Ha.....this time due to Adella's very high AR she survived his Devaststing hit and I was able at last to experiment on him .


First some brief background........In the DiD community we have on occasion noticed a random npc who seems to be capable of obscene levels of damage.....far in excess of any other similar npc with the same weapon in the same loaded cell. This is of great interest to DiD players of course because they are an instant game killer. Research on wiki highlighted a special 3x extra damage perk which may be awarded to any random npc and will typically not show up when the game is reloaded. You may, by good fortune, kill the deadly npc first and therefore not ever know he was ready to end your play through......but if he gets you first...game over man!


Today....I found one . In Brinewater Grotto on a TG quest. I had sneaked through most of it until the end of the cavern.....a bandit Marauder appeared and took a third of Adella's considerable 600+ health in one hit. Realising this was just such an un natural thing of which we knew. I saved my game and decided to run some tests.


Stats.....

Initially with a health buffed shield Adella had 642 health

Her AR was 1559

Her Light Armour Skill was 95

She wore full Dragonscale Legendary smithed with helmet and Dragonscale shield


The archer upon post mortem had a plain hunting bow with Dwarven arrows.


Each arrow strike took 180 health give or take 7 points.


Hunting bow = 14 damage. Dwarven arrow = 17 damage.......total 31

Playing on Legendary increases enemy damage by x3, giving him.....93 damage per hit ( theoretically)

Adella sustained approx 180 damage per hit which is near as dammit 3x the expected.

Therefore it is reasonable to conclude this npc had the special perk


However, upon reload....several times....this very same npc now inflicted just 58 damage per hit on average

Thus proving the variable presence of the perk....its added during load out...but only sometimes!


Fun and interest only....

I removed successive armour pieces to observe the effect of AR versus damage protection!

Results....

AR...1559.....58 damage per hit

AR....842......63

AR....740......65

AR....418.....165

AR....224......260

AR......50......355

These are averages over ten hits


This is extremely pleasing as for the first time the npc extra damage perk has been exposed in use.

Normally we just wind up dead after the first devaststing hit.

Please also bear in mind that although this guy was a MARAUDER archer

He only had a weak bow and low to mid range arrows.

Imagine an Ebony bow and arrow set in this guys hands

That COULD inflict circa 750 damage per hit on Adella even with her super high AR armour! (i.e. Dead !)


It is believed this perk CAN also be applied to melee npcs......but you'll never know until it's too late


Hope you found that interesting, I enjoyed messing with him and Adella enjoyed ending him when she had finished with him:)

Isn't 180 only about 2X 93? I'm not following where the 3X comes in? Thanks for clarifying

Oh yeah so it is.....your right But my recorded stats are correct


So in this instance he only had the 2x extra damage perk....blast!


Never mind the principle remains good........unexpected extra npc kill power


It CAN be UPTO 3x (there are lower set values also says wiki)


This one was a bit less.......but bad enough


On 3x he'd have done about 280 damage.....that makes it even worse.....


(Sorry my tired brains screwed up the simple math......it's nearly 4am here.....think, I need my bed)


STILL REALLY PLEASED.......WE CAUGHT ONE OF THE LITTLE DEVILS IN THE ACT

I believe that the Marauder level archer has a 2.5 Extra damage perk, and I think that is multiplied by the base weapon damage. So it would be 2.5x(base weapon damage)x3. He might have also gotten a Critical hit; they have level 2 of that perk.

Ah ha.......thanks Glargg that makes it a bit harder to decide what he had working then.........but it was certainly like double what you'd expect from his weapon set. I don't think he was doing critical hit because that would change the damage delt within each test session....from shot to shot.


Oh...hang on......base weapon damage......what's that meant to be for a hunting bow? I have no perks on archery and a skill of 50! So in my hands that bows base damage is 14.....But what does the npc see that damage level as?


This is getting horribly complicated now.....darn it!




NEVERTHELESS......he was taking 180 health points per hit off Adella........which upon the reloads dropped to 58


So however the infernal thing is calculated the end result is clear.


One way or another on first meeting that npc did THREE TIMES his USUAL damage


I really just wanted to prove to myself and others that we ( DiD community) were not imagining this thing


Well.......it's real alright.......QED


( you realise of course, I've had a real hang up over this ever since Ulda got svcker punched by that ghost archer in the DBs Cure for madness quest... Where we kill the insane clown. I have never forgiven this game over that.....)

Wow. NPCs deal damaged ? XD

Base damage for a Hunting Bow is 7, I think. Those arrows would be lower than you're seeing, too.

NPCs don't get the skill leveling that player-characters get, so there has to be another way to up the damage based on level. Thus the damage multiplier.

I have some wild theories on this because I unfortunately have not been able to observer it consistently. 3x damage, next reload, no 3x damage perk. Those wild theories being that if you ignore Meridia's Beacon she gets her revenge by weakening you character or like in old Daggerfall where if you don't feed for a few days as a werewolf character, your health gets reduced to 4. In Skyrim being that your character is weakened if you don't feed regularly as a werewolf. Like I say though, just some crazy idea theories I had.

This happened when i was fighting captain Hargar. I was at full health and the dude killed me with one hit! After i reload he was doing the same damage as a high level two handed boss but nothing close to one hit KO. Maybe if this ''hidden'' perk exist isn't only for archers.

Feiros.....yes as I Said in my opening post, I believe the perks can apply to melee weapons too.


Worst case scenario is when an already over powered npc ( Deathlord with ebony bow set) gets awarded it. It's a game killer for DiD players. When Bethedsa coded this in, they knew that almost nothing on Legendary could withstand it.......so imo it is a kinda "in-joke" for them. Of course most players are reloader types so having a giggle by ensuring a player is creamed occasionally doesn't matter. The fact that a minority of Dead is Dead enthusiasts will be pulling their hair out at losing two hundred invested char development hours....is of no concern whatsoever.


For this sole reason....I suggested to the DiD community that a blatantly unfair char death by this mechanism should be discountable. However, no one could be bothered to back me up and get it into the official rule page.........so we are unfortunately stuck with the fact that no matter how far you progress as a DiD player....at some point eventually you are going to meet a high npc who also has this perk and that's the end of your play through. Reloading usually makes the perk vanish.....so you can't even prove its what killed you....clever!


Edit.....I would like to meet the programmer who put this into our game......I really would....I would like the rationale explained to me. Dead is Dead as a play style has existed long before even Oblivion. So no one can say they didn't know how the perk would punish our play.......so what's the excuse then?

I highly doubt that 'dead is dead' was considered when trying to balance the game. The way you play doesn't naturally fit into the way the game is designed, you should just accept this instead of complaining about NPC damage calculations. Maybe you shouldn't play DiD if it drives you to the brink in this way.

I think the problem isn't so much "dead is dead" as it is "legendary." The legendary difficulty level was added later, after the vanilla game was developed. Master was the highest difficulty at release, and I believe the game was balanced for survivability at Master.

At Master difficulty, if you use every buff the game gives you for your level, there isn't anything in the game world that can one-shot kill you (at least this is my impression.) When they added the Legendary level, they didn't rebalance the game to match it. So Legendary is really "harder than the hardest level."

Yeah well that's pretty harsh Cjay......it ain't just me pal. There are a lot of folk play as I do and it's a growing style.


So you say I shouldn't complain if the Devs have done something that's potentially a show stopper for us......why not?


The game is designed for Role Play ok....it's an RPG.......Dead is Dead is an ultimate type of Role Play......in which can can Role Play the finality of mortal life. The Devs must know this.....is their business and they play games!


They don't have to give a fig about anything customers complain about unless it's enough to harm sales......but that doesn't mean that they should just ignore an entire play style genre.....it's not like a little care couldn't put the issue right......no one needs to redesign the game to stop this game killer scenario.


Glargg is probably right......although I suspect the highest output npcs would still take down a master level player.

Legendary Equation:

You x 0.25

Them x 3

the moment you set your game to Legendary this is the affect on you and all NPC's the full affect of this can be seen fully if you start a new game, level 1 and play on from there, the sudden realization that direct confrontation is out of the question even against wolves, mudcrabs.............don't think about taking on a bear ..........just run for your life.

this one is a Die-hard DiD'er and would like to make a note that she is only giving one point of view on the subject .........in saying that there are hundreds or thousands of ways playing & all of them are unique & personal.

this one has observed that between levels 1 - 10 there is a very big unbalance, it will take you at least 10 levels to even get a decent armor & weapons (bought/found or smithed) and even then the best you will have is 150AR & 50damage ........

you have to get to about a level 30 for the game to start balancing out ..........now you don't need 100 arrows anymore.........you only need 50! ............at level 50 the game becomes fair ..........you can now have AR of 1200 & 400 damage and a one on one with a deathlord is a matter of 3 - 5 power hits with a well enchanted mace.

the thing with legendary is that you have to change the way you do & think about things & quests .........running off to do bleak falls barrow at level 6 is inviting certain death ..........if the bandits don't get ya the giant spider will.

it becomes a strategy game, you have to plan ahead & craft your skills to support you, small mistakes are critical, and a mistake with a perk on a skill tree can be disastrous.

glargg's point on that legendary was added much later and was not properly tweaked to every aspect feel like the best answer, ............playing it for the first time ...........this one said WOW ......that's different "I just died!"

as for Ricks anolysis in the first post this one admires all the time and effort for gathering the information......and will come in very useful......the fact is YES NPC like this do appear ever now and then that can inflict a one hit kill, has happen to this one once or twice.....just a thought maybe this is not only a legendary thing but is active on all level.............the only difference is the difficulty multiplier ...........example on adept this affect would not be notice since the game is at 1x Vs 1x

this one has always wondered about the killer blow from the ebony warrior.....one hit kill even if you have a AR 1500.....because he has only a ebony sword with its base damage (and the bow & the magical enchantments), if this one could avoid the first 3 direct hits she would notice that his damage would become sorta normal, still lethal but you would survive a hit or two..........it is as if his STAMINA has to play a big factor in multiplying his damage ............after he uses it up he is playable.

would be good to repeat your experiment Rick, if you still have the game save & see if you receive less and less damage ...first a......direct hit.....then.....a miss first then the direct hit ..........2 misses and hit.....and so on

Many NPCs have special perks to multiply their damage output, since the quality of their equipment is poor. The problem is that the perk erroneously multiplies the damage output of arrows by the square of the intended value; this appears to be an engine bug, as it doesn't affect the Overdraw perks the player has access to.

Since version 2.1.3, this has been fixed by the Unofficial Skyrim Patch.

AR...1559.....58 damage per hit
AR....842......63
AR....740......65
AR....418.....165
AR....224......260
AR......50......355
These are averages over ten hits

You can go higher you know.. but the values will be less each time, I think 3k AR would probably be 50. Interesting though the jump from 418 to 740 is 102 damage.

Terra Nova.....Yes agreed.....it is possible to go higher.....by using the restoration exploitation loop......which I wouldn't even consider for honest play. But it might be worth doing the cheat solely to get the AR vs damage taken data. I love experiments


PrinceShroob.......Xbox mate!


Sah....hee hee.....you know me.....I usually go to Bleakfalls Barrow about level 4....Legendary...AR 70. I come out about level 8. Yes, of course you are right though....to do that.....very tactical and careful play is required......but I can do that

High level npc groups tend to get this bonus, and if they have good weapons they are devastating.

Was not aware of an bug in calculation.