How to kill dragons as melee in Skyrim?

[Dagger311]

These things are tearing me up. Th only ones I've killed were the one at Kynesgrove, a named one that Lydia tanked for me, and the one on the way to Sky Haven Temple. I play an Orc with heavy armor, a sword, and a shield. It would be non-profitable to just buy potions, they just get burned through. I tried the stuff I did when my allies were around, but the damage output wasn't enough to kill them quickly.

I'm tired of having to ride to the nearest cave to wait them out. Can anyone show me a good method to take them down?

 

[Techy]

Are you playing on console or PC?

 

[Famine]

Two things. Any armour enchantment that deflects their breath attacks (Resist Fire for flaming dragons, Resist Frost for ice breath dragons) and the opposite enchantment on your weapon (Damage Fire for ice breath dragons, Damage Frost for flaming dragons - Shock effects will do damage to any dragon, so if you can dual enchant, do so). Don't forget to use your shouts the same way - Fire for ice breath dragons, Frost for flaming dragons.

Stack effects on your armour (for Resist Fire/Frost it's necklaces, rings, boots and shields) and you can completely negate their breath attacks.

Good tactics include:
Fight them around high level NPC/monsters - Dragons will prioritise high risk targets like giants, mammoths, bears over puny humans and they deal a lot of damage to the dragons during combat.
Sneak.
Archery - an enchanted bow (opposite enchantment again) will do a lot of damage from a safe range and bring them to ground quickly.
Obstacles - when the dragon hovers to do a breath attack, just put something between you and it.

 

[Dagger311]

Are you playing on console or PC?

Console.

Two things. Any armour enchantment that deflects their breath attacks (Resist Fire for flaming dragons, Resist Frost for ice breath dragons) and the opposite enchantment on your weapon (Damage Fire for ice breath dragons, Damage Frost for flaming dragons - Shock effects will do damage to any dragon, so if you can dual enchant, do so). Don't forget to use your shouts the same way - Fire for ice breath dragons, Frost for flaming dragons.

Stack effects on your armour (for Resist Fire/Frost it's necklaces, rings, boots and shields) and you can completely negate their breath attacks.

Good tactics include:
Fight them around high level NPC/monsters - Dragons will prioritise high risk targets like giants, mammoths, bears over puny humans and they deal a lot of damage to the dragons during combat.
Sneak.
Archery - an enchanted bow (opposite enchantment again) will do a lot of damage from a safe range and bring them to ground quickly.
Obstacles - when the dragon hovers to do a breath attack, just put something between you and it.

Thanks, I've been working on the enchantment skill, I plan to get to put two enchantments on, and build up high element resists and stamina regen. Here's the step-by-step method I used when I had Lydia (Who lost her life walking off a ledge in a dwemer ruin .

Let Lydia draw aggro by attacking first and getting a bit of damage on there.
Dwarven bow/steel arrows until low health.
Unrelenting force to interrupt the breath attacks.
When the dragon is almost dead, berserk (I'm an orc) and go to town with my sword.

Works well, but only with a second person.

Also looking into alchemy to get cheap but potent healing potions.

 

[Bigbazz]

What difficulty are you playing on? I've never used enchanting myself personally, just blacksmithing and I've not really had an issue with dragons. Ocassionally I've been in the situation where the dragons hit me so hard that I get blown 200ft in the sky, but most of the time I hide until they land and then run around them in circles to avoid being hit, avoiding the front of them at all times (as they try to eat you).

 

[Famine]

They can also whip you with their tails. That kinda smarts - though not so much as being whumped with a giant's club.

A companion is actually a good idea, but don't bother with Housecarls like Lydia - use essential characters. If you've got Dawnguard installed, always use Serana because not only is she essential and thus unkillable, her attacks are a bit fierce. If not, Mjoll the Lioness (Riften) is essential and can be used as a follower after the relatively easy quest of recovering Grimsever - and there's a few other essential NPCs who can be recruited as temporary followers for the duration of a quest line.

If you don't have Dragonborn installed, dragons stop levelling up at level 50 and can become A Bit Easy. I stopped playing at Lv66 on my first playthrough because with a full set of dual-enchanted Dragonbone armour and some dual-enchanted Daedric weaponry, I was taking no damage from shouts, very little damage from bites and could, in some instances, take out a dragon in two hits. With Dragonborn and Dawnguard installed you get much tougher dragons, up to level 75.

 

[starknight97]

I find dragons to be one of the easiest enemies to kill. I recommend to try to stay to the side of the dragon and use your shield bash to interrupt fire breath and remember to block bites.

 

[Tired Tyres]

Level up smithing, get your amour to legendary, give it Fire and Frost protection.

Find flat ground to make sure the dragon lands, run up to it and hit it with you sword a lot. Block when it tries to bite you. Easy.

 

[Dagger311]

I play on adept, and was actually about to do the grimsever thing in hopes that I get to keep it .

 

[PepeMickey]

Low level (1-30) use a bow and stay behind cover. High level (50-100+) do whatever you want really.

 

[Dagger311]

Low level (1-30) use a bow and stay behind cover. High level (50-100+) do whatever you want really.

100+? I capped my mage at 81...

 

[Tired Tyres]

One of the DLC/update packs removed the level cap. Legendary difficulty was added and the ability to reset skills and get you perk points back.

 

[Dagger311]

One of the DLC/update packs removed the level cap. Legendary difficulty was added and the ability to reset skills and get you perk points back.

Wait, so I could be a master of everything? All perks unlocked and maxed? I need to get my hands on an ogmah infinium again (Not on this file, I'll make a new one).

 

[Famine]

No.

Due to the scaling requirements it's effectively impossible to do that - though mathematically it's doable.

To go from level 1 to level 2 you need 100XP (gained, as I'm sure you know, from Skill levelling). From level 2 to 3 you need 125XP. From level 49 to 50 you need 1,300XP...

To unlock every perk you need 251 perk points - equivalent to reaching level 252. In total you'd need 809,475XP. This is roughly equivalent to maxing out every Skill nine times over - though you could do it by maxing out the easier skills over and over again.


If you don't mind cheating, use the alchemy/enchant/fortify restoration stack to create incredibly expensive potions that will top out your Speech skill from 15-100 each time you sell one.

 

[Dagger311]

No.

Due to the scaling requirements it's effectively impossible to do that - though mathematically it's doable.

To go from level 1 to level 2 you need 100XP (gained, as I'm sure you know, from Skill levelling). From level 2 to 3 you need 125XP. From level 49 to 50 you need 1,300XP...

To unlock every perk you need 251 perk points - equivalent to reaching level 252. In total you'd need 809,475XP. This is roughly equivalent to maxing out every Skill nine times over - though you could do it by maxing out the easier skills over and over again.

If you don't mind cheating, use the alchemy/enchant/fortify restoration stack to create incredibly expensive potions that will top out your Speech skill from 15-100 each time you sell one.

The ogmah infinium glitch would do it given enough time, but I wouldn' t do that anyway, what's the fun in that? I'd rather play different characters, and make each one of them masters in their own fields. Here's the skills my orc uses:

Heavy armor.
Block.
One-handed.
Archery.
Enchanting.
Smithing.
Alchemy.
And speech when needed (No perk points in it yet).

I'm going to get on a calculator and see if I can get maximum on all the ones I'd use in those trees in a feasible amount of time.

 

[PepeMickey]

I'm level 94 and to level up is painfully slow now, still haven't done any of the DLCs though, it should be fun although even Legendary difficulty is pretty standard for my character, only elder and legendary dragons are challenging but I can kill them in 30 seconds if I really want to.

I'm interested in the Ebony Warrior, it should be the only thing that can actually make me lower down the difficulty a bit.

 

[Dagger311]

I read about him, sounds like a pain in the ass to me.

I plan to go up to legendary difficulty when my character is meaner, but for now it's still a little rough.

But anyway, yesterday I got the girl in Riften as a follower, gave her a skyforge steel battleaxe and steel plate armor. I'm about to go dragon hunting.

Oh, and taking some sacrifices in speech, I can have everything I want at 81.

 

[PepeMickey]

Another glitch or exploit I enjoy a lot is having multiple followers (at least 3 + atronachs and animals), I gave legendary armors and
weapons to all of then and my little army was pretty overpowered. Legendary difficulty became a joke so since it was game-breaking I went back on solo.

 

[Dagger311]

Another glitch or exploit I enjoy a lot is having multiple followers (at least 3 + atronachs and animals), I gave legendary armors and
weapons to all of then and my little army was pretty overpowered. Legendary difficulty became a joke so since it was game-breaking I went back on solo.

Yeah, that seems like a gamebreaker .

 

[PepeMickey]

The Legendary patch also included a lot of bug fixes and glitches are pretty much gone.