Anyone ever just kill this cult instead of messing with it? I didn't feel like dealing with these people this time around so I thought I would just take them out. Yeah, right. This group is tough. I kept getting one-hitted by the priestess. I'm not sure why or how though, because my character has over 300hp. Any ideas? Is it possible to do 300+ damage with a one hand mace hit?


I could just do the quest and not mess with it, but does anyone have any advice on a battle strategy with these folks? They are packed together pretty tight and there are the people up on the hill that bow me down, so I can't separate them to do one at a time. Lydia can take 1 out herself while being pummeled by the 6 or 8 of them. She goes down and then can never get back up - she just gets hit right back down, so she's not really much help. I guess I could attack and then run like hell down the hill and hope one or two will follow me at a time.

I just sneak/snipe them all with my bow along with a fus-roh-dah as a back-up if any of them start getting too close...works for me,of course I have only done that quest a couple of time as my pc doesn't approve of Boethiah and her snake-like morals!

I'm playing an assassin this time, and my character doesn't have time to be messing around with cults or doing any killing for anyone else.


I have played the quest before, but I've skipped it altogether as well. This time I thought I'd just rid of the filth from Skyrim, but it's proving to be a challenge. I'll take another stab at it tonight.

It actually ended up being pretty easy. I must have just been tired last night while I was trying it. I put Lydia at the bottom of the hill, ran up, tagged one of them with an arrow, and one or two at a time comes running down the hill. I run past Lydia, she starts in, and then I do what I can with my bow while keeping her health in check.

I cannot get hit even once by ANY of them. ALL OF THEM one hit me. Every time. With a dagger. 300+HP dagger hit. Something is wrong with that.

Wow...sounds like it was a good idea to bring Lyds along for back-up! I don't know why they would all be able to one hit you.....are you wearing any armor? That could factor into the problem.

once you kill your friend the quest is now active & Boethiah orders the blood bath .........its to the last man standing

1 ...........you DON'T FOLLOW everyone down the steps and stay at the top of the sacrificial mound you are safe .........all the cultist will kill each other .........that leave you only 1 cultist to kill instead of all of them.

2 ...........you FOLLOW every one down the steps but don't enter the ring ...........again all the cultist will go at each other again ...........IF you engage in combat then the become hostile to you and attack

3 ...........you FOLLOW every one down the steps and enter the ring ..............then every one will hostile to you and you become the center of combat

I rarely care about Lydia, but I got attached to her this time. I don't know why, I just did. She's been with me for 30+ levels and she fits well with my assassin/spell caster. We work well together. In the beginning when I had no armor at all, she protected me while I stood behind and kept her health up. Maybe that has something to do with it - I don't know.

Anyway, now I have the Nightingale armor, blade, and bow. In one-on-one, I usually dual wield Nightingale blade and Chillrend. So I can hold my own. But for some reason these people were killing me in one hit. Bizarre. I've taken out a few bandit camps since then, so I feel better now.

The first time I did the Beothia's Calling quest, I thought, nope not something my character wants to get involved with, so I annihilated the whole cult hoping it would fail the quest, only to be stuck with the quest activated.

If I remember right, you end up with the active quest no matter what you do. It's one of those quests that's forced on you whether you wanted to get involved or not. Just sitting there, in your journal, staring at you. So most of the time I just ignore the whole mess unless I'm using a character I feel would be into that sort of thing.

First off, don't use a follower. They inevitably charge into the attack and bring the whole lot of the cultists down on you.

From what I recall, I too was astonished at how potent they were and got laid out several times.

In the end, I went alone, leaving the follower at home. I managed to work my way around the back of the camp keeping to the right while sneaking and cutting right up the rocks as soon as I was able to. I think my sneak was up to 4/4 by then and the skill around the 80 mark. It's possible to scramble up the rocks behind them. It sort of plateaus out above the shrine area and you can take out the cultists near the altar from there before sneaking down and getting the camp cultists from there. This method often works because these guys at the top are the lookouts for the others. I took them out using sneak attacks with a legendary ebony bow that was enchanted with fire damage: I can't recall what damage the bow had. I worked from back to front of the camp waiting to make sure the others stopped looking for me with each strike. It would help if you have bonuses like x2 or x3 damage for sneak attacks. Invisibility may help but I didn't have it at the time so it's possible without it.

Even when you do kill them, you can't get rid of the quest without leading a follower there. I tried leading random bandits up the hill but they wouldn't even follow as far as the altar. In the end I picked a mercenary who seemed to have the worst attitude problem.

If the worst comes to the worst you could always drop the game difficulty level. I did it on Adept and was sorely tempted to chicken out and go to novice for this one. I only didn't because I remembered the Azura's star business where I couldn't manage it at all, saved up heaps of potions, waited 'til I could fashion armour like the Fort Knox vault, weapons that would put atom bombs to shame, dropped to novice... and found it too easy!

P.S. I'm pretty sure it is possible to do that kind of damage with one strike. I never checked what quality of weapons they were using but I have a dragonbone sword that does 350 damage and I have all the 1-handed perks. Maybe these npc's also have perks similar to bone-breaker?

These were daggers. They were like "sacrificial daggers" or something of the like, but the listed damage on them was not anything special. Now if they had some sort of modifier applied to their attacks, I completely understand how they might do considerable damage. They may also be set up with some sort of special critical damage or "automatic death" ability that I'm not aware of. Also, if they were to do a sneak attack it would become completely possible to do that much damage with the 6X multiplier. But 300+ damage? With a dagger on a regular attack? Come on. There has to be some type of modifier being applied here. What's driving me crazy is I can't figure out which one it might be. Do NPC's get perks in some situations that aren't available to the player and vice versa? Another note - I play on the expert setting. I know that most play on adept, so maybe that's why no one else has experienced this.