Nothing is more annoying, than when you work through what feels like an unending dungeon, take out a massive amount of bad guys, deplete your stock of potions, only to find that nothing of any real value is in this particular cave/sewer/temple/dungeon.

Sometimes the dungeons had some good stories in them which is great, awesome. Keep those there. Simply add more often dengeons that give you a unique item that is no where else to be found.

Example 1: There were multiple caves that were full of vampires. Could possibly one of these caves have in it something along the lines of a scared necklace that drew Vampires to it inexplicably? If so the game play, especially at night would be changed while it was equipped.

Example 2: A dungeon Crypt. After fighting the zombies, ghosts, and whatever ungodly creature here could there be a pay-off of a weapon super powerful versus unholy creatures? Give it a name, let the nearby townsfolk talk about it as an old rumor or fairytale. This adds to the feel of its uniqueness. When it's equipped we get the fighting benefits, and the townsfolk recognition, which in turn provides discounts and opened quest lines.

Example 3:Laying in the ocean just south of Anvil is a helmet that allows the wearer to breath freely underwater. This would have been a perfect pay-off to a player searching though a series of caves that was full of water that made it difficult to not drown in. The reward was equal the task rather than just randomly sunken in the ocean. Does anyone else agree with this, or am I way off?

I agree, finding unique loot after slaying a countless number of undead is very rewarding. It is even better when that loot is connected in some way to other parts of the game, whether it is a quest, or just people mentioning it.

so hand placed items morrowind style?

sure.

Yes, more payoff from dungeons, Oblivion lacked this. Payoff can be done in a few ways, unique items (Morrowind style) or a good sum of gold and items (Two Worlds style).

Yeah I agree. What I want to see more in Skyrim is many more unique dungeons and unique items, that are unrelated to quests. Oblivion barely had any of those... if any at all.

I don't think it would be good if EVERY dungeon had unique or even 'good' loot. But it would be an improvement if there was unique or "very good" loot here and there.
Why just in dungeons? Why not in the bottom of a pond or behind a waterfall? or under the king's pillow? Or stuck in a tree trunk 40 ft from the ground (how am I gonna get that down? How did that even get up there?) The upside of the huge worlds in TES is the opportunity for Easter eggs. It'd be a shame not to take advantage of it to the full extent.

But let me reinforce; pls not loot EVERYWHERE I look.

or perhaps both?

there were some items and such in oblivion but only a few and usually part of undocumented quests.

i'd like to see something like this in skyrim even though i only went dungeon diving when a quest required it. not my thing but some nice rewards would be good for those who've just spent an hour hacking through hordes to get through a dungeon.

It would certainly become more interesting to explore caves and crypts, knowing that you could find something special. It shouldn't be in every cave, but just enough to keep you going and make exploration worthwhile. In my opinion Oblivion lacked this sense of wanting to explore because you knew you'd only find levelled loot in a few chests spread around the dungeon.

So I'm all for more handplaced items and less levelled lootchests

I love these threads whose names are a string of nouns so much!

I disagree. I think all dungeons should have some kind of good payoff to them (preferably both loot and some kind of story about the dungeon). On the other hand, there shouldn't be ten thousand dungeons all around the world. Focus on a (relatively) small number of them, make them actually fun and interesting, and make them big (or big-ish). A hundred dungeons that are all extremely generic copies of each other with no good loot or any in-game reason why they're there just isn't fun.

Well, I agree with dot Bob dot. Not every cave should have a payoff. Sometimes it only turns out to be a hole in the ground for a local group of hobos, or a den for some middling smugglers or skooma addicts. Perhaps the best that you'll find are some semi-rare ingredients or passable amounts of gold or gems - or in my first example - a bunch of rags and a unique book at best. And I also agree that some of those unique or worthwhile items should be sprinkled into the rest of the world, too. It bothered me how, as a thief, I could defeat the locks and patrols to gain entry to a nobleman's house and the only thing remotely worthwhile stealing would be a bottle of wine.

And I agree with you. Fewer dungeons/forts/whatever should be present in the landscape... That helps immediately, because merely discovering one is a minor payoff. Some can, and indeed should, be short - it's those that might forego anything worthwhile. But I'm a fan of longer caves, too. Branching caves, or cyclical ones, if they're a bit longer, can and should have payoffs. Multiple payoffs, for some. And if they have a story behind them that the player can discover (though I realize that is sometimes a difficult feat to manage), all the better.

The fun part about exploring and "treasure hunting" is that in some places you find valuable objects and in others you don′t. Finding relics, gold and unique items everytime you slay a bunch of enemies seems a bit off. The only problem is that every single dungeon, fort and ruin looks the same, so the player gets that generic feeling "been here, done that", and thinks about "what loot shall we find here?" instead of "what is this place?". A good way to resolve this would be adding even more types of places to explore: different kinds of ruins, grottos, dens abandoned castles, etc...

Or how about when you unlock "Hard" chests you get more than a pear and 2 gold?

Often the most rewarding loot found in a dungeon is in the form of the armor or weapon an enemy is carrying, and I like that. It's unrealistic to expect treasure just sitting there at the end of every dungeon. That said, my favorite aspect of any game that provides it is rewarding exploration, and I definitely do want at least something of worth in each dungeon. The word worth can mean a lot of things. Whether it's a powerful weapon, a standard weapon that can be sold for a nice price, a useful piece of armor or clothing, or even a rare book, I just want something to justify the time I invested in exploring the dungeon.

If some of those effects that the item had were hidden at first, then it would be more interesting, so your character would not be a knowing all omniscient, that knows about every aspect each item that he finds.

So you find a necklace that boosts some skills and attributes, but have some unknown effects as well, and you had to find a sage of a level of power to uncover those additional effects, but for instance, one of the additional effects would be that it draws vampires toward you, and works even if you do not know about the effect right now.

That would be fun.

I hate to point it out yet again but, like Morrowind?

I agree with that, I don't want every single dungeon to have some spectacular item at the end of it, but I do want it to have something. Even if it's not worth anything, like a journal that fleshes out the dungeon, or just has a neat little story in it, just something to say "Good job, you got to the end!"

And also, like the other guy said, the higher a chest is locked, it only makes sense that better loot would be in it, no? I mean, who uses a lock like that for 5 gold and a pear? I think it'd be cool if the higher it was locked, the better the list of items it can pick from to generate inside the chest is. So that way, sometimes you still get nothing of any real worth, and sometimes you get a pleasant surprise for your efforts.

I do agree that Oblivion's dungeons often lacked a sense of reward, I think part of the problem had to do with the game's use of level scaling and lack of worthwhile hand-placed loot. Since all the good items were leveled, I never found myself feeling when I found good loot that I had discovered something really great that made exploring that dungeon worthwhile, in part, it was because I knew I would be able to find that in any other dungeon, but even games like Diablo which still feature heavy use of random loot, I would say, still make me feel more rewarded when I find high quality loot than in Oblivion. I think in that case, it helps that these types of games usually have a very large variety of items available, and the really good ones tend to be hard to find, so even though you might get them from random loot, you still feel like it's an accomplishment to find them, because it isn't every day that enemies drop such things. By comparison, in Oblivion, when I find Daedric armor, I just feel like I found another generic item. This is much better now that I'm playing Oblivion with OOO, though, as now the good items are usually hard to find, and tend to require getting past worthy challenges to get them. I'd also say that Fallout 3 and New Vegas handled this better, as did Morrowind. In these games, it helped a lot that they had a fair amount of high quality hand placed loot, in particular, the lack of many non-quest related unique items. Of course I like recieving unique items when I complete quests, these kinds of regards tend to feel more satisfying than just getting gold or something because you can get that anywhere, but not unique items, but in Morrowind, one thing that always made exploring feel satisfying was when I found a unique artifact in a dungeon, and that's something Oblivion never offered without mods. Even when I just found generic but rare items like Daedric armor, though, it still felt good, because such things were hard to find, but considering that Fallout 3 already handled this better than Oblivion, I would say, I think that Bethesda has probably learned the lesson and we can expect a better approach in Skyrim, I hope I won't be dissappointed.

Of course, not every dungeon should something really impressive in it, because while I sometimes get a sense of dissappointment when I explore a dungeon and come out with nothing worthwhile inside, I'd rather deal with the occassional dissappointment than have the satisfaction of finding good loot ruined by making it too easy to find it. As a general rule, I'd say, the best loot should be find in dungeons that are appropriately dangerous. In other words, I don't expect to find the Epic Amulet of Ultimate Doom in a cave populated by a few low level bandits using fur armor and rusty weapons, on the other hand, I don't want to fight through a dungeon full of high level Daedra and deadly traps, find a chest with a very hard lock at the end, and open it only to find it's full of calipers.



I'd say it depends on the type of dungeon and the type of enemy that populates it, if I go through a cave full of bandits, I do agree that it's going to seem kind of odd if they're using iron weapons and leather armor when they have much better equipment sitting around in chests, but not all dungeons are populated by enemies that can use weapons. Take Morrowind's Dwemer ruins for example, the enemies in those were usually Dwemer centurions, and those couldn't use weapons, in this case, of course if there's good items laying around, they're not going to use them. Of course, the most satisfying loot in those places tended to be Dwemer artifacts, which makes sense, although they weren't as good as you might think when people talk about how impressive and valuable they're supposed to be, being as at best, Dwemer weapons and armor were only mid range items, and the non-weapon artifacts were somehow actually not all that much more expensive than silverware items in the game, despite all the talk of how much collectors will pay for them, and usually I didn't bother collecting them except for Dwemer coins, and one of each item so I can have my own collection.

yeah amount of loot should be proportional to dungeon length and difficulty

I'd love to see more unique items hand placed in dungeons. I also think part of the problem was the level scaling like some said. I HATE to bring another Morrowind vs Oblivion comparison to the table, but in Morrowind things like glass and daedric items felt rewarding to find because they were extremely rare and scattered. In Oblivion if I wanted glass armor I could just find any bandit on the road, or if I wanted daedric I could just find marauders in the same forts they're always in.

Maybe the "reward" at the end of the dungeons doesn't always have to be gold or some practical item. Maybe you could find a relic that you can bring to a local scholar to discover more about the history of Skyrim, or even activate a quest. The reward at the end could also just be some notable landmark, or some special scripted event. Just something to give that dungeon some purpose and personality. Finding a good weapon (many which might be useless to you anyway) at the end of every dungeon would seem a little contrived and boring.

Considering that I'm a to-the-marrow thief, I often felt the hardest jobs were the worst paying. Take, for example, the Talos Plaza district. I could break into any house on a given day, and often the best I can do is some silverware (and the fine cloths to wrap it in, to keep the noise down. So I RP a bit. XD) and maybe some fancy jewelry.

But let me sneak into a dungeon, kill not a soul (I never said I didn't leave large lumps on the patrolling heads) and I get to the "stash" part - and nothing more than some worthless (to me, at least) armour and at best a handful of septims.


Loot just isn't fair. I don't want to make several trips to a single dungeon just to haul out enough gold to buy a meal. And I don't want to rob every single house in a city to feel like I've made a single good haul.




(Some of my statements are skewed by the mods I run. A "good" meal runs me about 40 drakes for the food and 14-50 for the drink. Weapons are known to show up in the 200's - for standard iron. I paid 8000 for a run down shack, with a tax running about 150. I like it hard. xD)

There was nothing more annoying than killing a whole bunch of undead and vampires, then you stumble upon the final chamber where the big bad vampire is and after a huge fight with him and his followers, you win, you approach the beautifully decorated chest open it AND ............. you find a fork, a silver spoon, and a dirty diaper, then you say to yourself "its OK maybe that cool coffin in the middle of the room has something good inside, it was for the vampire lord after all" you open the coffin and you find a pelvic bone and a leg bone, then you exit the game and throw the CD in the microwave.

:banghead:

One the best payoffs is also a story.

Have notes left behind from previous adventurers who delved into the cave, providing a history/backstory to the place, with maybe a meaningful resultion should you discover the fate of the last explorer, etc.

Every cave, fort, etc. does not need a really good pay-off. Where's the surprise in that? Any area you come across you already know there's something very worthwhile in it for you. Half the fun is not knowing whether or not your going to find something very good or something not that great.