I'm a level 17 Imperial Battlemage and I'm having serious trouble with Krosis. My companion is Lydia. I gave her Blades' Armor, Blades' Katana, Falmers' shield and other magical items to improve blocking and health. So she's well equipped for what she is.

We come to where Krosis stays, he raises up from his tomb and if I don't go for it, Lydia goes for him like a Pitbull. If I just watch Lydia she takes about 5% of Krosis' health and downs. If I help Lydia (with one handed weapons and avoiding magic to don't damage Lydia by accident) we manage to take about 10-15% of Krosis' health before Lydia downs but I seriously risk killing Lydia forever by causing her damage myself.

So after Lydia downs Krosis fix on me with his fireball shooting boss staff and my hell starts. I have leather boots of resist fire but Krosis' staff fireballs wipes about 30- 40% of my 200 health per hit. To make it all pure hell, Krosis moves away and around from me super fast. My fire hose seems to have little to no effect on him and good luck managing to hit any projectile magic with Xbox thumbsticks on that Flash moving S.O.B.

So I tried to hide behind an object, far way from Krosis and shoot arrows at him after he shoots his fireball at me. Elven Bow with Falmer arrows, around 24 per hit. Absolutely NO damage AT ALL. Nothing. I spent around 60 arrows, got a lot of arrows XP for hitting the arrows but and his health bar didn't nudge.

So I decided to I FUS-RO-DAH krosis down a cliff to the right of the word wall and got him stuck down there. Once he was there only ice spears can produce damage on him. But once he gets to about 25% health left he starts to move too often, too fast and use too much his shield. Ice spears become useless. From then on Krosis stop using the fireball staff and start to shoot ice spears at me. These ice spears cost about 30-40% of my 200 health per hit. The whole time he was down, arrows have absolutely no effect at all, even when they hit real good. Again I'm getting XP for landing hits with arrows but no damage to Krosis' health bar whatsoever.

I got to a point where I'm seeing "my" Krosis as either a(nother) Glitch on a Bethesda game or an extremelly bad and amateur "boss" design. Coming from Bethesda I'm a firmer believer of the first option.

BUT, I also assume that the problem may be me. Sometimes we get so frustrated with some part of a game we get stuck at that we lose perspective of the real problem we're facing.

So I would appreciate any help. Please notice that once Skyrim allows us to deeply customize our character's strenghts and weaknesses, not everybody's strategy to kill Krosis will be valid for my case. That's why I carfully described my character and companion at the beginning of the post. Telling me how did you beat Krosis as a level 80 Wizard or a level 10 thief would be entertaining to me, but not much of a help.

Please gimme some light here as I really wants Krosis' staff and mask!

Run away, and come back to fight another day!

Took me a long time to kill this foe, but when I did it was worth it. I had a lot of health/magicka potions and just drank them as needed while spamming him with firebolts until his health was low enough and killed him the rest of the way with Dawnbreaker.

Do you have companions?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L45eOnstbfk

I Wabbajack'd him to death. Try getting him on up-hill n you on a steep downhill. Dodge his fireballs and shoot magic/arrows.

This was AWESOME! Great ideas like summon several helpers and . Are those dogs/wolfs the familiars that we can conjure or just passing by wolves?

Throw on full heavy armor and a 2 handed battleaxe!! Well that's how I did it at least

That sounds like the problem right there.

Come back after 10 levels at the very least!

Bested him with my level 11 mage on Expert. What I used:

- Conjuration for Flame Atronach
- Destruction for Fire spells [ The one for apprentice ]
- Using terrain to my advantage. To dodge his fireballs, I simply used terrain that sloped downwards so if he missed his fireball, it would fly past me instead of exploding near me.
- Lots of potions.

Good luck!

I just ran into Krosis myself (level 13 altmer Icemage/Necromancer).

I didn't find him that terrible, as you can see when he does fireball and if you jump and move you can avoid most of the damage, by that time Lydia stands up and distracts him and I dualcast some Ice Spears till he is near the cliff, then FUS ROH DAH off the edge and more ice spears.

However I did jump down to loot him and died from fall damage, ha to reload and fight him again.

yeah they are my dogs. But you can use the animal shout have some animals help you. Or summoning familiars.
Some days I just play as a healer and let them do all the damage while I heal them

Man, I spent a good part of last night trying to defeat that SOB. Especially svcked cause right after I killed the dragon he popped his ugly head out and then took mine. Save game save game save game!!! Doh! Do as the other guy said...run away and come back and fight another day, I did and I'm still alive! Yay!

Sounds awesome but I specialized in one-handed combat since the beginning. So my 2 handed is pretty weak...


Mind to develop where the problem is? Imperial, Battlemage, level 17 or what combination? Also why is this holding me down. Thanks!


Thought about that but lots of people beat Krosis while unde level 15 though...


Great tips. But as a mage you should have way more Magicka than me as a battlemage. I need to get close to him to get good use of my single handed weapon skills....

To fight him directly at level 17 can be dangerous. You may want to come back later, or try and tell Lydia to wait somewhere, then you attack with your Destruction spells and then run back to Lydia when you need support. That way you can use magic damage without risking Lydia's death, but still have her nearby for support. That is, if he is the one I am thinking of, and is situated on a mountain dragon altar, and not in some tomb?

I managed to take him out with two stealth dagger strikes, but you probably don't have that option if you are playing a battlemage.

Strongest Dragon Priest in the game woops my level 17 ass. Must be a glitch, duh.

I was level 18 when I first beat him, but in the process my npc companion died. It was a really long fight for me. So I decided to just come back later when I was a bit more stronger.
You need to use fire res potions and just run around and cast spells on him and be ready to heal yourself alot. Let your npc do the tanking and get the aggro. If he comes to attack you, you need to RUN.
You wont be able to take his fireballs at that level. In the mean time your companion will get up and help him heal up a bit and keep doing that. Will be a long fight but worth it, tough fights are the best!

True. In fact, I never invested a single point into Health/Stamina. Everything went full Magicka. Also, a ring and a circlet to fortify my Magicka. Augmented with Elven boots that deflect 25% fire + simple elven gloves.

An apprentice robe that allows to use Destruction with 15% less cost + 75% Magicka regeneration. BUT, regeneration rate during combat is horribly gimped, hence why I still need some potions or else I will be running around doing nothing and running more risk of being killed.

how can he (besides Barbas and the horse have two other companions plus an atronach?

I was around level 18 when I ran into him. He turned my summons against me (Fire Atronach) and my spells were doing next to no damage on him. I was running around trying to get away from my own summons when I bumped into his treasure chest and took a quick peak just to pause the action. For me, it had a glass bow in there. I had no archery skill, but did have some arrows, so that's what I used and that's what I beat him with. Really it was a fluke because I was basically running around in a panic getting my butt handed to me until I fluked out and got that bow.

Summon the atronach, get a follower, horse follows you up, and you can get a dog too (have a dog and follower at the same time)

krosis svcks
I came at their at a pretty low level and let my follower and summon do most of the work while I took cheap shots from a distance to stagger him

Great insights. Thanks!


You either didn't read my whole post or wasn't able to understand my "bad English". You answer makes absolutely no sense in the context here.


Great tips. I'm about to let him go for a while and comeback once I'm higher level. I'm very close to end the main quest, over 40 hours in but at level 17 only. I really do not enjoy grinding for the sake of leveling up. I prefer to level up "organically" as I like to describe. I see some people with 10 hours in at level 30 and that makes me cringe. This amount of grinding would be torture for me.

I have killed him on two characters.

1st I conjured one dremora lord and he killed him by himself (on master), considering that dremora lords don't take much damage from fire.
2nd I just sneak one hit killed him when he came out of his coffin.

Remember the resistance bug that some people (including me ) have at the moment, so the flame resistant boots won't do anything. I would recommend doing the mara quest that gets you +15 magic resist, maybe make some fire/magic resist potions, find the lord stone which gives you 25% magic resist + 50 armor rating and finally maybe get some of the alteration perks that give you magic resist. Then wait until the next patch (this week IIRC) which will hopefully sort out the resist problem.

Are you familiar with Aranea Ienith?
She's a companion you get from Azura.


She can solo him pretty easily, on master difficulty even.
I had her do all the work while I hid behind the word wall.