I am playing a redguard shelled in heavy armor, focusing on blocking and a quick slash with a sword every once and then. I am level 30, heavy armor, blocking and one handed are all about 90.

Yet, tougher bandits club the hell out of me since they can constantly bash on my shield. The problem is that I lose a lot of stamina for blocking. Just blocking. I have a feeling that I lose more stamina for blocking than the bandit swinging his mace. This way, after a power bash and probably a power attack shortly after, I'm totally exhausted and never manage to recover since they will start to hammer on my shield again.

What am I doing wrong here? Maybe some internal recovery speed values are borked?


Many thanks in advance and long live the Empire.

What level is your stamina? Still sitting at 100?

There's a perk that can help with this in the heavy armor tree I think.

I can take out quite a few people without running out of stamina... I power bash 2 handed enemies and disarm them and I power attack after the bash staggers. I use Solutions of vigor and stamina regen pots I made to keep mine up, I also enchanted every armor part I could with Stamina Regen.

Are you choosing Stamina every time you level?

I don't remember my stamina values but I am level 30 and out of ten level-ups, about 6 go to stamina, 4 to health. And I haven't found anything perk-wise that helps.

I never run out of stamina, even when fighting ice spell abusing bastards. Look for perks in the Heavy Armor tree, I believe there's one that makes wearing heavy armor use as much stamina as wearing clothes.

That should help you out.

Choose stamina for every three lvls you level it works for me and i almost never runs out stamina except ice mages then you can increase what you may lack in health by items and i don't care about stamina on spellcaster character.

Well I chose stamina like two for every three levels and I still have problems :-/

I guess the problem is not wearing heavy armor (sprinting very long distances is possible), it is blocking.

A standard attack does not drain stamina at all! A power attack, shield bash and shield power bash does. And someone else hammering on your shield also takes a lot of stamina, almost as much as a shield bash if I'm not totally mistaken.

Conditioning - Heavy Armor weighs nothing and doesn't slow you down when worn.

I'm not certain but I believe this greatly reduces the amount of stamina used when blocking and fighting in heavy armor.



I can bash about 11 times in a row before my stamina runs out.

I only have a total stamina level of 250. Although it's boosted to 275 with Kynareth's blessing.

This will possibly break the game for you, but creating soups and eating them will result in unlimited stamina. The soups restore stamina at a rate of 1 per sec. It only takes 1 stamina to execute a power attack. Not sure about power bash...

I understand the part about the soups but what !?!


Also, I am virtually unstoppable when on Adrenaline Rush which quickly regenerates stamina. I have a feeling that losing stamina by blocking is not the problem, my regeneration is probably way too slow. How can I find out if it's too slow?

Don't think there's anyway to find out your regeneration speed. You could try boosting it by enchanting some armor with boost stamina regeneration.

All you need is a sliver of the green bar to be visible. In order to execute a power attack. That means it only needs to be a stamina level of 1.

EDIT : The soup will regen your stamina so you can power attack once every second, as long as you are under the influence of the soup.

Vegetable soup makes you regenerate 1 stamina and health per second.

You only need to have 1 point of Stamina available to do a power attack. Meaning that you can do power attacks regardless of how much stamina you have left in your bar unless it's flashing green.

Ok thanks for explaining. I didn't know that one point of stamina is already enough to be able to cast a power attack.

Eat Beef Stew!

Yeah, that's why drinking soups and stews that you cook (or drinking stamina regen potions) are so useful. You can drink a 1-point of stamina regeneration per second vegetable soup and pretty much just power-attack for the entire duration of the effect because you'll always have enough stamina to do a power attack.

You can check your Stamina regeneration rate in the console if you're on the PC:

player.getavinfo StaminaRate
player.getavinfo StaminaRateMult

Don't forget enchanting is your friend.

Beef Stew or vegetable soup, for unlimited (12 mins) power attack swings and shield smashes.

In case anybody's interested, I found the game setting fStaminaBlockDmgMult which is set to 0.25. I set it to 5.0 and I almost lost all my stamina when I blocked one single hit with a mace. I guess I'll set it down to 0.10 or even less since the book "The Mirror" taught us
I'm happy now.

you shouldn't go out of stamina

sword'n'board is all about normal hitting and using the stamina for shield bashes.

i played my first character perfectly this way without knowing anything about the cooking stuff.


edit: btw. the main thing you are doing wrong is getting hit

How the hell people level up so damn fast?