Talk:Dragon Priest/Archive 1

Strategies
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Equipment
Before fighting any of the dragon priests, it is essential that you have the correct equipment. Always stock up on Resist Shock, Fire, Frost and Resist Magic potions. These 4 potions will mitigate a large portion of the damage dealt by the dragon priest, making the fight easier. Depending on your class, it would also be wise to buy a potion that boosts damage (i.e., Potion Of Destruction, Potion Of The Warrior or Potion Of True Shot). Also bear in mind that potions have 4 grades: Potion (Weakest), Draught (Weak), Philter (Strong), and Elixir (Strongest). The strongest potions, Elixirs, may be purchased from any Alchemy store for less than 800 Septims. Finally, any armor which you can enchant with Resist Magic or Resist Elemental Damage will give you the final edge needed to take on the dragon priest.

Protecting against elemental damage
It is possible (and simple) to find gear in game that protects against a percentage of elemental damage. That percentage stacks. If you have the right gear, it is completely possible that you can completely nullify any and all elemental damage, as the Priests have no known melee attacks. For instance, Spellbreaker can be used to block all spells used by the priests.

Coffin exploit
Get the Priests to come out of their sarcophagus, run and rest for 1 hour. Come back and they'll be laying down in their tomb with the top off. They are triggered just like any Draugr, so you can sneak up on them and get a critical sneak hit/kill. Followers flagged as essential can be used as tanks here.

Rock formations
Many areas where Priests are fought contain ledges, cliffs, and rocks which can be used as cover to snipe them from a distance with bows. They retaliate with long ranged spells but often hit surrounding terrain. It is possible to stand behind a rock formation and have the Priest come to you without attacking. The Priest will simply stand there and you can shoot it with arrows (confirmed with Krosis).

Unrelenting Force
When the Priests are near the edge of any kind of cliff or ledge, use Unrelenting Force to push them off the edge. Some Priests will back away towards the edge anyway, so keep attacking until they are there.

Followers
Bring an invincible follower (Dark Brotherhood initiate, any Blades member, Derkeethus or Barbas) and use the Summon Spectral Assassin power. Their purpose is to provide a distraction for the Dragon Priest, allowing you to attack him and dispatch him with ease. Also, even if your character is non-blade oriented, it is highly recommended to use a Silver Sword, as it is very effective against the undead, regardless of its low damage value.

Staff of Magnus
After defeating Morokei, one of the eight named dragon priests, he drops the Staff of Magnus which is used for the College of Winterhold questline. It is also extremely useful against all the other dragon priests. Using the Staff of Magnus and a constant healing spell is a very easy way to defeat any of them. It drains Magicka at an extremely quick pace and the healing spell will only be needed for the first 10 or so seconds of combat. After that, the dragon priest will be helpless as he has no melee attack and his magicka is drained. It will then start to drain his health as well. It takes a while so make sure to have a stock of filled Soul Gems for recharging the staff.

The Warrior strategy
One way to defeat Dragon Priests is to hit them with power attacks. This staggers them, preventing them from attacking. A decent number of stamina potions will be needed, or a single food item that provides Stamina Regeneration over time (as the food item prevents stamina from completely depleting, allowing continuous power attacks). Another way for warrior characters to defeat Dragon Priests is to pin them in a corner so they can't back away to a range where they can just repeatedly hit you with magic attacks. This method can require a large amount of health potions or magicka potions if a healing spell is used.

The Speedy Gonzales strategy
If you are playing with a warrior focus and once you have the Elemental Fury shout, simply activate the shout and rush forward. A room with a Priest inside it will look different from normal so you should be able to anticipate. Determine which crypt they will rise from and run for that one. If done properly you should get anywhere from 2 to 5 hits in before they are fully standing. This technique is extremely useful for Warrior with a Two-Handed Weapon focus

The Shield strategy (Spellbreaker)
Get hold of the artifact shield Spellbreaker.( Shield is given as a reward in the quest 'The Only Cure') This shield gives you a bubble of antimagic even after you lower the shield, so if you don't have the perk for running shield charge you could raise the shield get the bubble and run towards your foe.

Ebony Blade Strategy
With the Ebony Blade killing Dragon Priests becomes easy. First when triggering the Dragon Priest get as close to its coffin as possible. Immediately start to hack away at it when reached. If taken, infinite Absorb Health enchantment will allow an easy kill on any Dragon Priest. Trying to stay close to the Priest is the priority. Most Dragon Priests will back away, so it is best if you corner your enemy first.

SnS: Sneak and Shield
When playing a character with high sneak, one of the best things you can do when facing a Dragon Priest is use a shield. Sneak up to where the priest lay and attempt to hit him with a Sneak Attack. Regardless of whether the sneak attack was successful or not, you'll usually be in a prime position to keep positional pressure on him. If he moves, just roll to follow and you're back in position. Staying in his grill is important to this strategy. So why the shield? Well, many of you may have noticed that, for the most part, Dragon Priests take a pretty decent amount of time to cast a spell. However, it takes very little time to perform a basic Shield Bash. So little time, in fact, that you can typically utilize the Shield Bash to stuff whatever the Dragon Priest was trying to cast on-reaction. You can follow the Bash with an attack or two, then Bash again. If done properly, the Dragon Priest will die and will have had little, if any, chance to do anything.

Best of all, it really doesn't require any special skill allotments or equipment. You don't even need to invest points in Block for it to work because you're only using an unaltered Shield Bash to interrupt spell casting. The only thing you really have to worry about is your character's stamina. That can be mitigated with proper rhythm or Stamina potions. The same principle even works on Dragons!

Time Frame
Once you have learned the Slow Time dragon shout, it becomes much easier to kill Dragon Priests, particularly if you have a high damage, but low health. Simply hide just out of the Dragon Priests line of sight, use the shout, and quickly hit him with everything you can during the effect. When Slow Time expires, go back to running and hiding until the shout recharges, and repeat until you kill the Dragon Priest

Backstab Strategy
For those who favor the use of stealth, many fights, particularly the one on one variety, become amazingly simple. This can be used to make the normally terrifying Dragon Priest easy to cut down. If the Dragonborn has taken the liberty to invest in Stealth, he will already have the useful Assassin's Blade perk, which allows the Dragonborn to deal fifteen times regular damage with daggers. Coupled with the Dark Brotherhood's Shrouded Gloves, the dragon priest can easily be killed in one decisive shot. The formula for this can be expressed as 30*15*2*2 = 1800 where thirty is the damage of a well upgraded ebony or daedric dagger, fifteen is the backstab damage of the Assassin's Blade perk, two is the multiplier from the shrouded gloves, and the last two is the damage gained from a power attack. As you may well have guessed, 1800 damage is more than enough to kill a dragon priest, even of the named variety.

Should there be any trouble attempting for the backstab, the best course of action is to either hide until you are hidden from the priest, or employ an invisibility spell/potion, which can allow you to deal the killing blow without having to spend some time in hiding. A good thief player will also easily be able to work around anything conjured by said dragon priest.

Another idea is to stay at a distance and pepper the priest with arrows. Use the occasional invisibility potion and the fight will be easy.(only tested on Hevnorak.)
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Object ID for dragon priest armor
can't find the dragon priest armor/robes. does anyone have the armor ID? I dont even think there is a Dragon priest armor nor robes

Easy technique
You could call this technique cheap, but it makes deafeating dragon priests very easy. When dragonpriest comes back to life, i use my slow time shout (i've found all the words), and then just beat him up with my swords( dual wield). They often die even before the slowed time effect ends.

Are there unamed dragon priests that can respawn or are there only eight of them? Just wondering

yes also named draugr can spawn as them at high levels2.127.9.57 18:23, March 7, 2012 (UTC)

Where do they spawn?

They can spawn anywhere as dungeon's boss monster once you hit a high enough level. Hyperfyre (talk) 03:25, March 14, 2012 (UTC)

WABBAJACK
Best strategy is to use the follower strategy with a Wabbajack, I think this might increase chance of instant killing. Same for Drougr deathlords. 24.61.51.228 00:48, March 19, 2012 (UTC)

UNRELENTING FORCE

The strategy information about unrelenting force is invalid because dragon priests are semi-immune to it, since patch 1.1

Unrelenting Force only staggers them for less than second and isn't worth the shout cooldown the player would get from this.

For further information i'd like to refer to the Trivia section of the Unrelenting Force article.

Unrelenting Force

Where it notes: "Ghosts, enemies with wards active, children, flying creatures, fish, and dragon priests are unaffected entirely. If the enemy's ward is low and about to break, the shout may break the ward, but it will not affect the enemy behind it."

Acran (talk) 04:01, July 15, 2012 (UTC)

Exploiting tombs
Undead in tombs can be forced out by casting Ruin spells next to the tombs (even Dragon priest). Makes getting the kavohzein's fang dagger out of Ragnvald way less time consuming (unless you want to clear the whole place out). Simply go to the tomb that you have to place the skulls in, place a rune next to the tomb. It'll blow up out comes the Dragon priest, kill him and it opens the gate.

Minor grammar issue?
It's minor, but should it be "Thousands of years ago, these priests ruled over Skyrim at the behest of their Dragon overlords."..? — Somarinoa (talk) 16:15, September 3, 2012 (UTC)

Dragon Cult
"The Dragon Priests themselves can be traced back to Atmora where they were they ruling body during the Merathic Era." -they were they

Updated with new information
The First Dragonborn, featured in, is also known to be a mysterious former Dragon Priest, and is revealed to be the first individual gifted with the dragon blood.

He ruled over Solstheim thousands of years ago at the behest of Dragons, much like his counterparts in Skyrim, however at some point this changed and he rebelled against the winged overlords.

Dragonborn Update
Someone should add the Dragon Priests added in the Dragonborn DLC like Dukaan.

Conjure Dragon Priest
Under Trivia, more information should be added about the Conjure Dragon Priest spell. It can be used without mods on PC-s by using the console command 'player.addspell 0010FC16', which will give the spell to the player. Once added, it is similar to Conjure Dremora Lord: Expert level, base cost of 358, affected by conjuration perks Summoner, Atromancy and Twin Souls. The summoned Dragon Priest has 1490 health, 545 magicka, 10% magic resistance and immunity to frost and poison. In combat, he will use protection spells, frost spells, resurrect corpses and summon Storm Atronachs. Akkuky (talk) 04:16, February 22, 2013 (UTC)

Thirteen, not Eight, Dragon Priests
There are now thirteen Dragon Priests with masks, not eight, but I'm not an autoconfirmed user or the equivalent and cannot edit the page. NgOroo (talk) 23:57, April 6, 2014 (UTC)

Spam and Vandalism
There is a bit of vandalism on many of the Dragon Priest related pages. The most obvious on this page being the picture of Adventure time. If any mods read this, I think they may want lock this page to prevent further vandalism, and other moderators can look over the post for correct information. Famixofpower (talk) 20:07, June 15, 2014 (UTC) Famixofpower (talk) 20:08, June 15, 2014 (UTC)