Skyrim: The Dragonlord

Adventures in Skyrim - spoilers ahead! You can follow the rest of the story here!

Getting artsy with my screencaps! :P

Xuru. I knew that name. The brother of Zuna who I completely forgot to look for after her death. I guess the Thalmor got his hands on him and swayed him to their side. There would be no talking him out of it though, so Twilight, Sofia, Bo, Aurora and I went to face him at his mountainous retreat. He was easy to find with his two dragon allies slaughtering everything in sight. Fireballs began to rain from the sky as I went after the named dragon first. It died pretty quick after I confused it with a Bend Will shout. At the same time  Aurora got blown to smitherines right beside me from a falling fireball.

In the distance I saw a chain of lighting strikes from the sky electrocuting Bo. There was nothing I could do for her but run past to the second dragon and slam it with a one hit kill, before turning to face Xuru. He had just finished running through Twilight with his two handed sword, and then with a small wrist gesture - summoned a brand new dragon instantaneously. Sofia leapt at it to keep it off me while I faced off against the knight landing a number of solid hits. He returned some too, and I needed heal pots after each one I didn't evade.

The showdown!

With perma dragon-aspect active, Xuru managed to fus roh dah me away a good distance. I landed on the corpse of my horse - the one that I thought couldn't die. I got back on my feet to see Xuru facing away from me. At his feet, Sofia's mangled body. She had managed to slay the dragon, but it didn't matter. As he turned to face me simply summoned another one. In a rage I charged twin blades flashing but he parried and disarmed my 900+ damage sword which was subsequently thrown to who knows where with all the explosions and lightning.

He's definitely the toughest non-scripted enemy I've faced!

Against a single blade he was pretty good at parrying, but I knew exactly how to make him drop his guard. I rolled past him and slew the dragon. As expected he did that wrist thing to summon another but by doing so left himself open to the final blow. The next dragon never did arrive. Xuru fell to his knees and collapsed onto the ground, dead. Exhausted, I surveyed the battlefield as the rain stopped.

I was the only one left standing.

Skyrim: Vithdovah

Adventures in Skyrim - spoilers ahead! You can follow the rest of the story here!

Since I couldn't risk melee against Vithdovah, nor could I out potion him given his huge pool of hit points the only strategy was to shoot him down with the exploding arrows, which took a long while! At half health he then decided to turn tail and flee. Having seen this strategy of fleeing and coming back with full HP before I hastily swam after him and fortunately managed to catch up on the mainland where some bandits managed to get his attention, and were in the process of being exploded.

Not willing to let him escape, I made sure to constantly then Dragonrend him to force him on the ground. While this ensured he didn't escape, it also made him much deadlier. Zuna was decimated in the fray so it came down to a one on one battle. Fortunately at that point I had managed to lure the beast into a forest where the tree cluster was too tight for him to spread his wings to take off. The foliage also gave me good cover against his crazy explosive breath.

Because in Skyrim, trees are immune to fire. 
And explosions. And any damage whatsoever.

In the longest dragon fight I've had so far, I finally slew Vithdovah after pelleting him with over 400 explosive arrows. This isn't counting the other explosive arrows Zuna had been shooting, nor whatever the bandits could do to him. With the guardian finally dead, I returned to the little island and found the entrance to the Altar of the Ascended.

The was one soul I particularly enjoyed consuming.

Skyrim: The Deadliest Dragon

Adventures in Skyrim - spoilers ahead! You can follow the rest of the story here!

Turns out I had missed one of the ascended, a blood marked zealot who wasn't really anything special. Zuna took care of him while I executed his bandit buddies. He did have a book marking the location of the ascended shrine though again hidden on an isle in the North sea. Must be the spawning ground of crazy up there. Upon our arrival we were greeted by the familiar roar of a dragon - Vithdovah the bombardier and HP sponge. Can you tell I'm making up their titles? Fun fact: This is now the dragon who has killed me the most times.

If only I could ram it with this boat.

Since the shrine is on a tiny isle, Vithdovah's usual attacks were to stay in the air and explode the ground beneath. Competent adventurers like myself would only get minor damage from this while side stepping. This is actually much worse when he is landed as I don't think you can fully avoid the rapid fire exploding spheres he spits out from close up. Still a little less painful than Auszeimrahgol's though.

Aiming through explosions is pretty tough.

His most powerful skill was that if I attacked him up close - I would instantly die. And not the "my health drops really quickly but I have time to press I to open the inventory screen to effectively pause and consume health pots" type with the previous dragons. Nope. One second you are alive, the next second you are dead. It took me awhile to realize the reason for this. In short - he reflects ALL melee damage. So yeah, power striking with a 900+ damage sword and a 600+ damage dragon slaying katana at the same time was killing me instantly. The clever scum managed to turn my own gear against me!

Skyrim: Battle of Experimentation

Adventures in Skyrim - spoilers ahead! You can follow the rest of the story here!

Our return to civilization was short lived as another dragon sighting led us to the Southern mountains this time, where we faced a reverend dragon (easy normal type) and Auszeimrahgol, the f-ing cheating dragon of bastardly-ness. Much like Ziisizaan, he had an invulnerability shield too - only his was on 100% of the time. What the what? Also his melee and breath attacks were tremendously strong. I couldn't blame Zuna for running to a corner and wetting herself from fear.

Oh and exploding arrows did NOTHING.

It became a battle of experimentation. Arrows (exploding and not) didn't do damage. Magic didn't do damage. Swords were dangerous. How the heck do I hurt this thing? But something in my attacks did hurt it as his health bar was down a tiny sliver. But how? Can you guess what it was? If you said "a weak spot" then good work! You are a true dragon hunter!

He's vulnerable now! Sort of... :P

Where is this weakspot you ask? In his fricking mouth. Yep. Not the jaw, or the nose, or the chin, or the teeth. INSIDE. So to hurt it I needed to shoot into its open maw, which is only open when it is dealing insane damage to something. Right. Tried that for a bit but it didn't take, so instead I had to shout it down (because it prefers being airborne and constantly moving) and ... face tanked it.

Yep. I walked into its deadly fire, drank around 50 full health potions and hacked the inside of his face (while it was still breathing at me, so no time for screenies again sorry) until he died. Zuna couldn't believe it. Neither could I, but it was dead and we weren't. I call that a win.

Skyrim: Dragon God Mode

Adventures in Skyrim - spoilers ahead! You can follow the rest of the story here!

Before hunting the next dragon I made sure to pick up the final surviving follower from Death Mountain: Zuna. She was terrified to come with me knowing the fate that had befallen all the others that did, but she agreed provided I'd help her look for her brother Xuru at some point. I agreed and so, we confronted Ziisizaan the stamina eater. Because he'd literally sap all my stamina away just by flying over head. This was only part of the problem though. The other problem was he was invincible. Yep! Nothing could hurt him!

My training was useless!

It took a long while before finding out that his invincibility was some sort of shield. When he shimmered white, he was on god mode. The trick was getting him to land where I wanted when the shield was off. This is more challenging than it sounds since it's like he's invincible 90% of the time and prefers to be airborne. It also doesn't help that at half health he flies off out of sight and returns fully healed. 

The silvery glow is actually his shield.

This made for a very long and annoying battle. Finally I just had to resort to convincing him to land without using "dragonrend" (by running around like a fool) so I could instead "Slow Time" and power strike him, drinking a gallon worth of stamina pots to actually deal enough damage to kill the scum before he flew off to regen to full health. Phew, obviously the enemies were learning to cheat too!

Skyrim: Unremarkable

Adventures in Skyrim - spoilers ahead! You can follow the rest of the story here!

My next task for the Dawnguard was to retrieve some sort of axe relic, and Agmaer rejoined me for this quest. He was clearly no Brutus though, nearly dying to some random night lord vampires near Deepwater Crossing. Fortunately I had his back.

I also had the vampires' back.

It's always good to follow through.

We stopped by Whiterun where I was made aware (as the acting Jarl) of some weapon the Thalmor were interested in an unremarkable cave to the South, so our mission quickly diverted to check it out. Bodies of adventurers paid by Thalmor gold lay near the entrance, and what seemed to be an ordinary bear in the first chamber turned out to be of the "killer" variety, slaying Agmaer in one strike!

I returned the favor to the beast then opted to go recruit more suitable assistance back at Death Mountain. The place was really running low on Daedric guards now, a fact a wandering ancient dragon was using to its advantage. With the other dovahkiin's Perdida, Zuna, and Tharas Gull we took it down after it landed and asked which of them was hungry for more adventure. Perdida jumped at the opportunity, and so with her in tow we returned to the unremarkable cave.

I always wonder how large caverns don't just naturally collapse.