Difficulty and The Elder Scrolls franchise typically aren’t synonymous with each other. The balance in each mainline Elder Scrolls game typically leans towards easy, but that doesn’t mean that each title doesn’t have tough moments.
Take Skyrim as an example. With its hundreds of quests and NPCs, there are plenty of moments where the Dragonborn’s abilities are truly put to the test. Some foes in Skyrim rival the player’s power while others well exceed what the player can do. From the Ebony Warrior to packs of draugr, here are the ten hardest combat encounters players can face in Skyrim. This article contains spoilers for Skyrim’s main questline.
10 The Ebony Warrior
Any player that gets to level 80 in Skyrim will likely be ready to end their playthrough. That is likely why Bethesda added the Ebony Warrior in the Dragonborn DLC as a way for players to get one last battle out of their playthrough. This NPC will approach players once they reach level 80 and challenge the player to a battle.
Calling the Ebony Warrior tough would be an understatement. He has a health pool of 2,071, has 50% damage resistance against elemental damage and poison, has a full set of Ebony gear equipped, and has 36 perks allocated that bolster his damage and defense. To top that off, the Ebony Warrior is one of the few non-undead humanoids in Skyrim that can use Shouts. Killing this beast of a character is no small feat.
9 Miraak
Miraak’s aggressive level scaling and boss fight mechanics make him a force to be reckoned with. He will always be a higher level than the player unless the player is level 150 or above. With a health pool of 1,220, Miraak seems surprisingly weak for a level 150 boss.
That doesn’t consider the boss fight itself, though. Whenever Miraak reaches critical health, he will consume a dragon soul to regain all of this health. Players will need to down Miraak three times before he truly dies. Combining this with his inherent damage resistance perks, Miraak has closer to 6,000 total HP. Considering his arena is rather small for stealth characters and archers, Miraak can be a nightmare on Legendary for certain builds.
8 Krosis
Excluding Solstheim’s dragon priests, every dragon priest in Skyrim is level 50 and does not scale with the player. Krosis is no exception. With a health pool of 1,490 and equipped with a plethora of ice Destruction spells, this dragon priest is a serious threat for low-level characters. That isn’t what makes Krosis dangerous, though.
Krosis spawns next to a dragon shrine. Assuming players completed the “Dragon Rising” quest, every dragon shrine in the game will have a dragon overlooking the area. That means that players that visit Shearpoint will need to fight a leveled dragon, level 50 dragon priest that has a high-level staff, all while having little cover to avoid attacks. This is a death trap for most low to mid-level characters and should be avoided.
7 Nightmaster Vampire Attacks
Every main city in Skyrim can be attacked by vampires if the Dawnguard DLC is installed. As the player levels up and gets better gear, so too do the vampires that invade each Hold. At level 60, players can begin to expect tougher vampires named Nightmaster Vampires, the strongest non-unique foe in Skyrim.
Each Nightmaster Vampire comes with 1,226 health, resistance to most magic damage, and can use devastating spells such as Invisibility and Chain Lightning. Nearly every vampire in the game gets replaced with this variant, meaning that city raids can pit players against half a dozen Nightmaster Vampires at a time, each resurrecting corpses as minions while throwing bolts of lightning. Vampire raids with these enemies are nothing short of terrifying.
6 Ahzidal
Solstheim’s fire dragon priest, otherwise known as Ahzidal, is easily the toughest named dragon priest in the game. A 2,000 health pool is further bolstered by Ahzidal’s Mask, an item enchanted with 50% fire resistance and 25% increased damage with fire spells.
Ahzidal only uses fire spells, which means that this level 60 boss that uses Expert-level spells is dealing an additional 25% damage compared to normal. Worse, he frequently uses a fast projectile spell named Fire Stream that deals 100 damage a second—which is increased to 125 a second thanks to his mask. This boss can also buff himself using Ebonyflesh and Flame Cloak. He even resurrects draugr to attack the player mid-fight.
5 The Seven Thousand Steps Frost Troll
Frost trolls are a tough opponent in Skyrim due to their high cold resistance and large health pools. These enemies are meant to be fought around level 22, so it’s strange that Bethesda decided that a frost troll should patrol the seven thousand steps to High Hrothgar, a location that is tied to one of Skyrim’s early-game quests.
Compared to the dragon players just killed, the frost troll has half its total health but can regenerate two HP per second. This means that early-game weapons and spells that deal low damage will be mostly mitigated by the frost troll’s health regeneration. Players are so weak when they first make contact with this enemy that many skip the fight altogether.
4 Orchendor
Image from Ultimateunit34 (Nexus Mods)
Most players likely don’t remember Orchendor. This is a unique mage that players encounter during Peryite’s “The Only Cure” quest. His health total scales based on the player’s level, starting at 300 and reaching up to 688 at level 40.
A pitiful health pool for a mini-boss, for sure, but that doesn’t matter because Orchendor is immune to all magic damage in Skyrim. Everything from cold to sun damage does nothing against Orchendor. To make matters worse, he has a perk that gives him double damage while he takes half, meaning his effective health pool is closer to 1,376 before buffs while his spells can make short work of most low-level characters.
Orchendor also has a spell roster fit for a dragon priest. He can cast Expert-tier spells like Ebonyflesh, Invisibility, Incinerate, and even teleport across the map. All of this is bundled with scaling gear to make by far the toughest mage fight in Skyrim.
3 Voslaarum and Naaslaarum
Image from Luipunker91 (DeviantArt)
If fighting Alduin wasn’t enough, why not fight two stronger versions of the World Eater at once? What about doing that battle on a sheet of ice with no cover? That is exactly what Dawnguard’s Voslaarum and Naaslaarum fight is.
Both dragons have a health pool that exceeds Alduin’s if the player is level 60. They can also use the Drain Vitality Shout that can annihilate a player’s stats for 30 seconds. This is not a fight to take lightly.
2 Karstaag
Karstaag is a level 90 frost giant that can be found in the Dragonborn DLC. Since he is level 90, this giant has 4,000 health, immunity to paralysis and ragdolls, takes 75% less damage from shock, is immune to fire, heals 12 HP a second, and surrounds himself in a blizzard that ragdolls the player while dealing damage-over-time.
Should players get past the blizzard, they will have to take down a giant that deals upwards of 100 damage a swing. These attacks also slow the player to prevent players from kiting the boss. He even spawns wraiths during the fight that draw a player’s attention away from Karstaag. In terms of non-leveled encounters, Karstaag is by far the toughest encounter in the entire game.
1 Skuldafn (Past Level 45)
Considering scaling, however, the Skuldafn dungeon is arguably the toughest encounter in all of Skyrim. This is due to Skuldafn being the only dungeon in Skyrim that replaces all draugr with a level-scaled variant.
In other words, players that enter this dungeon at level 45 can expect every draugr to be a Death Overlord variant. Draugr Death Overlords each have 1,400 health, use Ebony-quality gear, and can use the Unrelenting Force and Disarm Shouts. They take full advantage of these Shouts by using them every chance they get. Since some rooms in Skuldafn can have half a dozen draugr in them, expect to be ragdolled and disarmed every fight. When players also consider that this dungeon has two dragon fights and a dragon priest boss fight, it’s hard to argue that Skuldafn isn’t the hardest encounter in all of Skyrim.
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