Wandering around with my new mage, I came across a saber cat. I unleashed a storm of ice spikes on him which took him down halfway by the time he reached me. Then we had a little melee fight which I won, but not before he took me down to about 10%. Before I could equip my healing spell, I was attacked from the back by a second cat who obviously killed me.

I had watched this first cat for some time trying to figure out what he was before I attacked. There were no other signs of a second cat anywhere. So where did he come from?

I reloaded and this time summoned Mrs. Heat Miser. Between the two of us we killed him before he reached us. I spun around to find the second cat but nothing came. I left the scene with no further trouble.

Do battles with certain creatures in this game (namely the saber cats) have x% chance of spawning a second creature to simulate their stalking, pouncing, silent kill nature? If so, I'd like to cry foul on this one.

Then again, maybe I'm all wrong. Maybe that second cat is still out there, but he wasn't attracted to the second fight because it was much shorter. Still, I looked all around, and no second cat.

Chalk it up to one of those goofy Skyrim things you can't explain, or am I on to something?

Similarly, when I was hunting deer in the very beginning of the game I could swear that those deer de-spawned once they fled behind that one rock, because bloody hell I could not find them. Not a single one of them. "POOF!" as it were.

I haven't had it happen to me since though, rather odd.

There is a reason they get called "random encounters" you know.

All games cheat. It's the only way they can beat the players. Why else would a patch break more things than it fixes?

Oh, just drop it would you. I see no reason to bring that up in completely unrelated topics.
Shoo. I'm not sure where the door is, but I believe if you first look right and then to your left you will be able to locate the door and subsequently exit through said door.

when im a nord in full ebony armour who gets 1 hit at L42 by a low level mage using ice magic then yes the game cheats! lol

Might be worth using "Detect Life" (provided you have it) to more reliably scan the area as this would add confidence that the area was, in fact, clear.

As a stealth character who dabbles in magic and wears fully upgraded light armors.... some things still just come outta nowhere and one-shot kill me, and I'm level 50. This one time I found a band of wandering Bandits, with one or two chieftains among them. The melee fighters were easy to kill. However they had a mage and an archer as well. Generally the mages are my greatest threat. I don't know why, but they can manage to kill me in one spell cast that appears the same as the spells before it that barely scratched me. I take out the mage, while Lydia runs in and starts hacking on the melee bandits. I aim my bow at the archer and.... Thwack. The arrow pierces my armor and sends my now lifeless corpse backward about 10 feet. I probably reloaded that fight 7 times before succeeding, and experimenting with different tactics and different equipment I had on hand.

It's nice that you no longer see bandits in glass armor. But don't let that fool you. Just because they're wearing from Fur to Steel armor doesn't men they don't know how to handle themselves in a fight. In a way I like that I occasionally get dealt these hands from an apparently stacked deck. It forces me to break from my usual routine method of handling encounters, learn new tricks and even discover new ways of using the tricks I'd been using. They're frustrating, they're difficult, they can even downright piss you off. But ultimately, they are fun.

Very true indeed good sir

I think it does take some liberties. For instance, even when muffled and under a 60 second invisibility spell, you'll find that NPCs will still say, "I thought I heard something!" Uh, how in the name of Jove did you hear anything when muffled means you move silently?

I've seen this happen over and over which is why I disagree with the thread about the one guy playing this DiD that any death is the player fault.

In a way it's not a cheat. The game previews that you are to be attacked by sound. So if you are engaged in a fight (as with the OP) and you get also attacked from behind, the game has no legal way to hint that you are in trouble from behind because the sound is disguised by the fight in front.

My similar experience involved a dragon fight. After croaking the dragon, I took a few hits to learn I'd been attacked from behind by a spider. I turned to take that thing on and when finished with him found I was being attacked from behind AGAIN but by a bear. That did me in.

The ones that cheat are mages... i fought an ice mage once and he fired ice spikes like a lunatic! No joke he was firing it so fast it looked like a machine gun. Other times i find it really irritating how their spells scale but not ours it's like the game like to laugh at you for being weak.

Also i might add. what's up with overpowered mages? I fought a bandit outlaw i killed him, when i fought another outlaw who was a mage guess what? He 5x de HP the other one had! I mean if he was a plunderer that would be ok but he wasn't, also they were both in the same cave.

Yeah, I've hit some of these mages. They seem to pull magicka from you which results in them being able to fire continually. The only solution is to bypass them or keep them busy with something you've conjured. 1:1 is hopeless.

Agreed; I've came across a few low class warriors and have had some very cheap fights with random members showing up and or afflicting alot of dmg with a generic weapon.

I've noticed stuff just randomly spawning out of nowhere. Usually it happens in a direction you aren't looking, but if you're scanning the environment or something you can catch it. I don't recall if FO3 had this or not, but NV did.

Sabrecats and wolves almost always spawn and hunt in groups of 2 or more. They can spread out a decent amount - particularly the Sabrecats if one spots prey and kills it before the other one turns to join in - as they seem to be able to spot and react to things from farther away. I've noticed that when one of them spots you, the other one or two will almost always come running to attack you as well unless they are too far away. This means that for sabrecats, compared to wolves, you are more likely to encounter and kill one by itself but also far less likely to have seen the other one crouching off in the grass somewhere till it circles around behind you and attacks.

That gets to NPC sneaking. NPCs don't really sneak like you do, but the animal AI seems to include sneaky behavior for some of the creature types. While playing in 3rd person mode I have noticed that sabrecats and wolves coming to attack you while you are fighting another of their kind will actually circle behind you and come at you from behind. This means that you often won't ever have seen their red dot on you compass and from first person perspective they seem to appear behind you.

They appear to have a crouched movement animation (and are low profile already) so in places with high grass they do blend in really well sometimes. Its possible that there may be a more general NPC sneak mechanic as well - it might not hide them from your direct vision but maybe on your compass. I'm not entirely sure about that one though.


With sneak I think that has a lot to do with why, when escaping Helgen, the brief introduction to stealth which occurs at one point includes the line "Watch where you step" or something along those lines. When I first started playing I was getting noticed all the time for things I hadn't considered mattering because stealth in their previous games basically rendered the AI entirely braindead when it worked. First time I really noticed those bone-chimes hanging from the ceiling in a lot of dungeons was when they ruined my day when I thought I was getting the drop on a draugr deathlord I was about to get the drop on and a bit too weak to fight under normal conditions. Also figured out a little later in that same dungeon that sneaking with a readied glowing and roiling ball of flames in your hands is perhaps not the most effective choice if you plan on approaching undetected. When this works it does make stealth more interesting, but at their behavior can be very inconsistent. Also, setting off runes placed as traps in the dungeons is strangely treated by their detection rules as YOU casting the spell and therefore attacking. That one should have probably been handled differently - sure they'll come running and be more alert but they should not immediately detect you upon triggering.

The only thing I've noticed personally that does feel like NPCs cheating though is the Jet-Li style arrow dodges they seem to pull off once they're aware of someone shooting at them. I want that move.

I don't know why people complain about the mages cheating i never have trouble with them. Maybe it is just you... just kidding.
My issue is with sabretooth tigers they are the biggest [censored]ters in the game, they really do show up out of no where and kill you.
After sabretooth tigers bears are the second biggest [censored]ters. I hate the both of them.

Items can randomize when you reload a save. I often see that items hidden in a sack / barrel / drawer have changed after I reload.