The Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages (UESP) (2025)

Arena, the full game[edit]

Since the 10th anniversary of The Elder Scrolls series, Arena has been free to download.

Official Patches and Utilities[edit]

The latest Arena patches, official game utilities, and other files released by Bethesda.

Translations[edit]

Arena in other languages.

Save Game Editors[edit]

Edit just about anything you want to in your save files.

Saved Games[edit]

The following are user-submitted save files from Arena. Please feel free to add your own saves, provided they're useful or notable in some way. See sections below table for instructions.

Exporting Arena Save-Games (DOS)[edit]

Arena comes with the ability to store ten different saved games. Data for each save are spread across multiple files in the Arena directory. All files ending with a .00 extension are associated with the first slot in the list of saved games, all files ending with .01 are associated with the second slot, and so on through files ending in .09 for the tenth slot.

Names for each slot (i.e., the text entered while saving) are stored in the NAMES.DAT file. These names are 48 characters long and padded on the right by the X'00' character and thus cannot be edited with a normal text editor. However, there is absolutely no link between the names in NAMES.DAT and your save files. The link is between the slot itself (irrespective of the name) and the saved game files' extension. So, for the purpose of exporting or importing saved games, NAMES.DAT is optional.

To export a saved game from Arena, first create a place to put the files. If you are at a DOS command prompt, the command md ArenaSavedGame will create a folder in which to put the saved game. The command copy *.00 C:\ArenaSavedGame will then put a copy of all the save-game files associated with the top save slot into the "ArenaSavedGame" folder. Those files can be bundled together (e.g., in a ZIP file) to conveniently store, share, and import the saved game.

Importing Arena Save-Games (DOS)[edit]

The simplest way to import a save-game into Arena is to overwrite a previous save. This may be accomplished as follows:

• Backup the desired save by copying all associated files via DOS (e.g., copy *.01 c:\temp).
• If necessary, rename the files to be imported so they use the same extension as the backed-up files (e.g., change .04 to .01).
• Copy the save-game files into the Arena directory and load from the associated save slot within the game (e.g., for files ending in .01, load the second slot).

Save-game files may also be imported into an empty slot which, while less likely to incur an error, is also more difficult. This is due to the fact that the save's name must be entered in the NAMES.DAT file, which can only be modified using a binary editor. Those familiar with binary editors can modify NAMES.DAT with little effort by merely filling the appropriate EMPTY slot with some meaningful text. For those without a binary editor, or unfamiliar with such, the following program will allow the NAMES.DAT file to be easily modified: NameMod.zip (14 kb) (the ZIP file contains an executable, help file, and source code in C).

Exporting Arena Save-Games (Windows)[edit]

Exporting Arena save-games is a little trickier in Windows. First, locate the folder where Arena stores its files. With Bethesda's official release, the default location is C:\Program_Files\Bethesda_Softworks\Arena; with the handier ArenaSetup program, the default location is C:\Games\Bethesda_Softworks\Arena (note that "C:\" may need to be changed to whichever letter is associated with your computer's primary drive, most likely the drive with the largest storage capacity on machines with more than one drive). For easy access, create a new folder in this location, such as "Save-games" (or whatever you wish), and copy the *.0x files to this location. These files can now be passed along to anybody that would like to enjoy them, perhaps bundled together as a ZIP file for convenience.

Importing Arena Save-Games (Windows)[edit]

After downloading or otherwise receiving the desired save-games, they must be copied to the location where Arena stores its files (see "Exporting Arena Save-Games (Windows)" above). The best way to do this is to copy the saves to an empty slot; see the second paragraph of "Importing Arena Save-Games (DOS)" above for instructions on how to do this.

Misc Utilities[edit]

More editors and utilities for viewing Arena resources.

Mods[edit]

Non-exhaustive list of mods available for Arena. More can be found on the Nexus Mods page for Arena.