How do you avoid dragons eating you?

[Zeatrix]

I know I could probably set down the difficulty, but I enjoy a hard difficulty. I'm wondering if there's a trick I'm missing. Whenever I go into melee range of an ancient dragon, there's a huge chance it eats me, throws me away and I'm instantly dead. Doesn't matter what health I have (got 670 max HP atm). I try to attack it from behind or from the side, but the animation just cuts in as if I'm standing in front of it.

[Bomber]

What armor do you have? As far as i know this is a dragons finishing animation, which means he one shots you.

[Zeatrix]

I'm wearing a mix of light and heavy armor pieces. Yes it one-hits me, and it doesn't matter if the dragon's health is high or low. I tried casting armor spells, but it has no effect.

[Fenris]

It's the way Bethesda does that idiotic killcam. As soon as an enemy decides to do a power attack the game looks at your HP and if the power attack can do more damage than your remaining health, then you are dead and nothing you can do about it. It doesnt matther that you could probably dodge out of the way or block the attack, the game locks your character in place and goes through the kill move animation. After being frozen in place and losing all keyboard input for the millionth (well a lot of times anyway) time, I downloaded a mod to stop killmoves. The mod does not make the game any easier, it just stops the computer from being able to cheat since you probably would have been able to dodge or block anyway. I use VioLens http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/56980/? for the PC. There are also others that work, I just like all the options that one has.

[Gralzeim]

Bomber means that its normal melee attacks are sufficient to kill you in one hit, which would trigger the dragon's killmove. Same as with any other NPC like a bandit or guard, if they can do sufficient damage to kill you in one melee hit, that hit is probably going to be a killmove.

You're going to have to either amp up your armor rating or your health, or both.


Edit: Yes, like Fenris suggests, you could also use the excellent Violens mod, which I'd recommend anyway for finer control over when those happen.

[naru]

Depending on your remaining health and the hit's damage enemies can perform a killmove on you. Apparently the calculation does not include your damage reduction so even if you have capped armor a hit that can kill you naked can potentially trigger a killmove.

My best advice is: don't get close, use a bow, if it lands then kite it.

[Pirate Beard]

Originally posted by Fenris:

It's the way Bethesda does that idiotic killcam. As soon as an enemy decides to do a power attack the game looks at your HP and if the power attack can do more damage than your remaining health, then you are dead and nothing you can do about it. It doesnt matther that you could probably dodge out of the way or block the attack, the game locks your character in place and goes through the kill move animation. After being frozen in place and losing all keyboard input for the millionth (well a lot of times anyway) time, I downloaded a mod to stop killmoves. The mod does not make the game any easier, it just stops the computer from being able to cheat since you probably would have been able to dodge or block anyway. I use VioLens http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/56980/? for the PC. There are also others that work, I just like all the options that one has.

Tbf it's not cheating because your character does it too.

[Zeatrix]

It doesn't matter if I'm well positioned, he does the one hit animation regardless of where I stand (in melee range of course).

Makes sense with the melee hit converting to an animated kill-move though, I guess I'll just need even more health. Thanks for the help =)

[liosalpha]

Simple solution would be to switch over to a crosbow. and to only attacj the flanks when the oppertunety comes.

[Saphayla]

If you don't mind using mods, I recommend No Killmoves - No Killcams - No Killbites. It's available at Nexus and Workshop. It removes any and all Killcams from the game, regardless of who does them and with what weapon. If you still want to have your own Killcams, or you want all the others except for the Dragon one, I would suggest using something like VioLens, because it allows you to customize which Killcams should play and which ones shouldn't.

If you don't want to use mods, however, then I'm afraid there's not much you can do about it. Killcams in Skyrim are really broken, it's not rare for me to walk up to a Bandit Chief and get my head smashed without the ability to do anything, even though I could've easily avoided every single attack and won the fight. It's not fair, the calculations are wonky and irritating, so I choose to just disable them with a mod.

One thing you could do, however, is getting a follower (it can be a summoned body or atronach, as well), letting the Dragon focus on that follower and then attack and kill the Dragon in piece, without the risk of being eaten.

[Fenris]

Originally posted by i ' l l s t e a l i t:

Originally posted by Fenris:

It's the way Bethesda does that idiotic killcam. As soon as an enemy decides to do a power attack the game looks at your HP and if the power attack can do more damage than your remaining health, then you are dead and nothing you can do about it. It doesnt matther that you could probably dodge out of the way or block the attack, the game locks your character in place and goes through the kill move animation. After being frozen in place and losing all keyboard input for the millionth (well a lot of times anyway) time, I downloaded a mod to stop killmoves. The mod does not make the game any easier, it just stops the computer from being able to cheat since you probably would have been able to dodge or block anyway. I use VioLens http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/56980/? for the PC. There are also others that work, I just like all the options that one has.

Tbf it's not cheating because your character does it too.

When I do a power attack against my target, the target does not freeze in place unable to move. I think the final straw for me was when I was standing behind a dragon and my character froze in place then teleported in front of the dragon so I could see the kill move animations. So I got rid of kill moves by using VioLens. The fights are still just as hard since the opponent will still use power attacks, but now I know if I die to one of them it's because I screwed up and not because someone thought it was a good idead to take control from the player so I could see a kill move. It's really noticable if your using a cloth armored mage against two-handed weapon users, you will be dodging around succesfully avoiding attacks, then you can't move for about a second or so as the oppenent closes in on you and finally you see the kill move animation. Not trying to sound snide or anything, I just got fed up with that part of the game.

[Pirate Beard]

Originally posted by Fenris:

Originally posted by i ' l l s t e a l i t:

Tbf it's not cheating because your character does it too.

When I do a power attack against my target, the target does not freeze in place unable to move. I think the final straw for me was when I was standing behind a dragon and my character froze in place then teleported in front of the dragon so I could see the kill move animations. So I got rid of kill moves by using VioLens. The fights are still just as hard since the opponent will still use power attacks, but now I know if I die to one of them it's because I screwed up and not because someone thought it was a good idead to take control from the player so I could see a kill move. It's really noticable if your using a cloth armored mage against two-handed weapon users, you will be dodging around succesfully avoiding attacks, then you can't move for about a second or so as the oppenent closes in on you and finally you see the kill move animation. Not trying to sound snide or anything, I just got fed up with that part of the game.

Okay but when you get a killmove on an NPC the same thing happens to them. They stop whatever they're doing and get frozen and forced into a kill animation just like you do. I've had several instances where I'm not even facing the NPC entirely and they get forced into a killmove. But I guess so long as your mod makes you unable to do killmoves anymore either then it's still on fair ground

[Crazy man]

I usually make Lydia first fight with the dragon,and then , I'll be around the back of the dragon and attack it.I'll never fight with dragon face to face even I wear heavy armor.Because I am usually an ancher/assassin.I like a fatal blow.

[alexander_dougherty]

Just attack the dragon form the sides or behind, a dragon can't one hit you from these positions, although it can hit you with the tail. If you keep swiping the dragon from the side, and moving to stay there, it eventually dies.

[Fenris]

Originally posted by i ' l l s t e a l i t:

Originally posted by Fenris:

When I do a power attack against my target, the target does not freeze in place unable to move. I think the final straw for me was when I was standing behind a dragon and my character froze in place then teleported in front of the dragon so I could see the kill move animations. So I got rid of kill moves by using VioLens. The fights are still just as hard since the opponent will still use power attacks, but now I know if I die to one of them it's because I screwed up and not because someone thought it was a good idead to take control from the player so I could see a kill move. It's really noticable if your using a cloth armored mage against two-handed weapon users, you will be dodging around succesfully avoiding attacks, then you can't move for about a second or so as the oppenent closes in on you and finally you see the kill move animation. Not trying to sound snide or anything, I just got fed up with that part of the game.

Okay but when you get a killmove on an NPC the same thing happens to them. They stop whatever they're doing and get frozen and forced into a kill animation just like you do. I've had several instances where I'm not even facing the NPC entirely and they get forced into a killmove. But I guess so long as your mod makes you unable to do killmoves anymore either then it's still on fair ground

Yeah, I forgot about it happening to the NPCs as well. I've been using some mods for so long I sometimes can't tell (or remember) what is vanilla and what is modded.

[konrasu]

killing them