i want to play daggerfall but it seems that the initial release is really buggy

whats the best version and what mods do i need so that the game works fine :)

Actually, you don't need to modify the config file; alt-F11 can be used even if cheat mode isn't enabled. (In fact, the speedrun community, which generally doesn't allow cheat codes, has decided to allow Daggerfall' alt-F11 code.)

There are other bugs in the game. A couple that I've encountered:
* Sometimes the music will glitch; for example, a note will fail to turn off. I *think* this can be cleared up by turning the music off and on, but if that doesn't work, save and reload should do the trick.
* If you go into the wilderness, switch your mode of transport to ship, and then switch back, the game may crash depending on your position at the time of the switch. Interestingly enough, if the game doesn't crash, a certain height mapping feature of the wilderness, that is normally disabled, will be enabled, causing the terrain to be much more varied height-wise. If the game keeps crashing and you've saved, you can fast travel from the ship back to town; it will take a while (in-game time, not real time), but will get you out of this situation.
* There's others. You can't rest on your house's patio (if you try, guards will arrest you), and attacking the door on your ship will summon guards. Some effects don't work as described. When you're hit with an arrow, any "Cast on Strike" effects on your weapon are applied to you (this has resulted in at least one death for me). Sometimes a quest will fail to be clearable. Sometimes the game just randomly crashes.

In general, treat the game as being buggy. This means:
* Save early, often, and in multiple slots. 6 slots really aren't enough for this game.
* Always keep a save you believe is safe, preferably in town with no actice quests, or at least as few as possible.

I remembered something else:
* Pressing Alt-F11 while in mid-air (which is the likely situation when you unexpectedly end up out-of-bounds) may cause you to take falling damage; therefore, you may want to have a Slowfall spell handy to use if that happens. (Note that Levitate won't prevent falling damage if you're already falling when you cast it.)

The advice about saving is very useful indeed (not only for Daggerfall) - not only because of bugs, but also because it's very easy to get your character killed or put in hopeless situations in the normal course of the game. I myself save always before asking for a quest, before entering a dungeon, before making certain decisions, and after I have achieved certain goals. While savegames I create for the first two reasons are temporary ones, I keep the other savegames for a longer period of time (until I think they become obsolete). To make room for more than 6 savegames is easy enough: Just copy the 6 savegame folders elsewhere (ideally into a common folder), and delete the contents of the folders. You can repeat this as often as you like, and copy any savegame back (if you know what it contains :-)).

Regarding the bug examples mentioned (I know there's a lot more dtgreene could add):
- I never encountered most of them: the music bug, because I play without sound, the "patio" and "door" bug, because I would never do something like this, the "arrow" bug simply because I wouldn't notice it happen.
- Non-clearable quests and random crashes do happen, but, at least for me very rarely, and not noticeably more often than in most other games I play. The most frequent bug I see is the void bug (see my previous post).
- The one with setting transport mode to ship while travelling overland is a really funny one (and I owe dtgreene a lot of thanks for mentioning it in a post a couple of years ago). You can use it to change the visual appearance of the Daggerfall world dramatically - and to the better most of the time, in my mind. There is a certain risk that the game may crash indeed, but not very frequently, and it's highly recommended to save the game before switching the transport mode in the situation described above.
- Finally, I guess I'd encounter memory-leak related or other playing-session-time related bugs less frequently than some other players, simply because my playing sessions are rarely longer than one or two hours.

Bottomline for me is that an average player, especially a beginner, wouldn't encounter or notice most of Daggerfall's bugs, with the exception of the void bug (every couple of hours on average according to my experience) and random crashes, which occur (for me) even a lot less frequently than the void bug. No reason to avoid the game because of its bugs.
The difficulty is a different story though (and this is the main reason why saving often is highly recommended). The starter dungeon is manageable, but elsewhere in dungeons, temples or towns (the city Daggerfall at night, for example), etc. it's possible to encounter enemies you can't beat. In many cases you can avoid or escape them and still achieve the goal of your quest, but there may be cases, where you simply have to give up, especially when you're not yet familiar with the game.

To be honest, I've never tried to play Daggerfall without setting cheatmode to 1, after the latest patch had been released - mainly because of the maxspeed improvement (at the time I used to have a PC which was only barely powerful enough to run Daggerfall at all). If alt-f11 works without using the cheatmode variable, then the text of the official patch file is misleading: "Some of the development cheat keys have been released. To active them, you will have to add a variable to your z.cfg file. The variable is called CHEATMODE. You set it to 1. The cheat codes are as follows: ..." It follows a list of commands you can use to change the way Daggerfall works, among them alt-f11. As I can't reproduce the void bug easily, I just tried the teleport keys ([ and ], also on the list) inside a dungeon after I had deleted the cheatmode line from z.cfg - and they don't work anymore.

When the spell is an instant death spell, and it affects you, you *will* notice it in that case. At least the situation where the game crashes if you try to leave the ship is recoverable; just fast travel from the ship. The ship is actually located in the northwest corner of the map, and it's possible to travel from there; it just takes a lot of in-game time (so you will likely fail timed quests).

Interestingly enough, if you go to the northwest, you can find the entrance to the final dungeon; however, be aware that this is an entrance, not an exit, and the trigger that would normally let you complete the game will be absent, so you're stuck there. (There's actaully a speedrun category where the goal is to reach the place where the game would normally end this way.)

By the way, I learned about the glitch from someone else somewhere, but I don't remember who or where. The patch modes mention alt-F11 being available in a version before the cheat mode variable was added.

If you want to reproduce the void bug, just buy the smaller ship and go to the back of the hull (IIRC); you will fall out of bounds at the seam.

Also, alt-F11 isn't just for the void; it will take you back to the last spot of solid ground you were on whenever you use it in mid-air. Furthermore, if you use it immediately after loading a save (or starting a new game), the game will take you straight to the dungeon entrance; this allows you to skip the starter dungeon, and can also be useful if you are lost in a dungeon and haven't had the foresight to keep a save save or teleport spell handy.

Thanks for the clarifications and additional information - always interesting reading and much to learn.

huge THANKS for the detailed replies guys :)

so something like dfqfix is not needed ?

or does the gog version come pre installed with this ... like the gog version of vampire comes with the fan patch pre installed

[url=https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Tes2Mod:DFQFIX]https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Tes2Mod:DFQFIX[/url]

You're welcome. I really do enjoy discussing these older computer games.

I'm one of those people who likes to study the games they play, and of course Daggerfall is no exception.

By the way, I remember one time when I was going around hitting guards with the Mace of Molag Bal, getting my Strength score (or at least the value displayed on the status screen) above the normal limit of 100, and then noticing that guards were suddenly able to do massive damage to me; it's as if the guards were getting my strength bonus.

(Also, according to UESP, the Dodging skill is bugged and makes it harder for you to hit your enemy instead of the other way around. Fortunately, Battlespire fixed this (I tested it), but that still doesn't help Daggerfall players.)

You're welcome, but I'm not a guy.

It's actually not that difficult to fall through when (for example) climbing up certain types of inclines in dungeons (to the point where I had to learn to turn to the side and strafe over the last little bit at the top where the grade levels off).
The real challenge is this: if you do fall through the level geometry into the ether, but you happen to land on top of the ceiling of a lower level of the dungeon, can you manage to glitch your way back into the level (i.e., no cheats)? Always a fun thing to try. (For certain definitions of "fun".)

Is that even possible?

(Of course, it is certainly possible to complete your objective from oob, and then cast a teleport spell to warp back into the dungeon or even out of it.)

By the way, you don't mention it, but there is a non-cheat non-glitch way to get back into the level; set a mark before falling oob, and then cast recall. Also, IIRC there are some objects in the dungeon that can teleport you; perhaps you could try accessing one of those from oob?

Also, don't forget that Levitate can allow you to explore oob without having to land first (though I would sitll recommend casting slowfall to prevent damage for when you *do* eventually land).

Incidentally, it is also possible to go oob in Arena by casting Passwall on a dungeon wall that's next to a staircase, and then climbing the staircase from an unintended direction, but I do not know of any way to escape the resulting softlock (no mark/recall in Arena, sorry). Arena also has oob in towns (no glitching required), but there you can easily go back in-bounds if the game doesn't crash first.

The question of this thread was, do you NEED any mods - no. There exists a number of mods which either add or fix quests, or change certain game elements ("Werefall", "Daedrafall", etc.), and DFQFIX is one of them.
If you want to play Daggerfall with addons, it's probably a good idea to use DaggerfallSetup and install the quest-related mods only. Or select the ones you're interested in from the UESP-list and download and install them. As long as you use quest-related mods only, you may not even notice the difference, unless you are very familiar with the original game (how do you distiguish a new quest from an original one, and how do you recognise a fix, as long as you're not aware of the bug in the first place?).
Most other mods make the game harder or add new game elements, which is not necessarily desirable when you start playing and getting used to the game.

Possibly - I speak of my personal experience only. Normally I'm not trying to break a game, but trying to avoid it. Perhaps I've learnt over the years, unconciously, not to do things, which have a high probability to provoke the void bug :-).

If I may ask (English is not my mother-tongue): Is there a real female equivalent for the colloquial "guys"?

I guess you wouldn't make a good game tester.

(Testing a game involves trying to break the game on purpose, so that the bugs can be found (and then hopefully fixed unless it's decided that the game is more fun with the bug than without).)

I did stumble across this website that has some gender neutral alternatives that can work:
https://heyguys.cc/

Also, in some cases, like the one in meonfire's post, the word "guys" could simply be omitted from the sentence without affecting the meaning (except for the removal of the gendered assumption).