Summary
While Ward spells from the Restoration school inThe Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrimare an effective way to block spell projectiles, one player discovered that there’s also an alternate means of protection using one of the game’s most iconic shields. Even without any mods,Skyrimhas plenty of unique weaponsand armor scattered throughout the Nord province, and many of them can be obtained by completing Daedric Shrine quests. It’s anElder Scrollstradition that carried over fromOblivion, and many of the Daedric artifacts were adapted verbatim inSkyrim.
An example is theSpellbreaker heavy shield, the artifact of Peryite. Not only was its model painstakingly recreated forSkyrim, but it also boasts a similar magic effect when wielded. TheOblivionversion gave players a passive 30% value to Spell Reflect, while theSkyrimcounterpart gives them a spell Ward of up to 50 points when blocking. Using Spellbreaker is a decent way to ignore enemy spellcasters, but blocking with a shield inSkyrimslows down character movement, and if players want to close the gap faster, there is an unorthodox method of doing so.
Shared by JonathanTheMighty on the officialSkyrimsubreddit, the method is quite simple: dragging an object in front of the player character, and using it to block enemy projectiles forces the game’s collision system to react with the object instead. In effect, this blocks all the damage, at no cost to player movement. Ironically, the star of the video seems to be Spellbreaker, as the tower shield of Peryite is large enough to provide decent cover. That being said, any random object should suffice, asSkyrimplayers have reported using enemy corpses as meat shields to block incoming arrows.
While the game’s combat system still allows for varied builds, many players consider it outdated compared to the action RPGs that have come out sinceSkyrim. With Bethesda releasingFallout 4,Fallout 76, andStarfieldover the course of a decade, it may be a while until players see the developers take another stab at swords-and-sorcery combat. Thankfully, there is no shortage ofcombat overhaul mods forSkyrim, and the advancements made by the game’s modding scene have truly begun to push the boundaries ofSkyrim’s original vision.
However, many players have professed there is a certain kind of charm in the “janky” nature of Bethesda combat, and whileStarfieldarguably has the best gunplay in a Bethesda title yet, the charm still persists even in the Settled Systems. While it can be assumed that thenextElder Scrollsgamewill have a similar combat system toSkyrim, it wouldn’t be out of reason to expect Bethesda to take inspiration from some of its most popular mods.
The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrimis available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
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