Although Tharon-Zul is becoming relatively powerful and his horde of summoned Daedra are all but unstoppable in battle, there's one thing causing me an endless headache, and that's arrows. Sniper bandits, Dragur, and vampires have been the bane of my life since day 1, and that's still the case now after 36 hours. Wards only help against spells, and although I can try and distract archers with summons, it still only takes one stray arrow to take me out, which means I constantly have to Quick-Save because a hidden sniper archer can just take me out before I've had time to react.
I have more than enough Magicka now so perhaps I need to start investing in Health. In addition, although I will still eschew melee combat, I think perhaps robes-only may have been a mistake - if being encased in a suit of armour helps me survive arrow hits, I need to investigate this - I can still enchant the armour. There's just one other thing I could try as well - using a shield. With my mods, shield protect a lot better against arrows (as they should) so perhaps it's worth sacrificing spell flexibility (seeing as I usually have a summoned army following me about anyway) for near-imperviousness to arrow-fire.
After some research, I learn that the unique magical shield 'Spellbreaker' is granted as a boon from the Daedric Prince Peryite if I visit his shrine and carry out a task for him. As well as acting as a normal shield, it creates a (free!) Ward effect to protect from spells whilst blocking. Perfect! I find his shrine in the western wilds, and he commands me to slay one his followers who's holed up in a nearby Dwemer ruin called Bthardamz. For all-powerful beings, Daedric Princes do seem to need a lot of help from mortals.
Bthardamz is absolutely huge and the tunnels and corridors seem to go on forever. The place is crawling with spell-casting 'Afflicted' who, as well as being mages, have some kind of vile vomit attack. After almost an hour, I reach an impressively overgrown section of the ruins:
Soon after, I track down my mark, and assassinate him. Returning to the shrine, Peryite keeps his word and grants me the fabled shield. I try it out on a nearby Forsworn camp and even with no increases to Block yet and no skill points invested, it does a great job of blocking nearly all damage from arrows. It does make spellcasting more awkward as you can only cast with the non-shield hand and can't cast while blocking, but the difference is survivability is huge, so I think I may be adjusting my play-style to make use of the shield.
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