Killing a dragon solo

[Nabster]

I am new to game, I have killed a dragon as part of a group in the story line. I am now level 5 with a follower called Lydia and encountered a dragon on the seven thousand steps, is it possible / expected for us to kill it?

I tried twice and have not succeeded. Can the dragon kill Lydia?

Any tips for killing the dragon?

[Misuune]

attack the dragon from sides, deals less damage by just trying to crush you with its wings
let lydia be the dragon's important target

and for most part followers dont die unless you kill them yourself

[GrimCat]

Originally posted by Ralof:

attack the dragon from sides, deals less damage by just trying to crush you with its wings
let lydia be the dragon's important target

and for most part followers dont die unless you kill them yourself

So be careful with those arrows/bolts and spells.

[bucephalus]

Avoid the 'Cloak' spells, for one, followers do not know to step out of the radius and take constant damage from them.

Archery requires good positioning so that the follower is not in the way, which can take some effort as they tend to not watch where they are going and end up in the line of fire.

I have stopped using followers altogether, save for when a quest saddles me with one, after having Lydia die yet again by getting between me and my archery target right after I had loosed the shot. The fact my preferred play-style is stealth archery does not help, as most followers don't even know what the word "stealth" means and will charge as soon as someone/thing comes in range instead of letting me take my shot undetected.

[Nabster]

Thx for the advice, I just kill my first dragon with my follower

[Valden21]

For future reference, Lydia belongs a class of characters that are flagged as "Protected". What this means is that after taking enough damage to kill her, she'll fall to one knee and begin to slowly heal. When she's in this state, she can be killed, but ONLY by the player. So essentially, only the player can kill her, and she has to be in that semi-incapacitated state first.

[Spirit]

dragons can be very strong at around level 20. that's when i always have the most trouble with them

but then i'm always a mage so it could be easy for others

[258789553873]

Level 5 is normally the minimum level at which you can kill a dragon.

That being said, dragons may not be doable depending on your build. Here's some general tips:

For offense, use ranged attacks. Bows are normally considered the best, though destruction spells can also do. Dragons deal a lot of damage in melee, and besides that you obviously can't melee them while they're flying. If you're using magic btw, keep in mind that all dragons are resistant to the element they breath. This means don't use fire mage on a dragon that breaths fire, or frost magic on a dragon that breaths '?cold?'. Shock is actually the best, since none of the dragons in the game resist it, plus for other reasons I'll get to when I explain defense.

For defense, use trees and rocks and whatever else you can find for cover when they're breathing fire. That's pretty much a requirement at the lower levels. Later on though, you should be able to just tank the damage rather easily. A tip for that is their breath attacks are classified as magic, thus resist magic will actually reduce the damage their breath deals (though frost and fire resist can also help a lot, note that many of the most powerful dragons can only breath fire, so resist fire is somewhat more useful than resist frost). Also, since their breath attacks are spells, this means they need magicka to use them. Thus if you drain their magicka completely with shock spells they won't be able to use their breath attack. This is another reason why shock magic is so good against dragons. Another good thing to have is a shield, since later on you can get a perk that will give you magic resist while you're blocking with it. This is quite handy, obviously. You can also use ward spells, but keep in mind they drain magicka super fast, so you'll need some fortify restoration gear on you to really make effective use of them. For dragons, if you have the ward absorb perk, you can quickly re-fill your magicka by blocking their breath attack with it. Also, due to how the damage is applied, even the weakest ward can fully absorb the damage from even the strongest dragon. This is considered to be a very good thing to do if you're a mage. Though I should emphasize that this is the only time wards are normally considered to be viable at all.

For meleeing them, you normally want to avoid standing directly in front of them, since their bite hits the hardest of all the melee attacks they can do. They can also attack you with their wings if you're standing beside them, or with their tail if you're behind them. However, there is a gap between their tail and wings where they can't hit you with any attack. Its why on youtube you often see people attacking a dragon's hind legs, because they can't hit you with anything while you're standing there (keep in mind though they will try to turn around so they can hit you if you do this). However, if you are fairly tanky standing in front of them can be handy, since you can stagger them to stop them from breathing fire (best done with a shield bash, though you can also do a block-bash with a two-handed weapon for the same results). This can go a long way in reducing the damage they deal to you.

What is your build anyway? What are you using for damage? What's your race (three of the races come with resistances useful against dragon breath)? What armor are you using? That would go a long way in helping us figure out why you're struggling against dragons.

Also, another tip, if you can't handle dragons, you can always just hide and wait for npcs to kill them. Though it may take quite a while for your lone follower to solo the dragon for you. This is normally better done if you're near an area with lots of npcs (guards make good dragonslayers btw). Keep in mind though that dragons CAN kill npcs, including certain ones need for quests (Falkreath in particular is infamous for having quest npcs die to dragon attacks). Also, town npcs are stupid as ♥♥♥♥ and will seriously run and try to attack the dragon! Amusing as it may be to see the little old lady in town punching a dragon, dead quest npcs are still rather annoying. Really, you should only have guards kill dragons for you if there aren't any town npcs nearby (such as in the forts), or you really just have no other option. Often times its better for you to just run to a large bandit or forsworn camp for help. Besides, that way the dragon will help you clear out bandit and forsworn camps!

[Valden21]

Originally posted by -= AoFA =- Fightdrug *-* GER:

the normal ones are easy but watch out what you attack there are many types of dragons a old dragon is much harder to kill as a normal one they make much damage

better have a Ward spell learned at high lvl dragon fire or ice make much damage :paperbag:

and dont kill the dragon on The Throat of the World he is a nice one with many wisdom UwU

From the sound of it, the OP's not high enough level to see the more powerful varieties of dragons. The dragons you encounter vary in strength depending on what level you are; as you get more powerful, more powerful varieties of dragons will start showing up. As for the one on the Throat of the Dragon, you're right about him; he's very wise, and he's willing to help you, unlike every other dragon in the game.

[AoFA | FightDrug *-* [GER]]

Originally posted by Valden21:

Originally posted by -= AoFA =- Fightdrug *-* GER:

the normal ones are easy but watch out what you attack there are many types of dragons a old dragon is much harder to kill as a normal one they make much damage

better have a Ward spell learned at high lvl dragon fire or ice make much damage

and dont kill the dragon on The Throat of the World he is a nice one with many wisdom UwU

From the sound of it, the OP's not high enough level to see the more powerful varieties of dragons. The dragons you encounter vary in strength depending on what level you are; as you get more powerful, more powerful varieties of dragons will start showing up. As for the one on the Throat of the Dragon, you're right about him; he's very wise, and he's willing to help you, unlike every other dragon in the game.

i just say it for the future :P because i remember me as i fight the first time a old dragon

[󰀉tempeh󰀉]

I'm going second the suggestion to use lightning if you use magic for one reason: it's hitscan. As long as you're in range, it hits what it's aimed at. Fire and ice you need to lead your shots, which can be tricky when the dragon's flying around.

I also like to use dual-cast lightning with the dual-stagger perk for the first half of the fight even though my bows do absurdly more damage, and that's because the stun can prevent them from shouting. It might not matter as much for the weaker dragons, but for the strongest ones their shouts are worse than their breath.

If I were to start Skyrim all over again I'd use alchemy much earlier, get some extra resistance for those dragons when I don't have much resistance from enchantments yet. You could also just buy potions, I suppose. Or steal them.

[omardragonlord]

do not kill that dragon, that dragons name is Parathurnax, & if you kill him the Grey Beards will ignore you, & you are basically considerd evil if you kill Parathurnax

[258789553873]

Originally posted by omardragonlord:

do not kill that dragon, that dragons name is Parathurnax, & if you kill him the Grey Beards will ignore you, & you are basically considerd evil if you kill Parathurnax

He probably hasn't met him yet. It is possible for a random dragon to attack you while you're climbing the seven thousand steps. I had that happen once. It was sorta glitchy in fact because it had no place to land. When it came time to do its crash landing thing, it just hovered in mid-air because it had no place to land.

As for parthurnax, I don't think he's even killable early on, so quit spamming spoilers about him.

[xxx]

I never had a problem killing dragons (with followers...without followers)...I guess I need a dragon killing difficulty mod. The dragons at the so-called end of game (main questline) are the hardest...other then that I've always founded them to be too easy. You just got to get over your fear. Just be careful when you fight the vampires...werewolves at the start of the game can be tough too.

[Melkolf]

Dragons are easily killed let alone avoided early on - after a few hits they fly away for grief's sake and it's such a pain to run after them. It's sabre cats what are hard early on, they don't know the term retreat, and them claws and huge paws, and those teeth, oh grief, those teeth...

[AoFA | FightDrug *-* [GER]]

Originally posted by Melkolf:

Dragons are easily killed let alone avoided early on - after a few hits they fly away for grief's sake and it's such a pain to run after them. It's sabre cats what are hard early on, they don't know the term retreat, and them claws and huge paws, and those teeth, oh grief, those teeth...

i hate it when the fly away but i find it amazing with what speed the can fly away from you xD