I'm on my way to a Theives Guild mission and i stumpled upon a Dragon on a word wall, he was easy to kill but out popped a Dragon Priest called "Krosis" and easily blasted me into pieces...


Anyone have some good tips on how to take down a Dragon Priest? I'm currently level 29 and mainly using Archery and Two Handed both into the 70's but couldnt seem take a chunk of health from it no matter what i tried!

Any help would be great

Just beat Krosis with my levlel 26 Nord sword/shield warrior yesterday.

I had about 280 health and 200 stamina (IIRC, too lazy to launch the game to check, but basically I had way more health than stamina)

Kept pwning my ass a lot the first few tries. Eventually I brought Lydia with me (outfitted her with a full set of Superior Steel Plate armour which I had collected during my adventures, oh and she had a basic hunting bow and Exquisite Steel Sword)

I approached the coffin from behind/side of the word wall... as soon as he springs up, I took a few cheap shots (power attack first, then kept slashing) at him as his spawn animation cycle is being played. I had to do this because I am doing very small amount of damage to him, so every bit of advantage is important to me.

BTW, I am in full Exquisite Dwemer gear (armour and weapons), all unenchanted. No magical resistance except for the Nord's cold resist bonus. My Exquisite Dwemer Sword was doing about 35 damage.

So how did I prepare for this fight? I brought a LOT of Health and Stamina potions. Since Krosis has an annoying tactic of backpedalling and lobbing fireballs at me, the fight was a pretty intense case of tailgating him and slashing at the same time.

Two things that helped me take more life off his health bar are power attacks and my Power Shield Bash perk... pretty sure it manages to briefly stagger him sometimes (but not all the time).

so basically, chasing and slashing, then opening my Favourites and drinking potions to keep myself alive.

Eventually I had to hide behind a rock because he was a little too far for me to chase and I hadn't enough health - if I continued the chase, I'd surely be dead. If I drank my remaining potions, I wouldn't have any left to finish the battle.

So I hid behind the rock and pulled out the basic heal spell. I have no Restoration perks so the healing spell depletes my magicka so fast. Good thing I saved a few magicka potions. Also, my magicka is at 100 (never leveled it).

Role-play wise, I imagine that the Heal spell is a very basic spell that almost everyone knows (kinda like riding a bicycle or nailing something with a hammer) but in my warrior's case, he's not very good at magic (hence 100 magicka and no magic perks).

So while I was hiding behind this rock (which is higher than the elevation that Krosis was standing on BTW, so his fireballs couldn't hit me... again, cheap, I know), suddenly his attention turned over to Lydia and he started attacking Lydia. Finally the tank gets some use. ;P

While he was busy fighting Lydia, I took more cheap shots at him again. Finally his health is almost depleted.

But then, Lydia went into the "wounded state" (but she hasn't died yet) and then Krosis focued on me again. But this time, I managed to get him stuck against the word wall, so he can't backpedal anywhere.

His fireballs did hit me HARD even at this close range, and I eventually finished ALL of my potions but... when that final power attack landed on Krosis' head... nothing felt more satisfying.

Upon investigating Krosis' remains, Fjorin Heavy-Legs discovers an ominous-looking mask. Lydia, having just recovered from her wounds (she had some potions on her), warns Fjorin not to mess around with dead bodies, more so the remains of an evil Dragon Priest, but Fjorin picks it up anyway, telling her "worse come to worse, I'll just sell this off to some crazy spell caster..."

As an archer, I've managed to kill the dragon priests by doing:

1. Get a first mover with a kneed sneak shot
2. Shout 'Call of Valor' for a minion protector, who'll flawlessly tank the dragon priest. If you don't have this shout (and don't try to conjure any other dominions against a dragon priest) then as an archer you could successfully use either 'Unrelenting force' or 'Fire breath' for a solid knock-back effect, which will grant you some time to get a few arrows once more
3. (as a note) it's always useful to drink potions that enhance either fire, frost or shock resistance depending on the dragon priest.
4. Use the environment! This is without a doubt the MOST successful strategy I can give to you. Dragon priests are casters, and you're an archer so the fight should be fought at distance. SO to avoid getting butt kicked by their castings, take cover. AND then pop out once in a while to get some shots.
5. Do the environmental control as a procedure, and you'll manage to take them down one by one.

Hope this can help

A few zaps with the Wabbajack is all you need! I've taken down two with it.

I'm mainly an archer but the only way I've been able to kill them is by whacking them with my sword.

First time I fought him was really bad. I actually woke him up before killing the dragon, so I had both on my hands.

After that I just hide behind the wall and killed both with a bow, taking very little damage. Cheap but it worked.

Only once did I face him in melee and that was with a high level character (S&S). Bashing did wonders for stopping his attacks.

It is always helpful to throw some meat shield up there against boss types. They need to be tough and so I usually use my Dremora.

yes, magic resist. i am a breton (25% resist) with the lord stone (25%) in addition to optional ring (18% resist) and optional shield (18%). Mages/etc no longer send me fleeing in panic.

Oh, right, forgot to mention how I dealt with the dragon sitting on the word wall. I fired an arrow from afar and finished off the dragon first before attempting to fight Krosis.

Again, RP-wise, my character only knows basic archery (skill level 19 heh) he picked up during his years training to fight. He only uses it when he has to, and even then would still favour swords to finish the job.

I honestly play on Novice/Apprentice through most of my Skyrim days.

I will, however give a special mention to Rahgot, I went after him as a super low level because I wanted his +70 mask for my heavy armor wearer. I went in at 7, came out as 12. It was 15-20+ dungeon. It was painful. He killed me a couple times, then I realized his staff put a damage-over-time fire thing on the ground. He was easier when I figured that out.

The rest are mostly just hack and slash. I tend to rush them even on my archers because they're agile little tards.

I'm going to try and just use arrows and hide, my stealth is mega good so i'm hoping from a distance i can get a few big hits then i'm stealing his Mask, Cheers for all the tips/help!

I will post my frustrarion/win later...

If you pull the 'kite strategy', as I wrote, successfully, you'll get it rather easily.
AND: you can use the strategy against all of them.
Bein an archer is awesome, utilize the bow and its distance, forget all about melee.
It works.

I recently fought Volsung and Rahgot with my stealth character. Volsung did take some time, but the run and gun method worked on him as he couldn't detect me from a distance with arrows and sneak. Rahgot was really easy as i was able to sneak right up to him still lying in his coffin and sneak attack with my daggers for a one hit kill. i find it harder to actually get through the crypts on the way to the dragon priests now as i've encountered rooms with 4 draugr death overlords and they sniff out stealth like nobody's business and will chase for a long distance...

I do recall having trouble with some of them on my previous melee character at lower levels, but having a follower made quick work of them.

i've been meaning to track down Krosis but haven't stumbled on his location yet.

oh, the over lords..

As you can see it depends on your build. Personally i play heavy, sword and board so I just charge in and bash, slash away while they recover from the bash then bash again and rinse and repeat untill dead.
It could be argued bash is OP since when fighting any single enemy you can get away with never taking a scratch no matter what your up against, aslong as you have some stamina potions handy.

My character isn't being overpowered with his shield bash (or even power bash) since it doesn't work all the time and - especially with Krosis - the likelihood of me being killed from his barrage of explosive fireballs is much higher than him being constantly stagger-locked (because as I said, it doesn't happen all the time, and when it does happen, I can only get a few hits in before he starts shooting fireballs again).

I stumbled across Krosis at level 5 and let me tell you, that was one hell of a fight. I simply couldn't hurt him. My attacks did no damage. In a panic I jumped down the steep slope next to the word wall and ran behind some boulders. Old Krosis got stuck in the terrain and his fireballs kept hitting the rocks in front of me so I was able to just spam him with arrows. I must have put 100 arrows into him. Good thing I horde those things.

The mask is [censored]in, though. I wore that thing from level 5 up to level 40 or so.

Craft a Summon Frost/Storm Atronach Staff, poke priest with arrows when his attention is focused on the summon. I beat 3 to 4 priest at level one with this, so it is basically fool-proof no matter your class or built.

Your weapons don't matter. Your Magic Defense does! Try increasing your magic defense as much as possible! Lord's Stone is prolly best thing to have since it gives %25 Resist Magic Effect. Other effects you can get via enchantments. Focus on your magic defense then come back. You'll kill him easily since he is named. The named Dragon Priests are usually leveled. I think they are level 35, lowest. Normal Dragon Priests are level 50, if I am correct.

Remember that a Breton with Atronach stone is totally immune to dragon priests once a day. If you're not a Breton, keep it in mind for the future.
It can be really satisfying to just walk right up to them and unload; all they can do is refill your magicka.

Being a Breton always help VS magical enemies.

Bretons with Atronach stone are a pure mage's worst nightmare.

Actually any vampire with necromage, rank three atronach perk and atronach guardian stone can be permanently invincible to magic.

How about second worst nightmare?

Yeah, but the thing with a Breton/Atronach is that you can get the benefits at level 2. Nothing beats that.

My first meeting of him met with my demise. As did my second. Then I used 'fus ro dah' to shout him off the peak. He got stuck, wedged in the cliffs below. I simply stood above him and shot arrows and magic down onto him. He died without me getting scratched. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the mask.

I reloaded and did the same thing. Same crack. Same scratch free fight. I gave up, just glad I defeated him without losing myself or my follower.