Hi, TED here with a Character Build! One of my favorite lore books that I've read was Immortal Blood! The story briefly mentions this bloodline, which caught my interest more than most others. After my most recent read-through of it, I decided that I wanted to make a build on this bloodline. There was little lore that I could work with, BUT the time that I spent creating this beast has proven to be very joyful. This build relies on content from the Dragonborn DLC.
Note: This was going to be a part of the Factions Event, until I realized that I planned a two-week vacation that starts tomorrow. I figured now would be the best time to post it before I forget about it.
The Order
The Cyrodiil Vampyrum Order is a powerful vampire clan from Cyrodiil. All other clans that competed with the order have been ousted out. To compare the Order to a simple tribe of savages is an insult. If this were the case, then they wouldn’t be the dominant bloodline within the borders of the Imperial Province! The order suffers no rival savages within its boundaries, reveals themselves to none, and manipulates the hand of society to meet their agendas.
Kin-father Molag Bal, to whom they owe their existence to, and patron Clavicus Vile, beacon o’er their affairs, are the two forces whom they revere most above themselves. The bond with Vile is what separates the order from other clans, for his guidance steels their savage craving with reason and savvy. The code of conduct for the Order prohibits members from feeding in public spaces where they can be seen. By satisfying their thirst at night time, they maintain an appearance that is indistinguishable from living persons. They devote their pursuits to the procurement of influence, political and otherwise; it is their skillful manipulation of society where their true strength lies.
They view all other vampires as inferior to their power. They do take note of more enlightened clans such as the Glenmoril Wyrd and the Whet-Fang sodality. There may be a time when they attempt to test the power of the order. Wrath will be delivered swift and total if these foes encroach upon their dominion and try to threaten their sovereignty.
The Build
Race: Imperial Vampire. They get 3 skill boosts that will be beneficiary for leveling. But wait, there’s more! As a vampire, they receive a 25% bonus in magnitude to all Illusion spells, as well as a 25% sneaking bonus.
Standing Stone: The Shadow Stone. It is a valuable once-a-day power for situations in which retreat is the only option to take. It costs no magicka and can last for 60 seconds, providing more than enough time to rethink the next course of action!
Stat Distribution: Put 1 Health for every 4 Magicka on leveling up. Magic is a huge focus of this build. It is best to follow this until level 20. Once that is achieved, then alternate to 1 Health for every 1 Magicka.
Equipment: Master Robes of Alteration, Any Boots of Muffle, Masque of Clavicus Vile, Amulet of Talos, Ahzidal’s Gauntlets of Warding, Mace of Molag Bal
Skills: One-Handed, Conjuration, Illusion, Restoration, Alteration, Speech
Shouts: Marked for Death, Slow Time
Black Book Powers: Seeker of Shadows, Secret of Arcana, Companion’s Insight
Quests: Filament and Filigree, The Sallow Regent, Winds of Change, Unearthed, Conjuration Ritual Spell, The House of Horrors, A Daedra’s Best Friend, The Final Descent
Skills
The Cyrodiil Vampyrum Order is designed to function both with and without a Follower. For early game-play, be sure to pick up a follower like Sven to deal with enemies. Before getting the Mace of Molag Bal, you will be using the Bound Sword as your primary weapon. Casting this while in battle will increase your Conjuration skill fairly fast. After killing an enemy with your follower, you can cast Raise Zombie on the cadaver to finish off the rest of your foes. One day, a follower of yours will die. If this happens later in the game, you can use Secret of Arcana to cast Dead Thrall for free to continue using their services for your gain! That’s a bargain you won’t get anywhere else!
One Handed is a good melee skill to have. While an enemy is focused on your follower, you can position yourself to the back and attack together to increase total damage per second. The Mace of Molag Bal is useful because it depletes 25 points of both Magicka and Stamina. As the enemy is distracted, you are decreasing the amount of power attacks and/or spells he or she can utilize. That’s not all! Another bonus is the Soul Trap enchantment, which helps keep the Mace recharged (especially if you have the Black Star)!
Illusion is an excellent support skill, used to make enemies fight against each other via Fury/Frenzy spell. Due to the 25% magnitude bonus that Vampires get, each spell becomes more powerful as a result. Dual-casted Calm spells will now affect everything up to level 72! Dual-casted Fury Spells will now affect everything up to level 83! That’s not all! Even a Dual-casted Rally spell will give your follower a 43 point buff to health and stamina; that’s almost double the power for half the cost! The Quiet Casting perk will help turn your foes against each other without giving away your location.
Restoration has numerous benefits apart from healing yourself and your follower. Dragons that try to use their Fire or Frost shout on you will be negated by casting any Ward spell. The Ward Absorb perk helps absorb some magicka in the process of negating magic damage. By wearing Ahzidal’s Gauntlets of Warding, you are now able to absorb 75% of any incoming spell! Members of the Cyrodiil Vampyrum Order are capable of exploiting the un-dead’s weakness. Dual-casting Circle of Protection with the Necromage perk causes Undead up to level 55 to flee from combat for 45 seconds! This is very effective when dealing with Draugrs and other feral vampires.
Alteration is the skill that allows you to switch between having a follower around and no follower. This is in due part to the power of the Paralyze spell. By immobilizing your target, you can make them feel the wrath of Molag Bal’s spikey goodness! Stability increases the duration of Paralyze to 15 seconds! Paralyze synergizes well with Marked For Death for the fact that you can accurately cast the shout on a still enemy. By wearing the Master Robes of Alteration, this decreases your magicka cost to a point where you can dual-cast it for a Paralysis effect of 30 seconds. Within that time frame, wearing an Amulet of Talos and gaining the Blessing of Talos effect will allow you to activate Marked for Death twice while your enemy is immobilized! That’s double the power for half the effort! The Atronach perk allows you to absorb 30% of all spells; when casting Circle of Protection, you gain an unlimited source of magicka that you can utilize to paralyze targets! Other spells that prove useful are the Detect Life and Death spells. These give you a general idea of how you can approach combat as you delve further into a dungeon.
Note: Early leveling will require use of Flesh spells.
Speech allows you to persuade, bribe, or intimidate anybody to benefit yourself. Should you or your follower commit a crime in the public eye, you can rely on your sly tongue to have guards ignore such incidents. The Persuasion perk decreases the skill requirements by 30% to four out of the five Speech Categories. By wearing the Masque of Clavicus Vile, you only need to have your Speech level at 60 to pass all persuasion checks! When you’re going out shopping for soul gems or equipment for your follower, you think to yourself “Does it have that wow factor? Is it easy to use? Is it priced right?”
It's important to me to sell a product that works, so I'm going to prove it to you with these mathematical calculations! To demonstrate the bargaining power of this build, we will use the value of a filled Grand Soul Gem for these equations. First, we start off with the Base Price factor (CLICK HERE to see what I’m talking about); let’s assume the character has a skill level of 44. The price factor formula would follow as: (3.3*(100-44) + 2*44))/100
The Price Factor, in this case, would equal 2.72 rounded down. But wait, there’s more! Now we need to determine the Buying Price Factor. The formula for this consists of variables such as our Haggling percentage, whether or not we took the Allure perk, Fortify Barter potions, and the difference between the value 1 and the Fortify Barter percentage. Our Haggling perks make up 20% Haggling, which added with our Necromage boosted Seeker of Shadows passive gives us a total of 32.5% Haggling. Then we have the Masque of Clavicus Vile, which also boosted by Necromage, gives us 25% Fortify Barter. Since we aren’t using potions, blessings, or Allure, here is the formula as follows: (1/1.325)(1-0.25)
The total Buying Price Factor now becomes .566 rounded down; but I’m still not done! Now we finally have the two variables we need to figure out the Final Buy Price. The base value of a filled Grand Soul Gem is 500 septims. Here’s the final formula with all our established values: 500*2.72*0.566
With this calculation, the final buying price is 769; compare that to a final buying price of 1487 at level 15 without perks or Haggling/Barter boosts and you save approximately 51% off! Now every time that you go shopping, you can think to yourself “I’ve done well for myself.”
Sneak is an unperked skill that we’ll occasionally use to scout out the territory. The 25% bonus from vampirism and the 10% bonus from the Seeker of Shadows passive ability synergize well with any boots that have the Muffle effect (also benefits from Muffle spell). In both shadows and under the guise of the Shadow Stone, you will never be detected easily!
Follower
Your follower is a very important piece to this build! He or she is the means you use to conquer more than half of your adversaries. They are generally easy to acquire, be it from hiring for mercenary work or from becoming a thane of a certain Hold. For proper role-play and efficiency, a Housecarl would be the best follower to tank for you! Aside from Valdimar (Housecarl from Morthal w/Hearthfire installed), their primary skills are: Heavy Armor, One-Handed, Archery, and Block. Most of them have a 50% Frost Resistance due to their Racial passive ability. Usually when you’re using the Marked for Death shout with a follower around, there’s always that chance that you hit him unintentionally. That’s not the case when we have the Companion’s Insight passive ability; no longer do you have to worry about that guy being weak enough to be killed in one hit! Any shouts you use while in combat mode (meaning the enemy detects you) will not affect your follower at all!
Equipment set-up: Otar, Necklace of Fire Suppression, Daedric Armor of Peerless Health, Daedric Boots of Grounding, and Daedric Gauntlets.
Unless you’re facing Karstaag, there is no foe that is going to be able to triumph over your follower any time soon! The Nord’s racial passive combined with Otar, the necklace, and the boots make a tank out of all who serve you. But wait, there’s more! By completing the Ritual Conjuration quest, you earn a Sigil Stone that can be used to create Daedric Weapons and/or Armor for your follower. Since the skills of a Housecarl are suitable for Sword & Board and Ranged combat, we’ll need to make: a Daedric Sword, Daedric Shield, a Daedric Bow, and the two Daedric armor pieces mentioned in the Equipment set-up!
Ingredients you will need are: the Ebony Sword, Ebony Shield, and Ebony Bow. To add to the list are 5 Daedric Hearts, 2 Void Salts, 2 Ebony Ingots, 3 Centurion Dynamo Cores, and 3 Black Soul Gems. Once you have those, it’s as simple as putting an Ebony Weapon in with a Centurion Dynamo Core, a Daedric Heart, and a Black Soul Gem in! After placing the Sigil Stone on the pedestal, activate the lever and you save big money and a lot of time from searching for these products you won’t find anywhere else! Now summoning the Enchanted Daedric Armor is a little trickier. You’ll need to put in a Daedric Heart, piece of Void Salt, and an Ebony Ingot in the box. Make sure you save before you activate the lever; this way, you can reload to farm for those two pieces without losing too much gameplay time!
Gameplay Tactics
With your follower in hand, the both of you will sneak to a point where you can see an enemy from a
distance. Command your follower to ambush said target. Once you have snuck past the enemy, cast Paralyze and use the Marked for Death shout on the lying carcass. Should the spell’s duration run out, cast it again and continue wailing until its heart beats no more. A similar approach to this is using the first word of the Slow Time shout. The duration of its effect lasts 12 seconds (due to the Stability perk), which is more than enough time to cast Paralyze without getting hit once! With the Necromage perk affecting both the Blessing of Talos and the Amulet of Talos, it only takes 15 seconds for the shout to cool down! This means you only have to wait 3 more seconds to use another shout.
Sometimes, you will be outnumbered by a large mob of enemies. This is where you command your follower to wait from a distance. Once you have scoped the area for the best solution to clearing the area, single or dual-cast the Frenzy spell so that the masses are trying to rip each other apart. When the numbers dwindle to a maximum of 2 enemies, then you can order your follower to attack! By staying in stealth mode, casting Heal Other will heal your follower by 112 points while you sit there watching with a sweet roll in hand without being detected (due to the Quiet Casting perk)!
Dragons are trickier in that you have very little offensive advantage against them. Despite this, there is a way to deal with them in an efficient manner! Use the Marked for Death Shout on them and cast your Ward right before it shouts at you. Repeat this a couple times so that it will be softened up for your follower to decimate. At least 3 shouts into it should make it very vulnerable to any physical attack! Should you find yourself alone to face this foe on the ground, only go near if your Shout Cooldown has completed. Then sprint as fast as you can to perform a power attack. If MFD is stacked high enough, your weapon should deal enough damage to severely injure it.
With all that said, I’ll simplify these combos for those that are just skimming through and throw in some other ones:
Crippling Bones: This creates an opening for you and your follower to severely diminish the health of the afflicted target.
Requires: Paralyze + Marked for Death
Hidden Potential: While undetected, you can help your servant conquer his enemies by restoring his health and giving him a health boost.
Requires: Dual-Cast Rally + Heal Other + Silent Casting
Trade of the Order: Draw magicka from your Circle of Protection and cast Slow Time; this gives you plenty of time to immobilize every enemy and pick off one at a time.
Requires: Dual-Cast Circle of Protection + Atronach Perk + Slow Time +Paralysis
Eternal Loyalty: Should your favorite follower die during your adventures, you call upon the power of Molag Bal to revitalize the lifeless corpse to fight once more.
Requires: Secret of Arcana + Dead Thrall
Roleplay
Earn the favor of various Jarls by removing idle threats that have them worried. Solitude and Morthal both have vampire problems, one of which is related to the history of the Order. A survivor, by the name of Morvarth, has plans to take over the town of Morthal. Those that have read Immortal Blood know that he encountered a member of the Order. Should you find out that he survived the ordeal, you are to finish him and his minions off. Like Morvarth, any vampires you hear of that need to be killed, you eliminate them; this way, the Order can spread their influence beyond the borders of Cyrodiil and grow to become the dominant bloodline of Tamriel.
As part of the Conduct established from the Manifesto Cyrodiil Vampyrum, avoid daylight by lifestyle. The only time you should be up and running about is from 7PM to 5AM in game time. This will give you an hour to purchase all the material you’ll need and to sell everything you don’t need. While it is nighttime, find a spot where you can feed without being detected. The best spots to do this are in a Hold’s Guard Barracks. They are never locked and have guards that are waiting for you to drink their blood. For feeding purposes, try to keep it almost every day, if possible.
There are some ways in which you can directly influence the society of Skyrim through political means. The Dark Brotherhood is a good choice for a faction to join due to several reasons. If you don’t have Dawnguard installed and have reached Stage 4 Vampirism, they are all friendly to you and can be used to satisfy your feeding needs. The main part of the Dark Brotherhood questline revolves eliminating a higher authority within the Imperial Empire in the name of Emperor Titus Mede II. By killing the current emperor, you have now created an opening for one of the Order to fill in that role.
End-note
I would like to thank my great friends from the Skype chat (Ponty, Henson, and Mami Chula) for hearing my ideas and discussing how I could make this build fit the lore best, as well as reviewing the build before I posted it. Don’t forget to pop a like and comment on my first build!
Click Here For CB Anonymous
Hi, TED here with a Character Build! One of my favorite lore books that I've read was Immortal Blood! The story briefly mentions this bloodline, which caught my interest more than most others. After my most recent read-through of it, I decided that I wanted to make a build on this bloodline. There was little lore that I could work with, BUT the time that I spent creating this beast has proven to be very joyful. This build relies on content from the Dragonborn DLC.
Note: This was going to be a part of the Factions Event, until I realized that I planned a two-week vacation that starts tomorrow. I figured now would be the best time to post it before I forget about it.
The Order
The Cyrodiil Vampyrum Order is a powerful vampire clan from Cyrodiil. All other clans that competed with the order have been ousted out. To compare the Order to a simple tribe of savages is an insult. If this were the case, then they wouldn’t be the dominant bloodline within the borders of the Imperial Province! The order suffers no rival savages within its boundaries, reveals themselves to none, and manipulates the hand of society to meet their agendas.
Kin-father Molag Bal, to whom they owe their existence to, and patron Clavicus Vile, beacon o’er their affairs, are the two forces whom they revere most above themselves. The bond with Vile is what separates the order from other clans, for his guidance steels their savage craving with reason and savvy. The code of conduct for the Order prohibits members from feeding in public spaces where they can be seen. By satisfying their thirst at night time, they maintain an appearance that is indistinguishable from living persons. They devote their pursuits to the procurement of influence, political and otherwise; it is their skillful manipulation of society where their true strength lies.
They view all other vampires as inferior to their power. They do take note of more enlightened clans such as the Glenmoril Wyrd and the Whet-Fang sodality. There may be a time when they attempt to test the power of the order. Wrath will be delivered swift and total if these foes encroach upon their dominion and try to threaten their sovereignty.
The Build
Race: Imperial Vampire. They get 3 skill boosts that will be beneficiary for leveling. But wait, there’s more! As a vampire, they receive a 25% bonus in magnitude to all Illusion spells, as well as a 25% sneaking bonus.
Standing Stone: The Shadow Stone. It is a valuable once-a-day power for situations in which retreat is the only option to take. It costs no magicka and can last for 60 seconds, providing more than enough time to rethink the next course of action!
Stat Distribution: Put 1 Health for every 4 Magicka on leveling up. Magic is a huge focus of this build. It is best to follow this until level 20. Once that is achieved, then alternate to 1 Health for every 1 Magicka.
Equipment: Master Robes of Alteration, Any Boots of Muffle, Masque of Clavicus Vile, Amulet of Talos, Ahzidal’s Gauntlets of Warding, Mace of Molag Bal
Skills: One-Handed, Conjuration, Illusion, Restoration, Alteration, Speech
Shouts: Marked for Death, Slow Time
Black Book Powers: Seeker of Shadows, Secret of Arcana, Companion’s Insight
Quests: Filament and Filigree, The Sallow Regent, Winds of Change, Unearthed, Conjuration Ritual Spell, The House of Horrors, A Daedra’s Best Friend, The Final Descent
Skills
The Cyrodiil Vampyrum Order is designed to function both with and without a Follower. For early game-play, be sure to pick up a follower like Sven to deal with enemies. Before getting the Mace of Molag Bal, you will be using the Bound Sword as your primary weapon. Casting this while in battle will increase your Conjuration skill fairly fast. After killing an enemy with your follower, you can cast Raise Zombie on the cadaver to finish off the rest of your foes. One day, a follower of yours will die. If this happens later in the game, you can use Secret of Arcana to cast Dead Thrall for free to continue using their services for your gain! That’s a bargain you won’t get anywhere else!
One Handed is a good melee skill to have. While an enemy is focused on your follower, you can position yourself to the back and attack together to increase total damage per second. The Mace of Molag Bal is useful because it depletes 25 points of both Magicka and Stamina. As the enemy is distracted, you are decreasing the amount of power attacks and/or spells he or she can utilize. That’s not all! Another bonus is the Soul Trap enchantment, which helps keep the Mace recharged (especially if you have the Black Star)!
Illusion is an excellent support skill, used to make enemies fight against each other via Fury/Frenzy spell. Due to the 25% magnitude bonus that Vampires get, each spell becomes more powerful as a result. Dual-casted Calm spells will now affect everything up to level 72! Dual-casted Fury Spells will now affect everything up to level 83! That’s not all! Even a Dual-casted Rally spell will give your follower a 43 point buff to health and stamina; that’s almost double the power for half the cost! The Quiet Casting perk will help turn your foes against each other without giving away your location.
Restoration has numerous benefits apart from healing yourself and your follower. Dragons that try to use their Fire or Frost shout on you will be negated by casting any Ward spell. The Ward Absorb perk helps absorb some magicka in the process of negating magic damage. By wearing Ahzidal’s Gauntlets of Warding, you are now able to absorb 75% of any incoming spell! Members of the Cyrodiil Vampyrum Order are capable of exploiting the un-dead’s weakness. Dual-casting Circle of Protection with the Necromage perk causes Undead up to level 55 to flee from combat for 45 seconds! This is very effective when dealing with Draugrs and other feral vampires.
Alteration is the skill that allows you to switch between having a follower around and no follower. This is in due part to the power of the Paralyze spell. By immobilizing your target, you can make them feel the wrath of Molag Bal’s spikey goodness! Stability increases the duration of Paralyze to 15 seconds! Paralyze synergizes well with Marked For Death for the fact that you can accurately cast the shout on a still enemy. By wearing the Master Robes of Alteration, this decreases your magicka cost to a point where you can dual-cast it for a Paralysis effect of 30 seconds. Within that time frame, wearing an Amulet of Talos and gaining the Blessing of Talos effect will allow you to activate Marked for Death twice while your enemy is immobilized! That’s double the power for half the effort! The Atronach perk allows you to absorb 30% of all spells; when casting Circle of Protection, you gain an unlimited source of magicka that you can utilize to paralyze targets! Other spells that prove useful are the Detect Life and Death spells. These give you a general idea of how you can approach combat as you delve further into a dungeon.
Note: Early leveling will require use of Flesh spells.
Speech allows you to persuade, bribe, or intimidate anybody to benefit yourself. Should you or your follower commit a crime in the public eye, you can rely on your sly tongue to have guards ignore such incidents. The Persuasion perk decreases the skill requirements by 30% to four out of the five Speech Categories. By wearing the Masque of Clavicus Vile, you only need to have your Speech level at 60 to pass all persuasion checks! When you’re going out shopping for soul gems or equipment for your follower, you think to yourself “Does it have that wow factor? Is it easy to use? Is it priced right?”
It's important to me to sell a product that works, so I'm going to prove it to you with these mathematical calculations! To demonstrate the bargaining power of this build, we will use the value of a filled Grand Soul Gem for these equations. First, we start off with the Base Price factor (CLICK HERE to see what I’m talking about); let’s assume the character has a skill level of 44. The price factor formula would follow as: (3.3*(100-44) + 2*44))/100
The Price Factor, in this case, would equal 2.72 rounded down. But wait, there’s more! Now we need to determine the Buying Price Factor. The formula for this consists of variables such as our Haggling percentage, whether or not we took the Allure perk, Fortify Barter potions, and the difference between the value 1 and the Fortify Barter percentage. Our Haggling perks make up 20% Haggling, which added with our Necromage boosted Seeker of Shadows passive gives us a total of 32.5% Haggling. Then we have the Masque of Clavicus Vile, which also boosted by Necromage, gives us 25% Fortify Barter. Since we aren’t using potions, blessings, or Allure, here is the formula as follows: (1/1.325)(1-0.25)
The total Buying Price Factor now becomes .566 rounded down; but I’m still not done! Now we finally have the two variables we need to figure out the Final Buy Price. The base value of a filled Grand Soul Gem is 500 septims. Here’s the final formula with all our established values: 500*2.72*0.566
With this calculation, the final buying price is 769; compare that to a final buying price of 1487 at level 15 without perks or Haggling/Barter boosts and you save approximately 51% off! Now every time that you go shopping, you can think to yourself “I’ve done well for myself.”
Sneak is an unperked skill that we’ll occasionally use to scout out the territory. The 25% bonus from vampirism and the 10% bonus from the Seeker of Shadows passive ability synergize well with any boots that have the Muffle effect (also benefits from Muffle spell). In both shadows and under the guise of the Shadow Stone, you will never be detected easily!
Follower
Your follower is a very important piece to this build! He or she is the means you use to conquer more than half of your adversaries. They are generally easy to acquire, be it from hiring for mercenary work or from becoming a thane of a certain Hold. For proper role-play and efficiency, a Housecarl would be the best follower to tank for you! Aside from Valdimar (Housecarl from Morthal w/Hearthfire installed), their primary skills are: Heavy Armor, One-Handed, Archery, and Block. Most of them have a 50% Frost Resistance due to their Racial passive ability. Usually when you’re using the Marked for Death shout with a follower around, there’s always that chance that you hit him unintentionally. That’s not the case when we have the Companion’s Insight passive ability; no longer do you have to worry about that guy being weak enough to be killed in one hit! Any shouts you use while in combat mode (meaning the enemy detects you) will not affect your follower at all!
Equipment set-up: Otar, Necklace of Fire Suppression, Daedric Armor of Peerless Health, Daedric Boots of Grounding, and Daedric Gauntlets.
Unless you’re facing Karstaag, there is no foe that is going to be able to triumph over your follower any time soon! The Nord’s racial passive combined with Otar, the necklace, and the boots make a tank out of all who serve you. But wait, there’s more! By completing the Ritual Conjuration quest, you earn a Sigil Stone that can be used to create Daedric Weapons and/or Armor for your follower. Since the skills of a Housecarl are suitable for Sword & Board and Ranged combat, we’ll need to make: a Daedric Sword, Daedric Shield, a Daedric Bow, and the two Daedric armor pieces mentioned in the Equipment set-up!
Ingredients you will need are: the Ebony Sword, Ebony Shield, and Ebony Bow. To add to the list are 5 Daedric Hearts, 2 Void Salts, 2 Ebony Ingots, 3 Centurion Dynamo Cores, and 3 Black Soul Gems. Once you have those, it’s as simple as putting an Ebony Weapon in with a Centurion Dynamo Core, a Daedric Heart, and a Black Soul Gem in! After placing the Sigil Stone on the pedestal, activate the lever and you save big money and a lot of time from searching for these products you won’t find anywhere else! Now summoning the Enchanted Daedric Armor is a little trickier. You’ll need to put in a Daedric Heart, piece of Void Salt, and an Ebony Ingot in the box. Make sure you save before you activate the lever; this way, you can reload to farm for those two pieces without losing too much gameplay time!
Gameplay Tactics
With your follower in hand, the both of you will sneak to a point where you can see an enemy from a
distance. Command your follower to ambush said target. Once you have snuck past the enemy, cast Paralyze and use the Marked for Death shout on the lying carcass. Should the spell’s duration run out, cast it again and continue wailing until its heart beats no more. A similar approach to this is using the first word of the Slow Time shout. The duration of its effect lasts 12 seconds (due to the Stability perk), which is more than enough time to cast Paralyze without getting hit once! With the Necromage perk affecting both the Blessing of Talos and the Amulet of Talos, it only takes 15 seconds for the shout to cool down! This means you only have to wait 3 more seconds to use another shout.
Sometimes, you will be outnumbered by a large mob of enemies. This is where you command your follower to wait from a distance. Once you have scoped the area for the best solution to clearing the area, single or dual-cast the Frenzy spell so that the masses are trying to rip each other apart. When the numbers dwindle to a maximum of 2 enemies, then you can order your follower to attack! By staying in stealth mode, casting Heal Other will heal your follower by 112 points while you sit there watching with a sweet roll in hand without being detected (due to the Quiet Casting perk)!
Dragons are trickier in that you have very little offensive advantage against them. Despite this, there is a way to deal with them in an efficient manner! Use the Marked for Death Shout on them and cast your Ward right before it shouts at you. Repeat this a couple times so that it will be softened up for your follower to decimate. At least 3 shouts into it should make it very vulnerable to any physical attack! Should you find yourself alone to face this foe on the ground, only go near if your Shout Cooldown has completed. Then sprint as fast as you can to perform a power attack. If MFD is stacked high enough, your weapon should deal enough damage to severely injure it.
With all that said, I’ll simplify these combos for those that are just skimming through and throw in some other ones:
Crippling Bones: This creates an opening for you and your follower to severely diminish the health of the afflicted target.
Requires: Paralyze + Marked for Death
Hidden Potential: While undetected, you can help your servant conquer his enemies by restoring his health and giving him a health boost.
Requires: Dual-Cast Rally + Heal Other + Silent Casting
Trade of the Order: Draw magicka from your Circle of Protection and cast Slow Time; this gives you plenty of time to immobilize every enemy and pick off one at a time.
Requires: Dual-Cast Circle of Protection + Atronach Perk + Slow Time +Paralysis
Eternal Loyalty: Should your favorite follower die during your adventures, you call upon the power of Molag Bal to revitalize the lifeless corpse to fight once more.
Requires: Secret of Arcana + Dead Thrall
Roleplay
Earn the favor of various Jarls by removing idle threats that have them worried. Solitude and Morthal both have vampire problems, one of which is related to the history of the Order. A survivor, by the name of Morvarth, has plans to take over the town of Morthal. Those that have read Immortal Blood know that he encountered a member of the Order. Should you find out that he survived the ordeal, you are to finish him and his minions off. Like Morvarth, any vampires you hear of that need to be killed, you eliminate them; this way, the Order can spread their influence beyond the borders of Cyrodiil and grow to become the dominant bloodline of Tamriel.
As part of the Conduct established from the Manifesto Cyrodiil Vampyrum, avoid daylight by lifestyle. The only time you should be up and running about is from 7PM to 5AM in game time. This will give you an hour to purchase all the material you’ll need and to sell everything you don’t need. While it is nighttime, find a spot where you can feed without being detected. The best spots to do this are in a Hold’s Guard Barracks. They are never locked and have guards that are waiting for you to drink their blood. For feeding purposes, try to keep it almost every day, if possible.
There are some ways in which you can directly influence the society of Skyrim through political means. The Dark Brotherhood is a good choice for a faction to join due to several reasons. If you don’t have Dawnguard installed and have reached Stage 4 Vampirism, they are all friendly to you and can be used to satisfy your feeding needs. The main part of the Dark Brotherhood questline revolves eliminating a higher authority within the Imperial Empire in the name of Emperor Titus Mede II. By killing the current emperor, you have now created an opening for one of the Order to fill in that role.
End-note
I would like to thank my great friends from the Skype chat (Ponty, Henson, and Mami Chula) for hearing my ideas and discussing how I could make this build fit the lore best, as well as reviewing the build before I posted it. Don’t forget to pop a like and comment on my first build!
Click Here For CB Anonymous
Also, what is this guy's take on Volkihar questline? Destroying it from within?
