Patch Notes: The Arena of Daggerfall

A colosseum in the middle of Daggerfall

• The Arena of Daggerfall now stands in the heart of Daggerfall city, in the block just east of the centre, facing the market. The building is Kamer's Daggerfall Arena (used with his permission): high walls, tiers of seats, torches and braziers around a sand floor.
• It stands in every game, whether you use Daggerfall's own city layout or Beautiful Cities. It is part of the city, not a switch.
• It is drawn with your own copy of Daggerfall's textures, and the stone passages under it are built from your own game's dungeon pieces.
• You can walk the tiers and the floor. The walls are solid.
• The tavern, the two gem stores and the houses that stood on that block are gone. Every other building in the city keeps its name, its owner and its guild. The Palace, the temple, the guilds and the banks are where they were.

The gate

• At the north gate you'll find the Herald of the Arena, two gate wardens of the Royal Guard, recruiters for the Red Banner and the Blue Banner, and a bookmaker.
• Talk to the Herald and he gives you a choice: watch the exhibition, fight on the ladder, open the Arena window, go down to the fighters' hall (the undercroft), or leave. If a choice isn't open, he tells you why.

The Red Banner and the Blue Banner

• The arena's two companies take fighters at the gate. Talk to the Red Banner Recruiter or the Blue Banner Recruiter to join. Joining is free.
• Every ladder bout you win is a point for your banner. Beating a Tier Champion is worth 3, and the Grand Champion 10.
• A season lasts a year of the game's calendar. When it ends, the banner with more points wins, and its fighters wear the laurel all the next year: the crowd is on your side from the first bell.
• You can quit your banner whenever you like (the recruiter asks you twice), but you can't join the other one until the next season. You can go back to the banner you quit at any time.
• Each banner fields 24 fighters of its own, who climb the same ladder you do over the season. You'll see them on the leaderboards.
• Your banner's pennant shows beside your name on the versus bar. In an exhibition, the Red Banner's fighter faces the Blue Banner's.
• Your colours on the sand: fight a ladder bout under a banner and the banners around your side of the ring hang in its colour, and your half of the crowd takes on its colour too. At an exhibition, the Red Banner's half of the stands faces the Blue's.

The Arena window

• One window for everything at the arena, opened by the Herald, the recruiters and the bookmaker, and once you've joined a banner, from the Arena button on the character page of the pause menu.
• Bouts: the hour's exhibition with both fighters' records and odds (Watch, Wager), and your next ladder bout with its purse (Fight). Watching, wagering and fighting are done at the arena's gate; the window tells you why when you can't.
• Ladder: the ten tiers, where you stand, every opponent and champion, the purses and the title each tier gives.
• Team: your banner, the season's standing against the other, the laurel, your points, and your banner's top ten.
• Leaderboards: the highest tier, the fastest Grand Champion and the banners season by season, with your own row pinned below the top ten. Online, the realm's boards and its Hall of Champions (see Online below).
• Records: your wins, losses, yields, falls, streaks and purses, your last twenty bouts and your wagers. Offline, your last three ladder bouts can be watched again from here (see Replays below).
• Rules: the arena's rules in plain words.

The bookmaker

• The Bookmaker at the gate takes wagers on the hour's exhibition, from 10 to 1000 gold, until the fight begins. One wager a bout.
• His odds come from the fighters' records, less the house's tenth. A winning wager pays your stake back plus the odds he gave; a draw gives you your stake back.
• He lays no price shorter than 1 to 5: a fighter more likely to win than that is not taken.
• If you don't stay to watch, the bout is still fought and your wager is still settled once the hour is over. But leave once the fight has begun and he keeps your stake, whoever was ahead.
• He takes no wager on an hour whose bout you have already seen, and the Herald won't stage an hour's exhibition again once its fight has begun.
• Collect your winnings at his stall. He pays in person.

Titles

• The Herald calls you by your arena title when you step onto the sand.
• The Hall of Champions in the undercroft names every Grand Champion your character has seen: yours first, then each banner fighter who took the title, season by season. Their names hang on a wall of plaques beside the Keeper of the Hall. Click a plaque to read whose it is.
• Your banner shows on the character sheet beside your arena title and record.

The bouts

• Exhibitions: every hour from 8 in the morning to 9 at night, two fighters meet on the arena's sand. Stand near the colosseum and you'll see the bout, hear the crowd and see the fight on your screen. The same hour always brings the same two fighters.
• The Ladder: ten tiers, from The Pit to The Grand Melee. Win three bouts in a tier and you face its Tier Champion; beat the champion and you climb, and the arena gives you a title. Tier 5's champion is two Warriors at once, Tier 6 throws you to the beasts, Tier 9 is two against one, and Tier 10 is a free-for-all melee before the Grand Champion.
• Your opponents don't grow with you. The ladder is a fixed mountain.
• Nobody dies on the sand. At 1 health you go down and the bout is over. Badly hurt (15% health or less)? Sheathe your weapon to yield. Fighters can also be carried out of the ring, and after three minutes the judges decide: damage dealt, then hits landed, then fewer misses.
• After every bout the arena's healers make you whole again.
• Purses run from 50 gold for a first-tier win to 10,000 gold for the Grand Champion. The crowd's favour raises or cuts your purse. Losing costs you only the purse.
• While your bout is on, you can't rest, travel or leave through the gates.
• Your progress, titles and record are saved with your character. Your arena title and record show on the character sheet.
• Strike an exhibition fighter and the Herald will warn you once. Do it again and the watch comes for you.
• Replays: your last three ladder bouts are kept with your character. Ask the Herald (R - Watch your last bout again) or press Watch the replay on the Records page, at the arena's gate, and you watch the bout again from the terrace, with the crowd, the Herald and the verdict. A replay pays and counts nothing, and you can leave it whenever you like. (In a replay you appear as a fighter of your class.) Replays are kept offline only: online the realm keeps its own records.

The crowd

• The tiers fill with Daggerfall's own people: the gesturing man, dancers and musicians, courtiers and nobles. Big bouts draw hundreds.
• The crowd cheers a great blow, gasps at a telling one, groans at a knockdown and roars at a comeback. It boos stalling, running away and an early yield. A fighter it hates is booed every time they strike.
• Each fighter has the crowd's favour, for good or ill. Its darling and its villain are marked on the screen.
• The crowd shouts, too: "Blood on the sand!", "Get up, you dog!", and the name of a favourite's home town.
• At the verdict the crowd throws flowers for a winner it loves, and something worse for one it doesn't.
• The crowd's voices are built while you play from Daggerfall's own crowd recordings. Drums, the bell and the old Arena fanfares are Daggerfall's own sounds. The arena also has its own march and victory fanfare.

On your screen

• A versus bar shows both fighters' names and health, your stamina, the crowd's mood and the time left. It takes no keys and never pauses the game. It moves aside for the target frame and the quest card, keeps clear of the crosshair on a short screen, and hides with the rest of the HUD (F10).
• The bout's clock stops while the game is paused, so a pause never runs out a bout's time.
• The Herald calls each fighter by name, counts down "3 - 2 - 1 - Fight!" and gives the verdict in the middle of the screen.

The undercroft

• A stair inside the colosseum leads down to The Arena Undercroft: Kamer's own 32-block dungeon under the arena, now the fighters' hall.
• Nothing down there attacks you, and nothing breaks your rest. You'll find fighters at rest, the arena's keepers, the armourer at his anvil, and the beasts of the beast tier on their chains.
• Talk to the Pit Master at the training pit to spar: a practice bout against a fighter of your own tier. No purse, no crowd, no step on the ladder - just practice.
• The Keeper of the Hall reads you the Hall of Champions: the tier champions you have beaten, and your name as Grand Champion once you earn it.
• The castle's dungeon is not changed.
• The Smaller Dungeons setting never shrinks the undercroft, so the fighters' hall, the training pit and the Hall of Champions are always where they belong.

If you had something on that block

• A house: the Daggerfall Bank moves your deed to a house of the same kind elsewhere in the city, the first time you load. Your own furniture goes back to your furnishings, ready to set down again, and anything you bought from the decorator is paid back in full to your Daggerfall bank account. Everything that was in your chests and on your floor waits for you in a chest in the new house (or in a crate by the door if the house has no chest). You'll get a letter, and a note in your notebook.
• A rented room at the old tavern is honoured at any inn in the city.
• A quest building on that block is chosen again in the city, so the quest can still be finished.
• A save made inside one of those buildings, or a Recall anchor set there, puts you outside instead.
• An online home on that block moves too (see Online below).

Online: the arena of the realm

Online play needs a relay update (a single reconnect) and a registered account. Guests can watch, but they can't queue, join a banner or keep a result.

• Find a match: from the Arena window's Bouts page, look for a real opponent at your season rating. Ratings start at 1,000. The search widens every 10 seconds until someone is found. You both have 20 seconds to accept. A fighter who declines isn't offered to you again for a minute.
• Casual bouts: choose Casual bout instead and you're matched only with other players who want one. It's refereed the same way, but nothing is counted: no rating, no points, no record.
• Refereed bouts: a bout between players is fought on its own copy of the arena floor, and the server referees it. It holds both fighters' health (the same for every fighter of a level) and only counts a blow that could really have landed: in reach, at a believable pace, no harder than your weapon can hit.
  • Leave a fight for more than 15 seconds and you forfeit it. A matched bout that nobody turns up to is called off.
  • A win or loss moves your rating. More than five rated bouts in a day against the same fighter are kept, but don't move it.
• The ladder online is your account's own climb, with opponents the server runs. Wins count only in order, and your purse is paid once the realm has counted the win. Ladder wins (and rated wins against players) also earn Renown for the character who fought, within the usual hourly limit.
• The hour's exhibition is the same bout for everyone: online, the server fights it, so every player at the arena sees the same blows and the same winner. The bookmaker settles your wager by that result.
• The stands: watch any bout from the Bouts page (exhibitions, players' bouts, ladder bouts; a private session's bouts are watched by joining it), up to 60 watchers a bout. You're seated in the tiers with no body. Cheer and Boo from the stands (buttons on screen, or the = and - keys), and the whole crowd hears it.
• Banners online are your account's, not your character's. Seasons last eight weeks. You earn points for your banner: 1 for a ladder win, 3 for a Tier Champion, 10 for the Grand Champion and 2 for a rated win against a player. Last season's winners wear the laurel, and the crowd favours them from the first bell. Every fighter's banner shows on the versus bar.
• Realm leaderboards: the highest climb, the fastest Grand Champions, the season's player ratings and the banners, with your own row pinned under the top ten. The Hall of Champions online names every Grand Champion of the realm, in the window and when the Keeper of the Hall reads it.
• Records online shows your account's record and your last twenty bouts, with whom you fought and how.
• Titles: your arena title shows on your letters and notices too. Grand Champion is yours for good once the realm has counted all forty ladder wins. The season's #1 player (with at least three rated bouts) wears the title Arena Champion and the laurel beside their name, until someone else takes the top.
• Online homes on the arena's block move the way offline houses do. The first time you play online, your house moves to a free house elsewhere in Daggerfall. Your own furniture goes back to your furnishings, anything you bought from the decorator is paid back in full, and everything in your chests and on your floor waits for you in a chest in the new house. A tenant renting a room keeps it until their rent runs out. The Daggerfall Bank writes to tell you, and your notebook notes it.

Private sessions (online)

• Host your own session: open the Arena window (from the Herald, a recruiter or the bookmaker at the arena's gate in Daggerfall, or the pause menu's Arena button once you've joined a banner) and, on the Bouts page, press Host a session (you need a registered account). You get a six-character code to share on stream or in chat. Codes leave out I, L, O, 0 and 1, so a code read off the screen is typed right, and upper or lower case both work.
• Join one: type the code into the Session code box on the Bouts page and press Join (or Enter). You're taken to the arena floor and seated in the stands. Guests can join to watch; fighting needs a registered account. Press Host or Join while outdoors.
• The host decides who fights. The session's card lists everyone in it. The host presses Make Red or Make Blue beside a name to pick the two fighters, then Start bout: the two are brought down to the sand and everyone else watches from the stands. The host can also End bout (no result) while the bout has no result yet, Remove someone from the session, Lock session so nobody new can join (members who step away can still come back), or Close session.
• Every fighter is equal: in a session's bout both fighters have the same health, whatever their level. The server referees every blow, as in any bout between players, and the Herald calls it a friendly bout. However a bout ends, its fighters are healed and sent back to the stands.
• Nothing is counted: no rating, no banner points, no records, no Renown. The session keeps its own last 20 results, shown on its card.
• A session holds up to 62 people: 60 in the stands and two on the sand. It ends when its host closes it, 15 minutes after the host leaves, or 8 hours after it opened. A host or member who steps out can come back within that time with Rejoin session on the card (Host a session always starts a new one).

Fixes and polish

• The stairs: every stair in the colosseum now walks smoothly up and down, including the stair from the gate courtyard to the ring. You no longer catch on the steps or start climbing them.
• Paving: the streets that meet the arena now lead onto paved squares instead of ending in snow, and the gate passage and the courtyard inside the walls are paved too. Lamps, benches, crates and signposts mark the three sides away from the gate.
• The gate's people are known by what they do: the Herald of the Arena, the Red Banner Recruiter, the Blue Banner Recruiter, the Bookmaker and the Arena Wardens.
• The entrance: fighters now walk out from the gates under the stands to their marks as the Herald calls their names.
• The judges now count missed swings (yours and your opponent's), so "fewer misses" can settle a close bout.
• The crowd gasps at a real critical strike now, not just at any big hit.
• The stands: the noble lords and ladies in the crowd are their proper size.
• Your character now faces the way you do when you arrive somewhere (on the sand, through a door), instead of turning to face the camera.
• Thin lines of sky that showed through some of the colosseum's walls, and flickering streaks on an inner wall, are gone.
• The stair down to the undercroft is labelled "To The Arena Undercroft".
• The gate faces north, onto the market.
• A torch left burning in a house that was moved for the arena now waits for you in the new house's chest.
• The colosseum draws faster, and building it for the first time no longer stalls the game.
• Watching from the stands inside the arena, the gate passage now leads out onto the paved courtyard and the market, with a way out at its mouth where the Herald stands.

Patch Notes: Beautiful Villages and Cities

The towns of the Iliac Bay, laid out again

• Beautiful Villages of Daggerfall (by carademono) lays out every village, hamlet, farm, manor and temple in the Iliac Bay again, and rebuilds the roadside taverns.
• Beautiful Cities of Daggerfall (by carademono) lays out all 410 cities again, with districts, walls, gates, markets and docks.
• Both are on by default. Each has its own switch in the Features pane (under Mods). A change takes effect the next time the game starts, so a town never changes around you. Offline, the new towns also need Replace Game Artwork switched on.
• Roadside taverns keep their inn. A few of the new village blocks have no tavern in them, so those 274 roadside taverns stay as they were in Daggerfall.
• If you use your own texture files for the pieces these mods borrow (for example the real Daggerfall Expanded Textures), yours are shown instead of this game's versions.
• Every town is built from your own copy of Daggerfall, with the author's changes laid over it.

Your house stays your house

• Your houses, rented rooms, quest buildings, items left with a smith, Recall anchors set indoors, and saves made inside a building all keep the town layout they were made in. If you switch either mod on or off later, that town keeps its old layout, so your furniture, chests and decorations stay where you left them.
• If a town can't be shown in the layout your house was bought in (for example, Replace Game Artwork is switched off), the house isn't treated as yours there, so you never walk into a stranger's home or a shop as its owner. It comes back when the town does.
• Once nothing of yours is left in a town, it follows the mods as they're set from the next load.
• The first time you load after this update, the game forgets which buildings you had found in towns that changed. The towns themselves stay on your map.
• Online, a home can't be bought until the game has loaded the towns as the other players see them. An out-of-date copy of the game is asked to reload before buying.
• Online, players who see a town differently are never put in the same building together.
• A quest-giver you met indoors is still where you left them when you come back to finish the quest. One exception, online: a quest-giver you met indoors before this update may no longer be there if their town is now laid out by the new mods.
• If a town you have things in can't be shown as you left it, the game tells you. Items left with a smith can be collected from any smith in that town, a rented room is honoured at any inn there, and a quest building is chosen again so the quest can still be finished.
• Online, both mods are set for the whole room. Every online home keeps the layout its town had when it was bought, and everyone sees the same town around it.
• You can take any of a room's own furniture out of your house, including the new towns' food, tableware and clutter. Before this fix, some of those pieces couldn't be taken out online, and came back after a load offline. Some cabin pieces on Detailed Ships' ships had the same problem.

Pieces from other mods, made for this game

• The two mods place pieces from other mods that this game doesn't include. This game draws its own versions instead of leaving gaps: coloured beds, framed paintings, tapestries and banners for the regions and the Eight Divines, beams, mantels and chimneys, food, animals and tools, rocks and hills, market stalls, docks with their ramps and steps, temple gardens, and crop fields that change with the climate and turn to stubble in winter.
• Detailed Ships' bottles and other items now also appear in the towns, even with Detailed Ships switched off.
• A few pieces are left out because they're effects, or because nothing is known of their shape, the same as in Daggerfall Unity without those mods. These include some bridges, chimney smoke, and the temples' deity statues.

Fixes

• Roleplay & Realism: you can rest in the towns' coloured beds.
• Roleplay & Realism: the Master Armorer quest finds the armorer's shop in the new towns, instead of naming a neighbour's house.
• The bank no longer offers a house that has no door.
• Lamps, food and animals in the new towns are no longer mistaken for people you can talk to.
• The Mages Guild in Bubandanis and both guilds in Tulaedax work properly.
• Buildings in a few new villages now use the right colours and materials for their climate.
• Loading a save made inside a building in the new towns puts you back inside it, even after changing which mods are on.
• Windmills stand on the new farms when Windmills of Daggerfall is on, and the Order of the Raven's guild halls work in the new cities.
• You can enter the castles of Daggerfall, Sentinel and Wayrest in the new cities.
• The temples in two village layouts no longer have their front doors blocked by their foundations.
• A building no longer fails to load when it holds something the game has no picture for. Nothing is drawn there instead.

What's Changed

• AUDIT PRE-MERGE 1003 + 1003b: the arena PR (#545) audited twice, ARENA6 private sessions, main merged in (#547-#555) by @Lattymoy in #556
• AUDIT PRE-MERGE 1003b: two source pins follow the lines the second pass moved (#545's CI shard 3) by @Lattymoy in #557
• The Arena of Daggerfall and Beautiful Villages and Cities: the arena branch onto main (ARENA1-ARENA6, WD3), audited twice by @Lattymoy in #545

Full Changelog: app-v0.1.5781...app-v0.1.5875