Thief characters in Skyrim...how the HECK do you kill a dragon?

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dderidex

Supreme [H]ardness
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As above. So I finally gave up trying to play a combat character in the game (WAY too boring), or a mage character (WAY too powerful), and went with a thief. I guess I liked Deus Ex: HR a lot, so the sneaking around...hiding behind rocks after sniping an enemy at range almost holding my breath to see if they find me...is turning out to be exactly what I wanted.

HOWEVER...

...good gods killing a dragon is hard with this kind of character. My one-handed weapon attacks aren't...awful. But not that great. All my skill is in Sneak (up to around 60 or so at level 13 or 14, IIRC) and Archery.

I can't figure out how to kill the buggers. Aside from the one scripted attack outside Whiterun, which was pretty easy (involved chugging a lot of 'healing' potions to survive his attacks while the various guards with me helped kill it), I've not managed to end one, yet. With a mage or melee character, it was pretty trivial. But a thief...I mean, as they fly around overhead, it always almost triggers the 'detected' status regardless of WHERE I'm hiding...he just covers so much ground, so fast, and from directly overhead. Then it's all PFFFFOOOOH, raking the ground with the fire breath, and I'm done.

Ideas? The game pretty clearly intends 'thief' to be a viable path through the story, but I'm kind of stumped as to how, since fighting dragons seems to be something you need to do pretty often.
 
Use a bow until you get bored or it's health drops down to 10% or below and then run up to it and start beating it in the side. You'll still need to chug potions.
 
I'm playing through as a level 1 char and I've killed 3 dragons. The first one in the story line and two random ones. The two random ones I just arrowed to death mostly. One was near a town so a couple guards helped. The second was out in the open and that took a while.
 
JayteeBates said:
I'm playing through as a level 1 char and I've killed 3 dragons. The first one in the story line and two random ones. The two random ones I just arrowed to death mostly. One was near a town so a couple guards helped. The second was out in the open and that took a while.
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I've killed three as well and they all felt way too undepowered. I kept thinking "I am no where near powereful enough to kill this dragon right now."
 
Alchemy is part of the thief branch. Use potions for resists and poisons.

Archery should deal enough damage to it without you needing to get close.
 
Pretty tough sometimes, playing on master as a heavy armored, 1H, dest warrior. I know im not a thief but even I have to drink potions.
 
i found a sleeping Frost Dragon and 1 hit it from behind and was never seen :)

but atleast early on you will need to rely on distracting it and gear up your companion from whiterun to do most of the dragon slaying until you get some decent combat skills going.


im lvl 40 now tho and i pretty much eat dragons now.









 
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Since when were dragons hard? in earlier levels, giants could eat them for breakfast. At least from a vs. player standpoint.
 
Parmenides said:
Since when were dragons hard? in earlier levels, giants could eat them for breakfast. At least from a vs. player standpoint.
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they are hard for a thief early on when alot of your perks and skills up tend to be in sneak pickpocket or lockpicking and you might be neglecting some combat perks early.

but in general yes dragons are easy a bit too easy imo even a reguler dragon should be feared by the player but they tend to be fodder.

also on the subject and sorta related to dragons is the armor you can make. it takes 100 skill to craft but the heavy is weaker than daedric where it takes 90 skill to make daedric.

imo those should be reversed in the perk tree.
 
chockomonkey said:
uh, yea, why wouldn't they be? Must be a bug
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my guess is it has to do with the location in the perk tree.

the perks are setup so as you go up the right side you are getting heavy armor perks and as you go up the left side you go up perks that give you access to light armor liek elven and glass, and as they meet up in the middle at the top you get dragon which has both heavy and light versions so from that point of view it makes sense to have it as a 100 skill but that leaves daedric at 90 skill being better for heavy users than the 100skill perk which is kind lame. they should have a branch or better yet make some light class daedric armor. or something

just seems really odd for a 100skill perk to be weaker than the 90skill perk if you are going up heavy armor.
 
You can get dragon armor materials much earlier than Daedric, since the materials do not depend on your level. Dragonbone is also lighter than Daedric. it also allows you to specialize in one armor branch, yet still craft and improve a higher level armor of the other type I guess for allies (not sure if companions specialize in light or heavy armor yet).

What is also interesting is that "steel plate" is in the light armor branch, but is heavy armor.
 
Wildace said:
also on the subject and sorta related to dragons is the armor you can make. it takes 100 skill to craft but the heavy is weaker than daedric where it takes 90 skill to make daedric.

imo those should be reversed in the perk tree.
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IIRC, I remember reading about that on one of the wiki pages for the game.

The reason for their placement makes sense, actually. Dragons are, as many here note, pretty plentiful in the game. You will NEVER run out of - or have a hard time finding more of - dragon scales and bones and such.

Ebony ore? Not so much! So the skills reflect that variation...it's much harder to learn to make dragon armor, even though "it isn't as good" as a game balance factor for how plentiful the resources are for it compared to ebony or daedric armor.
 
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