Character build: FMT Assassin

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I guess it's time it jot down this build I've been thinking about, with quite significant insights provided by Aldeth added to the mix. So let me present: F/M/T Assassin. Or just FMT Assassin for short.

Why should I care about this build?
This build will let you put as many skills into active use as possible, allowing this character to reach character level 75+ in due time without resorting to stupid powerleveling exploit techniques to get there. Not only that, but you'll use the skills when they're at their strongest, comparatively speaking of course.

Play style considerations
This character is an assassin at heart, but shouldn't have problems with any situation in game. However, there's no general playstyle for this character - rather it changes as the character evolves.

Specifically, Destruction starts out quite powerful, but is later left into the dust by Melee as it doesn't gain much extra damage past the few perks that benefit elemental damage directly and new spells only get you so far. Melee and Sneak is generally a difficult combo to pull of at lower levels anyway, while you can pretty much take all the time in the world to aim a sneaky arrow from afar. Real bows take a while to pick up the damage just as melee weapons do.. except for one: Bound Bow (the Conjuration spell). Even the standard non-perked one is as good as an Ebony Bow paired with Daedric Arrows!

Ultimately, you'll be able to craft a pair of daggers that will put both Archery and Destruction on the back seat.. but it DOES take a while to get there, and that's the whole point of going the long way to achieve it. All three will still have a given place once you've completed the build. Anything that can be sniped from afar will be sniped, any large crowd will appreciate a Fire Storm in their amidst and anything that manages to get close will be introduced to the business end of your daggers. From sneak, preferably.

Perks and when to get them
Thanks to Aldeth's research, it can rather safely be concluded that there's absolutely no need whatsoever to stay at single digit or even teen levels for longer than it takes for you to haul your characters newbie arse to Riverwood and Whiterun soon thereafter. Once there, you can easily gain anywhere between 10-20 levels by pickpocket training combined with some basic crafting thrown in here and there. Pickpocket training means you train something and pickpocket back the funds you just spent, boosting your pickpocket skill as well, leading into a feedback loop of you just about gaining a new level-up by the time you've trained five times.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This will NOT make your early game easier per se, quite the opposite in fact. You'll run into much tougher opponents while your main damage skills will only gain modest increases in during this process. But with the amount of healthy powergaming thrown at this character, you gotta see it as giving them poor'ol mobs a fair chance.

Early on, you'll want Light Fingers 1/5 (Pickpocket) to help with pickpocket train, and once in Riverwood, you should pick Overdraw 3/5 (Archery) with a little help from Faendal to be able to dent the tough mobs you'll meet as soon as you leave the village. Alchemist 2/5 and Haggling 1/5 feed into each others, allowing you to start making tons of money to feed into other pursuits later on. Don't forget to pick up Elven Smithing as soon as you can - that's all you ever need from there, apart from Arcane Smithing later. That's only 9 perks to start with, while you can easily get double that by the time you get to Whiterun.

A while later, perks to try to reach a bit extra for are Merchant (Speech), Augmented Fire/Frost (Destruction), Impact (Destruction), Deadly Aim (Sneak), Benefactor (Alchemy) and Insightful Enchanter (Enchanting) while Unhindered (Light Armor), Extra Pockets (Pickpocket) and Steady Hand (Archery) bring in the quality of life improvements.

Ultimately, your perks will look like this:
Archery - 8+ points with maxed Overdraw and Steady Hand. Any leftover points at the extremely high levels are probably best put here.
Heavy Armor, Block & Two-handed - 0 points each. Trained to 90 skill, never used.
One handed - 9 points with Fighting Stance and Dual Savagery. Most points here come at very high levels as bow and destruction is plenty enough until then.
Smithing - 3 points with Elven and Arcane Smithing. With triple crafts, the rest of them are only aesthetical upgrades.
Light Armor - 5 points, straight to Deft Movement via Wind Walker.
Sneak - 4 points, straight to Assassin's Blade.
Lockpicking - 0 points. You're kidding, right?
Pickpocket - 4 points. Extra pockets and Cutpurse to keep pickpocket training going for a good while.
Speech - 3 points. Merchant.
Alchemy - 7 points. Everything up to Benefactor.
Illusion - 4 points. Quiet casting at the extreme late game, ie when Destruction and/or Alteration Master spells become available so that you can Fire Storm or Mass Paralyze from Sneak.
Conjuration - 0 points. Mystic Bow is strong all by itself and will be replaced with your own crafted bow later anyway. (Also, I'm just not the summoner type myself.)
Destruction - 7 points to boost Fire and Frost spells AND enchants and Impact, of course.
Restoration - 4 points for Avoid Death and Recovery 2/2. Late game picks.
Alteration - 5 points for maxed Magic Resistance.
Enchanting - 10 points for everything on the left side except for Storm Enchanter.

Level required: 74. That would be extremely high for any build.. except this build can actually expect to reach it without cheese and within a reasonable amount of time. Quite frankly, once you get all the crafting skills to 100 and fully perked, the rest of them are just icing on the cake anyway.

Enchants
Magic Resistance gets top priority on both Neck and Finger, so don't expect quite the boost to anything else early on. Once dual enchants come into play, Fortify Archery x 4 will ultimately let you one-shot kill Mammoths without potions. Fortify Destruction x 3 (one in Helm and two different ones in Chest) will pretty much negate the mana cost of it and greatly relieve the need for Soul Gems to fuel Fire+Frost dual enchants on your primary dps weapons.

Fortify Sneak in both Gloves and Boots should do wonders with staying hidden. Once you feel confident in prancing around mobs without them having the faintest idea you're there, create a secondary set with Fortify Alteration instead of Destruction so that you can Mass Paralyze at will. Or sacrifice a couple of Fortify Archery slots for them if you don't want to change apparel as you go.

Stat points
The highest you'll ever need in Magicka is around 180 for early access to Bound Bow. Most Master spells aren't worth their mana cost so don't sweat it.. Plus if you want to give them a whirl, you can always enchant a -100% magicka cost apparel to do it.

Stamina is best left at base until you actually start using melee for fighting more than occasionally. Even then, anything more than 200 is most likely overkill or you're playing the character against its design - you're not a warrior for long term stand and fight but a stealth bomber striking down the opposition whenever, wherever, however YOU want.

This puts your base health at a healthy 650+ @ level 74, more than most warriors.

 

Elemental damage does scale with items, but only with potions and poisons. And you'll need to invest heavily in alchemy/enchanting/speech for that work.
Considering that the easiest way to spread your poisons around is to go melee, then this is the only game I know where an F/M/x may be significantly more powerful than a pure mage when it comes to nukes.

Since you'll be training most of your skills you might be able to make do with just choosing Breton as your race and using the Atronach stone. Between that and potions you can skip magic resistance perks and enchantments. Magicka poisons are also deadly effective in Skyrim, especially on a fast weapon.

Good build/leveling plan overall, as far as I can tell.

 

Well, I'll chime in too, as Rechet and I have been collaborating on this build for the past couple of weeks. You can look at the progression if you're interested in the Gimpus thread I started, that is still evolving.

Just a few points not mentioned by Rechet (not that I disagree with anything he stated): This one requirement for this build is you engage in 5 training session every freakin' level. If you can resist the urge to push level up at the end of the Helgen dungeon, this process can be started at level 1, and it should never be started later than level 2. This will give you access to approximately 350 skill increases (assuming you get to level 71), which is enough to fully train 4 skills from 15 to 90, and get you a good way towards a 5th skill. (Level 76 is required to get 5 full skills trained from 15 to 90.)

This basic plan is this: The first 20 or so levels you train skills that you will need to survive early in the game. As Rechet stated, this can be done at no cost and can be completed upon arrival at Whiterun by pickpocket training, and since you're leveling pickpocket concurrently with whatever skill you're training, you'll level up again without leaving the side of your trainer. There is no reason not to get to Whiterun by level 6 or 7. (Don't get the Dragonstone on the way - Go directly to Whiterun. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.) Faendal can only get your archery to 50, so even if you play a character that started with 15, he won't be able to help you past level 7. And there is no need to leave Whiterun until you're level 20-25.

After that, you spend the next 30-40 levels training skills that you won't be able to use until late in the game, if at all. This is where the power of the build comes into play. You spent early training on skills that you'll use to level your character, but simultaneously you're working on skills for the end game. You can't effectively change your character's career from a fighter to a mage, or vice versa, if it means reverting to skills at level 15 when your character level is 50.

You'll now be somewhere around character level 60, and all subsequent training will be spent on whatever skills you want to perfect. Be it archery, melee, or picking up another school of magic. Since you're developing nearly all of the 18 skills, you can play the character however the hell you want - just decide in advance where you want to spend those perks.

By means of example of the variety of builds possible, my character is ALSO a FMT, but he only played the role of a sneaky assassin while growing up. Now, he's a battlemage, clad in daedric armor, who makes gratuitous use of Lightning Storm (known colloquially as the lightning hose of death) at no magicka cost, and then if anything lives long enough to get close, he summons a couple of deadra, whips out a sword and shield, and proceeds to the melee portion of the smackdown. There's nothing subtle about my build. So even though Rechet and I have nearly identical skill sets, and there is a good deal of commonality in our perk distributions (about 75% of it is identical), our characters are NOTHING alike. But they are both EXTREMELY effective.

I'll post more later on my perk distribution, item enchantments, and recommend skill development for those interested in following the way of the Gimpus.

 

Important things to do early on
- Once in Whiterun, take the horse carriage to at least the following places as soon as you can afford it: Riften (thief questline), Winterhold (mage questline & spells & training) and Solitude (Speech training). Remember that you can fast-travel back at no cost. You want to have at least enough places to fast travel to so that merchants have restocked by the time you get back. Edit: Seems like Markarth is better choice than Solitude since you can get both Speech AND Sneak training there. But I would aim for all the nine holds in any way so it hardly matters.

- Go grab the Transmute spell book from Halted Stream Camp at your earliest convenience. (Edit: Due to how the early leveling and game balance works, that pretty much means straight out of Riverwood.) It's just a bit north from Whiterun. This allows you to turn a profit from Smithing from the word go by buying Iron Ore and selling it as golden jewelry, or some silvery ones if you have excess lower quality gems.

- While already at Halted Stream Camp, you might as well go around the hill and get fast travel access to Lord Stone just a bit north from there. You might need it for some early battles, although it has potential as a 24/7 selection at least until you can reach armor cap and/or Magic Resistance cap on your own.

- You should try getting your hands on Bound Bow spellbook ASAP by clearing Fort Amol Prison, a bit northeast from Ivarstead but probably easier to get to by taking a walk due NE - E - SE from Whiterun, following the south bank of White River. Alternatively, train your Conjuration skill to 40 and just buy it from Winterhold.

- Early perk investment in Speech, Alchemy and Enchanting will let you make the most gold out of your trade skills. Everything between those three feeds into each other in terms of profits, and you use Smithing to realize it by crafting, improving and enchanting everything you can. Consequently, you need to start buying the ingredients (for all three of them!!) at every stop you make on your round trips following your first visit to Whiterun. With a bit of guile, I don't see why you wouldn't be able to continue all the way to 100 in all three of them. Don't forget that you need to pickpocket train every level as well, so you might not be able to go full throttle all the time.

 

No more thread hijacking for me. Since my FMT is definitely NOT an assassin, I've started my own thread instead of dominating Rechet's here.

Please refer to The Way of the Gimpus for my take on a F/M/T.

 

As I see it, the major differences between FMT and Gimpus are mostly gameplay related.

FMT is primarily a stealth bomber, Gimpus is anything but. In terms of skills this pretty much translates into the difference between going Archery-heavy or Conjuration-heavy. Gimpus doesn't specify the exact melee weapon choice, but Daggers is about the last thing crossing Gimpus' mind while it's the #1 pick for FMT.

Also, while it may not be readily apparent from the descriptions, I had these points in mind when designing the FMT:
- Melee combined with all three crafting skills becomes crazy overpowered long before reaching 100 skill in any of them, and "planet cracking open" level of broken once they do. So daggers is a conscious choice of toning this down, due to the One-handed enchants not working with them. Backstab with daggers is plenty powerful due to the ginormous x15 multiplier available to them nevertheless.
- My personal favorite method of enemy disposal in Skyrim is sniping them from afar, so this build puts the effort in supporting this. Also, it doesn't hurt that the single most bad-ass weapon available at very early levels is a conjured bow.
- I wanted a build that makes good use of offensive magic while it still counts for something, ie. during the early game. This also has the very nice side effect of effectively removing the soul gem upkeep cost from the enchants I find myself using the most anyway while giving them a sizeable boost in power.
- While Aldeth's idea and implementation of the pickpocket training is brilliant, I see no reason for stopping there. As long as you have a practically limitless supply to certain key ingredients from merchants, you can keep on leveling while at the same time piling up the resources you're going to need later on for training at the very high end of the skill spectra, easily costing 10k or even 20k gold per level. Believe me, that's not something you want to raise by crafting when your fingers are itching to get to the next dungeon during late game. I'll outline this strategy in a thread of it's own.

 

With the playtest experience testing the "crafting to the limit" idea, here's a few tweaks I would do if I were to do it again:

1) Scratch the idea with Bound Bow, as you can craft much better bows yourself before you've had a single chance to use it yourself since you'll fast-train all the crafting skills as soon as you reach Whiterun. Except MAYBE, MAYBE during your short journey to Halted Stream Camp to get your hands on the Transmute spell.

2) Leveling Conjuration becomes a bit more tedious since you'll be buying all the Soul Gems you'll ever need during the crafting routine, so casting Soul Trap yourself becomes superfluous. No, we don't WANT to be stupid ass exploiters and cast it repeatedly on corpses, thank you. Besides, you're a ranged character for quite a while so getting to close range just to cast Soul Trap is a bit backwards. Instead, just cast your strongest available summon (no perks required) in the general direction of your enemies whenever not sniping them. Frost Atronach should be an excellent pick since it acts defensively. Then proceed shooting the rest of the enemies with Destruction or your bow, whichever you prefer to level at the moment and if your Atronach happens to get into the way - even better as you get "kill experience" for it as well.

3) Since you'll be at armor cap without perks due to your triple crafting skills, it's actually worth crafting your end game suit as a mix between Elven and Steel. Gauntlets and Helm weigh the least out of Steel items so consider making either one (or both) of those slots out of Steel, depending whether the armor skill increases depend on the amount of pieces worn or just that there's a single piece of it somewhere. That way you'll level both of your armor skills without ever having to devote a single point of training for them. And none of the armor perks are all that spectacular once you've reached armor cap, and most certainly not worth the prerequisite points to reach them.

Finally, I didn't exactly specify which skills I consider prime candidates for training and when, so here it is:
1) Archery (Faendal, Riverwood) - straight to 50, WITHOUT USING PICKPOCKET TRAINING as you'll level too fast if you do! Up to 35 points used.
2) Speech (Solitude or Markarth) - 50 as soon as you can, but you WILL need to train some other, lower level skills so that you don't overshoot in level. Up to 70 points used.
3) Destruction - 40 as your main general dps skill to be able to pick Impact, Archery is mainly for sniping. Up to 95 points used.
5) Two-handed and Block - 90 in both. Neither skill is ever used so you have to train them all the way. Up to 245 points used.

This leaves around 150 points for skills you just want to speed up in their leveling. Decent candidates are Destruction (it takes literally ages to level), Conjuration (if you want to skip using summons altogether and go Sneak-heavy from the word go), Alteration (if you want early access to Magic Resist 3/3 after you're done with the crafting routine) or Sneak (if you just want to reach the point of being able to sneak around successfully faster).

 

My thinking with the bound axe/bow was to purchase not just the filled soul gems but the empty ones as well. This will allow me to quest a bit and ultimately speed up the whole process of crafting. Since I don't want to rely on the ability to easily find a weapon that casts soul trap (I hate purchasing anything just to learn the enchantment unless it's something good like Banish or Paralyze), I figure I can get it for free very early, and still have a decent damage dealer to boot.

Certainly the limiting ingredient in the alchemy/smithing/enchanting chain is filled soul gems. Hell, I don't care if I'm only making iron daggers - they still turn a profit once enchanted. Of course most of the smithing experience will come from gold rings, but they are profitable from the start, and their price increase is only marginal once enchanted. And alchemical ingredients are never in short supply, you can simply travel from merchant to merchant, get a friggin' ton, stop by your house, rest for an hour, and craft away. So getting my hands on more filled soul gems seems like a great idea.

But aren't Frost Atronachs a bit pricey for summoning without the perk? I'm thinking they were around 200 or so magicka. I know I didn't use them with Gimpus 2.0 until later on, because I didn't have the magicka.

Do you advocate elven and steel armor to save smithing perks and have low weight? I don't really care about weight - my characters tend to have a lot of stamina, and usually extra pockets - if I'm getting cutpurse anyway, one extra perk for 100 extra carry capacity seems like a bargain to me.

100% agreed.

I usually pick a skill or two that's at 15 first and get speech slightly thereafter. It's not that you don't want it, it's just that until you start crafting, having 50 speech isn't necessary, and since there's nothing else to do in terms of training in Markarth or Solitude, I usually go there after I'm done in Whiterun/Riften/Winterhold.

I'd just lump all three together at this point. I doubt I'll even use destruction again.

I don't have probelms leveling sneak. Gimpus never spent a single point in sneak, and by level 67, he was at nearly 90 sneak - and I never had the thief stone active.

 

Filling the soul gems yourself is not necessary when you can just buy everything. Remember that while you're doing the crafting routine, your adventuring gear is by necessity going to be rather poor until you actually create your final set - unless you want to waste a few Grand stones to craft something in between that you're never going to use in actual battle, just bogging you down.

Also, if you really want to emphasis the economical side of crafting AND really want to turbo your Alteration training by Transmuting, I'd rather say that the limiting factor is actually finding enough Iron Ore to buy rather than filled soulstones. Yes, I'm plenty aware that you're not set back much by just buying all Iron, Leather, Steel AND Moonstone/Quicksilver and crafting them into whatever has the best materials/end product value ratio, most likely body armors since you get quite sizeable value delta with those by improving them and the base item cost is several times higher than any corresponding dagger/bracer so you're not set back in base item value either. But those ONLY benefit your skill level in Smithing - you're not really turning (much) of a profit and you miss the opportunity to use Transmute.

A clarification for the observant reader: I strongly advocated NOT doing the crafting routine early on in the crafting to the limit thread, but the FMT is is designed so that it doesn't turn into a demigod just because you get great items from the start. UNLESS, of course, you cave in and start using melee more than absolutely necessary in the early going or worse yet, put some perk points into it before you're done with BOTH of your Archery AND Destruction training first. Sure, you could as well skip them both and just dive into melee, but you're no longer a FMT at that point, and you WILL miss quite a few character levels at the upper end.

Frost Atronach has a base magicka cost of just over 200 so the 180 you have as a FMT should be plenty to cast it, if not straight away but after a few castings of Conjure Familiar at the latest. Remember that you'll be casting Destruction for practically free as soon as you have the gear crafted.

Steel and Elven are my picks since they're the first available Light and Heavy Armor where you actually can put a perk point into for maximum Smithing boost, and since I wanted Arcane Blacksmithing. Everything else is just aesthetics from that point on.

Finally, I'm totally expecting to pour a significant portion of the ~150 free-roaming training points to finish off Destruction later on. I just want to give it an honest chance since I've never actually used it.. so that I can join the "Destruction sucks, I know, I've tried" club afterwards. I can see that from the numbers but the actual gameplay aspect interests me more at this point.

 

And buy them I do - but only the lesser and petty ones. And only the petty ones give good return on investment in the early going. You really have to craft something with a high base item cost to make up the difference between the price of a petty and lesser soul stone.

I don't enchant 99% of the gold rings I make. I raise my smithing in two ways. One, yes, I buy all the iron ore I can get my hands on, transmute it into gold, and craft gold rings. The other way I improve it is by bringing back decent value or low weight items I find from the dungeon and improving them, prior to enchantment and sale.

It's a losing proposition to craft a dwarven sword, improve it, enchant it, and still be able to turn anything close to a profit on sale. But if you find that dwarven sword, it's certainly worth your while to buy one dwarven ingot to improve it and then burn a low value soul stone to enchant it prior to sale.

That's why I'm filling soul gems - I don't care what item I'm enchanting - if the only outlay on my part is the ingot to improve that item, then it's well worth it. By doing it this way, I'm keeping all of my crafting skills right around the same point. All 3 skills are in the 50s for my character right now.

See above - you are turning a profit if your only outlay is the ingot and the empty soul gem you bought. Granted, unlike your character I am investing in skills beyond steel and elven. Any dwarven or orcish item I find I can improve. With your character, you have a more limited pool of items to pick from.

Now I know what you're thinking - how is it I'm questing with sub-par gear on master difficulty? Well, it's more of a pick and chose thing. The way I've been doing it thus far is working for the thieves guild. I pick up a mission from Vex and Delvin, and then I go to those cities, purchasing iron ore, filled and empty petty soul gems, and any and all alchemical ingredients I can find. Of course, as I complete the missions, I also get the special missions, which are generally pretty easy. With each mission, the only real threat is the boss at the end of each of those missions. (And the Markarth special mission which I just did yesterday was a problem. The boss killed me twice before I got past her.)

Fair point. And if you actually spent a point in adept conjuration to be able to use your bound bow straight away, you'll easily be able to summon it. Plus, if you play similarly to me, you don't actually expect your summon to kill much of anything. What they are there for is to put something between you and the enemy. They are more of a target than a supplemental damage source.

Yeah, if you don't plan on working on that at all, you could need as much as 75 points in it to go from 15-90.

Well, here's the thing. I think that destruction was deliberately underpowered in terms of raw damage because you have impact uber perk available at skill level 40. That totally changes your game play. In my one attempt at a pure mage build, I played an Altmer. Once I turned on the highborn ability, my magicka regenerated fast enough, that the stagger time was sufficient to allow me to get off another spell. Basically, you could stun lock anything for a minute, and even with the lowish damage output of your spells, nothing is going to be able to take that for a full minute.

 

Exactly. If you actually quest while doing the crafting routine in smaller increments, you'll get a whole lot of base items for improving, not to mention a vast majority of the enchants, for free. Otherwise you'll have to buy them all, just as I did while playtesting it. Yet another reason why I consider it less than optimal to jump into the crafting loop straight out of pickpocket training loop, back to back. Just wanted to go through with it anyway for the shits and giggles of getting to level 48 without touching a single monster, besides the ones in Helgen and HSC.

Oh, once you get your crafting apparel going past the +50% mark, it doesn't really matter much whether you have a perk for something or not. My far from perfect +smithing apparel managed to exactly double the value of an Ebony Bow, ie. +1440 value for a ~360 gold store bought ingot.

Remember that FMT has zero perks in Conjuration, but that's only because I'm not much of a summoner type myself. But even I acknowledge that they can be plenty useful in a variety of situations. FMT could easily consider tossing a disposable summon from sneak just for diversion, for example.

Well, for once I'm hoping that you're dead wrong and it was, actually, just an oversight. Scary way of balancing something, that, if it were true!

Edit: Speaking of perks, since I no longer consider any of the armor perks worth their salt since there's an actual benefit for wearing both types at the same time, this leaves quite a bit of room to, say, invest more into Illusion, should Alteration fail me miserably with Mass Paralyze.

---------- Added 1 hours, 36 minutes and 52 seconds later... ----------

Quick note about Destruction Augmented Fire/Frost perks and Enchanting affecting each other. Seems like the percentages multiply each other, being applied from both perks simultaneously. A fully enchanted Fire+Frost damage enchant on any weapon backed by the corresponding maxed Destruction perks does a whopping 81+81 damage.

Considering you can apply this to any fighting style, whether one-handed, two-handed or archery, this actually gives some long term value to the Destruction perks. Now, if only the spells themselves weren't so sucky..

 

Well, I'm still mostly crafting. In the 15 or so levels I have earned since finishing the initial training spree, nearly all of the experience earned has been from crafting. Sure, I kill something here and there, but it's few and far between. Maybe 2 out of those 15 levels have been from questing.

ACK! And the shame! I never realized you could improve something without having the relevant perk! I figured leather and iron didn't count because all characters start with knowledge of how to make them, but I thought since you couldn't make an item without the appropriate perk, you also were unable to improve an item without the appropriate perk.

Wow, you must have been using your full magicka bar for summoning your bound bow. Or even the bound battleaxe. I spent perks on my guy up to adept conjuration - and if I decide I want a demora lord, you can bet I'll get one in expert as well.

And yes, summons are there for diversionary tactics. They are much better at absorbing damage as a meat shield than they are at providing supplemental damage to kill stuff. You still have to do most of the work yourself, but you can do it while the enemy is putting his boot to the arse of your summons.

Mass Paralyze sounds really good, I'm just not sure I'm willing to submit the amount of resources necessary to specialize in that school for that one spell. Especially since Paralyze costs half as much magicka, and doesn't require you to reach level 90 in alteration before being able to cast it. I mean, even if you are up against two enemies, you can paralyze one while you deal with the other. And how often, if you are playing smart, do you actually run into a situation where you're fighting more than two enemies at once?

It is in this regard where illusion is nearly the exact opposite in terms of implementation, and in many ways it accomplishes the same thing as mass paralyze as an end result. The goal of Paralyze is to stop the enemy from attacking you. The calm spells do the same thing in illusion, with the added bonus of frenzy type spells that get them to attack each other.

But that's not the best part. Illusion becomes fully effective long before you reach a high illusion level, and it's because the master level spells are totally unnecessary. Yes, the master spells do have the benefit of being area of effect, but cannot be dual cast. All of the master level spells have a "lesser" adept or expert version that, when dual cast, actually exceeds the level of affected creatures than the master level spell.

This makes it also very magicka friendly. If you're willing to spend the perks to half the casting costs, everything up to adept can be cast with base magicka, and the expert level spells won't cost much more than that. And the only expert level spell you really want is Invisibility.

The final aspect of illusion is that when it is used properly and with proper perk selection, it makes spells in other schools - most notably alteration and restoration - less needed. You won't need any of the ward spells, and you definitely won't need the undead affecting spells, although just for convenience you'll still probably want the better healing spells. And the advantages of combining illusion magic with sneak should be self-evident (Cast Pacify with Hypnotic Gaze and Kindred Mage perks to make the enemy friendly. Sneak up behind enemy. Backstab.)

Of course, nothing is perfect, and for illusion spells to really shine, they do require a significant perk investment. You really need Rage and Master of the Mind Perks if you want your illusion spells to affect just about everything, and the prerequisites comprise a large chunk of the illusion tree. Assuming you also want the perks to half the casting costs, the only optional perk in the whole tree is Master Illusion.

 

I was thinking more along the lines of: "Since I already want to/have to take the prereqs to get Quiet Casting, the rest of it is only a few perks more". And magicka cost is no problem since if the Alteration strategy fails me, all I need to do is to re-enchant the apparel having Fortify Alteration+whatever so that they become Fortify Illusion+whatever. There's plenty of room for such enchants once I get Destruction out of the way first. Once again, not because I necessarily think it's any good, but because I want to test its wings as my primary dps skill for once. The perks in Alteration are only to get me Magic Resistance so no long term loss there either.

Speaking of Magic Resistance, I just learned that there's also a quest reward for it. Completing "The Book of Love" (starts in Riften) gives you a permanent +15% MR buff. In other words, you don't have to play a Breton nor use a shield to max your MR. Or the other way around - Breton + doubly enchanted shield* is all you need, if you want to use your Neck/Finger enchantment slots for something else.

*= There's another enchantment that gives Magic Resistance, which you can get by disenchanting the quest reward "Shield of Solitude". It's also a bit stronger than the standard MR enchant, but can only be applied to shields IIRC.

I agree with your assessment of Illusion spells. With one major reservation: in most other RPGs, spells that make monsters fight amongst themselves also causes major experience point losses as you don't get the experience for kills/damage made by other monsters. Unless I can get a confirmation that this is NOT the case in Skyrim, that's a big no-no for me. Pacify effect sounds excellent, though, but it can't possibly mean that mobs just stand around doing nothing while I merrily chop them into pieces, right? It's one thing if I Mass Paralyze them - that's kinda expected behaviour - but being able to do effectively the same with an Illusion spell would seem.. excessive, maybe?

 

Maybe it's just the way Gimpus 2.0 turned out, but I was disappointed in the end result of gearing up with full reduce casting cost gear. My current character is going two-handed, and I think I'm going to use as many affects as possible to strengthen my weapons. So what that probably means is I'll only stick the reduce casting cost enchantments on my armor.

There are a ton of such quests that give a permanent bonus to your character. List is broken down as - Name of Permanent Affect - bonus confered - quest needed to be completed:

1. Agent of Mara - +15% resist magic - Book of Love
2. Agent of Dibella - more combat damage to the opposite sex (strange) - The Heart of Dibella
3. Ancient Knowledge - +25% bonus when wearing Dwarven Armor and +15% smithing ability when improving weapons and armor (it's a permanent +15% ON TOP OF WHATEVER YOU'RE WEARING) - Unfathomable Depths
4. Dragon Infusion - Take 25% less damage from dragons - Dragons Research
5. Prowler's Profit - Greater chance of finding gems - No Stone Unturned
6. Sailor's Repose - Healing spells cure 10% more - Frostflow Lighthouse
7. Sinderion's Serendipity - 25% chance to create a second potion when making a potion - A Return to your Roots.

Numbers 1, 3, and 7 seem the most useful, although A Return to your Roots is necessarily not available until after you go through Blackreach.

That's the one you get for becoming Thane of Riften? I didn't realize that was a separate enchantment as opposed to the regular magic resistance enchantment that you can find on innumerable items throughout the game. Even if it does only apply to shields, if you put that and the other enchantment on your shield, you'll get a fair way to the cap just from those two and the Agent of Mara.

You won't get the experience from the kills, but you WILL get the experience from casting the spell. If we're talking about two enemies fighting amongst themselves, it's probably a wash, as you kill the survivor yourself, but in a group of more than two, you'd probably get more experience for not using the spell.

Any hostile action breaks the spell, but at the least you can one-shot the first member of the mob. There's also nothing that prevents you from casting it on a single person either - and the lower level spells work identically to Pacify (provided the enemy isn't too high of a level to resist the spell). So against single opponents, assuming you backstab and kill them in one hit, then yes, if effectively means they stand there while you chop them to bits.

 

In other words, I don't want to touch those spells with a ten foot pole. If I put in the effort to dispose of the enemies, I should be the one rewarded for it. The monsters fighting amongst themselves have no right of the kill exp as it was I that caused them to attack each other.

However, it's not like Skyrim has only a finite number of bodies to turn into exp like many other RPGs. Exploiting ambushes at rest and such extras notwithstanding, of course. Nor is it entirely a bad way of getting exp for the Illusion skill itself. Finally, none of the above considerations matter once you're maxed in all of the relevant skills so it certainly has much more end-game appeal as crowd control.

Just double-checking: If I were to pacify several mobs separately or a whole group at once with the Master spell, would ALL of them turn on me or just the one I attacked? But yeah, being able to backstab someone I've enthralled into believing there's no danger around sounds reasonable enough.

 

Well, that's only the frenzy spells. If you cast calm, pacify, etc., you get the experience for the spell, and whatever means you chose to dispose of them afterwards.

Correct. If you already maxed sneak and one handed, the only thing you're getting any experience for is the illusion spell itself anyway.

Provided the others saw you, they would all go hostile, and you'd have to recast the spell. But truth be told, I don't use the area of effect spells much. They take forever to cast, they require a huge amount of magicka, and have a lower level cap of what creatures they affect, given the right perks. You do get more experience however for the master level spells if more than one creature is affected.

One of the things I really like about illusion is that you don't have to do the ritual to access master level spells before it starts working at maximum effectiveness. Adept and Expert level spells dual casted will exceed the level limit offered by the master level spells that can't be dual cast. It works in every case:

Assuming all relevant perks:

Expert spell Pacify dual cast works on creatures level 48 or less.
Master spell Harmony works on creatures level 41 or less.

Expert spell Rout dual cast works on creatures level 50 or less.
Master spell Hysteria works on creatures level 35 or less.

There is no expert level equivalent of Frenzy, but that's OK, because adept spell Frenzy dual cast works on creatures level 40 less.
Master spell Mayhem works on creatures level 35 or less.

Again that's with all the perks that increase the level limit on the spells. The only advantage offered by the master level spells is area of effect, and for the most part that is largely unnecessary, especially not in the case of Frenzy. Assuming you don't get detected, the spell only has to work on one creature.

Works very well for the Dark Brotherhood missions. Cast calm - or the like - cast bound sword - sneak behind them and backstab. Get illusion, conjuration, sneak, and one handed experience for one easy kill. (Actually, I'm not sure on the conjuration - the target may have to be hostile to award experience - otherwise you could just continually cast it to level it up.)

Favorite illusion tactic: Cast hysteria and immediately after summon a dremora lord - the comments from the room of scared people are worth having to chase down one or two of them that run out of the room.

 

The rest of the Illusion spells seem nice, just not Frenzy until I'm certain it doesn't affect my leveling spree anymore.

Alteration seems to be a bit of a chore to level since you don't get exp for casting the +armor spells unless you're in combat. However, the real bummer in the works isn't actually the game's fault but my computer's. For some unexplicable reason, it takes ages before any summons actually materialize. I cast the spell, mana gets reduced but instead of getting my meatshield, it takes several seconds before I see the conjuration flash where the summon is to appear, and much, much later does it actually just poof there out of thin air.

No wonder it was really confusing to find monsters that teleport during my last playthrough - they could literally vanish into thin air for several MINUTES before managing to materialize again so that I could hurt them.

Bugs at its best..

 

Some playtesting with Illusions: I don't yet see why you would need Pacify for much of anything, as Calm backed up by Animage/Kindred Mage (+8/+10), Hypnotic Gaze (+8) and dualcast (2.2 x effect, in Illusions case level limit, AFTER all other perks are counted for) already pacifies all animals/npcs at least up to level 55 , ie. all of them. I guess extremely tough monsters that don't qualify for either of the race-specific perks need Pacify, but that affects EVERYTHING up to at least level 61. I'm at a loss where you got those level limits you listed..?

However, dualcasting much of anything in the Illusion tree requires serious magicka investment. Just the basic Calm requires a whopping 408 base magicka to cast (thank god for Fortify Magicka potions i happened to have over after my crafting spree as the Mammoth charges in and spell fails to launch due to insufficient magicka...), and Pacify is almost double that. So I guess Pacify has much better use as a single-cast spell against everything up to and including level 28/36/38 - which still covers all but the toughest monsters out there.

---------- Added 5 hours, 52 minutes and 54 seconds later... ----------

Quick note about play tactics about leveling your skills:
Since many of the spells used during most of the character's career require that you're in combat to gain cast experience for using them, it's usually best to start combat with a single snipe from your bow, quickly switch to the buff(s) you want to use and proceed with wasting the opposition with whatever skill you like, rather than using pre-buffing.

Since this thread is about the FMT, my recommended routine is thus follows:
1) Scout the opposition and lay a dualcasted Rune of your choice (requires Quiet Casting, which you SHOULD get rather early as I found out).
2) Prebuff with a dualcast Cloak spell. Only exp gain for those is from hurting enemies so why not.
3) Snipe off the strongest adversary with your bow (if there are several).
4) Use hotkeys to quickly switch to your best +armor spell and cast it.
5) (Optional): Toss a summon in front and to the side of you, magicka permitting.
6) Switch to a suitable damage spell and let loose.

Finally, since Destruction is so underwhelming in terms of dps against the tougher mobs (Giants, Draugr Overlords etc.), you're well advised to carry a full -100% mana cost gear for Destruction. I did it by replacing my +archery enchant in Neck with -destruction cost, and together with the one in helm and the two in body armor I'm casting everything Destruction for free. Even at 1/4 magicka cost, dual casting Fireballs et al drains your magicka in just a couple of casts!

 

I got the levels directly from the wiki. Some things I did not know, which is why your numbers may be more accurate than mine. I was under the impression that dual casting doubled the level - although you say it's 2.2. Also, I forgot to add in the Kindred Mage bonus - I only added in the Hypnotic Gaze, Aspect of Terror or Rage perks, where applicable.

I'm stumped about what you're saying about dual casting illusion spells though. The base magic cost of Calm, according to the wiki is just 146 - and they list costs at base 15 illusion. So even if you double it for dual casting it's still under 300. I'll have to see what it is on my character when I get home tonight, but I can say with confidence that it's nowhere near 408 to dual cast, especially if you have leveled it some.

Like I said, I'm not at home, but the other casting costs seem accurate in the illusion spell list that I use the most, so I don't see why they would be off for others. For example, they list Muffle with a 144 casting cost, single cast. I have a base magicka pool of 200, and a little bit of -% illusion gear, and I can cast that with much less than half a magicka bar (no perks in illusion, Illusion skill ~90).

 

Calm costs 146 magicka at zero skill, and almost linearly down to 86 magicka at 100 skill. 100 skill = approx. -41% casting cost compared to base, around -25% at 50 skill.

Dualcasting something is done at 280% base magicka cost (compared to 200% by just casting something twice, plus 40% on the total as dualcast penalty), ie. 408 at zero down to 241 at 100 skill for Calm. Seems just about right as I needed almost my whole magicka bar (180 of my own plus 120 something from Fortify Magicka potion, about 55 in Illusion skill) to dualcast Calm to pacify the Mammoth charging at me during playtesting. After which I happily proceeded to nail it down with a sneak attack from my bow, confirming its use as at least helping tremendously with scoring sneak attacks. (Other than doing it the old-fashioned way of re-hiding successfully in between, of course.)

But it pays to note that you don't just start dualcasting much of anything unless you have the perks and/or gear to reduce the manacost into something more manageable. The 2.8 magicka cost multiplier is not to be trifled with!

This may or may not have effects in the priority of enchants for my current and future characters. I find that Illusion levels plenty fast with Muffle alone and for that specific use it's actually DETRIMENTAL to have -magicka cost gear, but if my game plan includes dualcasting much of anything, I need something to bring down the magicka cost back into the expected neighborhood of my planned magicka bar.

However, other than for Destruction which you need to cut down in magicka use anyway if you're planning on using it more than occasionally, the effect of actually dualcasting something is not quite as profound for other schools as you most often only gain extra duration for the spells. This leaves Illusion as the odd one out, especially since most of the mind-affecting spells are rather weak compared to many of the monsters you meet when single-cast and practically useless unless perked.

---------- Added 4 hours, 50 minutes and 0 seconds later... ----------

Drats! There's still a lot of stuff in this game that come bite me from the shadows.

New revelation: Smithing improvements to armor is for BODY ARMOR ONLY! The rest of the available armor pieces - Helm, Gauntlets and Boots - only get the lesser of the improvement values, the same as is used for weapon's damage. No wonder Master difficulty level suddenly felt refreshingly tough when my FMT's been truckin' along with just barely above 350 armor so far. And silly me attributed it to me not carrying a shield and thus no Blocking..

Oh well, might actually have to consider taking my own advice and switch over to Lord Stone (+100 armor + 25% MR) for general questing. That, together with Ebonyflesh from Alteration (+100 armor) is just about enough to armor cap me, until my armor skills manage to catch up a bit. Both of them are less than 40 currently. Edit: Of course, to be able to actually use Ebonyflesh, I'd need alteration magicka cost reduction gear as it's the Expert spell. Stoneflesh at +60 is available (and in use currently) since I already have/want to get the Apprentice Alteration perk to reach Magic Resistance.

Also, while we're on the subject of Smithing improvements: fully boosted (including potion), it gives a 3.33 multiplier to item's base value when improving something, and 5.33 multiplier if you also have the relevant perk. Without potion, you get nice, round x2 value without perk and x3 with it, assuming the fully maxed +116% smithing apparel. Just tested these in the actual game.