If you're trying to cruise through the main quest in Daggerfall, you'll hit occasional speed bumps. Assuming you're high enough level for all the story triggers to happen—the full quest line is open once you've hit level 10—there are times where a character will say "this will take some time, come back and see me in a month."

There are ways to make this time advance quickly. If you're speedrunning, you're just going to fast-travel across the continent and back. A month of in-game time will tick down faster than you can say "wabbajack". You could also rent an inn for a month for >100GP and sleep for 99 hours 7 or 8 times. But the reason the game gives you these speedbumps is to nudge you in the direction of doing other quests. It's telling the player hey, there's a lot more to this game than the main quest, why don't you go join a guild, or a temple, or a knightly order, or go on quests for nobles, or ask around to see how you can help the common folk? It's a big open world out there.

For the past week, I've felt like I've been waiting until I could continue my main quest, and my side quest has been Daggerfall. I've done everything I can think of that I want to do in it. I've finished the main quest for the first time. I've reached the prestigious level of 24, far higher than necessary. I've hoarded a million gold pieces. I've collected a full suit of daedric armor.

I collected it honestly: every piece was either looted from an enemy or purchased in a shop except for the gauntlets, which was one of my rewards for advancing in the Knights of the Dragon. I was very pleased to discover the reward goes up to daedric, because the guide made it sound like ebony was the highest it goes. That might be one of the many changes in Daggerfall Unity.

Guild-wise, I've been promoted to the highest rank in the Archeologist's Guild, Temple of Stendarr and Knights of the Dragon:

I've done a little bit of work for the Fighter's Guild, but Belladabyth's not a fighter at heart. Sure, she knows her way around a wakazashi [sic], but she never graduated to long blades; she didn't need to. Her etiquette, streetwise and language skills are so high she can talk down 90% of the sentient enemies that try to attack her. Even the ancient liches and vampires, the most dangerous enemies in the game, are willing to be friends with the polite adventurer with the silver tongue.

Once you reach the highest rank in the Knights of the Dragon, they give you a house. Pro tip. I got myself a cozy little 2-level home in Chesterwark. So what does an archaeologist do when it's time to settle down and retire? Open an artifact museum in the attic, of course:

That's the Lord's Mail I got from an Archaeologist Guild quest, the Necromancer's Ring I got for completing the main quest, and Auriel's Shield I got from a KoD quest. Unfortunately, when you drop a single item in Daggerfall, it still gives it a generic "loot pile" icon, but I know they're artifacts.

So that's pretty much everything I wanted to do in this run of Daggerfall. I thought this would take weeks, but I got covid, I was too foggy-brained to do much of anything else, so I just lived in High Rock for a week. I would've loved to use the time waiting for the main quest to resume on something meaningful, like working on creative projects or writing a lot, training up some of my skills, but getting covid was a big setback. I'm still not at 100%. My brain still feels fuzzy and I'm more tired than I should be, but I tested negative twice, once at home and once at work. Today was my first day back. It sucked. Guess I have to get used to it again.

The gap in my updates feels much longer than it was. It felt like weeks, but it was only five days. Guess that's a sign that maybe the blog has become a habit, and I'll feel better once I get back to it every day. Maybe. RIP my posting streak. April 16 2022—November 09 2022. 207 days. That's divisible by 69. Nice.

If anything was going to kill my posting streak, I'm glad it was a horrible illness and not just me giving up. Now I have something to strive for. I'm coming for you, 208, you just wait 🦝