A 1:1 port of The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall

Daggerfall, in your browser.

The 1996 game with its rules intact, on a renderer built from scratch. Desktop or phone. Nothing to install.

Before the door opens

Bring your own ARENA2 folder.

This site carries no game data. Daggerfall is free, but its files aren't ours to hand out, so the first thing the game asks for is the folder. Pick it once; it stays in your browser and never leaves your device.

Don't have it yet? Getting it takes a minute.

Play

What it is

Ported 1:1

The rules are Daggerfall's: the file formats, the world assembly, the combat and skill math, quests, items, magic, guilds, the calendar and the courts, translated line by line from Daggerfall Unity's C# with the constants kept byte-exact, quirks and all.

Rebuilt

The presentation is new: a hand-rolled WebGL2 renderer with no engine underneath it, a touch layer for phones, and two interfaces. The classic screens, laid out from the original art to the pixel, or an enhanced one built as type and layout instead of painted bitmaps. Same game, one toggle.

In progress

Daggerfall Unity is a decade of work and this is a port of it, arc by arc. What has landed and what hasn't is written down. Read the ledger before you expect a finished game.

What it looks like

The enhanced screens with no game files loaded: the only pictures this site can show, because the classic screens are the original art, which you bring.

The enhanced menu on a desktop: a rail of six destinations on the left, the Settings pane open on the Game category, a column of settings with their values. — **Settings.** Daggerfall Unity's 171 keys, every one a real setting, with what each one does beside it.

The enhanced menu on a phone: the New Game pane, with the rail of destinations along the bottom of the screen. — **On a phone.** The rail moves to the bottom, into the thumb's arc.

The enhanced pack: a worn list of twenty-seven named slots, the weapons tab, the ground beside it, and a Longsword's detail panel with Take off and Use. — **The pack,** with a sample character. No game files means no doll and no item pictures; everything else is the real screen.

What's in it

As of 26 August 2026. Every line here is something you can walk up to and use; the ledger keeps the finer print.

The world

The whole Iliac Bay, streamed as you walk it: its towns, its wilderness, the weather and the seasons, day and night on the game's own calendar with its holidays. The travel map for the long way round.

Towns and people

Streets with people in them who answer questions, give directions, trade rumours and take offence. Shops, taverns, banks with letters of credit, temples, guild halls with their services, and a city watch that arrests you and a court that tries you.

Dungeons

The classic dungeons with their doors, locks, teleporters and traps, an automap that fills in as you go, and every monster from the rat to the ancient lich on the same combat rules as the classes that hunt you.

Combat

The classic first-person weapons with Daggerfall's own hit and damage formulas: bows both ways, knockback, armour that wears, poisons and diseases that take days, and enemies that shoot, cast, open doors and give up.

Magic

The spellbook and click-to-cast, the spell maker, the potion maker and the item maker, magic items, and the spell effects themselves: ninety of the game's ninety-one, priced and saved the way the original does it.

Your character

Character creation with the class questions, the custom class builder and the biography, then levelling, skills, reputation with every faction, and an inventory with a wagon behind it.

Quests

Quests run on the game's own scripts, 265 of them, offered by questgivers, argued about in the talk window, tracked in the logbook and kept across saves.

The screens

Every classic window laid out from the original art: character sheet, inventory, spellbook, travel map, both automaps, talk, trade, rest, the book reader, the pause menu with 171 settings and every key rebindable. Plus the enhanced menu, wizard, sheet and pack.

Sound and music

The game's sounds and ambience, footsteps that know what floor you are on, and the music: Daggerfall's own MIDI, played by a synth written for this port, or your own tracks in its place if you have them.

Not yet: riding a horse or cart, importing save games from classic Daggerfall or Daggerfall Unity, and mods. Saves made here are the port's own.

How to play

Four steps, and the first three only happen once.

Get Daggerfall.

It has been free since 2009. Any of these gives you the files; the zip is the same patched set Daggerfall Unity uses.
Find the ARENA2 folder.

It's inside the game folder. From Steam, look under DF/DAGGER/ARENA2. In DaggerfallGameFiles.zip it's arena2/, and on a phone you can hand the game the whole zip instead.
Press Play and pick it.

On a desktop, choose the folder or drop it on the page. On a phone, choose the zip. That is the last time you are asked.
Then play.

You wake in Privateer's Hold, as everyone does. The keys are below; on a phone a stick, a look pad, an attack button and a row of buttons appear on their own.

Controls

Daggerfall Unity's defaults, and every one of them can be changed in Settings.

Moving

Move	`WASD`
Look	Mouse
Run	`Shift`
Sneak	`Alt`
Jump	`Space`
Crouch	`C`
Rest	`R`
Travel map	`V`

Fighting

Draw weapon	`Z`
Swing	Right mouse, drag
Switch hand	`H`
Cast a spell	`Backspace`
Recast	`Q`
Use magic item	`U`
Spellbook	Character sheet, or cast

Around you

Use what you're looking at	Left mouse
Steal · Grab · Info · Talk	`F1F2F3F4`
Character sheet	`F5`
Inventory	`F6`
Logbook · Notebook	`LN`
Map	`M`
Quick save · load	`F9F11`
Pause	`Esc`

Good to know

Which browsers?: Any current one with WebGL2: Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari. On a phone, Safari on iOS or Chrome on Android; the touch controls appear on their own.
Where do my files and saves go?: Into your browser's storage for this site, on your device; there is no account and no server. Clearing the site's data removes the game files and your saves together, so you would pick the folder again.
Classic or enhanced?: Enhanced by default: the same game with its menus, wizard, character sheet and inventory rebuilt as type and layout. The classic screens are all there too. Switch in either menu, or add ?skin=classic to the address.
Is this Daggerfall Unity?: No, a port of it. Daggerfall Unity is the reference, and it has years more polish, a mod scene and a community. This is the same rules in a browser tab, on a phone if you like.
Does it work offline?: The page has to load from the network. After that the game reads everything from your device.
Something's wrong.: Reload first: the site is rebuilt several times a day and a page held open across a rebuild can lose its footing. If it is a real bug, the issue tracker wants it, with what you did and what happened.

Credits

Daggerfall Unity: Interkarma and contributors, MIT licence. The C# this port was translated from, and the quest scripts are its own; without it there would be nothing to port.
The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall: Bethesda Softworks, 1996. Daggerfall JavaScript is a fan project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Bethesda or ZeniMax.
Daggerfall Workshop and UESP: The documentation of Daggerfall's file formats that the readers were checked against.
Lattymoy: Built the port. Source, docs and the ledger are on GitHub.Set in Grenze Gotisch and Barlow Semi Condensed, loaded from Google Fonts: the one request this site makes to anyone else.