Breton Conjuration/Archer for Master Difficulty

[Ariadne33]

Hey! My name is Ashley and I'm new to these forums but I love Skyrim and wanted to share my character with everyone (and my thoughts on Master difficulty!)

Race: I think Breton is just the best and on Master there's a smaller margin for being suboptimal. I wanted an ability that would be good early or late game. High Elf is good early on for example but both its passive and active abilities are almost obsolete once you get Enchanting to 100 for Extra Effect (and the reason I'm playing Master is so I can do things like Enchanting without feeling guilty about it!). Orcs have a great active ability but the damage prevention doesn't help vs. spells and only 1/day (unless you abuse the wait timer!) Nords and Dark Elves are okay w/ their resists but I don't know, a general resist all seems better (and is mathematically better if shock, ice, and fire show up in equal amounts - but I don't think they do).

Conjuration: To keep enemies distracted and for Bound Bow early on (switching to Daedric late game). I have perks up to Adept and raised Magicka to 200 and stopped for good there. That way I can summon both Atronachs (I use Flame, I like their ranged abilities, plus it helps me know where to shoot!) and I can also use Oak or Stoneflesh (mostly just to get Alteration high enough for 2 levels of Magic Resistance) and I can conjure a bow. I used the Mage Stone to level Conjuration and cast Soul Trap on a dead creature to get it to 100 fast. I took all the lefthand perks Atromancy, Potency, Twin Soul, etc.

Archery: It's how I contribute On Master, enemies hit hard and I don't like to be near them. With Power Shot, you can stagger them a lot for you and your minions. I got Faendal as a follower and leveled this to 50 quick by training with him then trading my money back hehe.

Light Armor: Late game it is better than heavy for anybody but as an archer, the mobility is nice early on. I took as many perks as I needed to hit the armor cap (517 I think? I'm using the Lord Stone), Unhindered, Wind Walker, and Deft Movement is better than Reflect Blows (a) you're not getting it much anyway and (b) it might avoid a killing hit altogether! I still haven't maxed this, I haven't found a good way to level it quickly yet and I don't get hit a lot so it's been slow.

Alteration: Just 4 perks to get 2 tiers of resistance. Breton 25, Lord Stone 25, Agent of Mara 15, and 20 from the perks = max resist of 85%

Smithing: I went up the heavy armor side even though I use light armor. I wanted Daedric weapons and once I had found a weapon w/ Banish to disenchant, money wasn't an issue and I could max Smithing in one session anyway.

Enchanting: Up the middle for Extra Effect which is soooo powerful as I'm sure you all know! Now, you don't really need to make spells free for this build but you can of course. You can also throw on some extra magic resists if you don't want to play a Breton or spend the perks. I personally find perks a lot easier to come by than enchantment space. You could also have gear swaps for free spells too if you want (or sneaky gear!)

Lastly, my extra perks go to Speech just because I like the convenience of not having to run to a zillion places to sell my Banish daggers plus Haggling and Allure can net a lot of gold early on.

For enchants, I use Fortify Archery stuff, a Daedric Bow with dual element damage (fire/ice) but I'm not sure what the other enchants should be. Like does fire resist further reduce damage even if you're at the generic magic resist cap? And oh, I leveled enchanting w/ a bound bow w/ soul stealer plus bought petty and lesser soul gems, it was pretty fast, though not as fast as the 1st 2.

I hope this wasn't too long and still fun to check out even if it's stuff you guys already know. I tried an assassin on Master (heard it was really good and thought it might be fun) but it just wasn't for me, not patient enough I guess. Also, I hated leveling Destruction as a mage and the early levels seemed too tedious so I never got far. This character has been my favorite and has worked well at every level.

Nice to meet everyone! Enjoy!

 

[xsneakyxsimx]

Welcome to the Forum, Ariadne33! With what you planned so far, it looks good! With perk selection, a lot of the higher stuff in Light Armour and Archery could be considered optional if you start to get tight on perks. Were you intending to try to get to Level 81?

 

[Ariadne33]

Welcome to the Forum, Ariadne33! With what you planned so far, it looks good! With perk selection, a lot of the higher stuff in Light Armour and Archery could be considered optional if you start to get tight on perks. Were you intending to try to get to Level 81?

Yeah! But I can do what I have planned by level 58 - I could skip a lot of the Archery, Light Armor, and Speech perks for sure but since I'm planning to do all the quests w/ this one character now, I'll probably get there eventually

What do people usually do for Magicka, Stamina, and Health? I was planning to keep magic and stamina at 200 and put the rest into health. I think that'll be fine for this character.

 

[xsneakyxsimx]

Yeah! But I can do what I have planned by level 58 - I could skip a lot of the Archery, Light Armor, and Speech perks for sure but since I'm planning to do all the quests w/ this one character now, I'll probably get there eventually

What do people usually do for Magicka, Stamina, and Health? I was planning to keep magic and stamina at 200 and put the rest into health. I think that'll be fine for this character.

For a good, all-round set-up, I plan a 2/4/2 of Magicka/Health/Stamina, which at Level 81 would give 300/500/300 respectively. Because you're using enchanting, you can get a way with just 200 in both Magicka and Stamina, and fortify it if necessary. There is nothing wrong going for more survivability.

 

[theoduck]

I think I have finally gotten my Khajiit build right (4th time through -- didn't finish #3 because I got Dragonborn and wanted to incorporate it into whatever articles I might end up writing [see home page].

Playing on Master pretty much requires archery. Didn't see you mention the Ranger perk; damn that makes a huge difference.

If you have Dawnguard (and join the Dawnguard), you get crossbows, which are slow unless you take the Quick Shot perk -- having that pretty much makes crossbows a no-brainer around mid-game... I have an excellent system and a Death Razor mouse (Death Adder? I forget -- good for graphics work, too), but I haven't figured out out to shoot super fast with a bow -- seems like every third shot is a dud unless I don't worry about speed. With a crossbow, you always know that every shot is at max pull.

The annoying thing about archery (and any ranged attack) is the auto-miss; no matter how good of a shot I am, the game arbitrarily decides that X number of shots will automatically miss. You can see this in action when your target sometimes magically moonwalks 10 feet to safety the instant you release your shot. Grrr! I don't know if this is random or calculated somehow, but it's cheeze.

Since I shoot a lot of stuff, I had no need to exploit Faendal. I pay for training on the skills I don't want to use -- like Heavy Armor and Two Handed.

I use Alteration a lot. Ebonyflesh is your friend on Master...

...as is Fury. If you want to dominate on Master, invest heavily in Illusion. You don't need Master of the Mind or Master Illusion, but if you want to use Illusion at all, commit to everything else in the tree.

Since I take zero perks in speech, lockpicking, and pickpocket, that still leaves a lot of room to get dangerous with Alchemy and Enchanting (yeah you need it on Master).

Melee is going to happen no matter what. Getting Jenassa early on helps with that. If you treat her right, she will put your enemies in the microwave while you train your lesser skills (for me that's Destruction and Conjuration).

At level 41 this time, so far I have 2 perks in Agile Defender + Custom Fit. 2 perks in Armsman (one-handed) + Fighting Stance (plan on quietly getting the dual-wield perks while maxing out Block skill [no perks in Block]).

I'll probably do what I was doing in the unfinished game -- Alchemist 3, Enchanter 3 + Physician, Benefactor, Insightful, Corpus, Extra Effect. No need to take smithing past Advanced with this because Vampire Armor, with dual enchantments (boots resist shock/frost, armor +stamina for dual wield, helm archery/alteration, gauntlets +light armor/one-handed, ring/necklace both resist magic [one resist fire, the other -- whatever] and maxed-out tempering, is the best light armor in Skyrim. Elven arrows get the job done quickly until I have the Quick Shot perk, then it's Dwarven Bolts (might be worth taking that smithing perk) and a Dwemer crossbow doing fire/shock damage (lights them up and drains their magicka).

If you do the illusion thing, Bandit and Forswarn battles become massacres, even on Master, so there's really just Draugr Deathlords and Falmer/Chaurus to worry about. Falmer Warmongers are dangerous at any level and flying Chaurus will get right past your arrows and get in yo ass.

 

[theoduck]

Another great follower for this build is Valdimar (Hearthfire DLC). Make someone else (Lydia) Steward of Windstad Manor and take Valdimar for a spin. He's a badass, if a little wordy.

...and if you have a way to keep her alive, Meeko is an archer's best friend.

 

[Ariadne33]

Unfortunately, I have Skyrim on PS3 so no DLC yet but I thought about getting it for computer since I like the game so much but then I feel like I'm just rewarding Bethesda for not having the DLC on the PS3

And I love the pic, Theoduck, makes me want to play a Khajit hehe Argonians look cool too, I just wish that either of those races had better abilities I hate playing human characters in games but I hate non-optimized characters even more... Maybe next time I won't have to choose.

 

[theoduck]

Unfortunately, I have Skyrim on PS3 so no DLC yet but I thought about getting it for computer since I like the game so much but then I feel like I'm just rewarding Bethesda for not having the DLC on the PS3

And I love the pic, Theoduck, makes me want to play a Khajit hehe Argonians look cool too, I just wish that either of those races had better abilities I hate playing human characters in games but I hate non-optimized characters even more... Maybe next time I won't have to choose.

I think the racial abilities make the big difference in the early stages of the game... they don't seem to matter for very long.

 

[Panthera]

Welcome Ashley to the forums.

Interesting build you have there. Once I wanted to make weaponless assassin. I intended to conjure bow, swords and daggers. But the problem was that you couldn't conjure dagger which is essential for assassin class. At least not until dragonborn came in. But even with dragonborn dlc to get the dagger spell you need to go to this Morrowind island to buy it. -.-

Anyway... There is few things that troubles me. You said you aren't in to a stealth thing. And you invested perks in blacksmith for daedric weapons. Now considering that daedric bow is more suitable for stealth class because it's slow if you shoot while standing. Also heavier bows tend to take longer to draw. Here is my explanation why is troubling me.

Bows made of better material tend to draw more slowly, but one can always choose to draw partially for heavier bows, although only full draws stagger opponents. Better material bows always have higher damage per second than lesser material bows, but cheaper bows can stagger opponents more frequently. Below is a chart displaying the damage per second of the base bows in the game. It is worthwhile to note that while the (Supple) Ancient Nord bow has the second highest DPS in the list, it can't be tempered; thus meaning it is vastly inferior as your Archery skill grows. Bows with higher DPS fare better in close quarter scenarios. However, DPS is negligible when sneaking, as only base damage matters.

I have Imperial character which uses only human weaponry. So I was equipped with two steel swords, Valdr's Lucky Dagger (steel dagger) and Bow of the Hunting (It's a unique hunting bow with more damage and is tempered with steel). So basically I had somewhat lame weapons. I raised blacksmith to 100th lvl with only steel and arcane perk. And enchanting also 100th lvl with strait line of 8 perks on it. Than I enchanted 4 pieces of apparel with fortify smithing which gave +100% to smithing while alredy having 100 in blacksmith + steel perk. So my weapons were above legendary.

After that I've enchanted 4 pieces of my cloths with 40% one-hand and archery. I didn't have most damaging weaponry I could create but I did have a lot of benefits. Like staggering every shot which with slower bows is not possible at least not so often. So combining faster drawing and staggering with every shot, allowed me to kill the enemy at close range before enemy even reached me. And that's very good after you've been detected. My play is stealth oriented. And having steel swords which are one of the lightest weapons allows me more power attacks. And the most important it was role play friendly.

So here is my advice if you have downgourd installed get your hands on Auriel's bow and all perks you will need are steel perk, elven and arcane. Also if you temper with elven armor to the armor cap, you will have best armor in game because it will be lightest armor with the same protection as Dragon or some other which is above elven catagory.

Suggestion about enchanting your bow... If you have black Azura star, I find very practical to put paralyzing (1-3 sec) and soul trapping (1 sec) enchantments. Each time you kill you refill your bow with soul gem. It will give you more time and unmovable targets to shoot.

 

[Psiberzerker]

Hey! My name is Ashley and I'm new to these forums but I love Skyrim and wanted to share my character with everyone (and my thoughts on Master difficulty!)

Race: I think Breton is just the best and on Master there's a smaller margin for being suboptimal. I wanted an ability that would be good early or late game. High Elf is good early on for example but both its passive and active abilities are almost obsolete once you get Enchanting to 100 for Extra Effect (and the reason I'm playing Master is so I can do things like Enchanting without feeling guilty about it!). Orcs have a great active ability but the damage prevention doesn't help vs. spells and only 1/day (unless you abuse the wait timer!) Nords and Dark Elves are okay w/ their resists but I don't know, a general resist all seems better (and is mathematically better if shock, ice, and fire show up in equal amounts - but I don't think they do).

Conjuration: To keep enemies distracted and for Bound Bow early on (switching to Daedric late game). I have perks up to Adept and raised Magicka to 200 and stopped for good there. That way I can summon both Atronachs (I use Flame, I like their ranged abilities, plus it helps me know where to shoot!) and I can also use Oak or Stoneflesh (mostly just to get Alteration high enough for 2 levels of Magic Resistance) and I can conjure a bow. I used the Mage Stone to level Conjuration and cast Soul Trap on a dead creature to get it to 100 fast. I took all the lefthand perks Atromancy, Potency, Twin Soul, etc.

Archery: It's how I contribute On Master, enemies hit hard and I don't like to be near them. With Power Shot, you can stagger them a lot for you and your minions. I got Faendal as a follower and leveled this to 50 quick by training with him then trading my money back hehe.

Light Armor: Late game it is better than heavy for anybody but as an archer, the mobility is nice early on. I took as many perks as I needed to hit the armor cap (517 I think? I'm using the Lord Stone), Unhindered, Wind Walker, and Deft Movement is better than Reflect Blows (a) you're not getting it much anyway and (b) it might avoid a killing hit altogether! I still haven't maxed this, I haven't found a good way to level it quickly yet and I don't get hit a lot so it's been slow.

Alteration: Just 4 perks to get 2 tiers of resistance. Breton 25, Lord Stone 25, Agent of Mara 15, and 20 from the perks = max resist of 85%

Smithing: I went up the heavy armor side even though I use light armor. I wanted Daedric weapons and once I had found a weapon w/ Banish to disenchant, money wasn't an issue and I could max Smithing in one session anyway.

Enchanting: Up the middle for Extra Effect which is soooo powerful as I'm sure you all know! Now, you don't really need to make spells free for this build but you can of course. You can also throw on some extra magic resists if you don't want to play a Breton or spend the perks. I personally find perks a lot easier to come by than enchantment space. You could also have gear swaps for free spells too if you want (or sneaky gear!)

Lastly, my extra perks go to Speech just because I like the convenience of not having to run to a zillion places to sell my Banish daggers plus Haggling and Allure can net a lot of gold early on.

For enchants, I use Fortify Archery stuff, a Daedric Bow with dual element damage (fire/ice) but I'm not sure what the other enchants should be. Like does fire resist further reduce damage even if you're at the generic magic resist cap? And oh, I leveled enchanting w/ a bound bow w/ soul stealer plus bought petty and lesser soul gems, it was pretty fast, though not as fast as the 1st 2.

I hope this wasn't too long and still fun to check out even if it's stuff you guys already know. I tried an assassin on Master (heard it was really good and thought it might be fun) but it just wasn't for me, not patient enough I guess. Also, I hated leveling Destruction as a mage and the early levels seemed too tedious so I never got far. This character has been my favorite and has worked well at every level.

I don't really see much room for improvement on this build. I prefer Altmer for this type, more for the higher Running Speed than anything else, since Mobility is critical for an Archer.

As far as Enchanting goes, making Spells Free is a waste of 4 slots, since all the Conjuration you're using has Durations. You just need enough Magicka to cast them, and by the time they wear off, your blue gauge has recovered. I'd invest more in Health/Stamina, and Recovery on the clothes, or Fortify Archery to add damage without Smithing. I see you went for Daedric, despite being Light Armor, and due to a recent experiment, I discovered that the difference in Material is minimal in terms of Damage at top Tier. (Elven-Daedric made a difference of 17 at Legendary.) I doubt you want to respec, or start over now, but in future, I'm going to suggest going for the Light side of the tree for better Armor, and Perk Efficiency.

 

[khazan99]

The annoying thing about archery (and any ranged attack) is the auto-miss; no matter how good of a shot I am, the game arbitrarily decides that X number of shots will automatically miss. You can see this in action when your target sometimes magically moonwalks 10 feet to safety the instant you release your shot. Grrr! I don't know if this is random or calculated somehow, but it's cheeze.

Apologies for going off-topic but this statement really jumped out at me. I have noticed this happening from time to time as well, but always assumed it was just my XBox being a bit glitchy.

Can anyone confirm if this actually is meant to happen as part of some "random miss" feature built into the game?

Thanks!

 

[theoduck]

Apologies for going off-topic but this statement really jumped out at me. I have noticed this happening from time to time as well, but always assumed it was just my XBox being a bit glitchy.

Can anyone confirm if this actually is meant to happen as part of some "random miss" feature built into the game?

Thanks!

I'm on PC. Pretty sure it's just a built-in cheez carny-trick. What shall we call it?

"Milk-Bottling?"

There's an old standup comedian who used to joke about going to Coney Island growing up; they had that carnival game where you had to knock over the milk bottles with a ball to win a prize. One time a hurricane hit the area and ripped everything up. The only thing left standing were the milk bottles.

 

[Psiberzerker]

I'm on PC. Pretty sure it's just a built-in cheez carny-trick. What shall we call it?

"Milk-Bottling?"

There's an old standup comedian who used to joke about going to Coney Island growing up; they had that carnival game where you had to knock over the milk bottles with a ball to win a prize. One time a hurricane hit the area and ripped everything up. The only thing left standing were the milk bottles.

LOL, I call it "Psychic Bandit Syndrome." I swear, you sneak in, line up your shot perfectly, and that damned psychic bandit still jumps to the side at the last second. Then he says "What was that?" and goes to check out where the arrow hit. "Spidey Sense?" Lightning Bolt, it's a hit-scan, so they don't have as much of a chance do do that weird voodoo sidestep. They still do it, but not as often.

 

[theoduck]

LOL, I call it "Psychic Bandit Syndrome." I swear, you sneak in, line up your shot perfectly, and that damned psychic bandit still jumps to the side at the last second. Then he says "What was that?" and goes to check out where the arrow hit. "Spidey Sense?" Lightning Bolt, it's a hit-scan, so they don't have as much of a chance do do that weird voodoo sidestep. They still do it, but not as often.

Suffering from PBS, eh? lol!

Now that I installed my mods correctly and have ASIS, it seems to happen a little more -- not to mention that there were not one, but four Draugr Overlords at the word wall in Bleak Falls Barrow, all capable of milk-bottling and a bunch of other nasty tactics. Faendal and I were running all over that friggin' place. Fun!