Hi all, just started playing a couple of days ago and keep experiencing the same problems:

1. it will crash for no reason
2. the game is constantly freezing
3. every time i restart, it seems to last for a few minutes before it happens again.

I'd love to get through the entire ES series, but this game is making things really hard.

Any advice appreciated, thankyou.

Arena is buggy (it's a Bethesda game after all). You could try increasing the amount of memory that's allocated to DosBox. In the .conf file you'll see

memsize=(some number)

You can try increasing that to 32 (the max I believe is 63). Also make sure you make saves in different slots.

Please be more specific: Are you using the GOG version, the ArenaSetup version, or which version? Are you using a standard configuration, or one modified by yourself? Are you using any other files / utilities in association with Arena? What does "crash" mean exactly? Are you using a Windows PC with enough RAM?

I have played Arena out of the box (GOG, ArenaSetup) on several PC's and never encountered any crashes at all. I have seen unsatisfactory performance though, which can be fixed by tuning the configuration.
If you've used the GOG version, you could try ArenaSetup (or vice versa). And, unless you've done it already, you could un- and re-install Arena, and try again (without modifying the standard configuration initially - this can be done when Arena works, and you want to improve something).

ok so more specifically- i haven't changed any setting whatsoever and am playing through gog on the standard config. i'm on a PC and am not using any other files and by crashing i mean it sometimes crashes to desktop; just shuts down for no apparant reason.

OK - reading your first post, I interpret "sometimes" as "reproduceably every couple of minutes". Please try my earlier suggestions, in particular, try ArenaSetup ([url=https://wiwiki.wiwiland.net/?title=Arena_:_ArenaSetup_EN]https://wiwiki.wiwiland.net/?title=Arena_:_ArenaSetup_EN[/url] - copy/paste link, or search for ArenaSetup). It's easy: Download, install (to a new folder, not to your GOG Arena folder), let the installation create a shortcut on your desktop, launch Arena from there, and play a new game. Does it work? I just did this on my PC, and it works for me (takes less than 5 minutes, if you choose "select character" and simply accept any character rolled by the system).
The download site contains a few optimisation tipps, too, which you may try out after you've convinced yourself that the game works.
Good luck!