I'm so sick of dragon fights.

[Migel]

I've been playing and modding Skyrim for years. I never enjoyed the dragon fights. More often than not, I'd never even talk to Balgruuf and just not be dragonborn. I decided I'd do another full playtrough and I'm already regretting it. I hate dragon "fights". The dragon mostly ignores you and goes on to kill every NPC that isn't essential. Run for your lives works, but not perfectly. Being ignored by the dragon is saying it lightly, I feel like they avoid me. Kill an NPC, by the time I'm there, move to the other side of the City or Settlement and kill an NPC there. They're unpredictable so I can't set a trap either. It seems like Dragon fights are entirely designed for ranged characters - never had any issues killing them with my archer or mage builds. However, if you're stuck with melee due to an overly specific build, dragon fights can stretch infinitely to the point where I'll just load a save, avoid the fight and come back later.

I know that there's a shout that forces dragons to land, however, that too is pretty useless. They usually land a few lightyears away, or on roofs where you still can't reach them with melee. I got annoyed to the point where I even tried console killing them. That does not work. They just can't be detected. I've also sometimes tried TCL-ing up to them and giving them a good beating, however. They don't seem to give much of a ♥♥♥♥ about gravity and just keep flying away while every other Monster, NPC or Animal is frozen in place.

I've tried many mods that "enhance" dragon combat, however, all of them just add more attacks and skills to them to make for more variety. Dragon fighting is such a core gameplay aspect that it baffles me that after all this time I still haven't found a way to make melee builds work for a story playtrough. What the ♥♥♥♥ am I doing wrong? Is there any mod that can maybe make dragon fights more melee friendly and less of an upside-down whack-a-mole? Thanks. Currently stuck in a dragon fight in Solitude, will probably have to reload. Half the population is dead and "landing" purely consists of flying across the city, touching down on a roof for three seconds and ♥♥♥♥ing right back off. Splendid.

[Win2000Fan]

I agree. Even though one of my best experiences in Skyrim was killing a Dragon, after over a thousand hours of in game time, I have had enough with the dragons already.

[smr1957]

If one fighting style does not work, you must use another - and melee style is simply useless against flying creatures that do not land, so you must use archery.

Victory on the battlefield goes to those who can adapt; only death awaits those who do not.

[Jonny Sparta]

"No battle plan in history has survived first contact with the enemy."

Perhaps the same is true for builds and dragons :)

I wouldn't be suprised if you've tried it already but i recently started using Ultimate Dragons and I've found that the dragons are down on the ground much more and stay in the air for much shorter amounts of time.

It was a real relief for me seeing the improved behaviour, though i havn't fought many dragons with it on yet.

[Ankou]

Well, firstly I literally googled it and there is a mod called "Dragons - less flying - more fighting" for SE you could try. I think Ultimate Dragons does something similar.

Second, warriors in Skyrim aren't stupid and neither are the dragons (and given the terrible AI that's saying a lot.) Your character doesn't have to be either.
Guards and every warrior companion (including The Companions) will whip out a bow if they've been given one to fight a dragon because it's just a tactic that makes sense, Take a cue from them, just switch to melee when it's on the ground but otherwise even a weak attack is better than throwing insults at it.

Walled city attacks would be specifically bad for someone refusing to strategize because there are almost no places, mechanically speaking, a dragon can land on the ground. Solitude is actually one of the few, they can land in the Imperial training courtyard but I think that's it. In Whiterun and Riften I've had them just eventually just ragdoll or land outside the walls.


And if you are personally sick of the frequent vanilla attacks you could look into reducing them. I use Timing is Everything but there are others that will only deal with dragons.

[258789553873]

I have a mod called 'less flying more fighting' or something like that. It simply alters their AI to spend more time actually attacking rather than flying around. They do seem to land far more often also. Mostly, its meant to alleviate the boredom of sitting there watching a dragon fly around as you wait for it to stop so you can actually hit it with something.

Also, I play with elemental dragons. I haven't really gotten to test it out much, but one thing it does is make it so npcs that aren't either bandits or guards take little to no damage from dragons, which of course eliminates the possibility of dragons killing entire holds (which would happen often otherwise, the mod gives dragons a lot of HUGE high-damage aoe powers, and by huge, I mean several dragons can easily blanket an entire city in flames).

And, uh, you're fighting a giant monster that can fly. Do you really think anyone in their right mind would walk up to the thing and try to do ANYTHING to it, even if it couldn't fly? Of course, that may not be to everyone's taste, even if seriously killing a super dinosaur with a sword is completely non-sensical.

As for not having a place to land, that's a common issue. They need a pretty wide area to be able to land. I once got attacked by a dragon going up to High Hrothgar. The dragon never did land once, because it didn't have a place to land. Even when it got below 50% health (or w/e threshold they need to force them to land and stay grounded), the dragon just hovered in place until I killed it. When it did its death animation, it landed on the narrow road I was standing on clipping through trees and the mountain side itself.

If a dragon can't land, move to a wider area. In my experience that greatly helps in getting a dragon to land. Also, if they do land somewhere where there's not a lot of space available, its a good chance they'll keep landing there if they don't have any other place they can land.

And yeah, mods that just make dragons more durable just makes fighting them even more tedious. I wouldn't recommend installing such mods. I like elemental dragons, because it makes them more spectacular and actually a threat to you. Plus, a lot of the dragons can summon which gives you something to do while the dragon is flying in circles for no reason. Oh, and some have unique abilities like the invisible dragon, which is obviously hard to see (its not technically invisible, its just transparent like a ghost), and a dragon that can summon mirages of itself. and the wind dragon which can summon a wind cloak that knocks down anything that comes near. A dragon lich that can cast dead thrall on anything that's dead with no limit on the number of summons it can have. Not to mention they have an impressive variety of attacks that each require different methods of avoiding. Its really quite fun actually, even if for some reason all I've been able to find anywhere are skeletal dragons and this one frost dragon. Though my lack of experience fighting them is mostly because I'm constantly installing new mods and have to delete old saves.

[Ambugaton]

Yeah, they're tedious after a certain point, which is kind of sad considering it's supposed to be the thematic fight of the game. My favorite is when they fly off the map right when you hit them with dragonrend, but the game still considers you in a fight so you can't fast travel, just sit and wait to rinse and repeat.

As for making them more melee friendly, I'm probably the wrong person to ask because I only every play melee, so I don't know the distinction well enough to talk about it :P WHack a mole is pretty descriptive. If you get frustrated there's a dragonrend overhaul that does nothing but make dragonrend more effective.

[Ambugaton]

Originally posted by IXBlackWolfXI:

And yeah, mods that just make dragons more durable just makes fighting them even more tedious. I wouldn't recommend installing such mods. I like elemental dragons, because it makes them more spectacular and actually a threat to you. Plus, a lot of the dragons can summon which gives you something to do while the dragon is flying in circles for no reason. Oh, and some have unique abilities like the invisible dragon, which is obviously hard to see (its not technically invisible, its just transparent like a ghost), and a dragon that can summon mirages of itself. and the wind dragon which can summon a wind cloak that knocks down anything that comes near. A dragon lich that can cast dead thrall on anything that's dead with no limit on the number of summons it can have. Not to mention they have an impressive variety of attacks that each require different methods of avoiding. Its really quite fun actually, even if for some reason all I've been able to find anywhere are skeletal dragons and this one frost dragon. Though my lack of experience fighting them is mostly because I'm constantly installing new mods and have to delete old saves.

I'm going to cheeck this out. I like some of the variety of diverse dragons, but mostly it's just diverse breath attacks. They have one that will reanimate every dead damn thing within eyesight that is fun, but these sound interesting.

[every1hasnames]

The way the dragons are programmed to fight is attacking while flying. Only landing every so often then flying again until you get their hp down to a certain point that it brings them to the ground permanently.


The dragons are pretty much designed to be fought with ranged attacks. Because . There designed to fight like the majority of dragons are depicted to fight in movies and games. . They can fly. So they fight flying.





You solution is using a bow. The reason why they are avoiding you is most likely because you either havent attacked them or havent attacked them enough.



You can use a bow and be a melee character. In a lot of ways it would actually be more immersive. As even in real life a person who is trained to fight one way would find himself in a situation his training hasnt trained him for.



YOur solution is very simple. Use a bow. Shoot the dang thing until its grounded and then stick with your melee attacks.

The way your playing is causing your issue. Rather your reasoning to not use the things in the game that your 100 percent capable of using even if you havent put skill points in it.


If your downright no my character doesnt know how to use a bow or other form of ranged attack or just refuses to. If thats the kind of character your roleplaying. Then you kinda have to accept the limitations that come with it.

Even a no skill point in archery at all build using a bow will still damage the dragon. And with high enough crafting skill you can in fact do enough damage with just legendary leveled bows.

[258789553873]

Yeah, and even if you only use bows to fight dragons, the number of times you'll have to hit them will be sufficient to keep your archery skill up. Destruction magic also works fine for fighting dragons. Conjuration works too since you can summon things with ranged attacks, such as fire atronochs early level, then storm atronochs later.

In this game you pretty much need some type of ranged ability, at least if you're doing the main quest line. Its part of the reason why stealth archers are so common; archery is the best for fighting dragons.

And let's be honest, all the quest lines force a specific skill set upon you. You need to use spells to do the CoW questline, stealth skills for the TG and DB (with the later focusing more on assassination than thieving), and of course warrior skills for the companions. You CAN just play w/e you want for the civil war, though the gear they give may force certain armor skills on you, though that's more for the stormcloaks since they don't have a heavy armor variant for their faction. The main quest line forces you to fight dragons, so you need to build your character for doing that. And unlike some of the other quest lines, you really have no choice but to build your character a certain way for the main quest line. Yeah, you need to fight Farkas with a melee weapon early on in the companion's questline, but other than that they don't care how you kill stuff. The mage's guild also forces you to use magic on occassion, but again how you go about clearing the dungeons doesn't really matter. The DB is also rather free in all honesty. One of the npcs is a straight-up warrior, and the other is a mage who claims he just walks up to his target, blasts them, and then runs. Frankly, you don't need stealth for a lot of the contracts they give you. The TG though does force you to use thief skills quite often, but they're obviously an outlier here. The main quest line is kinda odd though since it doesn't make it clear what you're supposed to build. You get a one-handed sword near the end of the quest line that has a unique effect for fighting dragons, but its easy to miss. That same area also has a unique heavy armor set, but its not exactly necessary. The dawnguard give you faction gear with unique effects, and also sell some new restoration spells, but even then you have quite a selection of equipment to choose from. The volkihar, however, aren't so strict. They don't really have a faction armor, and other than that one bow you need to use near the end you're not given any specific gear. For that questline you just have to be a vampire, nothing more. You don't even have to be skilled in archery to be honest.

As for fighting dragons, archery is the best. If they land somewhere far from you, you don't have to run up to them to attack. You can attack them while they're hovering in the air. And unlike magic, you don't have to worry about running out of magicka, or dealing with the resistances all dragons have (vanilla dragons don't have armor, and neither do the dragons from elemental dragons to be honest, but other mods do add in dragons with armor, or even give all dragons an armor rating).

Oh, and another skill that's great against dragons: block. One of the perks in the block tree gives you elemental resistances when you block, which is indispensible against dragons. There's a reason why fighting dragons as a two-hander is so difficult; you can't even really do it at all on master difficulty from what I understand.

Not that it can't be done, of course. My main in oldrim right now is a two-hander that uses frost magic, and he does fine against dragons, even though half of them resist his long-ranged spells. Of course, my greatsword is so op I can kill them pretty fast once they land. And I play on expert, just so we know. I also have followers that can use ranged attacks. so that helps quite a lot too, though as of late I've found them to be unnecessary because I'm so op right now.

[ZarahNeander]

Honestly I never had problems fighting dragons, not even on my werewolf with zero archery/destruction/conjuration. If the piece of sh**...dragon refuses to land in a certain time spawn, I run away. If the game insists on 'still in combat' thing, I admit, I use a mod that let me leave combat.
The trick is, *not* to feel obliged to kill each and every dragon you come across

[craigsters]

There's a mods at nexusmods that make the dragons more deadly and change the style of fighting with them, but I rather not use them and just use my enchanted Enhanced Dwarven Crossbow with Exploding Steel Bolt of Ice, my crossbow has the Zephyr effect enchantment on it along with Auriel's Bow and Dragonbane, I use mods that let's you add most weapon enchantments!..

I even seen a Dragonrend Bow[www.nexusmods.com] mod uploaded to nexusmods last month, but refuse to try it because of it's low or little endorsements and the mod author's first mod

[Boboscus]

I just never finish the "dragon at the watchtower" quest anymore and my world never spawns any dragons.

[Perplex]

I dont like dragons either, i usualy do not even start the dragon event untill i am level 30 or higher so i can deal with the dragons in a few hits. They where fun the first few times but now? Meh.

[craigsters]

Owe I don't like it that I have to use a weaker unenchanted weapon to get on the dragons head to get the cutscene kill, all my enchanted weapons kill the dragon right away

[ralphtobybob]

The post suggesting drawing off the dragon to an open area is your solution. In LE, merchants used to get killed during dragon and vampire attacks. It was either figure out how to kill the dragon rapidly or face having to travel out of the way to sell stuff. This was before learning Dragonrend.

They'll fly off again after your first melee attack and buzz around for awhile, but if you use a poison of Slow, they'll land again. Stamina and magicka poisons work too, but that's about it.
I kinda remember at one point in LE they'd sometimes drop out of the sky dead if someone sneezed, once the main quest was finished.