Hybrid Playstyles

[Oskar Gudlaugsson]

Yeah, I think that build will do well. Right now I'm also trying sneak and illusion which will hopefully be effective.

It's very effective. I've been playing a thief/illusionist lately and have really discovered just how powerful that school of magic can be.

1. Muffle really helps you sneak successfully in the early game when you're sneak skill is low and you have few sneak perks yet. Muffle lasts reasonably long so it's not tedious to keep it up, and it also levels your illusion skill fast.

2. When you've been discovered by an enemy, cast calm. Very often the person or animal will turn away and start moving back to its original position. You then have a chance to hide again and get out of combat entirely. I could often use this to do repeated sneak attacks to take out tough opponents, or simply to escape if I'd run into an enemy accidentally.

3. Against more than one opponent, fury wins. You can also use this to turn guards or other neutral bystanders against your enemies - I've used this against hired thugs who would otherwise have killed me easily.

4. Once you have some perks invested in both illusion and sneak and a high enough skill in each, you can start causing a lot of trouble. My character, who's currently just lvl 19, is able to frenzy city guards or other powerful NPC's and then immediately hide away. Once the fighting is over she can come out, loot the corpses, and no-one blames her for a thing! Pretty powerful way to assassinate people there...

 

[Uskyldig]

plops, couldnt have said it better myself.
This is more or less why the thread was made.
I love destroying everything with a war hammer then knowing if I don't close the gap then a Mage will ruin my day.

 

[Teritus]

It's very effective. I've been playing a thief/illusionist lately and have really discovered just how powerful that school of magic can be.

1. Muffle really helps you sneak successfully in the early game when you're sneak skill is low and you have few sneak perks yet. Muffle lasts reasonably long so it's not tedious to keep it up, and it also levels your illusion skill fast.

2. When you've been discovered by an enemy, cast calm. Very often the person or animal will turn away and start moving back to its original position. You then have a chance to hide again and get out of combat entirely. I could often use this to do repeated sneak attacks to take out tough opponents, or simply to escape if I'd run into an enemy accidentally.

3. Against more than one opponent, fury wins. You can also use this to turn guards or other neutral bystanders against your enemies - I've used this against hired thugs who would otherwise have killed me easily.

4. Once you have some perks invested in both illusion and sneak and a high enough skill in each, you can start causing a lot of trouble. My character, who's currently just lvl 19, is able to frenzy city guards or other powerful NPC's and then immediately hide away. Once the fighting is over she can come out, loot the corpses, and no-one blames her for a thing! Pretty powerful way to assassinate people there...

But the only downside is that, until you get 90 illusion and all the perks, you can't really enter Dwarven ruins or Draugr crypts because your spells won't work on them.

 

[Oskar Gudlaugsson]

But the only downside is that, until you get 90 illusion and all the perks, you can't really enter Dwarven ruins or Draugr crypts because your spells won't work on them.

You're right that the illusionist is at a disadvantage in those areas. I wouldn't say that he "can't" deal with those creatures at all, though. It's just harder than otherwise. With my character, I have been avoiding those areas to an extent, but that's also been because I've been so busy with the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood quests, which mostly involve humanoids anyway.

I'm actually at a crossroad right now - whether to take some perks in light armor and improve my melee a bit, or just go for even more magic and rely on conjuring to do the dirty work when I can't trick my way through things. My bet is on the latter option, so I might just ditch armor entirely for some mage clothing (not doing any smithing).

 

[Professor Skalvar]

But the only downside is that, until you get 90 illusion and all the perks, you can't really enter Dwarven ruins or Draugr crypts because your spells won't work on them.

I honestly never bothered taking that perk. I find casting Invisibility while sneaking in boots that have the muffle enchantment much more useful than using calm, fury, or frenzy spells in Dwarven ruins or Draugr crypts.

 

[Teritus]

I honestly never bothered taking that perk. I find casting Invisibility while sneaking in boots that have the muffle enchantment much more useful than using calm, fury, or frenzy spells in Dwarven ruins or Draugr crypts.

Though I heard that Invisibility can be a bit of a game-breaker.

 

[Professor Skalvar]

Though I heard that Invisibility can be a bit of a game-breaker.

Almost anything in Skyrim can be a game-breaker depending on how much thought you put into a character and his/her skills. For the most part, I do agree that Invisibility is very much a game-breaker.

 

[Oskar Gudlaugsson]

I'm sure Invisibility will be really cool once I learn it (which will be soon), but it might not turn out be such a game-breaker, except for dealing with groups and staying alive. Against single melee opponents, I've been able to achieve the same thing just using Calm:

1. Snipe guy with bow.
2. Let him come running, maybe shoot him a second time.
3. When he's about to melee, cast Calm.
4. He'll say something then turn and start walking back to where he was.
5. Equip dagger, then sneak up to him and backstab.
6. If he's still alive, Calm again and backstab...

 

[Teritus]

I'm sure Invisibility will be really cool once I learn it (which will be soon), but it might not turn out be such a game-breaker, except for dealing with groups and staying alive. Against single melee opponents, I've been able to achieve the same thing just using Calm:

1. Snipe guy with bow.
2. Let him come running, maybe shoot him a second time.
3. When he's about to melee, cast Calm.
4. He'll say something then turn and start walking back to where he was.
5. Equip dagger, then sneak up to him and backstab.
6. If he's still alive, Calm again and backstab...

Did you put perks into archery though? Because it might be spreading it a trifle too thinly if you were to put perks in that, illusion and sneak.

 

[Zoridium JackL]

I find the problem with creating severely hybrid characters is that it limits your access to the more generally useful skill trees, for example, my current main character doesn't have enough points to invest in enchanting or alchemy, the enchanting isn't too much of an issue because I use the bound bow but alchemy would be great for poisons (I have enough buff potions in my inventory to start a store).

as it stands my character will have points in shield, illusion (quiet casting), conjuration, archery, light armour, sneak, smithing (up to dragon through glass) and pickpocket (because shooting naked people is so much more fun). this means I miss out on some VERY handy perks and I have no doubt that this will make my character MUCH more difficult in the later game.

 

[Necromis]

On spread to thin using illusion, sneak and archery, it doesn't. My mystic archer uses all three of those skills, plus 1hand and conjuration and all of them are at a very decent level without dilution. As you will end up using all the skills fairly regularly they all seem to go up at a decent rate, especially with the lovers stone. I am now able to use fury to weaken my enemies while I sneak in and either conjure my mystic bow or backstab with 30X damage from my DB gloves. Just depends on where the enemy is distance wise as to what weapon I use. The one thing that is a must on illusion for a sneak is the quiet casting perk. Till you get that you do have to wait on usint things like fury that much and cast things prior to actually getting to close to combat.

 

[Ironclad]

I am a jack of all trades for sure, my perks/skills are heavier on the sneak/archery side mind. I use light magic because all I need is muffle, flame atranoch (for bringing dragons down) & fast heal, most other magics are secondary to my needs and I feel they aren't overly useful (flame away!) when I need to engage fast and hard in battle. And heavier destruction spells are given to me in the form of staves and wands, same with conjurations.
Heavy armour, without the muffle or built-in silence magics, is also a pain in the butt. Within a few levels you can find very tough light armours, negating iron & steel.
I prefer jack of all because I need a little bit of everything; backstab, sneak, archery, one & two-handed. In fact I stopped perking two-handed after my 10th level up, same with block - just didn't find them useful enough. I can deal great amounts of damage early on, making the last few swings favour having a free hand for health magics or Sanguine Rose, say. Do many of you higher level players bother with a shield??
Shields are too heavy, I say, I want to carry away bars of gold or great weapons from a cleared dungeon, not lug a banded shield of 20% fire resistance. And this is a problem, I have a vast store of apparel at home, many items are specific to a particular enemy action, fire resist, frost resist, set undead on fire, hurt with shock, hurt with this n that.. just too much. I need a health sucking sword coupled with a soul sucking bow & a destructive staff. Job done. Oh, and I give Lydia a lightning stave and a summon staff. Together we rock!

OK, flame away

 

[Necromis]

blade of woe or nightengale blade.

 

[BleakJuju Bean]

Tbh I have nearly all the armours in the game (I don't have leather and imperial etc..) and 3 chests of lots of magical equipment most of it i don't use. ironclad your partly right about shields they are cumbersome and although I prefer duel swords myself fighting some one with a good shield skill takes 10x longer than killing anyone without, I imagine if block was at 101 (all perks = the extra 1) then as long as your shield was up you would be nearly invincible so it is definitely worth levelling up, because I'm level 41 now and I sometimes get killed

 

[Ironclad]

blade of woe or nightengale blade.

I have the latter, I also go stabby stabby with Mehrunes..

As for the shield issue, BJB, I guess this is my downfall but I have yet to find a shielded opponent that skilful (yet..), I am still fairly early in (just opened the Scroll) but if I did come across a near-invincible in a corridoor then I'd use Unrelenting to smash them back, attack wildly while they are down. Summoning Sanguine behind them too. There's always a way around a tough guy. Maybe..

 

[Necromis]

my kitty uses Mehrune and Woe, and Woe to anyone that comes against him in the dark. There is one shield that is worth sword and board if you are gonna do it, SpellBreaker.

 

[Spellsword_Kale]

My main/first character is a spellsword Breton - I do very little actual blocking and mostly just dodge or take the damage - I've mostly leveled health, and my magicka is boosted via circlet and cost-reducing armour. Magic focused in destruction, and healing is of course hot-keyed in. I've dabbled in a few spells from other schools, but only put perks in destruction. I'm still not very high level - 15 or 16, I think - so we'll see how it pans out later in the game... but for me so far its been just a very natural way to play. I find combining destruction magic with a 1H sword (I've taken 1H perks, as well, and light armour and some restoration... I think that's it) can be very efficient for dealing damage. Which is my basic style. Run in and kill all the things before they kill me, lol.

My second character is proving interesting, even at low level. She's also focused on 1H and light armour, but I've actually used a shield a few times and I'm planning on avoiding most all magic (character is a Nord), I think. But because of the no-magic, my playstyle has adapted to more use of archery, which means this character is becoming a sort of ranger-type. Archery, stealth, and a bit of mace on the side. Its influenced playing my spellsword - I've taken to using the bow a bit more than I had previously.

But a lot of it is also me getting more comfortable with the actual mechanics of playing the game!