This is an enhanced demo version of The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall which was published on a number of gaming magazine cover CDs. While the downloadable demo version of Daggerfall had to be limited to a single dungeon because of file size considerations, the covermount demo also includes towns and wilderness, allowing to sample a much larger portion of the game.
The playing world is limited to the small island of Betony, which is a minor region in the full version of Daggerfall. For the purposes of the demo, it was reworked into a full fledged province with a walled capital city, several large and small towns, homesteads, temples, shrines and dungeons. All of these locations are exclusive to the demo version and are not found in the retail game.
Most of the factions that the player can join or interact with are present in the demo. The capital city of Betony has a knightly order, a Fighters Guild and a Mages Guild. Notably, however, there is no palace in the city. There is one temple in the capital and several more in towns and in the countryside. It is also possible to receive admittance into the underworld guilds. When the player joins a guild, all services become immediately available, without the need to advance in rank with that guild.
Other quests are available from merchants in shops and innkeepers in taverns. Each faction and guild has about 2-3 quests to offer to the player, all of them similar to those found in the full version of Daggerfall.
There is a short tutorial which briefly explains the basics of game play. The tutorial is different from the one in the retail version of Daggerfall, because the demo starts in a city and not in a dungeon. The tutorial includes a unique optional quest where the player needs to rescue a townsperson from a dungeon.
The demo allows to start the game with a custom character of any race and class, but it also includes saved games with six pre-generated characters. Five are standard character classes, and one is a custom class specifically designed for the demo, which is called the Protector. This character is a combination of fighter and mage classes with a focus on archery, and is capable of using all types of weapons and armour. The Protector is particularly suitable for beginner players, and its design allows to demonstrate the various aspects of the game, such as melee and ranged combat, defensive and offensive magic, different varieties of weapons and armour etc., with a single character class.
There is no fixed level cap for the player character in the demo, but skills cannot be trained above 40%. This means that the player character can advance to about level 5, depending on the class, initial stats and the distribution of bonus skill points during character generation.
