Is it just me or is Alduin absolutely pathetic?

[Amplifier]

I have quite a high level character so I did expect the fight to be somewhat easy but what I got is just...absurd. Alduin lands, I land single blow from my sword and that's it, he dies.

I mean c'mon, I've encountered dragons that take more blows than this. Heck, even the normal low level dragons take more than a single hit to kill.
And they call him Eater of the Worlds, leader of the dragons, the fearsome one.
It doesn't help either that you have three Sovngarde legends to fight alongside. Why the hell did they need a Dragonborn for? They could literally take down Alduin all by themselves while I just stand and watch.

[Rusty Knight]

Install Deadly Dragons, choose Hardcore or Nightmare difficulty. That`s it. Every dragon battle will be much harder and challenging. Also, answering your question: whole vanilla Skyrim is pathetic.

[Improper Use]

You can just stand and watch them do it.
Yes. from a gameplay perspective Alduin is not of sufficent challenge to be an 'end game' boss.

As the entire games difficulty is based on linear scaling of health pools and damage it seems a little off to not have him scaled to the players level (like the world dragons) with a much greater emphasis on difficulty and/or placed at the top of the dragon 'tier'. Endgame bosses in most games introduce specific fight dynamics for only that boss. Of couse Skyrim does not do this.

If I were cynical I'd say its for the casual gamer. but that was derided with Dawnguards bosses and the dynamics used within those fights (yes, yes they can* be cheesed).

Personally I assume that it was simply overlooked or avoided as a challenge, we were given all of Sovnguarde to look at and really, thats Skyrim.

[Amplifier]

Nah, I'm not into the features of Deadly Dragons, especially the new additional dragons and stuff. I use the mod Ultimate Draogns instead, though the settings doesn't seem to affect Alduin.

I cranked my difficulty to Master and set the dragons health to 4x. I even used console commands to make Alduin's health at 10k. 10 effin' thousand, which is about 5x his normal health.
And surprisngly, I still killed him with 1-2 hits.

Originally posted by Good King Moggle Mog XII:

whole vanilla Skyrim is pathetic.

I woudln't agree to that. Yes, enemies in Skyrim can be weak as well but the problem here is Alduin and specifically him. He's supposed to be the f***ing grand final boss in the entire game yet what you end up with is a utter weakass.
When you take into account the fact that other enemies like mammoths, bandit leaders and even draugrs can be tougher opponents... that says alot.

[Amplifier]

Originally posted by Improper Use:

You can just stand and watch them do it.
Yes. from a gameplay perspective Alduin is not of sufficent challenge to be an 'end game' boss.

As the entire games difficulty is based on linear scaling of health pools and damage it seems a little off to not have him scaled to the players level (like the world dragons) with a much greater emphasis on difficulty and/or placed at the top of the dragon 'tier'. Endgame bosses in most games introduce specific fight dynamics for only that boss. Of couse Skyrim does not do this.

If I were cynical I'd say its for the casual gamer. but that was derided with Dawnguards bosses and the dynamics used within those fights (yes, yes they can* be cheesed).

Personally I assume that it was simply overlooked or avoided as a challenge, we were given all of Sovnguarde to look at and really, thats Skyrim.

You're right, Bethesda was pandering to the casuals. The simplication of game mechanics further proves that.
But neither should it have been necessary. Why shouldn't they make the boss weak?
Make Alduin an actual challenge and that'll prompt players to progress further in the game instead of rushing through the main questline.

[Nazenn]

Dragon Combat Overhaul also adds a lot to alduin if you want to install that instead.
With Deadly Dragons you can also pick the loremonger edition which removes the new dragon types if you ever did want to install it :)

But yes, vanilla Alduin was damn SHAMEFUL for a 'final' boss

[Delta 1038]

Originally posted by Nazenn:

Dragon Combat Overhaul also adds a lot to alduin if you want to install that instead.
With Deadly Dragons you can also pick the loremonger edition which removes the new dragon types if you ever did want to install it :)

But yes, vanilla Alduin was damn SHAMEFUL for a 'final' boss

Miraak however can be quite fun.

[L_L]

he has a cool death animation though :P

[[C3:M] Bubbanator]

Hey, your talking to hte guy who all he had to do was use storm call and run up to him with my orcish gauntlets and beat the ♥♥♥♥ out of him. too easy.

[76561198027586553]

THE ALL POWERFUL EATER OF WORLDS

dies in 1 hit

[WingedKagouti]

Originally posted by Improper Use:

You can just stand and watch them do it.
Yes. from a gameplay perspective Alduin is not of sufficent challenge to be an 'end game' boss.

And despite my opinion that both Morrowind and Oblivion are better games overall, Alduin is still a better 'final boss fight' than what either of those two offered.

[Supermarine]

Well, the obvious question is: what is your level?

I'm really surprised nobody has asked that yet.

One would expect Alduin, as a "final boss", indeed to be hard to beat and challenging at all levels. That is considering how the game works---open world.

I'm trying to guess here what was the problem, just for the fun of it. I can think of various options:

a) The most obvious first: you are an expert player using the lower difficulties.

b) The second, not so obvious but quite probable: you have some mods that affect game balance.

c) This was an dev's overlook, but not for the reasons mentioned before. I'm guessing it has to do with the 1.9 update and the removal of the level limits. So it's only lazy work but they really won't be able to control the outcome of everything when the character levels approach very big numbers.

I cannot venture further into any reasoning without knowing your actual level. I have played for 340+ hours with 6 characters and Alduin has always been a challenge. At least hitting him with my arrows :P

One-hit kill is lame, though.

[Cherry]

I beat him at level 15 and it took me 30 health potions. Probably because I don't upgrade my weapons to crazy damage like you did, took me about 60 sword swings. My sword has 60 damage.

[Amplifier]

Originally posted by Supermarine:

Well, the obvious question is: what is your level?

I'm really surprised nobody has asked that yet.

One would expect Alduin, as a "final boss", indeed to be hard to beat and challenging at all levels. That is considering how the game works---open world.

I'm trying to guess here what was the problem, just for the fun of it. I can think of various options:

a) The most obvious first: you are an expert player using the lower difficulties.

b) The second, not so obvious but quite probable: you have some mods that affect game balance.

c) This was an dev's overlook, but not for the reasons mentioned before. I'm guessing it has to do with the 1.9 update and the removal of the level limits. So it's only lazy work but they really won't be able to control the outcome of everything when the character levels approach very big numbers.

I cannot venture further into any reasoning without knowing your actual level. I have played for 340+ hours with 6 characters and Alduin has always been a challenge. At least hitting him with my arrows :P

One-hit kill is lame, though.

I'm about level 72 or so, but it doesnt' matter since my combat skills aren't the ones that have been increasing as much.

a) Read my seocnd post.

b) Read my second post

c) Read my third post. It's not an overlook. They never changed anything about Alduin from the very start. Clearly, Bethesda intended him to be that weak.

If you guys can't beat Alduin easily, then I'm curious, how do you even fare against other basic enemies? Mammoths and Giants? Dragon Priests? Deathlords? Centurions?
Compare them to Alduin and tell me which pose more of a "challenge".
Even the falmers take more hits to kill from my personal experience.

Oh, and let's forget about Legendary Dragons. Those dragons are like, 4x, more powerful than Alduin. Also the Revered dragon takes a far larger beating.

By right, it should be Alduin that reigns above all, not the other way round.

[pedantic_roc]

And what damage does your 1 hit weapon deal exactly?

[Delta 1038]

Originally posted by Crowe Freighter:

Oh, and let's forget about Legendary Dragons. Those dragons are like, 4x, more powerful than Alduin. Also the Revered dragon takes a far larger beating.

By right, it should be Alduin that reigns above all, not the other way round.

To be fair for the Rev/Legendary Dragons, they were added in Dawnguard and probably as a response on just how easy Ol'Addy was and by the Nine was that Lake fight memorable.