How are Dragons Easy?

[Da_BossMaN69]

This is something that has continually baffled me on this forum. The Idea that somehow the games hardest enemies (of which Bethesda has gone through great lengths to intentionally do so) are considered a cakewalk in this community.

Now part of me thinks some of you guys are either lying or simply let down by how easy they are compared to what you thought they'd be. As in some of you were expecting fights that would last for an hour or so but instead took only 2-5 minutes.

I can accept people saying the fights were easy, but can not accept people saying they were not the Hardest, or at least up there (like top 3 enemies). Meaning if you found dragons easy, then you most certainly had to have found every other creature easy as well.

Some of you guys make sense though when you give comparisons, such as Dragonpriest being harder, that I can understand. But any animal? Bull. How in God's name can a bear, sabercat, or troll be anywhere near the level of difficulty as a dragon. Or an NPC for that matter, especially Forsworn.

It is, in a seriousness almost impossible, and here's why. You can ragdoll NPC's and a majority of other creatures, you can also paralyze them, Ice-form them, to Dragons you can't the most you can do to them is a stagger.

Now In order to understand this I'd like people who disagree to give me a detailed account of their character and fighting style. If you're a warrior then I have to say from experience you HAVE to be full of it.

My guy is decked out in Dragonplate with 800 something armor rating and a Greatsword that does 140, no melee oriented enemy can so much as put a dent in that defense, save for Dragons. And while we're on melee, how many people here have the perk quick reflexes.

To me, it's the single ultimate melee perk, basically while blocking an incoming power attack it slows time down for a solid 3-8 seconds. So here's where Dragons are superior in combat to other melee oriented enemies. With this perk I can completely circle an enemy and attack them unopposed from behind. Guess what, can't do that to dragons since they CAN hit you from every angle.

And while on the improbability of this, I also have to point out the huge difference in Health between Dragons and others. Any NPC at MOST has 600 health, and no higher, Dragons have 4000, hell the weakest having 1000, how then can they be easier.

On top of that the weakest dragon deals 40 damage melee, but can also deal 50 damage in breath power, an Ancient (let alone a Legendary) deals 300.

No Melee oriented enemy can reach that amount of damage in a single hit.

And when it comes to Mages the only other enemy i can even somewhat budge on being remotely as difficult the disconnect is still there.

An NPC mage can still be afflicted by Ragdoll and paralysis, again Dragons can't. And the ultimate mages in the game, Dragon priests, as hard as they are, still don't come close, why?

Because once you close that gap, what do they have? No melee capability what so ever, they go down like a ton of bricks in CQC, Dragons don't suffer this problem.
And some people claim the difficulty lies in trying to close that gap because they float around, to them I ask, have you ever fought a dragon? They fly around dive bombing you in fire or frost like it's no one's business. At least a mage in float can be hit, Dragons must be landed or hovering for any attack to succesfully hit it, and when you do close that gap they won't just take the pounding.

And INB4 someone says that Dragonrend= Pure Dragon Pwnage, I counter ANY shout= every other NPC pwnage, I can simply stop time around a dragon priest/mage, or simply FUS RO DAH them away, or for the DP's afford me a second or two or rest.

Again to people who disagree post me why and give a detailed account of your character so I can somehow wrap my heads around that.

[Justice knight]

Honestly it completely depends on your build, a pure mage -in my opinion- will find Dragons a cake walk. They don't get close for the Dragon to melee attack and the Mage can dish out a huge amount of damage to the Dragon in the sky or ground.

Stealth characters can also find Dragons laughable, with the Dark Brotherhood gear and Assassin's Blade perk you can one hit them with a dagger stealth attack or sit back and pepper it with sneak attack arrows.

But with my newest pure Melee character, Dragons are far from easy, I can't hit them in the air and because I haven't shored up on magic defence the breath attacks do insane damage especially since I don't have Dragonrend yet it's even harder. I'll admit Dragons are harder than what most people let on, but if you're anything but melee- they're very, very far from being amongst the toughest enemies.

[Nord85]

I won't vote, because my answer is "it depends". With my illusion mage with mediocre destruction spells, the dragon fights were very lengthy and hard without a ton of magicka potions, and even with those they were challenging. With my bow- and armour-using characters, however, it's a completely different story. The normal dragon fight with them goes rather like this: A dragon attacks -> find a big tree or boulder and stand your back against it -> wait for the dragon to hover in place -> shoot -> heal if needed -> repeat the former steps until the dragon lands -> hack away with sword or axe (from the side to avoid the jaws/tail attack) -> loot the dead dragon. Of course, in open space with few potions it gets harder. Then the trick is to always try to run under the dragon when it makes a strafing attack, to minimize the time you're inside the area of effect of its breath. In these situations, ancient and better dragons can be really tough, especially if they breathe fire. A good tactic is to remember that if you use the opposite element shout from theirs with two or more words, they'll stagger.

In short, with a good bow and potions it's rather easy between levels 15 to 30. With only spells and/or with few healing potions dragons are hard.

[philfredobob]

I play as a jack-of-all-trades. but most of the time, i use a sword and shield, a bow for ranged, and restoration to heal myself. oh yes, and i play on Master difficulty.

You say dragons are the toughest, I'm one of those that say they are easy. when they are on the ground, you can usually block the bite attack, and stun them before they can attempt a breath attack. in the air, it's easy to avoid dragon breath attacks by simply putting a solid object between you and the dragon. you can stun dragons with a number of shouts, and completely nullify their breathe attack with the use of one word of ''Become Ethereal'', which regenerates quickly. most of the time, when i am fighting a dragon, i have ''Fast Healing'' equipped, and i simply heal the moment they attack me with breath attacks because breathe attack patterns are slow, and predictable.

while when i go up against, lets say, a Forsworn Briarheart, they use unexpected combos and moves, and also do so very quickly, being able to kill you with one dual wield power attack. or perhaps a Vampire with two shock spells in each hand, is capable of killing me by simply casting both spells, which strike exactly where you aim them with great speed. in both of these situations, if i wasn't playing smart, i wouldn't be left with any time to recover from these attacks. Dragons on the other hand, spend a lot of their time flying about doing nothing, so they give you a lot of opportunity to move around and recover from their attacks, as well as giving you time to find a better fighting environment.

in the end, dragon fights end up very easy. giving ample time to recover from each attack, and many opportunities to strike.

[Mauin]

I've had situations in the game where certain enemies seem to be doing far more damage than normal. One Forsworn Briarheart killed an old character of mine in a single shot, even though a Dragon could barely put a dent in her (to put this into greater perspective, the character was basically a god with around 3000 health and an armor rating in the thousands. Thanks to my enchantments and mods, of course. It was a part of her roleplay. That Briarheart would have had to do over 3000 damage at once to kill her. A Dragon doesn't even come close to that). Sometimes the Dragons that spawn at Word Walls glitch like this, though. They spawn with half health and do at least 5 times the damage they should be doing. That makes them impossible to fight, even with my strongest characters.



Glitches aside, the Dragons are only as easy/hard as you want them to be. My weaker characters are generally made to be at least somewhat resistant to Dragons. They usually have a warrior or spellsword combat style, but their gear is enchanted to give them an approximate 90% resistance to fire, frost, and shock. Along with the usual boosts to health, magicka, and stamina. In battle against a Dragon, they can still be killed easily. The characters, not the Dragons. I have Deadly Dragons and usually have it set fairly close to the "Insane" setting. A character that does 100 damage against a Dragon will take more than 10 minutes to bring it down, where the Dragon could probably kill that character in a single shot. I would estimate that, at their strongest, the weaker characters would probably have an armor rating between 800-1000, around 600 health, 300-400 stamina or magicka (depending on the exact build), have a 90% resistance to the elements, a 25% general magic resistance (unless I have the Atronach Stone, which I usually do), and do around 100-200 damage. Dragons still take ages to kill and they do heavy damage. A Nether Dragon (from Deadly Dragons) could easily kill one of these characters in a single hit. Which is part of the reason why I hate them, but... Whatever.

My "god-like" characters, on the other hand, take only small amounts of damage from Dragons. These characters, like Vulom Staadnau, are intentionally played as demi-gods. Vulom is supposed to be an ancient Vampire who has, throughout her life, finely honed all of her skills. From that, she has gained powers no ordinary mortal could possess. Therefore, I have given her some of the strongest enchantments and gear out of any of my characters. She has around 3000 health, magicka and stamina, and a resistance to magic that's ridiculous. She has a higher armor rating than I can remember and weapons that do around 400-500 damage each. Vulom barely gets scratched by a Dragon (I have them set to do 200% more melee damage and 150% more magic damage. They do no breath damage and their melee blows take off less than a quarter of her health). However, Dragons can still take ages to kill. I believe I have them set to have around 150-200% more health/magicka/stamina than in vanilla, and with a resistance to magic (maybe 20%). If she encounters multiple Dragons at once, the battle can last close to an hour.

[Zephyr]

I'm one of those that say they are easy. when they are on the ground, you can usually block the bite attack, and stun them before they can attempt a breath attack.

That's pretty much what I think, too. As long as you've got good armor rating and block, get right in the dragon's face and bash every time it starts a breath attack or a bite.

I think dragons do enough damage, but they're not tough enough, which is what I use Deadly Dragons for. Taking down a dragon shouldn't be a quick and easy fight.

[Kerr]

Depends on the type of Dragon and how good my character/gear is when I meet it. Outside of using the Oghma Inifinium glitch once, none of my characters so far have been over level 50. I like to play spellswords. So I tend to use a sword in one hand and destruction in another. Then heal when need be. Also I play on the default difficulty, adept.

The weaker dragons, I can deal with them no problem. But an Elder Dragon, Ancient Dragon or one of the even stronger ones added in DLC. Yeah, I'm probably in for a hard fight. I mean I can win, but it will most likely be a long and gruelling battle.

[Da_BossMaN69]

These Forsworn Briarheart encounters are glitches, trust me I've had the same problem in disbelief of what just happened re-loaded the save and watched as a dual wield power attack slashed my character and do only around 50 damage or at least 1/10 of my overall health meanwhile an Ancient needs only 4 bites or 2 breaths to kill me.

I have done fisticuffs with forsworn and bandits with hardly any penalty, my character bounces damages off likes it nothing.

But I think something;s wrong with you guy's game since multiple times I have seen the NPC wars on youtube, dragons always come out on top or at the least are defeated by a dragonpriest. If dragons can simply kill off every creature in the game easily wouldn't it stand to reason that they would be harder to kill than a forsworn. I mean if they could do such incredible damage then why have I never seen a character insta kill a dragon like that before, hell I've seen a Frost wipe out karthspire singlehandedly.

I will agree with their flying habits leaving you a breather though, they aren't overly aggressive in some regards, however I counter that by saying when forced to, they're very difficult to fight, such as with Odavhiing, in a tight environment like that, he didn't fly around and simply attacked relentlessly, easily the hardest fight in the game I've had so far, and I've rofl-stomped Morokei, Lurker (vindicators no less), Arch mages, and their ilk.

I still find this hard to believe though, and to Mauin specifically then if your character has such resistance to magic then he/she would almost certainly have to shrug off other magic users like common mages and even dragon priests.

[Finn Wolfshorn]

I think dragons do enough damage, but they're not tough enough, which is what I use Deadly Dragons for.

This! I too use DD, and I've set it so the dragons do vanilla damage but have much higher armour rating and magic resistance.

But really, vanilla dragons are easy, once you get used to them. My characters are mostly either light armour fighters or unarmoured mages, so they run around a lot during dragon fights evading the dragon's attacks rather than facing it directly. Distraction is always useful; let the dragon focus on anything else but you, whether it be followers, local wildlife, hold guards or giants and mammoths, and you've got all the time in the world to pelt it with arrows or spells. Use Slow Time while the dragon is hovering in one place to get a series of hits in while it's immobile; for a change, use Mark for Death so your attacks do more damage. Once they're grounded hack & slash them from the side until they die; if the jaws ever get close to you, Become Ethereal like philfredobob recommended.

Also, use strategy. Try to lure the dragon to a defensible place, i.e. one with lots of opportunities to take cover, like an already cleared fort that hasn't yet respawned or an ancient Nord tower (Valtheim Towers is one of my own favourite dragon fighting places); it's also good to position yourself near a door, so if the dragon homes in on you you can run inside, heal if needed and come back hoping it's flown off and taken to frying trolls and wolves while you weren't available.

[Marelo]

But I think something;s wrong with you guy's game since multiple times I have seen the NPC wars on youtube, dragons always come out on top or at the least are defeated by a dragonpriest. If dragons can simply kill off every creature in the game easily wouldn't it stand to reason that they would be harder to kill than a forsworn. I mean if they could do such incredible damage then why have I never seen a character insta kill a dragon like that before, hell I've seen a Frost wipe out karthspire singlehandedly.

One NPC versus another NPC is not an adequate measure of how difficult a player will find a fight with either. Players are far more creative and have far more options available to that creativity.

To the larger question, nobody who claims dragons are easier than some other NPCs is lying. Why would they? It's not a competition, and there's good reason a mod like Deadly Dragons both exists and is extremely popular. (I use it to make them twice as tough without changing their damage.)

Dragons are sometimes easier, depending on character build, because they're more predictable. They have relaxed, easy-to-read patterns that can be easily countered with the right gear, enchantments, shouts, potions, or spells. Look at the timing of Become Ethereal, for example. It works wonders in a dragon fight because it usually recharges before another breath attack comes around, and still leaves a window of time for attacks. But against a mage? They'll just keep launching blizzards at you and wreck you as soon as you're out, before the shout can recharge.

Different enemies require different strategies, and different strategies are available to different characters. There's the answer.

[Br3admax]

Dragons take half damage from NPCs. The PC will always do more damage to them.

Anyway all you have to do is hit them in the face hard enough and they stop. Destruction mages can infinitely stun lock them. Dragons are not that difficult.

And has the thought ever occurred to you that maybe there is something wrong with your game. Majority wins.

[Mauin]

I still find this hard to believe though, and to Mauin specifically then if your character has such resistance to magic then he/she would almost certainly have to shrug off other magic users like common mages and even dragon priests.

She is notoriously hard to kill (as she should be). Neither magic nor melee can bring her down.
The only times she dies... Is if I'm stupid/sleeping and walk off an exceptionally high cliff.


The thing with those Youtube videos is that you don't always know what mods they're running. For all you know, they could be using mods to make certain enemies more powerful.

See, the reason my Dragons are more powerful than vanilla is because I am running Deadly Dragons. It allows you to control just how tough you want your Dragon battles. There are other mods out there that change the Dragon combat AI, making them tougher opponents that way.

With Dragons, how easy they are/aren't is controlled by many different variables: mods for PC players, the difficulty setting, player skill, strategy, character enchantments. It's really a personal sort of thing that varies between characters. I've already said some of my battles were hard, and others are easy.

Back before I had Deadly Dragons, I did find Dragon battles to be easy. My first character was a dual-wielding Argonian (two Daedric swords enchanted for absorb health something else I can't remember) who had the same resistances of my weaker characters (described in my last post). She had absolutely no difficulty fighting Dragons on the then-highest difficulty Master. She had absolutely no need to take shelter or do anything else during battles because the Dragons did not pose much of a threat. Why? For one thing, they have ADD or something and get distracted stupidly easy. Another, they're just weak if you have the right setup. NPCs obviously don't have the same sort of gear that a Dovahkiin (whose gear is specifically enchanted for battling Dragons) and so they die easily.

This clip is ancient (heh), but I fight a horribly distracted Ancient Dragon in the first four minutes of this. That was an easy fight. Other battles were no more difficult than that.
Also, holy [&@%!] that lag. How did I manage that?

With Deadly Dragons, the battles aren't that much different when I'm playing on one of my demi-gods.
This is how my battles go now. For one of my powerful characters. Vara Rydilis, in this case.

With one of my weaker characters, the Dragons do possess the power to kill in one shot. They aren't easy.
Those battles go like this... This one is a Nether Dragon from Deadly Dragons and a vanilla Elder Dragon. It doesn't end well. Starts with a Giant fight. Just watch for the "Assault has Started" message in the upper left.

[Da_BossMaN69]

I'm not trying to offend anyone so if anyone is getting upset that wasn't my intention. Maybe lying was the wrong choice of words.

I just can't see how any other creature save for priests can e tougher. I am serious about the briar hearts though, I've never heard anyone complain about them before and personally have never been in a position where I found myself bing killed by them I mean how can you?

Do you guys work with quick reflexes? If I can help it I can go though an entire camp of those schmucks unharmed, provided they're all warriors or an archer.

I can't be in the minority in regards to npcs though, sure mages and higher level draugr I can understand but simple forsworn and falmer have never been an issue for me or others, intact this is the first time I've heard of people complaining about the forsworn before on any forum/comment

[Believe]

I have a level 64 Dark Elf Assassin, who dual-wields 2 daedric swords.

I absolutely slaughter dragons without any problems whatsoever, although I admit that Revered can be a [&@%!] if they refuse to land for a lengthy amount of time, but they still die in 3 power attacks when they do. This is without backstabbing, or stealth-shooting them at all.


Briarhearts on the other hand require a lot more planning, and every now and then one of the [&@%!] will still kill me.

So, I don't think that Dragons are the most difficult creatures in the game, maybe even not top-3. But they aren't usually as easy as they get made out to be.

And as many people have said, it really does depend on your class. My Bosmer Illusionist/Conjurer tends to get his ass handed to him by regular dragons, let alone Blood or higher...

[urthdigger]

I find dragons annoying more than anything. They're such a pain to hit while they're flying in the air, and for someone who tries to avoid having all the cities become ghost towns it's rather annoying how rather than focus on me, they slaughter all the stupid townsfolk. It's a LITTLE better once you get Bend Will or Dragonrend, but still! Some playthroughts I put off unlocking dragons for a long time just so I can don't have to deal with them.

[Jun Satou]

Depends which dragons really, for example a normal Dragon doesn't do more damage per second than a Forsworn Briarheart. Dragons usually Bite, Bite, Fly... ... Voice attack, land. Repeat.

No Melee oriented enemy can reach that amount of damage in a single hit.

If your character can withstand multiple attacks from a dragon, in the long-term fight comparison with a briarheart and a basic dragon, you'll find the FBheart does a number of dual-wielding rounds per dragon bite.
Forsworn Briarhearts chase you, dual wielding attacks increase damage output etc. I don't know if you've ever watched one of Nagidal's videos, he takes on Dragons by hiding behind trees, his characters is nothing but a stealthy thief and he manages to take this dragon out without hardly receiving any damage.

Dragons aren't as flexible and fast as FBhearts, Dragons can easily lose sight of you if you stay behind a house and wait however long you want to heal yourself. FBhearts run after you, go behind a tree if you want - they'll just follow with their axes and swords. Annoyances:

Hidden:

Well that's just an argument I put together for someone supporting the 'Yes (Easy)' option, not necessarily my personal argument.
If you do want my argument for higher level dragons, here: Dragonrend, Run away from the dragon, shoot arrows, hide behind large rocks, trees, houses etc.

[Torapa]

They're real easy if you give them enough liquor! Ha-Ha!

[Da_BossMaN69]

I am still simply baffled by you guys (again no offense should be take. From this). With every character I have, only three, one warrior, Mage, thief, I've torn these guys to pieces no problem.

First they only have 630 health, your weakest dragon has more health than them on top of that they are completely suspctible to any form of paralysis. Just the other day when that lovely [&@%!] Neloth ordered me to go get some hearts, I was reminded of this thread.

So using my Mage I wanted to test their supposed toughness. I cast dragon hide and let them hit me, even as a Mage with [&@%!] poor health it took them a considerable effort to lower my health, and I realize I cast the strongest armor spell, but when an ancient bum rushed me on my way back I decided to test it again.

The result in two breaths I was killed and in two bites I was tossed aside like it was nothing.

As for stealth killing a dragon, forget it you guys must be high. A you have to do is pickpocket a briarheart for an insta kill on top of that they are incredibly easy to kill I. Stealth because again they oh have 600 health max.

And as. Stealthy character you shouldn't be ambushed by them, that's your job.

Also BS on getting the jump on Dragons they always fly after you and know where you Are and takes considerabl effort to hide from them where as any NPC will give up after 10 seconds

[philfredobob]

I fought an Ancient Dragon on Legendary difficulty the other day, and he was very easy. my character has about ... 340 health, 340 magicka, and 250 Stamina boosted to 300 by an amulet.

basically, all i have to do to succeed is lead the dragon to a spot with cover, which is usually all over the place, then use the first word of ''Marked for Death'' on the dragon which weakens the dragon quite a bit, and then just use the cover to avoid breathe attacks while using a bow until the dragon decides to land.

At this point, i just run up to him with melee. their attacks are very slow, so i saw them coming, blocked the bite attacks, and shield bash before the dragon can even start his breathe attack, and i ended up having lost barely any health, while the dragon had lost loads, and he then lifted off into the sky again allowing me to recover what little health and stamina i had lost.

Dragons are just too slow and predictable. it makes their attacks easy to dodge/block/stop. I cannot see how you think they are the toughest in the game. I've had more trouble with Draugr and Dragon Priests or Forsworn, even Spriggans.

[Khali]

I don't have any issues with killing dragons. Once I get them on the ground it takes about a dozen hits with a sword and the fight is over. I tend to play a light armor duel wielding adventurer. I just have to be sure to have enough health potions handy to survive until I get them on the ground. If it wasn't for getting dragons down to the ground I wouldn't even carry a bow.

[Br3admax]

Dragonrend, Marked for Death, Bash, Hit, Bash, Hit. Dead dragon.

[soda popinski]

Briarhearts are by far the most difficult enemies in my experience.

I usually am playing an archer with good sneak, and when my level gets high enough, dragons can be killed in a few shots from a hidden position (2nd highest difficulty level is what I play).

Dragon Priests I always give enough respect to, so they usually don't smoke my ass, but Briarhearts will often surprise me and 1 shot me with a dual hand attack. This is at the point in time where basically nothing else has any chance of killing me unless my play turns extremely negligent.

[Finn Wolfshorn]

Ditto on the Briarhearts. I've had characters in the lvl 50-60s who ate vanilla dragons for breakfast one-hit-killed by those fiendish dual attacks on the same difficulty setting; and you need a high sneak skill in order to be able to pick the heart from them or they'll spot you before you even see them, their detection is just insane.

The quick reflexes perk helps, of course, as does blocking in general, but not all character builds use block - think of dual-wielders, mages, spellswords... pretty much everyone but sword-&-board or twohanded tanks.

[Da_BossMaN69]

My guy is 61 with maxed out perks for both 1 and 2 handed weapons, save for axes/maces/hammers and only 1 dual savagery.

My swords were Eduj at 95 and dragonbane at 93 I killed the FBH in maybe 5 seconds after he hit my guy once.

I can NOT do the same to a dragon. And the one shot kill must be a glitch I mean they're using weapons that at max do only 40 damage alone I'd imagine extra damage mutiples that by a half so with 2.5 what that's 90, which seems right to me by if not then what doubled?

Then that's 140, again still seems right to me. The one shot kill thing has to be a glitch since after I reloaded the save once it happened to me he did hardly we ouch damage to even stagger me.

[Nord85]

Well, while one hit alone might only do 40 damage, there are multiple hits in one complete dual-wield attack. I don't know about one-shot kills from Briarhearts, though, but in my experience even with a level 40+ character at adept difficulty, one not blocked dual wield attack could easily slice off one quarter to one one third of the character's ca. 350 health points.

Of course, high level dragons can do comparable damage with a single breath attack. The difference is that there are little to no breathing pauses between attacks when fighting a Briarheart, whereas there usually is ample time to find cover and heal between a dragon's strafing attacks. Basically, in the space of an average fight, Briarhearts can do much more damage per second than a dragon. Therefore, Briarhearts actually require active blocking/shield bashes/footwork to defeat, and preferably some healing potions/spells, while the dragons leave you so much space there's not nearly so much need for tactics.