Drain Health Cheese

[DonEuclid]

Discovered an interesting fact while I was screwing around with the spellmaking system.

 

You can make a 100 pt/1sec targeted drain health effect for only about 40 Magicka cost. For that tiny cost, it is an instant kill spell against most of the low level mobs. It won't kill anything over 100 HP, but it can still be used as a finisher against larger monsters.

 

It opens up some interesting exploits. First, you can combine it with a 2 second soul trap and still only pay about 45 Magicka - it basically turns soul trapping into harvesting.

 

Because of it's low cost, you can tack on extra damage/elemental effects without picking up too much cost, and have effects of roughly 60-80 Magicka that deal 20-30 real damage and 100 temporary damage.

 

I've found that this drain health cheese can make the game extraordinarily easy. Want the Oblivion gates closed? Do the main quest first and hit the gates from level 3-6. All of them. At that level, you will be running into mostly Stunted Scamps, Clannfear Runts, and Dremora Churls... all of which are instantly killed by the Cheeseball of Death. Many of the higher level Daedra only require permanent damage down to about half-gauge before the Cheeseball can take them too.

 

Surprised am I that the game testers missed this bit of velveeta.