Skyrim - my story of woe :p
- Thread starter FoxEye
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Light Amour skill is about 50. 1-handed weapons skill is 60. With a bound mystic sword I take most stuff down in 8-12 hits. Dragons in about 10 hits.
It's funny, a dragon bite takes a bit less than half my health, but I've yet to be 1 hit KO'd by one. The bandits are much, much more lethal than the dragons
Go figure...
It does kind of wreck the immersion, after having an epic (but fair) five minute fight vs a dragon, to come across a bandit who kills you with 1 arrow
It's funny, a dragon bite takes a bit less than half my health, but I've yet to be 1 hit KO'd by one. The bandits are much, much more lethal than the dragons
Go figure...It does kind of wreck the immersion, after having an epic (but fair) five minute fight vs a dragon, to come across a bandit who kills you with 1 arrow
Soldato
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It does kind of wreck the immersion, after having an epic (but fair) five minute fight vs a dragon, to come across a bandit who kills you with 1 arrow
Armour needs to be improved and light armour especially so. It also depends what type of armour you're wearing elven > steel > iron etc you need to get the best available for your level and improve it. Bandits are underpowered generally they usually only have iron/steel but Draugr level better, wait till you encounter their ebony weapons
n.b. you're making full use of ward spells, right?
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Against magic users, sure. It's a waste of time vs melee/archers.
Hmmmmm. Well I maxed my enchanting, and I have a real dilemna now.
Double enchanted gear with max enchanting skill is too powerful. Even without using any potions, just enchanting on it's own with the perks.
It renders anything I could loot worthless. I don't really like that. Even limiting myself to max -50% spell cost, I can have so many +mana and +mana regen items that I realistically cannot run out of mana.
I can also have +80% resistance to anything I want, any time I want. +50% to all resists on my gear plus one potion.
I'm not sure if this is something they intended. But it doesn't seem like much fun now as no spell caster is a threat any more.
It's just a shame the game is so polarised. Either you're getting 1-hit killed or you make yourself a god. I really wish there was something in between.
I have about 50 smithing now. And even with that (low) level of skill, my weapons are better than anything that could drop.
So it really does seem that smithing and enchanting (either, or, or both) really do break the game. With either of them there is no longer a challenge. With both of them it's just sad.
Trouble is, having levelled up many times from smithing and enchanting, I almost must use them now or I'm back to being 1-hit killed.
I think I'll just finish the damn game and stop trying to fix all the glaring issues with its design. I don't think you can play it properly without mods, after all. I'd been trying to avoid that, but the base game is just a joke (game mechanics, not the world which is beautiful).
Double enchanted gear with max enchanting skill is too powerful. Even without using any potions, just enchanting on it's own with the perks.
It renders anything I could loot worthless. I don't really like that. Even limiting myself to max -50% spell cost, I can have so many +mana and +mana regen items that I realistically cannot run out of mana.
I can also have +80% resistance to anything I want, any time I want. +50% to all resists on my gear plus one potion.
I'm not sure if this is something they intended. But it doesn't seem like much fun now as no spell caster is a threat any more.
It's just a shame the game is so polarised. Either you're getting 1-hit killed or you make yourself a god. I really wish there was something in between.
I have about 50 smithing now. And even with that (low) level of skill, my weapons are better than anything that could drop.
So it really does seem that smithing and enchanting (either, or, or both) really do break the game. With either of them there is no longer a challenge. With both of them it's just sad.
Trouble is, having levelled up many times from smithing and enchanting, I almost must use them now or I'm back to being 1-hit killed.
I think I'll just finish the damn game and stop trying to fix all the glaring issues with its design. I don't think you can play it properly without mods, after all. I'd been trying to avoid that, but the base game is just a joke (game mechanics, not the world which is beautiful).
Soldato
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Too hard/too easy is something thats common to most games. I remember with Gran Turismo you either had the "wrong" car and were behind the other drivers or you souped it up to the max in which case you were smoking every other car off the starting line. Neither was much fun. Unless you have a game that fundamentally doesn't level then you're always going to have this issue and even then people will complain its to hard/too easy depending on competency/experience. Which is why levelling exists in the first place to allow every player to find his/her level and feel like some kind of gaming god who can do no wrong, and flattery towards the player is part of any games appeal at the end of the day and game studios know this.
I think in my case I will simply limit myself to only 1 of each type of enchantment. No potions of enchanting allowed, and no +alchemy gear allowed when making potions. We'll see how that goes.
Hopefully then some of the looted gear will be better.
Hopefully then some of the looted gear will be better.
There definitely is. You just have to know how to sort of handicap yourself from using overpowered builds. You have to adjust the difficulty level as you play. And of course there are some useful mods that will keep things interesting in terms of challenge if things are getting too easy for you.
The difficulty spikes usually come from when you have spent time leveling up aspects that dont contribute much to your offensive capabilities. The enemy scaling, or introduction of new, harder enemies, means that you're just really unprepared for them at times. Best thing to do here is to just lower the difficulty a notch(or two) for a while. Get stronger, then raise the difficulty back up when you feel the challenge is being eroded.
The game is not good at dictating a universal challenge level and it's not surprising given the incredible amount of ways to exploit systems and the large variety of ways to play. Thing is - if they took away these exploitative builds, lots of people would complain. Many people enjoy having some overpowered beast of a character in RPG's, especially RPG's like this. So for better or worse, it's really up to you to control the level of challenge the game throws at you.
A rule of thumb is to never store anything outside of your base for this reason. Chests in other buildings respawn now and again.
True. I did enjoy my Dwarven bow which slapped for 256 base damage and then 30 more fire on top of that, tripled when you got a stealth hit, but it did make that character a bit too easy to play so I sold it.
I may have made a full suit of armour, necklace and ring to improve smithing, and then slugged a couple of smithing potions before making it. T'was like bringing a minigun to a knife fight, but it was cracking good fun!
An example of what I mean, about there being little middle ground.
Was in Ysgramor's Tomb, and you fight a bunch of mobs all called "Companion Ghost". In one room, the first two die in one hit each. They do almost no damage to me if they hit.
The third mob in the room, with the same name as the other two, one-hit kills *me* from almost full health.
There is no middle ground! On a harder difficulty two of those mobs would have been challenging and one impossible.
On an easier difficulty one "normal" mob and two trivial mobs.
But on the middle/default difficulty, two of those mobs are trivial and one insta-gibs me as I run up to it. Does that not strike anyone as strange?
Anyway, I've found out a bit about why NPCs have are able to kill you from almost full health. The game mechanics are truly awful in this regard.
In order to determine if an NPC can one-hit kill you, the game calculates how hard the NPC would hit /if you had no armour on/. If the hit would kill you with no armour on, the NPC does a "killing blow" animation.
In other words, killing blows completely ignore your armour. The more you invest in armour and defense, the more this game mechanic laughs in your face.
With a lot of armour, an ordinary hit might barely scratch you, but you might still get insta-gibbed by a "finishing blow" at 80%+ health.
You almost couldn't invent worse mechanics if you tried.
Was in Ysgramor's Tomb, and you fight a bunch of mobs all called "Companion Ghost". In one room, the first two die in one hit each. They do almost no damage to me if they hit.
The third mob in the room, with the same name as the other two, one-hit kills *me* from almost full health.
There is no middle ground! On a harder difficulty two of those mobs would have been challenging and one impossible.
On an easier difficulty one "normal" mob and two trivial mobs.
But on the middle/default difficulty, two of those mobs are trivial and one insta-gibs me as I run up to it. Does that not strike anyone as strange?
Anyway, I've found out a bit about why NPCs have are able to kill you from almost full health. The game mechanics are truly awful in this regard.
In order to determine if an NPC can one-hit kill you, the game calculates how hard the NPC would hit /if you had no armour on/. If the hit would kill you with no armour on, the NPC does a "killing blow" animation.
In other words, killing blows completely ignore your armour. The more you invest in armour and defense, the more this game mechanic laughs in your face.
With a lot of armour, an ordinary hit might barely scratch you, but you might still get insta-gibbed by a "finishing blow" at 80%+ health.
You almost couldn't invent worse mechanics if you tried.
Must admit, I've remembered why I stopped playing the first time
Once you've seen all the different kinds of dungeons (ice cave/ falmer cave/ dwemer ruins, etc), you've basically seen it all. The "quests" are all pretty much identical: go here, obtain or kill this one thing, come back.
I'm not sure where the genuinely interesting quests are hiding. Anyone want to suggest a really good quest to do?
Once you've seen all the different kinds of dungeons (ice cave/ falmer cave/ dwemer ruins, etc), you've basically seen it all. The "quests" are all pretty much identical: go here, obtain or kill this one thing, come back.
I'm not sure where the genuinely interesting quests are hiding. Anyone want to suggest a really good quest to do?
Soldato
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That seems to be true for just about every game I've ever played, at least once I've started to get to grips with it.
True. I did enjoy my Dwarven bow which slapped for 256 base damage and then 30 more fire on top of that, tripled when you got a stealth hit, but it did make that character a bit too easy to play so I sold it.
124 damage is more than enough for me. I actually started using a wooden hunting bow again just for a bit of fun and while it wasn't hard or difficult to stay alive (dodging still works regardless) the amount of hits it took to bring down an enemy did start to get a tad tedious.
Yeah that does sound strange there is nothing that can one-shot me since goodness knows when its been so long, maybe @ level 20-30 onwards. You've managed to mess something up somewhere or other likely your armour or health isn't correctly levelled, or both.
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Bethesda games lack in-depth spawn systems, it shouldn't just be (PC level) +/- x with a few minimum levels on monsters, that is boring.
It should really be an adjustable logarithm scale, with occasional/rare spikes (with associative loot that isn't a disappointment either).
It should really be an adjustable logarithm scale, with occasional/rare spikes (with associative loot that isn't a disappointment either).
Meh, this game is so crap in terms of combat systems.
Went back to the main quest, met Delphine, went to dragon burial site. For laughs, decided to see what happens if I do nothing at all. She spanks the dragon single handedly without taking any damage. *Any* damage.
"Why does the game need me, exactly? Delphine is clearly more badass then I am. Those dragons eat me in two hits, but can't so much as put a scratch in her."
It is just pathetic. I reload, attack the dragon in close combat as she does, and it proceeds to eat me. I have 330 health, I'm guessing Delphine has eleventy billion, like the other NPCs. It's just plain crap, and makes a mockery of the whole game.
If you take a follower with you, you can complete the whole game without taking any action yourself. Just let your (unkillable) follower destroy everything. They are much, much better at taking and dealing damage than the player can ever be. It makes you feel extremely stupid for playing. Why bother when you will never be as good as your NPC companions?
And why did Beth make every quest related NPC unkillable? And all NPC followers? It's just a cop out.
Went back to the main quest, met Delphine, went to dragon burial site. For laughs, decided to see what happens if I do nothing at all. She spanks the dragon single handedly without taking any damage. *Any* damage.
"Why does the game need me, exactly? Delphine is clearly more badass then I am. Those dragons eat me in two hits, but can't so much as put a scratch in her."
It is just pathetic. I reload, attack the dragon in close combat as she does, and it proceeds to eat me. I have 330 health, I'm guessing Delphine has eleventy billion, like the other NPCs. It's just plain crap, and makes a mockery of the whole game.
If you take a follower with you, you can complete the whole game without taking any action yourself. Just let your (unkillable) follower destroy everything. They are much, much better at taking and dealing damage than the player can ever be. It makes you feel extremely stupid for playing. Why bother when you will never be as good as your NPC companions?
And why did Beth make every quest related NPC unkillable? And all NPC followers? It's just a cop out.
^^ That aspect was amusing me earlier - now got a new character to L26 since I last posted in the thread - got Aranea Ienith as a follower (given her a few upgrades) and she just spanks almost everything and her spells do twice as much damage as mine lol - basically cloning her setup is pretty powerful though:
Cast stoneflesh or ironflesh before going into a fight
Conjurer either flame or frost atronach depending on enemy
Then I've got favourites for dual handed firebolt, lightning bolt (thinking of trying to replace it) and ice storm, healing and spam magicka potions if needed.
Also followed her perk tree a bit with Augmented Frost, Augmented Shock, Magic Resistance, Recovery and Regeneration. Will also do Mage Armor later but using enchanted heavy armour at the moment until I've better light/mage clothing.
Between enhancement and levelling I've now got Magicka around 500-600 and health at IIRC 220 or 230 (aiming to get health to about 300).
I tried using fireball but its silly AoE keeps aggroing my own follower on me lol.
Its a fairly potent setup in general.
Aranea Ienith is a bit of a tricky one as she goes crazy and does her own thing half the time and has a lot of AoE attacks that can cause problems with collateral damage lol - had to reload a few times after she went and massacred all the guards in a few towns.
EDIT: Dual spamming ice storm plus the blizzard shout into a room is crazy heh.
Cast stoneflesh or ironflesh before going into a fight
Conjurer either flame or frost atronach depending on enemy
Then I've got favourites for dual handed firebolt, lightning bolt (thinking of trying to replace it) and ice storm, healing and spam magicka potions if needed.
Also followed her perk tree a bit with Augmented Frost, Augmented Shock, Magic Resistance, Recovery and Regeneration. Will also do Mage Armor later but using enchanted heavy armour at the moment until I've better light/mage clothing.
Between enhancement and levelling I've now got Magicka around 500-600 and health at IIRC 220 or 230 (aiming to get health to about 300).
I tried using fireball but its silly AoE keeps aggroing my own follower on me lol.
Its a fairly potent setup in general.
Aranea Ienith is a bit of a tricky one as she goes crazy and does her own thing half the time and has a lot of AoE attacks that can cause problems with collateral damage lol - had to reload a few times after she went and massacred all the guards in a few towns.
EDIT: Dual spamming ice storm plus the blizzard shout into a room is crazy heh.
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Soldato
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^ wow I can't imagine having magicka that high I'm at about 130 heh. Health is around that level though and if wearing enchanted can bump that and basically immortal lol. I gave up on followers a long time ago got sick to death of them rushing into combat when I didn't want them to then going down 10 seconds later and leaving me to deal with the mess they created.
Well I stopped playing this anyway, in favour of getting through (some of) the vast legion of unplayed Steam games I have in my library
Glad I did tbh, Skyrim had become a chore to play. Same thing happened the first time I played it. At some point, you aren't having fun anymore, but the game is so bloody huge you keep playing somehow Playing something else really made me realise how little I'd been enjoying Skyrim.
Glad I did tbh, Skyrim had become a chore to play. Same thing happened the first time I played it. At some point, you aren't having fun anymore, but the game is so bloody huge you keep playing somehow
Playing something else really made me realise how little I'd been enjoying Skyrim.