Dragon Masks

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This game is actually painful with the amount of stuff there is to discover. It's like drinking through a fire hose. I try to go and get one quest done, inevitably stumble upon a cave, ruin, or SOMETHING that I have to check out, and end up completing three quests and picking up information on three others to boot.

Incidentally, are there an unlimited number of bounty quests? It seems like whenever I hit a tavern or an inn, and ask the bartender for rumors, he hands my a bounty notice on some infamous bandit I've never heard of that someone will pay something to have killed.

Anyway, after rediscovering my wife, I planned on getting some old quests cleaned up, visiting some of the major holds I hadn't yet been to, and I end up stumbling upon one of the dragon priests - who wasn't nearly as tough as I thought he'd be. He has this stupid staff where he creates a lightning wall that does 50 lightning damage per second, so he did kill me a couple of times with that until I got wise to his tricks. Anyway, I have a mask. Found out that there is a ridiculous number - like eight of them. That said, this one is from Otar or something like that, and after looking up the stats for each one, Otar is definitely not bad if you're a melee fighter. (Most of them seem to be more mage-oriented.) For a hack and slash character like I'm playing, getting a mask that gives resistances to fire, cold, and lightning is definitely not a bad deal.

Also on my research - and I fight this a bit frustrating - is that it is impossible to get 100% resistance in anything. According to the wiki page, resistance are factored sequentially, not additively. So it's not like if you have one piece of gear that gives 20%, and another that gives 30%, you don't get 50%. It takes the 20%, and then you get 30% of the remaining 80% (the order you do it doesn't matter - it works out the same). So that apparent 50% works out to more like 44%. Since everything is sequential, it means two things: 1) The only way you can gain complete immunity to magic or an element is if you found an item that had 100% resistance on it by itself. No such item exists as far as I'm aware. 2) Even if the percentage is the same, you get progressively less out of each additional piece of gear you add with resistance on it, because of the sequential factoring in of the pieces.

For example, say you have 5 items, each with 20% resistance on them.

1st item - worth the full 20%.
2nd item - worth an additional 16%, for a total of 36%
3rd item - worth an additional 12.8% for a total of 48.8%
4th item - worth an additional 10.2% for a total of 59%
5th item - worth an additional 8.2% for a total of 67.2%

So while more is always more, sometime more isn't a heck of a lot more.

 

Hehe, I have yet to collect all Dragon Mask on any one of my characters. Nor have I collected all the Stones of Barenziah. As you say Aldeth and I have posted about this earlier as well, there is a stupid amount of content in Skyrim. And yes, there is an unlimited amount of bounty quests and a few other variants. They are called "Radiant quests" and generated randomly to make each game slightly different.

 

Yeah, I looked up the dragon masks, and they range from very useful to certain type of builds, to near useless. None of them seem particularly great. And, IMO, the final dragon mask is a bit of a letdown, given all the work you'd need to do to acquire it.

The dragon masks are:

Hevnoraak - located in Valthume, southeast of Markarth. Wearer is immune to disease and poison, which is handy, given the frequency you seem to contract diseases.

Krosis - located in Shearpoint, northeast of Whiterun. This is probably the easiest one to get to, as even guards will tell you about the location, and then it appears on your map and you can actually fast-travel to it, even if you haven't been there. Unfortunately, this is apparently a fixed dragon spawn location, so you might end up having yourself a fight with a dragon and dragon priests simultaneously, which sounds rather bad. It's also the only dragon mask that isn't at the end of a dungeon, as it's outside.

Krosis grants a 20% bonus to lockpicking, alchemy, and archery. So this one seems rather build-specific. Great for a thief that uses archery as his main form of offense, and it's light armor, so it won't hose up your perk for using all light armor.

Merokei - located in Labrynthian, southeast of Morthal. Grants 100% magicka regeneration - obviously useful for mages.

Nahkriin - located in Skuldafn - this area can only be accessed during the main quest line, so I guess everyone gets the opportunity to get at least one mask. This one is also mage-specific - +50 magicka, -20% magicka cost to destruction and restoration spells.

Otar (the one I have) - located in Rangvald, north of Markarth. Grants 30% resistance to fire, frost, and shock, so this one has universal utility. (I actually lucked out, out of all the dragon masks, if I could only possess one, this one seems the most useful for my character.)

Rahgot - located in Forelhost, southeast of Riften. Major *meh* here - +70 stamina. Granted, +70 is a lot, but it's freakin' stamina.

Vokun - located in the middle of nowhere at High Gate Ruins. It's between Solitude and Dawnstar, with the closest nearby settlement being Ustengrav, a bit south of it. Another mage mask, this one gives a -20% magicka cost for alteration, conjuration, and illusion spells.

Volsung - located in Volskygge, which is also pretty far off the beaten path. You'd need to go pretty far west from Solitude to get there. That's the closest major city, but it's not particularly close. It's north of Deepwood Redoubt and south of Steepfall Burrow. This one has a pretty big *meh* factor too. +20 carry limit, 20% better prices, and underwater breathing.

I, for one, am of the opinion that after you do all that - fight eight high-level dragon priests to acquire these masks - that the end mask should be nothing short of spectacular. IMO, it is not. The last mask is Konahrik, also located in Labrynthian (once you have all the others) and has the following properties.

- high defense - but that's the only permanent property.
- When health is low, there's a chance that it auto-casts a spell that knocks back enemies, heals you, and grants a temporary cloak of fire.
- Also a chance that the masks summons the spectral dragon priest Konahrik, and gives you 30 seconds of unlimited shouting.

Now both those effects are outrageously good, but implicit in the statement of "a chance" of this happening is also "a chance" that it won't. So the abilities can't be relied upon. It would be much better to actually be able to have that as an innate ability - like a once per day use.

 

As far as resistances go, that's where Alchemy comes in. Easily the most OP skill in the game imo.

Alchemy subsumes Archery, Two-hand and One-hand. You can make potions that will give you more +%damage than any number of skill points you plan to invest in any perk. It also subsumes Destruction (except perhaps dual-casting), granting more +%elemental damage via potions and poisons. All other skills are either significantly improved or can be replaced adequately by Alchemy - even Enchanting (except perhaps for the dual-enchantment perk). While enchanting can boost alchemy, the fact is that this works both ways - alchemy can also be used to boost enchanting. Ultimately, the only advantage enchanting gives you is the dual-enchantment perk. Alchemy gives you a much stronger early, mid and late game for much less effort. Ultimately, with all your gold, you might even be able to afford enough skillups such that you can simply take dual-enchantment later on in the game (skillups->levelups->skill points). The reverse of this - using Enchanting to create powerful potions and create enough capital for you to train your skills - is by far a much more daunting task.

Alchemy trivializes any mage battle in the game with magicka drain poisons (they do work, give them a bit of time) and every elemental damage-heavy fight in the game understandably becomes easy when you have potions that can give upwards of 100% resistance. Slow poisons and Paralyze poisons help deal with all but the strongest monsters in the game. Alchemy is easily the most lucrative crafting skill with perks/skill levels and especially when combined with Speech. You should be making potions valued at 1k or more gold around level 20, so you'll have more than money to buy scrolls of summon atronach/dead thralls, or any other master-level spells - these are way OP when used early/mid game. At higher levels (assuming you do merchant runs every now and then) you should have enough gold to help you max every skill you need from trainers. With effort you can even try to max every skill you have.

Finally, Alchemy is unrivaled when it comes to the ease with which you can gather the necessary ingredients for whatever potions you plan to craft. Besides the obvious method (ie, roaming the countryside, preferably with the perk that allows you to harvest one more component), remember almost all the major holds in the game have alchemy NPCs. You want an almost endless supply? Visit all of them, sleep, visit all of them, sleep....

 

Please explain. How does alchemy improve enchanting - or vice versa.

 

Because you can make potions of Fortify Enchantment, and/or enchant items with Fortify Alchemy

 

Yep. You can even buy yourself a set of fortify alchemy gear from stores, and use these to create even better fortify enchanting potions. You can stop here if you think proceeding further is bug abuse. Anyway the next part involves using those fortify enchanting potions to create your own set of fortify alchemy gear. Use these to create the best fortify enchanting potions.