Master Level Still Very Challenging

[CaptainChaos]

I see all these posts here with people saying they 1 shot 1 kill everything and are impervious on Mastery Level.

 

I dk about the rest of you, but I'm 44th level, 400 health, 200 stamina, ebony mace (67 damage + 15 points of fire), and shield, 100 one arm attack, 96 heavy armor, 100 block, Nord, warrior all the way. I use Iron Flesh spell for extra armor but already have 563 armor, with some minor enchantments here and there. one on one, I kill almost anything without too much hassle. but 3 bandits give me a lot of trouble. I find bandit marauders can cause 200 points of damage with two handed attacks. THAT'S 200 POINTS OF DAMAGE FROM A SINGLE SWORD ATTACK. Bows and arrows aren't much better. Despite using a shield, it only blocks incoming arrows about 50% of the time and when I get hit, were are talking 50-100 points of damage. I can only mistime a few attacks before getting slaughtered, especially when against several bandits or Dragur death lord types.

 

Sure, polar bears, Falmer, even giants or dragons one on one, aren't that tough, but I still find 3-4 bandits to be EXTREMELY challenging, at least a good part of the time.

[hector530]

they use smithing to get weapons to legendary levels. that would help.

[Cyrotek]

The thing is, difficultys below master are too easy and the balancing on master is just totaly off.

 

I get twoshotet by random bandits while blocking, get oneshotet by fireballs of random mages, have to bash a half hour on a opponent that only wears cloth pants, leather boots, shield and a sword. On the other Hand, i kill enemys, that are supposed to be bosses, with like 3 hits and dragons just cant do anything.

 

Also its just stupid that u shoudnt level crafting skills or skills that dont alter your combat possibilitys early on. You gain Levels by it withhout getting much stronger (except if abuse the crafting system) while your opponents start twoshoting you ways to early ... and in the end everything starts to get easy again.

 

Played with a assasin-style character the first time on master, got a incredible hard time at the start and later (around lvl 30) i just startet to run through dungeons withhout getting touched while i had horrible problems at the start with random normal opponents (Stuff that i consider hard, like the end of azuras star quest? No Problem at all. Random bounty dungeon? Pretty hard).

 

After that i went for a heavy armor board and sword style character. Played him around 10 hours and stopped it. Getting twoshotet all the time through block (normal hit and immediatly after that a execute) was just incredible frustrating. And i didnt wantet to abuse the crafting system (what are the dependencys for a finisher of NPC vs. PC anyways? Getting finished with 80% Hitpoints left ist somewhat ... unfair?).

 

Now i play a mage, on master also. Had incredible Problems at the start again (No damage, no magicka, no health, i usually runned around healing my companion and hitting opponents in melee with a summoned weapon. Was pretty boring). After i finished the Mages Academy quests, i just run around and stunlock everything to death. Boring also, but i want finally to finish more than some quests before starting over again.

 

 

It badly needs some alterations on master. Like less health and less chance to "execute" for random opponents, stunimmunity on Bosses, etc.

I played oblivion with a conversation, that made it incredible hard, but, unlike skyrim on master, it never felt unfair.

 

Sorry for my grammar.

Edited December 23, 2011 by Cyrotek

[aguliondew]

Well I did not start my first playthrough on master I just turned the difficult up after I felt that adept was to easy with my gear. Yes starting a game on masters would feel very difficult but everyone who saids that masters is easy are people that have 100 smithing. Leveling smithing is way to easy when compared to the other perks and easily breaks the game. My first play through it took me 500 weapons to max smithing and over 2200 potion to max alchemy. The crafting system is messed when all smiths sell large amount of iron and rare materials(ebony/moonstone) every day. My second play through I am not abusing the crafting system and I notice how big of a difference having daedric armor is.

 

Also, npc executes you if they can kill you in one hit. Most of my deaths on my 2nd playthrough are due to 2h enemies can do that due because of my low armor. 567 armor is 80% damage reduction, so I assume my 110 armor is like 15% damage reduction. Still odd getting executed in 2 hits from people with steel weapons even thou I have 300hp.

[crudius]

Have to agree, the diff seems to fluctuate on master.

Im at 39 currently and can clear places with (mainly) bow no problem, then i will hit a patch where i can be two shotted by bandits!....or bloody bears.

 

Using maily alchemy with bow and baxe with some destro.

What im suprised by is how high some people seem to have skills and buffs? someone here had an armour of 500+......seems high to me? When i wear HA i only have a rating of around 200.

And another thread, someone mentioned having bow damage of 1800....? seems excesive to me.

 

Im using single enchants of mag regen/health boost on HA/LA muffled footwear.

weapons with smithing upgrades and health absorb or stam dam.

 

So yeah master does seems to fluctuate, just as i think i've got the hang of it.....up pops skyrims archery champion to pin cushion my head or a dragon with PMT.......

Anywway im loving it,having to spend time planning routes or tweaking poisons in alchemy to compensate is still a lot of fun.

[Dambuster]

I actually like the fluctuation between enemies and how difficult they are. Admittedly it's stupid that a dragon is easier than bandits but I find it cool to storm through somewhere and destroy all the lower levels before meeting my match. It also gives a sense of reward to the game - Oblivions everything takes 30 minutes to kill because they have 4000 hp was much worse than Skyrim's system of random very hard enemies. It can be annoying though when you reload 10 times to clear Trava's watch of bandit marauders to be given a detect life spellbook in return at level 46.

[crudius]

sorry for DP.

 

Anyone finding some things like dragons too easy on master....i just installed this

 

http://skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=3829

 

deadly dragons......

 

Damn! they are tough. Im getting my arse kicked by an elder blood dragon at Dragonbridge at the mo. just had to have a break because i was shouting at the screen.....need to have a rethink on dragon strategy :confused:

Edited December 24, 2011 by crudius

[TimF]

Yep, the system is ridiculously unbalanced. Not only that, but leveling skills like speech and pickpocket does near to no good to you (except some spare iron armor and a pair of weaker health potions from a master chest), but empowers enemies tremendously. Spreading out on different non-synergyzing skills does too. So, you would want to not use certain skills, and not level up. On the other hand, each build has its imbalanced and completely overpowered climaxes: mage - spamming zero-cost spells, rogue - spamming stealth&invisibility, warrior - super smithing/enchantment.

[aguliondew]

Well crudius I had that much armor because of perks, but having a 1800 damage bow I do not know how someone can get that without one of the bugs(restoration bug, enchanting bug). That deadly dragons mod is something that should only use after getting daedric weapons/armor, since max smithing breaks the game early on. Seems like deadly dragon mods' Hard mode ancient dragon has something like 9k hp. Crudius do you know of a mod that improves shouts for master because I only use them for their debuff effects?

[Kardgar]

I'm in the crowd that finds master difficulty to easy, this includes not using any crafting. I think the problem exists more within certain mob types though rather than the overall difficulty. For instance how bears/trolls/two-hand bandits are leagues and bounds stronger than everything else for a large part of the game.

 

I think it mostly boils down to familiarity with the game mechanics and the game world and knowing what works and what content is broken. Almost all forms of crafting trivialize the entire difficulty curve and some items; especially artifacts also break the curve. There is a happy medium that exists somewhere in between that works for 90% of the game content and there there is that 10% of the game content that just facerolls you in all your glory because they're so skewed. You can easily get destroyed with no workable tactic to win short of running for your life to heal and coming back to joust attacks until they die.

 

I will add that I'm a glutton for punishment and I use PISE mod to further boost the difficulty because I enjoy a good challenge. Early on there's very few strategies available until you get the right tools to overcome this stuff. Late game I find the only reason I continue to die to this stuff is if I just try to power through it, rather than carefully take out those 3 overpowered bandits, etc al.

Edited December 24, 2011 by Kardgar