they are annoying who else thinks so

The trick is to stay way back from them. Once they get up close to you, you are in trouble and they do move pretty quickly.

The easiest way to deal with them is complete magical immunity; preferably with Spell Reflection or Spell Absorption, but straight-up resist magic works too. Then use whatever you would normally use on a ghost, since they are unable to harm you by nonmagical means.

My mystic archer Buffy always wondered why people thought wisps were challenging - she always found them easy to kill just like about everything else (sneak bow shot). Then one day her friend Mazoga fought one - you know up close with a sword like Mazoga fights. Oh my, Buffy had to kill the wisp for Mazoga from a safe bow range or else she is sure Mazoga wouldn't have survived. Being a ranged attacker can sometimes have its challenges, but life is good vs wisps for properly built archers.

Me and I as well. We fight with a sword or mace and we are victorious. Not once in our memory have we been beaten by a little floating blob of lantern mist.

They′re no problem. A couple of swings and they′re gone. Or my favourite way, same thing I use on Spriggans, a heavy fire spell and they won′t bug you no more :flamethrower:

My Bosmer Recon Sniper Elberond has often wondered the same thing. He has no trouble with 'Wisps at all.

I Love Will o the Wisps.

At least with my Atronach characters. They are like floating magicka refueling stations. When I see a will of the wisp I feel like giving it a hug and grabbing tons of magicka, sometimes thinking of all the Atronach-haters out there

Vladimir hates wisps also. Although, each time hes fought one, the wisps always WISP they didnt attack him... :hubbahubba: :wink_smile:

They use to be really annoying. Now they're just a one hit kill. And while we're on the topic; I can kill them using my fists. Do enchanted rings count make my fists an enchanted weapon?

If your character are fast on their feet, quickly run a few steps back just as the wisp is casting their absorbing spell. The spell will miss, since you're out of distance. Then, just as quickly run up and hit them twice and quickly run a couple of steps back again so the spell misses, etc. The key is you have to be quick.

I found them incredibly annoying until I got my wonderful "Wizard Fury" spell. Takes them out in one shot.

How do you kill them with one hit?

No enchanted rings don't make your fists enchanted weapons. However at Journeyman or above Hand to Hand skill you can hurt creatures that are immune to normal weapons -- like Will of the Wisps, or Ghosts, or Wraiths.

Sneak shot with a bow works for me at higher levels.

Yup, my assassin one hit kills them too. Way more annoying for my Spellsword, adding to the annoyance is that MMM has the Diverse Wisps mod included, there's a whole lot more of them :ahhh:

Greenmead cave was full of Virvatuli wisps (more or less a finnish equivalent of Will'o the Wisp), good thing they are the lowest level wisps that don't do atribute damage, they only absorb health.

As long as you can cast Restore Intelligence and Restore Wisdom spells and are carrying a silver or enchanted weapon they're not that big of a deal. If you're unprepared I guess they can be a problem though.

Who doesnt.I remember the first time i saw the thing,i was unable to kill it with my warrior char so i ran.I ran for about 20min and when i stopped it spawned in front of me.That was annoying.

Well, as you can see from the above comments, there are quire a few of us who do not hate Wills. For Mystic Archers (and some other characters apparently), Wills are simply safe, easy kills. For those with the birthsign Atronach, they are handy magicka refueling stations or convenient light sources that will follow you around.

For some types of characters though, they are a challenge. :dance:

I just hate how they steal your health

In my game they are too busy killing guards to pay me any notice =p.

But I kill them with my absorb health. har har

I found them tough in the past, but my current character is an orc battlemage; his natural spell resistance is probably helping, plus some of the gear he's wearing. I beat the wisps down with the mace Rockshatter; its shock charge works quickly.

I hate when people says will o the wisp's are easy. Today I meet the for the first time, and I had to abondon a ruin, because I couldn't kill them. The last one I blasted with a few firespells, hit probably 30 times with my silver claymore and drank 5 health potions and died. I hated the minotaur, but this is much worse. Hopefully some of the advice in this thread will help me next time.

A couple months late on your reply eh?

Wisps are probably the most incorrectly assigned soul level in the entire game. They simply are not Common level enemies due to their abilities, at least not when compared to the various other creatures. Then again, Oblivion has a much worse problem with soul levels than Morrowind had.

As for anyone saying they are easy kills... well, only if 1) you have the proper preparation and, more importantly, 2) you do not meet them in closed quarters. If the latter happens to you (such as many caves, for example) and you do not have an open room/cavern to move to quickly, you will be in big trouble because you cannot gain range to do distance attacks. This is excluding preparations such as having magic resistance items on, of course, which falls into provision 1).

I'll also point out the speed boosts that happen in my game. Yes, my characters move fast, but as they move faster and faster, the enemies also speed up. As I've said elsewhere, even the UESP wiki patrons have still not figured out all the parameters for speed. Since Wisps are one of the fastest creatures in the game, even a very fast character like mine will be in a goodly amount of danger if they run into Wisps in close quarters where they cannot create and maintain a distance (again, barring protections from magic attacks, of course).

Naturally, it also hurts that I play on max difficulty with 6x damage for the Wisps...

Xivilia are a piece of cake compared to Wisps, and Xivilai are Grand Souls... doesn't make sense, but that 's Beth for us.

I don't have much trouble with will-o-the-wisps. Their spells never seem to faze me much—I never really even realized they absorbed health and magicka until I just read about them...maybe because I kill them so fast. All I remember seeing when fighting them is their damaging my intelligence and willpower, which made no difference to me. I use bows a lot but wisps disappear too much so I just get close and chop em up with several swipes of my Thornblade. I find brown bears and ogres more annoying than wisps (ogres because they take so long to chop down, brown bears because they are everywhere and take a few extra hits to kill as well).