Beat unity remake on my crappy pc. I made a female Breton spellsword as a test to see how well the game ran on that pc, and ended up deciding to go all the way with this character as a challenge run. Highest reflexes. Custom class is the way to go but this was an interesting change of pace. Random background. Spellsword is a good class. Having 3 weapon skills as primary was not optimal but made sense for any kind of warrior. Other than lacking dodge and critical strike the class was not too different from what I would make as custom. I downloaded a bunch of mods but decided this would be a vanilla experience to learn how this remake differs from the original. I made exception for convenient quest log because of the tedium that saved, and the roleplay realism armor mod to add special material versions of leather and chain. Might as well since spellsword can't use plate. Options included: smaller dungeons, infighting, alternate music, click to attack, everything else default.

I began by getting killed by the imp in 1 hit. Being able to kill that imp was always the test for whether a character was good or not. I got it after with shock. Destruction was her highest magic skill. I was impressed at how smoothly the game ran, though the combat was far more difficult than I remember. The enemies seemed more aggressive and much more difficult to fight in melee. I had to hold down shift to run and duck in quickly to bait an attack then duck back and strike after their attack animation. It was very nuanced as different enemies had different attack speeds and combos. Werewolves and short blade users in particular were difficult to dodge with their fast attacks while skeletons and big axe users were easier. Even more challenging was the sheer amount of damage the enemies did per hit. My character died frequently though this lessened significantly with levels. It did seem like there was some kind of extra damage mitigation from being higher level beyond what more hp and better armor would give. On top of this the enemies moved around more and I got into battles vs 2 or more foes far more often than on dos. Infighting was fun to see and occasionally helped me out. I did not fully clear the starting dungeon due to the difficulty. I then went to the nearest town to sell the loot and buy a wagon. Steel mace was my weapon for a long time, with shield to help with survival. I then went to a nearby good sized city Whitewood Borough, where I joined the 3 guilds there; fighters, mages, and knights. I got some basic spells; recall, levitate, slow fall, buoyancy, water breathing, free action, invis, cure disease, cure poison, basic heal and 2 training spells containing the cheapest effects for 3 schools. Spells in this game rely on the X per level stats to make effective low mp cost, so making useful spells for a low level character with only 1.5X mp was challenging. The heal I made did a fixed 10hp and could only be cast twice. Being able to choose quests from a list was new for me, but you could technically do that in the original by repeatedly declining quests. I used to just do whatever was offered but I will take advantage of this. Fighters guild in town animal killing was a fast easy way to get gold, until it was a harpy and I had no way to kill it. Then I did rodent killing over and over. It got crazy in the attic of 1 house where bats spawned in faster than I could kill them and I was swarmed by 5. It was more manageable in smaller rooms. But the cost was disease as I caught 2. My basic cure spell was so useless that I ended up deleting it and making a different one that cost my full mp. Trying to cure myself with the crappy one eventually led to death so I had to pay almost all the money I made to the temple. The quest mod helped a lot with my style of picking up as many quests as possible and working out the logistics to get them done the most efficiently. I joined the temple of Stendarr in a nearby village of Aldingwood gardens. At 1 point I went to daggerfall to start the main quest and ended up with 2 main quests, 3 guild quests from the other town, a temple quest, another set of guild quests from Daggerfall (which had 2 knight guilds), and 2 random quests from nobles at the castle. That was intense. A couple quests throughout game were failed due to not having enough time. After this lot I moved to Daggerfall for the story and its shops despite the less convenient layout. Of note I had to use console god mode to save myself from poison because I quick saved after getting it and did not have enough mp to cure. I did a necromancer quest which I do not recall ever doing in dos. It was way too hard because it kept spawning skeletons and zombies when 1 lone skeleton was a challenge. I had like 7+ of each, at least the hedge walls helped separate them. I did levitate on top of the mausoleum but archery was not good enough to even kill 1. Made sure to train it up each time I visited the fighter guild, put my anchor there for free resting and regularly purchase arrows. I did manage to kill enough skeletons to spawn the necro and complete the quest, then flee like mad into the wilds spamming fast travel as the horde chased me. I bought armor upgrades giving me a mix of elven and dwarven brigantine and mail, and a dwarven dai katana that I never used. Blunt was my highest weapon skill using elven mace. As skeletons turned into fodder I began using axe and long blade against easier enemies. I eventually had dwarven and then mithril versions for each 1 handed weapon and bow. In between I used up a steel sword of str and elven flail of luck. Later used up a couple weapons of oblivion.

I had plenty of magic items, including nukes, cure poison, healing and a shield of shield. I fell back on those when I was at risk of dying, either healing and shielding myself or nuke kiting. Nukes worked especially well against mages who nuked hard in melee and even fired long range spells. Huge improvement over the originals that just spammed shock, these even spread out their casts. I got a lot of magic saves so Breton was coming in handy there. I was getting magic skill gains from using those items which did not happen in the original. I really liked this change because it improved the value of magic items and lessened tedious spell grinding. These items especially helped with the slay X giants or harpies quests because they spawned so fast that there was no chance to rest. 2 dungeons had trouble, both of the pyramid pit with 4 magical locked doors at the bottom type. 1 I could find no way to open the doors and the quest target was inside, and I had no usable open spell. I used console no clipping to get in, and sometimes I used it to get around in other dungeons to drop off loot at the entrance or save time and brain fatigue scouring the place for a missed path or door. The other dungeon spawned the rescue npc inside a pillar and I had to use no clipping to even see her. By the point I left for the island of Betony to kill the girl's werewolf brother for the main quest (never been sent there before), I was level 8 with my highest skill blunt in the 70s. Axe and long blade were not too far behind in 50 to 60 range. Highest magic was destruction in 40s, and highest minor was a rivalry between restoration and archery in 30s. In misc my stealth was 60s and somehow higher than running, with crit and dodge doing well in 30s. Lockpicking getting half decent too because I try to pick every locked door. This werewolf dungeon was not small and thus took a very long time to complete, though at least he was in a big central room. Upon returning I got the courier quest which gave me 40 days to kill. This was when I always spent time training magic, but before that I took up another slew of quests from Daggerfall. Unfortunately 1 random quest from a noble was probably the most difficult quest in the game. I had to deliver a relic with vampires trying to stop me. Resting in town to set up recall did not work as both a vamp and ancient vamp spawned on me. Looks like no recall for me, and no rest either since stamina was very low. I should have bee lined to complete this quest but I instead went for the nearest. I was running on fumes the entire time, barely able to get 1hr of rest here and there between the near constant vampires. And they had a ranged spell that damaged fatigue over time which was guaranteed death unless I could get some sleep. So I either stayed in melee or killed with nuke items. I did nuke the ancient down no problem and thankfully no other ancients spawned. After this I traveled cautiously to get the free full rest without interruption so the remaining quests were not as difficult.

I went to see Nulfaga, then to Sentinel for the missing prince quest. I did a big loop between there, the necromancers and Wayrest doing all of the story quests and the occasional random side job from the nobles. It was interesting that I took the quests from the prince and princess of Wayrest at the same time to deliver to the same guy. Even though it sent me to 2 different locations it seemed like either the 1st guy completed both quests or he died which triggered failure of the prince quest. So I will not be getting Barenziah's quest. With nothing left to do I went to Medora and began completing her quest line. I put a recall in her chamber but there was no way out without cheating because of the lever puzzle to open the barricades. Noted, I should put recall at the levers. The month long wait between her quests was annoying so I went to Wayrest to grind magic and do a few guild quests. Got destruction into 60s which allowed me to enchant stuff. Blunt in 80s, archery highest minor at 51, and 100 stealth. I always had high stealth on dos but never before had it that high, and it somehow beat out running. I on dos I always got 100 running. I don't use the repair magic items option because enchanted stuff is so overpowered that it should be temporary. I made daedric war hammer with hurt self on use to get a bunch of bonus points, then a bunch of passive effects that would not degrade the weapon, since any cast while held or cast on strike would quickly degrade the weapon. I put potent vs undead, daedra and humanoid, + blunt, crit and dodge, and feather weight, which was just enough to use up the points. It was already an over powered weapon without enchants, and now I was killing even faster. I was still regularly using nuke and paralysis items, and I bought a ring of spell absorption which helped a lot vs ancient vamps, liches, and mages. They were not as insanely deadly in this version due to no longer blowing their entire mp on shocks in 1 second. I spent most of my mp on regen but I found I needed more ways to spend mp to make sure that spell absorb kept working. I made a bunch of single target ranged nukes and shield, and enchanted my bow and some of my armor. The timing for all the waiting for 1 month between quests set me up perfectly to get the oghmun infinitum book from daedra summoning, something I never bothered with on dos. My int was already 100 so I put the free 30 points to max out speed, which gave the character permanent crazy haste. I could easily kill the strongest enemies in the game from stealth before they could even turn around, but still had to be careful fighting aware enemies because it was very tempting to just stand there and spam crazy fast attacks. This was how I noticed the hp damage on my war hammer hurt me for every swing, so it was very possible to die when combined with enemy damage. I used archery a lot for the end game, making it play more like a shooter. It was fun with my 1k+ arrows, max speed and enchanted daedric long bow. I hated the delay in waiting for letters to progress the main quest as training magic to pass time was boring and I did not want to do any more quests. I did get the lord's mail from a knight quest but did not need it. Finally at the very end I got sick of waiting for letters asking for the totem. I tried going to Brisienna but she was not at the previous location, so I just gave it to Sentinel to get the game done. None of the rewards were worthwhile as I was already filthy rich and could enchant whatever I wished. My bow broke during the final dungeon. I did use a create spell to summon a bow to kill a few enemies but the material was not enough for daedra so I finished it with hammer and nukes. The puzzles in the final dungeon were a little annoying and it was a shame there was no boss fight. It was mostly about levitating around picking at stuff until progress happened.

This Unity remake was excellent, capturing the feel and mechanics of the original while also enhancing many aspects and fixing bugs. It definitely ran smoother than the original in terms of framerate, crashes and glitches. The best feature was small dungeons because the labyrinthine dungeons and difficult to use 3D map were the worst part of the game. Monster infighting was cool and I liked how enemies beat open locked doors. This meant using archery to easily kill enemies behind locked doors did not work in this version, plus I think they made doors block arrows. Definitely a better experience than the original.

End stats:

Lvl 21, 296 hp, 300 mana, 70 str, 100 int, 69 will, 70 agl, 90 end (pumped early for hp per lvl up), 50 per, 100 speed, 60 luck, master of fighters guild, archmage of mage guild, marshall of knights of dragon, diviner of Stendarr.

Primary: 98 blunt, 72 long blade. 62 axe Second: 88 destruction, 73 alteration, 67 illusion Minor: 75 mysticism, 67 restoration, 55 archery, 51 thaumatergy, 16 hand to hand, 15 short blade Misc: 100 stealth, 93 running, 73 crit, 60 dodge, 41 climbing, 38 backstabbing, 31 medical and mercantile, 23 lockpicking and streetwise, 20 jumping, 18 swimming, 10 etiquette

Gear:

Almost 1.4 million gold

That enchanted Daedric warhammer at used condition

Lost daedric longbow had potent vs daedra, undead, humanoid, improve archery and crit, featherweight, and bad reputation with underworld and commoners. Had 2 spare daedric bows to make more

Orc claymore with potent vs the 3, improves long blade, crit, dodge, restoration, feather weight and bad rep with all

Ebony mail hauberk with bonus armor, feather weight, regen hp in dark, athleticism, improved dodge, hp leech on use, damage in holy places.

Daedric mail left spaulder with bonus armor (this did not seem to stack), extra mana in every season, improve dodge, vampiric on strike, feather, hp leech on use, damage in holy places.

Ebony mail right spaulder with bonus armor, improve dodge and restoration, vampiric at range, feather, hp leech on use, damage in holy places.

Daedric mail chausses with extra mp in every season, improve mysticism, destruction and alteration, feather, hp leech on use, damage in holy places.

Ebony mail boots, never bothered to enchant

Dwarven brigandine gloves

Mithril brigandine helm

Torc of 50% extra weight capacity

There was a limit on how many effects could be enchanted on items and only so many useful options. Boosting magic skills was awesome because it significantly reduced mp costs. I could also make any consumable spell cast on use or while held, which technically made stock magic items obsolete. I never bothered with that as I had a big supply of magic items.

Many extra stock magic items with spell absorb, stat boosts, nukes, shield, heal, open, cure poison and many extra daedric, orc, ebony and adamantium weapons. Potions too, and almost 900 arrows. Potions were almost never needed but could be good while silenced since that prevented magic item casts too. I did routinely check the magic item and potion vendors but never used potion making.

Spells: I only used a few stock spells because I prefer very simple names and custom effects. I also wanted to get by with as few spells as possible. Stock spells were stamina (used a lot later on), free action, buoyancy, water breathing (never used), recall, shock. For custom spells the base numbers were only important for use at low level, while the X per level numbers made powerful cheap spells for high level characters.

Regen: too much mp cost for front loaded numbers so this effect was only good for mid to high level. My most often cast spell and main source of healing. I did mess up the names a bit as I experimented.

Regen 0: all 1s

Regen slow: 2 duration per lvl, most used spell for only slightly higher mp

Regen 1: 5 hp per lvl, which at lvl 20 was 100 hp healed per round for a long time, which cost same mp as a heal doing only 1 round worth. This was too powerful but a good way to emergency heal

Regen 2: 10 hp per lvl. Too powerful, probably not worth creating

Heal 1: 10 + 1 every 2 lvl. Cheap front loaded heal for low level. I used this for the early game and it was extremely inefficient

Heal 2: 5 per lvl. Kinda pointless compared to regen, especially when I had items with heal

Heal 3: 10 per lvl

Slowfall: all 1s but at high level it lasted too long and prevented jumping. It only needed to last a few seconds so I should have made like 3 + 1 per 20 lvls

Levitate: all 1s. Same deal as slowfall since it prevented running. I used climbing instead as much as I could. The long duration was good during the final dungeon but most times it lasted too long. Should have made one with less duration.

Open 15%: 15 + 1 per lvl. I made this early but almost never used it because of magic items. 5 per lvl would give 100% at lvl 20

Invisible, true invisible and chameleon: never used even though they seem like a good idea. 2 or 3 starting duration + 1 per lvl

Resist fire, shock, magic and spells. Simple 1s, but 2 per lvl for spells. Too mp costly to use, especially when compared to absorb spell item or lord's mail or other artifacts with spell protection. These basic versions only give 20% or 40% at lvl 20 so I would need 3 to 5 per lvl to be maybe worth using. Probably better to just heal or kill faster.

Cure poison and disease: 40 + 1 per lvl. I made these early on to get the best chance of success for near total mp cost. Higher starting mp would allow better chance. 5 per lvl would max out at lvl 20, but I never bothered because disease was extremely rare late game and I had plenty of cure poison items.

Identify: 4 per lvl. Made around mid game for decent odds for near my total mp at the time. Should replace with 5 per lvl but it worked well enough

Fire, ice, bolt, poison and nuke. My late game single target at range nukes for each element. 3 tiers. 1 = throw before closing into melee, 5 per lvl. 2 = likely insta kill, 15 per lvl. 3 = definite insta kill, 30 per lvl.

Disintegrate 1: 5 per lvl. Never used

Shield 1: all 1s. Shield 2: 5 per lvl. Decent way to blow some mp before a fight. Redundant with my several shield items though.

Paralyze 1: all 1s. High mp cost compared to nukes. Rarely used though I often used paralyze items. Version with 5 chance per lvl would be 100%.

Create: all 1s. Could create temporary arrows and steel equipment.

The 2 training spells: damage fatigue, heal fatigue, open, light, water walking, water breathing. The last 3 combined was almost as cheap as buoyancy but less duration per lvl. I never bothered to make a dedicated light spell, along with several other effects like drain, transfer, damage mp, soul trap, language, jumping etc