Here's the scenario, I'm running around near Riften on my sword and board warrior leveling myself up to 30 before I jump into caves or start any quests. I do this for all my characters, run the roads, kill mercs, bandits, thieves, assassins and the random animals that spawn near the road and the odd giant here and there. I also clear the 'outside' of ruins and forts etc, but I never go in them until I hit lvl 30.

Anyway I'm running along the road when the combat music starts playing, I quickly spin around to see where the red is and notice 3 figures engaged in a fight (it's nightime so couldn't see who it was) I draw my dwarven sword and cautiously make my way over to observe the battle and then finish off the victor. I soon discover it's two Vigilants of Stendar fighting an ancient vampire. Great I think I remeber all to well the horrors and difficulty I had beating one of these guys on my 2h Orc wielding an ebony hammer. The vampire beats both the vigilants (something I've never seen another npc able to do I might add) and promplty raise them to come fight me.

Easy enough, their blows land harmless against my shield as I bash them to stagger and then finish them both off, first one then the next. I then save the game, cause from past experience I'm almost certain I'll be taking a dirt nap. I rush in shield raised (have the perk so speed isn't reduced, plus the 50% reduction from elemental damage) I get up to the guy bash him while he does his drain health spell, but anyone who has played a warrior knows you can't bash forever cause you'll drain stamina way to fast, plus he's shooting giant icicles at me so that's also a stamina drain, but as a nord I can handle those cause of the resist.

My question is, how much health does the vampire drain health spell take? I've played a stage 4 vampire and there's no way this ancient vampire has the same spell, he just drains the life away from me frightenly fast. Hello dirt nap. Second attempt I do the same thing and fail, thrid attempt same results. I then decide to just let him waste his magic by shooting ice at me and the odd electricity bolt as I dance around like I'm Lord of the Dance. I do this for a good 10 minutes or so and there seems to be no slowing in his casting. he has to run out of magic eventually right?

After several failed attempts at this I decide to pull out the bow, and wouldn't you know it the second I do that sob charges into melee range. Don't get me wrong, I love that part.. that's a smart AI right there. So bow is pretty much out at this point, and I really hate running away like a sally so a few questions.

Does anyone know how much magic these guys have and if it's possible to make them use it all, thus making them unable to use the drain life spell?

Speaking of the drain life spell, how much health does it actually take, seems much more than the 4 or 5 the player is able to pull at stage 4 vampirism?

This guy is seriously kicking my teeth in, the only way I was able to beat one with my orc was I had an obscene amount of health and stamina potions on me and even then it was a close fight. Anyone have some good tactics that don't involve a serious amount of cheese?

Thanks, my apologies for the book!

Simple. Get some good gears.
That solves any kind of problems in this game.

(In order to get some capable equipments, you might have to level up your smithing, enchanting and alchemy to maximum.)

Yeah I always struggle with vampires and that damn spell. Best luck I've had is use a paralysis poison, will drop him for a couple seconds and let you get some hits in and heavy strikes with a 1h mace will stagger them good and interrupt that horse[censored]. As far as draining the mana when I was on my lowly thief getting [censored] by lower level vamps I could never get them to run out if mana so I doubt you'll get a big badass vamp too.

Ancient Vampires have the following stats: 583 Health, 348 Magicka, and Stamina 224. They wield either a 1H Sword or 1H Axe. They wear either Mage Robes or Clothing + Armored bots. They cast the following spells: Vampire Drain Life, Invisibility, Ice Spike, Lightning, and Revenant. They have the following attributes 50% Resist Frost, 50% Weak to Fire, Damage from Sunlight, +15 Unarmed Damage.

It sounds like your Magic Resistance is too low to be tangling with powerful casters. Since Vampire Drain Life is channeled, the easiest way for you beat this Ancient Vampire is probably to eat some Vegetable Soup; you'll be able to chain Bash him to death.

Thing is it takes time to level these 3 skills (enchant, alchemy especially ) , and by doing this he will gain some levels so the AI will scale and be stronger

What he need is resist magic gear , cause even with excellent armour and weapon , that doesn't help against drain life powers of the AI and magic in general

If you are weak in enchanting and don't feel like powerleveling it for several hours , you can still try to use enchanted sword with fire dmg and use a weakness to fire poison , it should work well on vampires who are vulnerable to fire , hoping that you can kill him before he drains your health bar

Otherwise , use a companion who uses fire (there's one at Riften's inn ) and fight the vamp at range with poisons or use scrolls

I actually have a character where I've got both enchanting and smithing maxed. I was trying to avoid that this playthrough and just use the gear I've aquired from killing mercs, thalmor and Imperials (I like to free my nordic brethren who are in bondage) naturally the military personnel escorting them don't take kindly to this.

My plan was to hit 30, then go grab me the atronach stone for some magic resist, coupled with the resist my shield gives me from elemental damage (blocking perk) I figured I'd be pretty solid in terms of magic resist. I haven't done the math or anything for it so it's possible I'm being naive.

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll sit down for a nice bowl of soup in the middle of the fight or do some more Lord of the Dance moves and mesmerize him with my fancy footwork! perhaps I just wasn't waiting long enough for his mana to run out. I'll post later to let you know how it went.

Thanks again!

Magicka Absorption can cause the buff from Quick Reflexes to fail. It's also all or nothing, so it's not a reliable alterative to Magic Resistance.

If you can't customize your gear to increase Magic Resistance, have you considered getting Spell Breaker? It's arguably the best shield in the game, and would make any caster a breeze.

Edit: Other options for increasing Magic Resistance that don't require crafting: (1) Lord Stone; (2) Agent of Mara buff; (3) 3/3 Magic Resistance in Alteration. Those three alone will get you up to 70% Magic Resistance, which is only 15% shy of the cap.

In my experience the power levels you get from Enchant, Alchemy, and Smithing scales up more quickly than the AI does. [Note I was being good, got bored waiting for 1.2 to be fixed, finished maxing out my skills, and broke my own game by becoming overpowered ....]

If the caller doesn't want to break their own game I like your advice ... Resistance gear & overall the best stuff he can find, buy, smith, or enchant is always a good idea.

When I ran into tough guys I couldn't handle a companion certainly helped out tons ....

Fus Roh Dah.

it's a vamp....fire. fire anything. scroll. spell (ok, maybe not for the warrior). shout. previously found weapons. poisons.

but ya...a good paralyze will do the trick.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't Vampires 100% immune to disease and poison? If that's true, poisons won't work. (I'm fairly sure all undead are immune to poisons.)

Player may gain some disease/ poison resist after becoming a vampire, but according most online sources cite 50% Frost as their only resistance.

Draugr and other types of undead are immune to poison, but not disease. Vampires are classifed as undead for the Detect Life/ Undead distinction, but are otherwise considered NPCs. They're susceptible to poison.

As far as I know all undead are immune to poison but they can't take fire.

As 30th level you should have some magic weapon that drains magika. frost is good too.

I would use that in combination with fire and my companion beating their brains in too.

don't forget to use your SHOUT. even relentless force level 1 can stagger them up close.

Never had an issue with these.

Sneak+Good Bow and Arrows+Drink True Shot Potion+High Poison Potion -equals-----a sneak attack for"omg damage" on a very stay dead vampire

I haven't touched the main quest yet so I don't have this shout, good for future use though when I do end up getting the shout and run into another ancient vamp.

I was apprehensive about using any kind of magic on my warrior because I felt it would break the rp for him. I may have to consider carrying around a few fire damage/paralysis scrolls just for these occassions though. Needless to say I wasn't really prepared to run into a vampire an ancient one at that during my road running and random roaming.

I'm only level 25 and haven't touched the main quest so I don't have any shouts. I do plan on using them though when I do have access. I travel light so I typically don't have much in the way of weapons on me, haven't found many enchanted weapons because I haven't been dungeon diving yet, just road running and wandering. The one weapon I did find was an orcish sword with frost damage on it, which wasn't bad but as I was unprepared I had left this weapon in the barrels outside the blacksmith in Whiterun as I haven't gotten the house yet.

My sneak skill is still 15 maybe 16 as I embrace the warrior mentality and don't sneak. The Bow is out because I can't sneak and also whenever I pull out my backup bow he immediately charges me (which is awesome I think) I also want to avoid the sneak/bow thing since I get plenty of this on my assassin character. It works splendidly though and I am missing it for this particular fight that's for sure


Just for some clarification. I run the roads and randomly wander in the wilderness until I'm level 30. I'm probably a bit OCD but I don't like starting quests until I'm that level because I feel they are more of a challenge to me. Anyway shouts are out as I haven't touched the main quest, and I don't have a lot of things mentioned availiable because I was totally unprepared to come across this guy (I didn't think Ancients started showing up till lvl 30) all these are good suggestions and I'll definitely have to sacrifice some carry room just so I'm better suited for these encounters.

As promised I'll report how the fight was eventually won. I decided to give the 'dodge and wait for him to run out magic' game again mainly because I had no fire scrolls whatsoever, I have the food items to make the various stamina soups, yet stupidly I didn't make any before I set out on my journey. I also had left the sole enchanted weapon I found at home (the barrel) because I didn't want the extra weight, and I hadn't run into anything that my dwarven sword couldn't cut down. Obviously there was a serious lack of preparation on my part here, and having survived the battle with his life my Nord will now treat items such as these like the american express card (never leave home without it).

The moons must have aligned... errr set for me during this partcular fight because after another 15 - 20 minutes or so timeframe of dodging his attacks with magic, he drew his weapon and charged me. I either got him to use all his magic or he realized the sun was coming up. I had glanced at the time to see how long I had been fighting this guy (in game) and saw it was 7 minutes away from 6 in the morning. Either way he charged me, he had a weapon drawn so no ice spells but his left hand did have the drain life goin. I shield bashed him whenever he did that and normal swings with my sword, I didnt do many power swings as I wanted to conserve stamina to interrupt his drain life. This went on for a little bit with him draining life me staggering with shield bash until eventually I did a spin move that beheaded him.

Moral of the story... be prepared for anything! Needless to say the Shout Fus Roh Dah will come in quite handy to use as a stagger, my nord has taken to keeping scrolls that do fire/paralysis instead of selling them, and rather than being a stickler on carryweight he now carries the frost enchanted orcish sword he liberated from a bandit chief with him wherever he goes.

Thanks for the suggestions on combating him all, I know I was terribly ill prepared to meet this foe as you can tell be me not having pretty much everything that was suggested

All in all though it was a good fight, and went far better than on my 2h orc zerker, if you ignore all the times I died trying different tactics

You should have used ice form shout to paralyze him

then finish him off

Not so much a problem when you are an alchemist armed with resist frost 80%, and you are poisoning him 26 points per second in addition to 150 poison instant poison.

But what you said about him not losing magicka for over 10 minutes, that's terrible.

Interesting...

Vampires are completely immune to poisons in my game, I just now tested it with an paralysis poison, Ancient Volkihar Vampire resisted paralysis poison always pops up in the usual place. Strange.

When talking about poison initially , i was refering to "weakness" poisons ( weakness to fire , weakness to magic mainly , ) and lingering damage posions (like lingering magicka damage for instance ) , if you are competent in alchemy they can be quite powerful .

Didn't try them all on vampires yet , but i 'm pretty sure weakness to fire and weakness to magic at least work on normal vampire , higher tier vamps should not resist it , but i'm not 100% sure though

Yeha it was weird, it wasn't like he was constantly casting at me, but it was a fairly solid stream of icicles coming at me, maybe a second or two delay in between. The other vampires I've fought have always closed to melee range on me right away, which has always been to their detriment. There also seems to be a noticable difference in the 'blooded' vamps drain life spell and the 'ancient' vamp drain life spell. I kind of expect that, but I also thought it would be similar to a player stage 4 vampirism drain life spell, it seems far more powerful for the AI vampires, course maybe my eyes are deceiving me.

I wasn't really aware about posions working that well against vampires I knew they have inherent weakness to fire but I thought they were immune to poison, on second thought maybe that's just disease. Either way I'm about as skilled in alchemy as I am in sneaking soooo yeah

That likely has more to do with Paralysis getting resisted by virtually all high level mobs very frequently.

Online sources list 50% Frost Resistance as the only resistance NPC vampires have in Skyrim.