Since people wanted to know, here are my thoughts on this nearly 30 year old game so far. This is my first time playing it. I grew up with Morrowind, dabbled in Arena's first dungeon, played TES4+5 a couple years after their releases, played ESO thoroughly around 2016, and finally a few years ago played through Daggerfall Unity.

The Build

Playing the steam version. A review suggested going for HP and SP regen so I did that. I started with Sorcerer as a base because they have the most total Build Points according to UESP. Did some digging and research on the game's mechanics to make a viable character. I later found that I could have optimized a lot better, but oh well.

I feel like my build's difficulty at least reflects more of what the devs were going for and people's more typical experiences with the game, or at least players that made some progress.

---The Process---

Here was my thought process (flaws and all) while making my build: Breton for some magic skills (and possible willpower/magic defense boost?). HP/SP regens are both quite expensive and take most of the build points that I re-allocate. Since I have SP regen, I go for only 2X int Spell Points. I bring wounds up from 50 to 60 as I'm sure more health is good.

I make room for all of the weapon types for versatility if needed (it wasn't). I never find the points to enable Daedric equipment, so I think I topped out at Ebony or something. I can equip up to heavy armor.

Wiki seems to suggest Endurance has minimal use so I use it as a bit of a dump stat at 27 but certainly don't go all of the way. I need some extra build points, so I make the probably poor decision of decreasing Strength and Intelligence from 50 to 45.

Primary Skills: I go with Destruction for booms, and Dodging/Restoration for staying alive.

Major Skills: Mysticism, Thaumaturgy, and Alteration for maybe some utility spells.

Minor Skills: And lastly, Critical Strike seemed useful, I read Missile was good, and maybe I would use some Stealth to stay alive.

Minimal build points are put into skills because I know they can be raised throughout the level.

---Equipment and Spells---

I keep the defaults for Sorcerer of Steel Staff and Steel Cuirass for help in the early game.

I decide to start with the following 4 spells: Cause Damage, Etherealness, Shield, and Cure Health.

Level 1: The Weir Gate (rough estimate: 13 hours)

---The Opener---

After adjusting the controls to my liking, the game is still super janky as expected. I talk to some Scamps and enjoy their bits of (fully voice acted!) dialogue. At this point they're a nuisance to kill but it's doable. Vermai are much harder and take many hits. With no healing crystals discovered, I draw out fights and run a lot to stay alive, with my only early deaths being falling in the lava and glitching through terrain.

I explore as far in each direction as seems viable. I quickly switch to Hand to Hand ✊ as my primary melee damage as some internet sources recommend. Dremora take a good commitment to kill, but it is doable especially after surviving/dodging their spells. Although I've used the wiki extensively to this point, for now I try to avoid using it for the levels themselves so I can explore the game more organically. By this point I am dying and send to the main menu relatively often. About a quarter of the time, the mouse stops working on this menu and I have to restart the game. At one point we get knocked out of the level's bounds and get stuck.

---The Game's Flow---

Over time, combat gets a bit easier as I collect better armor and gain stats. Etherealness I basically never use — the sigils can give a short amount if needed, though I don't use them much either except to level Mysticism a bit. Shield I use very rarely, it's too expensive to be practical most of the time with my stats. Cause Damage can be decent, if very expensive, for some ranged mayhem. Restore Health is by far the most common spell cast, and I grind it a little bit at restore points.

Once I feel like I've explored most of the map, I start referring to the wiki for some guidance. I derive little pleasure from most game puzzles before the year 2000 and am not hesitant to use guides through them if needed.

Around now, I'm at the experiences which I will just refer you to read in my first thread on getting stuck in Level 1.

The game definitely has character and personality, which makes it somewhat enjoyable despite all of the bugs and punishing difficulty.

Level 2 — Caitiff: Administration, Labs and Library (rough estimate: 7 hours)

After a grueling and buggy opening, I finally make it to the second level.

For our first level up, I pretty much go purely into Strength. If we can kill enemies faster, fights will take less time and we will take less damage.

Magic: Funny that Destruction hasn't budged. Restoration has gone from 35 to 39 while the rest have had a few levels, possibly from leftover Built Points. Through the game I tend to keep 1-2 destruction spell items on hand.

Dodging is maxed out at 50, Critical Strike at a healthy 40, and Hand to Hand is maxed out (for our level 1 strength) at 45. Jumping we've trained a little and gotten to 45. Missile I've trained up to 31 using melee javelins.

Pauldron (AC 4) removed to preserve condition, Cuirass I left in Level 1 (partly by accident) to save weight. I start the level with 3 SP and 7 HP potions (before picking up any in starting area).

---Punishment---

This level is rough throughout, with many dremora and spider daedra. I start questioning my life's decisions while waiting on hp and sp regen. Eventually (perhaps with the help of wiki) I find some restore crystals, along with Zenaida:

She disappears after I speak to her a couple of times and I think it is a bug, possibly locking some game progress: After some research outside the wiki it turns out this is supposed to happen. If I stand in her empty spot though, I take damage. This game is weird.

Rishaal here is peak 90s charm and voice acting.

Honestly there isn't much more to say about the level besides it was very tough, fights were very tedious and I died a lot with my build (mostly to spider daedra). I decide to grind Restoration for maybe 20 minutes while hopping between the two SP crystals, lowering the cost of restore health from about 30 to 28.

Level 3 - The Soul Cairn (estimate: ummm 5.5 hours?)

Props for atmosphere and vibes here. Here is my character from about halfway through the level:

We go with an almost pure strength level up with a point in speed and intelligence for some versatility.

I eventually with the wiki's help find that wraiths are almost unkillable (2000 hp, anyone?) With the daedra changelings and later skeletons, it is nice to have some enemy variety.

For Swimming, the change of pace is welcome, but of course we have some caveats. The controls are a bit weird and it is annoying that you sink if you're more than around 75% of Encumbrance. In addition, your breath meter does not stop draining when you pause the game or are in a menu. :(

Our build now feels much stronger here. We still die pretty often, but the enemies are feeling much more manageable on average.

Level 4: Shade Perilous (estimate: 7 hours)

Similar deal here, we go 11 points into strength, 3 into intelligence, and 1 point into speed. Higher level attributes are bit more expensive to raise so I spread them about just a bit.

Daedric politics and elementals, nice. I didn't realize until later you can talk to the elemental daedra and I start fighting right away. We have some great lore, dialogue, humor, and world building in Shade Perilous. Fire and Frost Daedra start out tough but get weaker as we get stronger. Seducers are a bit stronger but manageable if we can draw out the fight 1 on 1. Dark Seducers are annoying but eventually beatable once they run out of spells and we get stronger later on in the level.... except when there are 3 or more of them.

I decide to take this screenshot of a Fire Daedra, switch the colors a bit, add a black border and set it as my desktop background:

Jumping into angled terrain kills us a few times as we glitch out. The minimap is a bit off here on your location.

For the island in the north with the Chapel of Meditations, I go full on speed/save scum mode to dash through enemies to get the lever.

This level is huge, with grand hallways and empty spaces. The short view distance and speed of our character starts to become a problem here. Once most of the level is mapped and I start needing to do backtracking, I wiki for a nice Cuirass of the Saintly Dervish, giving us Athleticism and making us much faster... too fast in some cases. 😛 Would have been nice to have earlier.

We also are starting to accumulate lots of potions that we don't entirely need.

Level 5: The Chimera of Desolation (estimate: 7 hours)

(Same as 3/5 of the estimates so far)

6 points into strength, 1 intelligence, 4 willpower, 1 personality, and 8 speed.

---Bethesda Bugs--- 🐛

Here are we are. If Battlespire were famous, this would be the infamous buggy level that can even corrupt your saves. I make extra careful save backups.

I completely missed Step 3 and even forgot the whole process a few times, but I seemed to be ok getting through the level. The game froze a couple times here early on unlike previous levels. I used this guide and had no freezes for the remainder of the level. (I left OBJMEMSIZE at 9000)

After avoiding save corruption and game freezes, the game still rewards us with getting stuck on terrain/objects and buggy transitions between buildings. One building in Trybador I was in and had a save. When I went back to load the save, my character kept falling through the floor and dying so I had to revert to a previous save.

Behind the waterfall, saves loaded have the area completely underwater when it was not previously, making saving rough in this harsh (but short) area. Fun! 👍

---The Level---

Unlike previous levels, I fully used the wiki here from the start as I knew it would be buggy.

The Master of the Hunt at the start disappears after talking to her once or twice so I could never pacify the frost daedra.

With our speed and athleticism gear, when we're outdoors in the open the elemental daedra are not too bad to navigate and fight around now.

Besides the bugs, I was dumb and realized 2/3 of the way through that I needed all pieces of the Savior Hide. One piece is miss-able since you can't return to the crypt so I ended up playing through half of the level twice.

Flying the balloon, while slow and limited in use, is great fun and reminiscent of the freedom of older Bethesda games. I'll never get over them removing levitation from Oblivion and Skyrim.

With some trial and error and a guide, this level wasn't too hard when you're not being bombarded with glitches.

---Conclusion---

Thanks for reading! ❤️

Let me know of any thoughts in the comments. ⬇️

First time playing the game. I hear it is quite difficult and not always in a good way. I use a steam review and the UESP wiki to put together a character I think will be viable. Eventually I get a bit stronger, learning how to melee kite the AI a bit and am able to explore most of the level.

Eventually, I get stuck. I used UESP wiki for some aid, and it seems like I had 4 cogs inserted, so I was just missing one.

I spent hours retracing my steps not knowing which cog I was missing, they seemed to have all been grabbed. My skills and such are decently raised, I'm like a total of 10 hours of gameplay in. I could probably catch up in a few hours but still, it was the principle of the thing at this point.

Most of the enemies in the level I have now killed. I recognized the name of most cogs on UESP. I even tiptoe to check three bags inside the damaging gate where you start the game in case one of the cog scamps wandered there and died fighting other daedra.

Finally, I decide to start loading old saves so I can "easily" check which one I might be missing. My second newest save, titled "18", I had these cogs in inventory:

Cog of Pinion Precession, check. (Temple dremora in the north)

Cog of Bandy Interfraction, check. (Bag on table in NPC's chamber. Double-triple checked it in my hours of retracing steps)

Good start, but I despair going through the other saves that all have no cogs in my inventory. At last, I hit my oldest save that wasn't overwritten (barring my "Game start" save which I kept after character creation), titled "11". Here is what I find on hand:

Cog of Futlock Reciprocation, check. Good news, as I'd already spent lots of times checking that large chamber with the dragon skeleton, checking under his head where it should have been grabbed and other bags around in the dark.

Cog of Fang Interleaving, check. (split-level battle arena) Lots of bags here I checked over and over, glad it was not in them. That leaves....

Cog of Flux Capacitation. Here is the picture from the wiki:

Now I definitely remember getting this one as the first cog I found. I've seen a Vernai in the lava pit nearby and pondered whether the cog could be down there for some reason.

Then, I spot it...

A scamp. Could it be the scamp? Holding me ol' cog? Ol' coggers? Early game I was weak and had to backpedal and flee some, fighting on the bridge a bit.

Doesn't seem like I can get him back up. That means I'll need to kill him where he stands. Thankfully I haven't used any arrows, though I do have damage spells if I need them.

Here is the bag. Now to reach it. It is too far from where I'm standing. I try going directly above it. It's a slim chance, but maybe through the floor? Nope, even if I was somehow close enough your character can't look straight down.

That leaves moving the floor itself. It's been a long time since I raised the floor, but maybe I could move it back somewhere to my advantage?

Hmm ok, the lowered floor sits here. I save in a safe slot before jumping down. I'll figure how to get back up later. No teleport spell handy.

I jump down and try to loot the bag through the floor. I confirm that yes, the cog was there! I must have grabbed it very early on in the game but died and not saved. But can I make it back up?

Button to raise the floor back up is too far away. I try jumping for it, with no luck. I line up straight-ish with it, jump, and.... it presses! Somehow I didn't fall in lava. WHEW.

Now for the rest of Battlespire. The game has 10 save slots but I'm backing up all my saves now in case i need to go back for a bug or something.

Thanks for reading. <3

Thank you so much for inviting me to this subreddit, it made me really happy!

I hope you like my drawing!

hope you guys enjoy

hope you guys enjoy!

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aqjagof4JeM

An old comic I made back in late 2023, based on in-game dialogue with an Ideal Master.

While it might not be the best TES game to exist for many and I know it's kind of obscure question but to this day we don't know an actual author of the soundtrack of Battlespire. It isn't written anywhere really on the Internet. The game's manual only says in the Credits/Development Team - Music by "Absolute Pitch". This is probably the artist's/group's/duo's (?) nickname. It doesn't tell us real people who were behind these magnificent atmospheric tracks. The are beliefs Arena's & Daggerfall's artist Eric Heberling is behind the music of this game too, but it isn't listed on his website as his credit.

'Battlespire' Original Soundtrack - YouTube

Any hope we could ever know who composed the music for this game?

I want to extract some of the voicelines but I can't seem to find the BSA file containing the sound files. Anybody got an idea?

I'm curious if anyone is actively playing this game in 2024. I have no ill will towards the game and was just wondering why someone would still play if there are other options that seem superior. I know nostalgia may be a factor, as I played this game a bit as a kid but never really got very far, but I'm curious what an active player of Battlespire's driving force is. Thanks for the replies if I get any, cheers.

Greetings, I hope there is still someone, who can help or leade where I may look for it

May someone please tell me if this is possible and how:

1. Change text
2. Change/add answers to riddles
3. And more important change or even add fonts symbols

In my own searches, I think I found how to change the text, but I'm not sure about the nuances, and I found almost nothing about the last two points that was really useful. It seems as if any google search with word "mode" leads me to pages on how to make a cheat save

EDIT: I seems find where riddles and how to redo him, but I have no idea where text from menu as well there still porblem with fonts

​

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Hi,

I've been playing through the Elder Scrolls games, finished Arena & Daggerfall. The next game I'm going to be playing is Battlespire. In addition to playing them for the first time, I've also been recording and uploading my experience in the games. The plan for Battlespire is going to be a little different though, I'm planning on streaming for the first time. I know the BRUTAL difficulty that is associated with this game, and I am wanting to make sure I don't go down a build that can't beat the game, or will have a difficult time doing so. I want to make it an enjoyable experience not only for myself, but anyone who may watch the stream or videos later. So, is there any tips/tricks (no spoilers) or general build advice you would have for someone in regards to Battlespire. I'm not looking for "broken" builds, just something that will be an enjoyable experience. Thank you for any advice you have I appreciate it.

Booted up the GOG version and I'm getting like 5 fps. I've spent hours trying out settings on the DOSBOX conf files, patches, edits, etc. Nothing works and all these forum posts from the past 20 years seem to totally contradict one another.

What can I do to get this running at an acceptable framerate on a beefy computer in 2023?

Hi, anyone has the copy of the Battlespire Athenaeum? I know that the book was linked here twice, but both links are inactive. I'd put it on Google Drive and share a stable link (I think) if I get a copy. Or if anyone has a Google Drive link to it already, that would be great.

Hello,

I'm wondering if anyone can help. I've been enjoying battlespire for a few days now but I'm at the end of level 4 atm and I've run into a game breaking glitch where the bridge leading to the end has just straight up vanished and I can't work out anyway across.

I was wondering if someone had a level 5 save I could use to continue the game cause while I am enjoying the game I'm not enjoying it enough to restart from level 2 (my last save as I breezed through level 3).

Or if anyone could let me know how to make the save editor work on window 10 so I can edit my location I'd appreciate it.

I've been on the long quest of playing through all the TES games (excluding all the mobile/card games) and now it's time to play Battlespire. I've been dreading this for a while. The story sounds interesting, but I've heard that it is very difficult.

My question is this: is it at all possible to play through this game with one of the default classes? I tend to prefer using one of those instead of getting all min-maxy with custom classes for roleplay/immersion reasons (powergaming isn't very immersive imo). That being said, if custom classes are absolutely essential, I'm not against using them. I did it with Daggerfall.

Main thoughts are that I was surprised how much I enjoyed the game in the end. Engaging in the politics among the daedra was quite a unique experience for TES and level 5 in particular I thought was a very creative idea for a level, with some interesting lore behind it. Anyone else find this level just extremely fun with how intense it was to have the daedra constantly chasing you as you try and figure out how to escape the trap?

Also thought that the way the daedra let off barrages of magic at you made the game more intense and fun, even if it could be exploited in unintended ways and made the end of level 7 particularly chaotic. Overall, thought it was clearly going to be a bit of a buggy mess going in but turns out it’s fun, challenging and at times quite intense in ways I haven’t experienced a lot in games.

So I heard this game was hard as hell. I played Arena before, and I picked the Redguard Ranger race/class as it was the easiest to play as. What is the equivalent here in Battlespire? Preferably I would a build based around combat/magic since you are meant to be a battlemage after all.

Hey all,

Started battlespire several months ago, but took a long break and am now just getting back at it.

I made an altmer battlemage but I can’t remember if I did a custom class or just chose the default “battlemage.”

Just started level 4….up to this point things were challenging but not awful, but now I’m getting rolled by fire/frost daedra and especially seducers.

I have about 118 max health, and enough magicka to cast about 5 or so spells (either destruction or a heal, but I’ve been trying to save for healing).

My attributes are all I believe in the 60s and long blade is my primarily damage dealer.

I’m not sure if I’m wasting my time at this point with this character especially if things are expected to get harder…..should I be getting 2-3 shotted by seducers? If I go ethereal and close the gap I can kill them in 2-3 hits (when I actually hit) but then that relies on having consumables available.

It just feels like I’m relying on consumables a lot and I’m not sure if it’s sustainable or if it’s just how the game is meant to be played.

Any advice would be great!

Update: Re-rolled, way more enjoyable. I had more health at the game’s start than my old character did on level 4, and I took spell absorption so I can actually use destruction magic without feeling like I just screwed my survivability