Hi all,

Looking for some considered advice on my current Daggerfall character. He's a level 9 Warrior, who just stumbled across the Knightly Order artifact quest (the one where a Lich drops a note mentioning a hidden artifact in another dungeon). On investigating the dungeon in question, it turns out to be infested with Vampires - and not only that, the entrance to the dungeon is *directly* opposite a small room containing a Vampire Ancient, who, naturally, notices me the instant I enter the dungeon.

Now, my character is very strong, and very agile, but has no magic skills (though he does have a couple of ranged magic items, one with Fireball and one with Ice Storm), and worse, has no archery skills at all. I'm quite keen to do this quest soon (so that I don't forget about it!) but this Vampire Ancient slaughters my character in moments, unsurprisingly.

Should I:
- try and evade the monsters, and just run around hoping to find the wizard?
- head back to town and invest in some Archery levels and equipment?
- try and find some beefier protective magic items? If so, where's good to look?
- spend some time working my way up the Mage's Guild to get some real magic protection?
- do something else entirely?

Looking forward to your advice!

The ancient vampire is too though for you to take him in melee and his magic resistance is too big (except to fire perhaps) and ranged attacks won't hurt him much. I guess until you reach level 20, obtain daedric armor/weapons and enchant something with resistance to shock you should avoid these monsters.

If you can drag him with you to another room (preferably a large and far away room) you may get him out of the way to explore that part of the dungeon. But be careful, because he also moves very fast. Fortunately he doesn't have any ranged attack spells unlike the Ancient Lych.

Anything of silence may allow you to take him if you're fast. Hit him with it a couple times and make sure it takes, then hit and run in melee until he hopefully dies. His melee is probably strong enough to kill you in 2-3 hits and if the silence doesn't work he'll rattle off shock like 20 times into you.

Make a good reflection spell (high magnitude, low duration). It's OK if you blow your entire magicka pool on it, because it only has to last long enough for him to blast himself into paste.

Actually, that makes a lot of sense. I've got a helm that bumps my Int up to nearly 90, so I should be able to get a pretty powerful one going. Unfortunately I'll still have to grind out several ranks in the Temple of Kynareth (Mage's Guild won't let me in, the snobs) before I can use the spellmaker.