flawed is the labyrinthine level design in the dungeons. Though even then one can argue it adds to the sense of unease and adventure.
I'm surprised there is no mention of Physical Combat And Armor Overhaul along with Meaner Monsters (both mods are designed to go together). This is a great combat overhaul that makes skills more meaningful and adjusts combat in a satisfying way. I would also recommend limit gold, that limits the money shops have when buying your stuff and adds an economy to the game. I have it set so most shops only have about 1000 gold max but you can invest gold into the shops to increase it (its also not the default setting I turned it way down). These would be for complete overhaul games obviously :)
I saw a beta test video of a multiplayer from about a year ago, they were able to sync the player models but enemies weren’t able to sync (the were on different places on the players screens) I hope it’s able to be done eventually, but it would probably be incredibly difficult
Thank you so much! Gotta breathe some life into my favourite game once more. I think i have like 3 different versions installs across my hard drives. lol
You can use the Smaller Dungeon setting hidden in the Settings.ini (forums.dfworkshop.net/viewtopic.php?t=1689) It limits the size of the dungeons, making them much more fun imo. (They are still maze-like though) A modder is slowly going through the process of manually creating each dungeon to be more lifelike - www.nexusmods.com/daggerfallunity/mods/320 But it only has the one dungeon at the moment, it looks very promising though.
Have you seen or heard about the multiplayer mod? It's amazing- I was playing with my friend a few days ago. It has a few issues, like enemies, synching up. But in-time it could be the Daggerfall MMO i've always dreamed of.
Thanks for this. After your initial Daggerfall retrospective video I went out and downloaded DFU and tried one of the mod collections on Nexus...and I'm not entirely sure it worked out very well. On top of that the game seemed rather difficult to break into at the start and I ended up dropping the game. Hopefully trying the Vanilla+ build with maybe some of the smaller graphics stuff tossed in will help me finally get my foot in the door for Daggerfall, the only main line Elder Scrolls I haven't been able to get into.
Daggerfall has a lot of newbie pitfalls. The awful tutoiral being a big part of the problem. The game works best if you just make a bunch of characters, because the first one will be flawed unless you follow some min/max guide. For first timers I would reccommend just picking the Ranger or Spellsword class. Fight your way out of the dungeon, travel to Gothway Garden and join either the Fighters Guild or Mages guild shop for some better gear and then start doing some quests for the guild you joined.
It can be difficult for sure - it took me 2-3 character until I found one that suited my play style. Use the starting dungeon as a means of testing whether you like your current character build and then leave if you’re happy with it. Join a guild/temple of your choosing and try a few of the easier looking quests to get some money - from there, the world is your oyster. Some good end goals could be to max rank in a few guilds, finish the main quest, or aim to be able to buy a house. Or you can just enjoy dabbling with a few quests and grave robbing. You don’t really have to aim for any kind of goal, and that’s one of my favourite things - it’s nice sometimes just to choose a character build and enjoy the world for an hour or two and call it quits there. Kind of like a Rogue-like game, which I feel Daggerfall is closer too than a longer game like Morrowind for example.
Me before that video: Sad because i didnt got to know Daggerfall back in the 90's Me after that video: happy because i can play Daggerfall in 2024, and with new levels of grandness
I’m glad I installed my 3d enemies mod incorrectly cause now only certain enemies are actually 3d So while most enemies turn into a loot pile, skeletons and zombies just go “eugh” and ragdoll and it’s hilarious
