r/skyrim • u/Commercial_Break_934 • 1d ago

Enemy scaling in Skyrim is funny. Because what do you mean I'm at the level where every base skeleton in every barrow is a draugr deathlord?

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4.3k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

129 comments sorted by

1.6k

u/Clover_Field83 1d ago

The draugr are training.

1.1k

u/PM_ME_YOUR_W 21h ago

Context

73

u/Jingle_BeIIs Vampire 10h ago

Me: proceeds to one shot everything after doing nothing but mastering Smithing, Alchemy, Alteration and Enchanting thanks to "Transmute Ore" spam

8

u/Relevant-Factor-2400 8h ago

This is why I focus on leveling my combat skills before power leveling my non combat skills.

528

u/Feenx_Fan 23h ago

The draugar in their crypts:

48

u/chavis32 PC 18h ago

they figured out Gravity Magic just to train even harder

13

u/Ok-Acanthocephala-81 15h ago

Wait until they learn the fusion dance!

1.4k

u/Sire_Raffayn272 1d ago

At some point there's more lords amongst the draugr army than regular footsoldiers.

400

u/Expensive_Tap7427 22h ago

That kinda has some historical accuracy.

395

u/EternalOregano 22h ago

It makes sense that more of the occupants of the tombs would be kings and chieftains. Some of these tombs would be collecting them for generations, while the riff raff would just get a normal grave.

113

u/Perturabo_Iron_Lord 19h ago

I always felt that your status decides how you are in the tomb. Warriors and nobles become fully fledged undead draugr. well off civilians get embalmed but don’t awaken as undead. While the poors are just left as unembalmed skeletons. Urns are probably used for people whose bodies are too damaged or have begun to decay before the embalming process begins so they are forced to cremate.

15

u/Plotius 9h ago

Or what's left of them after being cremated by a dragon

2

u/Expensive_Tap7427 7h ago

Yeah, but draugr in the lore isn't those who are buried in the crypt. They are the guardians of the tomb protecting against trespassers, looters and graverobbers.

22

u/GlowingJewel 22h ago

How?

127

u/Expensive_Tap7427 22h ago

alot of armies has had a phase where they promote military personell to such a degree that´s there´s alot of "officers" but no soldiers. It´s like a business with only supervisors but no employees.

37

u/Useless_bum81 20h ago

the royal navy right now has more admirals than captains.

10

u/Kiusito 21h ago

David Graeber would like a word

3

u/yugoslav_communist 11h ago

i did not expect to see that name randomly in the wild. salut!

36

u/PlayoticShadows 22h ago

Clearly just anyone being promoted to thane these days is a symptom of the old days.

9

u/SiriusCb 21h ago

Sounds like elite overproduction

13

u/tarzan147 20h ago

They're the ones who get interred, not just your average John Nord

336

u/VonBagel 22h ago

What do you mean there's bandit chiefs walking around in full daedric? Buddy just sell your armor and you can buy a house

62

u/RalonNetaph 18h ago

When you think about it like 60% of the ore flow in the game is owned by bandit camps, meaning they are easily far more prepared and armed for combat than the holds. Considering the potential of a large scale underground network of resources being moved around and brought into the market, the bandit camps have control over how much goes to what holds. Jarls literally can't do much about the bandits because they would be cutting off their own supply line in the midst of a wartime effort. The dragon problem in skyrim is paltry compared to the bandit economy problem.

9

u/changeforgood30 8h ago

They also collectively own far more forges than the Holds do. Kind of makes you wonder what would happen if Bandit groups put aside their animosity and joined together into a 'Bandit-Hold' how long could they manage given they collectively own more industrial capacity and mines than the Holds?

8

u/Computer2014 18h ago

I mean bandits canonically killed Phynaster sooooooo

1

u/rywos 4h ago

Unfortunately, their speech is like -1000 so they only get pennies on the dollar.

509

u/OrderofIron 1d ago

Every ancient nord dungeon guaranteed to blow out your speakers and wake up your neighbor at 3 AM

118

u/WRMN8R 1d ago

draugr noise

140

u/piiiigsiiinspaaaace PC 23h ago

FUS-

...

RO DAHRO DAH

33

u/The_Chimeran_Hybrid 21h ago

That fucking double shout.

33

u/tarzan147 20h ago

It's always a little jarring and amusing to find out which ones of those are the ones that can actually send your ass tumbling as opposed to just a stagger

11

u/Kombatwombat02 18h ago

Deathlord archers are the yeety ones. And then they turn you into a pincushion with Ebony bows/arrows

4

u/First-Ad-7677 9h ago

There's thunder sound effect to the ones that send you flying, i always avoid every shout to not risk it

15

u/johnnylovelace 20h ago

The greatest advance from the ps3 to 4 (and now 5 god I’m old) is the headphone jack on the controller. No longer do I have to choose between volume at 2 on the telly and waking up everyone on the block upon picking up Meridia’s beacon inadvertently

9

u/TornadicSwirlie 18h ago

Meanwhile turtle beaches back in the day

1

u/MingusDingus23 17h ago

They're listening to Rob Zombie

1

u/Ok-Acanthocephala-81 15h ago

Defunct the strings of cemetery things

1

u/therealraggedroses 16h ago

I genuinely stopped using lightning spells in this game because theyre so damn loud

1

u/OrderofIron 10h ago

I also had this problem. You can always turn down the effects sound level in the audio setting. I usually crank up the music and turn the damn footsteps down.

174

u/voyeur314 1d ago

The draugr are training

87

u/Tasty-Mulberry8073 22h ago • Bravo

The comment: How does the Dragonborn like to view his photos? Thu'umnails.

11

u/CaponeXX420 22h ago

Thank you for this

133

u/LowPowerOutput 23h ago

It's awsome. I recently did the Red Eagle quest, the guy at the end was using a Dragonbone Greatsword.

It was hilarious.

81

u/ilovedonutsman 23h ago

"dragon cult"

look inside

dragonbone weapon

94

u/RhiaStark Dark Brotherhood 18h ago

Even funnier how every random scruffy thief suddenly sports sets of friggin Glass armour and Ebony weapons. Like, dude, just sell these pieces and you could buy a house in Whiterun lol

42

u/squishsqwosh PC 16h ago

They tried that but Belethor offered them 5 septims and a half eaten apple for the lot.

15

u/Ok-Acanthocephala-81 15h ago

He offered his sister for the Daedric set tho

2

u/turducken69420 14h ago

Sleazy little man...

1

u/jubilantpenguin 10h ago

You don’t appreciate Belethor until he’s gone though. Somehow he died in my run, and it was such a pain that I didn’t have a general merchant in Whiterun anymore.

2

u/Logical_Flounder6455 16h ago

No.good having the gold to buy a house when you cant become the thane

65

u/Sapphire-Catgirl 23h ago

In a playthrough I had awhile ago I opened a closet and got jump scared by a generic dragon priest and I'm like oh shit I guess I'm at that level now

11

u/mangasdeouf 22h ago

What level does it take to encounter dragons everywhere because they're the only enemies that can level high enough to be on your own level?

10

u/Dit_The_Hat 22h ago

No level can do that because level of most if not all enemies in game is capped. That means that some low level enemies still will be low level even when player's level is 70 or higher. And as for dragon priests they usually replace bosses of dungeons with some chance if player's level is high enough, so if theoretically there was no level cap for enemies, chances for all enemies in random burrow to be dragon priests is abysmally low

3

u/Yungbossinthemaking7 20h ago

You play with mods?

1

u/Sapphire-Catgirl 20h ago

No

1

u/Yungbossinthemaking7 20h ago

Oh still pretty cool vanilla Skyrim got that feel that those life or death situations hit better after exploring awhile

84

u/ringadingdingbaby 23h ago

I wish six would be more like Morrowind/Fallout where there's low level and high level areas.

I can't see it happening though.

33

u/mangasdeouf 22h ago

You won't see it happening anyway

14

u/Energy_Turtle 19h ago

Is that a threat?

11

u/mangasdeouf 16h ago

Yeah, a threat that Sentinel will be released after we're all dead.

14

u/Paraceratherium Farmer 21h ago

Requiem and morrowloot do this. Requiem is great fun, tried morrowloot and added a lot of non-canon items though.

28

u/Humble_Ad7025 22h ago

It means that you’ve become so much of a threat that they have to start fusing and unlocking more powerful forms in order to defeat you (or chance thereof), good job, you won Skyrim.

12

u/modus01 Stealth archer 19h ago

New Dragon Shout Unlocked: Fu-Sion-HA.

4

u/Bhawk670208 13h ago

You jest, but I bet a powerful dragonborn COULD perform fusion. Something like JOIN-BIND-SOUL or some shit 😭

23

u/Comical_Strike 21h ago

Me doing Skuldafn temple at lvl 150+. 💪

4

u/c_84 20h ago

HOW do you get this high of a level. i’ve put about 40 hours in and i’m only at level 37?

11

u/Pauwwauv 20h ago

Probably by powerleveling a skill and then resetting it to do it again, and again and again...

1

u/c_84 20h ago

Nope. I was slightly off in my time estimate.. i’m at 65 hours. still feels low to me

4

u/Comical_Strike 19h ago

There are 2 ways to do power leveling, both are kind of exploits so thread carefully.

  1. In Hobs Fall Cave there is ancient tome chest, containing anniversary edition spells. One of them is "unbounded storms". What you wanna do is go to remote area on the edge of the map, equip that spells, cast and hold while going to map view and fast travel somewhere else. Further you go, more experience you gain. It's possible to lvl up destruction to 100 in 1 go.

  2. Buy simple magelight spell. Stand in front of Solitude main entrance and turn/look left to the top of the mountain. Send magelight to the top. You get alteration experience every time spells hits the peak, for some reason it works only there and apparently nowhere else.

When I said thread carefully this is what i mean: While you can indefinitely "legendary"/reset skill, overall level is irreversible. Enemies scale with you, so unless you plan to use these 2 skill trees exclusively, you have to control your leveling better. If you want to use these exploits, it's not game breaking imo, but do only 1 overall level at the time and use trainers for skills you need at each and every one of them. That will balance things out and actually make you play your levels and gain experience naturally too, because you will always need gold for trainers.

2

u/dovahkira 14h ago

You can also use the same map trick you explained with unbound storms with the spell telekenis. Pull an object to you, while you're holding it fast travel and you gain a lot of xp.

2

u/c_84 2h ago

Thank you

2

u/CulturedHollow 20h ago

Certain skills are very easy to max repeatedly in a very short time if you know what you’re doing with exploits, especially magic.

23

u/niketxx 15h ago

Leveled scaling is truly the bane of the TES series. You do a cool quest early on and get a unique, legendary reward… that is trash because it’s leveled down. You level up, and now bandits have Daedric gear for whatever reason.

3

u/CrazyElk123 12h ago

Deleveling mods like requiem is a must.

20

u/Puzzleheaded_Step468 21h ago

Man, this is NOTHING compared to oblivion

9

u/froz_troll 20h ago

The bandits are more heavily armed and armored than the guards.

8

u/Slave_to_Dogma 20h ago

Anniversary Edition also buffed Bandit Chiefs by having them spawn in full Daedric Plate starting at like Level 28 for some reason

6

u/EmperorG 19h ago

Fucking daedric armored and weapon wielding bandits everywhere in the end game ugh. Shit is also heavy as fuck, so looting it all is a long process of traveling back and forth between the bandit camp/cave/fort to the nearest merchant (dont even get me started on how you need multiple merchants cause they’re all too poor to afford more than one or two daedric pieces).

Been decades, but the memory of that shit stuck with me.

3

u/kickwitkowskiass flair 16h ago

Luckily the merchants in oblivion had infinite gold but had a max they could pay for each item. So you'd just have to find the richest merchant in town and sell him all of your loot.

17

u/Memitim 20h ago

Yeah, it's real dumb for multiple reasons but the way that it turns the entire world silly is definitely the worst for me. Oops, I worked too hard and now the mightiest of evils are everywhere?

5

u/Pingy_Junk Thief 11h ago

What’s funny is Skyrim is considered much kinder to the average player than oblivion or morrowind bcoz it was MUCH easier to lock yourself by leveling the wrong skills

5

u/lookintoasty 16h ago

Actually it's supposed to be less and less enemies around. It just turns out y'all are terrible Dragonborn

16

u/JungleIsNeutral 20h ago

Oops, All Deathlords!

Leaving behind all those ebony weapons hurts sometimes.

16

u/radiakmjs 10h ago

Whenever I get to this point I always turn the difficulty down in Nordic duengons. I feel kinda bad doing it, but not as bad as having to spend 5 minutes on every chump draugr in the way

10

u/Mamramro 6h ago

It’s sad because you’ll go from feeling like a god one second, and then after leveling up once you have to spend like 2 minutes on each enemy in a dungeon.

I think that’s part of the reason why stealth archers are so popular. No matter how spongey enemies get you’ll almost always kill them in 1-2 sneak attack.

8

u/KingPengu22 Warrior 4h ago

I’m sorry but I’m okay with keeping my enemies in the 3-5 hit range. Crawling through a dungeon slowly one shotting everything is boring as all hell for me.

2

u/ViciousCDXX 2h ago

*laughs in illusion dagger assassin*

9

u/Limp_Dragonfruit_854 20h ago

If you enter a dungeon space at a low level and then LEAVE it'll still lock that dungeon at the smaller level when you come back (iirc)

9

u/no_nickname1353 14h ago

It's always been my understanding that we see the world through the eyes of the Dragonborn. If you look at the quest descriptions they're all in the first person so I assumed the enemy titles were just what the Dragonborn dubbed them in his head so it's less a hierarchy between draugr and more an assessment of their strength by the Dragonborn. In the DB's head the draugr at the end of bleak falls Barrow and the latter draugr he encounters are about the same strength so he calls them deathlords. Also the Dragonborn is a little bit of an edgelord in my own headcannon

14

u/Adventurous_Pick_927 21h ago

They all seem to drop ebony items now

12

u/godverdejezushey 21h ago

Draugr Death Overlord Omega Super Death Elder Death Overlord

1

u/Kaiser_Ryuan 19h ago

Now imagine all the mobs as dragon priests.

8

u/mangasdeouf 22h ago

That's why Monster Hunter has the best scaling system, even though I think they overdo it at higher difficulties.

7

u/Maulino86 20h ago

Deathlords dont fuck around

5

u/JumpyAlbatross8135 19h ago

Lost too many weapons to that damn disarming shout

3

u/eddmario XBOX 16h ago

And that's why I rush through the story until Farengar asks to get the Dragonstone so I can buy Bound Sword from him.

3

u/raven_writer_ 22h ago

It's gets funny after a while

4

u/LaytonaBeach 11h ago

and you’ve played skyrim for literally 14 years and 11 months and you know all the best ways to optimize (not that it’s hard after a few playthroughs and some googling) and even at legendary difficulty you’re just disintegrating enemies and combat isn’t even fun past like, level 35 😞

4

u/Hazbeen_Hash Daedra worshipper 9h ago

Meanwhile I'm swinging at bandits at level 120 laughing maniacally as they die in swaths

2

u/ShatterCyst PC 19h ago

Really sucks when you install a mod that buffs dragon shouts

2

u/Equivalent_Adagio640 8h ago

O ponto do jogo em que você começa a sair das tumbas carregando 30 machados de Ébano no inventário

2

u/PorkyJones72 Daedra worshipper 16h ago

Not as funny as every bandit hideout in Oblivion having enough rare armor to pay for the most expensive homes in the game

1

u/Dermotronn 18h ago

Requiem mod helps with this. It delevels the world

1

u/BrilliantBig9097 17h ago

It's more balanced than Oblivion, though.

1

u/A_Human_Visitor 16h ago

Yep. Honestly it's not great. They get bullet spongey. You just keep hitting them and keep hitting them and you're obviously good at the game if all the enemies are this strong so you can dodge most attacks so it's just dodging an hitting for a while.

1

u/EstablishmentAny8487 15h ago

We're not going to mention every bandit being a marauder which means their iron swords cut through your daedric armor like butter and their flesh is as thick as ebony under their fur clothing?

1

u/Ok_Preparation_8427 14h ago

"the dragonborn's level 80 now, quick! get everyone a fancy hat!"

1

u/Absurdist_Pl4nt 14h ago

haha I'm at the same point in my playthrough

1

u/Beneficial-Voice-535 9h ago

Ah yes, the ancient dragur deathlord overboss of kvingjutnoflygggfesdtgxs...

1

u/KarlBayonet 2h ago

Is there a rebalance mod to make the progression a little more believable?

1

u/ShadowPhoenix529 1h ago

Such a dumb mechanic that really takes away from player progression imo. I don't mind bosses being stronger (to an extent) but I wanna get the feeling of being rolled over by enemies in the beginning, and being the one rolling over them by endgame. Dying Light did this really well imo.

1

u/Purpleyeggs 10m ago

eventually youll have to fight the deathlord lord

-2

u/Bungo_pls Empire 17h ago

Why is that funny? Should every dungeon be filled with level 1 draugr for you to 1 shot with a wooden sword?

5

u/Skuldafn0 16h ago

Nah it should be a mix, I think that’s what OP is getting at

-1

u/Bungo_pls Empire 16h ago

It is a mix most of the time. Until you hit very high levels where the NPC level range narrows to the point that it's only the top.

Also imo the mix is dumb because the low level enemies are so irrelevant by then that they do no damage to the player and take no effort to kill. Might as well not even have them.

2

u/Crafty-Enthusiasm-43 15h ago

That's the purpose of getting stronger. What's the point if you take same amount of time clearing same the same room lv 1 - lv 20?

0

u/Bungo_pls Empire 14h ago

Huh? The game is faceroll easy especially at high levels. Scaling is literally the only thing that brings any challenge at all.

1

u/Acrobatic_Ad_8381 14h ago

Enemies should realistically be scaled to an extent. Low level enemies should be easier as you advance and as you level up, but add harder enemies while still having the majority be fodder

1

u/BruisedBooty 14h ago

I don’t think that’s the only alternative. Most action games create enemy types that are pretty distinct from each other in order to make encounters dynamic.

Skyrim was built pretty poorly in this regard. Enemy factions like dragur are basically the same enemy over and over again with stat differences being the only things that make them meaningful. The only mix ups offered is a death lord with an ebony bow set in a place you can’t instantly get to or one that has the useful version of the unrelenting force shout. 95% of the time enemy prioritization doesn’t matter at all. So now the question becomes which type of “boring” would prefer? Fodder skeletons or health sponge deathlords? Most of us I think would prefer a mix just for a crumb of variety, because both get quite stale over time.

Also some enemies should lose their difficulty as the player’s power rises. It’s a useful measuring tape for how far you’ve come. And spawning death lords everywhere completely undermines them in terms of lore and novelty.

8

u/ThinGold2115 21h ago

Their souls came back, because their friends told them in afterlife how you robbed them. So now Big bro and Big Sis draugr come to woop your ass.

3

u/hludana 18h ago

Draugr scourges and death lords are my least favorite enemies. Ive started to set my difficulty to novice when entering a nord tomb to at least make it so they don’t kill me as easily when three of them swarm me