Skyrim Master Difficulty Experience

[Turisas]

Early 40's, and yeah of course I did my fair share of valiantly running away from trouble more than a few times when starting out. I didn't pump up the crafting skills right away nor would I advise anyone to, because that fancy daedric gear won't do you much good if your heavy armor and weapon skills are still in their 20's.

I leveled like you're "meant to", exploring and doing quests; I never had any fights where I had to load several times or anything like that. But I'm always pretty meticulous when it comes to using potions and such, so I always have resistances available against mages and so on.
The difficulty curve started to take a dip around lvl 20 or so when I started putting more effort into the crafting - they really are unbalancing when used together, but not enough so that you could skip leveling the armor and weapon skills altogether.

 

[shiggidyshwa]

This is an awesome thread. I stumbled onto it after Googling 'skyrim master difficulty'.

I'm using a lvl 31 axe/shield Redguard and it's been fun/frustrating, but the frustration lends itself to the fun. Around lvl 20 I switched to Adept difficulty to see what it was all about, and it's just no fun. I love being able to block, dodge attacks, and use my companion and trusty flame atronach to clear dungeons.

Reading some posts here about gimped weapons/armour, I don't usually play RPGs so rolling stats isn't my strong suit. It's amazing how some of you can do that though. Props.

IMO, the insane difficulty of master (for me) makes each victory so much sweeter. My last memorable fight was against Malyn Varen inside Azura's Star. No companion, just me vs. 3 daedra kynn-somethings and Malyn. I didn't lvl smithing like I should have so I'm stuck with Ebony and an HP draining Glass Axe, so the first time in, popping resist fire/shock potions, I still got 2/3 shotted. Went on like this for about 2-3 reloads.

Did some youtubing and found someone who used the time slow shout to dash to Malyn and 2/3 shot him before the daedra attacked. Tried it myself but my weapon was too weak. The daedra have that intense fireball spell that 2/3 shots me, so even going into melee was hard since they usually don't clump up. Completely by accident, I realized that my flame atronach was the perfect tank as it was fire-resistant and could take their melee hits. Waited for them to engage my atronach in melee then rushed in to melee when I thought they wouldn't use their fireballs.

Malyn was way easier. Just rushed him and shield bashed him into submission while popping stamina potions and power attacks.

Also, the Become Ethereal shout is great. I equip it against dragons when I can't dodge their breath, and I use it to close the gap between me and strong casters. Then I just block, bash, and power attack them into submission. I must have 10x more stamina potions than health or magicka. Also helps that Redguard have the quick stamina recharge perk.

Good times. Anyone else have trophy fights they wanna share?

 

[Mangoose]

Good times. Anyone else have trophy fights they wanna share?

No. Skyrim is passable/playable at Master difficulty but if you want memorable fights go play a more challenging game that doesn't challenge you with health and damage bloat.

 

[shiggidyshwa]

What's health and damage bloat?

 

[Black Cat]

What's health and damage bloat?

Something people who believe higher difficulty levels being about more monsters that both cause and soak more damage is something that wasn't here before the decline usually say.

Don't worry, I don't understand it either.

 

[UserNamer]

I think it's called "bloat" because it is just not an increase in hp, but a ludicrous, exaggerated and idiotical increase.

 

[abija]

That's not so easy to solve though. Higher level spells that do more damage and feats that reduce damage are exactly the same as damage/hp bloat.
What you want is an AI that's less likely to fall for the standard obvious tricks and give it some extra spells.
But that will very likely generate a ridiculous amount of qq that you need to play on very hard to enjoy the game at the full potential.

Meanwhile I think the devs are aiming for a very simple principle, you get the set of abilities that on lower difficulties you can sort of ignore then try to make sure on hard they damage enough so the player needs to respond to them and the unit lives long enough so it gets to execute them.
Most fail on designing a decent combat system though or let chipmunks do the number tweaking.

 

[Black Cat]

The point is not if it was there earlier or not. The point is that it is unnecessary and need not be there. Ideally, difficulty of fights should scale by increasing combat abilities a la Dark Messiah and tactics of the enemies. They should have higher level spells and higher level feats that give them better protection against your attacks and more chances of killing you out right.

But it isn't necesary, one way or the other. You can have a fun, cool, and challenging experience with either method, and the one you are actually mentioning wouldn't make much sense outside of pure role playing games: Throwing more enemies and making them all stronger, faster, more resilient and better at blocking and evading is what action games have been doing since, like, forever, given action games are about twitch reflexes and instinctive reactions. Few games will actually greatly change the abilities of an enemy type on higher dificulty levels, as the point of it isn't to be a diferent game but to put the skills you have developed in the previous levels to the test.

Also, it depends on the type of game: In a tactical turn based game you can give enemies a higher variety of behaviours to choose from, and a greater variety of weapon types, make them more stealthy, etc, but then the game is about out maneuvering the enemy in a tactical context. In an action game where the entire point is to kill stuffies and burn thingies the skills you can give the enemies are skills that cause more damage, skills that block more damage, better evasion moves, and maybe one or two trick movements to confuse you. Action games aren't about out maneuvering your oponent but about being faster than it and having a good enough grasp of what you can do as to improvise, and having a high enough skill as to pull out what you just improvised.

And, let's be honest about this: Skyrim is an action game with role playing elements, not a role playing game and not a tactical wargame. And it is not a good action game at that, at least not in the same way, say, Devil May Cry III is a good action game. And no, trash enemies on DMC III's higher difficulty levels don't start advancing on a phalanx formation instead of rushing you and trying to kick your butt, they just become faster and stronger, and the groups are several orders of magnitude bigger. It's still awesome.

Actually, I wouldn't mind the next TES game having Devil May Cry III based combat. Man, that would kick ass and take a whole lot of names. Comboing and air juggling giants, and calculating invincibility frames to dodge their really unfair counter-attacks, and punching the crap out of random vikings while eating pizza = Win.

 

[Jasede]

Please no! I can play Godhand on Hard blindfolded with a kick-me sign, but DMC 3 massacres me on Easy. I just don't have the instincts for it.

 

[Mangoose]

Well, besides the way enemy difficulty is handled, Skyrim also has a huge lack of combat choices besides block, attack, and choose a power attack. Which is what leads to the hp bloat - when you have no choices besides attacking head on what else could the difficulty come from?

I think Skyrim would be 100% better honestly if you could do a quick dodge roll.

 

[villain of the story]

Well, there are a couple perk moves like, charging into an enemy with a sword which does a guaranteed critical, sprinting into an enemy with shield raised to knock him off, power attack while standing still to decapitate.

 

[Mangoose]

Throwing more enemies and making them all stronger, faster, more resilient and better at blocking and evading is what action games have been doing since, like, forever, given action games are about twitch reflexes and instinctive reactions.

Unfortunately Skyrim only does the Bolded half and doesn't do the Italicized half. If it did have both halves, I wouldn't be complaining.

 

[Nael]

This is an awesome thread. I stumbled onto it after Googling 'skyrim master difficulty'.

I'm using a lvl 31 axe/shield Redguard and it's been fun/frustrating, but the frustration lends itself to the fun. Around lvl 20 I switched to Adept difficulty to see what it was all about, and it's just no fun. I love being able to block, dodge attacks, and use my companion and trusty flame atronach to clear dungeons.

Reading some posts here about gimped weapons/armour, I don't usually play RPGs so rolling stats isn't my strong suit. It's amazing how some of you can do that though. Props.

IMO, the insane difficulty of master (for me) makes each victory so much sweeter. My last memorable fight was against Malyn Varen inside Azura's Star. No companion, just me vs. 3 daedra kynn-somethings and Malyn. I didn't lvl smithing like I should have so I'm stuck with Ebony and an HP draining Glass Axe, so the first time in, popping resist fire/shock potions, I still got 2/3 shotted. Went on like this for about 2-3 reloads.

Did some youtubing and found someone who used the time slow shout to dash to Malyn and 2/3 shot him before the daedra attacked. Tried it myself but my weapon was too weak. The daedra have that intense fireball spell that 2/3 shots me, so even going into melee was hard since they usually don't clump up. Completely by accident, I realized that my flame atronach was the perfect tank as it was fire-resistant and could take their melee hits. Waited for them to engage my atronach in melee then rushed in to melee when I thought they wouldn't use their fireballs.

Malyn was way easier. Just rushed him and shield bashed him into submission while popping stamina potions and power attacks.

Also, the Become Ethereal shout is great. I equip it against dragons when I can't dodge their breath, and I use it to close the gap between me and strong casters. Then I just block, bash, and power attack them into submission. I must have 10x more stamina potions than health or magicka. Also helps that Redguard have the quick stamina recharge perk.

Good times. Anyone else have trophy fights they wanna share?

I saw a mudcrab the other day.

 

[Roguey]

In an action game where the entire point is to kill stuffies and burn thingies the skills you can give the enemies are skills that cause more damage, skills that block more damage, better evasion moves, and maybe one or two trick movements to confuse you. Action games aren't about out maneuvering your oponent but about being faster than it and having a good enough grasp of what you can do as to improvise, and having a high enough skill as to pull out what you just improvised.

In Doom, higher difficulty just increases the number of monsters and Nightmare makes them faster and respawn. Their health and damage remain the same. I don't feel like thinking up other examples, so you'll just have to do with that one, but it shows how one can increase difficulty in an action game without affecting health/damage at all.

And, let's be honest about this: Skyrim is an action game with role playing elements, not a role playing game and not a tactical wargame. And it is not a good action game at that, at least not in the same way, say, Devil May Cry III is a good action game. And no, trash enemies on DMC III's higher difficulty levels don't start advancing on a phalanx formation instead of rushing you and trying to kick your butt, they just become faster and stronger, and the groups are several orders of magnitude bigger. It's still awesome.

In DMC 3/4 bosses attack more frequently on higher difficulties and the mobs get a devil trigger on DMD. Then you have Heaven or Hell where one hit will kill everything including you and Legendary Dark Knight in 4 which is Son of Sparda with a zillion more mobs (of course Skyrim can't do that because it's a memory hog).

Actually, I wouldn't mind the next TES game having Devil May Cry III based combat. Man, that would kick ass and take a whole lot of names. Comboing and air juggling giants, and calculating invincibility frames to dodge their really unfair counter-attacks, and punching the crap out of random vikings while eating pizza = Win.

Would probably completely alienate their base. We'll see how Reckoning with its God of War-based combat dizzy works out.

 

[Kraszu]

Well, besides the way enemy difficulty is handled, Skyrim also has a huge lack of combat choices besides block, attack, and choose a power attack. Which is what leads to the hp bloat - when you have no choices besides attacking head on what else could the difficulty come from?

From timing like in Gothic, Risen or mount&blade. There is also difficulty in mob control, not getting yourself surrounded, being aware of your surrounding to not get blocked yourself.

As for combos I fucking hate them, pressing some combination of keys fast should be left to Guitar Hero type games. It is one of the most tedious gameplay element ever invented.

 

[Kaol]

One idea i had was to limit yourself to your races core skills as determined by what's increased at the start.

Or just picking 5 skills to raise and leaving the others, trouble is the game kind of forces you to do smithing at least as even the best of the best armours in the game seem to be worse than a legendary fur coat.

 

[shiggidyshwa]

The combat seems decent to me, but I don't play these kinds of games very often so please forgive my judgment. Most of it becomes vanilla after a while. I chalk some of that up to facing most known enemies in the game and knowing their patterns. Minions go down in 3-5 hits while bosses are still a potion chugfest.

Still, the beginning of most boss fights forces me to come up with some sort of strategy. I remember kiting my second dragon into a giant camp, and running circles around a pillar to hit a draugr lord because he was using a 2h and moved so slow. Toughest fight for me was an arch necromancer in some out of the way cavern. Those ice spikes hurt like hell.

The cool thing is that enemies I used to run away from are now at least doable. I've seen my block actually able to parry blows now and resist magic, where as at level 5 everything was going through my shield. I never really thought about it much but my character has grown a lot since the early levels of getting wtfpwned by frost spiderlets. Now I catch those things like pokemon.

Someone in another thread mentioned consistency in the story and I agree that it has to be looked after. **spoiler ahead** I just finished freeing the Forsworn in Markarth but they still attack me elsewhere in Skyrim. Breaking out of Markarth with them, I had to wipe the town's guard, which set the Jarl on me. I can't kill him (invincible) despite him being so clearly in on it which throws the story even more.**spoiler ends**

I see some criticism of the dumbing down of attributes. I might get crap for this, but I like the concept of levelling your stats through use. This isn't praise of Skyrim's system. I'm just saying. Maybe Skyrim gets it right or it doesn't. Right now I'm on the fence, because a lot of people mention game-breaking enchantment/smithing abuse. But I feel like I'm through with the traditional number-rolling. I still feel like I want more control over my character's combat moves through unique specials, instead of the finisher kill-cams. Rolling numbers feels a bit artificial to me and I'd prefer skills leveling with usage alongside the option of gaining specials for weapons or spells. You practice karate you become Chuck Norris, right?

IMO if they made enemy AI much smarter only at higher difficulties, nobody would play easy. This isn't checkers and everybody would wanna see what all the fuss is about the draugr who ran away from your fight to hold your entire family hostage in exchange for your life. Make the AI as intelligent as can be for all difficulties and buff up their attack/defense power with the difficulty.

I feel like Skyrim got it half right. The problem is that as enemies get low on hp, they still fight as normal. Some enemies like wolves run away and counterattack but it's not enough when I can still see them arcing around that tree. I feel like that's where enemy AI can really shine - their last-ditch defenses. And it doesn't have to involve a ton of complexity. A lot of enemies are humanoid, and if you program 5-10 counterattack moves that are used based on context, it would provide a ton of fun and diversity to the combat. Likewise with other enemies. Bears are essentially slower bigger wolves. I don't get why enemies in games stick around to die. They should run unless they're full-on berserker, which introduces snare dynamics and area-specific damage effects to the game. I'd enjoy nothing more than seeing a bandit run away near the end of his rope only to have me shoot him in the leg and cripple him. If hardcore multiplayer games like Guild Wars can do this, why not Skyrim?

 

[fusrodah]

At least the "radiant" part of the world produces confusing as fuck encounters. Not sure if difficulty affects those, but playing on master, I was on my way to Solitude near Riverwood.

Just behind a bend of the road two bandit chiefs come by. They immediately get hostile.
Now, two wolves decide to join in the fun, thankfully attacking the bandits.
In the middle of the encounter a stray horse stumbles upon the skirmish and it too seems to have issues with bandits.

Now, with the bandits and wolves dead, the horse decides to go after me next. ( Whatever did I do to it? ) I have no choice but to try putting it down but its master who just arrived at the scene appears to have different ideas. A hunter not too pleased about me molesting his horse starts shooting at me.

After everyone involved: the horse, two bandits, two wolves and the hunter lie dead, I discover a third bandit shot to death in the bushes and a single bandit with full health literally cowering behind a rock.

Just what the hell happened here and how exactly did I get involved?!?

Not much premeditation can be observed in the world. Just a very low threshold for violence against everything and everyone.

 

[shiggidyshwa]

I agree that Skyrim gives me about as many Christmas-grade jaw drops as Battlefield 1942 did. Your experience sounds hilarious. I can honestly say I've had one or two experiences like that. Pure gold.

 

[Multiple Sarcasm]

So, dual-wielding melee on Master.
How do you do it, prestigious codexian Skyrim pros? Magic and archery are easy, two-handed reach and S&B defense are doable, but I just can't into this dual-wielding schtick - it's just too cool for me, it seems. You can't block, you can't chain dual attacks (which also take forever in between) and you have to be right in the something's face to hit anything, which chews through your health bar in seconds.
What am I doing wrong (apart from playing Skyrim)?

 

[halflingbarbarian]

On Master, you have to understand that the mechanics behind the difficulty increase calls for certain unavoidable character builds related to the playstyle you want. If you are going down the route of dual-wield, I think the bare minimum is an investment in heavy armor, and also staying the fuck away from situations where you have to face more than 1 enemy by yourself until you got sufficient investment in the dual-wield perks. Dual-wielding at the start of Master, as you've already noticed, is basically doing sword/board kind of damage WITHOUT a blocking mechanism. Once you pass the threshold where dual-wielding power attack damage becomes differentiated clearly from sword/board damage, you can start enjoying the power of that playstyle (aka with decent weapons, enough perks, enough stamina to execute DW power attacks, etc.)

Also notice that the normal swing speed of DW is not much different from doing sword/board (I'm not even sure if there's a difference). The power of DW is in the ability to have 2 (or 4, if you have 100 enchanting) weapon effects and also the satisfying burst of its signature 2-3 hit power attack, which does enough damage usually to stagger targets setting it up for another one if you got the stamina - chain it up.

So my advice is to persevere, use tight corridors in dungeons wisely for now, and perhaps get a companion to tank for your ass then sack them once you are all grown up (I'm damn allergic to companions they are dumb as fuck). DW will grow into its own once you develop the perks and equipment to make it shine.

Edit: Video of some crazy fast PA/normal attack speeds using DW and some abilities, most notably elemental fury shout: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-SzowBCw5o

 

[abija]

And the 1 stamina exploit as a baseline for his build bypassing any need for stamina ^^
Notice how you build the char on adept and youtube on master.

If companions wouldn't be scaled to same system as enemies on master the amount of qq about melees being broken and the game too easy would diminish substantially.

 

[Multiple Sarcasm]

My experience after a few hours DW on Master, put mildly:
:ragequit: :fuck-this-fucking-shit-to-fuck:



I dunno, guys, it just gets too frustrating, with little to no satisfaction from combat, when all you do is buff up, jump in and swing wildly like a maniac, nomming snacks and chugging health potions, hoping to drain the enemies HP bar before they drain yours. Not my thing. I'll rather stick to two-handers in melee, I guess.

 

[Zlaja]

Breaking out of Markarth with them, I had to wipe the town's guard, which set the Jarl on me

You aren't supposed to fight the town guard. They won't attack you. As soon as you leave the prison you're free to go. The fight doesn't involve you.

 

[shiggidyshwa]

Breaking out of Markarth with them, I had to wipe the town's guard, which set the Jarl on me

You aren't supposed to fight the town guard. They won't attack you. As soon as you leave the prison you're free to go. The fight doesn't involve you.

Well dang... thanks for clearing that up. Now that I think about it, there was a Vigilant of Stendarr (invincible) using lightning spells and one must have hit me by accident as I ran out of the mines with the Forsworn. That must have made me hit him or a guard back, starting the whole process. I gotta say though that taking on Markarth's entire town guard was pretty fun. Not hard, but fun, especially if I thought of Markarth itself as a unique dungeon.

It still feels inconsistent with the quest story for me. But I guess I'll take the good with the bad.

Does anyone know if the Forsworn subplot gets more fleshed out as the game progresses? I'd hate that quest to be the end of it, especially because the story is one of the more interesting aspects of Skyrim's lore. You have the Nords who feel repressed by their Imperial overlords, but you also have the Forsworn who had their lands taken from them by no other than Ulfric Stormcloak, leader of the Nord freedom fighters.