Uh just saying I am not a complete archer. I don't even us archery as much. But, when I use my bow I take down dragons normally. I don't have trouble with dragons moving out of screens if I time it right. It's easy just gotta be patient.

The game isn't bad. YOU make it fun just remember that.

I am a pure caster and i need a companion to kill a dragon i only wear robe i literally take 30 minuts (more if you include the 4/5 times i die in the process) to kill a dragon (i play the hardest difficulty so the game go slow, i even die for randome snow wolves sometimes! i just like to take long time to finish a game since i play them only once i hate to repeat them even with different char i can't live the same/similar story twice)

I usually die 3/4 times before i figure out how to kill the dragon once i even had to leave some snow wolf do half of the job i waited 15 minuts looking at the dragon fighting those wolves when the dragon was down half life... i sent my companion (told her "it's almost dead just go i will cover you" she didn't notice i was obviously lieing)

i went around while my companion was getting rosted, found a rock and start casting all i had... rinse and repeat for at least 10 minuts (i died a couple of time due to the horrible horrible HORRIBLE dear lord did i say HORRIBLE GUI )

someone would say it's frustrating but i loved it... the accomplishment in actually killing the dragon feels real i have no uber gear no decent armor/waepon/trinket i am still lvl 7 wearing the robe they gave me at the school of magic...

It's NOT the game it's just you that don't know how to play it in a way that is FUN for you... many wouldn't like the way i play (pretty frustrating and super slow) but this is an open game and challenge is for you to find your own way to play (other thing is the HORRIBLE GUI did i mention it?)

That's the real challenge and you are obviously losing right there...

My character is a warrior; uses heavy armor and mostly 2 handed weapons. However, he also uses a bow. Not very well, but I fire away. I've fought 2 dragons so far and I didn't feel the fights were unfair. They're dragons; they're supposed to be hard. The second fight I wasn't even expecting; I heard a loud noise and suddenly there was one attacking me; I ran for cover..and started shooting arrows at it. When he got too close, I stunned him with shout and ran for cover; and resumed peppering away. Bow and arrow is not supposed to be like a machine gun; this isn't DA2 with Varric and his SAW crossbow; And I don't think the game is broken if I'm not good at the combat. Try different tactics. I've been playing about 16 hours and every fight I've seen something new; new animation; new combat move..something. I've having a ball with it. Sad thing is, I'm having problems with the game; getting the 5-10 second freezes outside. Still having fun.

Erm, Archery is beautifully done. It's so powerful if you just spend a bit of time learning how to use it properly. It's only easy to miss if you're awful at aiming, and I don't understand how it's at all slow to fire. Maybe your build is bad, or maybe you're just bad with Archery, I don't know, but I cannot see how you find Archery to have "no real advantage." I only have two perks, the 40% boost to damage, and the Zoom function, and I can bring down dragons with minimal fuss. Also, balance between power-attacks and regular attacks to keep your stamina nice and high. It's not complicated.

You play a Hunter/Ranger sort of class. They're experts with bows, and they can use survival skills like Alchemy (which I don't really count as magic). Additionally, the get bonuses to stealthy skills, which is good, because they're more of a glass cannon kind of class; they can deal huge damage, but can't really take it very well. As above, it's not complicated.

I don't know whether to laugh or scream at your opinions on Alchemy. I'm struggling to hold back from calling you an idiot, honestly. Of course you don't know where to find stuff to craft with. If I want to bake a cake in real life, and there's no supermarket, I'm not necessarily immediately going to know exactly where to get the ingredients for it. Why do you have this expectation that the game is going to be like, "Hey, man, look over here! There's some really great ingredients that you can use for a really great potion!" It would be totally ridiculous for the game to do something like that. When the game does give you hints on where to look for stuff, it's in books, and it's also contained in comments made by people around Skyrim. Read and listen, for God's sake. It is so easy to reliably source ingredients throughout Skyrim; I constantly have a huge glut of ingredients in my inventory, and struggle to get rid of them. It's so quick, easy, and interesting to make new potions, and experiment with ingredients, and I genuinely have no idea what has given you the idea that the game should hold your hand all the way through. Also, good potions cost a fortune to buy, when instead they can be made with easy-to-find, cheaper ingredients.

I don't quite get what you were expecting with Skyrim. Were you expecting some kind of BF3-style waypoint and guide arrow system? The game is designed in order to force you to learn how to make decisions. Why did you expect it to help you build a class? Does a strange spectral entity guide you through life in the real world? You have to figure it out for yourself, just like everybody else that plays Skyrim. It's not that difficult to build a good class; it just takes time, patience, and the knowledge of where you shouldn't go in Skyrim, lest you get your ass kicked.

If you actually try defeating enemies you won't have any problems. Imagine being a poor beggar rotting in a corner, VOILA I KEEL DRAGONS -No, it doesn't happen.
When you get to 20-30 you'll have it quite easy no matter how you've built character.

I tried to play the game a very niche way at first too. I went sword and shield and chugged potions.

Then I came to a cave with an ice bridge that spanned a gap that seemed to be an endless pit of "holy [censored] don't fall here" terror.

Suddenly two freaking ice trolls came barreling at me from across the bridge. The first time I tried to carefully fight them but, being that they were trolls and I had no fire enchants I was at a disadvantage... And was properly DESTROYED.

On my second attempt, I realized that the scary pit was actually a blessing in disguise...

"FUS... RO DAH!!!!!"

And bam, two ice trolls who thought of me as their next meal were suddenly ragdolling their way to the center of the earth.



The point of my post is this, you CAN play the game the way you want, but sometimes if you don't want to take the time to level up a skill to FORCE the game to let you win with your specific tactic, there may be an other solution. I've come to understand that the greatest asset of Skyrim is that there ARE hundreds of solutions to every scenario and thinking outside of the box is often an exciting experience all on its own.


Since this experience I've been using Unrelenting force on ANYTHING near a cliff, its good for the lolz.

If svck at it you really should ,archery is awesome.

How so?

If the games too hard for you; lower the difficulty. Nuff said.

Honest to God- the dragons are the easiest thing. It's the sabertooth tigers and the trolls that are killing me the most.

With respect, you've not really addressed the points I made.

Alchemy requires the player write down where he found a herb, so he can go back and find it again (travelling isn't the problem), and to write down what it does. Otherwise it's like looking for a needle in a haystack. If you use the alchemy lab it will only tell you the ingredients that you have, so if you want to build a potion of x you need to already have ingredients, or know what you need (whcih is why i said write it down because the game doesn't record it for you), or you won't know what to buyild that potion with. It will list all the things you can craft based on what you have previously discovered, but not what it requires (it just says "ingredient, ingredient, ingredient, optional"). The inventory also doesn't tell you where the ingredients you have came from, when you look at them. That would be a great help. So many things i've found only once, as loot, while a few things you find everywhere, like Lavender. So how then do you source those ingredients again?

I have a huge stock of ingredients, mainly because it's the same few things you find everywhere. That's not the point.
And it's no good having recipes if you don't know where you can consistently source the ingredients. If you only ever find one of a herb needed to craft a super potion of healing, for example, then that potion is a waste of time since you're only goinhg to be using it once. What's the point of alchemy then? That is the point I am trying to make.
And having recipes list ingredients is great, except if you don't know where to find that ingredient - what then is the point?

...so write it down? It doesn't hurt to write stuff down if you can't remember it.

I'm playing an archer / sneak guy, and alchemy has saved my hide quite a few times already. With respect to the dragon issue, use cover and sneak bonus! I like that different characters have more or less difficulty with certain enemies, and have to rely on cover, moving around, alchemy, stuff like that - if everything was perfectly balanced difficulty-wise, the game would be very bland.

Get your Huscarl in some [censored] hot Armour and get her in between you and a spanking. Also get a war dog, anything to keep the attention off your face.

I'm lvl 16 in legendary Dwarf armor with 5% fire resist on all my dragon fighting crap, [censored] is lols.

If your thinking, how on earth does he have legendary smithing, well, its easy. Just through all your money at it, do the companion guild quest. Go hunting, a lot. Make and sell lots of armor. And most importantly get some % bonus to smithing skill items.
I'm on a 45% bonus with something like 60 smithing skill.

Enchant and smithing are the 2 power houses of any class.

Even in you put difficulty on master, you will still 1 hit bandits, it will make you feel like you've made progress and gotten way stronger

Got to agree with this. The one thing that never give me any problems are dragons. But I always have a companion, keep up a protection spell of some sort and move around so I'm attacking from the side or behind. But I'm only L15 and may not have run into the tougher stuff.

Got to agree specially as a Dunmer I eat fire dragons for breakfast 50% racial resist to fire + 40% fire resist shield = dead dragon with no health lose. Have a 40% frost shield and 20% frost potions for those frosty dragons too. I try not to use companions as it makes the game to damn easy.

Clearing a fortress of bandits is no problem for me, but whenever I go into Dwemer ruins and encounter those steam centurions, I get destroyed in mere seconds. It just shows how this game handles level scaling. I don't mind that at all.