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[forsaken1111]

I have it. But I'm not gonna go kill something, quick travel to an enchanting table, go find something else to kill, repeat,repeat....

I've been using the atronach forge under the university

Hrm, I like sticking to the specific guild for each class (warrior/mage/theif) but I'll check that out.

You'll need to amass the materials required to summon them but it's fairly effective. Also I haven't tried but you may be able to soul steal your own summons.

[Tellemurius]

I have it. But I'm not gonna go kill something, quick travel to an enchanting table, go find something else to kill, repeat,repeat....

I've been using the atronach forge under the university

Hrm, I like sticking to the specific guild for each class (warrior/mage/theif) but I'll check that out.

You'll need to amass the materials required to summon them but it's fairly effective. Also I haven't tried but you may be able to soul steal your own summons.

You always could. I believe there was a explanation in one of the lore books that when you summoned a creature from the other side you pull their soul in a temporary container but its enough that you can trap it.

[Micro102]

You cannot capture souls of monsters summoned by scrolls or spells, but I don't know about from the forge.

[Gizogin]

Get 1,000 Azura's Stars, then.

If you're willing to cheat to get that, then you may as well just cheat for level 100 Enchanting directly, but that's just me.

[MorleyDev]

If you're willing to grind it doing the exact same task over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again (and in a single-player game none-the-less) you may as well cheat

[alway]

Tip: You gain enchanting xp by recharging enchanted items and staves.

Translation: Find a couple good staves, open with soul trap, and recharge after every kill.

[bombzero]

i would have been so much happier with skyrim if they had made dragons i dont know.... a actually dangerous enemy?

i mean, bandit leaders were tougher than dragons! and giants would kill elder dragons 1v1.


just seems a little bit odd that the most fearsome creature to ever exist in the elder scrolls world, (according to Bethesda) can be taken out by things considered nuisances to towns, or by a very small band of city guards.

EDIT: on second thought, maybe its just that all the little wimpy pansies out there would cry if their game wasn't winnable at level 1 
seriously though, difficulty of RPG games is going WAAAY down.

skyrim is a good game by itself in many respects, just seems to be lacking somehow compared to oblivion and morrowind. you may say dont compare it to the previous games, but how the hell am i not supposed to compare how fun/challenging/plot-heavy a newer game in a series is to its earlier counterparts?
i think Bethesda is dumbing things down too much. 

[Kilroy the Grand]

I agree.

[Sordid]

Yeah, I don't really get it. It's like they deliberately designed the game to provide instant gratification, without realizing that there is no such thing, that without effort there is no satisfaction. Didn't it occur to them that just throwing dragons at the player straight at level 1 would make them feel extremely weak? That the fights would be totally anti-climactic and victory would feel hollow? Dragons should by definition be late-game boss enemies, not something you get as a random encounter straight from the start. I find it utterly baffling that for all the work and time and money that it took to make Skyrim they made such a very basic design error. I can understand that some bugs can sneak through, but how do you not notice that the player can kill a dragon at level 1!? It must've been done on purpose, and that causes me to question to mental health of the person who made that decision.

Even weirder, Bethsoft used to understand this. Remember TES: Redguard? Yeah, there was a dragon in a prior TES game. Just one, and it was a boss. This "1 dragon good, therefore many dragons better" mindset can only exist in the head of someone who has never heard the word "pacing".

[IronyOwl]

Dragons are a fairly major part of the game/storyline in a game that prides itself on allowing the player to spin around and start marching off in the opposite direction at any time. I suppose they could have made only three, custom-crafted dragons in the entire game, but I'm inclined to think that would have been considerably worse. If they wanted dragons to be an innate, unscripted feature, they had to come in at the very start.

I agree that the scaling of dragons is a bit off, but there just wasn't any good way to handle the level one thing without doing something completely different. The fact that your very first dragon fight includes so much NPC help was probably a good way to handle it, but afterwards they needed something to swoop down on you right away, not after you'd hit level 15 or completed Investigate The Dragon Rumors or what have you.

[bombzero]

im not really sure, on one hand Bethesda is a great company, they care about customers, and actually fix bugs. (*cough* infinity ward *cough*)

but on the other hand they made dragons push-overs. i mean every "big" enemy in oblivion was like "oh fuck, oh fuck, RUN!". i mean i found ogres intimidating at level 40, so they must have done something right.

i think possibly its this whole 'scaling enemies by level' idea that has taken over mainstream RPGs. i don't think the player should sanely be able to access endgame areas until level 50 or so. and that level 50 should be a damned accomplishment, with god-like power to accompany it. (see, any older RPG), this new design tactic every company is using makes for an easy unenjoyable game.

one might argue its so everyone can play, well what they have done is make it so anyone can pick up a controller and beat the game in a day. old-school games were a grueling assault for even veteran gamers, and i miss that with newer games.

(btw, how the hell can i be 16 and feel nostalgic about a gaming era from before i was born? especially considering Halo and CoD were my intros to gaming. i guess i was born knowing what good games were.  )

Dragons are a fairly major part of the game/storyline in a game that prides itself on allowing the player to spin around and start marching off in the opposite direction at any time. I suppose they could have made only three, custom-crafted dragons in the entire game, but I'm inclined to think that would have been considerably worse. If they wanted dragons to be an innate, unscripted feature, they had to come in at the very start.

I agree that the scaling of dragons is a bit off, but there just wasn't any good way to handle the level one thing without doing something completely different. The fact that your very first dragon fight includes so much NPC help was probably a good way to handle it, but afterwards they needed something to swoop down on you right away, not after you'd hit level 15 or completed Investigate The Dragon Rumors or what have you.

one of the main issues was the scaling, leveling up should have a point, making it possible to kill enemies you couldn't before, not making enemies that you could already kill easier, and making new easily killable enemies available. hell i would have fucking loved it if dragons were the 'SHIT RUN' enemy of the game at low levels, only slayable through hit-and-run tactics or NPC help. as is, a town guard has a decent chance against one.

my opinion probably isnt helped by the fact that im a bit of a dragon lover, so them making dragons the pansy weakling enemy of the game rubs me the wrong way. older RPGs always have dragons portrayed as lethal, dangerous enemies that you need a whole group of nigh-legendary allies to take down.


hmm, maybe its more not so that dragons are weak, but that bandit leaders, frost trolls, and dragon priests are considerably more dangerous then the 'bringers of the end times'.

[IronyOwl]

but on the other hand they made dragons push-overs. i mean every "big" enemy in oblivion was like "oh fuck, oh fuck, RUN!". i mean i found ogres intimidating at level 40, so they must have done something right.

i think possibly its this whole 'scaling enemies by level' idea that has taken over mainstream RPGs. i don't think the player should sanely be able to access endgame areas until level 50 or so. and that level 50 should be a damned accomplishment, with god-like power to accompany it. (see, any older RPG), this new design tactic every company is using makes for an easy unenjoyable game.

These two are completely at odds with each other. Goblins and ogres were tough at higher levels because their health (and maybe damage? don't recall) scaled by level.

Furthermore, not-scaling means only tiny fragments of the game are relevant at any one time. Imagine if instead of being able to run around in the wilderness and find some random ruin to explore, you had to ask NPCs what the three level-appropriate ruins surrounding this level-appropriate quest hub were, none of which was relevant before and none of which would be relevant after.

I'm also not sure you get much more sense of accomplishment from slaying the level 50 balors the game spits at you at level 50 than you do from slaying the level 1 goblins the game spits at you at level 1. I mean, it's certainly possible for being able to take down the Horrible Gates of Doom to be much more satisfying than the Rickety Hovels of Flailing, but in practice it's usually the specifics that matter, not some overarching motif or assurances from lore.

one of the main issues was the scaling, leveling up should have a point, making it possible to kill enemies you couldn't before, not making enemies that you could already kill easier, and making new easily killable enemies available. hell i would have fucking loved it if dragons were the 'SHIT RUN' enemy of the game at low levels, only slayable through hit-and-run tactics or NPC help. as is, a town guard has a decent chance against one.

Trouble is, in order for that to matter you have to be able to run up against them and find out that you can't kill them first. This is extremely problematic from a design perspective, because it means either the player is respawning constantly from being ganked by random demigod NPCs they'll be able to fight in fifty levels, or loading constantly from the same, or can disengage from fights, even from much, much higher-level enemies, relatively easily and reliably.

Also, especially in a game this open, "only slayable through hit-and-run tactics" tends to equate to "Can't beat them normally but can bug or exploit a win out of them," which tends to be unfulfilling and extremely damaging to immersion. With dragons in particular, you've also got the issues of them being flying and capable of using ranged attacks, so being able to successfully run away, either permanently or as a skirmish tactic, would most likely be either impossible or rather wonky.

my opinion probably isnt helped by the fact that im a bit of a dragon lover, so them making dragons the pansy weakling enemy of the game rubs me the wrong way. older RPGs always have dragons portrayed as lethal, dangerous enemies that you need a whole group of nigh-legendary allies to take down.


hmm, maybe its more not so that dragons are weak, but that bandit leaders, frost trolls, and dragon priests are considerably more dangerous then the 'bringers of the end times'.

Well, if it helps, those dragons are probably mook dragons. It makes a certain amount of sense that a lone, ordinary Dragon would be somewhat less risky than a Bandit Chieftain or Volken, Holder Of One Of The Nine. I do agree that the upper limits probably aren't strong enough, though.

Plus, they can fly and use magic, which puts them at a decided advantage. Granted, they don't always use those advantages very well, but against the player at least strafing with dragonfire tends to be fairly futile anyway.

[MorleyDev]

They should of had a reason mentioned in-game for Dragons to get stronger as you level up. Even if it was just "Older, more powerful dragons take longer for Alduin to resurrect". Some kind of justification that can help you suspend the disbelief...

[bombzero]

They should of had a reason mentioned in-game for Dragons to get stronger as you level up. Even if it was just "Older, more powerful dragons take longer for Alduin to resurrect". Some kind of justification that can help you suspend the disbelief...

a solid point, actually, that was sort of my assumption.

@ironyowl, im not against 'scaling' by level, im more against making it so the enemy that 'your level' always takes minimal player skill to beat. at level 1-10 stuff that is 'your level' should take some skill, a bit more for the next set, a bit more for the next, and to top it off the final set should be the 3/4 hardest, creating a feeling you just got more powerful.

still logic states any creature that big should be able to lightly paw-slap you and send you flying several feet, and their bite would probably crunch steel armor, not be reduced to 1 damage.
overall my logic is along the lines of, "this creature weighs a couple tons, has sharp claws and teeth, and a tough scaly hide." so they SHOULD be tough to kill, but not necessarily impossible at low level.

i mean i didn't even need health potions to fight elder dragons, despite HP getting a slight nerf in skyrim.

i know it comes off a bit wierd, but basically im irritated about the main antagonists in the game, which Bethesda built up a ton of hype about, being roughly akin to groups of bandits difficulty wise.

also, Bethesda SERIOUSLY needs to figure out how to do bigger battles in a computer resource friendly way. its been done for years already. check out a game by the name of viking: battle for asgard for wonderful examples of what a 'battle' is in a video game, spoiler warning, its not a 10v10 brawl. though Viking did drop the ball on storyline...

yes im basically pissed at Bethesda for (IMO) botching a wonderful opportunity at making a great game, its good, not great.

[Azkanan]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again.

Why Skyrim fails:

1. Hand-holding gameplay.
2. Fetch Quests = All Quests
3. Anti-climatic main/guild questlines.
4. Shallow NPC Relations.

1. Hand-holding gameplay.
YOU MUST FIND THE [ANCIENT ITEM] THAT HAS BEEN LOST FOR CENTURIES! Let me draw where it is on your map for you.

2. Fetch Quests = All Quests.
Every quest in the game is basically a fetch quest. Go here, Grab X, come back. Go here, Kill X, come back. Go here, Talk to X, come back.

3. Anti-climatic main/guild questlines.
3a. Guilds.

After becoming the most powerful magician in Skyrim, the most respected warrior of the north, the most insidious thief in the frozen north, you'll still have some 10 year old walk up to you and call you a cunt. After becoming so accomplished, after hours of eyeball-burning exploration and action, you get fuck all for your efforts. You get a pretty title and another place to sleep.

3b. Main questline.

After spending hours of fighting dragons and all the spoiler shenanigans you go through, right at the very end, the climatic moment of the game, after you

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Kill either of the top leaders in the game (Imperial boss / Rebel boss)

, the guy you accompanied steps outside to address his soldiers and says "We've done it! We've won!". The crowd then disperses, and you're left going "Wait, what? What now?". You try to speak to the guy you accompanied, and he talks as if he barely knows you.

On that note, the whole "War" system is fucking bollocks. You basically attack forts with a bunch of NPCs, battles that have no significant appeal or pay-off, that last for five minutes. If not less.


4. Shallow NPC Relations.

The only NPCs I ever felt like I wanted to learn more about, were Lydia and that Smithy woman at the gate of Dragon...run.. Dragonkeep... whatever it's called. I haven't played for a while.
And the most annoying thing about it is, that you can't do shit with them beyond some static/linear Q&A - and even that has been severely dumbed down from Oblivion, which in turn was actually dumbed down from Morrowind.