Yesterday I spent close to an hour fighting (if you can call it that) one dragon, dying and re-loading over and over. The dragon was just hovering above me, blasting me with his breath, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it as a meele fighter with no magic or ranged weapons. Eventually I just led him to a bandit camp and let the bandits bring him down with their arrows. It was pretty frustrating...

I've never had this problem before, every other dragon I've fought has landed at some point and given me a chance to fight back. Was I just unlucky with that one fight? Or is there some trick to getting them to land? I know they'll crash if you hurt them badly enough, but I couldn't even get a single hit in on that dragon.

dragons dont have to land lol. If you have dragonrend it would bring him down. Some dragons stay in the air. Unless he didnt come down when he was close to dying.
The art of fighting a dragon: expect the unexpected.

It's funny but it actually depends if dragon has a good spot to land. If you're fighting somewhere where you have no good landing zone with enough space on a straight terrain, he might just keep flying forever. Just try to move to a better zone, and he will surely land down eventually.

Like stated before, your best bet is dragonrend. If you dont have that shout yet then you just have to wait for them to land, if they dont then thats just bad luck.

I know they don't have to, I'm just saying it was frustrating that he wouldn't.


I didn't think about that, that's good advice.

As a thief/assasin I always tried waiting for them so I could try to sneak/backstab them.

...after giving up on my 2nd dragon I just started perking bows JUST to fight dragons... Even with dragonrend you can't get a sneak-attack in as Dragonrend will put FULL attention on you. >_< It's just not worth it to melee them.

Though I do have one friend who uses sparks, then fights with a shield/1h. He told me that Sparks drains their magica, so they can't breathe fire - and they HAVE to land to attack you then. Haven't seen it myself, but it might be worth a shot.

If, for whatever reason, a dragon isn't landing due to no good landing spot, then i'd say DON'T dragonrend him into landing, because he'll land some 2 miles away and you'll have to go running after him. Pluck him with arrows until he drops.

Yeah. I fought one that flew mostly, and when it did land, it landed on a rock outcropping I couldn't reach. Every time. So, my advice is to always invest in some kinda ranged weapon.

This. Plus, arrows have no weight. I pick up every single arrow I find. There is no excuse not to.

To actually get the dragon to land, as others have said, your best bet is simply to find a flat, spacious clearing. Give him room in that clearing, and he should land on his own. Dragonrend can expedite that process. Dragons can also be forced to land if you damage them enough, but honestly if you can damage a flying dragon that much, you might as well just take him out while he's still in the air. The best ways to damage airborne dragons are Marked For Death and Drain Vitaility. I've never tried using Ice Form on a flying dragon, but that might work too.... Storm Call *can* work, but only if the dragon is within range (i.e., it won't work whenever the dragon flies away and then loops back to you, which happens fairly often in my experience). Also if you have decent Archery and/or Alchemy, [poisoned] arrows can make short work of many dragons. Finally, having followers/companions can quicken the time necessary to take down an airborne dragon, since you're getting a lot more damage per second.


@chaosapient666: I can think of a few reasons not to. One would be to cut back on inventory clutter. Another, if the arrows are weaker than your standard arrows (e.g., there's really no need to pick up Iron ever, since Steel is so easy to come by). Also if you can craft your own arrows, why pick up weaker arrows in loot? And of course if your character is simply not an archer, arrows are pointless.

true. I had to run after the dragon when using dragon rend it wierd areas. What i really want dragonrend to do? Acutally knock them out of the sky. Like instantly, there wings dont work.

Good ideas, thanks!