I don't understand daggers...

[David Brasher]

I view daggers as being mainly for roleplaying. Like if you are a mage who does not generally use melee weapons but carries a small one just in case. Daggers are also much more convenient for harvesting and preparing alchemical ingredients than a sword or axe. (Do you ever chop vegetables in your kitchen at home with a longsword? I didn't think so.) Skinning animals for their hides also works a lot better with a dagger than with another weapon.

 

Archer characters and thief characters often don't use large melee weapons. They want to be light on their feet and unencumbered.

 

And if you are a warrior, maybe your melee weapon will get knocked out of your hand during battle, and it might be best to just draw your dagger rather than looking for your sword on the ground while people are doing their best to kill you.

Edited January 27, 2012 by David Brasher

[KarthGalin]

Daggers aren't useless. As others have pointed out:

1) Daggers offer the highest dps of any weapon in the game at high smithing.

2) Daggers offer a very high sneak attack bonus. The higher your smithing, the better daggers are for sneak attacking than other weapons.

3) Daggers kill silently. You can cut an enemy's throat five feet away from another enemy and he probably won't notice.

4) Daggers are very light; you can afford to carry several if you want, or have a dagger set aside just for silent sneak attacks.

 

The downside is that daggers have a very short range. Against enemies using one-handed weapons this isn't such a big deal, but when an opponent uses a two-handed weapon, they're constantly backing up out of your range and you rarely have enough time to dodge out of the range of their weapons when they're making attacks.

[thesapien]

Nobody mentioned my favorite thing about daggers:

 

They are faster. When using anything else, I feel like I'm playing in slow motion. So they are better for the fast moving, evading then attack then evade, non-blocking type character. If you're not using armor or just don't want to get hit by melee opponents, then daggers are the way to go. You can attack and move around opponents wielding larger weapons who just keep swinging at the air.

 

This is why enemies who also don't wear armor or often have light armor will use daggers on you.

[pastafrola]

The downside with daggers is that they are not affected by "fortify one handed" potions and enchants and the low range. I always carry sword of the same quality for non stealth attacks. Edited January 27, 2012 by pastafrola

[danshive]

It's also my understanding that they make a good second weapon when dual wielding, i.e. have a sword in one hand and the dagger in the other. I assume this is to reduce stamina usage and increase speed. Or maybe people just think it looks cool.

[TimF]

The downside with daggers is that they are not affected by "fortify one handed" potions and enchants and the low range. I always carry sword of the same quality for non stealth attacks.

 

They're affected by "fortify marksmanship...", at least potions. There is a little bugfix on the nexus that sorts everything out.

[AnzacTNF]

The person who wrote this interesting thread came up with solid arguments and clear calculations about what weapon deals the most damage. I'm not sure if that's the final answer but to me his points are much more convincing than most other posts in this thread.

[KarthGalin]

The person who wrote this interesting thread came up with solid arguments and clear calculations about what weapon deals the most damage. I'm not sure if that's the final answer but to me his points are much more convincing than most other posts in this thread.

 

That's nice for the unmodded/unfixed version of the game but this is the Nexus, I think we can assume anyone here can install the Weapon and Armor Fixes patch and then, well, daggers are great. :P

Edited January 28, 2012 by Karth Galin