The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Mod Review:
Deadly Dragons (version 4.4.0) and
Deadly Dragons Armory (version 6.3.5)
+ Deadly Dragons
IF you use this carefully, it can be a great tool to shape your Skyrim experience.
As shipped, Skyrim dragons are scaled so that pretty much whatever your character build, build, whether mage, archer, or knight, you have a chance to take down a dragon. This is why dragons don't just swoop by breathing at you (which is what a smart dragon would do), but will occasionally hover and breathe at you (so you can shoot them with a bow or spell), or touch down and chase you (so you can attack them in melee combat, though they might get stuck).
Before you criticize how or why the developers shipped dragons, THINK. Think about whether you would have a fun time in Skyrim trying to chase a dragon who can just bail out at any time, flying very far away in a heartbeat, only to come back after it had healed itself.
What Deadly Dragons does is let you adjust your dragon experience to match how much protection you have gotten. It is not that hard to get 25% to 50% or more of magic resistance shortly after you start the game. With enough magic resistance, you can let a dragon breathe at you and not even be concerned with your Health. With Deadly Dragons, you have a damage slider that lets you compensate for it so that, if you like, dragons can be challenging again.
Here is where you need to be careful. If you use the "Expert" setting, you may find that your fight with dragon consists of ducking behind cover and shooting dragons whenever it is safe. You may like that and find it "realistic", but others may find it boring to always use the same, cheap, tactic. What you need to do is manually adjust the settings.
In the early game, I find that turning down the melee damage and magic damage to +0% (or just a more moderate number than +75%) is the safest. Dragon health and defences only serve to extend a fight and drain your resources because they dragon has more staying power to deliver damage. If you turn up damage too much, you will spend too much time running away and healing, and melee combat may become nearly impossible because the dragon kills you too quickly. This adds up to too much time wasted fighting the dragon and not enough time making progress on quests and story.
Something else to be careful of is the Assault mode. If you turn it on, periodically dragons will appear in "exteriors". However, this can also be interior areas that use exterior cells that are separated from the rest of the Skyrim world. For example, the Karthspire cave that leads to Sky Haven Temple. It uses an exterior cell type to have a sky, and Deadly Dragons thinks it is an open exterior. But the layout of that map is too tight for a dragon, so what happens is you get a dragon flying in and out of cave walls or the floor.
- Deadly Dragons Armory
Deadly Dragons Armory adds a quantity of item components for the construction of the armour sets by the mod. It also gives a small chance of obtaining one of these armor items, or a powerful weapon, or a moderately powerful wearable accessory.
The amulets and rings are not too bad -- Useful, but not necessarily so good that you will want nothing else.
The armour options are, in my opinion, rather overpowered. The weapons are also generally overpowered if you are lucky enough to find them before level 30+.
Mod Review:Deadly Dragons (version 4.4.0) and
Deadly Dragons Armory (version 6.3.5)
+ Deadly Dragons
IF you use this carefully, it can be a great tool to shape your Skyrim experience.
As shipped, Skyrim dragons are scaled so that pretty much whatever your character build, build, whether mage, archer, or knight, you have a chance to take down a dragon. This is why dragons don't just swoop by breathing at you (which is what a smart dragon would do), but will occasionally hover and breathe at you (so you can shoot them with a bow or spell), or touch down and chase you (so you can attack them in melee combat, though they might get stuck).
Before you criticize how or why the developers shipped dragons, THINK. Think about whether you would have a fun time in Skyrim trying to chase a dragon who can just bail out at any time, flying very far away in a heartbeat, only to come back after it had healed itself.
What Deadly Dragons does is let you adjust your dragon experience to match how much protection you have gotten. It is not that hard to get 25% to 50% or more of magic resistance shortly after you start the game. With enough magic resistance, you can let a dragon breathe at you and not even be concerned with your Health. With Deadly Dragons, you have a damage slider that lets you compensate for it so that, if you like, dragons can be challenging again.
Here is where you need to be careful. If you use the "Expert" setting, you may find that your fight with dragon consists of ducking behind cover and shooting dragons whenever it is safe. You may like that and find it "realistic", but others may find it boring to always use the same, cheap, tactic. What you need to do is manually adjust the settings.
In the early game, I find that turning down the melee damage and magic damage to +0% (or just a more moderate number than +75%) is the safest. Dragon health and defences only serve to extend a fight and drain your resources because they dragon has more staying power to deliver damage. If you turn up damage too much, you will spend too much time running away and healing, and melee combat may become nearly impossible because the dragon kills you too quickly. This adds up to too much time wasted fighting the dragon and not enough time making progress on quests and story.
Something else to be careful of is the Assault mode. If you turn it on, periodically dragons will appear in "exteriors". However, this can also be interior areas that use exterior cells that are separated from the rest of the Skyrim world. For example, the Karthspire cave that leads to Sky Haven Temple. It uses an exterior cell type to have a sky, and Deadly Dragons thinks it is an open exterior. But the layout of that map is too tight for a dragon, so what happens is you get a dragon flying in and out of cave walls or the floor.
- Deadly Dragons Armory
Deadly Dragons Armory adds a quantity of item components for the construction of the armour sets by the mod. It also gives a small chance of obtaining one of these armor items, or a powerful weapon, or a moderately powerful wearable accessory.
The amulets and rings are not too bad -- Useful, but not necessarily so good that you will want nothing else.
The armour options are, in my opinion, rather overpowered. The weapons are also generally overpowered if you are lucky enough to find them before level 30+.
- They easily overshadow whatever you can buy or make or find elsewhere, especially as you can upgrade the unenchanted versions of the craftable armour to enchanted ones with 3 powers.
- Normally, adding multiple enchantments to an item requires 100 Enchanting skill and quite a few perks.
- There is no level requirement, so at a fairly low level you could just look for dragons and slowly assemble your high-powered armour set. Depending on your level and gear, a single piece of head armour could give more of an armour rating than your current suit combined.
- This makes future drops in the game useless unless you get components or more item drops from this mod. It has just taken over your game.
- This can make the Enchanting and Smithing skills basically useless.
I recommend not using the armour until the late game. Instead, just use the mod to get Dragon SoulGems, which are the equivalent of Grand Gems (you cannot use Soul Trap on a dragon).
What is "late game"? Obviously that depends on your game. However, if you can't answer this question, then one of two things are likely to happen: You will throw this mod away, or you will throw all other armor/weapon mods away, because the stats here are so dominating that it is pretty much pointless to use anything else.
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