the only sound of Dragon wings makes me sprint for cover, preferably to a cavern to hide safely in....

ok, this is my first play through, my character is below level 20, and I have Deadly Dragons, Dragon Combat overhaul and SkyRe installed. I kept the Adept level.

At the first Dragon encounter, after awkwardly shooting a few arrows (not sure any actually hit) and being knocked away by the beast's landing, not mentioning getting bathed in fire, I just ran away and hid below an outcropping while the Dragon was circling trying to find me and dosing my hiding place with his breath. Finally he went back to the tower and the others did eventually manage to kill him... honestly, I don't know how.

for now, I have kept that strategy... any other is suicide, really. The Dragons are so fast that most of the time, I don't know where they are until I get my ass kicked.

Same thing with other types of enemies: I can take one on alright but any close combat with more two or more and I end up dead. They flank me (that's SkyRe or Enhanced Enemy AI, I believe) so it's hard to tackle more than one. So I mostly run, hide, shoot arrows and when one is left, I can use close combat.

All of that to say, that's those mods make Skyrim hard, but very realistic. My character may be the Dragonborn, but so far, he's a young pup trying to survive.

I would be curious about your own experiences?

Well, I'm on console. But the one of the most challenging (and fun) fights I had were against 2 Legendary Dragons and 1 Ancient. I believe tje difficult was on Master.

HAd to go kill a vampire in Winterhold for the Dawnguard, as i was leading him away from town to kill him, TWO revered dragons attacked (i have both Deadly dragons AND DCO active). somehow, the managed to miss the stupid vampire for about 2-3 minutes of fighting when they left. about a minute later, one of them come back and successfully kills the vampire. After that, it took about 15-20 minutes to take it down. It kept running to the college (where there was no one outside O.o since they were all asleep) and back to town repeatedly. Get anywhere near them, and i die fairly fast even with max armor rating

I get quite depressed sometimes when I have a character who just cannot handle dragons. He's supposed to be the prophesied dragonborn and he can't even kill one. Atm I'm playing on Expert, but I turn it up to Master when I fight dragons. I always save it before I fight it so I can try and fail as many times as I want.

I think once you know the technique to damage dragons without taking any damage yourself they're very easy to kill whatever the difficulty setting.

I disagree with that, I always find dragons a challenge on higher difficultys. But that's just me.

The challenge is exactly the same, you just have to hit them a lot more. The technique is no different, it just takes longer that's all.

with those 3 mods installed the first thing i do is find a nice spot any place be it a pillar, tree, rock anything to avoid deadly dragon breath and there fireballs shout, ice storm and thunder storm shout boy they are dangerous. dragons are dangerous with those 3 combination of mods

Not if you have low magic resistance and a relatively low armour rating. Keeps it challenging, very challenging. On most of my playthroughs, dragons kill me in 2-3 hits.

Our strategy with dragons is obviously very different. I very rarely ever take any damage whatsoever from any dragon so magic resistance or armour ratings for my characters is irrelevant as I'm the only one dealing damage and that's even on master difficulty. The idea is remain away from the front end and avoid the odd tail swish by dodging, works every time on any difficulty.

Buuut.. they breathe fire! Dx

Not out of their backsides they don't.

Buuut.. buuut. They have wings! Huge wings! ='(

im sure i have seen Tsun firing unrelenting force from backside in souvngard somewhere on internet cant say about dragons though

Edit : wait here it is http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=203494294

A dragon fart could possibly make fire

Well, right now I am playing a character who uses no magic, so no healing.

She isn't a high level and I accidently ran into a word wall with a dragon. Problem is, she had no health potions left and the dragon's fire would drop her health to half.

So....that wasn't exactly an easy job for me.

On XBOX Master +... If you're a (no magic) warrior and you don't know their [dragons] timing then I can see where there might be a problem. If you use magic dragons are easy. If you're a pure mage everything else besides dragons are a problem. Not into stealth characters.

I wish I had a decent PC. First mod I'd dl is deadly dragons.

At low levels on the highest difficulties and with those mods (if you haven't tried the mods don't think you know what dragon combat is like with them) every dragon attack can one-shot you. There is a very big different between "run out, shoot the dragon a few times, take cover, heal" and "find a way to bring down the dragon without getting hit, even by attacks that go through walls, and when the dragon has lots of armor, magic resistance, and extra high stats."

Very big difference.

I always use the unrelenting force shout on them so that they will be prevented from breathing fire.

About the same the first time I tried those mods (also my first time on legendary). If you save and load a lot you can bring down weak dragons, but it may take a long time (1 hour+, possibly more).

My strategy was:

1) Curse myself for doing Dragon Rising so early

2) If the dragon is in a town or settled area reload or use the console to make all the NPCs essential (for a farm, say)

3) Otherwise, run and run and run.

The biggest different for me was health. Once I hit 500 health, I was able to take many dragons (not the strongest DD variants, but many). I did manage an Aspect of Alduin at that point, but it took me several hours (I don't recommend it). With 1000 health, max magic resistance, and high resistance to all elemental damage, I clean up pretty well (though keeping NPCs alive is still a challenge). (Edit - in case it's not clear I recommend focusing on health and only health through the first 40 levels at least, it really makes things harder if you divide focus that early, especially if you plan on going for legendary skills.)

In general make sure you have cover, some attacks will cut through your cover but it's possible to dodge and gain some control over positioning. Dodge if possible, watch the dragon if possible (if you haven't disabled your radar then it will help here), if you don't know where it is kind of zig around like a madman, and if it's swooping sprint. When it lands it's restricted in its movements so that's the time to take the offense.

And of course, enchanting is a big deal. If you can resist 90+% of the damage then you can attack the dragon in many situations that would be impossible otherwise, instead of going pure defense until the dragon (eventually) lands (and probably flies back up again much too soon).

Finally, take advantage of the dragon's tendency to attack any target at all. Get it between you and its target (mudcrab, rabbit, NPC, troll, bear, bandit, stray leaf...) and it will often have its back to you. It gets easier over time. At some point it may be worth manually setting the damage higher in the mod menus (increasing armor, hp, and magic resistance really just serves to make the fights longer, strong dragon variants will have plenty enough health already without going hardcoe - but to each his own, of course).