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50 free The Elder Scrolls trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
The Elder Scrolls started in 1994 as a gladiator game that forgot to include any gladiators. Bethesda had already printed the boxes, so Arena shipped under a title that no longer fit, with a name its own designers admitted they did not understand. Thirty years and more than 90 million copies later, it is one of the defining role-playing series in gaming. This quiz covers the whole franchise, not just Skyrim. You will get questions on the early DOS games and the people who built them, Morrowind and Oblivion and their expansions, the spin-offs that flopped (Battlespire, Redguard) and the ones that did not (The Elder Scrolls Online), plus the novels, the card game, the mobile titles and the long wait for The Elder Scrolls VI. Lore questions cover the continent, its provinces and races, the Divines and the Daedra. Difficulty runs from easy (which province is Oblivion set in?) to expert (what was Daggerfall's working title?). Fifty questions, each checked against its source. Pick a race, roll a character and see how far you get.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which studio is the primary developer of the main Elder Scrolls games?
Bethesda Game Studios
Bethesda Game Studios was spun out of publisher Bethesda Softworks in 2001 with roughly 40 staff; both sit under ZeniMax Media.
Q 02On which fictional continent are the Elder Scrolls games set?
Tamriel
The other three are real continents in the lore, but Tamriel's people know so little about them that they barely appear in the games.
Q 03In which year was the first game, The Elder Scrolls: Arena, released?
1994
Arena missed its Christmas 1993 deadline and shipped in March 1994 with an initial distribution of only a few thousand units before word of mouth took over.
Q 04Daggerfall, the second game in the series, was released in which year?
1996
It sold more than 100,000 copies in its first two days, wiping out retailer stock and forcing a smaller second printing four days after launch.
Q 05Morrowind's main story takes place on which island?
Vvardenfell
The game was originally planned to cover the entire province, but the scope was cut to this central island and three of the five Great Houses.
Q 06Which demigod, housed inside Red Mountain, is Morrowind's central antagonist?
Dagoth Ur
IGN ranked him 90th on its 2010 list of the top 100 video game villains, a rare showing for a character who mostly talks before the final fight.
Q 07Morrowind was Bethesda's first major title on a console. Which one?
Xbox
It was the best-selling RPG on that console in 2002 and stayed in its top ten a year after launch, a feat otherwise matched only by Halo.
Q 08The Bloodmoon expansion for Morrowind let players become what?
A werewolf
Catching the transformation disease from a beast in combat gives you three days to find a cure; after that, every night brings a forced change.
Q 09Oblivion takes place in which province of the Empire?
Cyrodiil
Todd Howard later admitted the capital province felt less distinctive than Morrowind, which pushed the team toward a more varied setting for Skyrim.
Q 10Which actor voiced Emperor Uriel Septim VII in Oblivion?
Patrick Stewart
Sean Bean and Terence Stamp were also in the cast, while Max von Sydow would not join the series until Skyrim five years later.
Q 11Oblivion's first paid download in April 2006 became infamous. What was it?
Horse armor
Players liked the idea of small add-ons but balked at the price for cosmetic barding, and the episode is still shorthand for overpriced microtransactions.
Q 12On what date was The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim released?
November 11, 2011
The 11/11/11 launch shipped seven million units in its first week and was projected to bring in around US$450 million in that opening stretch.
Q 13What kind of title was The Elder Scrolls: Legends?
A collectible card game
It used a two-lane board where one lane hid freshly played creatures from attacks, a twist that set it apart from Hearthstone.
Q 21Redguard is the only Elder Scrolls game to feature what?
A third-person camera
It also locked players into a named hero, Cyrus, rather than letting them build a character, which alienated fans of Daggerfall's freedom.
Q 22Who composed the music for Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim?
Jeremy Soule
Skyrim's main theme was recorded with a choir of more than 30 singers performing in the fictional dragon language.
Q 23Which fanatical cult tries to open the gates to Oblivion in the fourth game?
Mythic Dawn
Their leader Mankar Camoran retreats to a self-made realm called Paradise, where the player confronts him to recover the Amulet of Kings.
Q 14Skyrim: Very Special Edition, a 2018 parody text adventure, ran on which device?
Amazon Alexa
The E3 gag also promised versions for the Etch A Sketch, Motorola pagers and Samsung smart fridges, but the voice-assistant one actually existed.
Q 15The extinct Dwemer race is colloquially known by which name?
Dwarves
Despite the nickname and their underground metalwork, the Dwemer are classified as a kind of elf with startlingly advanced technology.
Q 16The Elder Scrolls continent sits on which planet?
Nirn
Other continents on the planet include Akavir, Pyandonea, Yokuda and Atmora, but the games have so far stayed home.
Q 17Which Looking Glass series was the main inspiration for Arena?
Ultima Underworld
The team also admired Legends of Valour, and designer Ted Peterson cheerfully called the result derivative, just much, much bigger.
Q 18In Arena, which Imperial Battlemage traps the Emperor and usurps his throne?
Jagar Tharn
He stores his life force in the Jewel of Fire, so reassembling the Staff of Chaos alone is not enough to free the Emperor.
Q 19Daggerfall restricts travel to High Rock and which other province?
Hammerfell
The two provinces meet at the Iliac Bay, and the map between them still held 15,000 places and a population of 750,000.
Q 20Daggerfall's game world was famously described as the size of which country?
Great Britain
That works out to roughly 209,331 square kilometres; a YouTube channel once walked across the whole map in 69 hours.
Q 24The Shivering Isles expansion is ruled by which Daedric Prince?
Sheogorath
The Prince of Madness turns out to be the alter ego of Jyggalag, the Lord of Order, whose Greymarch threatens to wipe the realm clean.
Q 25The Elder Scrolls Online begins with the player imprisoned in which realm?
Coldharbour
Starting as a prisoner is a series tradition; here the player is a soul shriven, a husk whose soul has already been taken.
Q 26Which Daedric Prince is the main antagonist of The Elder Scrolls Online's base story?
Molag Bal
His scheme is to drag the entire mortal world into his own realm, and stopping it means uniting three alliances at war with each other.
Q 27Talos, the Ninth Divine, is the deified form of which emperor?
Tiber Septim
His apotheosis is disputed by the elven races, and the ban on his worship is a central grievance in Skyrim's civil war.
Q 28In 2011 Bethesda challenged Mojang's trademark on which game title?
Scrolls
The settlement let Mojang keep the name but barred using it for any sequel; the game was later relaunched as Caller's Bane.
Q 29Which engine did Bethesda license to replace XnGine for Morrowind?
Gamebryo
The Direct3D engine brought 32-bit textures and skeletal animation, and Bethesda timed screenshot releases to NVIDIA's GeForce 4 launch to show off its water.
Q 30Which company co-published Oblivion's initial Xbox 360 and PC releases with Bethesda?
2K Games
The Take-Two subsidiary also shared retail duties on the Shivering Isles expansion a year later.