I've been lurking here for a while and thought it might be time, if not a little late, to submit my first build. I'm pretty new to Skyrim, and The Elder Scrolls in general, so forgive me (and by all means, correct me) if I misspeak about certain aspects of the lore, or incorporate them a little too lightly into my build.
This build came from the fact that I had never put a single point into Conjuration or Two-handed, so I decided to mix the two, and threw in my favorite skill, Alchemy. What resulted became my most focused and absolute favorite build, so I chose him for my first play through on master, as well as my first build submitted here. So, nervously, I present...
The Beast of High Rock
Roleplay
Roleplaying is essential to this character. The basic concept is that he is an eccentric but proficient alchemist, obsessed with his work in achieving everlasting necro-reanimation through reaching a heightened state of consciousness, with the help of drugs, which lets him inhabit the planes of both the living and the dead. So far, he has achieved mild success, but only on weaker specimens, and the blasted things keep turning to ash! He has hit a dead end in his lab deep in the mountains of High Rock. He needs better ingredients, better specimens, and more research. He needs to travel to Skyrim!
I took inspiration from occultist/psycho-experimenter/mountaineer Aleister Crowley (AKA The Great Beast 666), as well as from another Beast - X-Men's Hank McCoy - in that McCoy and this character both have big, hulking, brutish builds that are more or less incidental to their soft-spoken, studious, scientific natures.
This character is perfect for exploring every corner of Skyrim. Scour its caves and mountains looking for rare ingredients; clear its crypts and ruins studying the deformed and the undead. We will go anywhere and do anything to see our scientific hunger for knowledge through to the end, and oftentimes that curiosity gets us sidetracked in the occasional Daedric or radiant quest. Kill a cult leader because a fumes-induced hallucination instructed us to? You bet! Sounds interesting! Sacrifice a follower because a possessed corpse demands it? That sounds extremely relevant to our studies. Maybe we'll learn something!
One other bit of roleplay: no magic other than necromancy. No enchanted gear or healing spells or alteration buffs. This character is an alchemist, and only knows how to use drugs to boost his skills and defenses. The roleplay dictates that necromancy is achieved through use of mind-altering substances.
Race: Breton. Intelligent, curious, and somewhat eccentric, Bretons are a perfect fit for this mad alchemist build. We also get some much-needed magic resistance through their passive racial ability. Naming him Aleister/Alasdair is recommended, as well as a muscular build, mutton chops, older complexion, and ugly features.
Stone: The Ritual, The Atronach, or The Lord. I went with The Lord for the added toughness because I didn't want to wear a full set of armor, and the extra passive magic resist had me set against mages. The Atronach could save a lot of somewhat useless points from being dumped into magicka, and the regen penalty doesn't matter since we're only using magicka for thralls. The Ritual is just cool.
Gear: I had the most trouble deciding on a look for this guy. Taking inspiration from Beast, I ended up wearing nothing but the Ebony Mail, upgraded as high as I could get it with honest methods, and going barefoot and barehanded. It worked out OK, and I only went that route after obtaining a pair of good thralls. It forced me to play smarter and be more reliant on my thralls and potions, the centers of the roleplay, and not be just another heavy armor-wearing skullcrusher. I wish I could come up with an "essential" costume for this guy, but in the end it's entirely up to you how you want to look. Here are some suggestions:
- Ebony Mail, Ebony Boots/Gauntlets: An armor that “poisons” our enemies is perfect for an alchemist, and the smoke damage stacks with the bleed damage from our battleaxe. Also, I just think it’s the best looking heavy armor in the game (I hate 90% of the armor in Skyrim, and looks are very important to me.) You could RP that he’s coated the armor in poison that he is immune to due to an extremely high tolerance (Snakeblood), though that's obviously not the in-game description.
- Dragonplate/Dragonscale Armor: Wearing bones is great for a character obsessed with the undead, and since reaching that armor cap with “honest” alchemy and smithing alone can be difficult, the better protection it offers is great, too. One more point in Smithing isn't too bad.
- Lab Gear: Found or bought fortify alchemy pieces. Take and buy every piece you see. Though this should be the only enchanted gear that you wear.
- Ebony Battleaxe: A nice, clean weapon will do the trick. Upgraded with smithing perks and potions of course.
Quests: The Only Cure, Boethiah's Calling, A Return to Your Roots, The White Phial, A Scroll For Anksa, etc. etc. Anything occult or alchemy related. This is an explorer build at heart.
Major Skills
Alchemy: His raison d'être - the blood in his veins and the thorn in his side - alchemy pervades every aspect of his existence. We will be using it to raise thralls, fortify our attacks and defenses, debuff those of the enemy, setting up our thralls for the kill, healing, smithing - everything! All Perks are taken, including Experimenter 3/3. Eating glowing mushrooms and dangerous-looking flowers to discover their effects is exactly what this character would do.
Conjuration: The subject of his obsession. To permanently reanimate the dead is the reason he came to Skyrim! Summoner is not taken because it's not entirely useful for a non-stealth, non-summoning conjurer. Also, Dead Thrall is our end goal, with which Summoner is useless. We will be killing the first couple baddies ourselves, then dragging them into the next battle to distract the tougher foes. Novice – Master, Necromancer, Dark Souls, Twin Souls.
Two-handed: Our one and only form of attack, other than those of our thralls, but we can swing an axe with the best of the “true Nord warriors.” Barbarian 5/5, Great Critical Charge, Devastating Blow, Sweep, weapon of your choice (3/3), but I have a hard time seeing this guy with anything other than a giant battleaxe.
Support Skills
Block: Every two-hander needs some block, and without flesh spells or enchanting buffs, and with relatively low health and stamina, we need all the damage reduction we can get. Shield Wall 5/5.
Smithing: We need to our armor as strong and effective as it can be. Choose perks depending on what you want to wear, but I chose Steel - Ebony and Arcane.
Heavy Armor/Light Armor: Wear what you want. I took Juggernaut 5/5.
Stat Spread: 1:3:2 (Magicka:Health:Stamina). Goal is to reach 180 Magicka, then put everything else into health and stamina.
Finished Perk Spread - Not much use for anything else. Conditioning might be useful.
Shouts
Become Ethereal – After a chance encounter with a fellow alchemist in Shroud Hearth Barrow, I have discovered a most fascinating mixture! It’s a shame I had to put my axe through the fellow’s skull – could have saved a lot of time studying the elixir and differentiating its different components.
Slow Time/Elemental Fury – My unique tolerance to potions can yield some…. interesting, albeit unwieldy, results. Using a Potion of Slow on myself seems to affect not my physiology, but only my perception of time around me. Sometimes it appears to slow to a crawl, while others it feels as fast as the rush of the northern winds!
Drugs
The Beast's Blotter: Fortify Magicka - One of my favorite parts of the roleplay is that we must take this potion in order to use Dead Thrall. I see it as this character achieving an altered state of consciousness, with the help of drugs, that enables him to inhabit the planes of both the dead and the living, and to drag souls back from the plane of the dead.
Dragonbane Draught: Fortify Two-handed/Resist Fire - Made from Troll Fat and Fly Amanita, plus any Resist Fire ingredient.
Dragonbane Elixir: Fortify Heavy Armor/Resist Frost - Made from Thistle Branch and Slaughterfish Scales.
Painkillers: Fortify Heavy Armor/Fortify Block - Made from Slaughterfish Scales, Tundra Cotton, White Caps.
Steroids: Fortify Two-handed + Fortify Heavy Armor - The last thing they'll see are the veins bursting out of your forehead.
Stimulants: Fortify Two-handed/Regenerate Stamina - Made from Bee, Fly Amanita, Troll Fat
Vitamins: Restore Health/Restore Stamina - Made from Purple Flower, Blue Flower, Charred Skeever Hide
Sharing The Needle: Sweep/Conentrated Poison and a couple good enthralled mages can be absolutely devastating. All your classic slow, paralysis, lingering damage poisons are useful, but here are a few others I like to use:
- Salt Pile/Deathbell/Rock Warbler Egg - Slow and Weakness to Magic. Dose 'em and let your thralls do the rest.
- Juniper Berries/Ice Wraith Teeth/Skeever Tail - Weakness to Fire/Damage Stamina Regen + an enthralled Savos Aren or fire mage.
- Magesbane Elixir - Glow Dust and Hanging Moss: Damage Magicka/Damage Magicka Regen.
Photo Credit: http://fantasygallery.net/cardiff/#.UVXp-avwKAZ
Wow, I can't believe my build survived! Thanks guys! Be sure to check out my better second build, The Ronin:
I've been lurking here for a while and thought it might be time, if not a little late, to submit my first build. I'm pretty new to Skyrim, and The Elder Scrolls in general, so forgive me (and by all means, correct me) if I misspeak about certain aspects of the lore, or incorporate them a little too lightly into my build.
This build came from the fact that I had never put a single point into Conjuration or Two-handed, so I decided to mix the two, and threw in my favorite skill, Alchemy. What resulted became my most focused and absolute favorite build, so I chose him for my first play through on master, as well as my first build submitted here. So, nervously, I present...
The Beast of High Rock
Roleplay
Roleplaying is essential to this character. The basic concept is that he is an eccentric but proficient alchemist, obsessed with his work in achieving everlasting necro-reanimation through reaching a heightened state of consciousness, with the help of drugs, which lets him inhabit the planes of both the living and the dead. So far, he has achieved mild success, but only on weaker specimens, and the blasted things keep turning to ash! He has hit a dead end in his lab deep in the mountains of High Rock. He needs better ingredients, better specimens, and more research. He needs to travel to Skyrim!
I took inspiration from occultist/psycho-experimenter/mountaineer Aleister Crowley (AKA The Great Beast 666), as well as from another Beast - X-Men's Hank McCoy - in that McCoy and this character both have big, hulking, brutish builds that are more or less incidental to their soft-spoken, studious, scientific natures.
This character is perfect for exploring every corner of Skyrim. Scour its caves and mountains looking for rare ingredients; clear its crypts and ruins studying the deformed and the undead. We will go anywhere and do anything to see our scientific hunger for knowledge through to the end, and oftentimes that curiosity gets us sidetracked in the occasional Daedric or radiant quest. Kill a cult leader because a fumes-induced hallucination instructed us to? You bet! Sounds interesting! Sacrifice a follower because a possessed corpse demands it? That sounds extremely relevant to our studies. Maybe we'll learn something!
One other bit of roleplay: no magic other than necromancy. No enchanted gear or healing spells or alteration buffs. This character is an alchemist, and only knows how to use drugs to boost his skills and defenses. The roleplay dictates that necromancy is achieved through use of mind-altering substances.
Race: Breton. Intelligent, curious, and somewhat eccentric, Bretons are a perfect fit for this mad alchemist build. We also get some much-needed magic resistance through their passive racial ability. Naming him Aleister/Alasdair is recommended, as well as a muscular build, mutton chops, older complexion, and ugly features.
Stone: The Ritual, The Atronach, or The Lord. I went with The Lord for the added toughness because I didn't want to wear a full set of armor, and the extra passive magic resist had me set against mages. The Atronach could save a lot of somewhat useless points from being dumped into magicka, and the regen penalty doesn't matter since we're only using magicka for thralls. The Ritual is just cool.
Gear: I had the most trouble deciding on a look for this guy. Taking inspiration from Beast, I ended up wearing nothing but the Ebony Mail, upgraded as high as I could get it with honest methods, and going barefoot and barehanded. It worked out OK, and I only went that route after obtaining a pair of good thralls. It forced me to play smarter and be more reliant on my thralls and potions, the centers of the roleplay, and not be just another heavy armor-wearing skullcrusher. I wish I could come up with an "essential" costume for this guy, but in the end it's entirely up to you how you want to look. Here are some suggestions:
- Ebony Mail, Ebony Boots/Gauntlets: An armor that “poisons” our enemies is perfect for an alchemist, and the smoke damage stacks with the bleed damage from our battleaxe. Also, I just think it’s the best looking heavy armor in the game (I hate 90% of the armor in Skyrim, and looks are very important to me.) You could RP that he’s coated the armor in poison that he is immune to due to an extremely high tolerance (Snakeblood), though that's obviously not the in-game description.
- Dragonplate/Dragonscale Armor: Wearing bones is great for a character obsessed with the undead, and since reaching that armor cap with “honest” alchemy and smithing alone can be difficult, the better protection it offers is great, too. One more point in Smithing isn't too bad.
- Lab Gear: Found or bought fortify alchemy pieces. Take and buy every piece you see. Though this should be the only enchanted gear that you wear.
- Ebony Battleaxe: A nice, clean weapon will do the trick. Upgraded with smithing perks and potions of course.
Quests: The Only Cure, Boethiah's Calling, A Return to Your Roots, The White Phial, A Scroll For Anksa, etc. etc. Anything occult or alchemy related. This is an explorer build at heart.
Major Skills
Alchemy: His raison d'être - the blood in his veins and the thorn in his side - alchemy pervades every aspect of his existence. We will be using it to raise thralls, fortify our attacks and defenses, debuff those of the enemy, setting up our thralls for the kill, healing, smithing - everything! All Perks are taken, including Experimenter 3/3. Eating glowing mushrooms and dangerous-looking flowers to discover their effects is exactly what this character would do.
Conjuration: The subject of his obsession. To permanently reanimate the dead is the reason he came to Skyrim! Summoner is not taken because it's not entirely useful for a non-stealth, non-summoning conjurer. Also, Dead Thrall is our end goal, with which Summoner is useless. We will be killing the first couple baddies ourselves, then dragging them into the next battle to distract the tougher foes. Novice – Master, Necromancer, Dark Souls, Twin Souls.
Two-handed: Our one and only form of attack, other than those of our thralls, but we can swing an axe with the best of the “true Nord warriors.” Barbarian 5/5, Great Critical Charge, Devastating Blow, Sweep, weapon of your choice (3/3), but I have a hard time seeing this guy with anything other than a giant battleaxe.
Support Skills
Block: Every two-hander needs some block, and without flesh spells or enchanting buffs, and with relatively low health and stamina, we need all the damage reduction we can get. Shield Wall 5/5.
Smithing: We need to our armor as strong and effective as it can be. Choose perks depending on what you want to wear, but I chose Steel - Ebony and Arcane.
Heavy Armor/Light Armor: Wear what you want. I took Juggernaut 5/5.
Stat Spread: 1:3:2 (Magicka:Health:Stamina). Goal is to reach 180 Magicka, then put everything else into health and stamina.
Finished Perk Spread - Not much use for anything else. Conditioning might be useful.
Shouts
Become Ethereal – After a chance encounter with a fellow alchemist in Shroud Hearth Barrow, I have discovered a most fascinating mixture! It’s a shame I had to put my axe through the fellow’s skull – could have saved a lot of time studying the elixir and differentiating its different components.
Slow Time/Elemental Fury – My unique tolerance to potions can yield some…. interesting, albeit unwieldy, results. Using a Potion of Slow on myself seems to affect not my physiology, but only my perception of time around me. Sometimes it appears to slow to a crawl, while others it feels as fast as the rush of the northern winds!
Drugs
The Beast's Blotter: Fortify Magicka - One of my favorite parts of the roleplay is that we must take this potion in order to use Dead Thrall. I see it as this character achieving an altered state of consciousness, with the help of drugs, that enables him to inhabit the planes of both the dead and the living, and to drag souls back from the plane of the dead.
Dragonbane Draught: Fortify Two-handed/Resist Fire - Made from Troll Fat and Fly Amanita, plus any Resist Fire ingredient.
Dragonbane Elixir: Fortify Heavy Armor/Resist Frost - Made from Thistle Branch and Slaughterfish Scales.
Painkillers: Fortify Heavy Armor/Fortify Block - Made from Slaughterfish Scales, Tundra Cotton, White Caps.
Steroids: Fortify Two-handed + Fortify Heavy Armor - The last thing they'll see are the veins bursting out of your forehead.
Stimulants: Fortify Two-handed/Regenerate Stamina - Made from Bee, Fly Amanita, Troll Fat
Vitamins: Restore Health/Restore Stamina - Made from Purple Flower, Blue Flower, Charred Skeever Hide
Sharing The Needle: Sweep/Conentrated Poison and a couple good enthralled mages can be absolutely devastating. All your classic slow, paralysis, lingering damage poisons are useful, but here are a few others I like to use:
- Salt Pile/Deathbell/Rock Warbler Egg - Slow and Weakness to Magic. Dose 'em and let your thralls do the rest.
- Juniper Berries/Ice Wraith Teeth/Skeever Tail - Weakness to Fire/Damage Stamina Regen + an enthralled Savos Aren or fire mage.
- Magesbane Elixir - Glow Dust and Hanging Moss: Damage Magicka/Damage Magicka Regen.
Photo Credit: http://fantasygallery.net/cardiff/#.UVXp-avwKAZ
Wow, I can't believe my build survived! Thanks guys! Be sure to check out my better second build, The Ronin:
