Hello!

I recently purchased Skyrim on Steam during the summer sales and I'm enjoying every minute of it. I've reached level.. 17 I think, but I'm starting to have problems clearing the dungeons.

I'm trying to build a battle-mage (heavy armor, one-hander and destruction), but both my damage and my defense seems very lackluster against any enemy who's not a lowly bandit/draugr. It's getting frustrating, since I'm unable to complete many of my current quests.

I'm still equipped with the Skyforge Sword, you get for joining the Companions, and my best piece of armor is dwarven - the rest is good, old steel. I've been unable to find anything better, and my smithing is not yet high enough to produce anything worthwhile.

Normally I'm equipped witht the sword and firebolt. And the bow, when I sneak. But even when I manage to sneak up on a Bandit Thug and do the 2xdmg-attack, I still have major issues getting them down.

Can anyone shed some light on what I'm doing wrong? I know it's hard based on the above, but I can't possibly be the only one having issues

Thanks!

Might want to get a follower and/or lower the difficulty.

Try to use as much ranged attacks as possible before the enemy reachs you, at this point put away the flames so you can block and bash. walk away or bash when he tries to power attack and attack when he's staggered

Use the hotkeys to quickselect different weapons, spells and a shield. I find using a sword and spell to be the most awkward combat type.
best to have a shield hotkeyed.

Try keeping a healing spell or shield spell in your off-weapon hand.

Thanks again. I'll try and experiment with that.

Another thing you might want to do is only specialize in combat or magic until one of them is strong enough to where you feel "safe." THEN you can branch out and level up the other skills. Levelling a bunch of skills at once can make you comparatively weaker to bandits who are only levelling combat related skills.

You can get Mjoll the Lioness as a follower after level 14

I like to supplement this kind of build with Conjuration: whether for additional firepower or a temporary tank, it's always useful. As a battlemage you may want to ditch the bow and keep Destruction as your long range skill, then switch to sword + something else when up close, as advised earlier. You will get the most out of Destruction if you utilize Impact, so you'll want it in both hands in certain situations anyway. But spells don't get sneak damage bonus, so maybe this isn't the best idea right now when your character has problems with killing enemies as it is.

This was stated, but up to about level 20 or so, focus on developing your main combat, defense and recovery skills, what ever they are. Then you can add in other skills once you are established. At this middle levels, some bosses can one shot you. It does not happen often, but often enough that you want to make sure you have a save point from just before you went in to the dungeon. And, no an Autosave is not what you need here. Never be afraid to make too many save slots, you can't have too many of them.

Followers can help you when your not fully skilled up. Also, you can craft armor and weapons better than you can find during the early and middle stages of the game.

Since you are -at least partly- mage, give at least one perk to restoration spell and use healing spell more effectively. That helps a lot.

Also, when I play as Battle-Mage I never used bow. I was using mace in right and flames in left hand. I'm not expert on Skyrim but that's the deadliest combination, IMHO. (Correct me if I'm wrong guys )

Are you utilizing poisons OP?

You're a newb so I'm going to ask a newb question...are you spending perk points? If you're using a one hand sword then the Armsman perks are essential. You shouldn't have a hard time if you hit them with a destruction spell or 2 from a distance then finish them off with your sword once they get close to you. Some areas may be too hard for you at the moment, wait until you level up a bit and increase your skills to tackle tougher dungeons.

The game allows you to accept quests that are too hard. If you start a quest that is kicking your butt just backout and do it another day when you have better gear.

I like to spend my early days building up all my skills. This game is like no other you can spend hundreds of hours playing it. Take your time and slowly build your skills.

Lack of armor or smithing perk's and/or skill could be one reason why you are getting killed easier.

Lack of destruction or 1h perk's and/or skill could be a reason that it takes forever to kill an enemy.

I would ditch the bow for now, perhaps go back to it later if you want to. I had a spellsword that used a bound bow for ranged attack's, but he mostly lvl'd archery hunting til it was high enough, used destruction til then, then used cloak's and runes only in destruction.

I would reccomend ignoring using the bow for now, until you can get your One-handed and Destruction up.

Also, what dungeons are you having trouble with, a few may probaly have emenies that will destroy you.

Are we overwhelming you with help?

Is it the melee enemies you're having trouble against, or casters? Or both?

You might want to consider taking up a crafting discipline (or all of them) to start beefing up your passive defense. Improve every piece or armor or weapon that you find using the grindstone and the work bench. Start cranking out resist potions as well as health and stamina recovery at alcehmy stations. Use the enchanter to add bonuses to armor and weapon skills. That's just the basics. There's ways to use each crafting discipline REALLY well, but if you're not using the basics of at least one, you're probably swimming upstream.

Yep. Unless you know what you're doing, using only 1/5 on armsman, juggernaut and/or any other armor/weapon skill's opening perk, isn't going to cut it.

Work on your one handed skill, heavy armor, and Block. You really want to use a heavy shield and block those attacks. I don't use magic much, even though I have most of the magic genre perk trees; destruction, conjuration, enchanting etc. I still find using a sword and a shield fortified with enchantments on my daedric armor to be very sucessful against even the strongest foes. Also you will really want to invest alot of time in Smithing and Enchanting to enchant your armor to fortify your one handed and archery skills to have a higher damage rate. You will need it otherwise you will never have a high powered weapon that cut through Legendary Dragons like butter.

Welcome to the forum!

I always found levels 18-20 a little tougher because of the enemies leveling up around then. I like know it gets a little easier for a while after level 21. Usually. I have found it works best to work on leveling the 6 skills associated with the guardian stone you pick in the beginning of the game until level 20. (Provided you picked one.) Then feel free to chose a new one, if you like. And don't forget to use your shouts if you have them.

Have you any mods? Steam workshop has lots of armor and weapon mods that can remedy some of your problems. A word of caution, go easy at first to avoid conflicts.

Enjoy Skyrim and good luck!