The Elder Scrolls - Daggerfall

Step into one of the largest role-playing worlds ever made and forge your own destiny in the Iliac Bay — Daggerfall starts here with no discs to find, no installer to sit through and no account to make. Bethesda's 1996 open-world RPG, The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, hands you a first-person adventure of dungeons, guilds and political intrigue on a map nobody has ever fully walked. A phone will show it, but Daggerfall wants a swing direction from your mouse hand while the other hand works an inventory, a spellbook and a character sheet, and touch has nowhere to put all of that.

How to Play Daggerfall Online

Getting into the world takes a couple of minutes:

1. Press Play to boot the DOS build.
2. Daggerfall carries far more data than most DOS games, so the first load takes longer here than a smaller title would.
3. Click inside the game frame so mouse look and the movement keys reach the game rather than the page.
4. Create your character — pick a class or answer the question-based background, then set your skills.
5. Begin in the starter dungeon, find your way out, and step into the open world.

Daggerfall is huge and open — don't rush; learn the controls in the first dungeon before exploring.

Controls

Daggerfall uses a first-person keyboard-and-mouse scheme:

To attack, hold the mouse button and move in the direction you want to swing — the motion sets the type of strike.

What Is The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall?

The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall is an open-world role-playing game developed and published by Bethesda Softworks in 1996 for MS-DOS. The second entry in the legendary Elder Scrolls series, it's set in the Iliac Bay region of Tamriel and is famous for its staggering scale — a procedurally generated world of thousands of towns, dungeons, and locations spread across an area larger than almost any RPG before or since. Your character is an agent sent by the Emperor to resolve a haunting and recover a lost letter, leading into a web of political intrigue.

Daggerfall is renowned for its freedom and depth: a detailed character-creation system, dozens of skills, joinable guilds and factions, a reputation system, banking and property, and a main quest with multiple endings. It expanded the ambitions of the RPG genre and laid the groundwork for later Elder Scrolls hits like Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim. For fans of deep, open-ended adventure, it remains a remarkable, one-of-a-kind classic.

How the Game Works / Gameplay Basics

You begin by creating a character — choosing or generating a class, distributing skills, and setting advantages and disadvantages that shape your playstyle. From there, the world is yours to explore in first person. You travel between towns and dungeons (often via a fast-travel map across the huge region), take on quests from guilds, nobles, and townsfolk, and develop your character by using skills, which improve through practice.

Combat is real-time and mouse-driven — the direction you swing affects your attack — and you'll battle through enormous, maze-like dungeons full of monsters, traps, and loot. Beyond fighting, Daggerfall is rich with systems: join the Mages or Fighters Guild, deal with vampires and werewolves, manage a reputation with dozens of factions, buy property, and pursue a branching main quest. The sheer openness means you can play as a warrior, mage, thief, or anything in between, carving your own path through Tamriel.

Beginner Tips

• Learn in the starter dungeon. Practice movement and combat before facing the open world.
• Build your character thoughtfully. Skills and class choices shape how you'll play — pick a focus.
• Use fast travel. The world is vast; the map's travel system saves enormous time.
• Join guilds. Guild quests are a reliable source of gold, gear, and progression.
• Map your dungeons. Use the automap — dungeons are huge and easy to get lost in.
• Save often. Daggerfall is deep and occasionally unforgiving, so keep regular saves.

Why Play Daggerfall Online?

You don't have to find the discs, sit through a long installer, or set aside drive space for it — character creation is waiting as soon as the page finishes loading. Daggerfall rewards long campaigns, but it also rewards curiosity, and a browser tab is a cheap way to answer the question of what an Elder Scrolls game looked like before Morrowind narrowed the scope.

Because it runs in a tab, the Iliac Bay is available from whatever machine you're at, without a single file landing on your disk. That matters more here than usual: this is a game whose install once dominated a mid-90s hard drive.

Troubleshooting

• Game won't start? Daggerfall has more to read in than most DOS games, so reload the page and give it longer than you would a smaller title before deciding something has gone wrong.
• Keyboard or mouse not responding? Click once inside the game frame; until you do, the browser keeps the mouse and your view won't turn with it.
• Combat feels awkward? Remember to hold the mouse and move to swing in a direction.
• Running slowly? Loading a large dungeon and travelling across the map are the heaviest moments in the game, so close other tabs and applications before a long journey.
• No sound? Dungeon audio is a genuine navigation aid here, since you often hear something before the corridor turns far enough to show it, so an unmuted tab is worth the trouble underground.
• Lost in a dungeon? Use the in-game automap to find your way to the exit.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Daggerfall free to play online? Yes. Bethesda itself released Daggerfall as a free download years ago to mark an Elder Scrolls anniversary, and the copy running on this page likewise costs nothing and needs no account.

Do I need the Daggerfall discs or an installer to play here? No. The DOS machine is emulated on the page with the game already installed on it, which skips both the disc swapping and the setup program.

Can I play Daggerfall on mobile? You can, but attacking means dragging the mouse in the direction you want to swing, and quests, spells and inventory each live behind their own dense screen. Both of those want a real pointer and real keys.

Is this the original 1996 Daggerfall? Yes — Bethesda's own DOS release, not the Unity fan project or a remaster.

How big is Daggerfall? Enormous — its procedurally generated world contains thousands of towns and dungeons, making it one of the largest RPGs ever made.

Can I save my progress? Yes. Daggerfall keeps several named save slots of its own. Use more than one: a dungeon that turns out to be beyond your character is much easier to back out of when you still have an older save above ground.

A vast world of intrigue and dungeons awaits in the Iliac Bay. Load it up and begin your adventure.