UESP Forums

Hi everyone, this is my first post here. I thought this would be the best place to post such a cry for help.
I recently started playing, ATM I play a mage kind of build (destuction mainly). I'm level 18 and use a few mods, nothing gameplay-changing though.
I left difficulty level at "adept" and started doing quests in no particular order. Thing is, I can't do most of them.

Example 1: Silent Tongues (UESPwiki recomended lvl: 16). I did it at lvl 8 the first time, was difficult until i encountered the archer+shout undead that stands before the axe.
I got my a** kicked soo bad. Went back at level 18, same thing, little better. But the guy.. my fireballs do NO damage to him, nothing does..jesus, impossible.

Example 2: Reavealing the Unseen. Same thing, can do most of the dungeon but when i get to the dwarven machine in the little room he simply destroys me, oneshots me.
I've even watched a video but the mob was completely different, the one from the video didn't move or shoot arrows or come at you, mine is not even a "Centurion Master", is somthing else i don't remember..how? why is that?

4W3XeW8_GeI?t=1426 is the youtube video.

So, basically, what am I doing wrong? Almost every quest I try to do comes to a point where it is undoable, really undoable. I may be a bad player but.. well, not by so much, if I get oneshotted there must be something wrong. And why the mob difference? Is not the first time that I watch videos where the game responds very differently.

Any help is much appreciated.

Welcome! Glad you're here!

Might be of help to list the Mods you're using. One of them may change mobs or mob behavior.

Also, mobs and bosses level up with you, so it should only get a little easier as you level up. Check out the Effects of Leveling on the Wiki.

welcome to the site!

Have you put a lot of time into defensive skills, do you wear armour (what is it?) and what is your health?

I have found even on normal difficulty that a medium level character will die a lot if they have no health and armour, things do 100+ damage very quickly in this game.

It sounds like you're being battered though, can you give more info on your character and the mods used?

Thank you for answering so soon. I use SkyUI, MoreHUD and PerksUI.
I wear cloth armor (almost no armor), put points in magicka and health about 1:1. I use destruction spells for the most part but tried alot of things.
For example summons, but they drain my mag very bad and leave me dry. Actually, the magicka problem is huge, I can never finish a fight with some left.
I'm beginning to think I have been rushing things though, I started College pretty much straight away and made almost no armor or enchanting of my own..
What i find strange is the disparity withing the same dungeon. I can clear the Silenced Tongues one pretty easy, but then this guy comes in and i don't even tickle him, wheras
one of his arrows shreds half of my health, if not more. Maybe i should have finished the companions quests first? Or something like that?

Yeah, the no armor thing is going to be hard, especially as you level up. I found that even with Ebonyflesh I would get taken down by one or two arrows if I wasn't wearing any armor. The best thing to do is to start wearing some light armor until you level up more.

Having a weapon and some Weakness to Magic/whatever element you're using potions would also help make a dent in baddies. Hit them with a poisoned blade/arrow and then finish them off with spells.

Just like if you were a beginning mage in real life, you'd probably want to supplement your abilities with a physical weapon and armor until you get more proficient in your skills. I mean even Yoda uses a saber sometimes.

Thank you all for the good advice!
I've started again and this time i carry an axe and wear light armor (I'm trying to enchant them myself) instead of the 0 armor mage robes.
The difference is simply huge, at least for the time being I'll be no "pure" mage, but it rocks. Also I'm leveling smithing and enchanting whenever I can and started using Oakflesh, summons and sometimes some sneaky attacks. Thanks again.

Oh, I forgot. Would you do the Companions quests as an axe-wielding (for the moment at least) mage? The quests seem to fit my level but it seems a little.. well, odd.. being a somewhat-mage working with all those mage-haters..

Glad that you're enjoying yourself now!

The great thing about TES games is that you can do whatever you want. Maybe your character has a backstory that gives him some predisposition to want to join the Companions (looked up to them as a child or something), or maybe his/her reason is to show the Companions that not all mages are the same. Or it could go the other way, and they would have nothing to do with the Companions. It's up to you and how you see your character. Also don't feel the need to complete everything with one character. You can always go back and finish things as someone else.

Again, sorry for the off-topic questions but.. I read the effects of leveling apge and I wonder: does leveling a skill improve it in some way or is it just for unlocking the perks?

Yes Musicman, this is what I find so great about this game, total freedom. Just love it.

dermainz wrote: does leveling a skill improve it in some way or is it just for unlocking the perks?

afaik all of the Skills Values affect gameplay in some way, regardless of which perks you do or don't pick up. So the higher you get them the better.

iirc 100 in a combat skill will give you about +50% damage with that type of weapon, as an example. Any perks you pick up will just make that even higher.

If you read through the Skills pages on the UESP wiki they will probably explain it more exactly.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Skills

Hi again guys, sorry to bother you again with the very same problem.

So I did make a new charachter, he's level 20, wears elven armor (superior), has good 1h skill and uses some magic (destruction/conjuration for the most).
Lydia is with him a almost all the time and wears dwarven armor and shield. This time I did things much better with much better results, up till now I've been able to clear anything with no problem at all and was very satisfied.

Then came the dwemer ruin.. I shred everything in my path, 1 hour into the dungeon I come to the room where I should find the sword lost by the girl in riften and.. Bam! No way at all, construct shreds me to pieces.. when I try to hit him nothing I do has any effect whatsoever, no damage. Lydia restist stoicly but dies eventually.

Same thing in this Meridia Beacon dungeon, I do everything smoothly but then come to the room with the wizard and again.. no way. One of his ice storms gets me I die. Again I wonder how Lydia manages to stay alive for the time, but she dies eventually. Again, nothing I do even bothers him, no atronach, no magic, no power attack. I have 200+ health, I wear armor and I'm a breton, plus I tried with some mag resist + frost resist potions.. nothing. Staying behind the colums doesn't help, as I do no damage while he oneshots me.

I don't understand.. how can it be I'm able to stay more than 1 hour in a place that seems even easy only to find out in the end there's one NPC I don't even tickle. What am I supposed to do? Go out and retry later after I invested more than 1 hour in this? I mean that's frustrating to say the least, being that it happens alot. Why isn't it I just enter the dungeon and see I'm not ready in the first say 5 minutes? IDK.. I love this game, but I can't spend an evening in a dungeon and then just throw it all away at the very last moment..

How do you guys cope with this? Your advice was very good and for a time all went well.. I thougt maybe I'm a crappy player but.. when you get oneshotted I don't know that even the best of players can do better.
Again, sorry for the long post, appreciate any help.

Hey

It's difficult to give precise advice really. At Level 20 I expect my characters to be doing about 50-75 damage on each normal hit. So if your sword is much lower than that then maybe a bit of Smithing and/or a few pieces of Fortify 1H apparel might be in order.

I also get the impression you're using Conjuration to try to do the fighting for you. imo the real power in Summons is distracting the enemy so you can run in and whack them without being hit back - you might also find that the Familiar is actually better than the Atronachs against some enemies.

Malkoran (the Meridia Beacon Dungeon guy) is a tough Boss. I'm guessing Lydia survives for a while because she is a Nord with 50% Frost Resistance. Personally I would recommend using Paralysis poison against him - if you sneak down the steps you can even take a pop at him with a bow before he does anything. Much easier to kill if he's just lying on the ground.

dermainz wrote: when you get oneshotted I don't know that even the best of players can do better.

tbh if there is a danger of being oneshotted then the best of players (whatever that really means) will avoid being shot in the first place by using a high mobility/ranged attacks style, using summons/allies to distract the enemy then attack them from behind, sneak attacks, paralysis or even just by running away.
Running away from a tough Boss is all part of your character's story sometimes.
That's my excuse anyway.

Once again I get good advice in a nice way. And for that, being that my post was somewhat "whiney", I'm grateful.
I rarely use summons to do the work for me, sometimes they just do because enemies go down before I can actually do something.
How can I see the damage of my hits? Because I guess you don't mean the damage written in the weapon "specs".. in that case it'd be 27 or so.
I tried the "high mobility" way, but as I don't do any damage (or so little you don't even see the red bar changing) I'd have to dodge spells for who knows how long, and one of these is area effect. Anyway, I'm gonna try again and let you know.

My suggestion for killing Malkoran (the Meridia's Beacon quest boss)? Well since you're a Breton, I say go get the Atronach stone (It's in the swamp south of Windhelm), go back to the dungeon, use your Dragonskin power, and tank him as fast as possible. 30 seconds of 100% spell absorption (50% from the Atronach stone; 50% from Dragonskin racial power) is a pretty big advantage versus powerful mages.

Sun Tzu wrote:The general who wins the battle makes many calculations in his temple before the battle is fought. The general who loses makes but few calculations beforehand.

Okay. So you might not be keeping up with the 'Arms Race' in the game. As you level up enemies get stronger so you need to make sure your ass-kicking power increases in line with these new enemies.

dermainz wrote:I guess you don't mean the damage written in the weapon "specs".. in that case it'd be 27 or so.

Well this is it - I do mean what's written in the weapon specs.

I found the notes for one of my characters from last year. Bear in mind this is a build strongly focussed on just Archery Damage so don't expect a dual 1H & Magic character to get these same numbers. This is just to give you an idea of how other people build their characters.

Level 20 Nord 'Ranger'

Skills should be listed as they appear in the Skills screen left to right.
Combat: 62 - 15 - 20 - 25 - 24 - 43
Stealth: 21 - 68 - 24 - 15 - 31 - 17
Magic: 16 - 16 - 15 - 15 - 28 - 40

Exquisite Vampire Armour. Total AR 61
Flawless Dwarven Bow & Dwarven Arrows = 76 Damage (228 on a Sneak Attack)
4 Pieces of Fortify Archery +18/+18/+20/+20
2 Pieces of Fortify Smithing +11/+11 in storage.

Health 260 / Stamina 130

Perks - Stealth 1, Back Stab, Deadly Aim, Haggling 1,
Overdraw 1,2 & 3, Enchanter 1,2 & 3,
Eagle Eye, Critical Shot, Steel Smithing, Dwarven Smithing

^
So the Archery skill, 3 Overdraw perks, 4 Fortify enchantments and some Smithing all combine to add up to pack a hefty ranged punch. Add in a few potions of Fortify Health/Archery/Armour, Resist Fire/Frost/Shock, some Paralysis poisons and a few Invisibilitys in case you need to run away and you have a fairly potent character.

I think the key is to have a plan on how your character is going to do damage to enemies then pick perks and make potions/enchantments to match that plan.

You might just need to spend some time clearing dungeons but leaving the bosses while you re-balance your character a bit. Skyrim characters get very powerful as soon as you start combining Alchemy-Smithing-Enchanting so there's no need to restart. Maybe just pick on the bosses you can Paralyse and leave the Robots until you are doing 500+ damage with every hit.

Or you may tweak your difficulty slider, if the boss fights are too hard for you. Noone's keeping you from doing that.

By adjusting difficulty the game would loose a big part of its appeal, I have done that on one occasion though.
Maybe I overdid defense, I have something like 132 armor in light armor. Anyway, I think I got it, the "Arms Race" factor is my problem.
The thing with enchants is that I use the 1h but also destruction and conjuring and have yet to find any enchants that boosts them. I found some that decrase the magicka needed but none that boost damage.
By the way.. I tried to shoot a few arrows and found out that even with (very) low skill, no perk and no enhancements of any kind, the damage almost equals my lightning bolt!!
And you can sneak attack.. I think I'll make an archer/thief sometime in the future