Dawnguard

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With the expansion slated for release on the XBox (which I have) on June 26th, this seems pertinent. (In sadder news, I will have somewhere between zero and little time to play on Tuesday.)

A lot of the news that has come out involved mounted combat (you can wield crossbows, bows, and any melee weapon on horseback, but you cannot cast spells). Also heavily hyped is the addition of two new skill trees (one for vampires, one for werewolves). This is distinct from other skill trees in that the perks for the trees are gained automatically by using skills while transformed to either a werewolf or vampire. In other words, you don't need to level up your character to gain access to the perks in these trees.

Finally, there is the addition of dragonbone weapons. IMO, the addition of dragonbone weapons, supposedly more powerful than daedric, only make the heavy armor skill less appealing than before.

The arguments for and against use of light versus heavy armor were pretty clear. Since the last smithing perk, dragon smithing, allows the crafting of both a heavy variety of dragon armor (dragonplate) and a light version of dragon armor (dragonscale), regardless of which path to dragon smithing you took to get there, you could now craft both heavy and light armor.

There were pros and cons for both choices. The pros were mostly for the light armor side. You needed to spend one fewer smithing perk to get to dragon smithing going up the light armor side, and the light armor skill tree offered up many more useful perks than the heavy armor side. Light armor perks included Unhindered, Wind Walker, and Deft Movement - all useful, and even the % armor increase perks were useful in getting to the cap. So you might actually want these perks, and since there's only six of them, it was definitely worth considering. Light armor also doesn't slow you down as much, and uses less stamina when attacking and running.

By contrast, the only really useful heavy armor perks required a high skill level, and near-useless perks as prerequisites. Conditioning is the heavy armor equivalent of Unhindered, but has a level requirement of 70 (compared to 50 for Unhindered), and has prerequisites of Fists of Steel and Cushioning, both have which have practically no utility in the game. The only other perk you could consider useful is Reflect Blows, but that requires taking the entire right hand side of the tree, with the almost-useless Tower of Strength perk, and Well Fitted and Matching Set perks - both of which were likely to be superfluous given the ease of hitting the armor cap with heavy armor. The opportunity cost of spending eight perks to get the two you wanted was so high that most people wearing heavy armor left the entire skill tree untouched.

Since both heavy and light armors are more than capable of hitting the armor cap, the only argument for taking the heavy armor side was you got access to daedric weapons, which offered a significant damage increase over the best you could do on the light side, which was glass weapons. This was because prior to Dawnguard, there were no weapons to craft with the dragon smithing perk. But with the addition of dragonbone weapons, the one advantage you had by going heavy armor is gone. Now the only question is: What is the appeal of using heavy armor at all?

 

I have no sympathy. ASFAIK, there hasn't even been a release date announced for the PC version

 

Yeah, they say "about" one month later, but no official date yet. I don't know why XBox got it first, although I have to assume it's because they gave Bethseda a crapload of money.

Anyway, according to the newly updated wiki, Dragonbone weapons require anywhere from 1-4 dragon bones along with 1-2 ebony ingots and 1-3 leather strips to craft. So they are rather bone-intensive crafts. You don't need any scales. As compared to daedric, they seem to have one higher point in base damage for all weapon types (including both the bow and the arrow), with the exception of the Warhammer, which actually seems to be two points less than daedric.

Curiously, you'll be able to craft dragonbone arrows, making them the only craftable arrow I'm aware of. According the crafting chart, a dragonbone arrow has 1 dragon bone and 1 firewood listed as crafting material, and you get 24 arrows. So I suppose that's not a terrible tradeoff once you're well into the game and have excess dragon bones lying around.

One interesting point about this is that it switches the limiting factor regarding what you need from dragon slaying. Previously, getting your hands on enough scales was always the problem, and you typically walked away with excess bones. All the dragon plate armor pieces require just one bone, except the armor which required two. But all of the plate and scale pieces required 2-4 scales to make. And with the exception of plate body armor and plate shield, all pieces from both sets required an additional scale as an upgrade material. So if you were only interested in the scale version, you had no need of the bones at all.

So you needed about 3 times as many scales as you did bones. But it's the complete opposite with the weapons. Not only do they require multiple bones but no scales as crafting materials, but all the weapons require an additional bone as an upgrade material. So at the very least it balances out what you need, and possibly exceeds it (depending on the number and type of weapons you make). I'm glad I held on to my dragon bones with this character. I don't know how many I have, but it should be enough to at least be able to craft and upgrade 2 weapons. (Assuming I want a sword along with an axe/mace, I'll need 5 bones.)

 

I suppose the best new feature is the ability to stay as a final stage standard vampire without it limiting the social life of a character. Miscalculating the fast travel time so that you appear into the middle of a city, freshly transmuted to the final stage, COULD be a gameplay hassle otherwise.

Getting some actual use for all those Dragonbones is a good thing as well.

 

Crossbows are pretty beefy. Base damage on an un-upgraded steel crossbow is 39 with an archery skill around 60. Not bad at all. And while it takes a little longer to reload, it's not massively slower than a bow, assuming you do a full draw on the bow.

---------- Added 3 hours, 57 minutes and 42 seconds later... ----------

Couple other comments - both arrows and bolts are now craftable. You need firewood, and the appropriate ingot to make the arrows. So if you use an iron ingot, you get iron arrows, an ebony ingot gives you ebony arrows. Each craft gives you 24 arrows.

Now, all arrows are craftable, but some are going to be much more expensive. There's no reason now to ever use less than ebony arrows, because that's relatively cheap. But daedric arrows do require a daedra heart, which is a bit pricey for 24 arrows, and dragon bones are required for dragon arrows, which obviously, require you to kill a dragon.

As for crossbows, you can get a steel crossbow right out of the box, as soon as you join the Dawnguard, and it has been confirmed that Dwemer xbows also exist. Now crossbow bolts can be enchanted just like weapons. So you can get ice bolts, fire bolts, shock bolts, and even exploding bolts, although I haven't seen them yet. But the regular bolts do the same damage as corresponding arrows of the same type. Regarding actual use of the crossbow, you carry it loaded, so the first shot can be fired off much more quickly than an arrow. Crossbows have a 50% chance to stagger an opponent, and this stacks with the power shot perk, so if you have a xbow and the perk, you have a 100% chance to stagger an opponent.

 

They seem a bit over powered. They should be significantly slower to reload than a bow.

 

And they aren't. Although I will point out that unlike a bow, you can't aim while loading the bolt. With the bow you could line up your shot as you draw the bow string back. So in that regard, a bow may be better. However, if you are the type of character who specializes in one-shot sniping, the crossbow with its enhanced damage is clearly the superior option.

EDIT: Some early observations with NO spoilers. Upon installing Dawnguard, you are told by a town guard in the first city you go to (for me it happened to be Riften) that the Dawnguard is recruiting members, and you get "Quest Started: Dawnguard". So apparently, you don't need a character that has completed the main storyline to do Dawnguard.

The leader of the Dawnguard gives you a mission to prove yourself, at the conclusion of which you can decide to join them or the Vampires. So it's a definite either/or choice that you are presented with early on. The other obvious either/or choice that you'll have is that vampirism and lycanthropy are mutually exclusive, so you won't be able to develop both the vampire and lycanthropy bonus skill trees.

Finally, even though they look similar to all the other skill trees, in terms of being a constellation with perks to unlock, the function of these skills is COMPLETELY different than what you're used to, as the perks are given to you automatically by using the vampire or werewolf skills. So even if you have a level 81 character, you could max out either of these skill trees. Now if you don't really have any interest in playing as either a vampire or werewolf, you're probably best off not siding with the vampires, as the effects of vampirism are far more annoying than lycanthropy. AFAIK, you aren't forced into lycanthropy by joining the Dawnguard, but you clearly are forced in vampirism by siding with the vampires. And obviously, with a whole new perk tree that confers a host of new special abilities, these aren't the vampires and werewolves you're used to from Skyrim. They are much beefier versions of them.

 

I have to retract some of my previous comments on the crossbow. You can't craft them. You can make crossbow bolts as much as you please, but my character doesn't get the option to make a steel crossbow when he pulls up the steel smithing sub-menu. (I don't mean it's grayed out - there is simply no option of a crossbow present.

What this means in practical terms is that unless you are fairly early in the game, or have minimal crafting skills, you can almost always make a standard bow with a higher damage rating than you can find a crossbow. That said, crossbows can be enchanted just like all other weapons.

 

There are some parts of Dawnguard that are a bit of a bummer. For example, both the Vampire and Werewolf playstyles are not particularly practical. For example, you cannot interact with anything while you're transformed. So you can't loot enemies, you can't pick anything up, you can't open a chest, (although you can open a closed door or throw a switch).

That kind of sucks. And makes it pretty much makes it impossible to play, having to transform back whenever you want to do anything besides going all offense. And while I do think the skills and abilities offered are cool, I also think they're going to get old after a while. I see it happening that after I play for a while, I'm going to revert back to my normal form. Also you are required to go 3rd person view transformed - that's the style I usually use anyway, but for those who prefer 1st person, you're stuck with 3rd while transformed.