-shrugs- I'd rather A Dragon fight in a town with guards, its fun. I dread the "Go Kill a Dragon at X Spot" type quests...cause not only do I have GET to the dragon resting on the rocks..but I got to deal with everything BEFORE him..and sometimes its 2 Frost Trolls + Ice Wraiths, sometimes its bandits, sometimes its Spriggans...

I hate Spriggrans...They just morph out of trees and attack me...Matrons can two shot me with one spell...ugh...

Dragons making guards scurry = fun. Dragons you are forced to fight...meh...they are ok, but not boring.

One time i was going to enter the Jorrvaskr (companions) in Whiterun and when i was almost getting to the door i heard a Dragon Roar, i looked back and it was a Dragon ! It landed inside Whiterun and that was one of the most intense and cool Dragon battles i've had.. Amazing !

How many of you have fought an ancient dragon on master?

me.. it's not difficult even the slightest, i do have the passive -30% spell damage perk from alteration though, so that effects it somewhat.. also my character has about 700 hp, and over 1000 armor rating, so that probably makes it easier, too.

Probably? There's no probably about it. Jesus.

Agree. I liken them to Oblivion gates and Cliff Racers. At about my 5th dragon I just spent two straight minutes watching it fly circles around me while yelling "GET THE [censored] DOWN!!!"
My 9th I learned to accept it and just stared at it as it flew in circles and thought "Are we having FUN?"

There's really not much epic about watching something fly in circles for two minutes before doing your best to get behind it and hack-and-slash there.

It gets boring

Cheers

I liken them to planar invasions in the game Rift. Really cool and awesome when you start the game. But before long they become the most annoying aspect of the game because they're entirely too frequent and just get in the way of you doing what you want to do.

I had 30 dragon souls saved up when I beat the game and that was with doing 90% of the side quests first. The dragons are just too common. Nerf their spawn rate by about 75% and they'd be a much more enjoyable aspect of the game.

Mind you I have not yet met an ancient dragon yet....but the first few times it was scary and epic.

At level 24 and 20+dragon slayings later not as epic...

what gets me thru them nowadays is a scenario that happened to me at the town near the magic school.....one was by the merchant house and one poor fool said "I'm not getting involved in this...".....guess who got involved and chewed on by the dragon....lol.

I make bets to myself who is most likely to be eaten after saying this line...a lotta fun....as long as its not me.

my first elder dragon plopped down right in the college courtyard; scared the bejesus out of me. of course, all it took was exactly 1 normal healing potion and it was as easy as any other dragon. the one other guy in the courtyard had the exact same reaction as me: i went up to talk to him as he started over the dragon bones and he went "oh, yes. uh huh."

Once an ancient dragon lands, takes me about five seconds to kill it dual-wielding. im lvl 47. Dragons are ridiculously NOT challenging.

I actually tried earlier, and I went to DawnStar, an anicent dragon landed on a building, and from sneak mode i was able to 1-shot it on master difficulty with arrows.. using the sneak 3x damage bonus. Dragons.. not difficult, nope.

Maybe not for you.

But when I hear that dreaded roar... I pray to Malacath it's a fire dragon, because I can't handle frost dragons without downing several potions.

People keep talking about Elder and Ancient dragons but I'm level 38 and I've yet to see one, the highest level dragons I meet are Blood Dragons and the last one I decided to kill purely by shield bashing it to death (I even had lag since I decided to record it with fraps)

Do I have to advance my main quest further to get Elder and Ancient dragons (NOTE: This is a yes or no question, do not spoil anything, if you know the answer have it be either simply "yes" or "no")

If you play this game without min maxing like any other RPG the balance is fine. If use the optimal builds like the combination of Enchanting, Blacksmithing and Archery... ya.. it gets very easy because you have powerful attacks and the best gear. I don't see how its even possible to hit level 60 without min maxing the [censored] out of the game. I have played 50+ hours, have finished I think about 2/3rds of the campaign and my best skill (1 handed weapons) is at about 60. I didn't grind, min max or anything else and the challenge level of the game is just right. I could get my blacksmithing to 100 and enchanting to 100 in a couple of hours and have dragon bone legendary armor if I wanted it, but I don't do it because I know that the game doesn't intend for you to have that. I agree its a flaw of the game that these exploits exist, but knowing that, why would you exploit a known flaw and ruin the experiance for yourself?

Its what I don't get about these arguments. People start out by exploiting the flaws of the game and than complain that its not balanced....

The Dragon's are some serious lost potential. They felt amazing and epic the first couple times I encountered them, and still do from time to time, but there's a couple big problems I have with them.

They can become way to frequent. I agree fast traveling seems to spawn them, I've had about 5 attack me at the Mage college, and often see them showing up in other fast travel locations. Even without, they could have cut down on the spawn rate a good 20%. Starting about level 20, the regular and frost ones became way to easy(was strict Mage then), and even now at level 39, anything below an elder gives up little more trouble than a couple bandits. I have more dragon bones/scales than I can use. The frequency makes them feel a lot less unique and special. I don't think they should be ultra rare, but there's to many as it is.

My second issue is a big one. Ok, let me set the scene... I'm traveling under a dual-moon, clear sky night with the northern lights shining bright. I hear a roar, and as I look behind me, an Elder Dragon swoops over my head with a fierce roar. It turns around, and as we make eye contact, it unleashes a breath of fire. I raise my shield and barely manage to survive the creature's attack. It flies off into the distance a bit, and as it begins to swoop around... it stops, mid air, and attacks a [censored] mudcrab. Then, it starts flying again, goes right by me, to attack that fierce looking Wolf 100 yards away. As I make my way over to fight this apparently DADD(Dragon Attention Deficit Disorder) affected bastard, it gets up and again flies off another 100 yards to attack whatever the heck else that isn't me. This kills the fun more than any other thing. The Dragon AI is both awesome and horrible at the same time. I understand why they want the Dragons to randomly attack other creatures, I've seen cool things like the Dragon just spraying fire down on Giants near me, getting them into the fight. But more often than not, they completely ignore me and attack mudcrabs, wolves, bears, and other insignificant creatures, that aren't even aggro'd by anyone/anything, and are incredibly far away. They really should have programmed a distance parameter where the Dragon wouldn't choose to randomly engage enemies far away from your character, wouldn't engage animal type mobs unless they attacked the Dragon, and would still have preference to attacking you... I'm the friggin' Dovakiin, not the mudcrab at the edge of my view distance who's just sitting there doing nothing.

I have the game on PC and I'm eagerly awaiting the construction kit for this game to be released so hopefully someone can mod the combat behavior. I love the game, but Bethesda both succeeded and failed hard with this things, and the issue I have is that the failings seems like something they could have easily changed. I have no idea what the thought process was that lead to these decisions regarding the AI behavior.

I am level 28 and I can't 1v1 a dragon... How do you kill it in 3 hits. I am playing on masters and it takes me a very, very, very long time to kill dragon.

I have around 88 1 hand with all sword perks except last crit and lvl 100 perk

I also even exploit the smithing a bit so my weapons and armor are all epic.

Dragons have become a nuisance to me. It really isn't about the difficulty of the dragons, but the fact that they appear out of nowhere while I just want to get on with my quest or continue exploring. The dragons sometimes take very long to attack or never attack at all, so they waste time that could be spent on more fun things.

Personally, I am a bit underwhelmed. It's okay when the fight actually works, but the AI on the dragons is terrible. All the time, they fly up and then don't know where to go or start attacking all the enemies in the area that aren't even involved (and I'm not talking about the near area) so I must run after them and actually force them to fight me.

Because one-handed does significantly less damage than 2h weapon, or bows. I have 100 smithing 100 enchanting 100 alchemy in my character, 90 archery, and 4 of my apparel items (head, gloves, necklace and ring) all have +42% bow damage, and my daedric bow's about 450-something damage base damage, with +30 fire damage & +30 shock damage on it per hit, not counting the +23 damage also from daedric arrows (which adds to base damage for each shot). Bow is also smithing-improved +220% over smithing-level-100 from blacksmithing (+100% from armor enchants (fortify smithing), +120% from potion)

So my girl's bow (when it has enough charge) does roughly 533 damage per hit with elemental damage combined + base damage, and that's not counting a poison i could add if i wanted to, or that potion that does +bow damage for a while, or both. i know it's about 450-something (I've shut down the gaming computer for the night typing on my laptop, so not sure -exactly- what # the bow's damage is, somewhere about 450 - 457'ish)

Also i had the game on novice combat rating until i got about 30, then turned it up a notch, then about mid-40's up another notch, and now that my girl's in her late 50's almost 60 I'm using master difficulty.

You don't even have to min/max for Dragons to be unchallenging. I can't imagine how boring Skyrim must be when you stack (abuse) Alchemy, Enchanting and Smithing.

Get the Wind Fury shout and dual wield.

Killed a frost dragon in 4 seconds after it landed with only steel swords xD

Posted this in another thread but it's essentially a mod that increases the difficulty of dragons. This mod makes me think twice about chasing down random dragons.... lol