I was just reading up on the forums, and I realized something. In a few different articles and sources, dragons are mentioned to "fly around, then when wounded, crash into the ground". Once they're on the ground, you can get up close + personal with them. One problem, however. How do you get Mr. Dragon to come down to melee range, if you don't have ranged attacks? For a mage or archer, taking it down from the air would be possible, but with a melee class, what are you gonna do? Throw your sword..?
In a mountain, maybe you could jump on top of it when it flies by, but that's a long shot at best (if it is even supported).

You might say, well, we have dragonshouts! Well just scream the dragon out of the sky! Well...yes, we do, but we don't know if we'll have a shout that can knock them out of the air, or just deal damage. Either way, you'd have to find the specific shouts first in order to use them. I guess you'd avoid dragons until you got a shout that hits air/knocks it out of the sky, or you start training a ranged skill. Problem: Oh censored, here we are, back to grinding just so you can kill dragons.

And therefore, the amusing thought comes to mind, in which a fierce, Nord Warrior stands helplessly on the ground, swinging his Sword of Fury at the air, cursing himself for neglecting to practice magic or marksmanship.

I have one more thing. Beth has gone off about how we can switch between weapons, and dual wield, etc (basically EASY mixing/hybriding). Perhaps this.... "problem" ... encourages hybriding, instead of specializing, like previous TES games.

Well, no more pure Berserker Warrior for me... :banghead:

The dragon will land at you, as he does in the trailer, and as described by Todd Howard in articles.

I'm sure the dragon will come down nice and low so you can whack its soft underbelly . It needs to get close to you as well, after-all. It can't just rely on fireballs.

You think the dragon will stay up in the air forever? If you've seen the trailer, he swoops down to attack you. That's when your melee character is supposed to strike.

If the Dragon swoops down and tries to attack, you could always counterattack.

that dragon will do whatever the hell it wants, if your ill suited for what it throws at you at that moment I call good design descision and a lesson learned that you can choose to rectify later.

Yeah, what they all said. the dragons swoop down, and attack you.

Cliffracers come to mind. Dragons use fire, but they'll probably swipe at your or try to eat you.

Flying poses limitations for the dragon, in that his firing arc is limited and his forward movement commits him to a strafe path. Its hard to hit a moving target on the ground long enough to do them in. I imagine there's a practical need for the dragon to get closer to finish the job, especially if the target can ward against fire.

If I were the dragon tho, I'd forego the whole fire thing entirely, and just pick the target up with my claws and drop him from a significant height.

If the dragon's ranged abilities are based on the same shouts we get, then maybe they have some limits on how often they can use them just as we do.

That's actually an excellent point, and totally consistent with what we've been told.

there is a big thing that will help you, the whole reason you kill dragons, dragon shouts, some will be free like fus do rah, which can knock them down
and its not like you have to be a master in archery to use a bow

and at some point they will land or attack you

Dragons fly based on speech as stated by Lore

while theres no levitation confirmed (and im pretty sure its denied) shouldnt there be a shout that allows you to fly? theres one that lets you teleport.

I made a topic just like this a while ago, I siad we should have a "come here you stupid dragon" shout, or "your mother was a cliffracer!" shout.

Creatures capable of flight are not always in flight... :facepalm:

I've actually thought about this from the beginning. I just never brought it up.
Unlike alot of people on the forums, instead of worrying my head off about Skyrim, I just can't wait to see.

I guess you'll just have to be strategic in how you fight, from what we've heard they'll land to attack you if they can't hit you with fire so find some place to be until they come close. I mean that's what you'd have to do right?

They don't really have any ranged attacks, even for fire-breath and other shouts you need to be in range, and for that it needs to land or swoop down...

i realize they are going to have to make the dragons total retards so that you can actually finish the game. but i would like to see them put one dragon in that would just pick up a big boulder or a tree stump and just drop it on you from way up high. but of course they are going to be designed like idiot and just conveniently land right next to you so they can die for no good reason. :rolleyes:

if you dont have either archery or magic for ranged then you should be owned by anything that does have ranged.

I didn't know. I didn't see or copy your thread, 100% thought of it myself. Great minds think alike? :tongue:

This isn't Dragon Age, your warriors and non-archer rogues can still use their bow.

If the dragon is out of range of your arrows or magic just use the Reservist Sniper Rifle, it should bring him down with a couple of head shots. … Ops, sorry, thinking about FO3. Really, just piss him off and he will come after you, per T. Howard in July PC Gamer. Then you can get your adrenalin going.

It wouldn't make sense for dragons to land when they're fighting a melee only character. Why would they give up such an obvious advantage. And to those who don't know, dragons in TES are intelligent creatures and if they're flying around above you for 3 minutes and you're just mindlessly jumping and swinging your sword, they'll know. The only solution I can think of is that the first shout we get will be the "push" one and when we use it on a dragon in the air, it'll disorient them and make them crash.

I think it will be advisable for every class thats not a mage to have some proficiency with the bow, since there is no more an "archer" build, since, in the end, archer builds were stupid, because nobody uses a bow when five guys are attacking you with swords. The bow should be a strategic weapon, not THE weapon to use.

Maybe you should learn how to balance a character then? I dunno.

You STILL CAN USE A BOW! Just not effectively. Again, balancing your playstyle is important.