Hey guys, I'm a total newbie to The Elder Scrolls, and when I had to pick
a race, I chose Dark Elf because they look cool.

I'm level 13 now, and I've been encountering some problems. Wide-range combat is
fine; I use my bow and arrow, which is my favorite weapon in the whole game.

However, after toying around with some of the options for close-range combat, I decided
to use Flames + a shield. I also prefer using Heavy Armor, because of its higher rating.
However, I am extremely weak in close-range combat; I just take too much damage, and
don't deal enough of it. I die a whole lot, and have to waste my potions to stay alive in battles.

Should I switch to One-Handed weapons? Should I use Light Armor? What can I do to make
my character last longer in combat? I should add that I don't have a follower right now, my
last one died. Where can I get this Lydia that everyone's talking about, anyway?

Please help me out here.

Well, first, when you say "flames", do you mean the Flames spell? The one from the start of the game? If so, that won't do much at level 13, go to the college of winterhold and buy new spells.

I find destruction and archery a bit redundant, since they're both long range combat skills. Perhaps you could try one handed weapons instead, if you want (and if you haven't put perks in destruction yet). A good alternative to a melee combat skill is a crowd control skill, so enemies don't even get into melee in the first place; in that, illusion and conjuration are the best choices.

On the other hand, investing in destruction gives you a more powerful attack against enemy mages, as you can use shock spells to keep the out of magicka. If you plan on getting in melee range at all, heavy armor is best. Time your blocks well and invest a bit in the block tree. Try using a (higher level) frost spell in the other hand instead, that will make fighting melee enemies easier, as it drains their stamina. If you're not using melee weapons, you don't need a lot of stamina, so you can focus on health and a bit of magicka. Also, get the first perk in restoration and switch your destruction spell for a healing spell when things get tough.

First off, a Dark Elf is generally use by a player that wants to exceed in stealth, thieving, etc and should be using light armor for these reasons. Secondly, if it's the flame spell you got at the beginning it's probably too weak to do any real damage. I would recommend getting a one handed weapons to use with your shield.

Maybe a flame spell and a healing spell would be better than the shield?
Or if you are close enough to need a shield, a one handed weapon makes more sense. A poisoned,smithing improved, enchanted weapon goes a long way.
Have you smithed and enchanted your armour? Fortify health can go a long way toward your survivabilty.
The flames spell can still cut it for a while, but to keep up you need the destruction dual wielding, and augmented flames perks.
Even heavy armour needs a few perks invested to get the best protection.

Thanks for the advice! The only real problem with the standard Restoration spell is that it
takes pretty long to heal yourself, especially when you only have one hand.

Where can I get "crowd control" spells? Also, you said "If you plan on getting in melee range at all..."
Can I really stay out of melee range?

I just fought a Bandit enemy with strong armor and a Greatsword, and I had to use all my
healing potions to survive I used my shield, mace, and heavy armor, all of which have a couple
of perks to support them, but his attacks did a lot of damage. Draining his stamina sounds like a good
idea, but I don't have any frost spells.

And to Woe is Adam: I do use sneak a lot, especially with my bow and arrow. However, why would
Light Armor be better with sneak? Does it make less noise? Does it even make you faster when wearing
it?

EDIT: I've invested two perks into Destruction: the first one, and the one that makes Fire spells 25% stronger.

You will sneak better, and move a little faster, in light armour. If the basic spells aren't cutting it anymore, time to upgrade. The best ones are all in the College, but vendors will stock the apprentice spells. Don't forget a little alchemy can massively up your stock of healing potions.

dunmer are usually used as battlemages.

What do you mean by 'battlemage'?

Destruction does poor damage when used with only one hand. It does poor damage in general, but its only saving grace is the stagger from dual wielding spells with a perk.

If you want to use destruction, and be effective with it, you probably shouldn't use a shield while casting and instead just use two hands.

The most important perks to take for destruction will be novice, apprentice, dual casting, and impact. Without those you probably won't have much luck with it.
I'd also recommend against using frost, fire and shock are much better and less is resistant to those.

I would recommend just sticking to archery personally, until you learn the game better. Early on, if you focus on too many damage skills you just end up being mediocre with all of them instead of good in one.

The problem with using dual Destruction is always that I get attacked while I am defenseless.

My first character was a Dunmer, and I thought somewhat as you do. After a while I realised that using a spell and a shield, or a sword and a spell, just isn't that effective after about level 10, because of the lack of destruction scaling. And if you're using archery (which you are), there's not much point in using ranged destruction spells either. I spent a few perks in destruction (which is very tempting, because of the intial bonus to destruction Dunmer get), and I basically stopped using it entirely, but that didn't seem to matter much. To be honest, playing on adept, you can happily waste quite a lot of perks and still have little difficulty in dispatching your enemies.

I found using a one-handed weapon and a shield pretty effective. Do make sure that you're timing your blocks correctly (it took me a while to get the hang of this). Block, bash, power attack. Once you get power bash, you can keep a single opponent constantly staggered (aka 'stun-locked').

You get Lydia by following the main quest chain to Whiterun and killing the dragon there (the quest called 'Dragon Rising'). It's pretty easy to kill (despite being a dragon) because you get Irileth and a bunch of guards to help you. Once you've completed that quest (and spoken to the Jarl), Lydia will be in Dragonsreach (the Jarl's palace in Whiterun), until you buy the Whiterun house, when she'll move in there. Just find her in either location and ask her to come with you. There are also plenty of other characters who are willing to follow you, either for gold, or once you've done them a favour, e.g. there's a mercenary in the Drunken Huntsman in Whiterun.

As for armor: I would keep the heavy armor if you plan on focussing on hand-to-hand combat, but if you want to kill things with your bow, switch to light armor and use stealth. Light armor is quieter than heavy armor.

Bear in mind that some enemies are just strong - some scale with your level, but some don't. So if you're struggling with killing a bandit leader, it may be wise to sprint out, and come back when you're stronger.

There are lots of way of staying out of melee range: (i) get a companion and hide behind them, (ii) summon an atronach and hide behind it, (iii) raise a zombie and hide behind it, (iv) use fear type spells to make your enemies run away or calm type spells to make them non hostile (aka 'crowd control'), (iv) use frost spells to slow your enemies and then use your superior mobility to prevent them from getting near you (aka 'kiting'), (vi) use stealth. There are also various things you can do with shouts.

A couple of people raised the question of what the natural play-style for a Dunmer would be. IMO, it's something of a mixed bag. The initial +10 to destruction suggests using destruction magic, and with the fire-resistance and flame-cloak abilities, there's a natural synergy with fire magic, but bonuses to illusion, light armor and sneak suggest a stealth character, who'll have no real use for destruction magic.

(Edit: One other thing - if you're planning on becoming a stealth archer, you should probably not take a companion. Most companions have poor stealth abilities, and even those who are stealthy tend to charge in once the enemy is engaged, and then they block your shot.)

On my current game as a dunmer assassin, I use a dagger in right and and illusion in my left with light armor. If enemies get to close for comfort, I just cast a fear spell on them. You could try investing some perks in illusion and using spells that control your enemies hostility.

To Ytheria:
This was probably the most helpful reply yet!

Thanks for informing me that some enemies do not scale with your level— I struggled especially
with Bandit Leaders and Giants.

Also, I already had Jenassa, the mercenary you mentioned above. She died.

To iiStEaLXx:
I don't have any illusion spells yet, but I'll go buy some soon. But why would you use a dagger? Is the
hitting speed faster compared to swords/maces/axes?

IMHO, Dark Elfs are THE best Spellsword-esque character you can run with. (aka Paladin (Magic/Blades))

I myself go with the following on my DE:

Illusion
Destruction
Light Armor
One-Handed
Sneak (only if you go Dual-Wielding, and DON'T use Destruction)

Heavy Armor's too much for them IMHO. And I never want to see a Dark Elf using a Bow. When I think Bow.. I think Bosmer. When I think Dark Elf, I think Swords and Magic. That simple.

You've really had to have played Oblivion (AT LEAST) to understand and grasp what each Race is specifically better at then the others. And also just wing it bro.. you'll never know what works for you unless you try it?

First off, you need to settle on your choices, so you can get more focused advice after that. Keep 3 basic things in mind when choosing your skills: Damage, Survival and a "backup".

How do you want to deal damage? Do you like fighting at range, or do you prefer close, melee range combat? This is very important, as your survival skills should be chosen with your damage skills in mind.

How are you going to make sure you kill your enemies before they kill you? You can choose heavy armor or alteration shield spells and take the damage up front. You can choose sneak or illusion (or both) and kill the enemies before they react, without having to fight in melee range and fleeing (or invisibility) if detected. You could use conjuration to create a distraction while you kill the enemies and they are focused on your summons. Or the Impact perk and dual cast destruction, so they never get to you.

And what if all that fails? You should always have a plan B ready. When things get ugly, you could use restoration to heal yourself, or restore health and magicka through alchemy potions, or use invisibility (illusion), etc.

Choose between all that, and you will be able to get more specific advice on your skill choices. If you want to keep archery, ok. But if you're going for heavy armor, sneak is not a good idea (sneak before the opening shot anyway for the damage bonus). Then you will need a way to keep yourself alive in melee. You could use illusion if you want, but invisibility in particular will not be very effective in heavy armor and complements sneaking better. You could use dual cast impact perk destruction spells to keep the enemy at bay, but then you will need either points into magicka or enchanting. If you're choosing magic, increasing magicka or enchanting for a single school seems like a waste, so you could get conjuration too, as it doesn't require a lot of perks. If you prefer your shield and melee combat, honestly a one handed weapon would be better. Or you could go the sneaking route if you like it, but then drop the heavy armor and get illusion (if you're going for magic).

You have a lot of choices. Pick what seems fun to you, what you like playing. Good luck and have fun.

The dagger is to use with sneaking, as it gets a 15x damage bonus with perks in sneaking (30x with dark brotherhood gloves) on your sneak attacks. Sneak+daggers+illusion is a very powerful combo, but so is heavy armor, shield and weapon, etc. If you don't like sneaking, don't get it, you don't need it. Just get some other kind of defense (like heavy armor). But just remember to sneak before using your first shot on someone (if they haven't seen you yet), even if you don't sneak, because you still get a bonus to your attack.

I'm playing a Dunmer spellsword and am having the same problem with things like bandit bosses with two-handed weapons. Mainly because I just svck at melee combat! I try to stay out of reach (light armor) and just blast with the flames, which seem to still be effective for me at level 13. My Dwarven mace is better though. I won't use shields because I'm trying to stay in the spirit of the spellsword archetype, which is sword in one hand, spell in the other, thus no blocking. But I'm thinking of dropping the spell and blocking/bashing with the mace when facing 2-handers. I also use bows, because they're so effective. Usually just a few shots, then I wade in with my mace and flames. I've used the Ancestor's Wrath once, to good effect, but it's slow to activate, so when you're already nearly dead from 3 bandits hacking on you is not the time to use it.

You have to use everything, or skills like 1-handed can lag behind and leave you in trouble. Also look for armor that supports your magicka. I have hide armor that reduces magicka cost for destruction and a hide helmet that adds 30 magicka. I never seem to run out in combat, and I can usually fully heal myself. You can buy stuff like this, but I stripped both of these items off bandits, which is much better. Anyway, I'm still pretty low level, so I don't know if this will be a good character for the long term. But I'm having fun.

Race, in this game has nothing to do with what your more proficent at... aside from at the start of the game.