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The Honorable Gidian Diva of Sass

Sahrot Vahlok Spaan. Bahnahgaar. Minion #88!
Staff member
I've created two light armor characters and gotten one up to level 50 and have managed to slay Aldiun with her. So far and I've done pretty well with them, though you have to know how to use them. Here's how I do it:

  • Use a shield, and invest in the quick reflexes perk. When an enemy does a power attack the time will slow and instead of blocking it flank the enemy and get in as many quick jabs as possible.

A shield seems so un-rogue like to me. Is it the only viable way to go?
You don't need a shield to block, and more importantly, bash. I prefer using no shield because shields do not bash on the move very well. You won't absorb as much damage by blocking like this, obviously. But if you're playing on a tougher difficulty blocking won't do much for you anyways.
 

original_funk

Iron is coming
A shield seems so un-rogue like to me. Is it the only viable way to go?


Ah well I perhaps should have read your OP a bit better, because I my play main light armour character as a skirmisher who doesn't rely on stealth as heavily, more on her bows and quick feet.

You could try illusion magic to "disappear", fear and calm spells can give you that edge to sneak away. However I'm afraid that the rouge is one class where Skyrim's in very undeveloped. There's no way to parry or dodge blows other than just moving out of the way or blocking them. Some elements of Assassin's creed's combat I think would be welcome I think. Also some of those weapons as well, such as smoke bombs (or a smoke spell) and throwing knives would go a long way to making playing as a rouge much better.

As for dragons, well if you can sneak up on the ones that live on the mountains, and for the random attacks, just make sure a follower is around to do all your tanking for you, and keep firing arrows at it from a distance.

If you're on your own, either switch to Novice or run like fluff. Rogues were never really meant to be dragon slayers anyway.
 

shadowkitty

Mistress of Shadows
I've created two light armor characters and gotten one up to level 50 and have managed to slay Aldiun with her. So far and I've done pretty well with them, though you have to know how to use them. Here's how I do it:

  • Use a shield, and invest in the quick reflexes perk. When an enemy does a power attack the time will slow and instead of blocking it flank the enemy and get in as many quick jabs as possible.


A shield seems so un-rogue like to me. Is it the only viable way to go?

I always have light armour and have never used a shield. You can block with whatever weapon you are equipped with, but as I use my crossbow exclusively, I just back off, fire, back off, fire, and it works for me in melee attacks. If the heat gets too much, hit em with unrelenting force to give yourself a bit of breathing space.
 

Dagmar

Defender of the Bunnies of Skyrim
My Rogue is my main character. She has a crafting build (Alchemy/Enchanting/Smithing) which allows her to attain higher armor rating at lower levels. (I do not grind crafting skills with her. If you don't know how to do this efficiently over time let me know and I'll put up another post for that.)

Dual wield. It's a simple axiom. If you kill your enemies faster you receive less damage. It's also a traditional rogue build as opposed to a sword and shield build.

Cook and use lots of vegetable soup. The healing effect is broken but the stamina effect is not and it will allow you to do more dual power attacks than you could normally do - again more damage means enemies die faster and you take less damage.

Head to the Lord Stone as early as possible to get the benefit of resist magic and improved armor rating effects.

Join the Thieves Guild as soon as you can. From a role playing perspective this fits well with a Rogue character. Do NOT go past sixth quest in the main quest line for the Thieves Guild (Speaking With Silence) until you are level 36. This quest line has some of the best weapon rewards in the game for a dual wielding archer Rogue build but they're leveled items. The best Nightingale Blade as a mission reward from the seventh quest Hard Answers can be obtained at level 36. Normally the best one would be level 46 but the highest level version is bugged and can't be tempered. After Hard Answers is completed do not continue until you are level 46.

What you do want to do once in the Thieves Guild ASAP is start and finish the No Stone Unturned quest from Vex. No Stone Unturned may be a long tedious quest but you get to explore all over Skyrim doing it trying to locate all the Stones of Barenziah. In addition, the Prowlers Profit power you get places gemstones in almost every container you open and when that happens your Smithing leveling is going to be much faster because all the Jewelry you make will be very high value at that point. If you wait too long it won't benefit your Smithing leveling speed and won't be as valuable as a revenue stream

Hire trainers to improve your Light Armor skills. Unfortunately it's also axiomatic that you want to avoid getting hit in light armor in the beginning, but without training, there's no other way to improve Light Armor skill so by constantly trying to avoid getting hit your Light Armor skill is going to level at an extremely low rate unless you do mind numbingly dull and non-immersive things like stand in front of a tiny mud crab for long periods of time, or you hire trainers at every possible opportunity. With the crafting build you should have a steady stream of revenue to train often between levels. With the Prowlers Profit power you should be able to train for 5 full points every time you level. I picked up over 25 of my Light Armor skill points from trainers.

Get a follower. Use your crafting build to optimize their gear as well. Let them take some of the heat off of you. Lydia is an easy free follower to get and, despite the fact that a lot of players don't like her, she's a Housecarl which means she belongs to the class of fighters that are hands down the best heavy armor melee weapon/archery followers in the game. She'll ruin any stealth combat strategy you have if she is actively following you but there are a lot of situations where you can have her wait behind while you clear the area using a stealth strategy and if your stealth becomes compromised you can high tail it back to her and she'll automatically engage all incoming hostiles.
 

Jader

The Mystic Marksman
Tbh it all comes down to what you feel like incorporating into the build.My char for example uses bound weaponry with the exception of a dagger to backstab and summons/necros assistance when forced into open combat.Invisibility is invaluable to a rogue weither it be from potions,spell or powers.I play on master difficulty and really don't have a problem with light armour.
 

High King of Skyrim

King of the barbarian horde
Perhaps adopt this tactic only if discovered and your initial duel wielding barrage fails to drop your foe.

I'm lucky if that "opening barrage" does much more than 4% damage to the one I'm attacking.

<edit>To the more powerful critters which *I* run in to thus far</edit>
Check your difficulty level, you may have inadvertently adjusted it. Just hang in there. The build you have chosen is actually quite hard mainly due to the points I addressed earlier. So don't lose faith because of a few setbacks! You will eventually become a lethal killing machine but as in all things, it takes hours upon hours of practice, coupled with trial and error. I was no different to you when I first began. :)
 

The Honorable Gidian Diva of Sass

Sahrot Vahlok Spaan. Bahnahgaar. Minion #88!
Staff member
Exactly which pretty much only happens with a sleeping dragon at their lair IF its next to a mountain
Invisibility and muffle 100% of noise.
still cant do that if theyre flying
Yes you can. You just have to move. NPCs will actively follow and attack you unless you recast invisibility in sneak mode, then you need to move out of the NPC's way as fast as possible as they will move in the last direction they saw you, and attack. If you successfully pull it off, you can restealth. It's similar to shadow warrior. You must be 100% muffled though.
 

MetalHeadManiac

Aela's TRUE husband
Invisibility and muffle 100% of noise.
still cant do that if theyre flying
Yes you can. You just have to move. NPCs will actively follow and attack you unless you recast invisibility in sneak mode, then you need to move out of the NPC's way as fast as possible as they will move in the last direction they saw you, and attack. If you successfully pull it off, you can restealth. It's similar to shadow warrior. You must be 100% muffled though.
Invisibility and muffle 100% of noise.
still cant do that if theyre flying
Yes you can. You just have to move. NPCs will actively follow and attack you unless you recast invisibility in sneak mode, then you need to move out of the NPC's way as fast as possible as they will move in the last direction they saw you, and attack. If you successfully pull it off, you can restealth. It's similar to shadow warrior. You must be 100% muffled though.
With a flying dragon though? how are you gonna hit that and do any real damage? cant use close quarters and by the time you get a bow that can do enough damage to one shot a normal dragon you will be facing stronger dragons
 

The Honorable Gidian Diva of Sass

Sahrot Vahlok Spaan. Bahnahgaar. Minion #88!
Staff member
still cant do that if theyre flying
Yes you can. You just have to move. NPCs will actively follow and attack you unless you recast invisibility in sneak mode, then you need to move out of the NPC's way as fast as possible as they will move in the last direction they saw you, and attack. If you successfully pull it off, you can restealth. It's similar to shadow warrior. You must be 100% muffled though.
still cant do that if theyre flying
Yes you can. You just have to move. NPCs will actively follow and attack you unless you recast invisibility in sneak mode, then you need to move out of the NPC's way as fast as possible as they will move in the last direction they saw you, and attack. If you successfully pull it off, you can restealth. It's similar to shadow warrior. You must be 100% muffled though.
With a flying dragon though? how are you gonna hit that and do any real damage? cant use close quarters and by the time you get a bow that can do enough damage to one shot a normal dragon you will be facing stronger dragons
Get dragonrend early. It's not that hard. Dragon's have a simple and exploitable attack pattern. You need Become Ethereal to avoid their breath attack, and strafe around their head to avoid their bite attacks while hacking away at them. If you can't do that, then don't fight dragons. I was able to get a Legendary Dragon down to almost half health BARE HANDED like that, and I shot it with lightning to force it to crash before getting pushed offthe side of the mountain by it.
 

MetalHeadManiac

Aela's TRUE husband
Yes you can. You just have to move. NPCs will actively follow and attack you unless you recast invisibility in sneak mode, then you need to move out of the NPC's way as fast as possible as they will move in the last direction they saw you, and attack. If you successfully pull it off, you can restealth. It's similar to shadow warrior. You must be 100% muffled though.
Yes you can. You just have to move. NPCs will actively follow and attack you unless you recast invisibility in sneak mode, then you need to move out of the NPC's way as fast as possible as they will move in the last direction they saw you, and attack. If you successfully pull it off, you can restealth. It's similar to shadow warrior. You must be 100% muffled though.
With a flying dragon though? how are you gonna hit that and do any real damage? cant use close quarters and by the time you get a bow that can do enough damage to one shot a normal dragon you will be facing stronger dragons
Get dragonrend early. It's not that hard. Dragon's have a simple and exploitable attack pattern. You need Become Ethereal to avoid their breath attack, and strafe around their head to avoid their bite attacks while hacking away at them. If you can't do that, then don't fight dragons. I was able to get a Legendary Dragon down to almost half health BARE HANDED like that, and I shot it with lightning to force it to crash before getting pushed offthe side of the mountain by it.
No way a rogue would be doing the main quest
 

Daelon DuLac

How do you backstab a Dragon?
With a flying dragon though? how are you gonna hit that and do any real damage? cant use close quarters and by the time you get a bow that can do enough damage to one shot a normal dragon you will be facing stronger dragons
Get dragonrend early. It's not that hard. Dragon's have a simple and exploitable attack pattern. You need Become Ethereal to avoid their breath attack, and strafe around their head to avoid their bite attacks while hacking away at them. If you can't do that, then don't fight dragons. I was able to get a Legendary Dragon down to almost half health BARE HANDED like that, and I shot it with lightning to force it to crash before getting pushed offthe side of the mountain by it.
No way a rogue would be doing the main quest
Not necessarily. :)
 

Daelon DuLac

How do you backstab a Dragon?
All this stuff about not being able to take down a dragon. Fah! I agree with the poster that advises dodge, ethereal, hack, hack (or shoot, shoot). Dragons are not supposed to be easy, but their movements are as predictable as their attack patterns. One shotting a dragon just isn't realistic. Even at my strongest, it still took 3 or 4 arrows to bring a dragon to the ground (without Dragonrend) and maybe one or two hits with my 2 handed or maybe 8 or 9 with my 2 handed if they were already on the ground. Face it, you're the Dragonborn, not a demi-god! Even you gotta work for it!
 

Daelon DuLac

How do you backstab a Dragon?
still cant do that if theyre flying
Yes you can. You just have to move. NPCs will actively follow and attack you unless you recast invisibility in sneak mode, then you need to move out of the NPC's way as fast as possible as they will move in the last direction they saw you, and attack. If you successfully pull it off, you can restealth. It's similar to shadow warrior. You must be 100% muffled though.
still cant do that if theyre flying
Yes you can. You just have to move. NPCs will actively follow and attack you unless you recast invisibility in sneak mode, then you need to move out of the NPC's way as fast as possible as they will move in the last direction they saw you, and attack. If you successfully pull it off, you can restealth. It's similar to shadow warrior. You must be 100% muffled though.
With a flying dragon though? how are you gonna hit that and do any real damage? cant use close quarters and by the time you get a bow that can do enough damage to one shot a normal dragon you will be facing stronger dragons
Can't you hit the dragon with your bow? It just takes practice and, after you actually do hit it for the first time (usually when it's floating in front of you preparing it's breath attack), it will fight you to the finish. If you're a mage, it's even easier to hit 'em.
 

MetalHeadManiac

Aela's TRUE husband
Get dragonrend early. It's not that hard. Dragon's have a simple and exploitable attack pattern. You need Become Ethereal to avoid their breath attack, and strafe around their head to avoid their bite attacks while hacking away at them. If you can't do that, then don't fight dragons. I was able to get a Legendary Dragon down to almost half health BARE HANDED like that, and I shot it with lightning to force it to crash before getting pushed offthe side of the mountain by it.
No way a rogue would be doing the main quest
Not necessarily. :)
A dark brotherhood and savior of skyrim doesnt add up. also the fact that he mentioned he doesnt use illusion and hes not high enough level to be using those spells. the muffle is taken care of but not the invisibility.
 

Daelon DuLac

How do you backstab a Dragon?
No way a rogue would be doing the main quest
Not necessarily. :)
A dark brotherhood and savior of skyrim doesnt add up. also the fact that he mentioned he doesnt use illusion and hes not high enough level to be using those spells. the muffle is taken care of but not the invisibility.
Try gathering charus eggs and luna moth wings (there's some other combos too) and use an alchemy table for invisibility potions. You only get about 18 seconds if you low level but I've had them go as high as 120 seconds when higher level and with enhancements. When I'm low level assassin or theif, I always make a ton and just guzzle 'em like soda. I can see losing your invisibility when you attack someone, but when you open a door? That never made sense to me.
 

MetalHeadManiac

Aela's TRUE husband
Yah i know.. In oblivion there was this enchantment called chameleon and you
Not necessarily. :)
A dark brotherhood and savior of skyrim doesnt add up. also the fact that he mentioned he doesnt use illusion and hes not high enough level to be using those spells. the muffle is taken care of but not the invisibility.
Try gathering charus eggs and luna moth wings (there's some other combos too) and use an alchemy table for invisibility potions. You only get about 18 seconds if you low level but I've had them go as high as 120 seconds when higher level and with enhancements. When I'm low level assassin or theif, I always make a ton and just guzzle 'em like soda. I can see losing your invisibility when you attack someone, but when you open a door? That never made sense to me.
Yah i know.. In oblivion there was this enchantment called chameleon and you stayed inivisible. It tended to get boring though as it was extremely overpowered
 

Daelon DuLac

How do you backstab a Dragon?
Yah i know.. In oblivion there was this enchantment called chameleon and you
A dark brotherhood and savior of skyrim doesnt add up. also the fact that he mentioned he doesnt use illusion and hes not high enough level to be using those spells. the muffle is taken care of but not the invisibility.
Try gathering charus eggs and luna moth wings (there's some other combos too) and use an alchemy table for invisibility potions. You only get about 18 seconds if you low level but I've had them go as high as 120 seconds when higher level and with enhancements. When I'm low level assassin or theif, I always make a ton and just guzzle 'em like soda. I can see losing your invisibility when you attack someone, but when you open a door? That never made sense to me.
Yah i know.. In oblivion there was this enchantment called chameleon and you stayed inivisible. It tended to get boring though as it was extremely overpowered
Plus you couldn't tell if you socks matched! :)
 

Lightningfalcon

Seems khajit...
Heavy armour is the easy route to take. Any old fool can wade into the thick of combat with an armoured, tank-like skin and not take too much damage obviously. Light Armour however, demands a different approach. Forget the stealth benefit for a moment and think in terms of where you're struggling, combat. Now with light armour you have a distinct advantage, speed and stamina. However, these advantages are rendered useless if you do not know how to utilise them. Your rogue character is primarily an offensive character as you've elected to dual wield. So you inflict mass damage but it comes at a cost, defence. Since you don't even have the ability to block you've made things harder for yourself than you need to. No shield, no blocking with your weapon and no thick armour to absorb damage. This is simply the build you've chosen. If you tweaked it just a little by using one weapon instead of two then you would gain the ability to block. The best perk in the tree is quick reflexes, which will enable you to avoid a power attack altogether. Perhaps adopt this tactic only if discovered and your initial duel wielding barrage fails to drop your foe. Rest assured as you progress through the light armour tree you'll be able to shrug off blows by even the strongest enemies and by this time no doubt your duel savagery will be lethal, you won't need to dodge/block. Good luck! :)


There's always one line in skyrim that sometimes make me wanna change from assassin.

It's a line in the companions.

"Face problems head on, leave the sneaking and whispers to the gutter rats who can't fight for themselves."
- Kodlak Whitemane

It's hard to deny that because we can't fight, we have to slit their throat from behind.
 

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