And the reason the fight lasted over 3 game days is because the dragon refused to land or attack me until he took enough damage to fall from the sky and crash into the ground. And even after he crashed I was able to stand at his flank 20 yards away and whittle the remainder of his health away with bow and arrow attacks without him making any effort to crawl towards me or breathe at me or any of those other things dragons typically like to do.

I did raise my destruction skill up ~20 points (thanks for that) by zapping him with a lightning bolt every time he flew by (well, every time he flew by close enough for an attempt, and every attempt I actually managed to aim well enough to hit him). Yes, the dragon clearly knew where I was, as he was turning his head to track my stationary position the entire fight. Yes, I was "in combat" with him the entire time - his slowly dwindling health bar was on my screen and his red dot was on my compass. And I'm pretty sure I heard every epic dragon fighting score in the game several times over, enough to get sick of them.

But the dragon simply would not land. Or hover. Or shout his dragon breath weapon. Or attack in any way. He just wanted to fly around my position on wide open terrain endlessly. The sun set, rose, set again, rose, set again, rose, and finally after setting one last time I managed to force him out of the sky, at which point I walked closer (I was encumbered.. a big thank you to the dragon for skidding to a stop 100 yards away and sitting there, making me walk over to him instead; really appreciated that final inconvenience) and put him down and us both out of our misery with many arrows.

We are now at patch 1.3(?) on the PC and this bug (which is nowhere near as "rare" as Bethesda likes to claim it is) is still not fixed, despite the patch notes insisting it is. Please fix it for real. If dragons are going to be the star opponents of your game, you should really make sure they work.

One word... DRAGONREND... don't have it yet? Play the main quest until you do.
This kind of thing will never happen to you if you have the Dragonrend shout.

Sounds pretty epic. Reminds me of this battle from this insignificant series...

http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110605120307/lotr/images/8/8c/LOTR_Gandalf_and_the_Balrog_by_Evolvana.jpg

"Neither he nor the Balrog was killed by the fall, and Gandalf pursued the creature for eight days until they climbed to the peak of Zirakzigil. Here they fought for two days and nights. In the end, the Balrog was cast down and it broke the mountain-side as it fell. Gandalf himself died following this ordeal and his body lay on the peak while his spirit travelled outside of Time."

Another thing I think is weird is how sometimes they will prioitize roasting mudcrabs over taking the fight to the player who will be dishing out way more damage. They should not sit there and breathe on mudcrabs while being hit with strong shots from a bow leaving the player to freely pincushion them with no fear of reprisal.

The worst is when it lands a few hundred yards away to kill some random woodland creature and then lifts off just before you get in range.

Dragons only land on flat plains but it sounds like you already know that. But did you try a few other things?

You were encumbered for the whole fight? does that mean you just stood there and didnt try a few different patches?

Process of illimination ftw.

I'm scared now. I haven't run into one of those yet but I've been dungeon crawling a lot. I hope it'll be a while before I see one.

:tes:

ROFL hell I quite after the first few minutes if the dragon don't land. I'm not taking all day to kill one... Or three for that matter.

But congrats on the battle of endurance! You clearly are a dedicated dragon hunter!

I've had some epic dragon battles, including one where I damaged a flying dragon enough for it to do the whole "skidding across the landscape" thing and mowing me down in its path!

What seriously, you want them to come and sit in front of you and be an easy target while you hit them?

There are plenty of other threads moaning that dragons are too easy. Why is it viewed as a bug when they don't land in front of you and sit still so you can hit them? That would just be artificial stupidity at its worst.

If a dragon doesn't come down to attack and I fail to hit it with arrows a few times, I just walk away - they usually fly off into the distance after a while.

There is no reason why they should always come to attack you and if you expect them to you will sometimes be disappointed - some of them just fly around and then head off back to their mountain or whatever.

I walked around a bit to try different areas while fighting (and hoping to come across a container to drop my excess loot in), and the dragon continued to adjust his position to remain in orbit around me. I actually tried quite a few things.

That said, dragons have attacked me on the craziest types of landscape before (and successfully landed on them to fight). The flat plains requirement is just a myth. But yes, it was wide open grassy landscape this time.

No, "artificial stupidity at its worst" is what happened in my "fight" this evening, where the dragon circled around my character for 3+ game days and passed over head enough times to be pecked to death by my novice lightning attacks (I'm not even a caster, I just have that spell for stubborn bugged dragons that do this sort of thing).

You're talking about a scenario where a dragon stays at range versus a melee opponent and utilizes his breath weaponry while flying by. Yes, that would be smart for the dragon. This dragon was not doing that. This dragon wasn't attacking at all. And that is, quite simply, a bug.

Tuor killed five Balrogs during the Fall of Gondolin... Gandalf was a poozer.

Well, at least now you have a great heroic story to tell.

This. Not to sound like an apologist but I just chalk this kind of stuff up to it being an especially crazy, stubborn dragon that eventually met his demise. He was elder, maybe he was senile, lol.

THIS.

Soooooooooo frustrating when it happens over and over and over again, *with the same dragon*.

I personally hate those dragons that when hit with Dragonrend, land half the map away and then abandon combat because you took too long to get to them. Happened to me today - fast travel to Dawnstar, get attached by an Ancient Dragon, damned if the thing doesn't just chomp me (literally, it grabbed my in its jaws and threw me to my death). Fast travel back there to get attached by two Ancient Dragons, one of which when hit by Dragonrend goes off and lands by Nightcrawler Temple. Then since I can't get there fast enough, it abandons combat and heads home.

I've had something simular to that, but it was an elder dragon and an ancient dragon and I was in Whiterun, the Elder took a day to kill, the bastard wouldn't land but guards can be useful but the ancient dragon just took the piss, it took 5 days and 3 scores of guards to kill, that didn't land neither, it occasionaly landed on a building but the [censored] flew off and left a pile of dead guards after it was done, I managed to kill it with a fireball when it was in mid flight, shot it right out of sky.

Would people stop mentioning Dragonrend. You basically have to finish the main quest to get it. Not everyone wants to delve deep into the main quest early on.

Yeah nice and epic battle there

Gandalf, anyone?

Epic fight there Chief

I tried to take down an Elder Dragon last night with my hulky Nord. He died after 2 full frost breaths hit him and that was after quaffing a resist frost potion.
Wish I had never allowed XBL to patch my game to 1.2

An epic duel worthy of song my friend.

3 days?

That must have been exhausting...

:snoring:

Sounds epic.

I guess you could have just left him to go about his business. I am sure you might have run into him again one day.

I recently had to fight an invisible dragon. The textures must have been missing or my video drivers needed to be updated, but all I could see was the very tips of its scales. Luckily a few stormcloaks were in the area and I guess they could see it because they took enough health from it for me to finish it off when it crash landed.

I know and when they are flying I swear they are blind as a bat. I can be out in the open in plain sight and the moron dragon still can not see me at times....WTF!?!?