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Character Build: The Sun-Eater

Tags: #Character Build Enchanter  #Character Build Supporter  #Character Build Vampire  #Rank:Recognized  #TwistedOrthrusBuild  #Swiggity swag check out this tag 
  • April 5, 2015

    Fear and turn undead enchantments often get overlooked. Just like Whirlwind Sprint, they are often reduced to nothing more than an ‘Oh S*it!’ button when all else fails. Let’s change that shall we?

    The Sun-Eater

    “Then, of course, there are the Exiled Sun-Eaters of Numaneh, but to tell their tale is forbidden.” 

    Source

    Race: Redguard Vampire

    Stone: Lord

    Stats: 2/2/1

    Major Skills: Alteration, Enchanting, Restoration

    Minor Skills: Destruction, One-handed

    Shouts: Disarm, Soul Tear, Summon Durnehviir

    Main hand weapons(left): Nordic sword of Fear, Nordic Sword of Turning

    Off-hand weapons(right): Nordic sword of flames, Nordic sword of souls

    Armor: Enchanted Hammerfell garb

    Spells: Flesh Spells, Fire Rune, Fire Bolt, Healing, Heal other, Poison Rune

    Items, Powers and Effects: Auriel’s Bow, Bloodcursed Arrows, Black Star, Adrenaline Rush, Companion’s Insight

    Who are the Sun-Eaters?

    With so little information on this group, I decided to do some reading between the lines to understand who and what they may be.

    It is important to note that Nirn’s Sun gives life to everything by providing it with magical energy. All living things draw this energy from the sun, or more accurately, Aetherius. The sun is just a gateway to Aetherius, and the one with the greatest influence over Nirn. Not only does magical energy leave Aetherius to provide life, but the souls of the dead return to it, and become one with it once again. It’s essentially one massive cycle of energy moving between Nirn and Aetherius.

    Now we know the souls of the dead contain magical energy. The most obvious example of this is using souls to create or recharge enchanted weaponry. An example on a larger scale is the ideal masters in the Soul Carin, who feed on this energy.  Souls that are stopped from returning to Aetherius, exit the natural cycle. This would, in theory weaken the influence the Sun had over Nirn. Now who would benefit from that, but Vampires? Creatures who, it has been theorised, cannot be in direct sun light due to the life providing energy being channelled from Aetherius.

    While many of the races of Tamriel, look down on the arts of necromancy and soul tampering, the Redguards abhor it like no others. While The Ash’abah tribe may be tolerated as the services they preform are necessary, the Sun-Eaters are so despised that the Redguards are forbidden to speak of them. 

    Combine all this together and what do you get? A cult of Redguard vampires, dedicated to stealing the souls of the living, in an attempt to weaken the Sun so that they can walk in daylight once again. You get the Sun-Eaters.

    The Build

    The Sun-Eater loves a challenge, and as such, plays the role of ‘boss killer’ in his little party. Any enemy that tries to face him must stand up to his fear or turn undead enchanted weapons first. Only the strongest willed will pass this test, only to be cut down by the Sun-Eater’s enchanted weaponry moments later. This vampire takes no prisoners.

    Those who do flee are left at the mercy of the rest of the party, who hunt them down and destroy them as they plead for their lives. The Sun-Eater’s follower is gifted magical weapons and armor, second only in quality to the Sun-Eater himself. Companion’s insight is taken to keep the follower safe. I chose Teldryn Sero so that I could have a larger party with his flame atronach. My second choice was Rayya.

    Collecting soul, both white and black is critical to the Sun-Eater. Picking up Azura’s star and turning it black is a good mission to complete early on. Recharging weapons levels enchanting based on the size of the soul, not how much energy is restored. You can repeatedly keep emptying and refilling the black star with black souls to level enchanting quickly.

    The Sun-Eater is skilled in the schools of Alteration for defence, Destruction for ranged combat, and Restoration for healing allies and poisoning enemies. The Destruction school and the necromage skill will help to greatly improve the power of the Sun-Eater’s enchantments.

    Shouts also play a major role in this build. Summon Durnehviir is the go to shout when outside. He can even the odds in a dragon fight, and will summon two undead warriors of his own to join your party. It is also a perquisite to the soul tear shout, which was used when inside as a way to gain another party member temporarily, as well as their soul. The final shout used was disarm. This makes the weak enemies your allies fight even easier to handle. All words are gained using dungeon back-dooring.

    Enchanted Weaponry

    The Sun-Eater Carries an assortment of enchanted weapons to account for most situations. Below are the ones I used most:

    Phobos: Fear + Fire Damage (Left Hand)

    Expel: Turn Undead + Fire Damage (Left Hand)

    Release: Fire Damage + Fiery Soul Trap (Right Hand)

    With this set up and relevant perks, anything below level 46 can be feared or turned thanks to the following formulas.

    Phobos: Fear Enchantment: 25 x 1.25 (Champion of the Night) x 1.5 (Augmented Flames 2/2) =46

    Expel: Fear Enchantment: 25 x 1.5 (Augmented Flames 2/2) x 1.25 (necromage) =46 (The enchantment will display a magnitude of 37 as the necromage multiplier only triggers when striking an undead opponent.)

    The effect on both of these weapons can be further improved to 54 by using an Enchanter’s elixir before creating them. They can also both be temporarily boosted even further by consuming either elixir of the healer for Expel or an Elixir of illusion for Phobos. I chose to max my enchantments at 46 most of the time so that I would have some enemies to fight.

    Armor enchantments are not as important and I suggest using whatever you feel like. I personally reduced alteration and destruction cost. I gave my follower a fire damage sword but would occasionally give them some soul gems and fiery soul trap.

    Perk Spread

    The first ten levels are taken slowly so that you can buy as many empty petty soul gems as possible. This will make levelling enchanting a lot easier. You will also be able to pick up many more in the Soul Carin and Apocrypha later on. The vital perks in enchanting are extra effect and fire enchanter.

    Restoration also needs to be levelled quickly to get the necromage perk ASAP. At early levels I focused on liberally healing myself and my companions, until I could unlock the poison rune. Adept restoration allows this to be cast more often and gives a good spell for self-healing.

    Destruction also powers your enchantments, but is also your only form of ranged combat. I found that apprentice level spells were enough for this purpose. However, I went up to adept destruction so that I could use flame cloaks. Other important perks are Rune Master and Augmented Flames 2/2.

    Alteration is used primarily for flesh spells to keep our defence high. Combined with the lord stone and necromage, you’ll have over 400AR.I did occasionally use equilibrium to recover magicka but it played a very small part in the build. You’ll want to max out mage armor for the best protection, and grab stability to make flesh spells last longer. This skill will be ‘legendary’d’ once all other skills are close to complete.

    One handed plays only a small part as the majority of damage will come from enchantments. I grabbed dual flurry and dual savagery to increase the efficiency of dual wielding.

    Quests and Role Play

    Role play for this build will centre on the quests you take. The vampire side of dawnguard is a no-brainer. You need the quest to unlock certain shouts, but it also provides great role play opportunity. 

    The visit to the soul carin is the prime example of this, since you will get to see where all the souls you have captured have gone. Collecting Auriel’s bow and the bloodcursed arrows is another high point, allowing the Sun-Eater to achieve his goal to a lesser extent. Finally, the fight with Lord Harkon is one of the great boss fights your character can look forward to.

    You’ll also want to complete dragonborn and the main quest since both have strong enemies to face at the end. I made it an objective to hunt down and complete quests where there would be a named or unique enemy to fight at the end, to keep their souls out of Aetherius. Dragon Priests are good targets.

    The ultimate boss fight however is The Ebony Warrior. By reducing alteration spell cost to 0, The Sun-Eater can legendary the alteration skill and use telekinesis to level to 100 repeatedly. This should be the last thing you do with the build. I left my follower behind to face him one on one.

    I will however say, if you think the ebony warrior is beneath you, it is possible to make him cower before you by chugging an elixir of illusion before the fight.

    Special Move

    Overrun: Hit an enemy with disarm before making him run in fear. Your allies will have no trouble cleaning them up. If the enemies flee to where you’ve already been, leave a rune behind for good measure.

     

    A huge thanks to Matt Feeney here for his support during the creation of this build.

  • Member
    April 5, 2015

    Excellent job like always Twisted. My only complaint it that the build seems to end rather suddenly, just a brief thank you to Matt Feeny and a sizable blank space. What happened to the cool banner linking people to your other builds that you used on your older builds? :P

    One other thing: Isn't your right hand considered to be your main hand in Skyrim, and by extension, your left hand is considered your off hand?

  • April 5, 2015

    Think you made a mistake down the bottom there Twisterino.

    Anyway this is a great build and I'm glad it's living up to the hype (Brewmaster has been mentioning it for weeks). I always enjoy a good Redguard Build, and those done on hidden, or mostly unknown factions are even better. +1 from me Twisted, and a congratulations on a build well done. (now to the other build)

  • Member
    April 5, 2015
    Hot damn, a new Twisted Orthrus build! Mighty fancy seeing you active in the building scene again. Gotta agree with the Albino feller though, it ends rather too suddenly.
  • Member
    April 5, 2015
    I honestly didn't think a believable build could be made about these guys... Thanks for proving me wrong.
  • Member
    April 6, 2015

    Nice theory on the workings of the sun in relation to the vampires. Damn that source, though!

  • April 8, 2015

    Sorry it has taken me so long to reply. I've been super busy since posting my build. 

    Yeah, I will add in the little banner when I have the chance.

    You're correct on this, but for this build, the left hand was my main weapon hand since I used it a lot more often than my right.

  • April 8, 2015

    Thank you Phil. I have Matt to think for the source and a lot of help working with it too. I heard that theory about vampires and the sun somewhere before, but cannot remember where.

  • Member
    April 8, 2015

    Wow, how did I miss this for the past three days? A vampiric, lore-inspired Redguard elementalist? The only reason I know I'm not dreaming right now is that you didn't take Alchemy. 

    Like Kaiser, I really didn't imagine there was enough on these guys to manipulate into a build. I think Feeney and I had actually talked about them once before, actually. But man, you really did it well. I love the logic and lore groundwork that you use to justify the play style and skill set. It really strengthens the characterization and supports the gameplay.

    I love the way you use Champion of the Night and Necromage to get the equal 25% boost on the two core enchantments, and then throw in all that Fire Damage, which perfectly complements them both (not to mention buffing their power). Even all the supplemental assets tie in effectively -- the Black Star, Bloodcursed Arrows, the shouts and summons you use, etc.

    Pretty much the only elements that aren't 100% relevant, from my perspective, are Poison Rune (which is still justifiable, and totally worth using for the leveling alone), and using a Dunmer follower. But then again, you don't have much choice if you want your follower to be a summoner -- it seems like all but one or two of the Conjuration followers are Dunmer.

    One thing worth noting: You spelled "cairn" incorrectly two or three times. Other than that, I have nothing to offer but praise. Well done, Twisted!

  • Member
    April 8, 2015

    A dark, mysterious group so repellant that the mere utterance of their name is forbidden... HECK YEAH!

    I don't normally gravitate toward vampires or Redguards, but evidently when you put them together something wonderfully magical happens... they turn awesome! Now add five skills that are near and dear to me, some really cool roleplay, and an amazing display of weaponry... what's not to like?

    This one looks like tons of fun--I can't believe it slipped under my radar. Great job... as always :D