mjgreeny, you can always leave 'em behind for a bit when you wanna be a ninja, then lead enemies back to them. That’s what I do. :)
Jinsai
2022
If so, it’s not a very good design. As Tom Chick noted in his review, there’s a weird, semi-useless smattering of stats in the game. I can’t tell what level critter I’m fighting or have killed, for example.
I can’t tell how much damage is being done, inflicted, blocked, protected, etc. aside from watching my (or their) health bar shrink…so why bother putting numbers in at all?
Presumably it’s just so you know which potion or item is “better”, but since “better” is also relative to what “level” you and the critters are, it seems all the more arbitrary.
There’s no harm in drinking a ton of different potions, but there’s also not much discernable benefit…so why bother? Would it have killed them to put a countdown showing when effects wear off? or even just an icon to show what the effect is? Or even one of those awful delayed/fading messages in the upper left corner?
When I zap some critter, the game has no problem saying something like “Hagar The Horrible resisted your puny frost spell” right before Hagar one-shots me and my body flies halfway to Whiterun.
I am enjoying it, despite all that.
The numbers tell you which weapon or piece of armor is better. I don’t really need (or want!) to know a numerical value of how much damage I’m inflicting, how much is being resisted or blocked, etc. I don’t care. If I’m not doing very much damage with a swing or a spell, I know it’s not an effective weapon for that encounter.
Likewise with my own resistances. If an ice dragon swoops down I chug a frost resist potion because I die quicker without it. I really don’t need to have numbers of how much damage I’m taking flash on the screen to understand that better.
I don’t care what “level” the monsters I’m fighting are. It doesn’t really matter. The only time it matters is with spells that say they affect monsters up to a certain level, which I agree is vague. Still, you can quickly ascertain their usefulness by trying them.
kerzain
2024
I am glad there are no floaty numbers, or scrolling text window for such things. I’m also glad people aren’t given the option of enabling/disabling such things for themselves, because knowing they were being catered to in this fashion would ruin my single player experience.
flyinj
2025
What possible good are daggers in the game? Does anyone ever use them? They just seem like really crappy swords from what I can tell.
Pogo
2026
I used invisibility two times at lower level when my quest target was simply an item in a chest… a chest guarded by 3 overpowered enemies.
I don’t remember if it wore off immediately after lockpicking and looting the chest, because I ran like hell afterward (though a frost spell almost slowed me down enough to get my ass kicked).
I imagine if a fight is going in such a way that you would have to chug ALL your health potions just to survive, you could pop invisibility and run away. I haven’t tried it.
ha ha.
I don’t think it’s “not very good design” to have a vision and a philosophy for your game, and to stick to it. I think they’re intentionally trying to obscure things like monster levels and how much damage is being resisted. I see nothing wrong with not including the option to disregard their own intent.
Only if you have decent stealth and are sneaking away. Otherwise enemies do a good job of tracking/swinging at you on sound alone.
candide
2029
There’s a stealth perk in the game that gives 15x damage for backstabbing with a dagger.
RepoMan
2030
Your triple negative has thoroughly confused me, sir.
kerzain
2031
They’re faster than swords, which in and of itself is good, but also pretty handy for proc weapons.
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Unlike swords, swinging a dagger makes no sound so you can swing and miss and still not alert a bunch of enemies.
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Daggers have the highest multiplier in the game, allowing you (with the right set up) to one hit kill every single enemy.
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They have the fastest attack animation making them great if you want to deliver a poison in melee range.
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They have a really cool power attack animation and the unique “throat slice” animation.
Of course this is assuming you are playing a sneaky type, they are useless (in practical terms) for a 2 handed/dual wielding warrior or mage.
@soondifferent: unless you have muffled boots or are using the muffle spells which means they won’t detect you at all; aside from the enchant+alchemy+smithing combo the other game breaking combo is simply illusion + muffled boots + daggers, you can pretty much kill an entire room one by one without being hit once.
Here’s a good example of how broken it is:
spoiler vid
Skipper
2033
Skill perks, and armor perks, believe it or not, make them probably one of the strongest single shot weapons in the game. Nearly game-breaking so, if you are so inclined, and if you’re stealthy.
Skipper
2034
Elder scrolls games aren’t really known for a lot of that, and to be honest, it helps more with immersion when there is less of it in game. I can understand the frustration, but there are numbers there for some of it. Your weapon damage, your health, etc. To what Tom said though, that could have been solved by simply changing the spell text to something like, “weak foes,” or, “powerful foes,” keeping to the theme of less-number based RPG.
Skorin
2035
I can kill literally everything with a single backstab.
an example of what I can kill with a backstab
The final boss of the main quest. And everything else.
Stealth is completely broken and I love it.
Aeon221
2036
This is very true, the AI WILL hunt your ass down post attack even if stealthed, muffled and invis if you don’t have much skill in stealth.
And if you cast invis without quiet casting, it aggros loads of them.
Skipper
2037
Some notes on that video though:
-He’s wearing a double damage from dagger item, note the bonus.
-I don’t think he’s playing on Master, I know he says he is, but the HP’s on some of those in my game are insane at that difficulty. Let’s assume he is, but I have my doubts.
-He chose to dual wield daggers, not stealth via 1 hit.
So honestly, they could do something along the lines of:
-Ditch the double backstab armor.
-Don’t allow dual wield backstab score, only one hit.
-Allow some randomness on sneak/invis detection, even at 100 skill.
Personally I just put the dagger away and have fun instead.
One-shotting fools from the shadows never, ever gets old.
Sword and board is so much better in Skyrim than in previous TES games that I’m not even tempted to get my stealth on.
Which makes the Thieves’ Guild quests great. I kinda halfass stealth through the bits you’re expected to, then chug however much invisijuice is necessary once the stealth section becomes non-trivial. Because I’ve got a truly stupid amount of invisijuice, courtesy of my ingredient-collecting OCD.
Skipper
2040
What’s kind of messed up is that I felt the Thieves Guild quests took more of being a thief, than the Mage guild quests took at being a mage. Seriously, the hardest requirement there was casting Fear to get in. :(
