So I've been playing for about 35 hours and I have completed 21 normal quests and about 50 miscellanious quests, I decide to give the Mage College quest line a go and I get up to Labrynthian and progress through the dungeon all fine and danndy, enemies pose a nice challenge, have to guzzle a few potions here and there especially when facing the guy guarding the Dragon Shout but when I reach the final enemy in the dungeon I find that my attacks do diddly squat against him and his attacks do gargantuan damage to me.

How am I meant to get past that? Find thunder resistant equipment because that's the type of attacks he uses? (Haven't seen any as far as I know during my journey around Skyrim) Or am I expected to run away and level up 5 or 10 times and then come back? It's just that normal enemies are somewhat easy yet boss enemies are like a solid Dragonbone wall impeding your progress. In Oblivion Boss enemies are harder then normal enemies but not rediculously so!

Also I'm a melee character and for some reason my weapon doesn't glow while in that dungeon... also various places in the dungeon reducedd my Magicka to 0 though that's less harmful to me. I made sure my weapon was charged up from soul gems and it still wasn't glowing :/

that dungeon is scripted to deplete your manna also that boss's staff 1st eats manna then absorbs health so just keep your manna up use shouts and keep as far away from it as possible or go out make a weapon of absorb life and just unlease your fury onto it like I did ...

Oooh, okay then. That makes sense I guess.

Hide and kill him with your bow&arrows. If I remember right, if you hid between the rocks and shot an arrow every now and then, he'll die in about 40 minutes and you wouldn't even get one scratch.

You can also just turn down the difficulty for a fight like this. Since you consider the boss to already be overpowered then making it easier shouldn't feel like a 'cheat.'

my brother killed him in 5 minutes. there was a hitbox glitch where the staff of magnus wouldn't hit him (lucky SOAB)

there's shock resist boots in the (ex) arch-mages quarters, near the bed. I found them on the chest to the left of the bed.

And it's a dragon priest, they are always at level 50, no matter what level you are. get ready for a long fight.

Toughest guy in the game so far for me, that's the one with the two mages thralling over him or whatever they are doing with a barrier before the fight? That who you're talking about? I died several times with my paladin.

Just bring lots of potions and hit and run. Unload your biggest bombs and seek shelter. Rinse and repeat.

just don't complain the game is too easy after you do that

Ah okay so yeah I'm totally not used to these scripted boss fights (Was there ever such a boss fight in Oblivion?). With this knowledge the fight became significantly easier and I've just killed him " Thanks! Maybe next time I should just ask for advice instead of rambling on >.>

btw I'm playing on Adept difficulty and wouldn't want to lower it below that.

If your level isn't high enough ( i did Labyrnthian at 40+) it will be lots harder. I defeated Morokei in about a minute.....

Plan your potions and weapons carefully and just be ready to strike. I did it melee, with poisoned daggers and swords..... I also have Aela as a follower and she is great at doing ranged attacks with her bow. Which I upgraded all her items, so she is a real bad a$$!

I did it at just under level 30 at Adept difficulty and by keeping my Mana from being drained the fight was over pretty quick and easily. If you don't keep your mana up you yourself die realy fast.

Boss battles tend to still revolve around thee olde rpg mechanics of health and stats, etc.. Dragons are a bit different, but not much. An entertaining boss battle in other games revolves around figuring out their patterns, and there are few that operate like that here. It's just one of those things Bethesda hasn't moved towards. I wouldn't exactly say it's bad. Just that they're in a heavy RPG mindset.

I did this quest a few nights ago and it was one of the most satisfying battles I've had yet. Compared to other "boss" battles, it just seemed to have more thought put into it. Reminiscent of those old Nintendo games where you had to figure out the secret for defeating the boss. Here's how I handled it:

While I do tend to prefer that bosses provide challenge through tactics and whatnot rather than damage and HP, I'm actually glad Bethesda has not moved in the directions of some of the bosses you're talking about, as they combine the two for maximum irritation factor rather than using one or the other. Then again, I have other games I can play if I want insane boss fights, so I like having at least one where they're relatively easy.

I took him out melee around mid 30s on Adept. I don't recall the fight being particularly difficult. I had the "Aura" shout which I used to show me where every enemy was. Then again I kind of "power leveled" and planned the perks around my playing style (sneak around and assassinate as many minions before making myself known). Muffle boots from the DB didn't hurt. I assassinated one of the main minions protecting the boss which made it easy. Unrelenting Force then bum rush in to beat the crap out of him while he's down, Keep him cramped and shield bash between power attacks. Then back off quickly if he recovers. I went through a lot of heal potions and stamina potions, and had to spend a bundle replenishing them at the vendors before I returned to the college. I'd found a glass shield with 50% shock resistance, and that saved my butt. Still it was a tough fight, nothing like what's coming up later, but tough.

Yeah, Mirabelle said something about this place and I said, "But I'm going on vacation tomorrow. I put it on Savros' calender a month ago..."

*whew!*

Think I'll take some personal days and maybe even a leave of absence for... 10 levels or so.

I used the catwalk above him and since I had the rune perk I could cast lightning runes next to him then run to the other end. When he came up I went down and hid until he came back down. Took a good 20 minutes, think I was high 20's low 30's at the time.

hes a level 50 named boss monster, you should expect a huge challenge. however, it is possible to beat him as early as level 7 on master difficulty using certain somewhat cheesy tactics.

Whats with the difficulty everyone seems to have with it? Everone plays on Master difficulty? Once I knew to keep my Magicka high it became a cynch and beat it first try. Also what's the problems with the 2 guys that are charging up the boss or imprisoning/draining him or whatever? They don't do anything to me unless I walk right up to them and either try to talk to them or attack them at which point they fight me, both only attack me one at a time after I interrupt/talk to them and both die extremely easily.

What do the 2 mages DO to Morokei? To me it looks like they're either powering him up or keeping him imprisoned/draining his power for there own uses as Morokei doesn't attack until you kill one of the mages which weakens the glowy effect around Morokei.

from what I understand it was two of the mages from the mage college who were imprisoned there (probably by the arch-mage) to hold morokei there forever, at least that's what it seemed like to me.

either way, I found that boss to be the easiest one yet, he never hit me and went own in a mere three shots, although I was playing a sneak archer at the time, so that may have something to do with it.

The two mages are there to keep him imprisoned. They are basically on the side of the good guys, however, in order to complete the quest they have to die. I back-stabbed both then sneaked up on the Man and gave him a demonstration of dual wielding daggers from the rear. One of the easiest Dragon-Priests to take down, I thought - all this preserving mana and needing lots of potions stuff is beyond me.

If you stop and listen to the ghosts as you go through it is explained a bit, then after you kill him another ghosts pops up to explain he sacrifced them to entrap him in that dungeon. I haven't tried but I am not sure they need to die. Only went through it with one character who killed those two first, anyone not kill them?

I agree wth Franpa's obesrvations completely . Playing a mage on Adept svcks, the difficulty is all over the place. Being a mage I thought I'd start with the WInterhold Quests, so I ended up at Labyrinthian when I was still level 12 or so....

I was certainly glad Bethesda AT LEAST had the mercy to include a quick exit point. So yeah, I ditched that afer about 20 attempts and went back when I was level 30, and it was still tricky until i figured that this guy does tend to stick to fixed routes, at least if you stay on the top ledge where the mages were. Just blasted him with staves and destruction. If you use any kind of conjured ally, he will turn it against you!


I say it is bad, because the game is heavily live-combat-oriented, and the RPG mindset just gets in the way of any satisfying action. Combat is terrible in Skyrim, and it is not possible to go through the game without a lot of it . The combat animations are jerky, followers always get in the way, friendly fire ("realistic")... They tried to shoot a bit too high there, and all the attempts at realism just make combat a chore. Especially if you don't go for a warrior build.

As a mage you are forced to continually interrupt the action to navigate through the cludgy inventory menus to find your potions, making sure you don't select a Poison instead, think about what type of elemental resistance you may need, etc etc.... All this thinking just kills the flow of the action, where combat requires reflexes and good timing. Adrenaline flow is rudely interrupted!

Most powerful attacks do not happen until after you've released the attack key, and only if you hold it down for a second first.... Spell casting gets interrupted if you get hit....You can stand face to face with an enemy and slash at him and not make a hit because you were looking slightly off to side of his head, so the crosshair was not touching him. This is truly pathetic, and shows a complete lack of understanding of what makes good action in video games. I understand them wanting to prevent rapid auto-fire, but the correct way to do it is that the first attack happens instantly , and THEN there is a waiting time before you can slash or shoot again.

From sheathed to fire, you have to hit attack 2 or sometime 3 times....
Hotkey confusion: hitting a hotkey twice UNEQUIPS your weapon, living you barehanded in the middle of battle. . . NICE....

The kind of logic behind this is really foreign to any sort of live action game- it belongs to turn-based board games FFS!

Not too mention the physics... ouch.... everybody but your character seems to fly over the ground on turbo roller skates when they're charging. . .

I could carry on but it's probably all been moaned about before..

Maybe I got spoiled because i got onto Skyrim after trying out Assassin's Creed 2 and Batman Arkham Asylum, both of which have very excellent live combat that you can actually enjoy and learn, become skilled in. Looking forward to a mod that lets you unhook the crosshairs from camera view and lock them onto enemies!!! PLEASE!!!!

The Staff of Jyrik Galduarson from Saarthal is very helpful as it does 25 dmg and drains 50 mana per hit...plus you can cast it rapidly, unlike other staves or spells. You will drain his mana in no time if you use this stave.

Huh. I actually had the opposite problem - decent dungeon crawl, boss was a push over. He never got an attack off, because I just stood next to his bubble and told my companion to whack the guys keeping him prisoner. As soon as the bubble went down, I did a freeze-time shout, stepped up to masky-boy, and cut him down before he could go into scoot-and-shoot mode.
Of course, I also used exactly two spells to get my position as Arch Mage. One was for the "entrance exam", and I need a potion to boost my Magika high enough to cast that one. The other was the ward spell in Tolfdirs class, and he had to teach me that. The only magic I do is enchanting (alchemy isn't technically magic, which is why the college doesn't have a faculty member who teaches it).