Determinable benefits of daggers to swords?

[Daemos Avetorii]

I am unaware if one can place a stronger enchantment on a larger blade such as a claymore. If the maximum magnitude is the same say 40 fire damage for example then the claymore will still be stronger on account of it's innate damage, range, flinching power and weight.
I recently tried killing Alval Uvani with an unpoisoned, unenchanted dagger. He survived and the guards came... Well they are a mess of bloody remains now. Anyway. I wonder if I had used a longsword would that not have been more effective?

Daggers may be quick but have essentially zero chance to cause staggering and have low reach. I guess their strength is in firing of enchantments on it as fast as possible for cumulative effects perhaps.
Still would a longsword or even a shortsword not be a superior weapon for sneak kills?

Incidentally. Why would the guards come to the defense of a Dark Brotherhood member? o.o

[Chicken Slayer]

Nope, you can't place a stonger enchantment on a bigger sword.

Also, two-handed swords (claymores) do not give you a sneak bonus. One of the down sides of that is if you are playing with permanent glitch-repaired summoned weapons, the weightless summoned sword (2-handed) is not as good as the summoned mace or dagger in many cases... and you can't get the mace from the blue rune stones if you are playing a blade fighter.


I did a lot of testing with stacking damage (weakness to magic) and sneak attacks (and fights in general) against the big monsters (Storm Atros etc.). With a sneak attack you are slowed and the monster is often knocked back so it takes time to recover and go for a follow up hit. In a regular fight, daggers are faster, but because you miss a lot due to the short reach, the stacking effect often runs out between hits, expecially if you are using a one second duration on the blade. I like silver short swords early in the game because the custom enchantments can be very powerful relative to the monsters (and the swords are light weight), but around level 20 I switch over to a Deadric longsword with a four second duration on the Weakness to magic enchantment. With that weakness duration (plus soul trap, 100pts drain health and some little fire damage), I can get in a devastating sneak hit (6x damage), recover from the knock back and hit again while the weakness is still in effect, and even have a chance to stack the damage with a third hit. The reach of the blade and the duration of the weakness are also effective against targets like conjurers who run around a lot and cause a lot of misses. By level 20 I am strong enough and rich enough that the weight of the big sword is not a concern. The benefits in damage of the big sword out weigh those of even a deadric shortsword IMOif you can handle the weight of the thing. I tested dagger, shortsword, and longsword.

Even at high levels, the benefit may not be obvious since everything else being equal, an enchanted dagger will still kill the monster in the course of the fight, but not in 2-3 hits. Statistically, the benefit is there and it might save you a potion/soul gem or two, especially at high levels when the goblin warlords, ogres etc. become tough as nails.


Where can you get a deadric longsword ASAP (and everything else deadric)? ... Save Malada (High Fane) until after the bad girl waiting at the camp nearby is in full daedric armor and then complete the quest by going into the ruins. I think that is at level 20 but it might be at 18 or 19. You can go up and talk to those in the camp without a fight breaking out.


hope this helps.

[Dark Spark]

Using a custom enchantment to deliver magical damage is wasted on a dagger. Sure, the dagger strikes more often in any given amount of time, but even a custom enchantment of 1-second simply means re-setting the timer instead of piling up another fresh wallop of magical damage on the target. Be it a dagger or a longsword, you can land a new blow well within 1 second.

The trick is using a dagger enchanted with magical damage which is delivered instantly. That means one created with a Sigil Stone. Every subsequent hit from such a blade adds the full force of a new blast rather than merely prolonging the spell cast by the first hit.

[Daemos Avetorii]

Thanks for the enchantment lesson, Dark Spark.

[Chicken Slayer]

"Using a custom enchantment to deliver magical damage is wasted on a dagger. Sure, the dagger strikes more often in any given amount of time, but even a custom enchantment of 1-second simply means re-setting the timer instead of piling up another fresh wallop of magical damage on the target. Be it a dagger or a longsword, you can land a new blow well within 1 second."

I don't understand why you are saying this. Is it because you are thinking of elemental (fire) + weakness to element instead of drain health* and weakness to magic?

Weakness to Magic does stack. It does not reset the way other enchantments do (eg weakness to element). So with drain health at 100pts and WtM at 100 for 1 second your first hit does 100 DH, your second hit does 200 DH (100 + 100%) if it is within a second of the first. If you have a two second duration and can get in three hits, the second hit does 200 and the third does 300 (100dh+100%+100%) not 200. If you miss, you are doing 200 or 100 again. A storm atronach has 350 health, which is the highest for the non-leveling creatures so if you also have summed a total of 51 damage points from base and fire, the beasty is dead in three hits. A big sword with sneak bonus will kill it in two hits. Fire is the best choice since storm atros are immune to shock, and what kills them in two or three hits kills every other non-leveled moster. The little bit of fire damage added on to make up the energy left in the grand soul gem is also stacking (10+10x2+10x3) at the third hit so you have a total of 10+20+30 = 60 fire damage for three hits. (My math might be conservative here, it could be 400 drain health (200+200) for the third hit and 10+20+40=70 for fire).

Now, if you can get in five or six hits within a four second duration of the first WtM, your 100pt drain health is putting on a huge amount of damage with the last hit. Add to that five hits of base damage plus permanent magic damage (which could be well over a hundred points by then) and you have enough to kill the toughest leveled-health opponent at the end game levels (~lvl 50) in a toe to toe fight.

Sigil stones putting out permanent damage (e.g. 25 pts fire) need a lot of hits to build up the hundreds in damage needed to kill the big boys. Now look at drain health 100pts 1s, fire 1s 10pts**, and weakness to magica 100*** for 4 sec (and 1 sec soul trap at the start). Each hit after the first does at least 20 pts fire damage. The third hit does 360 damage vs 75 for the sigil stone. For a 500 health ogre, the sigil sword needs 20 hits (ignoring base damage) while the enchanted sword needs 5 (within its 4 seconds--ignoring base damage. The enchanted sword carries 18 charges, more than enough to get the job done, while the sigil sword carries 70 charges. A little more energy efficient but you do not have soul trap on it to recharge Azura's star or a soul gem.

Additionally, you can enchant a super sword long before level 17 (when transcendant sigil stones show up). All you need is a grand soul gem and 50 pts Destruction skill to be able to cast weakness to magika. The game is more or less a walk in the park after that, but it also means you don't have to mess around putting together a 100% chameleon suit or building up your blade skill and armorer to squeeze the last bit of damage from a sword.

If a player is prone to running out of juice or dropping swords, enchanted daggers can be good backup weapons because they are light weight. They (daedric dagger) are also almost as good as a sword if you are role-playing a mage who wants an emergency side arm.


*Drain health is very inexpensive, but it is only good for one hit (no additive damage) so you have to stack it so one hit can do enough damage to kill.
**This might be lower. My game computer is in pieces now so I can't check, but 10 seems about right.
*** This (WtM) is actually best at 99 instead of 100 to maximize damage and duration when enchanting with a grand soul gem. It does more damage than lowering drain health to 99 or 98.

[Dark Spark]

"Using a custom enchantment to deliver magical damage is wasted on a dagger. Sure, the dagger strikes more often in any given amount of time, but even a custom enchantment of 1-second simply means re-setting the timer instead of piling up another fresh wallop of magical damage on the target. Be it a dagger or a longsword, you can land a new blow well within 1 second."

I don't understand why you are saying this. Is it because you are thinking of elemental (fire) + weakness to element instead of drain health* and weakness to magic?...

'Wasted' in terms of comparing a dagger and a 1-handed sword running the same set of enchantments. In a custom enchantment, both weapons deliver the same magical damages, but the dagger (with its faster strikes) doesn't gain much advantage over the sword because here the main magical damage is simply having its timer prolonged rather than adding another burst of damage.

This is the same magical damage with both weapons. But the sword can deal more physical damage on top of this, contributing to stagger or whatnot.

...
If a player is prone to running out of juice or dropping swords, enchanted daggers can be good backup weapons because they are light weight. They (daedric dagger) are also almost as good as a sword if you are role-playing a mage who wants an emergency side arm.

My backup/civilian dress dagger (a bodice knife, as it were) is a dagger with a Sigil Stone Absorb Health enchantment. In the situations where it's needed, the dagger will draw a huge amount of health from a target in the span of a second or two.

If it were a dagger custom-enchanted with Absorb Health, in the span of that same second, the only health absorbed would be the amount drawn from the first hit. Every strike afterwards is wasted within that initial second of attack.

[Chicken Slayer]

I'll agree with most of that (big base damage is better than little base damage weapons). But I am pretty sure that if you get in 5 hits in one second you get five damages.

I have seen some pretty indepth testing on some of the wiki-type pages, and other than Weakness to poison, eveything seems to work more or less as expected. If you can reference an internet page with empirical testing, it would be much appreciated.

I think I see your reasoning though. The weak fireball spell is a three second duration and you have to let it burn. If you fire off two in a row, the second one stops the burn of the first. But I don't think it works that way for default 1-second enchantments, at least not for damage. I could be wrong, and I will test it tonight with a damage enchantment that will kill in two hits. The test will be two quick dagger slashes vs two slow. The monster should live with the two fast hits if you are correct.

[Chicken Slayer]

OK, I tested it and the myth has been busted (at least for elemental damage enchantments). Fast enchanted dagger slashes (inside 1 second) do just as much damage as hits spaced far apart.

Test:

Two iron daggers with 1 point base damage.

One dagger was enchanted with 15 fire for 1 second, the other was left alone.

Tested at level two with a Nord that had 15 or 20 blade skill (minor skill and combat specialty, but little more - she has mostly been casting spells). Victims were wolves (20 health), skeletons (20 health), and ghosts (15x lvl =30@ lvl 2) inside and outside the Rielle ruins northwest of Bruma.

With two quick slashes, all of the creatures died (they stood there for a moment fighting and then collapsed as if waiting for damage points to add up - bleeding out). With two slow hits, all of the creatures also died (the wolves and skeletons literally went flying, ghosts just melted). There is a difference in the death animation between fast and slow damage, possibly because the second hit overwhelmed with damage points, while the two quick hits did not (16 damage against 4 health = 4x, and 32 damage against 20 health = 1.6x). I have seen this when hitting monsters with overpowered weapons before. I don't know what is going on with the time delay deaths, but dead is dead even if they can get a swing in on you after you deliver the killing points.

I did some control tests against skeletons to make sure my second hits were not killing with just base damage. To do this I hit skeletons once with the enchanted dagger and then hot-keyed the unenchanted dagger for follow ups. As expected, it took three or four additional hits to kill the skeletons, which then collapsed instead of flying off.

But daggers still suck. I spent a lot of time swinging at air. It was hard to get two quick slashes to both connect with a wolf (but sometimes 3 or 4 connected -it's hard to control the attack). It was impossible to get two hits in within one second when a skeleton blocked the firt hit because of the slight stagger effect of the block. That is when you need a 3 or 4 second durations to weakness enchantments and a long blade.

[Travalanche]

2 handers> daggers anyday, the reach and the fact that some enemies like to strafe around you or back up really helps. Daggers are probably better for endgame purposes because you have tons of soul gems by then but for 90% of the game you'll want something that is efficient, requires less repair hammers, and gets a higher % boost from skills.

You can't craft in Oblivion so it's not like you can make 9999999 damage daggers anyways and enchanting can only do so much with the hp scaling of enemies. If you play with the difficulty slider on medium-ish setting and are lvl 25 you more than likely won't be able to 1-shot anything anyways.

I've never cared for Daggers in any Elder Scrolls game because they require you to waste time sneaking around if you want to get a kill. Sneaking has it's uses but you may as well just rush the enemy with a Deadric warhammer IMO because that's just as deadly as getting a backstab anyways and more versatile in general combat lol.

If daggers got a higher skill boost they would be alright but unless you cap your character or play at a minimum slider setting they are pretty bad from my experience and enemies are always walking around you making you miss so you need decent reach to hit them consistently.

[Carrylim]

Well, if you can steal or pickpocket equipped weapons take the blade of woe from Astrid of the Dark brother hood, then complete then quest line and she'll give it to you.t With two blades of woe (blades of woe are considerably stronger than daedric daggers) at 15 times dames the dual wield power attack will reduce even a Draugr Death lord to approximately 30% health then use the shout ice form to freeze it wile its not facing you could easily keep you partially hidden. Then just roll back into a corner before he defrosts. Then repeat works on anything smaller than a mammoth or giant.

[TheFp333]

Perhaps it is effective (I am not master of Oblivion's mechanics) to use some disintegrate magics while using daggers. The main problem I find while using daggers when not sneaking is constant knockback due to the fast swings with them. Do shields knockback if they're broken though? I am not sure myself.

[Dark Spark]

A broken shield is automatically unequipped when it hits 0%.

[AKB]

Well, if you can steal or pickpocket equipped weapons take the blade of woe from Astrid of the Dark brother hood, then complete then quest line and she'll give it to you.t With two blades of woe (blades of woe are considerably stronger than daedric daggers) at 15 times dames the dual wield power attack will reduce even a Draugr Death lord to approximately 30% health then use the shout ice form to freeze it wile its not facing you could easily keep you partially hidden. Then just roll back into a corner before he defrosts. Then repeat works on anything smaller than a mammoth or giant.

Talking about Oblivion here, not Skyrim. Also a necropost, but I'll allow it.

I only ever used Mehrunes Razor as a weapon in Oblivion and Skyrim due to random kill chance being amazingly good on high difficulty. So for that reason alone, I would always prefer a dagger to a sword.

[Alicxesmine]

I am using two daggers at the moment, however swords are significantly higher in damage. I can still get my 15x damage modifier on back stabs if I use my dagger.

Is the attack speed significantly different when I swap one dagger for a sword?

Is there anything else I need to take into consideration?

[AKB]

Your attack speed is determined by the weapon in your left hand, not as a fraction of the two. If you want to use a dagger and sword, just make sure the dagger is the left handed weapon so you get the full bonus for speed.