Summary
- Spellbreaker is a powerful shield in Skyrim that can block spells and provide spell Ward, but it turns out there are other wards to deflect spells too.
- Players have discovered an unorthodox method of blocking enemy projectiles by dragging objects in front of them.
- While Skyrim's combat system may be considered outdated, the game's modding scene has advanced it and Bethesda may draw inspiration from popular mods for future games.
While Ward spells from the Restoration school in The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim are 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, Skyrim has plenty of unique weapons and armor scattered throughout the Nord province, and many of them can be obtained by completing Daedric Shrine quests. It's an Elder Scrolls tradition that carried over from Oblivion, and many of the Daedric artifacts were adapted verbatim in Skyrim.
An example is the Spellbreaker heavy shield, the artifact of Peryite. Not only was its model painstakingly recreated for Skyrim, but it also boasts a similar magic effect when wielded. The Oblivion version gave players a passive 30% value to Spell Reflect, while the Skyrim counterpart 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 in Skyrim slows 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 official Skyrim subreddit, 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, as Skyrim players 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While the game's combat system still allows for varied builds, many players consider it outdated compared to the action RPGs that have come out since Skyrim. With Bethesda releasing Fallout 4, Fallout 76, and Starfield over 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 of combat overhaul mods for Skyrim, and the advancements made by the game's modding scene have truly begun to push the boundaries of Skyrim's original vision.
However, many players have professed there is a certain kind of charm in the "janky" nature of Bethesda combat, and while Starfield arguably has the best gunplay in a Bethesda title yet, the charm still persists even in the Settled Systems. While it can be assumed that the next Elder Scrolls game will have a similar combat system to Skyrim, it wouldn't be out of reason to expect Bethesda to take inspiration from some of its most popular mods.
The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.