Back in 1994 I bought Arena, played & enjoyed it but for some reason I could not find some dungeon on the map (think it was Labyrinthian as I recall correctly as I had a very hard time before in Fortress of Ice) so I stopped and played UFO Enemy Unknown instead (was also bugged but got it patched and finished it => all time favorite :-).

Recently I bought Battlespire and Redguard (especially for the latter) and got Arena/Daggerfall for free
After 22 years I played Arena again and now I am stuck again.
What I did:
1. Got parchment from Stonekeep in Hammerfell
2. Visited Palace in Rihad and got the Fang Lair location
3. To get stronger, revisited Stonekeep, took parchment again and got me a Staff Piece
4. Visited it again and got me a tablet
5. Visited Fang Lair and took the Staff Piece (already got "one" but Staff Piece counter remained 1).
Got next vision to visit Skyrim and ask about Labyrinthian.
6. Due to the fact I had the Tablet already, I got nowhere a topic about Labyrinthian nor Fortress of Ice.
Not in Hammerfell, Skyrim, nowhere . . . Revisited Hihad Palace & Stonekeep
[url=][/url]No new directions, staff pieces, maps, . . . nothing.
7. Checked UESP site, went to Winterhold Mages Guild and because of the tablet, got the Labyrinthian location. No location, directions, ... to Fortress of Ice.
8 Looted Labyrinthian and took the Staff Piece
STAFF PIECE COUNTER REMAINED 1 instead of 2 and I got no visions, directions, hints, whatsoever to the next region/dungeon.
9. According to UESP site, the parchment in Stonekeep is an exploit to get Staff Pieces and maps, so I revisited Stonekeep more than once, Fang Lair, Labyrinthian, took parchment & staff pieces, but nothing.
Staff Piece counter doesn't add up, no further directions, no extra maps/tablets, question topics, exploits, . . .
10. Tried to HEX edit the staff pieces and set it to 2 but it was too time consuming to figure it out

So I am stuck again. . .

As I have the tendency to visit a dungeon more than once for the loot & exp, I suspect a similar thing happened back in 1994. And again, all the time I invested in becoming a LVL 14 Spellsword with some nice equipment & stats, I am very reluctant to restart Arena once again.

So beware, NEVER TAKE THE PARCHMENT IN STONEKEEP MORE THAN ONCE.
It can ruin your further progress severely !!!

If anyone has a solution to this problem . . .

That's not the only bug in the game.

While playing the game (floppy version from Bethesda's website), on my first playthrough, I was hit with an invisible disease (or was it poison?). The game didn't say I was diseased, and the game didn't warn me when fast traveling, but I still died when fast traveling, and the invisible ailment did respond to a cure.

Incidentally, I believe the speedrun strategy for Arena is to repeatedly take the parchment, allowing one to only need to play one quick dungeon over and over again to beat the game.

(Is there any speedrun out there (in a different category, obviously) that doesn't abuse this glitch and actually clears every main quest dungeon?)

Thanks for posting about this issue. I ran into the same issue but I don't think it's as severe in my case, because I only picked it up twice.

1. I got the parchment from Stonekeep.
2. I visited Rihad but only to rest and sell loot, I avoided the palace because I wasn't done exploring Stonekeep.
3. I went back to Stonekeep and noticed the treasure was re-spawning, so I went back to the ghoul lair, and saw another parchment icon. This time when I took it, it gave me the staff piece. In my inventory, the parchment is now missing but it says "Staff Pieces (1)"
4. I went to the palace in Rihad, and the queen dismissed me. I never learned where Fang Lair was and never needed to go there.
5. I have been able to get to Fortress of Ice and am currently searching for the tablet. I plan to take the tablet one time ;)

I'll be very annoyed if I find out later on that my game is screwed because of this. Like if I find the second staff piece but the counter remains at 1.

I think this game is probably not really supported, since they offer it as a freebie download. Anyway I figured I'd visit the forum to log the issue, but it seems you already did.

According to the commentary in this video: This bug actually exists only in the CD-ROM (1.07) version of the game; it does *not* exist in any earlier versions.

(The video in question is a speedrun video; it may spoil the plot, but I note that it doesn't spoil any of the main quest dungeons after the first one.)

I played it for the 3rd time and finished it finally for the 1st time !!!

It was fun to see the Stonekeep exploit in action and how the speedrun was performed. Thx