Regarding dragons, here’s what I’d like to see:
Let the random ones be relatively easy. Have them do more cool shit like strafing the ground with fire, crash landing, making lots of noise. Less flying away and fighting something else.
Minor spoilers about types of dragons you may not know about:
There appear to be special one-time dragons in certain areas of the map. Fighting them should be a true adventure – climbing a mountain to do battle with a legend. I fought one the other day with an awesome setup.
don’t read if you haven’t done Northwind Summit
It was sleeping on top of a Word of Power wall. It look badass. It reminded me of the high dragon in Dragon Age, which is high praise. But then it was fairly easy to defeat like any other one.
Those need to be 10 times as strong. I think mods can go part way but Bethesda probably needed to make them do additional cool things that don’t kill you, like knocking you back or something.
Overall I’m still a solid fan of them.
Except for when they one-hit you. Really impressively done, but super annoying.
McKnight
4323
This. I mean it’s just such a let down considering random bosses in dungeons can Shout and knock my weapons away and do a whole host of other things and yet here’s these Uber Dragons who should be fluent in the “Dragon Tongue” and all they do is sit there and breath fire. I want to see Dragon’s blinking across huge expanses of terrain when they swoop in, sending me flying 10 feet with just a breath.
While I too enjoy them as is, I can’t help but feel there’s so much potential wasted.
pg1
4324
I’m still not seeing how magic, specifically destruction, can be more powerful than melee or bows like Aeon is saying. My mage has ~57% less destruction cost then skilled up to adept. He can only fire off fireball a few times before having no mana and it is also easy to miss. At range with room there is no big issue yet, but close combat vs multiple enemies is a problem (harder than fighting dragons). Magic also fires a hell out a lot slower than arrows and seems a lot easier to miss due to being a bit slower. Another annoying thing is my right hand always gets stuck on one spell unless I put on a sword or something to clear it.
My new heavy armor orc already has 120+ armor at level 3 and still can get sneak bonus with a bow. It really seems like no comparison. When I first started as a destruction mage I thought I was powerful but I just didn’t know any better.
I am only level 12 but a pure mage build, my 1 handed is 18 lol. This is quite depressing to hear these comments. Have other been successful with destruction mage build wearing robes. I’d hate to put another 40 or 50 hours in to find this out.
Friendly reminder: you can beat the main quest (and all other quests actually) as a pure mage; that said, the issue that has been pointed out time and time again is that spells (regardless of school) don’t scale past a certain threshold and with the absence of spellcrafting that is barrier you can’t get over.
Now, unless you are playing at Master difficulty and around +40 level, a playthrough as a pure mage is perfectly viable, simply less effective than playing with a thief/warrior.
I’ve fought dragons that are a lot harder than the random ones. The Blood Dragon battle near Morthal, for example, was pretty goddamn epic. It was a 40-minute battle (including a reload), I used nearly every potion in my inventory and STILL barely beat him. I had to use tactics, running for cover (which was scarce), desperately trying to heal up after his breath brought me from full to almost dead. He was pretty badass.
I can understand why the dragons are not generally at the top of the difficulty curve, though. I mean, you are supposed to be this magically-endowed dragonslayer. So you have an easier time fighting them than most folks.
Juste
4328
Goddamn i hate those sabre cats. They insist on two-shotting my poor magethief and they are freakin’ everywhere in these mountains!
Has anyone found a reliable way to take them down? I’m level 11.
Razgon
4329
Heh, its the ninjacats from Red Dead Redemption all over again!
That is good to know but I’m already having trouble beating some mobs at 12 and relying on Lydia to do much of the work. I guess I wasn’t paying to close attention about the spell discussion. I assumed that what was meant was that once you reached expert spells there was no way of enchanting/modifying the spells to do more damage other than perks. However, my assumption (which after reading the net I now know is wrong) was that a Firebolt cast from a mage with Destruction 25 did less damage than somebody with Destruction of 100. Just like a 9 mm pistol did more damage in Fallout when the owner had guns skill of 25 vs 100.
What I didn’t realize is that only advantage of higher skills seems to be it lets you pick better perks. I can’t say I agree with this design decision and lowers my impression of the game by notch.
Oh well I guess I’ll start an Orc and become a tank or 2 handed guy.
Tony_M
4331
Wait what? So I’ve been raising my conjuration and restoration skills on my Orc Warrior, but I don’t have any plans to put perks into them (at least not till the unlikely levels of 40+), but I assumed that the increased skill would still be of benefit. Are you saying that those extra skill points in magic skills aren’t achieving anything other than artificially boosting my level (and the level of my enemies) without an increase in power?
Well no because every time you gain a level you get to increase health magic or stamina and you get another perk. So even if your healing/summoning spells aren’t improving you are still getting more powerful from leveling up.
That seems to be my impression. It also means that my Light Armor skill on my Mage is rather useless since I haven’t put perks in it either.
It’s still stupid given that every other skill in the game is affected in some way by how skilled you are in it, regardless of perks. If that’s not the case for magic then that’s an awful design decision.
Razgon
4335
Are you sure they actually are so? I mean, I don’t think blades do more damage from levelling up one-handed. I don’t think armor protects you more from levelling up the skill.
I am almost sure that blades do, and Speech/Lockpicking/etc all do aswell.
I don’t think so. Otherwise, why have the perks in Lockpicking that specifically make levels of locks easier? (Not that we know by how much…)
Well my lockpicking has gotten much easier on my character with 40 in lockpicking then it ever was with my now new character.
Oh well, maybe it’s all just my imagination :)
Giaddon
4339
Both those things are affected by skill.
Speech definitely gives a boost to the cost of buying/selling items. I think higher enchantment skill gives you higher percentage increase in the enchantment. I don’t notice any increase in Alchemy for restore health potions at 20 or 25 skill. Nor for Smithing My impression that lockpick is helped with higher skill but it is hard to be sure.
In contrast I don’t see any benefit for higher armors skills and maybe not combat skills. AFAIK armor just reduces damage and is independent of skill.
