User blog:NightShade25/Character Builds

Do no see a lot of pages on being primarily an archer so thought I would throw some information out there...

I decided to also specialize in Sneak, Enchanting, and Smithing, with a touch of one handed for Skyrim.

I am about level 39 so far and this is what I ran into.

One it is pretty fun. Once you level up a bit with the right equipment and perks you are pretty much the modern day equivalent of a sniper. Sneak is essential, or you will just get bashed all the time.

Sneak - Leveling sneak is very easy. Just walk around in sneak mode the majority of the time, and take all the sneak perks, especially the weapon ones early (for the sneak attack bonus). You get 3x for bows, 6x for swords and the like, and 15x for daggers! (Dark brotherhood, have not joined, but I heard you can get your hands on a set of gloves or wraps that double your damage, for effective 30x on daggers, outrageous when you get daggers with high enough base damage). I use only light armor, but upgraded I get all the protection I need (legendary glass armor set is about 400 armor rating with only one light armor perk taken) and makes sneaking early on easy.

One note about leveling in smithing and enchantment. I did it as I went along. If you level up to very high levels without keeping your combat skills up you are going to be fodder for the enemy. A few levels each time and kept it in pace with my main combat skill, archery, and you should not have any problems.

Smithing was more about getting better armor and upgrading it better. It is also VERY easy to level but time consuming. About 92 right now and trotting around in Legendary glass armor, bows, daggars, and one handed swords all enchanted with something rather nice (health, archery, stamina, whatever you like). Iron ingots are laying around everywhere, carry a pick and you can mine a lot of what you need as well. I focused on the light armor perk side since it is better for sneak but it is up to you. Just creating iron daggers over and over, then feed that into enchanting...

Enchanting - There are some really nice enhancements via enchantment. One, you can feed back into your smithing by creating a set of rings, necklaces, gauntlets, and whatever else you can add it to by adding smithing enchantments to them. So you have the armor you wear out and your smithing kit. You can pick Whiterun or Riften houses since they are both close to smithing stations and make it easy to swap out (don't worry, money will not be an issue as you will see). When you then upgrade your equipment in smithing with your smithing kit, your level is so high that the items are high level very early on. All those effects stack. Pick up the black star (Azura star quest you can decide to make it black) and you have infinate grand souls to feed your personal stuff since bandits are EVERYWHERE and they are all grand souls. I find other grand souls to be a bother to track down and find, and I do not know how many grand soul stones I have accidentally slurped a lesser soul into. Make your bow enchanted with soul trap and your pipeline is basically complete. I carry around a lot of petty and lesser soul gems, easily found and cheap to buy if you have to and you have your assembly line for leveling up. Take all those daggers you find, or iron daggers you use to level up smithing, and add paralyze to them. Easy money and fast leveling. At higher levels I find I have to sweep nearly all the merchants to offload everything and am left with a pile of gold. Finally, enchant some of your armor or rings and what you wear with archery, to add on even more damage. I wear a ring, the gauntlets, and my helmet with archery enchantments.

Archery - Not a lot to say here, shoot everything with bows. With the sneak, it is very easy to walk through entire dungeons and rarely get hit back. Levels sort of slowly, but enough fights with dragons (which shooting with arrows is very handy versus other ways to get them) and it stays up ok. Add your enchanted items as I indicated, and a legendary glass bow base damage with my enchanted armor is about 154, add your ebony arrows or glass at 18 or 20 a pop you are in 175 territory. Put yourself in sneak for your 3x multiplier and there is not a lot out there that can sustain a 525 point initial hit (if you do not get a critical which gives even more), and if they do, not much more to put them away, and they have to find you first anyway. Like a said, medievil sniper. Bonus, if they are up high and you do not kill them, I nearly always stagger them with the perk, so I have seen my fair share of plunging enemies that are killed by the following fall. Not much trouble with Dragons at all at any point, run and shoot (use your time slowdown perks while aiming and you can hit them in the air if you figure out the lead time). You also get to stay far enough away when they land to sidestep their breath and fill them with arrows. Since you sneak and shoot, leveling CAN be a problem. Up in the mountains (its in this wiki somewhere under Archery training) there is a woman who trains you for free by shooting at targets, 5 levels worth. For the ones you pay for, you can do that, use the money from your enchanting endeavors. Arrows cannot be crafted, so you have to buy them. I buy the best at every opportunity. You rarely find good arrows in the wild, just lower level ones. Make sure you pick up the arrows you use if you can and if you do all of that you should not run into arrow shortages. I keep the three best at my level at the time well stocked (strive for about 150 a set), and choose the arrow that fits the general situation (creeping through dungeon or bandit hideout, low level arrows, get to the boss or significant enemies, swap for the better ones). They do not weigh anything so no worries there. They are expensive but one of the only items I really buy from merchants anyway with my other skills and perks - it is not necessary really to buy a lot from a merchant.

One handed I just keep up the base damage perks, since with sneak and daggers you can lay out serious punishment. On the rare occasions I get caught on surprise or fights that are designed to eliminate your use of sneak I keep an improved sword and shield on hand for slashing away (and get the Sanguine Rose, below). Levels up slow as a result, but you can always train with all the money from enchanted iron daggers laying around from you enchanting flair.

Items to have - Enchant your bow with Soul Trap. Feeds your enchanment skill easily. Do not need hardly any time (2 seconds is PLENTY) so do not worry about that since they drop first shot a lot anyway, and if you do have to use more, you still end up with it. Get the Sanguine rose. Drinking contest in Whiterun starts it. Have a lot of coin on hand if your speech is not very good. Your very own daedric warrior at the press of a button. I do not bring along companions since they always get in the way or get me discovered, or they die, so this is nice. Dragon fights? Draws a ton of fire from you. Fights with things hard to hit with arrows (like, ice wraith, etc)? Draws fire and you can practice your one handed. He seems to attract most of the attention as opposed to companions so basically any situation you are being overrun pop him out and fight or run. Next up is the black star (Azura star quest) as I mentioned above. Note the quest to get this is HARD. I waited until I was a high level and paid the price with leveled daedric mages that mopped the floor with me. Without the Sanguine rose it would have been a long night. Keep a pick on you for mining ore for smithing, keeps it cheaper than buying the high level stuff like malachite that costs a fortune and is hard to find. Keep and store all those dragon bones and scales and stuff them in a container in your house for later on when you get the dragon armor perk. Find potions that enhance enchanting or smithing as well and do not sell them - when you create armor and weapons for yourself, you want the best. Remember to keep your smithing "kit" handy (mentioned above) when you create your own stuff. You do not need to have it on for mundane stuff though when leveling. The Gaulder amulet gives you +30 to health, magicka, and stamina, very nice. I find the "bug" associated with this does not work so I just wear this amulet. That quest is jumpstarted by joining up with College of Winterhold (like I said, which I did just for the quests and house, not because I am interested in using magic, and you do not need it). For up close and personal combat, I prefer a sword with a paralysis enchantment since I do not do head to head battle well as I am not tailored to it, kicking them when they are down is much easier. I do carry a shield when I go into this mode. For the dagger, I use a shock enchantment since it justs adds that much more damage to a sneak attack, you would not use a dagger in hand to hand anyway, just to kick it off. I seriously doubt you will need to hand to hand with a sneak dagger attack with the perks - I am betting once I get my hands on the gloves or wraps in the Dark Brotherhood I could seriously drop a dragon with one sneak shot. Without that item, I can easily take down Daugr Overlords for instance so it is a serious tool in the toolbox.

Archery fighting - As I alluded to, most fights with lower level creatures is pretty much one shot one kill in sneak. Boss fights are more interesting, if you want them to be that is. I became archmage early on not because I care about magic (other than healing and conjurinig) but because there are great quests available with good money, and very nice accomodations for the archmage once you are it. I have taken no magic perks and have not tried to level any magic skills at all so it is not a pre-requisite. For a boss fight example, becoming archmage you have to get a Staff of Magnus in Labrinthyan (sp?) and there is a bone dragon and a big bad magic guy to fight at the end. I killed the bone dragon hiding in the corner as you come through the door on the right never being detected with three arrow shots to the throat (note that the throat is the only part vulnerable, when through a lot of arrows to find that out). As far as the big bad magician, I took out the mages holding him down and perched on the highest point in sneak. Pop with an arrow, and move back a bit and let him run around. Never saw me the entire fight. If he did see you (at the level I had at the time, low) you are pretty much toast. If you find the right place in general, you can take down most bosses this way without a scratch. I do get bored and want to level one handed so sometimes I come out to finish them off face to face.

Archery glitches - A couple to be aware of. Invisible walls a really bad problem. Sometimes you can sneak an arrow through a hole, others you cannot even if they are larger. Walls extend out farther than you think, so do bridge handles, and anything else like that. A lot of arrows stuck in invisible walls. Next is the sudden drop in Archery skill when you get it pretty high. It shows up in red and you are not poisoned, sick, or otherwise. It is a bug. Level up one in Archery and it goes away. Causes a lot of heartburn though. Next is aim. Most of what I have read is about it hitting high, and this is true most of the time. I have also found that it at times fires low. Basically, aim center mass and do not get fancy trying to pick off a head or arm, and you will have no issues. Hitting a limb as opposed to something else makes no difference in the damage you cause, so just focus on HITTING them, not getting fancy. You can fire a LONG way away - I have found that you really do not have to compensate for the distance, aim center mass and you will hit. Dragons that have not ENGAGED you that are flying in the air are impossible to hit. Maybe you can but I know some that should have registered and they do not. Once they engage you, you can hit them in the air, do not know why. If you want to pick a fight with a dragon flying around I find going out of sneak and jumping around, and staying in the area where it is will eventually draw a fight to you. Finally, if you find your arrows dropping way short for no reason, it is probably due to disease. Check in the magic menu for active effects. If you have rockjaw for instance you can only shoot about 1/4 the distance. Took me a while to figure that out.

Other skills - Speech levels on its own, and I find it not very useful in general. There are enough merchants to sell your loot, and even with bad prices I am never short on gold. If you join the Thieves guild, you get a hood that makes prices 10% better so I carry that around. I do not bother with any of the magic ones since I rarely use magic (healing, magelight, and conjuring, and sometimes on a lark laying traps in the destruction tree). If I were a mage it would be essential, for this character, not necessary. I do not use two handed or heavy armor so I do not bother with those. Light armor seems to level, even sneaking most of the time, on its own. Lockpicks are easy to find or cheap to buy and you will pick a ton of locks, so it will level up just fine. I do not bother with the perks because even with Master locks with about 3-5 picks I can get them open (right now I have about 300 lockpicks). Block not necessary at all with my type of character. Pickpocket sort of a pain IMHO but you need it a bit for the Thieves guild, but not necessary to spend any perks on it unless you like it. Alchemy I used early on for money but found enchanting much more lucrative, so no improvements there.

Base stats and perk taking- focus mainly on health, then stamina, then occasionally magicka since spells are expensive without the perks, but not overly concerned with them. For perks, I have heard a couple of things regarding the number you have. 50, then 80 depending on where you read. I am leaning on believing their are 80 since the rational is that it is just hard to level past 50. I do not go out of my way to level up since it occurs pretty easily anyway and the creatures level with you in most cases. Remember the note about leveling smithing and enchanting because of that fact, or you will pay for it. Naturally progressing it with your primary attack skill should keep you from getting into trouble. So for this character, all the sneak perks, take them. All the archery perks. I only take one handed perks that add damage (first perk in the tree up to five times). Light armor for protection, I take improve armor rating (up to 5 times) called Agile Defender and the Custom Fit and Matching Set to get to the top one, do not bother with the other branch. Enchanting I take the Enchanter (first in the tree) up to 5 times and the center branch (Insightful Enchanter and Corpus Enchanter) up to the top one Extra effect and do not bother with the others. Smithing I focus on the light armor branch up to Dragon Armor and do not bother with improve magic items - you make your own if you are following this type of character. By my count that is 5 for One handed, 16 for Archery, 8 for Light Armor, 13 for sneak, 8 for enchantment, and 5 for Smithing for a total of 55, which leaves you 25 to play with for whatever you like, like going up the heavy branch in smithing or whatever. I focus on core first (sneak, archery), then non combat (smithing, enchanting), and toss in the few one handed and light armor ones from time to time. Basically, you can max your perk set out very easily with this type of character with some left over for what interests you.

Quests and guilds - This type of character lends itself to the sneaky side, so Thieves and the Dark Brotherhood are good choices. They are fun too. I would join the College of Winterhold just to have access to the countless quests and house they have. You join the Thieves Guild by just going to Riften and talking to the tough guy outside. Have not joined the Dark Brotherhood yet but plan on it, in Oblivion it was very fun. Not very interested in the Fighters (I think they are in Whiterun) mainly because I am not interested in being a werewolf and it is not my style. I have not chosen a side with the Stormcloaks or the Imperials mainly because it is not catching my interest and in any event being not aligned with either seems to make working with either side easy. Do not know if it makes a difference though. I am a book collector (especially the ones that give you levels) and so I read all the books I come across, and they give you quests to boot in some cases. You do not have to READ the book just open it up unless you have a lot of time on your hands. Just talking with Jarls and assistants gives you plenty, and talking with other characters gives you plenty of quests as well. I have more quests underway than I know what to do with.

Quest glitches - There are three so far that I cannot complete. One is a simple bandit flush routine that was given to me twice at the same location, the tower had the bandits but because I killed the bandit leader the first time he stayed dead, so I cannot complete. There is one where you have to inform the family some guy is dead (found him in a tower) but there is no dialouge to do that. The last is one to become a Thane, you have to assist the people of Falkreath. You will notice that dragons sometimes pop up in towns when you fast travel. I did not realize it at the time, but it landed behind the blacksmiths house and killed a lot of townspeople in the weeds. I killed the dragon and went on my way, and later on I cannot find enough people to do quests for now! Oops, but I think that is a quest bug regardless.

Well, have fun if you try this out. Never did the archery thing in Oblivion, but in Skyrim I have found this to be very fun, especially if you like being the sniper type of character which I tend to like in other games as well. I will update this if I come across any of my unanswered items above and will check from time to time if someone has a question, will try to answer it.