The Skull Crusher Build, V3.0, Pure Dragon Knight
Almost Unkillable, 55K DPS
Designed for the Skull Crusher Event and the Night Market
updated May 21, 2026
Introduction
The Skull Crusher Event, for those who don't know, is the Friday evening challenge to solo world bosses whilst your guildies look on. We start with easy base zone bosses then go on to the much tougher DLC bosses. I started designing this build before I had the idea for the Skull Crusher challenge, and this is it's second major iteration. I had to wait for the updated Dragon Knight before publishing this build.
Below is the Superstars build for this character. It contains most things you need to actually copy the build and have some fun. After the Superstars screen, I discuss some of the details of the build and there is a short video of it in action in the Night Market.
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Build Discussion
This is the third version of this build. It is designed to be as tough as the previous one but to deal a bit more damage, about 20% up on version 2. In some dungeons there are DPS challenges and the previous version could fail in this area. Now with 20% more damage it should no longer be such a concern.
Sets
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The two main sets for this build to work are Impregnable from Cyrodiil and Twice Born Star which is crafted. Essential is a monster set and the best I have found is Zaan, farmed from Scalecaller Peak on veteran difficulty. I have Zaan in Heavy.
The Maelstrom Greatsword on the back bar, this gives a good boost to damage for 18 seconds and is a great gap closer.
Impregnable is actually really good in PvP giving a ton of crit resistance, you can therefore take this build straight into PvP and not die too quickly.
Twice Born Star adds the ability to use two Mundus stones. I am using the Thief for extra crit chance and the Lady for extra resistance.
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Zaan
Zaan is an armour set in the Elder Scrolls Online that can be obtained in Scalecaller Peak. It is part of the Dragon Bones DLC pack. When you deal Critical Damage with a Light or Heavy Attack, you have a 33% chance to tether to your enemy for 10 seconds as long as you remain within 8 meters of them. Enemies touching the tether take 145 Flame damage every 1 second, increasing by 100% per tick and are afflicted with the Burning status effect. This effect can occur once every 20 seconds and scales off the higher of your Weapon or Spell Damage.
Maelstrom Greatsword
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When you use Critical Charge/Stampede you gain up to 12% more weapon and spell damage on all attacks, this lasts 18 seconds.
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Buffed Stats, Food and Potions
I was aiming for around 30K magicka and 30K Health. My resistances needed to be 30K minimum. I sometimes see this rise to a max of 40K in combat metrics, but only the first 35K of resists are counted. As you can see, specific resistances are very high, and it helps that this is a Nord Character; Nords are very resistant to frost, especially.
All attributes go into Magicka, after all, this isn't a tank, we still want to do reasonable damage. If we take too long to kill a boss it may well reset!​​​​
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Ingredients:
To achieve the restore effect for all three resources, you must use one of the following combinations:
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Bugloss + Columbine + Dragonthorn
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Bugloss + Columbine + Mountain Flower
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Columbine + Mountain Flower + Wormwood
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Required Skills: Recipe Improvement 1 and Recipe Quality 2 (Legendary).
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Ingredients:
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1 Perfect Roe (Obtained rarely by skinning common fish).
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1 Frost Mirriam (Often found through Provisioning hirelings or reward containers).
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1 Red Meat.
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1 Lemon.
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A good alternative and significantly cheaper is Witchmother's Potent Brew.
Champion Points
This set of CP is balanced for huge resistance, great shield longevity and good damage output. Feel free to mix and match depending on which area of the build you wish to improve or change.
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Rotation and how to play
Playing the Skull Crusher is really quite easy. Basically, you will utilise the heals and shield when needed, otherwise concentrate on buffing the Engulfing Dragon Fire with:
Shatterspike Mantle
Incinerate
Igneous Weapons
Quick Cloak
Heart of Flame
Refresh when necessary. I suggest getting the Fancy Action Bar Addon.
What is it like to play?
In a word, bloody great fun. There is something fantastic about going into almost any situation and, as long as you don't stand in very stupid you're never going to die. I often throw a taunt on to help out if we have no tank or not enough tanks (replace Molten Whip with the Undaunted Taunt Inner Rage). And, still do more damage than the average pug by far. It often feels like God Mode in a dungeon or trial. Yes, you have seen me die on this build, but only usually when I make a stupid mistake, or the tank loses taunt, and I'm hit with a 100K cleave.
Now, you can make this build even more defensive, but at the cost of damage, we want to maintain that 50K DPS so that it doesn't get boring or take so long on a boss it gives up and goes home for tea.
I love using this build, and you will often see me on it. I love everything about the new Pure DK and when the class masteries are launched, this will only get better. I will update the build at that point.​​​​
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Build Notes:
Version: 3
Date: May 2026
Race: Nord
Anything you can't see - it's there, check the Superstars screenshot carefully
Will there be updates? - This will be updated when Update 50 is launched.
Finally, I hope you find this build guide useful and enjoyable. I had a lot of fun putting it together and even more fun hacking and slashing.