The force shout helped me a lot, and the fact that he had someone else to target.
If you have skill in conjuration, that really helps. A Flame Atronach vs. a fire breathing dragon will have its damage reduced by 25% but will completely immune to the dragon's attack. Versus a frost breather, it will do more damage but also suffer more from the breath weapon. However, in either case it will likely draw some of the dragon's fire away from you. I haven't gotten my conjuration high enough to summon better stuff, but the frost atronach would work similarly, and the storm atronach would have no bonuses other than being really tough. A familiar wouldn't be able to do much to a dragon but might divert its attention. Same thing with a zombie.
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Much of MADNESS, and more of SIN, and HORROR the soul of the plot.
I remember finding them around some shack with a witch. I think the name was witchmist glade or something. It's just south of a dragon peak northwest of Riften. I've seen some south of Solitude as well. Also, while I didn't see a hive, there was a bee on the bridge at Riverton (the town you reach after the tutorial) I know this because one of the NPCs bumped into it and had to walk around it. I on the other hand, caught and ate the bee.
I just started a new character, warrior with stealth.
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Much of MADNESS, and more of SIN, and HORROR the soul of the plot.
Oh, confirmed sighting of two beehives near Ivarstead. Head down the southern road. There will be a cave showing up on your compass to the right (east). Both games I've found a bear outside and two inside the (one large chamber) cave. One hive is on a tree just outside, the other is hanging from the ceiling of the cave entrance. Presumably the honey is what drew the bears in.
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Much of MADNESS, and more of SIN, and HORROR the soul of the plot.
I've read that armor doesn't protect against magic but my experience leads me to doubt that. My character is a Nord, so she's frost resistant and she has a flame retardant shield, but the only things that really seem to hurt me are massive hand to hand attacks with weapons or claws. Even a dragon biting me and breathing didn't do that much damage. I cut the thing down in pretty short order.
I'm starting to think that fighters are still the easiest class to play.
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Much of MADNESS, and more of SIN, and HORROR the soul of the plot.
I think you are right about that. I would love to be able to use the robes that increase my magika recovery and reduce the cost of my destruction spells, but if I wear those in combat I take so much damage without real armor.
I had that problem with my mage as well which led me to using light armor. However, something I found it after starting this character, was that there is an alteration perk called 'mage armor' that doubles (or more depending on the level of perk you have) the defensive bonus of the various shield spells (oakskin etc...) if one isn't wearing any real armor. In that case, those spells will provide better defense than any light armor, although for only 60 seconds. There is another perk that makes alteration spells last longer.
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Much of MADNESS, and more of SIN, and HORROR the soul of the plot.
Since this thread seems to be turning into my blog...
Fighters are definitely more powerful than mages, it would seem. I just beat Krosis, the dragon priest my mage had to jump off of a mountain to get away from. It took some potions (healing and stamina) as well as my flame retardant shield, but I was actually inflicting damage with my (ebony) sword. Two things to consider here. One, unlike Oblivion, melee attacks don't cost stamina unless they're power attacks. The other thing is that destruction spell damage doesn't scale. The firebolt never gets stronger. There are more powerful spells but the magicka cost is also much greater. So my sword, which does more damage, costs me nothing to swing. The spells cost magicka to cast and never get more powerful based on the skill level, unlike melee attacks which do. If I was still wielding the same weapons as at low level, they would be more powerful.
Now, it's true that a higher skill level in destruction does reduce the cost of the spells, but since the damage doesn't increase, neither does the ability to hurt more powerful opponents. That is the clincher. The mage could cast a lot of spells that barely scratched the dragon priest rather than having super powerful spells that punched through its defenses. For a lot of opponents, this doesn't matter. They aren't that well protected. But for boss fights it really matters, especially since the fighter can keep swinging when their stamina is depleted, unlike the mage who can't do spit without magicka.
I do think my mage also suffered from another problem. Skyrim eliminated two parts of Oblivion's leveling problem, everything in the world leveling up with you and the likelihood of gaining a level thus causing you to get weaker than enemies due to poor stat increases. It did not however eliminate the problem that raising non-combat skills could cause you to go in level and make your combat enemies more powerful. You could be a really good thief and yet get massacred by common bandits if those thieving skills were major ones. In Oblivion, you could avoid going up in level several ways, the best was to set major skills in things you didn't use much. That isn't possible in Skyrim. Any raise contributes to a level up, though not equally, according to the wiki. But what probably happened with my mage was that all those skill raises from trying out alchemy and enchanting as well as using one-handed weapons and light armor caused her to level up faster than her destruction and conjuration skills so the enemies, especially the bosses, got to be too hard to fight. Jack of all trades was great in Oblivion but not so good in Skyrim.
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Much of MADNESS, and more of SIN, and HORROR the soul of the plot.
There is a headless horseman in Skyrim! I saw it while heading up to Meridia's shrine and chased it down the roads. I think it's just an easter egg though. It finally ended up at a burial site west of Whiterun. Guards and non-hostile NPCs wouldn't interact with it at all but bandits and hostile animals would attack it, or try to as it was too fast.
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Much of MADNESS, and more of SIN, and HORROR the soul of the plot.
I've messed with smithing a bit but decided to abandon it for this character, trying to keep down the number of skills I'm using and avoid the problem my mage had.
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Much of MADNESS, and more of SIN, and HORROR the soul of the plot.
Just for the record, those flying dragon mages have much stronger then normal magic resistance. But I agree that mages are weaker then fighters or thieves. I myself started out blasting things with magic, then switched to sword when it just got too hard to kill things.
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We all carry within us our places of exile, our crimes and our ravages. But our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to fight them in ourselves and in others. ~Albert Camus
Re: I almost wet myself.
"Just what I always wanted to eat. I will name it newbie, and I will hug it and pet it and squeeze it."
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