This was the conclusion I came to. Not only that magic and poison effects could be applied faster due to faster swipes, but the haste rating given to you by the elemental fury dragon shout (or whatever it's called) would speed up your daggers even more, applying the magic/poison effects even faster. Speed is more important than weapon strength when it comes to applying magic damage and especially poisons more quickly.

If anything, the fact that daggers are excluded from the damage bonus would likely indicate they'll be just as deadly as dual-wielding more standard melee weapons, if not more so. The difference will be primarily in that rogues this time around are being encouraged to take up alchemy. They've talked about the poisons that can be made with alchemy quite a bit. Chances are rogues will be able to stack both enchantments and poison on their daggers, making them outright killing machines.

I hope they use the kind of poison that doesn't spoil the succulent Mud Crab flesh, though.

i never really liked using daggers, but it seems that daggers i guess are only viable as sneak-attack weapons.
in two worlds 2 you would only use your dagger when you were in sneak mode, other than that you would use a different weapon.
maybe off-hand a dagger but mainhand i don't think you should.

do you get a bonus sneak dmg for a 2h sneak-attack? just wondering.

Yes it is kind of early to tell unless I play the game myself and watch the damage. Usually I use a dagger and a short sword type for dual wielding in certain games I have played Assassin/Stealth characters.

The thing that made daggers so deadly, in oblivion, was enchantments. Two in particular, Drain Health and Weakness to Magic. A dagger, enchanted with both, could take down an Orge w/ 980 HP, in 4 sec., delivering 2 blows, in just under 1 sec. That's faster than any weapon in the game. This could be done with a character, having only 5 Str and 5 Blade Skill. It is because of the way WTM stacked, in the mechanics. That's not saying, a low skilled char, w/ this weapon, could kill the enemy faster than a 100 skilled char. It's just saying that this enchanted dagger, is the fastest killing weapon in the game, for a given char.

NOTE : That's in the Vanilla game, fighting straight up, in open combat, with no sneak bonus or poisons.

WTM is a Destruction Spell. Is or will it be available? We don't know.
Even if it is available, will it still stack? We don't know.
Will Drain Health be available? We don't know.
Does the DW mechanics, decrease the damage effect of one or both weapons? We don't know.
How much increase is the attack speed? is it x2, is it x1.5, is it x1.8? We don't know.

Conclusion : Will daggers be useless or will they be epic speed killing machines?.....You guessed it...We don't know.

No, no birthsign.

You just choose your race at the beginning. Later you can choose something like a birthsigh at standing stones -- warrior, mage, thief. Said choice can be changed at any time, and simply levels the skills associated with the class archetype quicker then the rest.


Elemental fury is only cast on one weapon at a time, which can be seen in the videos, so doesn't have particular utility for dual-wielders over single weapon wielders.


Unlikely, there's no perk for it in the sneak, or two-handed perk tree, plus two-handers make the most noise when sneaking.

There's no point, other than role-playing.

And TES is role-playing, right?

At least it looks like dual wielding will work better now than it did in Daggerfall

Except the dual-wield power attack which uses both weapons, which presumably will be more powerful than other power attacks and hence will be the preffered attack to get the *15 dagger stealth damage bonus...

In oblivion, stealth had no 'power attack'. If it's changed in Skyrim, then it might be a possibility. However, I'm not so sure they'd allow us to attack with two weapons in stealth and stack up the attack of both of them.. One dagger needs to be just as good for stealth combared to two daggers IMO.

1. Dual-wield power attack has already been confirmed (I beilieve it's the standing still version of the power attack).
2. I admit, I'm unsure you can do power attacks in stealth, I have read all about it previously but I can't remember the official source so I can't honestly claim it to be 'official'.
3. I'd like one dagger to be as good as two however I'm leaning towards the dual wield stealth dagger attack as being possible, in which case two daggers will have the advantage.

I don't know if I agree with you about that. You only see a single weapon being used in the video, but Todd does say "you can shout at your weapons". The video didn't show the shout done when dual wielding.

to get in touch with your inner Princess Stabbity Stab-Stab, because everyone has one.

Saying "you can shout at your weapons" is grammatically correct -- you can likely choose which weapon in your inventory you shout at, however in every instance I've seen in the videos it only effects one weapon when duel wielding.

This was why I was quite puzzled when people were saying it improved duel-wielding -- it doesn't effect both weapons, and even if it did you can't attack with both at the same time short of the power attack.

I believe that Daggers are more of a stealth only weapon.

The difference is that doing 15x backstab with a dagger takes one perk - a stealth perk - instead of 5 one handed perks.

How about you wait until we get an entire perk tree(s) with all the details before we bring any final conclusion?

I read the sneak attack with a dagger is at the end of the individual skill tree and hence to unlock takes more than one perk.

2 things:

1) The bonus multiplier of one-handed prowess is not 20% per rank. It's 40% per rank (source: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:One-handed). This means that a sword is the best weapon, both for stealth and for regular fighting.

See some numbers:

Assuming raw damage of 10 for a sword, with just three ranks of one-handed prowess base damage scales to 22 (10 · (1+ 0.4 · 3)) and sneak damage to 22 · 6 = 132.
If a dagger of equivalent quality has a raw damage of 9 (most extreme case), then base damage would still be 9 and sneak damage would be 9 * 15 = 135.

And this is with just 3 ranks of one-handed prowess. If you get the fourth one, swords deal 156 damage in sneak. With the fifith one, they deal 180. This is far, far better than 135 and, let's not forget, swords will be much more powerful outside of stealth.

2) Daggers are only useful for dedicated stealthy characters who don't want to waste perks on one-handed. Daggers increase raw damage as the sneak skill progresses (perfect for assassins) and the sneak multiplier is, obvisouly, inside the sneak skill (so again perfect for assassins). Daggers are thus the most efficient weapon por stealthy characters.

In the sneak perk tree, the end one makes daggers do 15x more damage in sneak mode. Sure its at the end but there is also another that increases sneak damage for all 1h weapons by 6x. So when you get that final perk, you have 21x the damage in sneak mode.





Lets assume that the character didn't put points into one handed. 10x12=120 (from extra perk in sneak) while 9x21=189. Better for a stealth character. Not all would want to go into one handed.

If the one-handed prowess perk applies to all one-handed weapons except daggers, then I expect that this x6 sneak multiplier won't affect daggers either.

Sneak is based around daggers, and the description doesn't say that. It says: Backstab Sneak attacks do 6x damage with 1h weapons. I think daggers fall under 1h weapons. Also, lets say that the person did a sneak double power attack, and power attacks take the damage x3, then x2 for two of them. 9x3x2=54. 9x21=189x2=378+54=432 damage.

It doesn't really increase the one handed weapon sneak damage by "6x", it sets the damage to 6x. The original multiplier is lower, and it is replaced by 6x, just as Oblivion's sneak perks. You can't just sum multipliers like that, there is no indication that they react like this. Also it seems pretty obvious that one handed weapons are being taken as a completely different category than daggers here.

I honestly don't think using two daggers in stealth will be better than one, however when you are seen (or if you are soon), two daggers will be better to fend of the enemies in a blurry of attacks. But, because you are able to pause the game and scroll around for ages thinking what strategy is best right now it doens't really have any tactical difference.

No, they don't. That's precisely the thing. Daggers depend on the sneak skill. Their damage is tied to your sneak level and not to your one-handed level. Also, perks in one-handed explicitely exlcude daggers. Furthermore, it's common sense that if there is a multiplier specifically for daggers then the multiplier for one-handed won't affect them.