Daggerfall: Now available for free!

DAGGERFALL Box-cover (2).jpg

Five years ago, to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of The Elder Scrolls, we released The Elder Scrolls: Arena as a free download. If you do the math, that means the series is now celebrating its 15th Anniversary. So despite saying we’d never do it, we’ve decided to release The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall as a FREE download too!

One thing to keep in mind — the game is over 10-years-old and we’re releasing it “as is.” In other words, we’re not providing customer support or technical support on the game at this point. That being said, I successfully started up the game running DOSBox and following QA superstar Mike Mazzuca’s detailed walkthrough for installing the game. Follow the directions and you should be in good shape.

Having heard many stories of how you guys wanted to get your hands on the game, we’re excited that many of you will get to experience Daggerfall for the first time. Head here to download the game. Enjoy!


Reader Comments

  3. Although I’m quite happy for the countless people who wanted to play this game, it kinda kills the brag rights of having played it. Still, I own a copy (of both ARENA and Daggerfall).

    In spite of this, alot of people will probably quit on it due to the sheer amount of bugs and whatnot.

    Or just ’cause they can’t actually role-play in it. It’s really a Dungeon Crawler. Live with it :D

    -Ognob

  14. Wow. Just wow. it’ll be a right pain to install DOSbox and this, but once it’s done with I’ll probably never leave my computer again. Really, the only thing that could possibly be better than this are:

    A: A TESV announcement
    B: Releasing Daggerfall on XBLA

    But those are what-ifs, and for the moment I can sure make do with this.

  17. I’m trying to download this but I’m getting 12 kb/s download speed and it’s cutting off abruptly without finishing. Any chance you can release a torrent file alternative?

  18. +1 for releasing old games for free…..

    If only developers did this instead of repackaging other people’s work and trying to make a quick buck.

  23. Oh and I only get to download it with 10,1-14,1 KB/sek, hmm i got a lot of that lately with The Elder Scrolls website. Could you boost the speed or release it to someone who can provide at better DLspeed?

    3-4 hours is a bit long waiting for 148 mb.

  25. Yeah, it just up and quit on me at around 38 megabytes… hopefully that is just because of lots of traffic or some such…

  27. For the last part of the instructions “Each time you want to run daggerfall”

    You know you can run all the commands in a batch file from dosbox, right?

  28. THAT is how you run a company! Develop your fan base while rewarding long time fans? Brilliant. You guys are the friggin best.

  29. Thank you so much, Bethesda! I always wanted to play this game but alas it was before my time and I wasn’t about to pay $40+ for a used copy of such an old game.

  32. Great news Bethesda!

    I still have my hologram box of Daggerfall with the disc. I tried DOSBox on my old rig and it failed miserably. Let’s hope it works better this time around.

  33. Holy smacks! This is dreamlike! I wonder will i ever wake up or am i comatose for life? Forever? And whats that strange voice that says..Stay awhile! Stay FOREVER!!!

    Thanks Bethesda this is truly amazing generousity :D At last i can keep my near mint condition DAGGERFALL cd i’ve had since getting it the first day it came out in New York City in a safe viewable storage spot with my other Bethesda games without ever worrying about scratching it.

  34. I’m getting only a 6 kb/s (and is telling me a total of 7-8 hours), could Bethesda make an official hosting of Daggerfall as a torrent?

  35. Thanks Bethesda, you’re GODS! This remembers me of the old days (Arena + Daggerfall) and it’s really fantastic that I’ve got the chance to play Daggerfall again.

  36. Thank you, Bethesda! I’ve been trying to find Daggerfall for ages without having to pay obscene amounts in postage fees… now my search is over! :D

  37. this is so nice….
    but could you pleaseplease do something to speed up the download? as mentioned before, i too encounter severe problems: sloooow speed like 1 – 8 kb/sec and it stops after a few kbs (around 500 – 800 kb)

    anyway – thank you for being that generous.

    der moebi aus Germany

  38. Nostalgie…
    I have this game on CD, but I’ll download it anyways. Just for sure. :)
    I’m still playing with DosBox from time to time.

  39. Uhh, yeah, well… nice, but little too old, isn’t it. Why not Morrowind or Oblivion? THAT would be generous!

  40. Grandstaff will you please pester Todd some more (he writes you are good at it :-) ) and ask him to pull some strings, so that we can get a stable download. That does not crash, and that might keep a downloadspeed a bit over the 14 KB/sek I run at now (35th try i think).

    I want to play this game again, but if I can’t download it I can’t play it.

    PLEASE!

  42. It’s really awesome to finaly play Daggerfall! I allways wanted to!
    A release on XBLA would be pretty cool indeed!
    Too bad this version has not been patched to be playable on Vista T_T

  44. I, too, want to thank Bethesda for this :) Really great :)
    (And I thought Todd H. once said, they lost the source code – ? Obviously, you’ve found it! :) )

    Thanks again :)

    As for bandwidth, this was to be expected. A lot of cars on a highway will also make the line move very slowly…

  45. For some reason the downloaded file came out as a .zip, but was unopenable. That’s probably because it’s actually a .exe. Could you fix that?

    Or, actually, can it be a Zip file? DOSBox doesn’t just run on Windows, after all.

  47. Yes but normally on the net you just get more! and no it’s not really expensive, and definitely not in the US. Highways on the other hand takes time,effort and cost a lot of money to expand.

  48. Thank you Beth :)

    It will be good to finally see your early work and look at how far you have come. Perhaps get a feel for how the games lore developed over time too.

    I remember with foundness RPGs of the late 80s, always loved them. Then the 3rd person view games destroyed the immersion and I stopped playing them after that. Oblivion was the first RPG I liked since those days, made me buy morrowind too in fact. Now I get to see the early games as well.

    Very nice.
    I wonder if it will be better than “Eye of the Beholder” or “Black Crypt”.

    It will be fun finding out :)

    Thank you very much :)

  50. SWEET! I was not expecting this, but thank you guys very much! I still haven’t had a chance to even pick up Oblivion, but I love Morrowind. Having a chance to play the first two games is fantastic!!