I would IMMENSELY enjoy seeing dragons stay away from towns except on rare occassions.

There is nothing more frustrating than stepping out of a building and finding a dragon too powerful for you to try to kill just one-shotting all of the NPCs. Welp, there goes THAT side of the game and all those quests.



Another problem I'm having with Deadly Dragons is that I can't seem to find all of the crafting materials. For example, the cloth-based armors. I haven't discovered where I'm supposed to get a Dragonslayer's Rainment or Dragonslayer's Cloth (is that the correct item?) for the mage-inspired armors, Vengeful and Wrathful.

Also -- Could some of the Deadly Dragons gameplay be altered to make mages a viable character? As it stands, the ONLY way to kill a dragon is with a bow or physical weapon. Trying to magic them to death is utterly futile, even when you take into consideration their resistances. Maybe give them some penalities for mages to exploit?

Wow, this thread got necro'd. Suprised. In other news, 3.3 (or maybe 4.0) is in the works, and will overhaul the entire mod (again) now that 3jiou has a firm grasp with the Creation Kit tools. Few actual changes to the mod, just everything will be done "better". A few new dragons for the level 55 range is possibly in the works.

@Peter ID

Dragons killing NPC's is a necessary evil from a mod like this. The only way to get around this would be to either have every single NPC that isn't an enemy be flagged as Essential, or have some sort of script to make NPC's run to the nearest building during dragon encounters. The former is not an option, although you can set potential followers as Essential through this mod... The latter, there are other mods for that.

@Eris

I'm aware that Mages are very underpowered when compared to a Archer/Warrior type character who uses Smithing to suppliment there damage. There are difficulty settings in place to make health manageable... There are also mods out there to balance destruction magic somewhat properly.

There is also the essential NPC bat file.

And... umm... honestly, you do not refer players of your mod to other mods in order to balance your mod. That's just incredibly poor design. Instead, make the mage vs. dragons reasonable within the game world (e.g., there is no way that a dragon is 100% immune to Impact effects - believe me, even a dragon will be distracted by dual fireballs in the face, if nothing else from the blinding explosions). The example I offer makes a point to improve the mod and take it from good to excellent. What should happen is a dragon has a good chance of avoiding Impact because (a) they have resistance and ( they are smart. Immune? No way. 75-80% resistant? Perhaps, especially for older dragons. In fact, the resistance should scale, anyway, but never be 100%. That's pointless. That's Bethesda approach with the vanilla game (i.e., ignore ranged attackers, particularly casters, and think that everyone roleplays a melee warrior...boring!)

I run this mod and have been for a couple of weeks. Initially, I liked the "Events". My first Dragon encounter was in Riverwood at a very early level. It was epic and lasted for 1 hr. Later in-game I turned it off. The firestorms that kill everyone in a village is just too much. The random Dragons and other things are great, but the storms...not good.

At least it had an option.

You know what's bad game design? Shipping a retail game where there is no scaling of magic damage whatsoever. That is before you factor in how mana intensive spells are. Especially given how every single other skill in this game scales with level. Don't lecture me on game design. I've played enough of them to know what is "good", "fun", what arbitrary limitations are, and what is attainable within a reasonable timeframe. Given the skills & experience of the people making mods on there own free time.

And...Umm.. Honesly? Out of the several thousand comments on the Nexus site, there are only a handful of people who say that the mod is way to difficult for Mage characters (that is what difficulty settings are for hurr durr).. Most players actually do play as Archer/Warrior/Rouge archetype characters anyways.

Further, the intention was/is for dragons to have a 50% resistance to any stun effect, but it would either work for melee and not magic attacks, or vise-versa. Seing as you have to be in the dragons face to smack it with a sword, and you can Blaster-caster it from afar from cover.. Melee won out. Since so few people seemed to have an issue with this change, it was left alone.

EDIT: It amazes me that nearly 6 months after release they still haven't bothered to add some sort of scaling to magic, but they have time to add in ranged & magic kill-cams lol.

I don't want a 'magic rebalance' mod -- in my opinion, magic is balanced well enough for moderately difficult play. It's the fact that physical damage has been so overpowered that people take it for granted and then scream destruction svcks.

I like the Deadly Dragons mod. And I kill dragons WITHOUT smithing or unusual weapons. I kill them with long bows and basic imperial bows with iron or steel arrows, with a defaultly low marksman skill (~20ish) because I don't use arrows for ANY other purpose than killing dragons. It takes FOREVER, but it works for my mage (approximately 40-50 arrows will do it). In all other parts of the game, I use my mage on Expert difficulty, and I don't use any sort of magic rebalance mods outside of Mighty Magic. In this way, the game provides me with a challenge, but it doesn't mean that vital tasks aren't downright impossible given my play-style.

My problem is that the dragons have NOTHING for a mage to exploit, only resistances, which takes the bite out of any kind of destructive magic, no matter how you spin it. I'm not looking to beef destruction, I'm looking for gameplay elements in a mod that appears to attempt to rebalance dragon combat that would be suitable for a mage-themed character. Currently, there are no methods.

You don't have to necessarily resort to dropping the resistances on dragons just for destruction magic (although that's the obvious quick fix). You could think of ways that force mages to turn to more utility-type magics or use some strategy. (I'm betting most "full blown mage" characters out there that are going all no-weapons and no-bow DO use the other schools.) But right now, there is no strategy. None that I can find, anyway.

You award mage players by including armors which cater to them, so I assume you aren't out to punish them for their play-styles.


By the way, why are you so bloody aggressive about the mage difficulty critique? By going "hurr durr", I feel you are trying to insinuate something against my intelligence. I find this insulting. I was trying to offer suggestions to make your mod better, not tear you down or be offensive. I like your work, but if your solution to your mod is to always scale the difficulty all the way down just to be playable, then it means that it's not in line with the rest of the game, and yes, that IS bad design. Don't blame Bethesda or players because your mod only focuses on one particular area and then someone critiques you on how to improve it, and don't pretend that "balancing" a supposedly unbalanced feature so that it only favors or is useable by Archer/Warrior/Rouge archetypes is good game design, because it's not. (This is in reference to: "Most players actually do play as Archer/Warrior/Rouge archetype characters anyways.")

If you truly feel this way, then please edit your Nexus post so that it clearly reads in giant red letters that this mod is only intended for physical combat archetype players only. If it's not, then please at least consider the original comments made in good faith, and don't go around insulting people's intelligence or blaming a game company you bothered to make a mod for.

Yes, magic is poorly balanced... I have a hard time seeing how they thought exclusively using buffs to decrease magicka use was better than increasing damage output, when combat relies on dishing out a lot of damage quickly. Who cares if my spells cost so little magicka that it lets me cast them for minutes on end, if an enemy can take me out in moments? Woo, so I get to die with a 75% magicka left instead of maybe surviving with 10% left.

It's not the fault of this mod that magic doesn't scale well, and it would be out of place for this mod to rebalance magic because that's not where its focus is. It would just serve to step on the toes of mods that are focused on fixing magic properly, and could cause conflicts (decreasing the mod's usability). This mod does just what it says... makes deadlier dragons. If there's trouble because the harder dragons exacerbate the magic scaling problem, then find a mod that fixes the magic scaling problem. Similarly, this mod makes it harder to fight a dragon as a werewolf because werewolves are poorly balanced... so the answer is to find a mod that's designed to fix werewolves, not complain that this mod should fix them.

I think you misunderstand the root of my complaint.

My suggestion was not that the mod touch magic in any way -- it should be dependent of it. If it is exacerbating "the magic scaling problem" (which some of us don't actually see as a problem), that just means that it's not in balance with the base game. The answer to fixing a mod is not "add more mods", it's fixing the mod itself. The ONLY time you should EVER suggest to players that they add more mods is if you've created a package that was INTENDED to work with specific other mods. This does not appear to be the case here.

I hate arguing these points because I don't want the mod creator to think that I'm trying to discourage him, when what he has is a really great mod with a lot of hard but fantastic work in it. However, if we're going to discuss improvements or suggestions at all, let's not respond to them with "Oh well, just add more mods!" or brush them off by blaming a perceived problem in a completely separate system. When making a mod for public release, you need to consider that you're reaching your goals AND ensuring that the mod remains fun across different save games and character builds.

The problem is that there is a problem with the way magic scales in the vanilla game. It's not something this mod causes. Maybe it's not as bad with vanilla content, but that's because the vanilla content doesn't really throw particularly deadly enemies at you.

Besides which, making the dragons more susceptible to magic to account for the (lack of) vanilla magic scaling would serve to make the dragons easy again, which is against the entire point of the mod. That someone at level 5 or 6 is putting out roughly the same damage rate as someone at level 40 or 41 with magic, how would you make deadlier dragons if they could still be taken out by lower-level mages?

Deadly Dragons is a Horrible MOD! [censored] Dragons have become three times more annoying!

I read someone else is having problems that 4.1.0 version installer isnt working, any solution yet? I have uninstalled previous version + texture pack, done steam cache verifying thingy (which did repair one missing file) but still when i download newest version of DD and activate it with NMM installer wont appear.

If you found them annoying in the first place why did you install a mod which makes them harder to kill?

can I request anoher creature:
Dragon Zombie, with a poisonous breath and covered in decaying flesh!

You know, I don't know if this has been suggested or investigated, but I'd like to suggest (if it hasn't) that the Events be offered as natural calamities. This was happening originally with the fire and ice storms, but that could be improved and elaborated. The point of the dragons' return is supposed to be "End of Days" anyway (i.e., Armageddon). It would make a lot of sense for natural systems to become out of whack and unusual events happen.

This would not have to be restricted to elemental storms or even truly damaging events, either. For example, you could have sudden unusual changes of weather such as rain in a snow-covered mountain area or a brief blizzard in the tundra/plains. You could have a rain of small creatures such as small mudcrabs, rats, wolves, goats, fish, etc, or maybe even a rain of small stones, grass, twigs, etc. You could even have a solar eclipse (it doesn't matter if the moons are in the proper position because the point is that it is unnatural... besides, the moons were already manipulated in the past, anyway).

Most importantly, you would not have Events have anything to do with dragons because the dragons are inherently part of the calamities/armageddon and there are plenty of dragon encounters already. Having more dragon encounters doesn't really offer any feeling of "difference" or "unnatural" (i.e., unnatural meaning not as per normal daily life in memory or recorded history stretching back to ancient times).

There's a lot of potential there and the basis was already laid, so this would seem feasible. Just an idea, anyway.

The "End of Days" is because the legend surrounding Alduin was that he would eat the world, so I don't really see why that in itself would cause natural disasters. Whatever bad happens would be linked to the dragons, somehow.

However, what would be cool was is there were some dragons that could cause such disasters. IIRC, Deadly Dragons has some types of dragons that have shouts for ice storms and meteor storms (like Alduin). Adding a variation of Storm Call to their repertoire would be cool. A further idea would be a radiant quest that tells of an unusually bad thunder storm (or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzoFqt0AHZc) in , and when you go to investigate, you find a dragon in the middle of it. Kill the dragon, and the storm clears away.