Friday 18 January 2019

Reviewing Monsters: The Elder Scrolls V - Skyrim, Part 1

The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim cover.png
This article has been burning a hole in my hard drive for around three or four months, when the whole "reviewing monsters" bit was just something I was toying around with maybe doing a series of these. It's sort of a personal proof-of-concept thing, I guess? Ended up finishing the Zelda, Digimon and Yu-Gi-Oh "reviewing monsters" things first, though. Anyway, it's a slow month and I guess this article is sort of good enough for me to put out.

It's nearly a decade old at this point, but The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is still easily one of my favourite games. Set in the frozen region of Skyrim, the game features a gigantic and diverse amount of enemies, ranging from humans (well, humanoids) to the titular dragons to undead to beasts both fantastic and otherwise. I tried to fit them all in a single article, but it grew so long that I decided to split it into two parts. This first part is going to deal with the beasts and monsters of Skyrim, while an upcoming sequel is going to deal with the humanoid bandits, the undead monsters and the daedra (basically the demons of the setting). A third part will deal with the monsters added with the DLC's. Sometime in the future I plan to do one of this for Skyrim's predecesssor, Oblivion.

Anyway, without further ado, let's go straight into my review/commentary on Skyrim's fauna! I'll have to extend a bit of thanks to the Elder Scrolls Wikis, UESP and Elder Scrolls Wikia, for providing a lot of the pictures and information.
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Skeever:


I guess these giant rats serve as the default weakest enemies in the game? Giant rats are a pretty common trope for weak enemies in any fantasy setting, and these are... well, pretty ugly-looking, really selling just how disgusting pestilent, sewer-living rats are. Not much to say here, although I appreciate that the role these dirty skeevers have in the game.


Mudcrab:


Another one that ties with the Skeever as the weakest enemies of the game is the Mudcrab, found mostly around any water source. Ponds, rivers, seas... These are gigantic crabs, though, again, the size of small dogs. And they will actually burrow into the ground, exposing only their tough back which make them look like rocks, serving as a neat bit of camouflage. Mudcrabs have been staples in the Elder Scrolls series since Morrowind, although their appearances have transformed from game to game. I think Skyrim's Mudcrab model is the one that looks the most like a real-life mudcrab with very, very thick claws and legs, other than, y'know, being pretty big and having rock camouflage. Not much to say here, but I do like the idea of crab enemies in a fantasy setting, and I do like the little detail of there being Mudcrabs of different sizes in the world, but they're all just identified as simply "Mudcrab".

Wolf:


Again, you got to have wolves in a fantasy setting. Not sure why Skyrim's wolves have very pronounced canines, though. I really don't have much to say here -- wolves are another pretty basic animal, sometimes hunting in packs and sometimes being alone. There are two main variants encountered in the wilds of Skyrim, a black-maned one simply called "Wolf", and an icy-pelted variant called "Ice Wolf". In some bandit forts, you'll sometimes have them engage in pit fighting with unique "Pit Wolf" enemies that you can release and sic on their barbaric masters.


Bears:


Another one that is "just a real-world animal", bears are pretty frightening beasts in real life, and they're still pretty frightening in the world of Skyrim as well. The wolves, bears and sabre-cats all are basically the same sort of enemy that just lurk around in forests and some forested caves, attack with simple melee attacks, and just differ in terms of flavour and stats. Wolves are fragile, bears are tanky but slow, while sabre cats attack quickly and speedily. Bears are pretty tough if you're not prepared for them at a low level. There are three common variants of the bear -- regular Bear, Cave Bear and Snow Bear.

Sabre Cat:


Now we're getting somewhere! I recognize the need for recognizable enemies as low-level overworld enemies or dungeon fodder in a fantasy setting, but I always find that games that aren't set in a real-world setting that rely too much on real enemies kind of miss the whole point of making a fantasy game in the first place. Granted, Sabre Cats are based on an extinct real-world beast, but hey, at least it's different! As mentioned before, Sabre Cats are a lot stealthier than wolves and bears, and rely on huge chunks of speedy strikes to bring you down quickly.  Like the bears and wolves, Sabre Cats are found in two variants -- regular Sabre Cat and Snowy Sabre Cat. Smilodons are cool, and I do enjoy them replacing the Mountain Lion (which served a similar purpose) from Oblivion with this cooler-looking beast. The Dawnguard expansion will add a third variant, but we'll cover Dawnguard stuff in a separate segment.

Frostbite Spider:


Probably one of the most memorable monsters that's still based on real-world animals, the gigantic Frostbite Spiders are one of the most terrifying motherfuckers in Skyrim. Granted, I used to have arachnophobia and while I've gone on exposure therapy to make me play through this game without freaking out too much... man, they've really done an amazing job at making the Frostbite Spiders move like real spiders, yeah? Comparing the Frostbite Spiders in Skyrim to the Spider Daedra in the preceding game, Oblivion, it's pretty obvious that they've done their research in making the spiders really behave like real-world spiders. The arms-raised up threat posture, the gigantic Tarantula-esque pedipalps... they took some of the creepiest features of different spiders and combined them into this pretty scary thing.

Throw in the fact that they can spit venom to your face, and their lairs tend to be filled with wrapped-up desiccated corpses, and the fact that some of them straight-up just hide on the ceiling and drop down when you wander into a seemingly empty room... really well done stuff, honestly, making these spiders really work as horrifying enemies. And if wolf-sized spiders aren't bad enough, Giant Frostbite Spider variants exist, which is, well, even bigger versions of giant spiders!

Spriggan:

File:SR-creature-Spriggan Matron.jpg
While previous games have depicted Spriggans as just humanoid women dressed in leaf-themed clothes, Poison Ivy style, Skyrim have turned the boring-looking forest spirits into something far, far more badass. Sure, they're still humanoid-looking and still feminine, but their entire body is made up of gnarly branches and wood formed into a fascimile of a humanoid shape, with leaves and bees buzzing around it, while the entire thing glows with a green glow. The Spriggans are vengeful nature spirits that can actually turn invisible or disappear into a swarm of bees, and they will charm all nearby animals -- even non-hostile deers and elks -- to fight for them. In addition to that, Spriggans will unleash swarms of insects to attack you and poison you, and they tend to retreat behind the shield of their animal buddies and heal to full health. And if regular green Spriggans aren't troublesome enough, once you reach higher levels, the orange-glowing Spriggan Matrons show up, and those are even more troublesome! Pretty troublesome enemies mechanically, but I am always impressed at how badass Spriggans look in this game. Honestly, I've never really thought of it, but I can honestly consider the Spriggans as one of my favourite enemies in this game.

Horker:


Horkers are... well, they are Skyrim's version of walruses, but instead of two giant tusks pointing downwads, they instead have three horns splayed outwards around their mouth. It's an interesting and small change from a real-world animal, but makes the Horker feel so much more unique. It's something that I wished they had done with more animals in this game. Horkers are kind of rare, only found in the Northernmost coast of Skyrim where the climate is a lot more icy. I do respect that about Skyrim -- all the beasts and animals tend to be found in climates and locations that make sense for them.

Giant:


You can't have a quasi-nordic game without having giants! Having said that, though, the Giants of Skyrim don't really play a particularly huge role in any of the game's many storylines, but they are a constant presence as you walk and explore through Skyrim's wilderness. You'll find that these giants wander around Skyrim and have their own primitive, tribal camps and societies, and they are almost always found herding and caring for mammoths. They're pretty simple, otherwise, just lanky, bearded giant men holding huge clubs.

Interestingly, while clearly an enemy in the game, Giants are never immediately hostile, and when they see you they will hoo-hah and wave and gesture angrily for you to stay the fuck away, and then slam their clubs to the ground to try and chase you off. It's definitely a nice little bit of worldbuilding, showing that not all monsters in Skyrim are out for your blood. Of course, though, when you do antagonize a giant... you get sent into space thanks to a hilarious bug in the game's physics engine, which the developers have sort of decided to keep thanks to the fandom's love for it. While they're not super-significant, I do love the fact that the Giants do feel like a slightly more intelligent sort of enemy in the game. Hell, sometimes you even come across Giants mourning their dead mammoths, and will be so morose that they'll ignore you unless provoked! Love these giants.

Mammoth:


I've mentioned these guys briefly, but, yeah, mammoths exist. They have two pairs of horns instead of a single pair like actual mammoths or their present-day descendants, elephants. I don't really have much to say about them... it's always nice to see fantasy games that try and fill a diverse amount of animals in the wild, moving away from the canines, felines, lizards and amphibians and go for slightly unconventional animals. Real-world elephants are as deadly as lions and wolves, but very rarely do video games cast them as enemies.

Slaughterfish:


Lurking in the rivers of Skyrim are the Slaughterfish, which look like some sort of freaky prehistoric fish with fins that are just maybe a couple generations away from developing into primitive legs, and a very crocodilian mouth, similar to the real-world fish alligator gar (Atractosteus spatula). Previous incarnations of Slaughterfish in the franchise have looked like weird fanged eels, and these certainly look a lot more threatening! It's a bit weird that Skyrim removed underwater combat while still keeping underwater enemies, though, meaning you have to kill these nasty buggers from the shore, or just swim fast enough to avoid them entirely. Not very memorable as actual enemies, but I do love their design.

Troll:


One of the more dangerous and hostile enemies are the trolls of Skyrim, which are these huge, hulking ape-like beasts with three eyes. That third eye and horn-like head ridges really end up giving the trolls of Elder Scrolls a unique look, honestly. Trolls have differed very wildly in different sorts of media, going from being quasi-intelligent to being fully-fledged sapient species, but the trolls of Tamriel are just, well, brutish beasts. Two variants of them are found, the normal troll and the Frost Troll, and they're all pretty powerful, attacking quickly and hunting you down aggressively, and can regenerate their health rapidly should you leave them undamaged for a couple of seconds. Like most trolls in fairytale stories and the like, though, trolls have a huge vulnerability to flame. One particularly nasty bit is a Frost Troll that stands on the pathway up High Hrothgar, which you tend to encounter at a pretty low level, and guaranteed to give you a bad time.

Wispmother, Wisp & Shade:



I had originally grouped the Wispmother and the Wisps with the 'undead' segment, before realizing that despite literally being a ghostly lady... Wispmothers aren't counted as undead! Undead-specific spells don't affect the Wispmother. So what the hell are these things? Most in-game books and NPCs refer to Wispmothers and Wisps as 'ghostly spirits' and the like, but apparently they're less ghosts and more... elementals? I guess they're what passes as elementals in the setting of Tamriel? Nature spirits similar to the Spriggan? It doesn't help that the Wispmothers are some of the straight-up rarest enemies in the game. You have a chance to encounter them in the wild, of course, but the only real quests they're a star of is a relatively minor one that ends up with ambiguity.

Anyway, the Wisps are these cute little comet-like balls of light that zip around, and apparently lure adventurers and travelers towards their master, the Wispmother (or Shade, for a lower-leveled version). The Wisps themselves aren't outright harmful, but the Wispmother is a powerful spellcaster that creates duplicates of herself called Shades (on the right of these pictures). And if you think "huh, the Shades don't really look different from the Wispmother", that is the point and that's why fighting these frosty ladies are a pain. Honestly, I really enjoy the mystery behind the Wispmother. What is she? What are the Shades and Wisps to her? Are those just tools or minions, appendages that can detach from her, or straight-up her children? Pretty cool and haunting design, honestly.

Magic Anomaly:


Encountered on exactly one quest, the Magic Anomalies are living blobs of mana that are unleashed upon the Winterhold during the Mages Guild questline. Not much to say here, they're basically reskinned Wisps. Pretty cool that they actually gave the Magic Anomalies new textures and model instead of recolouring an existing enemy. Not much to say here.

Hagraven:


The Hagravens fill a similar role in Skyrim as monsters like Harpies or Witches do on other settings, and they are these crone humanoids with bird feet, tail, claws and vestigial wings hanging off their arms. While on a first glance they might just seem to be yet another monster that live in Skyrim, as you explore the game, you'll see hints that these beasts probably used to be humans, with Hagravens tending to be found alongside (and lead) communities of witches or Forsworn (a tribe of primitive, barbaric people we'll cover separately). A particularly interesting side-quest, Repentance, will involve you trying to get a girl and her mother out from a cult of witches intent on turning them into Hagravens. Hagravens also serve as a boss fight during the Companions/Werewolf storyline. You also get accidentally engaged to one in one of the more light-hearted quests.

Interestingly, though, based on how you can soul-trap Hagravens without needing black soul gems, apparently the ritual to transform humans into Hagraven have altered their souls so much that they end up having souls comparable to beasts and monsters instead of sentient species. Hagravens are some of the few non-humanoid enemies that attack with spells, unleashing the same sort of fire and frost spells that the player can use, and they can even use healing spells on their own. Definitely a bunch of creepy enemies!

Ice Wraith:


One of the rarer enemies in the game, Ice Wraiths populate the snowy mountains of Skyrim, and they manifest as this ghostly, flying skeletal snake with a disjointed lower jaw and a body made entirely of ice. Pretty cool enemies, honestly, and probably the only real "elemental" in the game if we're going by classic D&D fantasy terms, considering enemies like Atronachs are technically Daedra. The Ice Wraiths are fun, speedy monsters to fight that can be surprisingly deadly to deal with. I do like the general aesthetic of these Ice Wraiths -- it's probably their badass skeletal look, yeah? But it's also probably because the Ice Wraith are some of the few monsters in the game that's actually ice-themed. Other than maybe the horkers and snow-coloured variants of the animals, there really aren't a lot of ice-themed monsters in a game that's supposed to be set in the frozen tundra, one of my more petty complaints about Skyrim.

Falmer:


The next five or six enemies are only ever encountered in the depths of the many, many abandoned dwarven ruins dotted around Skyrim, and the location for many questlines. See, through various questlines and in-game books, you discover that the dwarves as a race are all these crazily logical race that focused on making machinery (which still run to this day) and deny the concept of gods in general. Due to some huge event in the past (taking place hundreds of years before any Elder Scrolls game), the entire race ended up vanishing without a trace, leaving their empty cities and their automatons. In Skyrim, however, the dwarf clans have enslaved a group of their elven cousins, the Snow Elves, under the guise of 'protecting' them from humans. The snow elves were blinded, and forced to ingest mushrooms that decreased their intelligence... and when the dwarves disappeared, these 'fallen elves', or the Falmer, end up getting the rein of the dwarven cities. Except they're just these growling, barely-sentient morlock-like beast-people that have truly degenerated into eyeless brutes. Hell, whatever process transformed them into the Falmer has even turned their souls, like the Hagravens, into equivalent of non-sentient species.

That's the short form of the Falmer race, anyway. One of the more terrifying enemies found in the game, the Falmer are these pale-skinned, gangly, emancipated elves that lurk in caves. They have just enough intelligence to have their own society of sorts, living in crude tents and creating crude armour and weaponry from the gigantic subterranean insects called Chaurus, but they are always hostile to you, and some specific Falmer groups have even breached their dwarven-city prisons and attacked some of the people living above the ground. The idea of a blind, troglodyte-like race living secluded from the rest of the world for millennia is well-done, honestly, and I do love just how unique the weird bug-based chitin armour that these Gollum-esque monsters have. Variants of the Falmer include Falmer Skulker, Falmer Gloomlurker, Falmer Nightprowler and Falmer Shadowmaster, all very appropriate names.

My favourite feature has to be the remaining marks on their face where their eyes used to be, which are just glazed over with a layer of flesh. While the Falmer will pretty much annoy you after any significant amount of time playing the game, I do really love the concept of the race, and, of course, the deep and intentionally ambiguous backstory that Elder Scrolls has behind these creatures.

Chaurus:


Of course, as mentioned before, the Falmer sort of exist alongside a group of strange bug-like creatures that's this strange mixture of centipede, earwig and beetle, the Chaurus. Some of the Chaurus are rarely found in swamps and marshes, but a good majority of them are found alongside the Falmer, with some Falmer settlements even keeping them in primitive cages. The Chaurus might behave similarly to the Frostbite Spiders on paper -- buggy enemies that shoot poison -- but they are insanely brutal and one of the more powerful and frustrating enemies in the game. Chaurus appear in two variants, the 'Chaurus' and the more powerful 'Chaurus Reaper'. The Dawnguard DLC would reveal that all the Chaurus you've been fighting throughout vanilla Skyrim are, in fact, the larval stage of the Chaurus species... but we'll cover the adult stage when we get there.

It's definitely a very cool-looking insect, keeping a lot of aspects of what made their inspirations look so creepy, while at the same time not exactly looking like any one specific real-life arthropod. Absolutely love their utterly creepy and disturbingly fleshy mouths, by the way, with what looks like extra eyes around that creepy looking mouth.

Dwarven Spider:


Whatever strange method that the ancient dwarves used to create their cities and automatons had allowed them to remain self-sustained thousands of years after the dwarves disappeared from Tamriel, and all of these dwarven automatons are technically the same sort of enemies found in Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, which also featured dwarven ruins. The dwarven ruins clearly run on some magic-steampunk/clockpunk aesthetic, and it's particularly reflected in the design of their automatons. The weakest of them, the dwarven spiders, tend to be curled up and hidden in deployable pipes, before scuttling towards you and whacking you with their tiny little arms or jumping at your face. In addition, stronger versions (the Dwarven Spider Worker and Dwarven Spider Guardians) can shoot out electricity like any self-respecting fantasy robot monster. If you do manage to not engage them immediately, however, it's clear that the Dwarven Spiders actually wander around the dwarven ruins and seem to be the ones that maintain the operation of the dwarven's complex machines.

Dwarven Sphere:


More powerful than the Dwarren Spiders are the Spheres, which act like little Metroid/Transformer robots! They roll around as little metallic spheres, before expanding and revealing the humanoid robot warrior nestled within. They act as guards and patrolers in the dwarven ruins, and sometimes when you trigger traps, these spheres will shoot out of the pipes to beat you down. More powerful variants (Dwarven Sphere Guardian and Dwarven Sphere Master) will shoot at you with the crossbow mounted on their right arm. I really do find them pretty interesting, and the developers really  worked in some pretty cool animations with the sphere transformations, or the robot mode zipping around with a sphere for a lower body. Best of all, I do love how the gyroscopic stability renders the Dwarven Sphere effectively immune to your "Unrelenting Force" power (which, to those unfamiliar to Skyrim, has you shout and unleash a wall of force that tends to throw enemies away).

Dwarven Centurions:


Tending to act as bosses of any Dwarven lair, the Dwarven Centurion (and their more powerful variants, the Centurion Guardian and Centurion Master) are these giant, hulking robots, and I do appreciate just how much what are essentially giant steam-powered golden robots still feel very much at home in a fantasy setting. Sure, 'magic steampunk' does go a long way to explaining these dwemer automatons, but still, it's pretty impressive regardless.

The Dwarven Centurion tended to be held in gurneys until they are activated, and they just walk around with their hammer arm and their spring-loaded battleaxe and try to murder you. Sometimes they breathe out superheated steam attacks, which I've always thought pretty cool! They're always pretty hard and fun to fight against, due to some intense amount of resistances. Skyrim might have had a wee bit too many dwarven dungeons and missions involving them, but all things considered, from a design standpoint these are honestly pretty damn cool.

Non-Hostile Animals


Because you need to keep the world feeling vibrant and such. I honestly do appreciate how many of these there are, even if I kinda wished that they had added more wacky creatures (especially when I look at Morrowind's list of bizarre monsters!) Anyway, in order, these are the dog, cow, chicken, horse, elk, deer, fox, goat and rabbit models. I'm 99% sure that out of these, only the dog and horse have battle stats, while the rest are mostly just there for fluff. Love the fact that the carnivorous beasts or bandits or whatever can sometimes chase down deer or rabbits, though! Not much to say here. You can ride horses, the game keeps track of the number of rabbits you killed, foxes can sometimes lead you to treasure, chickens can report a crime thanks to a bug, and dogs are good boys. There are also a bunch of other animals like fish and bugs that technically function a lot more like intractable objects that you harvest for alchemical ingredients.


Dragons!


Yep, here we are, at the stars of the game. While Skyrim features a multitude of different factions and storylines, including but not limited to: werewolves, a mage's college, a civil war, a thieves' guild, an assassin cult, a dozen demon lords trying to solicit your services, a vampiric castle, a hunt for ancient gemstones and many, many more, the main plotline of the game is the return of the dragons -- which were believed to be wiped out of Tamriel. Dragons has been a staple RPG monster that have not actually made an appearance in any major Elder Scrolls game, at least not as enemies. And Skyrim's main story -- and your character's backstory -- is closely tied to the dragons.

See, Elder Scrolls lore has dragons as being far more than just giant lizards with wings that breathe fire, but are actually the 'children' of the god of time, Akatosh. They all have immortal souls, which means that they cannot 'truly' die unless killed by another dragon and having their soul absorbed by another dragon. In the distant past, Akatosh's firstborn son Alduin, who should only wake up to devour the world at the end of time (acting like some Ragnarok equivalent) ended up reneging from his duties and led his dragons to enslave the ancient Nordic population of Skyrim. Alduin was supposedly defeated, but as you, the protagonist, find out, Alduin was merely sent forwards in time -- to the present day.

And that's where you come in. The protagonist you play, regardless of race and gender, is a Dovahkiin, or a Dragonborn, a mortal with the soul of a dragon, rendering you able to permanently kill dragons by absorbing their souls, as well as learning powerful Shouts, weaponizing a unique sort of magic that the dragons can do.  Eventually you fight against Alduin and his minions, befriend a couple of other dragons, kill Alduin and all that jazz... but we're not here to recap the main story, but to talk about the dragons!

There are several different types, and the dragons basically spawn either in the overworld or over cities, and the types of dragons that will appear will depend on your level. Most dragons will fly around and attack from above, spitting fire or frost from the skies, although if you deal enough damage to them, they will land (sometimes crashland) and try and chomp you with their fangs. All the dragons have two giant wings for front arms and two legs. The weakest version, just called "Dragon", is seen up there. In addition to generic dragons, some bosses have specific names -- although they reuse the model of whichever dragon subtype corresponds to your character's level.


The second sort of dragons you'll meet, Blood Dragon, are kind of green and have these cool-looking sails on their back and tail. I kind of wish that the differences are more pronounced, and that we get slightly more colourful dragons than the pretty drab colours... but I guess Skyrim's whole aesthetic is to go somewhat more 'hard fantasy'.


Frost Dragons are basically the same as regular dragons, except they can use the Frost Breath shout and have boney spikes. Kind of boring, honestly.


Elder Dragons are the prettiest-looking ones, with a pretty fancy two-toned wing that combine bronze-brown and light green. Still ultimately same old, same old, though.


Ancient Dragons are the most powerful dragons in the original game (both expansions will add far more distinctive-looking dragon variants) and are pretty boring, although at least they're coloured a badass shade of red.


The Skeletal Dragon is a variant that I really wished the developers of Skyrim had taken more to heart. See, in the game, after killing a dragon, all their flesh burn away as you absorb their soul, leaving behind nothing but a skeleton. But in one dungeon -- the magic infused Labyrinthian, a huge aspect of the mage storyline, you fight this animated skeleton of a dragon as it rises out of its burial pit like a goddamn Legend of Zelda boss... and I really wished that Skyrim's dragons aren't all so samey. Give them more powers, more abilities, more diverse looks. Skelly here is ultimately just reskinned from any old dragon, but the way you encounter him and the uniqueness behind him is just so memorable. Plus, there are a lot of Dragon Shouts in the game, but the actual enemy dragons only ever use like, three or four of the simplest ones. How devastating is it if he dragons used Marked For Death or Storm Call or Cyclone?


In addition, these three dragons all have unique models, although at a glance you really can't tell. From left to right, these are Alduin, Paarthurnax and Odahviing. Alduin the World-Eater is the main villain, and he has a unique jet-black model with more spikes, but it's only really apparent if you stop and compare him to other dragons. I hoenstly think they really could've done a lot more to make Alduin feel so much more special than just a slightly spikier dragon. Look at how distinctive, say, Deathwing is in the World of Warcraft series, or Tiamat from Dungeons and Dragons. Even if they can't give him a unique model, at least give him something that visually stands out. Even a simple larger size would've done wonders in making Alduin feel special.

Paarthurnax is our 'mentor' figure of sorts, a renegade that sided with mortals during the dragon wars and ends up teaching the protagonist a special shout that's super-effective against dragons. His model has slightly more tattered wings and unique 'beards' that highlight his grizzled age. The dragon on the right is Odahviing, Alduin's lieutenant that you subjugate, befriend and turn into your personal attack dragon. He's basically a generic dragon with a unique blood-red palette.

Anyway, while the dragons are clearly a cool concept, they end up feeling very, very samey after a while of playing, and considering how many of them keep showing up, I really wished that they had made them feel way, way more special. Keeping the dragon attacks to a minimum while making them hard, maybe, or having some traditional "dragons hoarding treasure in a dungeon" deal, or simply just more variation in appearances. There is a reason a lot of the mods out there exist just to make dragons feel a lot more special and a lot harder.

And... and that's all for today! Expect the sequel, where I discuss the undead and the daedra (and try to find something interesting about humanoid enemies)1

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