Ereshkigal
Member
Have a pretty good idea on the build I want to create. I was just wondering about your guys' thoughts on the topic. Thanks for any ideas you peeps bring.
As much as I've played Skyrim (500+ hours) I felt that playing a stealth character of almost any variety felt very rewarding. Stealth characters most certainly have the opportunity to be the most powerful in the game. The only obstacle is that unlike a lot of other builds which evolve mainly by scaling (high damage, higher defense, higher stats) stealth evolves by adding more skills and knowing how/when to use them (no footsteps, dodge roll, ranged vs. melee, when to avoid combat entirely).
I've played with a few stealth builds, and generally I found the Illusion Assassin to be my favorite. It is a build that not only works great on master (and beyond with mods), but also because of its required abilities pretty much can take you through every questline without feeling like a fish out of water.
Thieves Guild first and focus almost soley on increasing your stealth, pickpocket, and archery abilities. Make sure you get Shadow Warrior ASAP because its kind of a big deal whenAt this point in the game, I was exclusively using a bow, and sneaking around as much as I could without fighting.you fight Mercer Frey.
College of Winterhold second and focus on increasing your Illusion abilities. I found most of them to become outdated later (calm, fear, frenzy, etc) but the one you MUST HAVE is the invisibility spell. The higher your Illusion skill, the more powerful this will be, so try to aim for 100 Illusion.
Now with both of these all set, its time to find a really good dagger. Mehrune's Razor is what I used for a very long time.
Next its time to join the Companions, as the 1-handed skill is very useful for this build, and they have several trainers you could make use of. There are a lot of enemies you will encounter that are going to be difficult to get crits on, but that's fine because you have invisibility and Shadow Warrior, making escape always possible.
Your playstyle will basically be a dagger in one hand and the invisibility spell in the other. It doesn't do the massive kinds of damage that dual-wielding daggers will do, but it usually gets the job done. You can switch to dual wielding if you want too, but this is how I played it (because I don't like switching a lot). Because of Shadow Warrior, using crouch during a face-to-face encounter will often times teleport you behind your target and killcam them, and giving you a moment to re-cloak yourself.
As for escaping dangerous situations (dragon chasing you, mammoths and/or giants after you, fighting an army of Thalmor in some field), using invisibility AND THEN crouching will make them lose you and then keep them off of you until you are ready again.
After I had all that setup, doing the Dark Brotherhood quests felt EPIC because I felt like the ULTIMATE ASSASSINO! As well I wasn't a very high level when I finished the build (like level 29) so it felt a lot of room for other stuff. I eventually switched my bow out for a bound bow and got my conjuration up so I didn't have to keep arrow counting.
Some important things to note are that you should not but 5 points into Stealth, it will basically be a waste after the first. As well, you do not need any perks in any armor tree because using this build almost guarantees that you aren't going to take any physical damage. I ended up enchanting some of those yellow mantled mage robes
It's also important that you get enchanting to reduce the cost of illusion spells as much as you can. You need to be able to spam invisibility A LOT for a very long time, so that's important. And use the Nightingale boots or simply enchant muffle on some of your own.
Here's the base build: build Skyrim Perk Calculator - Plan the perks for your Skyrim character before spending them!
Completely silent, completely invisible, deadly at range or up close, able to vanish at a moment's notice. It's like playing a ghost >: )
Just one point i would like to make, when you say assassin, do you mean sneaky character that just kills everyone or a pure assassin, i am currently doing a new build of a pure assassin. that means when you are given a job, such as kill the bandit leader, thats what i do, nobody else dies just the leader, just like an assassin would do, only kill the target because the fallout after means the leaders followers will disband and the problem is solved. try it its really good fun sneaking into a bandits lair and only taking out the leader, even more challenging if its a Forsworn camp.
Very nice, that definitely sounds like it would be fun on the Master Dificulty
What race did you choose ?