Giant (Skyrim)

Template:Creatures Giants are a type of large humanoid found in the wilderness of Skyrim and High Rock. They're armed with crudely made clubs and clothe themselves with fur pelts adorned with the skulls of Trolls. Their use of weapons and clothing, coupled with the player's ability to converse with them, suggests that they are moderately intelligent. They seem to stand at about 11 to 12 feet tall (quite similar to the real-life Giant of Castelnau) and make aggressive grunting noises when attacking. They can be very dangerous when aggravated often leading to killing you in one hit at low levels. However, they can be a good source of income for higher level players as they are found in many places and drop an average of 100 to 200 septims each.

Giants are nomadic creatures that herd Mammoths for sustenance, and are wary but used to the presence of other races. They only attack if attacked first, or if someone strays too close to their camps or herds - lone groups of giants on the move can be closely approached with only a low chance of hostility. Due a possible bug, sometimes they also appear to ignore the players presence altogether even if both are face to face with each other.

Daggerfall

Giants are large creatures in Daggerfall. Speakers of Giantish can stop giants from attacking. Giants have 75 health and do 30 damage when attacking.

Skyrim

Giants can be found in Skyrim herding Mammoths or standing around large fires. Many can be found near Whiterun. They're normally peaceful, unless you get too close to them or attack them or their Mammoths. They often have mammoth cheese near their fires.

Skyrim Hunting Tactician

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  A Giant herding two Mammoths

  The easiest way to bring down a giant at lower levels is finding some part of the land they cannot travel on, preferably an elevated position to provide a better firing range. Piles of rocks and boulders make good places for shelter. Another aspect to look for is ease getting to your safe spot. After finding such a place, lay into the giant or one of his mammoths with your best ranged attack. The giant makes for a more preferable target as he is easier to put down than his beast, but if you do not have a clear shot at him, shooting his mammoths will get his attention.

  

  Leather containers in which the giants store the Mammoth Cheese

  As he closes simply pour every amount of damage you can into him. When the giant and any of his mammoths, if you draw any in, reach your location and they cannot reach with you with their attacks, they will vacate the area and put considerable distance between you and themselves. This can be misleading as while they look as though they lost interest in you, the moment the player jumps off the rock/shelter, they will come right back.

• Those skilled in Destruction magics can make use of this, emptying their most destructive spells onto the giant and mammoths as they close in, then jumping to the safe spot to regenerate magicka. After the mammoths and their shepherd leave to put some distance between them and the player, they can then jump down and plant frost/fire/lightning runes for when the Giants return. Rinse and repeat this process several times to kill your giant as well as net some extra experience and mammoth tusks. Dragon shouts, like Fire Breath will help expedite this process. A second tactic involving magic is to use frost spells on them. While giants appear moderately resistant to frost damage, this will drain their stamina, leaving them unable to run after you, after which they can be easily killed. A single dual-cast Ice Spike spell will immediately drain a Giant's stamina, causing them to move rather slowly. Since Ice Spike is a relatively simple spell, one can take down three or four giants with ease using this strategy.

• A Marksman can shoot at them from a distance, and while in hiding. As soon as the giant is alerted he will leave his spot and go hunting for the danger. Stay in hiding and retreat to a spot where he can't see you until he will stop looking for you and you are hidden again (the eye icon will tell you when that is). Then creep up on him again and fire your next arrow or spell. Repeat until he is down. You can raid ANY foe down with this tactic as long as you have a good hiding spot. Attacks in hiding do more damage.

• A Dragon can be lured into combat with the herd. Sometimes this will happen automatically when it strafes the ground with its breath, hitting the massive beasts. Stronger dragons such as a Blood Dragon will bring down at least one adversary before falling.

• If you have the Impact perk in Destruction, giants can be killed with little difficulty by repeatedly hitting them with a dual cast bolt spell of the element of your choice. Be sure to space them out so that each one hits just as the giant is recovering. Having a follower to add damage means using less Magicka , otherwise you'll likely need over 500, either as a full pool or through dipping into potions. Note this doesn't work well if you draw another giant or mammoth.

• Using Thu'ums can be a good idea. Using the Animal Allegiance shout on a hostile giant will cause his Mammoth herd, and any surrounding animals, to attack him.
• Using The Ritual Stone is also a very good tactic against Giants and their pet Mammoths. Once you have killed one or two of the creatures you can use the ritual stone to revive them to fight for your side.

• Unrelenting force can be the best weapon against giants, as they take fall damage as any other creature. All it takes is a 20 foot drop, and mastery of Unrelenting Force, and you can take several giants down at once. Although it can be risky if you can't take more than one hit from a giant, as if you miss, you may be sent 100 feet into the air (unless you have a high enough health and armor rating).

• You can lure giants and mammoths into any of the guard outposts (White run guard towers etc.) and the guards there will help you take down the giant beasts for free of charge. Note this is also a good way to charge a Soul gem of greater or grand caliber.

Notes

• Mountain Giants are very powerful and may be seen traveling with Mammoths, which stay close to their own camps. It can therefore be concluded that they are dependent on mammoths for sustenance. This is also supported by camps having pouches of mammoth cheese.
• Some of the farmers of Whiterun offer cows to the giants as a way of preventing attacks on livestock, which usually works.
• Giants will not attack you on sight unless you come too close to them or attack them or their mammoths.
• They use large, primitive clubs as weapons.
• The easiest way for a low-level player to kill a Giant is using the 30x bonus to sneak attacks with daggers granted by Dark Brotherhood armor and the proper Sneak perk. On their own, giants are fairly easy to sneak up on, as they move slowly and are prone to standing still for long periods of time.
• Another easy way to kill giants is if a player is a werewolf, the running pounce attack can knock a giant to the ground and give an open opportunity for attack. The same tactic can be used on a mammoth, though it does not knock the mammoth down, the attack will still deal a good amount of damage.
• Another method of killing giants at low levels is to find a rock formation (there usually is one around most giant camps) and from there pick them off at your leisure using a bow. You can usually kill the mammoths this way too. There is some hit and miss to getting this right as you may be just within range of their club.
• There is a special ability involving the physics impulse produced by the Giants club. When the player, or anything else, is killed by a Giant's club they will most often be sent soaring several hundred feet straight up. NPCs can sometimes be seen in the distance being launched into the sky. Also ragdolls will randomly fall from the sky, having been launched in the air by a nearby Giant. *See Notes section of Abilities (Skyrim)
• Giants can drop Giant's Toe, hides, food, gold, and equipment. There are often chests found in tents and hollow tree trunks nearby giant camps.
• If a giant's mammoth is killed by the environment, the giant will guard the mammoth, as if it were still alive (possibly the giant mourning).
• Giants are easily capable of killing dragons, and may send their corpses hundreds of feet into the air. In groups consisting of 2 giants and 2 mammoths, even an Ancient Dragon cannot hold its own once it lands.
• Giants sometimes shrink when they are killed to half or less of their actual size from a bug or glitch.