I've played Skyrim to mid 30s in the past, but it had been years.


Last night I received the quest in Whiterun to retrieve Nettlebane (The Blessing of Nature). It's held by a few spellcasters not far from Helgen. I showed up on the scene, sneaking. I found one of the spellcasters alone. I had Lydia with me. I attacked with my bow. The caster charged me, and I was dead literally a couple of seconds later. It was so fast I was shocked.


I'm only level 5. I don't use any mods that would give me items before I should have them, and don't want to.


Is there any way to determine, in game (no googling), which quests are too tough for my level?


Short of pre-googling every quest, or searching for them on YouTube, how do you play the game with reasonably few deaths?

What difficulty are you playing on?

Sorry, I meant to mention that.

I'm on Adept.

The dagger has to be Nettlebane, which means you went up against 3-5 witches and a Hagraven. The latter must've launched a fireball, which killed you on the spot.

The quest giver does mention you're going to face one of these, but there's no way to know one unless you meet it, or if you happened to read Herbane's Bestiary: Hagravens ingame book.

To play with reasonably fewer deaths, means you understand that not everything is out there to fall under your iron war axe. You need to think about resistances to magic, poison and the state of your armor & weapons, to name a few. The rest, you'll pick up along the way.

You could say that the game provides that meta-knowledge by killing your character when you over-reach. It's why you get to reload from your last save, instead of rolling a new character right back at the the start. Smithing, enchanting, and carrying (and using) appropriate potions should let you do just about anything at any level, but if it isn't difficult some times, you'd get bored.

That piece of quest can be easier for a Dunmer, with some fire resistance, as the main enemy uses a fire attack. Sneak attacks on the lesser enemies can make them easy, as they don't cluster.

But the game will randomly make an enemy tougher than usual, just to keep you awake. You probably hit that situation here.

I totally understand why that would be a pain, but it was something that actually initially drew me in to Morrowind. It felt more real if you had to actually be cautious when taking missions because you might be going someplace that was way too tough for you to handle.

Like others have alluded to, the Hagraven alone, could easily kill you on Adept, if you low magic resistances.

It was a single spellcaster that killed me. I found one alone, the Hagraven didn't see me.


I understand that everything isn't fodder. My issue is that some things are, some aren't, and you can't really tell in advance what is or is not.

I suppose now you know: Keeping your distance from a spellcaster npc, is like giving it what it needs to kill you.

I get that, of course I'm am archer though

Nothing stops you from shooting at close range. And you can also bash with the bow -this will interrupt whatever spell the npc is casting against you. Not to mention that 9 times out of 10, npc spellcasters switch to their dagger at close range.

Archery is good, but sometimes you DO need to close swiftly.

As one who plays mostly spellcasters, let me tell you: Close swiftly or risk death.

Allow me to add that an accomplished player spellcaster will kill, regardless of range

sneak archery can beat any outdoor battle, and most indoor battle. you can kill the hagraven by approaching from the stormcloak camp up the cliff. she won't know what hit her. you can't kill her with one shot this early, so you will have hit, sneak retreat and hit again until she's dead.

My archer maintains max distance from all foes - largely because she has zero melee ability (won't even touch a melee weapon). In the case of spellcasters, her defense is very high magic resistance. Given her magic resistance, she can trade arrows against fireballs and win. She's never encountered a mage with arrow resistance. Lol. In fact most mages she encounters conveniently pop up a useless ward spell to mark themselves clearly as a target. Her other alternatives to melee are fear spells and summoned distractions - both of which are intended to let her keep shooting her bow.

As far as encountering deadly foes unexpectedly, some of that may depend on a character's build. A dragon or dragon priest is no big problem for my mystic archer but two orcs with axes who manage to get close are terrifying.

Don't get near, and use a corner. Pop out, make the mage miss, then pop out again and shoot em. If you see they got staggered get a few more shots in, and repeat this until you're done. If they decide to close in, bash them and run to another corner. They can be tricky to dodge in interiors cause there's so little space, hence corner abusing at lower levels.


Contrary to comments above, Skyrim is not actually designed in a way that you can't tackle everything as soon as you see it. In my experience it's just mages that are horribly unbalanced, and npcs are really unproportionally op, compared to a mere fraction of the power when used by a pc. The only actual challenge are mammoths, which are really hard to beat even if you take advantage of the dumb ai.

Heck, I'm glad you can't tell in advance what it tough and what is not. Thumbs up for Bethesda in that regard.

Yup, God forbid a *game* should let me escape utter realism and just have fun at the expense of a few NPC lives

I will actually answer your questions.


No,there really isn't any way to know in game what dungeons and enemies are more dangerous.


If I want to avoid dying a lot, I simply lower the difficulty to novice, or use the console to put it in god mode (tgm). Or, if I want to play it straight, I am very cautious and also run away a lot. Running back out of a dungeon, healing, then going back in can be a useful tactic. Out in the open, it can be trickier.

I guess this is all meta knowledge/spoilers we are talking about.

If you really want to tackle mages at level 5, you can. Be a Breton. Take Atronach stone. Use Dragonskin. They do no damage. Just walk up to them and kill them.

I don't consider this meta information. Talking about item locations etc in the game wound be, but I don't think talking about how to approach the game is .


From my point of view anyway

This. If you play cautiously, it should be rare when you get killed since running away is an option and with caution, you can escape even a powerful enemy. But you have to always be thinking about escape routes and how you are going to deal with an overwhelming enemy as you proceed. If you just charge in blindly, escape can be difficult, but with planning it can be done 90% of the time when you get in over your head.

EDIT: The only time you really can't escape is when the door slams shut behind you in the boss chamber and you have to kill the boss to leave. I hate that when it happens because it feels so damn gamey.

I hate it too. In fact I dislike the whole notion of "bosses" in video games. I think there can be a few instances when a "boss" might be justified for story reasons. But other than that I think boss battles are artificial, unimmersive, and are a throwback to primitive arcade-style gaming.

Yeah Shelly that is kinda true.....but conversely I would not expect a bandit gang to be run as a democratic co-operative enterprise....real gangs have bosses and the boss is pretty much the roughest hombre in the outfit.....which is how they get to be....and stay....Boss.

Actually, on many quests if you pay attention to all the dialogue given by a quest giver you can often get some idea of how difficult a quest is. For instance in the Nettlbane instance you are told by the quest giver that it is being held by hagraven(s) possibly plural. You might not know off hand that hagravens are tougher than your run of the mill bandit, but you are provided contextual clues as to the potential hazards. The clue being that this elder priestess who definitely has great restoration skill and probably some other magic skill is terrified of them and the other priest there obviously doesn't want any part of them either or he would have went already.

Other quests are like that too, if the quest giver mentions a specific creature, than you know it has to be levelled, further if they say to be careful, then you know it is likely a 10+ level creature. So you want to be a really tough 8+ level with a follower or wait until you 10th level to do it. If they say, oh just go get such and such from these two bit cowardly bandits, than you know it not likely too difficult even at lower level.