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Character Build: Keeper of the Runes

Tags: #Character Build Spellsword  #Character Build Enchanter  #Character Build Battlemage  #Race:Breton  #Rank:Recognized  #LeBlanc Builds 
  • Member
    December 2, 2015

    This is based on a character that I played when I first got into Skyrim although I've dusted it off thoroughly and revamped it significantly from my initial playthrough with it.  The reason for doing so was I always loved runes and there is a tremendous shortage of those builds available.  I've used a few ideas that I've picked up along the way from other builds here.  I hope you enjoy this as much as I did.

    War.  Strife.  Conflict.  Rebellion.  Forsworn.  All are words associated with Skyrim, particularly the area of The Reach and the hold of Markarth.  These words also resonate closely with the Bretons from High Rock.  Collectors of history are found in every civilization.  Typically these are bookish persons tasked with being the librarians for their society.  In High Rock, the Bretons also have a historian...but he is no mere librarian.  Sitting upon the High Rock council is the Keeper of the Runes, runes transcribed magically with the histories of the Breton people.  Due to the importance of this position within the court there is an ongoing tutelage period with no fewer than fifty Breton youth training for the right to wear the Keeper mantle.  Taken in at birth from newborns deemed worthy they endure a thirty year servitude in seclusion, studying under the Society of the Keepers, committing all the trials and tribulations of the Breton history to memory and imbuing their very core being.  In addition to their mental studies a Keeper-in-Training also undergoes a variety of martial training to hone their battle skills.  A Keeper is well versed not only in the lore and the runes but also in the blade as well.  As we said, no mere librarian is this one.

    A Breton library deep within the Halls of the Keepers.

    One of the more important moments in Breton history, and also Tamriel lore, occurred in 4E 171.  That year saw the Great War begin in Tamriel.  The Bretons participated valiantly in the War, providing much needed reinforcements to the Empire in Northern Hammerfall in 4E 173.  The bloody conflict would last four long years and ended with the Aldmeri Dominion winning a strategic victory and the White-Gold Concordat being enacted, outlawing the worship of Talos.  Of more importance to Breton historians is what transpired twenty six years after the end of the Great War.  This period of time saw the beginning of the Civil War, also known to history as the Stormcloak Rebellion. 

    Bretons, living in the area of Markarth and the surround area of The Reach, sided with a young upstart named Ulfric Stormcloak, a young militia leader, in an attempt to retake the hold of Markarth from the Empire forces.  The reason for them siding with the young Stormcloak turned out to be a promise to have free worship of Talos once again.  The Empire, citing the White-Gold Concordat, retook the city and arrested all members of the Reach Militia.  This led directly to the outbreak of the Civil War still going on in Skyrim to the present day; with the Empire on one side and the Stormcloaks on the other.

                                                                      Civil War fighting between the Stormcloaks and Empire forces.

    Back in High Rock, when the time is deemed appropriate, one of the promising young Keeper-to-be is selected after a diligent selection processes.  As the current Keeper of the Runes prepares to see the end of this mortal life, the Keeper-to-be sets off on his final round of training.  This time it's to be a real life journey, a trip to Skyrim to see the ongoing Civil War conflict and to visit their estranged cousins, the Reachmen.  The goal of this journey is to see firsthand how history has applied itself to the modern day; hopefully this will help the Keeper of Runes be wise in his council back in High Rock.  Now is time to put all your practicing to the test.  You are now ready to wield the runes and heft the weapon in anger, if need be, to see history first hand and possibly...to make history of your own.

    YOU are to be the new Keeper of the Runes and it is now time for you to venture into the wilds of Skyrim to begin your practicum...

    BUILD BASICS

    Race: Breton
    Stone: Mage, then Lord
    Major Skills: Enchanting, Illusion, Destruction
    Minor Skills: Alteration, Restoration, Light Armor, Smithing
    Perk Spread: 3/1/0
    Shouts: Ice Form; Ethereal Form; Slow Time
    Appearance: Tattooed with war paint in runic forms, typically red in color symbolizing Fire.  Long, unkempt hair and (if male) beard from years of seclusion and study.
    Mandatory Quests: The Black Star; Agent of Mara; Liar's Retreat; Civil War (Empire)
    Recommended Quests: College of Winterhold; Main Quest; Dawnguard; March of the Dead

    GEAR

    Wearing full set of Ancient Falmer Armor

    Armor: We will use Light Armor in this build.  As a Breton we will shoot for Elven Armor in the leveling process; you may wish to use Gilded Elven if you happen across any.  The end game armor we will seek out is the Ancient Falmer Armor from the Dawnguard Quest Line.  This is the upper end "elvish" type armor that we can improve using Elven Smithing.The Longhammper, soon to transform into the Chaos Breaker

    Weaponry: We will use two handed weapons with the hammer being our preferred option.  In the early going I liked the Steel Warhammer due to the runic style engravings on it.  You will eventually end up with an Elven Warhammer as your primary weapon, either via crafting or finding in your journey.  Whichever weapon you choose will then be self-enchanted with an elemental attack (fire, frost or spark) depending on which Augmented perks you have taken in the Destruction tree.  End game we will be going with the Longhammer.  This weapon boasts 30% quicker attack speed and we can self enchant it.  This will be the platform for our end-game weapon, Chaos Breaker (see below).

    Enchantments and Potions

    Weapon: Your primary enchantment will be a flame enchantment, shooting for at least 20 points during your leveling process.  Once you gain the Extra Effect perk in the Enchanting tree your second enchantment will be a Shock enchantment until you get the Chaos Damage enchantment.  At this point, Chaos Damage becomes your primary enchantment and you can choose any other non-elemental enchantment you want to but I recommend Absorb Heath.

    Armor: You will use a mixture of Fortify Destruction and Fortify Health enchantments on your gear.  If you feel the need, you can toss in a Fortify Two Handed enchantment to boost melee damage should you feel the need but this didn't seem needed on playthrough.  There are lots of options here on self customizing depending on the play style you take with this build.

    Potions: While we are not an alchemist, there are a few potions that even at base brewing could be helpful.  I recommend Fortify Two Handed with Dragon Tongue + Fly Amantia to boost weapon damage plus give you some added fire resistance for those pesky dragons.  Hitting up the Khajiit caravans for the Weakness to Fire potions, or brewing these yourself, will also help boost damage; particularly in boss fights.

    PERKS

    Perk Review

    Alteration: Main goal is the two points in magic resistance to help reach 85% Magic Resistance.  You can also use magical armor, this is especially useful in the early going although it's tough to balance with rune casting. 

    Destruction: Runes will always be our opening attack so get Rune Master as soon as possible.  Then get 2/2 in Augmented Flames.  Augmented flames works in conjunction with your self enchanted weapon (fire enchantment) to boost damage in melee. 

    Illusion: Quiet casting is the main thing to get here, the earlier the better as it helps you place your runes without being discovered.  You may want to go all the way to Master of the Mind for the Frenzy Rune to work on undead and automatons. 

    Light Armor: When you gain the Ancient Falmer Armor you will need to use a regular Elven Helm to complete the set.  You do gain the Matching set bonus with this helm as the AFA set does not have an "armor" helm itself. 

    Smithing: Taken to Elven in order to improve your Elven armor and weapons.  This skill also allows you to improve the Ancient Falmer armor set. 

    Enchanting: This is the primary skill of the build in regards to melee combat.  As the character is magical in it's base construction, but runes do not ramp up damage-wise, we need a survival ability and this is where that happens.  As in Mason's build The Sorcerer, the enchanting of destruction properties onto a weapon gain damage improvements from magical abilities.  This ties in with the builds background plus saves us from having to add in perks in the Two Handed tree.

    SHOUTS & SPELLS

    Ice Form is used as a viable replacement for Ash Rune due to perk concerns, I didn't want to make this a level 60 or 70 build.  Slow Time will help deal even more damage with the quick hitting Longhammer/Chaos Breaker and Ethereal Form is a good fallback if you happen to get pushed to far. 

    As for spells, you should start with the basic Flames spell although this will only be used to burn away webs that block your progression, it will not be a combat spell.  Your primary attack, magically, is the rune.  Fire, Frost and Lightning are all accessed from the destruction tree.  The Poison rune comes from the restoration tree and the Frenzy Rune comes to you via the Illusion tree.  As noted we skip the Ash Rune in favor of the Ice Form shout but this effectively gives us all the runes in the game, befitting the Keeper of the Runes.  The only other spell I used was the basic ward spell to deal with dragonbreath until they landed where I used melee upon them.

    COMBAT BASICS

    Runes are the basic attack in the build and should be used in every combat situation.  Wielding a two-handed hammer allows the added comfort of offensive firepower and some blocking/bashing defense for survivability.  This is especially important as runes do not keep up with damage scaling in the vanilla game.  The Chaos Breaker allows for a synergized weapon that enhances our trained Destruction skills into a melee onslaught, making short work of any foes not felled by our initial rune onslaught.*Note that dual casting a rune does increase it's damage potential.  I highly recommend dual cast runes for boss fights.

    Combat will begin with the Keeper of Runes approaching his enemies in stealth.  We have no perks, or added enchantments, so this is just to allow us to place our runes before the battle commences.  With Quiet Casting in the Illusion tree, we can place our rune(s)* prior to starting combat.  I would attempt to place a trail of three runes starting just in front of my position and gradually getting closer to the target.  The fourth, and final rune, would be targeted under the enemy himself; exploding on contact.*I play on PC and use the Balanced Magic mod which scales destruction damage which does help runes and also allows the placement of four runes at one time.  I felt that the Unlimited Runes mod was "a little" overpowered.  If you are on console or do not use mods, you can reverse this and use your initial attack rune on the enemy and then quickly lay a second rune in his path and possibly a third rune before he gets to you.  This will require quick casting but can be done as I tested this in my playthough.

    Once you've laid all your runes it's time to forego them and pull out your hammer.  Standard melee blows should fell most enemies quickly.  Do not use power attacks if you can help it as this actually slows down your attack rate and does not take maximum advantage of the enchanting/destruction synergy and, later, the attack speed thrown in by the Longhammer/Chaos Breaker.  It's best to get used to this early on in the game.

    It's at this point of melee combat that your magical ability and rune crafting come into play.  The synergy between the destruction skills and the self-enchanted weapon increase the weapons overall damage significantly. 

    While moving between runes and a two handed weapon may seem tedious at first it is actually very simple.  On the PC you set your melee weapon to your 1 hot button while your four runes are set to buttons 2-5.  I typically used Fire as my primary rune so set that up as your default.  When you need the melee weapon, hit the 1 button and you draw your two-hander.  When done with melee, hit the 1 button again and you sheath the weapon but are back to your default stance with Fire Runes in both hands ready to single cast to dual cast.  Dual Casting a rune does ramp up it's power (based on information found in researching this online...Augmented element perks do not) so it's highly recommended to do this, especially for boss fights. 

    The goal here is to have enemies traveling over your well laid rune traps to be wounded and bleeding well before they ever arrive at your doorstep.  This, especially in fighting multiple enemies that Skyrim loves to do to us, helps the melee portion of the fight end quick and cause less injury to you.  With multiple runes, even at lower damage outputs (non-mod), one can hope that one or two enemies may succumb to their blasts.

    Roleplaying Tidbits

    As a Breton, descended from the Elves, and as the Keeper of the Runes we are always on the search for relics and artifacts that tie in to those traits.  Primarily of interest to us are two weapons and one skill we discovered in our years of study in High Rock. 

    The skill we are after is the Chaos Damage enchantment.  This comes randomly on weapons in the Dragonborn expansion.  Obtain this but DO NOT disenchant the Champion's Cudgel (see below).

    The first weapon we seek is the Dawnguard Rune Hammer.  As the name implies, the weapon can place down a rune.  This is an iconic weapon that will serve as your badge of office as Keeper of the Runes when you return to High Rock.  Proudly display this in one of your many homes that you will likely own during your playthrough.*The inability to self-enchant this weapon makes it less than desirable in this build as it cannot take advantage of the enchanting/magical damage boost.  It was my first option but when I saw it couldn't take advantage of the "Mason Synergy" I went in another direction.

    The second weapon we are after is the Champion's Cudgel, via the March of the Dead quest.  This artifact is of interest to us because of it's Chaos Damage ability which we will replicate in our end game weapon, Chaos Breaker.*For roleplaying purposes do NOT disenchant this trophy item, find the chaos damage enchant on another random weapon dorp or buy it from a vendor.

    CHAOS BREAKER

    This hammer uses the Longhammer as it's base platform.  You will also need the Chaos Damage enchantment plus the Twin Effects perk in Enchanting, two black soul gems and a Fortify Enchanting potion.*The max potion is +39%, buy or find the best you can.

    To make the Chaos Breaker, improve the Longhammer at a workbench.  Drink the Fortify Enchanting potion and enchant with the Chaos Damage enchantment.  Quickly add an Absorb Health as the 2nd enchantment.

    *Chaos Damage: See the second and fifth trivia bullets for interesting insight to this weapon.

    Special Move

    Runeful Execution: Drop a fire rune at your feet and time your Chaos Breaker attack to hit simultaneously with the rune explosion.  The enemy gets blown directly into your attack by the rune resulting in a "rock and a hard place" moment for them.  Contemplation is usually short lived.

    The Daisy Cutter: When encountering three or more enemies, cluster a group of runes in front of you.  Draw their attention and get them to converge on your spot, hitting the runes at the same time.  The Daisy Cutter will cut all the enemies down with area of effect damage.

    MODS

    As I play on PC there are several mods that I used in this build.  The primary one is Balanced Magic which scales magic damage and also allows placement of up to four runes at one time.  I find this is definitely better than one, and fitting in with the Rune Master perk, but not as overpowered as some mods that allow unlimited runes.  Any other magic balancing mod that you use should work to some extent as rune damage is the key drawback if you don't mod it.

    For console users, sans mods, follow the same gameplay but you would use your one rune to target the enemy and then quickly lay a procession of runes down as the enemy gets closer to you.  Make sure you target the first rune from maximum distance to allow the most rune placements possible.  You could also retreat slightly during this initial combat phase in order to allow the placement of up to four runes to match the modded play.  Once in melee range, combat would resume with your two handed weapon as noted above in the combat section.  This is definitely viable for console users as the two-handed is set up to be the primary damage dealer in the build.

    NOTES

    We are NOT taking Ash Rune in this build, too many runes and not enough perk points.  However you can modify the build as you see fit if you prefer this rune.  I felt the Ice Form shout was a fair trade off and had a similar effect of paralyzing an enemy during combat.

    The Illusion tree (Master of the Mind and Frenzy Rune) is a place you could adjust some points to go after the Ash Rune if you would prefer it.

    The right path in the Smithing tree can wait until later in the game as we only use Orcish Smithing to improve the Longhammer which comes into play more towards end-game.

    Thanks

    Thanks to Mason for his build, The Sorcerer, which I highly recommend you checking out as well.  Also, thanks to the Workshop gang for their time and patience in reviewing my build and giving me some solid critiques to help make it better.  I've always wanted a solid rune based build and coupled with the elemental synergy I think I hit the mark I was looking for.  Thanks for checking the build out and I hope you have as much fun playing it as I did.  Please take a look at my other builds at #LeBlanc Builds

    And thanks to Manik for his Peer Review.  My thanks!  Workshop Success Stories

  • Member
    December 2, 2015
    How did you get your character to hold that great sword over her shoulder like that?
  • Member
    December 2, 2015

    I can't take any credit for that.  Found the photo online, was hoping for elven armor but wanted something that looked "ready for combat".  I liked it so I used it.

  • December 2, 2015

    Nice work John, definetly looking good, and if I didn't say it before I love the focus on Runes, a really under-rated and underused spell type that needs way more love. 

  • Member
    December 2, 2015

    Thanks Dragonborn.  They are underused, sadly with good reason.  Unmodded they are just not that good.  Still, they can be used in the build even unmodded as the roleplaying and contribute at least a little bit.  With mods they are much more sinister and give this some added "oompf".  Definitely a spell set that hasn't seen enough love!

  • Member
    December 2, 2015

    Pretty Combat Animations?

  • Member
    December 3, 2015

    This is awsome! I really like it!

    When I first started playing this game, runes were the only spells I really like using because of the damage output vs. the mana cost at the brief time. It like laying a mine down and the looks on enemies' faces when they step on one. I was sadly disappointed that you can only use one that is until I made my own mod in which I could place no more than four and have three tiers of runes a character can use. I liked your history lesson at the beginning of this. I founded it to be very compelling to start things off. I would though suggest listing alchemy as a minor skill and two handed as a major. Also keep in mind that in order to initiate your rune death trap with quiet casting, you have to remain undetected while doing it. A perk or two in sneak can fix this perfectly. 

    I didn't know you can even buy chaos damage enchanted things.

    There so many other topics I like about this, I can go on covering a whole page! Well made, well presented definitely, An A+ here! Haven't read nothing like this before. Keep up the good work.

  • Member
    December 3, 2015

    Thanks Ry, glad you like it.  I enjoy incorporating some history into my builds as it helps me learn more of the lore, something I didn't really know much about to be honest. 

    As for the trees you mention, with the casting distance you can set runes from you don't need points in stealth.  Remember this is just to let you set your first couple of runes (or target your first enemy if on console).  After that stealth is out the window, you are quick casting and then pulling out your weapon.  Definitely not meant to be a stealthy build in the least.  In fact, in clearing the Temple of Meridia I was able to set two runes in the final hallway (before fighting the necromancer) and it wasn't until my third rune that was actually in the room that I pulled them.  I got my fourth cast off and was waiting for them...

    As for the Two Handed tree, completely unnecessary.  Remember the damage in this build, for the melee weapon, comes from the synergy between your self enchantment with an elemental enchantment (fire, frost, lightning) and the Destruction tree with your Augmented perk(s). 

    And for Alchemy, I wanted to avoid making this a three craft build.  I tried desperately to limit the use of smithing (you can easily find elven armor and weapons) to improvement opportunities.  You can buy the Weakness poisons from alchemists (primarily the Khajiit caravans) and even a base level Fortify 2H takes easily obtainable materials and bumps damage by 20-30% with no points.  Again, wanted to avoid a three crafting build if at all possible.

  • Member
    December 27, 2015

    LONGHAMMMMMMER!!!

    Between that and a heavy focus on rune warfare, that's all I needed to see. I've played builds that utilized one or the other, and loved them both... but both in the same build sounds pretty boss ;D

    This looks like great fun and is really well put together--gotta say... I'm a bit surprised (and disappointed) that nearly a month later it's still in Bloodworks.

  • Member
    December 27, 2015

    This one WAS a lot of fun to play.  The runes just add to it for me (like you I love runes and wish they were better in vanilla).  With mods they are actually useful as a primary attack but even without them, using the weapon synergy learned from Mason you can survive with unmodded runes just fine so I felt it worked no matter how you played (console or PC).  Thanks for taking time to check out a lot of my builds today.