Your toughest Skyrim battle

[Rossmallo]

Im not entirely sure of my toughest one, but I do know of my initially scariest then most awesome.

I headed out of Whiterun, and headed in one direction. I found a deer, got out my bow, went into sneak mode, and aimed.

It suddenly showed me as being detected.

?Wait. What am I being detected b- OH, FUCK.? Were my exact words, as a dragon suddenly zoomed in and flamed me in the face. Needless to say, this pissed me off pretty damn hard, so I volleyed a few shots off after him, but none of the shots even came close. But that?s when shit started to get crazy. The dragon flew off, and landed in the worst possible place. Right in the middle of a Giant camp. Two Giants and three Mammoths pretty much tore it to shreds in a matter of seconds.

It took me a few moments to realise what had happened, then sprinted in and grabbed everything I could off the dragon and took it?s soul. However, two of the mammoths and one giant were good and pissed, and started chasing me. Legged it for ages, but one of the mammoths pursued me for two minutes straight (though, me kiting it with arrows probably didnt help). It then veered off and attacked a settlement of bandits, which gave me enough time to kill the mammoth and finish off one of the survivors, letting the other one run off crying like a *****.

This was all because I wanted to get one piece of leather for upgrading my Thieves Guild shoes.

EDIT:

I literally just this second remembered one that was DEFINATELY defined as tough. I swear to god this must have been a rampant glitch, because I have no idea how the hell else it could have happened.

I was in a Forsworn camp, trying to break that guy out for Molag Bal's quest. Killed everything in there relatively easily, then went outside.

Now, imagine if you will, someone had, right in front of you, turned the difficulty up without you noticing. That's what happened as far as enemy toughness was concerned, but my actual difficulty didnt change.

I sneaked up on one of those Briarheart gits, and backstabbed him. This would usually either oneshot them or take out 2/3 of thier hp. Not this time. It took out a tenth of his hp if that. He then immediately turned around and one of those cutscene deaths happened. He did one of those cross-sword chops which got stuck on me, and after a horrible noise and a massive wrenching motion, MY HEAD WENT SPIRALLING ACROSS THE LANDSCAPE. Id never seen this before, so i was MAJORLY freaked out.

From there on, every attempt at sneaking out from either direction would result in me getting killed instantly by the briarheart, or blown away by random mages. If I didn't have the Shadowcloak of Nocturnal, I think I might still be stuck there.

And no, the difficulty went back down to normal after this, so it wasnt permanent.

 

[DanielBrown]

One of the Dragon Priests. I believe it was Voldrun.
I play at a fairly low difficulty setting, but that boss still required me to chug health potions like mad. Constantly draining my mana and health by a rapid paste while still having high defenses...
Got the bastard eventually!

 

[Kiardras]

Draugur overlord type thing. Sneak up to him, but he has preternatural awareness and kills me in 2 hits.

Ok, sneaky bowshot. Nope, killed.

3rd times the charm. Sneak up the steps. Lodge an arrow in his eyesocket, doing sod all damage....

He shouts at me, causing me to drop my bow. I run away, pulling out double fists of fire, and start burning him up.


The next 15 minutes were spent running in circles in this room waiting for my magicka to recharge, whilst flaming him to death. Whenever he got close, I shouted at him and ran away again.

Ended up with about 15 health left, one hit away from death when he finally died, and dropped no good loot. Bastard.

 

[King of the Sandbox]

Im not entirely sure of my toughest one, but I do know of my initially scariest then most awesome.

I headed out of Whiterun, and headed in one direction. I found a deer, got out my bow, went into sneak mode, and aimed.

It suddenly showed me as being detected.

?Wait. What am I being detected b- OH, FUCK.? Were my exact words, as a dragon suddenly zoomed in and flamed me in the face. Needless to say, this pissed me off pretty damn hard, so I volleyed a few shots off after him, but none of the shots even came close. But that?s when shit started to get crazy. The dragon flew off, and landed in the worst possible place. Right in the middle of a Giant camp. Two Giants and three Mammoths pretty much tore it to shreds in a matter of seconds.

It took me a few moments to realise what had happened, then sprinted in and grabbed everything I could off the dragon and took it?s soul. However, two of the mammoths and one giant were good and pissed, and started chasing me. Legged it for ages, but one of the mammoths pursued me for two minutes straight (though, me kiting it with arrows probably didnt help). It then veered off and attacked a settlement of bandits, which gave me enough time to kill the mammoth and finish off one of the survivors, letting the other one run off crying like a *****.

This was all because I wanted to get one piece of leather for upgrading my Thieves Guild shoes.

Awesome! And on the upside, you now have mammoth moccasins! I never get tired of stories like these. ^_^

 

[Ickorus]

Probably the one against two dragons (One blood, one Elder), a stormcloak camp, a couple of sabre-tooth tigers and two giants.

On master difficulty.

 

[neon flame]

The most difficult normal fight I had was the ghostly boss at the end of one of the tombs that had a word of power in it (I was given the quest by a courier after I used a shout in Whiterun).

I must have been underleveled and poorly equipped, because the ice breath shout that he starts the fight with instantly sent Lydia into her kneeling animation. He then proceeded to carve up my health in seconds with his dual axes. I couldn't run back down the corridor I came from to kite him, and running into his chamber caused a draugr mage to spawn, who then summoned a frost atronach and slowed me down with ice spells, allowing the boss to catch and kill me. I reloaded several times, and even going in knowing what would happen (courage spell on Lydia, all my best buff spells active), he still killed me.

I want to say there was some epic solution to this, but in the end I just turned the difficulty down, kited him into the corridor and chugged every last one of my health potions. I was so happy I had beaten him that I forgot about the mage in the next room, and went in without healing. I had to do the fight all over again

The actual most difficult battle I've had was self-imposed:

Spoiler

I had just become a werewolf with the companions, and decided that, since my character woke up without equipment, I would only use equipment I found during the quest to kill the Silver Hand. This worked fine right up until the boss, who ignored my armour and instantly triggered a death animation on me. Since his weapon was silver, transforming just made me die faster.

I didn't have an amazing solution to that either. Just gave up on role playing and re-equipped my smithed and enchanted armour.

 

[King of the Sandbox]

I tried to kill Astrid when she's first introduced, but failed, I reloaded to earn the disarm shout and try again later =P

 

[Rossmallo]

Awesome! And on the upside, you now have mammoth moccasins! I never get tired of stories like these. ^_^

Just added a way worse one. Take a look.

 

[brunothepig]

It's hard to say. Probably one of the ancient heroes that you find hanging out with the draugr. Some of those guys are massively powerful, even now a few can one-shot me with their bow, and I have full dragon-scale. At level 40 something. Although Krosis was also a massive pain in the ass, and my first fight with an Elder Dragon damn near raped me.

 

[King of the Sandbox]

Awesome! And on the upside, you now have mammoth moccasins! I never get tired of stories like these. ^_^

Just added a way worse one. Take a look.

Oh, dear. That does sound tough! And the thing that happened after you finally beat him... that happens to me a lot. I wish I could tell the game to save for me every 5 minutes, because I forget waaaay too often.

-snip-
I think I have something like 12 unused dragon souls I couldnt even use if I wanted to sitting around on my main character right now. Cant help but feel Bethesda should turn down the frequency of these encounters a little. Dont get me wrong, I love the dragon fights, but having them thrown at you every time you turn a corner lowers the level of enjoyment I get out of them considerably.

I agree, to a point. But I honestly haven't fought very many. It's not like I see one every day. I may go perhaps an in game week without seeing one, which is fine for me. Then again, even if they did pop up more, I'd be fine with it. Fighting them is one of my favorite things to do. Each battle is it's own adventure involving landscape, tactics, minions, random others, etc. ^_^

And I still haven't seen one carry anything/anyone up into the air and drop it yet, and I'm kinda dissapoint.

 

[CowboyfromHell666]

I think I was in Volenruud, or some Nordic ruin, and the final boss was this spectral dual wielding dickwad who also had a Draugr Scourge backing him up. Lydia was utterly useless and kept dying, and the Scourge would always summon a Frost Atronach that would whoop my ass. I forgot what level I was, but I think I was sub 20 at that time, or low 20s. And I couldn't kill them without turning the difficulty down. It was impossible for me. I didn't have enough health potions or elixirs to aid me, at the time I was utter shit with Destruction, and my Dwarven Mace was useful since it had a fire enchant, but I was getting practically two shotted.

I have also had some tough fights with mages, but nothing some good ol' skull bashing and resistance potions couldn't solve.

EDIT: I just remembered a real tough fight I had that didn't require me to be a puss and change difficulties. It was against a Draugr Deathlord, and the room we duked it out in had a magical pillar that liked to shoot frost at me. I found out the hard way about that, and that the Deathlord was a powerful ****. I then found out that the doorway I was in must have had something he detested, because it wouldn't follow me through. So I used that to my advantage to heal up, which was followed by me hitting it once, losing half my health, and then repeating. Eventually it maned up and was able to kill me through the doorway. MY last ditch effort was simple; next attempt, shield and mace in hand, I sprinted to the other side where there was an elevated area, and cornered it so Lydia could be useful and the pillar couldn't get to me. Whenever I needed to, I'd heal and I believe I used some offensive spells. Somehow I got real good at blocking and was able to deflect his power attacks. Eventually, he died. And i was happy.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

So I had this character, not really a stealth build but with the help of a little illusion he tries to sneak up on dudes and stab them for a cheap hit before the real fight starts. Also he steals stuff a lot.

So I was doing the thieves guild mission, the early one where you go to a honey farm and burn some hives and empty a safe. So I emptied the safe and came back out of the house undetected, standing around the door were hired thugs waiting for me. Those are the guys who are hired by the town guard to hunt you down if you get caught commiting a crime.

Anyway, these guys attack me and now my cover is blown sky high, on this mission the little island your on is filled with mercenaries your supposed to sneak past, but well the hired thugs got their attention and everyone decided to attack me. But then they decided to attack each other.

Then the dragon showed up! Did I mention that I was attempting to play the game on master difficulty at the time?

Man I died so many times. But I won in the end, and the dragon was kind enough to kill some of the thugs for me so I could loot their magic weapons. Im just glad I had heavy armour and wasnt a real stealth build. I ended up killing a fair few of the mercenaries and the hired thugs were all killed by the dragon, and I abandoned the island and went for the beach(dragon nearly killed me on the swim over, water doesnt protect you from dragonfire). I ended up finding some guards who were willing to help me in a farm. Then the dragon attacked a bear and it tanked the dragon for us. First time I killed the dragon the bear one shotted me afterwards so I had to go through the whole process again.

I dont think I have ever laughed out loud at a game before. That shit was like lock stock and two smoking barrels where every bad guy arrives at the same place and kills each other in the ending.

I ended up turning the game down to expert though after that fiasco, and I really enjoy it now. Master is just too punishing. Worse than dark souls!

 

[The Lugz]

i broke the game way, wayyyyy too quickly for it to be a real challenge unfortunately i encountered a giant and went 'oh holy hellballs' and just ran random dungeons and collected ore to get my smithing enchanting and combat maxed

so, now im running around dual-wielding 'netherblade and bitchslap' as i call them, offering 200 damage each plus twin 35 damage enchants and nothing can even hit be before it gets my triple power attack of doom

(200x3)+35x6 ( plus whatever the fire enchant gives )
i make that 810 plus power attack damage which is rather sick!

i'm honestly thinking of vendoring my gear and weapons or making a new char because i want some difficulty and i know there's a ton of content i've still not finished

 

[Pimppeter2]

Early on I ran into a Frost Troll on my way to High Hrothgar. I could not kill the ************. So I lead him all the way down the 7,000 steps of the mountain and into the city where the NPCs turned hostile and killed him. But not before he took one of them with him.

 

[Batou667]

Your toughest Skyrim battle

My daily battle through all the ruddy Skyrim threads on Page 1!

Mods, any chance of a Skyrim subforum, until this blows over?

 

[busterkeatonrules]

I decided to do something nice for Ulfric Stormcloak, since he'd given me a nice new suit of Stormcloak armor and a number of missions where I got to carve up legions of the hated Imperials. So I asked his assistant if there was any work that the community needed done - and he gave me the task of exterminating a giant.

By this point I'd gotten close to exactly one giant, an incident which directly inspired my long-standing policy of hauling ass in the opposite direction at the first sight of a club-wielding silhouette on the horizon. I was not looking forward to this fight.

But anything for the Stormcloaks, so I snuck over to the nearby giant camp where, sure enough, something abnormally large was lumbering about, club on shoulder. I decided to inflict as much damage as possible right away, so I equipped my best arrow, laced it with my most expensive poison, and made absolutely sure I was undetected.

As soon as the giant stumbled into my sights, I let the arrow fly, hitting the giant with the full Sneak Attack bonus plus poison damage. The giant spotted me immediately, and came charging at me with barely a dent in his health meter. And THAT'S when I noticed that he wasn't alone.

Out from behind that big stone pillar with a mammoth skull on top, came ANOTHER giant, also pissed off. The newcomer had a full health meter - and a big, conspicious white map indicator shining over his head.

Yup. I had messed with the wrong giant.

While I was busy being astonished, giant #1 was able to score his first hit, a single sweep of his club shaving off half of my health meter. I turned tail (literally, I play a Khajiit) and ran down the hill. Another hit took out nearly all my remaining health, I hit the Inventory button and guzzled a massive amount of those weak-ass health potions I'd been finding everywhere.

Giving up any hope of escape, it dawned on me that my best bet was to give up on my Stormcloak ambitions and just hope for a calm, uneventful career as a rug in whatever distant part of Skyrim I'd shortly find myself. I decided to go down fighting, though. I pulled out my trusty scimitar and started whacking away at the giants.

Amazingly, though the giants had soon trimmed my health bar back to almost nothing, I remained firmly footed in the Windhelm area. I opened my inventory again to look for more health potions, and spotted something I'd forgotten that I owned: A Dwarven sword with a nice Absorb Health enchantment! I didn't equip it when I got it because I wanted to save it for emergencies.

I drained another crapload of potions, grabbed the Dwarven sword, and started whacking away at the giants. Eventually, to my surprise, they both dropped dead. I harvested their filthy toes, reported back to Windhelm, and secretly wowed never again to seek gainful employment.

 

[Minjoltr]

My first fight with the Dragon Priest who had Volsung was pretty tricky because I was only about level 10. By the fifth time he killed me I'd realised that if you move slightly to the left every time he raises his arms for an attack, he misses, then you shoot him, then move left, miss shoot, left, miss shoot, rinse, repeat. On my second try at this, I beat him with no damage.

So it's currently my first fight with Alduin just after reading the Elder Scroll. Took about ten minutes and half my health potions and then he didn't even have the courtesy to die properly.

 

[Exocet]

I met a draug deathlord once.It shouted my only weapon away about halfway through our duel,and I couldn't find it.I had to punch it to death.

I did not reload an earlier save to get my weapon back,because I felt too badass.