Arena:Glitches

General Glitches
Monster Creation
Occasionally monsters will be spawned inside of walls.
Wrong Directions
If there is only 1 temple in a settlement, asking about it directly will lead you to a southeast corner of a map. Asking about 'Nearest Temple' should help.
East and West Reversed
Some quests will tell you to go to a dungeon located East of the city, but on the map it is actually to the West (or vice versa). On page sixty two of  Codex Scientia, there is an image of a compass that has these directions reversed; and within the game the Sun rises in the West. This has caused some to speculate that these are remnants of an earlier game concept where these cardinal directions were reversed.
Invisible Barriers
There are times where your character will appear to be stuck on something that prevents you from moving forward.  Simply back up and attempt to go around it or turn until you are able to move forward.  This occurs in dungeons when moving near walls that are slanted.  It also occurs often near trees.  Trees are sometimes not aligned with their collision area.  An obvious example can be seen in the City of Rihad.  Entering the city and turning left following the city wall, you quickly come to a tree.  If you try to walk all the way around the tree, you can see that it moves positions.
Missing 1st Vision After Leveling
After reaching level 2, the first time you camp you are to receive two vision messages from Ria Silmane.  The first vision is an introduction to the Staff of Chaos and in the second, she reveals the name for the location of the first piece of the staff.  If you happen to survive long enough to make it to level 3 without camping, you will only receive the 2nd message.
Fuzzy or Distorted Maps
If you are trying to make a pristine dungeon map, you may find that Arena is working against you. Anytime a game is saved, the map code gets a little scrambled. The next time you load that save, it won't look as clean as when you saved it. The areas where you have been will still appear on the map, but they will appear faded and more like areas you've been near rather than areas you have visited. If you wish to maintain a clean map, then you will need to perform the following when making game saves: Save the game, load the save you just made, and save the game again.  The first save scrambles the map code a bit, and the second save does the same thing, however, since it is already scrambled, it essentially corrects it back to normal. Moving your character will start updating the map, so it's important that you don't move when performing this correction. This also occurs when the maps are saved internally when switching between levels. You can check the map when returning to a level and if it's distorted, you can save and then load that save to restore your map.
Clearing the Quest Log
Going to the save load menu while playing and then exiting by pressing the Escape key will result in the Quest Log going blank, though this is easily solvable by reloading a save if you want to return it to normal.
Getting Negative Health
Punching locked doors actually reduces your health, but taking damage in this way can't kill you, and so it is possible for you to actually get a negative health level by doing this.
Diving Into The Glitch Lands

Every wilderness block in the game is wholly disconnected from every other in the game. Each of these is 4096 by 4096 voxels large, and the city/town/village spawns in the center of it. If you go past that boundary, the terrain will start infinitely repeating the last two loaded chunks. At this point if you go into an interior, then leave, you will have entered the "glitch lands", finding yourself in a surprisingly stable landscape of conflated environments of the game surrounding you. This has to be done during daytime and with clear weather for this work, otherwise the game will crash.

You can also get a landboat from the glitch lands. A landboat is special because you can fast travel in it. When you leave the boat in a level that isn't meant to have a boat, it turns into a different object depending on the objects occupying the .INF file for that level. In a city, for example, the boat will turn into a beggar.

Exploitable Glitches
Artifact Collection
You were not meant to have more than one artifact at any one time; if you're holding one, you simply cannot get another artifact quest. There's an exploit that allows you to get another artifact, though: if it's an artifact that can be repaired, use it once, bring it to a store, and put it in for repair. At that point, because you do not have an artifact in your possession, you can get another artifact quest. Members of the Knight class must turn in the artifact instantly after it was used, since knights repair weapons and armor automatically over time.

Cheap Repairing
When having an item or artifact repaired, there are three options that will greatly reduce the cost and time of the repair.  When presented with the option to accept the repair cost and time the blacksmith offers, select “no”.  You may then select; “Can’t you afford it?”.  If you offer 1 gold, it will give you a large waiting time, however, when you later check the status of the repair, you will find that it has been reduced to a time closer to a month.  If you offer 13 gold and later check the status, it will have been reduced to less than a day.  If instead you chose the option; “Can’t you wait that long?”, and enter “8192” for the number of days you can wait, the cost will be greatly reduced and the item will be ready immediately when checking it’s status.

Free Rooms at Inns
As a result of data not being cleared, it is possible to sleep for free at any inn.

First, save your game outside the inn you wish to stay in. Enter the inn and purchase a room. Now reload the saved game and enter the inn. Click on the camp button. Despite the fact that you did not purchase a room in the saved game, the occupied rooms data will not clear, allowing you to sleep within the inn.
Note that this glitch does not always occur.

Increased Treasure Piles
Enter a dungeon and find a stairwell going down. Move down the stairs, then turn and go back up. Each repetition of moving up and down the stairs will increase the amount of items in the treasure piles.

Increase Spell Points
When an offensive spell-casting item is used, and gives the option to pick the target, instead of left clicking, right click your mouse. It will cancel the spell, adding the points to your spell points, instead. The number depends on which spell you last cast - the more points it cost, the more points you'll get. This can be used to increase your spell points far beyond your limit.

Note that this can cause the game to crash if used too many times immediately in a row (usually more than 80). Points can also simply vanish later for an unidentified cause.

Create Tower Spell
You can create a tower anywhere in the world outside of buildings by creating a wall over the water surface (if there is none around, you can create it by destroying a floor tile). It will be a door on all sides that leads to a random tower.

These typically have a low monster rate, but have at least one pile of treasure lying around. Which goes well with the increased treasure pile glitch.

Necromancer's Amulet Stacking
The Necromancer's Amulet may be worn while another amulet is equipped, resulting in very impressive armor class. The artifact must be equipped last.

Main Quest Shortcut
(In 1.07 CD version only) This patch introduced a bug that causes the quest item not to be removed properly from a dungeon. You can beat the game by visiting Stonekeep and looting the Parchment 17 times.

Causing Incomplete Loading

Is possible for the player to intentionally load areas with incomplete features by entering them before the game is finished loading from a save. For interiors with multiple floors, you can only improperly load the first floor, as floor transitions undo the glitch, and their short delay allows the game to finish loading the save. Causing Unfinished Loadings can be done in three different ways:
The first way is to stand right in front of the exit stairs in a dungeon, saving your game and then loading that game while holding forward. Save loading will not advance while in the world map, and from here you can improperly load any location on the map.
The second way is to click on an entrance/exit on the first frame after loading. To do this, you need to hold the left click and pause the game. From here, load a save where you're right in front of a door, and position your mouse so that it'll be on the door when the game loads. Since you aren't holding left click anymore, the unclick will register the first frame the save loads, and it's the unclick that causes actions to happen.
The third method is the hardest, and it's identical to the first method in results. Hold right click, then load a save. While the save is loading, you need to position your (currently invisible) cursor so that it is on the map icon in the HUD on the first frame when the save loads.

This glitch has a number of effects, some practical, most useless. Many have been recorded but it is possible that some remain unrecorded. Known effects include:
For all interiors: Lighting will not load. This can decrease lag.
For all Palaces: The rulers will use a King sprite, even if they are female. 
For Main Quest dungeons: All keys, locked doors, riddles, and Main Quest items, will appear as though you were visiting the dungeon for the first time. Note this only affects the first floor for previously explained reasons.
For Random Quest dungeons: Quest targets will not load. Remains undetermined if this affects the entire dungeon or just the first floor.
For Wilderness Crypts: Monsters, locked doors, and Treasure Piles will not load.
For exteriors: No known effects on exteriors have been found.

Know that doing this in Stonekeep will allow you to use the aforementioned Stonekeep Skip even in the Floppy Disk Version of the game by repeating the dungeon using this glitch until you loot the parchment seventeen times.

Easily Accessible Gold
Normally, palaces could have massive piles of gold at night, but this is inaccessible. However, village palaces contain torture chambers that contain a dead body. Due to how pre-generated dead bodies work, these will contain a massive amount of gold, usually 10,000 gold pieces. Note that guards will attack when you leave the audience chamber. The following is a list of all village palaces.

Black Marsh
Chasecreek
Portdun Mont
Glenbridge (normally inaccessible)

Elsweyr
Markgran Brook
Chasemoor
Darkarn Place
Duncori Walk

Hammerfell
Chaseguard
Corten Mont
Nimbel Moor
Karnver Falls
Dragon Grove

High Rock
Eagle Brook
Thorkan Park
Karthgran Vale

Morrowind
Riverbridge
Corkarth Run
Sailen Vulgate

Skyrim
Laintar Dale
Nevgrad Watch
North Keep
Lainalten
Amber Guard

Summerset Isles
Silsailen Point
Holly Falls
Glenview
White Guard
Karnwasten Moor
Graddun Spring
Karndar Watch

Valenwood
Heimdar City
Lynpar March
Marbruk Field
Glenpoint

Another Easy Gold Method

Arena can keep up to 256 loot piles in memory at one time. If this limit is exceeded, the earliest ones will be rendered unusable until more space is cleared, at that point they will be rendered usable again and filled with items from the current area's loot table. When you drop potions, each is considered a separate dropped item and loot pile for a brief moment before being congealed in a single loot pile.

You may use this to your advantage by creating 255 loot piles of unimportant items and then dropping 256 potions at once in one last loot pile (stamina potions are recommended, since they are very cheap, but theoretically any item should work as long as you have enough). Each of these loot piles except this last one will be turned into bags of 20,000 gold and sometimes also contain a magic item.

Problematic Glitches
"Who Are You" (CD ver1.07 Crash)
When playing the CD version 1.07, clicking the option to ask an NPC, "Who are you", will eventually cause the game to freeze or crash. There are 10 different greetings, 100 different occupations, and 3 dialogue options for each occupation. Unfortunately, you will only see 15 of the occupations in 1.06 and a different set of 15 in 1.07. For example, you will not speak to a bodyguard or cook in 1.06, an artist or butcher in 1.07, or a falconer or sailor in either; though they all exist in the code. With version 1.06 you will eventually see all 15 occupations and each of the 3 dialogue options for those, but in 1.07 there are two dialogue options that call for local equipment stores to be listed, but the game will crash. So, for the bodyguard and innkeeper, you will only see two of the three options. Because the dialogue option is random and options can be repeated, the game may allow you to speak to many characters, or crash on the very first one. Save your game often or avoid asking for names. 
There is a rare secondary glitch that may occur after exiting a quest dungeon that may allow one of the "store" dialogues to appear. Unfortunately, if this is the case, then all of the dialogue that mentions an inn will leave the inn names blank. This secondary glitch is corrected the first time you camp.

"NEW GAME" option causes glitches
While the start date is the only consistently reproducible glitch, games that have been started this way have a history of being notable for other glitches.  The patch notes for v1.05 state: "New characters created from within the game will work", however, with this patch we have the obvious starting date issue. Other players have noted other glitches that appear related to starting a new game this way, but the results are not consistent.  To avoid encountering any of these possible glitches, simply follow the recommendation in the 1.06 patch notes.  "We recommend that you do not choose this option."

Wrong Start Date
All characters created using "NEW GAME" from the options menu will start "1st of Morning Star" instead of the intended "1st of Hearthfire". This bug was introduced with patch v1.05 and continued with v1.06 and v1.07. If you "DROP TO DOS" and then create a new character without opening the "LOAD SAVE GAME" menu, the new character will have the Hearthfire start date.  Simply viewing the "LOAD SAVE GAME" menu before creating your character will cause the bug.

Can't Get Artifact Quest
The patch notes for v1.06  state: ''"Can't get an Artifact Quest: This seems to be related to picking the Start New Game option while in the middle of another game. We recommend that you do not choose this option."'' 

Blocking climbing up
Some monsters may block your way out from underground caves (making it impossible to climb up), forcing you to use fly or destroy walls\floors to leave the cave.

Item Checked In for Repair Is Gone
Sometimes you will check an item in for repair, and later when you go back for it, it's not there any more. The reason for this is that the size of the file where Arena stores locations is limited to 131136 bytes. The number of cities and dungeons the game can store in this file depends on their size. Large dungeons with many levels consume the most space while small cities take the least space. The total number of places the file can store is somewhere between eight and sixteen — when you discover more, the game deletes the oldest entries. In any case, if you go to too many places between the time you start the repair and the time you come to pick up the repaired item, you run the risk of the game forgetting that you put the item in for repair.

Quest Success Unrecognized
Sometimes when you return from a quest with a quest item, the quest giver does not recognize that you have the item. For instance, if you got the quest from a temple priest, when you talk to him you might just get the standard talking-to-a-priest menu. When this happens, leave the building and save the game. Completely exit Arena. Restart Arena and load the saved game. The quest giver should now recognize that you are holding the item.

Some Mages Guild buildings have several doors. If the Mages Guild is your quest destination, you need to use the northeastern door for the quest to be completed.

Garbled Quest Location
When asking townspeople about the location of the next dungeon, the location they specify may have missing or garbled characters. If so, you will not be able to continue the main quest until the bug is corrected. To do so, simply save your progress and restart the game, just like with the Quest Success Unrecognized glitch. 

Stuck on a Raised Platform
Arena has problems with the math when you step down from a raised area. Sometimes you get stuck and cannot move in any direction. You will be able to turn 360°, though, and that is a saving grace. Unfortunately levitation does not give you immunity. Place yourself so that you are moving directly toward or directly away from the riser (directly = not at an angle), then jump forward (press Shift-J). That should get you going again. Levitation and "mountain climbing" (jumping onto one area to jump to an even higher area) can lead you to walk off an edge and become stuck in an area higher than you can jump out of.  This may require you to reload a previous save. If in doubt, it may be safer to jump off the edge rather than to step off.  As always, be careful what you jump into.

Unarmed Melee Combat
In theory, you can use your fists to do damage in melee combat or to break down a door. In practice, this nearly always crashes Arena, even if you have the correct amount of EMS allocated under (genuine) DOS. The workaround for this is to always use a weapon. If you don't want to wear out your main weapon for some reason (e.g., just to bang down a door), use a weapon you got from a monster. Those are usually pretty worthless to carry and sell but can be temporarily used just to break down doors.

Faulty magic items
Upon equipping a Bracelet of Strength, it will initially give one +10 points of Strength; however, the Strength value will inexplicably drop back to its original value, and if you remove the bracelet, you will LOSE 10 additional points of Strength. Buying another Bracelet of Strength won't solve the problem, you have still permanently lost the 10 points and are basically stuck with a faulty bracelet for the rest of the game. Occurred on High Elf Battlemage. Leveling apparently solves the problem. 

This glitch seems to occur most often when using a custom spell involving "transfer X attribute to caster"; it may be assumed that if the target's attribute is lower than the caster's, the spell will inflict a drop in the caster's attribute. Thus, such spells are better avoided, and the values do reset upon leveling. Another issue is when a human enemy such as a Mage or Spellsword casts a Curse upon you, lowering one or more attributes, one of those attributes may stay permanently lowered until level-up.

Using passwall to enter a dungeon door backwards
If you use passwall to make your way to a dungeon door from the opposite side, then you will enter a glitched part of the next floor. If you save here, then your entire game will be ruined, for you can not continue from that point forward.

Bugged escort portrait
If you are playing a female character and doing escort or rescue quests in your home province, you can end with the escortee portrait identical to your own. This will lead to the portrait staying on your screen permanently. The only way to fix it is save game editing, so it is better to retry that quest.

Losing fatigue and health points
You can have 199/199 fatigue despite having 100 in both strength and endurance attributes. The value can go back to 200 later and lower your max health by one point.

Not removing equipped armor before repair bug
You may encounter a serious bug after giving a Blacksmith a equipped piece of armor (and probably the same for the equipped weapon) to repair. Here's a list of issues that will occur when this bug is in a effect: 
If you view the character screen page, you'll get locked on it, you'll still be able to move the cursor around, but you won't be able to press ESC, click "Done" or "Next Page". You'll have to close the game. Another issue one will notice on the lock page that their character's bonus statistic numbers for Damage, Magic Def, To Hit, To Defend, Health, Heal Mod, and Charisma will also be missing. 
When checking the map name of places and stuff that were written on it be gone, even when talk to a NPC for directions where they suppose to write down the place name on your map, it won't show up. Also when asking a NPC for a specific inn, temple, or equipment store you won't be able to for the list of names for them will be blank. 
The text that shows up when clicking on a locked door or chest that describes the difficulty of unlocking it won't show, though you can still break-in a house or a chest by using the steal icon. 
If go to a Temple and talk to the Priest there, instead of showing the interacting menu, the game will freeze staring at the Priest and the music will start stuttering. You'll have to close the game. 
If going to camp in either a broken-in house or a dungeon, a unknown enemy or enemies will appear invisible (no sprite) with some with the glitter magic effect where they suppose to be, their attacks will be instant death. Also the appearing invisible enemy may crash the game as well! 
Enemies that you encounter normally in a dungeon like in Stonekeep, their names won't appear. Instead the prompt box when checking a enemy will be as "The  has nothing usable." and exiting the above red text will show as "You see a ...". 

To prevent this serious bug, it's really recommend to unequip the piece of armor before repairing it. If you accidentally saved, if you have a backup save on another slot you'll may have to load it up for now it seems there's no workaround for this bug.

Problematic Security Question (ver. 1.06)
On occasion, the game won't link correctly to the location for the spell names. When exiting the first dungeon, the game will ask; "What is the cost of...", but will give you blank, garbled, or partial text.  Go ahead and make a guess.  If you are incorrect, you will be given a second chance and the text will be corrected.

Incorrect shop names in Imperial City
When you travel to the Imperial City, the names of the shops are not always updated properly.  This can lead to issues of the names written on your map and other shop related services. For an example; if you first travel in Elsweyr to any of the settlements of Rimmen, Senchal, Torval, or Black Heights and then travel from one of them to Imperial City, the inn located at (106, 12) will have one of four different names.  The correct one is when traveling from Senchal.  It is recommended that each time you travel to Imperial City that you first save the game while in the City, exit to DOS, and then reload the save before continuing to explore the city.  This will correct the names and locations within the city.  They will remain correct until you travel to other cities that can change the listings and you'll have to perform the correction again.

Asking about rumors while in the wilderness makes the game crash (any version)
If you save while exploring the wilderness, exit to desktop, and then reload the save and ask a NPC in the wilderness about rumors, the game will crash if the rumor would have been about an artifact quest (go to X inn to find a person who sells informations about Y artifact).
If you first load a save inside a city, or first you travel to a city and then return back to the same wilderness area where it would have crashed had you just opened the game and loaded a save in the wilderness, it won't crash anymore.

Basically, never ask about rumors while in the wilderness if you've just started the game and loaded a save there. Or first, load a save inside a city to resolve this crash.

It should be noted however, that since you can only be directed to the inns inside of a city (never to an inn in the wilderness), that the NPCs will direct you to one of the inns of the city where you loaded the first save.
Which means, if you loaded your first save in Rihad, Hammerfell, and then you loaded your current save in the wilderness, even if you're in Skyrim, the NPCs will still tell you to go the inns in Rihad, because the game has that location "saved" into its memory. Since the game saves the last city visited and utilizes its names to give directions and assign quests, it's better to first fast travel to the city that gives its name to the area, and then reload the save and continue exploring the wilderness.

Incurable Diseases

If you start a new game, die because of a disease, and immediately start and save in another new game, you will be stuck with the negative effects of the disease (including the possibility of dying during Fast Travel) but the game won't recognize this as a disease and therefore you won't be able to cure yourself. 

Inconsistencies
Last Vision Lost
After you pick up the last Staff piece in Dagoth-Ur, you're supposed to get a vision from Ria Silmane where she tells you to go to the Imperial Palace to pick up the Jewel of Life. In fact, you won't get this vision. It is not clear why this is, mostly because there are no conditions under which you get the vision.
Palace loot
Treasure rooms in palaces contain huge piles of gold (10,000 to 20,000). But the loot appears in interiors only at night, and palaces are closed at night.

Miscellanea
Several scantily-clothed NPCs are designed to be missing from the streets during snowy weather, but due to a bug it doesn't happen.
If you include a space in your character name, only the portion before the space will be visible in certain situations. (Menu Bar, Ria Silmane dialogue) EX: "Sir Edmund" will only be written as "Sir".
When you ask an NPC where the palace is and you happen to already be near it, the NPC will write "Palace" on your map indicating it's location. These location labels are always just to the right of the door.  If the palace is on the east wall, the writing is essentially off the map and will not appear.
From the wilderness, the area where the palace is located leaves an opening in the city wall.  You can enter the city from this opening but there are no people, houses, or shops. However, entering the center of the city in this manner and turning the "Detail" down can allow an unobstructed view of the surrounding scenery and celestial bodies.
When creating a character you may discover that when shown a screen with only two options, pressing   will automatically choose the bottom option.  This can cause your game to be glitched, especially when selecting gender. The most visible effect can be seen if you try to select your weapon in the inventory after the game starts. You will see a second face image to the left of your character instead of your weapon in your hand.
After renting a room at an inn, if you open the LOAD GAME option, any remaining hours are removed and if you wish to camp, you will have to rent the room again.
When speaking to NPCs, there are highlighted letters that can be used as keyboard shortcuts. However, the "E" to exit a conversation does not work.
The minstrels and monks in Taverns have the same dialogue options as NPCs outside, however, when asking about the main quest, there is no dialogue and it just returns to the dialogue options.
If you are close to and facing a door when trying to speak to a NPC, they will disappear and you will receive the message about the locked door.
There are two inaccessible temples in the Imperial City. The first is a small building with no doors located at (86,69). The second is much larger and is located at (109,50).  In map view, you will often see these jutting brown cells off of buildings.  When they are between buildings it usually indicates a clothesline.  When they are in front of a red door, it indicates a sign in front of a building that offers services.  The second Temple has this cell in map view, but nothing is there.  There is also a large gray square on the front of the building which appears to be a missing texture which will sometimes have changing colors near dawn and dusk.  The NPCs do not list them in their dialogue options and no one will try to direct you to them. They are essentially monuments using the same building textures as the other temples in the city.
Although their weight is listed as .5 kg, short bows, tantos, and daggers do not add to your carry weight.

Gallery
Not removing equipped armor before repair bug screenshots
 

East and West Reversed
 

The Glitch Lands