Your suspicion is correct. Next time you start up the GOG version, wait till the title screen intro starts to play, then try CTRL + F11 several times, until the video seems to play smoothly (this command reduces the number of CPU cycles in the emulation; if that doesn't work, CTRL + F12 increases the number of cycles). If this fixes the problem, you can take note of the cumber of cycles at which the games runs normally (this info is displayed in the window title when running DOSBox in windowed mode) and edit the config file with the setting that works for you -- though I admit I haven't bothered with that, being content to CTRL + F11 a few times every time I start up the game. =P

I had the same issue when running it on my Windows 10 Gaming PC. To make Daggerfall play properly, you need to locate and modify the DOSBox config file. It will be located in the Daggerfall install file named: dosbox_daggerfall.conf
I recomend opening with WordPad as you need to search inside this file and alter the following.

Search and change core=auto to core=dynamic
Search and change aspect=false to aspect=true
Search and change scaler=normal12x to scaler=normal13x
Search and change memsize=16 to memsize=63
Search and change fullresolution=original to fullresolution=desktop
Search and change cycles=50000 to cycles=limit50000
Search and change fulldouble=false to fulldouble=true
Search and change output=surface to output=ddraw

Run the game and press "2" which is Game DOS settings, now this part is crucial... First Select Digital with the Arrow keys and hit Enter. Select Sound Blaster Professional as the Digital Device. Set the Port to 220, DMA to 1 and IRQ to 7. Now select test and listen to the Emperor, his voice should be as clear as day. Now select OK and choose Select MIDI. Again, choose Sound Blaster Professional and set the MIDI Port to 388. Now simply test it, it should sound like an 80's Techno and you're done to enjoy the game. Little tip, first chance you get you need to alter the controls so you can move the camera with the mouse.

Regards Dean

Two small comments:
- aspect=true displays the game in its native 4:3 ratio, with small black borders on the left and right side, while aspect=false fills the whole screen, but distorts the display slightly. A matter of personal preferences.
- It's difficult to distinguish "1" and "l" in text editors. The parameter values are "normal2x" and "normal3x".

You are very right about the normal"X"x parameters. GOG actually sets this to normal12x so bumping it up by a single point won't make for drastic visual changes but does give it an extra degree of support... Just in case... That's also why I suggested edditing the .conf file with WordPad, it's very easy to distinguish between the two and you can specifically search for each individual command that needs the adjustments.

Regards Dean

Here is the list of values for the scaler parameter of DOSBox:
none, normal2x, normal3x, advmame2x, advmame3x, advinterp2x, advinterp3x, hq2x, hq3x, 2xsai, super2xsai, supereagle, tv2x, tv3x, rgb2x, rgb3x, scan2x, scan3x.

Simply use "scaler=xxxx", without quotes and replace xxxx by one of the above.

I myself use hq3x or (super)2xsai for Arena and Daggerfall (and output=ddraw is essential in my opinion, too).

A great post and very helpfull, thank you!

Only problem is that now my characters seems to move much more slowly than before.
My speed is 100 and when sprinting i seem to get around the speed i used to without, any ideas?
Only thing i've tried was to increase or decrease cycles but that didn't help.

edit: also my weapons swinging seems to reguire a lot of mouse movement and isn't accurate anymore :/

I assume we're talking about Daggerfall, and not about Daggerfall Unity or any other game.
You don't say which values of which parameters you changed to which new values, and how far you increased cycles.
I'd try to set cycles to a 5-digit value (I use 50000, for example), or to max. If this leads to an acceptable speed, you can try to reduce cycles to the minimum value for which you find the speed acceptable.
If this doesn't help, the other parameters must be carefully analysed, and I wouldn't rule out problems which have nothing to do with Daggerfall (or Arena), PC-related ones, for example.

I fiddled around with cycles values and all other mentioned above, just can't get it working. giving up for a moment :/

If I understand you correctly, movement speed in Daggerfall was ok before you changed the DOSBox parameters, After changing them movement speed was deteriorated, and even modifying cycles values didn't help.
It's difficult to analyse the problem without more data, like hardware specs and the DOSBox parameter values you use. And if you play the GOG version of Daggerfall, do you use Galaxy? If yes, you might try the direct download version of Daggerfall, to make sure that the problem isn't related with Galaxy.

There are two ways forward:
- Backup your savegames, un- and reinstall Daggerfall, and restore your savegames. For a change you might install DaggerfallSetup instead of the GOG version (or vice versa, depending what's installed now), but this is unlikely to be essential.
Check movement speed without modifying anything. If it's acceptable, backup the DOSBox configuration file, and edit this file again, like you did before (you might have mistyped a value, or modified one unintentionally). Check movement speed again. Is it worse now? Ifr not, restore the original configuration file and try again.
Depending on the results of these little tests, it might be possible to understand the problem better and to try other things, if the problem can't be solved in this way.
- Try Daggerfall Unity (you can import your DF saves). I'd use the original DFU from the developers' homepage rather than the huge GOG package, but it's up to you (among other things, the default key settings of the GOG package are a bit odd, but can be adjusted to whatever you like). If you're familiar with the DF UI and like it: The DFU UI is not quite identical with the DF UI, but it's not too difficult to get used to it.

Hi Greywolf1 and everyone else!

Thanks for the great reply, infact I didn't read your great instructions before I got it working.

My conclusion:
-I installed DaggerfallSetup
-I copied my old save folders

I fiddled around with dosbox.conf and apparrently the best working settings are these: (short version)

[sdl]
fullscreen=false
fulldouble=false ------ untested vs. value changed to "true"
fullresolution=original
windowresolution=original
output=surface ---------- best to try this also with "ddraw", with my machine looked better but worked more poorly
autolock=true
sensitivity=100
waitonerror=false
priority=higher,normal
mapperfile=mapper.txt
usescancodes=true

[dosbox]
language=
machine=svga_s3
captures=PICS
memsize=64

[render]
frameskip=0
aspect=true
scaler=normal2x ------ didn't test if there was a difference to normal3x...

[cpu]
core=dynamic ---------- proven to be a good setting on my pc, original value is "auto"
cputype=auto
cycles=fixed 50000 --!!! this seemed to be the key to most issues with jumping, walkin, swordswinging etc...!!!
cycleup=1000
cycledown=1000

My machine is:
Win 10 64-bit
i5-8600k ~ 5.0GHz
RAM DDR4 16Gb 2666MHz
Palit GTX 1070 Dual 8Gb
M.2 1TB 970 EVO Plus

I hope this helps someone

Hm, main differences to my DFSetup DOSBox configuration are:
- fullscreen=true (shouldn't make much difference, but perhaps worth trying?),
- output=ddraw (doesn't slow down DF on my PC, at least I don't notice),
- aspect=false (again, might be worth trying),
- scaler=super2xsai (I tried several parameters, none of them impacts performance on my PC noticeably).

Looking at my DFSetup folder I noticed that there are two conf files: dosbox.conf and dosboxdaggerfall.conf, and it looks like the second one overrides the first one (because it contains the autoexec section of DOSBox). This would affect the fullscreen, resolution and output parameters. To be on the safe side, I've made sure that the four lines match the corresponding lines of dosbox.conf.

Moreover, I noticed that your PC is quite powerful (at least a lot more powerful than mine). Is it possible that DOSBox works differently on your PC than on mine? Perhaps someone else can help here. I do remember having read a note somewhere that increasing cycles too far may slow down games. Unless you've tried this already, you could try other cycles values, like 20000, 10000, 7000 and 4000, just to see what happens.
And you might install GOG Daggerfall (non-Galaxy, without DFU). Shouldn't make a big difference, but why not give it a try).

In your first post you said "Only problem is that now my characters seems to move much more slowly than before."
But you don't explain what "before" means. Are you saying that you had an acceptable performance before you changed something?

Hi and sorry for slow reply, spent my time only playing now :'D

The "before" was with the release of the game downloaded from bethesda with default dosbox config.
Performance was sluggish overall but not as in laggy. So no, wouldn't say it was acceptable.
Even still after my methods I get some sluggishness, especially at bigger ins and some larger dungeons.
Haven't dug into that since the game is very much playable :)

I have been unable to notice any major difference in performance between
output=ddraw / surface, aspect=false / true or scaler=super2xsai / normal2x

If in the future I should experiment I'll try to remember to update here.