I'm trying to do a quest involving killing vampires, but i keep getting slaughtered by a vampire orc whering steel armor and wieling a claymore. No matter what i do i cant survive fighting him, and ontop of that i can't find any healing potions anywhere except for ones that cost several hundred gold.

What can i do? I cant afford to buy a potion and the only healing spell i have doesnt even put a dent on my health bar anymore. What can i do?

Azura's Shrine? or Skingrad Quest?

Anyway, my advice would be to lower the difficulty slider.

azura's shrine.

and if it matters, i'm lvl 7 and am wearing mostly iron armor, i have a steel cuiras and steel leggings (which i got off a female orc vampire in the same cave). my two armors are an akaravi katana (i got it off the main quest) and i believe an iron or steel longsword with 5 frost damage on it from a sigil stone (and it is charged, it's what i've been using to kill the vampires, infact its the sole reason i killed the first orc with steel armor)

Use fire spells on vampires as they have a weakness to it. It doesn't matter what level you are, as enemies level with you anyway. Put on the strongest armor you have, and if necessary, use any helpful Greater Powers.

I would reccomend getting a better suit of armor, and if you have the Battlehorn Castle DLC, one of the dead NPCs there can provide you with a nearly full set of steel armor. Otherwise, as HA said, just use fire spells and enchantments and lower the difficulty slider if you need to.

As soon as I saw your post I knew you meant the Azura Shrine quest. I can't tell you how many times I died trying to beat that Orc the first time out.

I would add: Make sure you lure that one Vampire down the tunnel for a one on one and then you can heal before fightng the Orc. If you can shoot fireballs or something at him from a distance, he'll be weaker when you get up close and so will his armor. If you can summon, do that a few times so the summoned creature will weaken him and distract him too. I've seen advice to run out into the sunlight but I don't know if that works. It may buy you time anyway. Good luck!

^ Yes. Whenever I'm doing one of these more epic quests with lots of battling, my characters always try to have the best armor they can wear. Enchanted this and enchanted that. Rings of shielding, items with magic resistance, etc. My Paladin, for instance, has been collecting several sets of armor she's found in various ruins (Elven armor, Blackwood armor, etc). Iron, leather and steel are fine for the average bandit/marauder hideout, but when doing something more demanding, you gotta step up your game! Otherwise, its.... :violin:

Also, it's important to bring strategy into the equation. Have you been priming your character for illusion? Use Invisibility if you can. Conjuration? get a zombie or a scamp after that screwball orc.

Finally, if you don't have any money for healing potions, do some dungeon diving, find something worthwhile to sell, and stock up a nice array of potions. TAke your time, don't be haphazard. Prepare for this battle as if it's major, really put some thought into any strategy or items you can employ.

i forgot to mention that i have shield 8% on my 'legion shield'. that gives me a rather nice boost.

and that idea of dragging them into the sun sure sounds funny, but it may be a bit of a challenge (surviving long enough to get outside) and besides, i think i read somewhere the npc vampires cant die from sunlight, only you can.

More steel armor isn't going to help. That orc has a magic weapon and knows how to use it. Do you have any scrolls on you that could help? Like summoning a clannfear or headless zombie? There's a few of them lying around early, but I don't remember where. Necromancers drop healing and other potions so if you can kill them you'll get some. If you're a member of the Arcane U you could make a better enchanted sword than the one you have. (There's silver longswords lying around the Leyawiin Fighters' Guild, and some more steel armor). Or if you can get through an Oblvion gate you can get a better damage sigil stone than the one you got. Absorb health +10 would work well for you!

Or there's the difficulty slider...

Mara

Yeah as Holy Assassin said just bang the difficulty slider down a few notches. Man I wish morrowind had one of those things.

i normally dont like to mess with that slider, partially bc it's so effective. if you turn it all the way down you're essentially playing in god mode, but if you turn it all the way up everything else has god mode to you. i've seen people demonstrate this on youtube, never actually tried it myself. i did turn the slider down a bit so it'd actually be in the middle rather than slightly above (i did this along time ago).

how far down would i have to put it to make a difference anyway without setting the game to god mode?

and yeah, i probably should go into an oblivion gate and get a better sigil stone, but the last one i went into (the one near bruma) was flooded with dremora, and according to the wiki apparently that gate is part of the main quest, and you're supposed to go through it with an army. however earlier i did close one near the imperial city (nothing but scamps in it interestingly enough, but i think i did find one dremora mage near the end). running into a gate full of dremora after i had just done one with none was obviously quite a shock.

there is a gate right next to the mine i'm doing, no idea if it's safe or not though. maybe i should just try it, put fire damage or drain health on my akaravi katana. drain health would probably be better, is that the one that heals you at the same time it damages the opponent? i can never keep any of the spell names straight, they're all so similar.

Drain does only draining of health. Absorb passes the health to you while removing it from the foe.

Some fine advice offered in the posts above. From how you describe your character, you should be using your shield to block in between your hits. Let me mention alchemy. It is an incredible skill that almost any character should be good at. Make your own healing potions and poisons.

Poison your weapon and hit the orc. Open your inventory (this pauses the game).

Repoison your weapon and drink a healing potion.

Close your inventory and hit the orc. Open your inventory to pause the game. . . .

Repeat as necessary. You can have up to 4 healing potions working on you at a time. Similarly, you can have up to 4 poisons working on that vampire at a time.

Don't feel badly. That final orc for Azura's Shrine is a tough fight. If you need to bump the difficulty slider down some for that fight, do so. All it does is make you hit harder and him hit weaker. Once the fight is done, move it back to normal. Good luck.

well i just did that gate, mostly just scamps and clanfears in it. ran into several dremora (none of them a challenge), and a flame atronoch when i got to the sigil stone (ironic, since i had a sword with frost damage it).

did the reloading trick once to get a better stone, and got one with 20 shock damage. even though the vampires are resistant to shock, i decided to keep it anyway since most daedra are weak to shock, so it'll make my trips through oblivion much easier. i'll just find another gate and get a flame sigil or an absord health sigil.

i could however use a feather sigil right now, i found a huge number of enchanted weapons off the dremora and wasnt able to carry them all. each one was worth more than 250 (most of them 300) gold. i was able to sell them all by using a little trick i learned. just drop one and use the z key to carry it around, you can't fast travel doing that sadly, but all it meant is i had to drop it infront of the ruined gate, sell the other things, go back and pick it up, then return to the imperial city to sell that too.

i have noticed a rather drastic increase in monetary gain from the oblivion world, perhaps if i continue to level i'll have less money problems and then i can afford all the healing potions i want!

edit: i wasnt planning on messing with alchemy, but considering my lack of healing potions, perhaps that would be a good idea. and as you said, poisons would bump up my damage considerably. i probably do need to go to work on raising my alchemy for a while (either that or find another daedric shrine)

Vampires are not resistant to shock. Here are their strengths and weakness: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Vampire

Make your own healing potions. With alchemy skill this is easy to do and they are potent. Sure, they work over time, but you can pop up to 4 at once. At mid to higher levels of alchemy, that is a lot of healing per second happening.

Yes, you should find that money comes hard at low levels, but very very easy at mid-to-higher levels.

If your having trouble go to Robbers glen cave and loot the place of treasure. The only enemies in that place besides the boss are imps. Hopefully you can get some good items in that cave which should help you against the Vampires. Finding a Sword that does Fire 5 Damage per strike would help or a sigil stone that has fire damage would also help.

I'd recommend lowering the difficulty and using fire spells or fire enchanted weapons. Then raise the difficulty to what ever you had it after killing him. Your level does not matter for that particular enemy but some enemies have a set level like umbra is always level 50 so I wouldnt fight her until your at least lvl 30. Or you can buy the apotheosti staff or whatever it's called from rindirs staffs, that staff should kill that Orc with 1 hit.

Are you good at alchemy? Can you make fire damage potions? One shot with a fire damage poisoned arrow.... I've never taken out my backup blade. The difficulty slider works mid-combat as well. You won't have to adjust it far from its current position, to be able to get past that guy. Did you know that if you hold down the block button, you can fire your flare spell extremely fast? Arrow shot, as he runs towards me, I fire multiple flares at him, and he usually dies at my feet. Be sure to bring some mandrake root.

When I am ill-prepared (as in being an early level) to deal with a large amount of foes, I sneak in and try to draw them one at a time, away from the others. It can be as simple as standing up fully, then ducking back down, backing down a corridor, and waiting for the curious person to move towards your position, where you are waiting, with destruction for them.

Totally agree with this. I never touch the slider, as it makes everything feel cheaty. :shakehead: But that's me. I'd rather use whatever resources my character's got going at the time and go with them.

I don't understand the "cheaty" part of using that slider. If it's not cheating to turn it up, then it's not cheating to turn it down. It just alters the "damage dealt" proportion between player and enemy. I try to set the slider for "realism." My character shouldn't be immune to big damage from an attack, and neither should an opponent.

Having said that, I don't move it around, once I've found a setting that works for my character, which is usually only slightly up or down from center. I tend to play deliberately "gimped" characters, so I usually have the slider slightly high, to emphasize the character's weakness. But that's just personal preference.

I'm in agreement with the suggestions to work on alchemy. There's really no down-side to alchemy. In fact, in an emergency, you can eat Daedra Hearts, Venison or Cairn Bolete as a quick restorative.

I agree with the others. If you find combat too hard, just turn down the slider. If the game is way too hard, it's no fun. I keep mine pretty far to the left and I'm not ashamed of that. It's a matter of personal taste.

Vampires can be tricky guys. I remember being scared to death the first time I did Azura's quest, as I had never encountered a vampire before and was expecting pale dracula guys swooping in with cloaks and fangs.

This is a good way to put it. I agree with this.

With one exception, I've never touched the slider. It interferes with my ability to "feel" how my character is progressing. One of the minor satisfactions of playing a roleplaying game for me is watching my character get better at things. All that sword-swinging and potion-making begins to pay off after awhile, just as it does in real life. To me, moving the difficulty slider is changing the rules in the middle of the game.

I've only felt the need to move it once in all the years I've played Morrowind and Oblivion. The only time I have played the main quest I completely lost interest about two-thirds of the way through. But I did want to see this darn statue everyone was talking about. So I pushed the slider to the left and walked through the last battle to get it over with.

I guess the slider does have its uses, lol.

You misunderstood me, but whatever. I said moving the slider to the left "feels cheaty", but then I said "that's just me". In other words, it feels like cheating if I make my game easier. I never said you or anyone else has to live by my rule.

If someone is having a hard time, and really getting frustrated, it's their choice if he or she wants to mess with the slider. Personally, I just leave it in the middle, as it feels like cheating to make things easier. :shrug: I'd rather prepare for days (game days) and make sure I've got everything I need, rather than move a slider around just for one battle.

I agree with you, and I apologize for missing your meaning. I meant no criticism. As I also said, it's "just personal preference.."

i've fought vampires before under the imperial city (i like to go there to get me one of those black robes for my mages), but i believe the first vampire i saw was that guy in the dark brotherhood. the vampires under the imperial city arent much of a challenge, but they're all wearing dresses and leather armor, not steel plate armor.