Assassin Build without smithing/enchanting

I'm starting an assassin/thief, and was wondering if it is viable not going the enchanting/smithing route? If so, what are the best daggers/bows to get?

I'm thinking of going something like this
http://skyrimcalculator.com/#305836

All tips and suggestions are welcome!

muse9191 said:

I'm starting an assassin/thief, and was wondering if it is viable not going the enchanting/smithing route? If so, what are the best daggers/bows to get?

I'm thinking of going something like this
http://skyrimcalculator.com/#305836

All tips and suggestions are welcome!

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I hope you are going to play on easy... Maybe you should also consider conjuration skill for bound bow and bound sword. Their damage is like daedric.

Ditch the pickpocket and speech perks, move them into dual flurry /dual savagery and light armor and you will be viable on adept, maybe expert if you are very good.

Add steel smithing and arcane blacksmith for windshear and the Blade of Woe and you can own master. This will also give you a high damage Forsworn bow. This will only take 2 perks, and will help you much more than your whole alchemy tree.

Ranger and bullseye will help a lot once you have some extra perks.

Windwalker will fuel dual savagery. Windshear will give you stagger without power attacking. Dual flurry will get your Windshear strikes in before you get hit. Blade of Woe will proc Assassin's Blade silently.

If you aren't enchanting or specialized in magic, light armor is much better than alteration because Almost all of the pre-enchanted stealth gear is light armor.

Hit the TG & DB quest lines as soon as possible as well. You can get good Light Armor & Weaponry from those factions.

Illusion can also be your friend. Calm & Fury are great spells, and can lead to Quiet Casting.....no shout or spell incantation will be heard. That way you can thin the mob without getting hit or seen. Even if the boss wins against two or three others, he is weakened, and you can also be shooting them all with your bow from the shadows as they are fighting themselves..... Just a thought.

I would recommend joining the Dark Brotherhood as soon as possible to get the Shrouded Armor set. Even if you're not investing in any Light Armor perks, some armor rating is better than none and all of the enchantments except the Resist Poison on the curaiss will compliment your build. In addition Babette is the Master level trainer in Alchemy and, eventually you'll get the Ancient Shrouded Armor set, Firiniel's End, which is a good enchanted bow, and the Blade of Woe.

When you're level 15 or higher, head over to Hag's End to get the Predator's Grace boots which has a better Muffle enchantment and Bloodthorn, which is a weak dagger for backstabbing but is useful for harvesting souls and has a drain health enchantment. Whenever your in need of healing you can dual wield it with the Blade of Woe to get 20 points of health per dual wielding attack from the two daggers.

Joker said:

Hit the TG & DB quest lines as soon as possible as well. You can get good Light Armor & Weaponry from those factions.

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I don't recommend that for the Thieves Guild quest line. The best item rewards are leveled so I would actually recommend not going too deeply into the quest line until you're close to level 46.

None of the brotherhood gear is leveled, so you can go there straight out of Helgen with no consequences. Doing the TG questline before 46 is an especially terrible idea if you aren't enchanting. You can start it though to get access to a fence.

Thanks for all the help. Is Mehrune's Razor any good? The proc sounds pretty cool.

muse9191 said:

Thanks for all the help. Is Mehrune's Razor any good? The proc sounds pretty cool.

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Yeah, it's really useful. I used to use only axes and swords, but ever since I got the razor I started using it. It can be really useful when you're fighting a hard boss.

I think Mehrunes Razor looks better, especially if you are a conjurer, but the Blade of Woe does more damage, responds to a lower smithing perk, and is a whole lot easier to get.

The insta-kill on Mehrunes Razor hits really rarely, like 2% of the time, and most dagger attacks are 1 hit kills anyway, so the enchantment is more of a novelty than something that is actually useful.

muse9191 said:

Thanks for all the help. Is Mehrune's Razor any good? The proc sounds pretty cool.

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Some player's like it. The chance for an instant kill is very low (1.9%). The base damage is good but not as good as the Blade of Woe. If you're dual wielding then it makes for good off hand weapon to compliment the Blade of Woe.

Mehrunes Razor is a good dagger to get ahold of if you need a second one. Best dagger out there though is the blade of woe. It's possible to get 2 blades of woe if you have at least 70 pickpocket and the perk to steal your enemies weapons when you start the dark brotherhood questline. As far as daggers go, all else that I can suggest is getting one with soul trap.

If you're into swords, I suggest hitting the thieves guild quest line at level 46 like Dagmar said above. At 46+ both the Nightingale sword, and Chillrend are at their highest strength, and Chillrend actually has the highest base damage of any sword in the game if gotten at level 46+ as well as having an awesome enchantment(and looking cool).

As for bows, Finriel's end is a good start, but the cream of the crop is the Nightingale bow at level 46+. I believe that at that level it is the strongest base damage for any bow in the game.

No assassin is complete without armor right? Well, the thieves guild armor will provide better armor rating, but the shrouded/ancient shrouded armor has better enchants. Predator's grace is an alternative for the boots, and if you aren't going to be using a bow very often I would suggest taking the shrouded hood rather than cowl for the sneak bonus over the archery bonus. Also, you may think about the Jester's clothes/Cicero's clothes. They don't provide any armor rating but the bonuses are pretty good. Boots and gloves of the old gods are great for a sneak archer and finally I must mention my favorite armor set: Linwe's armor. It's inferior to the shrouded armor but it does provide decent bonuses and armor rating, it also looks awesome!

As far as armor goes, I'm thinking about Cicero's Set. I'm leaning towards more of a glass cannon build, so armor rating isn't a huge deal to me. And, I'm gonna attempt this on Legendary, I may crash and burn, but it'll be worth it!

Legendary ouch.

Without smithing, armor, illusion, conjuration, alteration or enchanting, I would be very surprised to see that work at all. You are going to get 1-shotted by basically everything in the game.

Yeah I would want to work on at least illusion if you're gonna do that.

I haven't tried legendary yet. I will try my own suggestions on legendary and see how it goes next chance I get to play.

I've been wanting to play an assassin without any magic for a while now.

muse9191 said:

As far as armor goes, I'm thinking about Cicero's Set. I'm leaning towards more of a glass cannon build, so armor rating isn't a huge deal to me. And, I'm gonna attempt this on Legendary, I may crash and burn, but it'll be worth it!

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I'm doing legendary with clothing or armor but just for the looks. Leveling armor is very slow because all the sneaking. My heavy armor is at level 30 and light armor at level 25. I've just recently started to wear armors for a while now. As long as you are undetected and fast enough to kill the enemy before it reaches you... you'll be alright.

But dragons are pain in the a..., they have huge health pool! So don't let them bite you, keep your distance and make sure to have a lot of arrows... well if you are using bow that is.

Panthera said:

I'm doing legendary with clothing or armor but just for the looks. Leveling armor is very slow because all the sneaking. My heavy armor is at level 30 and light armor at level 25. I've just recently started to wear armors for a while now. As long as you are undetected and fast enough to kill the enemy before it reaches you... you'll be alright.

But dragons are pain in the a..., they have huge health pool! So don't let them bite you, keep your distance and make sure to have a lot of arrows... well if you are using bow that is.

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Yeah, my Levels:
Sneak 40+
Archery 65
Conjuration 50+
Illusion 30+
Heavy Armor 20.....I feel your pain...

I started mine last night. Going pretty good so far. I went north from Whiterun for leather because that area is loaded with deer, at level 3. I saw a mammoth fighting something in a really rocky area so I started shooting. Faendal got killed, I am safe on a rock as long as nothing else comes, and I got the mammoth down to maybe 5% health, but his regen is about equal to my dps. After 40 minutes of battle and about 500 arrows, I saved. I'm getting that tusk dammit. I gained 4 levels so far trying to kill it, and the 3/5 in archery hasn't added enough dps to bring him down. I'm glad I grabbed a skyforge steel sword right before I left. I might have to use it.

Legendary has definitely been a different game so far. I'm just doing what I need to do to stay alive, now at almost 50 archery, 30 sneak and I think 16 1h and light armor. Almost everything that hit me once killed me before I could finish it off. It's crazy how fast your weapon skills level. I haven't even thought about doing a quest yet and my bow damage is already half max without smithing. I don't think you can get anywhere on legendary without smithing or offensive magic.

One important thing to add, without a follower, this would be agonizing