dea

Just to add to this conversation, if you do as I did on my second character and wait until level 35 or later to start the main quest it is a lot harder. My first random dragon was an Elder and it just got worse from there.

Better to compare damage outputs rather than apples to oranges. Melee and archer builds get HUGE damage increasing perks and equipment buffs. The reduced magic cost is merely a counterbalance to the fact that magic has far less chance to improve damage. I can hardly believe that it wasnt intentional since it is dead obvious that it would be used. Its like saying that it wasnt intentional that players would hide behind rocks from ranged damage.

See, that is another issue. Scaling down to the player, instead of encouraging the player to improve. I mean, let's be honest here. Does anyone really believe a low level Dovahkiin has any business at all fulfilling their prophecy when they're basically wet behind the ears?

yes, i started playing at adept cause as the middle difficulty mode i would gues it is a normal run and medium to hard bosses.. but as a mage or archer ( i have both ) it is just very easy. the priests can be irritating whit there spells, but as a mage myself they are a laugh.

@ Hungry Donner, caps are fine by me, its makes the game more interesting cause there is no unlimmited spell spamming. I study to become a game designer muself and i'm learning from every game i play. But it saddens me to see that great games like Oblivion have such unbalances. For the rest it is a great game, in 80 hours i did allmost every quest and found all masks (whitout internet).

A novel idea if you are looking for a challenge.

Do not use Dragonrend.

Use a bow and your other shouts. Crank it up to master.

Enjoy.

Have you tested this? I am fairly certain he is invincible if dragonrend is not on him.

Or simply throw iron daggers with telekinesis, make it more painful and EPIC!

He is.

One of the problems with this fight is that the three heroes who assist you also know Dragonrend, and, like other effects it stacks, so if multiple copies are on him at once his HP nosedives during that period. Which leads to another of the problems: you don't actually need to fight, because the Big Three will wipe him in short order no matter what.

That said, I have a feeling that at least some of the folks who are asking for this battle to be more like the old-school boss fights haven't actually fought certain old-school bosses, since if they had, they wouldn't be making that request.

No, seriously; while I wouldn't mind the fight being a bit harder there's a fine line between 'difficult' and 'you gotta be kidding me', and those who have fought the latter sort of bosses know why I don't want Alduin to become one of them, despite his standing.

I don't know, everyone I have spoken to, even those who only casually play and barely know the lore were disappointed with the ease that they defeated him with. If anything, he should have been hard enough to justify us having three invincible allies along with ourself. The fact that some other NPC in the same area can just about single-handedly take him down proves there is something wrong with him.

Oh, I'm not arguing that, it's just that the extent to which some folks would ramp him up is a lot more severe than they think, and we'd end up with a whole new raft of complaints. Which is why I tend to be on the conservative side of boss buffing, as massively-difficult boss fights simply aren't enjoyable save by a small minority.

He is easy because you are DRAGONBORN!!!!!!!!111!!!!111!1!!1!!

Why is an ancient dragon harder than him then, if he is the most ancient of all dragons?

I'm assuming you're referring to those types of things that literally take hours to accomplish, most of which you spend narrowly avoiding becoming a poop smear on the ground. The quickest reference I can think of is watching friends in old school Final Fantasy games. I'd agree that you're right, people would endlessly moan about that. However, I think the average player is frequently coming across enemies noticeably tougher than Alduin, before they fight Alduin.

While I'll usually agree with the "If you think it's too easy, crank up the difficulty/don't use exploits" crowd, here I have to differ. I had no issues with the difficulty throughout the game, before and after defeating Alduin, at various level ranges. But he was kind of a pansy.

Tried that. The dragons indeed becomes powerful, but Alduin is still the same old.

Indeed. We are comparing him in relation to other enemies so game difficulty is not a factor here.

It would probably help if we weren't given three immortal and OP allies, as they make it way too easy. I assume they are there to make sure a low-level character can actually complete the battle, however that begs the question of whether or not a low-level character should even be there in the first place, and the answers to that run head-on into the 'do what you want, when you want' policy the game follows.

If my solo fights against Ancient Dragons are an indicator, the fight would still be too easy for stealth archers; unlike most 'wild' dragon fights the player gets first shot, and a well-prepared archer can one-shot almost anything he/she gets the jump on. Even without first-strike, it wouldn't take more than a handful (4-5, say) of shots with an uber-bow to kill him, even on Master, so for high(er) level characters he'd be a cakewalk in his current form anyway.

As for improving the fight: apply a passive buff to him that reduces Dragonrend's effects (remember, it took three copies to banish him the last time, and then just barely), improve his shouts and give him a few more, and give him a high armor rating. That last is a counter to the fact that you have 4 people (minimum) beating on him at once, which means that he loses massive amounts of HP during each Dragonrend cycle. If necessary, boost his HP; although I hate that method, it does help soak hits from high-end weapons.

In all honesty, this is my opinion, I believe the entire fight needs to be scrapped and rebuilt from the ground up in concept. The way it is now, is just plain lazy, and no different from any normal dragon.

Just talking simple changes, I would give him an exponential increase in hitpoints based on our character's level, with him having a base count at around 4500, and scaling all the way up to 12500 at the most. Have his armor rating set at around 50% mitigation, and have all of his damage set to deal a staight up percentage of a target's maximum health per hit.

Give him access to unlinked shout timers.

Give him whirlwind sprint, unrelenting force, marked for death, slow time, ice form, disarm, lightning breath, and a special point blank area of effect unrelenting force, along with everything he already has. Maybe allow him to summon two dragon priests as well.

Totally agree. As cliche as it sounds, I wanted the fight to feel more "epic." I was expecting something borderline unfair/aggravating...either Alduin has an insane amount of health, uses a whole bunch of shouts against me (us), he summons help in the form of other allied dragons; something tricky. I realize adapting the battle to a HUGE range of player characters is nearly impossible (level scaling, gear, build, tactics, etc.), but if anything, Alduin fought like any other dragon that rides the small bus.

He was super hard for me during the first fight...

Would you guys say the first fight with Alduin is harder? When you only have Paarthurnax helping?

Not harder, just longer, and that's with Paarthanaax NOT helping (didn't realise he was supposed to until reading spoilers).

I feel like the fight on the throat of the world is harder than the actual final fight.

Let a forswarn briarheart have some swings at you , reload to an alive point. Go let Alduin have a snap or two , yeah thought so , the encounter could have done things differently as far as introducing phases. Even when he's on the ground ......... he still has feet , teeth , and a tail. Every other dragon ever in anything those were the things you avoided at all costs , no matter what age the dragon is.They either tried to REALLY showcase how seriously awesome dragonrend is , or they just plain borked the encounter and couldn't be bothered to adjust it.

You could adjust the hitbox that dragonrend would work on him while he's flying so that it wasn't a given he'd just plop out of the air when you just mash the button.There could have been a "phase" where he grabbed you and you two had a fight on a cliff face or something where noone else could get to you , then he runs before you can win and starts eating the other heroes alive and you have to get back there asap , or whatever. He doesn't necessarily have to just be totally beastly and 1-shot you, there could have been other combat influences introduced to make the fight more interesting. I'm sure Alduin , as ancient as he is , and being the world-eater and all , has some old "aces up the sleeve" he could possibly pull etc. Bad encounter is bad.

Oh and as far as the dual-wield perk for destruction , you guys wouldn't even be discussing it if it didn't work 100% ON THE FINAL OMG BOSS in the game. The lame part is him not having resists like he should , and melee armor on a dragon one would think should be pretty damn beefy.It seems the opposite of wow , some great encounters , seriously flawed logic.That game you kill a boss he personally drops upgrades to make killing him next week even easier. Beyond the fact these "bosses" are semi-godlike in that they reincarnate every Tuesday , it's just baffling why you'd want to use gear off something you defeated , obviously you're the stronger one already. So you're left with game developers dealing with every freaking aspect of every possible whine that could possibly be brought up , I did the encounter , was disapointed and moved on. I was disappointed in the ENCOUNTER I fully expected to do massive damage , I'd been preparing to do just that , but the enemy is gimped into a one-sided fight by limiting his defensive and offensive choices too much.

Well, I just finished this last night. I have to admit, my melee warrior had a harder time fighting past all the Deathlords and Death Overlords in Skuldafn Temple than fighting Alduin. But at least this time I got to participate a little. I didn't have to stand by and watch Martin take all the glory this time.

To answer an earlier question, I had a much harder time with the first Alduin fight. I was chugging more potions than I could count for that fight. I didn't drink a single potion during the Sovngarde fight. [Disclosure: level 39, Adept difficulty. No enchantments, no magic use of any kind, the only shout used was Dragonrend].

I guess I agree that it felt kind of anticlimactic for me too. After battling simultaneous Death Overlords and a Dragon Priest I was expecting the game to really throw something at me when I faced Alduin. Didn't happen.

He was VERY hard the first time for me. I died multiple times before I reloaded an earlier save and stocked up on stacks of potions, better gear, etc. I think I still drank 30 Ultimate Healing potions during that fight before I finally defeated him, and that is minimum (no exaggeration).

The first fight with Alduin is easily the most difficult encounter I had in the entire game.