Character build: FMT Assassin

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I knew there was something wrong with that calculation! I wasn't going to question your math, but just from personal experience in playing, it didn't seem like it was possible to do what you were doing and hit the armor cap. The first armor set I was capable of getting to the armor cap was ebony - and that was fully perked - so it seemed absurd that you could get there with light armors without the perks.

I didn't know why your calculation was wrong, but I wasn't getting anywhere near the armor rating you were predicting. I knew you were using perfect enchants, but it's not that much better. You can squeeze another 19% from your smithing gear, and a few extra percent from your potion, but it wasn't going to make up for the 200+ additional armor rating that I needed to hit the cap.

At that point, why not just go whole hog and do the alteration ritual and dragonhide? If you're already spending the perks, and already wearing the gear, just go and get the one that brings you all the way to the cap irrespective of what you're wearing. I don't use alteration cost reduction gear OR have the perks invested beyond magic resistance, but it seems like you're already doing 90% of what you need for dragonhide by going for ebonyflesh.

That would also allow you to not use the Lord Stone. I don't know about you, but I always want some type of experience bonus. Since most of my character use a diverse set of skills, on balance it pays for me to have the Lover Stone active, but I have with other characters implemented the Warrior Stone, the Thief Stone, or the Mage Stone, depending on what the situation warranted.

With my current character, the only way I'd consider giving up one of those stones is if I ended up maxing out an entire set of skills for one of the classes, and another one of the classes I wasn't anticipating advancing much further. But generally speaking, I'd much prefer to get a 15% bonus for ALL of my skills rather than 20% to one set of skills. If you were going to be really meticulous about things, it would actually make sense to switch over your stones every time you wanted to work on a crafting skill and get a resting bonus before doing it. That could up your return by at least 30%, 35% if you were married.

 

Yeah, that little miss puts a wrench into the works, to put it mildly. Not that the FMT absolutely NEEDS armor cap since she's a freakin' assassin, for crying out loud, but still. The current Elven Gilded Armor + Elven Boots together with Steel Helm + Steel gauntlets (fully smithed) gives 302 base armor, which extends all the way to 422 when both armor skills reach 100, ie. +40% armor from skill. That's still 145 points short of the goal of 567.

Good point about Dragonhide, I didn't give it a second though after I saw the "only 80%" reduction on it. Until I realized it was MAGIC that capped at 85% reduction, not physical.. However, it DOES have only half the duration of the other armor spells and isn't castable with my 180 base magicka without using at least THREE enchant slots for alteration magicka cost reduction, and all four are needed if I intend to dualcast it for extended duration, up to 99 seconds if I also pick Stability. While I *was* planning to do precisely that to be able to test Mass Paralyze, I don't want to be stuck with a short term buff just because I miscalculated something in my armor calculation if that should prove to be less than stellar in practical use. Not to mention - what's the point of having 400+ armor to begin with if your armor buff totally IGNORES what you have? Other than having something to fall back on when the buff eventually wears out and/or you forget to cast it, I guess?

There are a few ways I could go about it:
1) Put the remaining perks into Smithing so that I can craft Dragonscale and Dragonplate, as I still want a mix of those to be able to train both armor skills myself. But even if I traded everything to Dragonplate, that's only 30 more base armor (for 3 perk points no less!) than I already have, 42 after skill bonus, still leaving me 103 short. (For the record, I wanted to skip most of the Smithing perks for this very reason.)
2) Put perk point(s) into either Light or Heavy armor. Just the first one gives a bare minimum of +36 armor, assuming I put it into the type I have my body armor made of. If I switch over to having three pieces of Elven (better body armor than Steel) and just Steel Gauntlets, this could extend all the way up to +47 armor per perk point. Requires still at least three perk points, and makes having both Light AND Heavy armor rather stupid to begin with. And I still haven't actually tested whether having 1 of the one, 3 of the other type armor pieces causes the skills to level unevenly or not so I'm just keeping it on the safe side for the moment.
3) Enchant stuff with Fortify Heavy/Light Armor. The best I could get is +29 to either skill per enchant slot, which improves the armor skill bonus from 40% to.. drumroll.. 51.6%. Needless to say, that's not going to matter much, not to mention the enchants would directly compete with all the other main enchants I'd rather use AND wearing two types at once would still cut the effect further.
4) Use Fortify Light/Heavy armor potions. Not that bad to actually get some use for those, as I crafted a literal metric ton of both and am already struggling as it is to be able to sell off the potions I produce unless I use the vast majority myself. However, you only get +62 skill out of those when fully maxed, ie. at most 64.8% instead of 40% total armor skill bonus if I used both at all times whenever doing combat. While I do have the potions to last me a few day's worth of combat and can easily produce new ones, that's still only +74 armor at the end of the day.

As I see it, this pretty much locks me down into using the Lord Stone. That is, IF I find that having my physical damage reduction "only" at around 60% instead of the full 80% is a game-breaker. I seriously doubt it, as getting mobbed on as an ASSASSIN just shouldn't happen all that much or you're doing it wrong. You have Sneak, divide & conquer, diversions and all the crowd control at your fingertips from Illusion and Alteration - you shouldn't EVER be forced to fight against large crowds unless you play it lazy!

But wait a minute.. Now that I actually double-checked it, Lord Stone only gives +50 armor, not +100! I need to stop taking things granted like this, my memory's failing me worse than ever.

However, the Lord Stone still has another benefit in that it gives +25% magic resistance. That together with Agent of Mara (+15%) and Magic Resist perks (+30%) is already 70%, meaning I'd only need one (half!) enchant slot to fully max my Magic Resist. But if I lock it down as my primary choice for a Standing Stone, I could actually skip one perk in Alteration and put it in Light Armor instead, as that's what I want to be wearing in all slots once Heavy armor has piggy-bagged its way to 100 skill first. That way, all of the actually good Light Armor perks (Unhindered, Wind Walker and Deft Movement) are just one prereq away, rather than two. Even more importantly, I would no longer have to choose between Magic Resist, Fortify Destruction/Alteration/Illusion (whichever I end up using at end game) and Fortify Archery in either Neck of Finger slot, allowing for full -100% magicka cost reduction without putting a dent into either Archery or Magic Resistance boosts.

Generally, although I like fast experience gain just as much as anyone else, my considered opinion is that there's better uses for your Standing Stone slot than getting something you're going to get anyway just a wee bit faster. Switching over to Warrior/Mage/Thief stone and resting just prior to doing a major crafting spree is one thing but generally I value my life (Lord) or being able to haul back more shinies (Steed) better for actual adventuring involving combat and/or extremely long dungeons.

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Just re-read the whole thread and this is turning into a mess as I try to cater for both going adventuring straight out of the pickpocket train loop AND doing crafting straight away. I tried the early crafting, no questing route mostly for shits and giggles but is NOT something I'd recommend for anyone as you're missing other gameplay aspects (such as the whole point of having Bound Bow) if you do it that way. Also, Eagle Eye and Steady hand (Archery) failed to impress me much, along with the multitude of other minor tweaks here and there.

But no worries, I'm going to keep playtesting until I get the answers I deem necessary for an update to this guide worth its salt. Expect a lengthier, more detailed (and less buggy) guide for my second take on the "must use as many skills as possible to reach maximum level" character later on. Probably wrong to call it JUST an assassin since there's sizeable portions of such character's life that are anything but.

 

Hmmm.... I do have one further question - why is it that you are dead set on getting to the magic resistance cap, and not all that keen on hitting the physical damage cap? While I understand that some elemental damage types are the highest damage per hit in the game, there are WAY more creatures that do physical damage than elemental or magic damage. And really, with the exception of dragons the same thing applies to mages as applies to other characters - if you can't divide and conquer and sneak kill, you're doing something wrong... And dragons aren't that hard anyway.

Plus, aren't you playing a Breton, and did you factor in the free 25% magic resistance? It would seem that if you value magic resistance so highly, that it would make sense to go and play the race that gives you 25% for free. Granted, I'm playing a character that generally eschews defense in general. (This coming from someone who tanks dragons while wearing leather armor, and only has 30% magic resistance.) I make up for this by having a large health pool. I'm level 61 now, and I like the nice round numbers I have in my base attributes - 400 health, 300 stamina, 200 magicka. With 400 health and the hoped for result of not having things live all that long when they're facing me, means I can skimp a bit on defense. (Remember, while I go two handed, this is a high sneak character, who does you bows too.)

 

Magic damage also comes in 3 main flavors, and you can just use fire/lightning/cold resistance items to further mitigate incoming damage. Magic is never a problem in my games, and I tend to take a more direct route to leveling (traveling potions merchant instead of artisan). I almost always play as a Breton though.

 

Oh, don't get me wrong - I do consider hitting armor cap more important than getting to magic reduction cap. I just lived in the hope that I could get away without armor perks to reach it, saving me a whole lot of perks for, say, Illusion.

However, I did still miss why I could so easily bust the cap with my previous character, having no perks in Light armor AND skill below 30 AND no Lord Stone. Despite what the description says, the Ancient Knowledge buff you gain by completing Unfathomable Depths (starts also from Riften) gives +25% armor bonus to ALL worn armor, not just Dwarven! This ultimately puts the shoddy set I currently wear to 528 armor, without having to add a shield nor perks. All I need is the Novice Alteration spell, Oakflesh, to cap me - or use Lord stone and stop worrying it altogether.

I'm aware that Bretons give excellent racial bonus, but I'd hate to HAVE to always play a Breton. As I see it, as long as my character build includes at least one Magic Resist enchant anywhere, choosing Breton allows me to fill that with something else instead. But unless that unlocks some other enchant combinations, such as needing at least one of Finger or Neck slots for magicka cost reduction as was for the FMT, that's rather minor detail in the grand scheme of things. I'd hate to start forcing race choices down the throat of people wanting to try my guide.

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Also, it's certainly not a bad thing that I can CHOOSE to combine Lord Stone + Stoneflesh + Fortify Light/Heavy Armor potion to armor cap me a long, long time before reaching it on my own during the arguably toughest part of the game, battling the toughest dudes the game ever throws at you while still being far away from being maxed in much of anything related to actual combat. None of that requires sacrificing permanent perk points.

 

I remember this distinctly as well from previous characters. In fact, I was highly disappointed last night when I finally equipped my dragonscale set and discovered my total armor was just 408 - about 200 less that what I was expecting based on my previous character. So something was up. I went and looked up some patch notes, and it's funny you happened to mention this:

Because that was one of the changes in patch 1.4. It used to be all available armor pieces, and now it's not, which at least partially explains why I had so much higher armor values before. I'm guessing that Bethesda wasn't thrilled that people were hitting the armor cap without having to invest perks in the armor tree and took steps to counter this.

That was supposedly patched - but even so, it's still worth doing the quest because it increases your smithing ability for improvements by 15%. It used to be that you gained an extra 15% experience from smithing stuff, but it was changed to the 15% bonus to improvements (much better IMO) and supposedly it also fixed the bug where it improved all armor. That said, I haven't done that quest with this character yet, so we'll see.

 

It COULD be that my previous char still has the pre-patch version of Ancient Knowledge (save game data?), but he definitely still gets +25% armor from it, even after removing and re-equipping everything. He's sitting at exactly 550 armor with his Dragonscale set (including shield) but that's only because his Light armor skill sits at below 30. Guess I'll have to test it with my FMT, I was planning on doing that quest soonish anyway so shouldn't take that long.

However, if the armor bonus is applied Dwarven armor only, that's no big deal - being heavy armor with somewhat decent stats to begin with, it's actually slightly better what I currently have and makes it to 539 armor without shield, just 28 points below cap. Dwarven Smithing is just as easily reached in the tree as Elven is so no big game plan change there. UESPWiki still claims that it works on everything, though, and were it changed in patch 1.4, that'd certainly be noted by now.

Even in the worst case that it actually does big fat nothing to your armor directly, the +15% bonus to your Smith improvement might be a deal-breaker, especially if it's yet another +15% on top of everything else. Although increasing Smithing skill doesn't necessarily translate linearly into improvements as it's a tiered system, it could mean yet another +6/+13 base armor for every worn piece, which is quite a bit already.

More playtesting required... =)

 

Wouldn't that make it a deal-maker, not deal breaker?

 

I've only ever heard of deal-breakers but I guess you could call it a deal-maker as well.

I'm not against the idea of using perks to get to the armor cap, just that FMT benefits from the less trodden path of having both armor types simultaneously and that seriously slashes down the perks affecting only either type. I'd hate using a shield to get me to armor cap as then I would NOT be at the cap whenever I switch over to my bow or need to dualwield whatever. Although that WOULD enable me to include Block into the skills I could train myself, but I couldn't possibly put perks into it without sacrificing something else. With up to 16 skills out of 18 in use already, the perk points are extremely stretched as they are now.

Another optimization point could be that it only takes 3 magicka cost reduction enchant slots (3 x 29% = 87%) to be able to dual-cast ANY single-handed spell up to and including Paralyze with 163 base magicka without any perks, down to 96 magicka with 100 skill. Master level spells still require the fourth unless you have up to 306 base magicka for dualcast Firestorm. There are two "free" slots in Body armor and one in Helm once you account one slot for Archery, and getting three more out of the Neck/Finger slots requires sacrificing one Archery slot and all Magic Resists if you want to be dual-casting from two different schools with the same gear set. For this spesific purpose, choosing a Breton to still be able to reach Magic Resist cap without any enchants (Breton 25, Agent of Mara 15, MR perks 30 plus Lord Stone 25 = 95 so actually 10% headroom still) could be an interesting option.

 

So how has the game play of this character developed? Mine is coming along pretty much as intended. As a Barbarian Assassin, my combat game play revolved around sneak attacks (with both a bow and a dagger), and two handed melee combat, which was what I had envisioned. Sometimes, you start with a plan, but you find something more effective when you start leveling a skill you never previously invested in.

That's why I decided against quiet casting - I don't really cast many spells at all. I heal when I need it, I cast muffle regularly - but that never seems to alert enemies - and a dremora lord for the bigger fights. Bows provide all the ranged damage I need, and I'm one tough hombre in melee.

 

Oh, it's working as intended as the saying goes. Just pondering whether some choices I've made along the way really make much sense, and more importantly, whether I might have missed something I really NEED to know before I start writing a guide version 2.0 for real. I've already discovered several such flaws such as totally disregarding Illusion in favor of Alteration just because I liked the idea of Mass Paralyze, which I can't even get my hands on for a VERY long time (thank you for that revelation), calculating the projected armor values on wrong premises, missing potentially useful quest rewards just because I forgot they existed and so on. All too many potentially fatal mistakes to just iron out without a complete redesign from ground up, more or less.

I'm actually thinking of restarting this character from right after I first made it to Riverwood (I still have the save) so that I can actually TEST the parts about actually using Bound Bow, doing the trade skills in a more reasonable way, ie. improving stuff I find from dungeons, getting enchants for free as loot, adventuring on Master difficulty with far from perfect gear and all that. I kinda skipped all that when I did the crafting all at once. I'm still going to carry on with what I have now, just make a sidetrack to explore a path I didn't take earlier once I'm certain my gear has improved to the point that it's going to be smooth sailing from there on out.

There's a few other such branch points I'd like to explore, such as whether there's any point in trying to do some early Destruction training (sub-40 skill) yourself when all you can craft yourself is like -12% magicka cost per item slot or just burn through the "easy" levels with training points so that I can start from when I get Impact. Since I did the crafting first, I had to put my training points somewhere so my Destruction skill was at 60 before casting a single spell after Helgen/HSC. By then, leveling it yourself becomes VERY slow already, so might as well train it all the way through without actually ever using its spells in gameplay. What a shameful waste of a perk point that would be, if I never ever Dual casted anything Destruction although I have the perk for it...

 

Well, since I actually did a lot of the things you were planning on testing for yourself, maybe I can give an assist here:

There are a few considerations to make with this, other than wanting to quest before going straight to crafting. First of all, the bound weapons only really outshine their unbound counterparts if you pick up Mystic Binding. If you don't select Mystic Binding, then you'll soon be able to craft a better bow than the bound bow you can summon. With the perk, it's the best bow you can get your hands on until you can custom craft your own daedric bow (which is exactly what I did with my character).

Secondly, if you're already picking up Mystic Binding, you have all the prerequisites you need for Soul Stealer, allowing you to purchase bow filled and unfilled soul stones, which actually makes crafting a bit easier and considerably less costly as an filled soul gem costs about three times as much as an unfilled one. And killing things like wolves and draugr is just fine for filling up those petty and lesser soul gems, as you're not going to want to mess with anything particularly tough.

Finally, if the intent is to level conjuration on your own past about level 40, it's going to take a really long time if you only rely on bound weapons. You got to pull out the summons. And if you're doing that, and you actually want to use the summons early and often (they are invaluable when you're character is fairly weak in the early going), you're also going to have to invest in some of the lower casting cost perks. Aside from Enchanting, Conjuration is the only mage skill I sunk perks into, and I have no regrets about doing so. I used the bound bow for a really long time, and I STILL summon stuff now, so I never felt like I wasted any of those perks. I just took only those that were essential - Mystic Binding, Soul Stealer, and Novice-Expert Casting. No Summoner, no Dual Casting (you don't want a longer duration version - casting them more often increases the experience faster), no atromancy or necromancy perks.

Well, Flames is good enough for Helgen and the HSC. But since Destruction is on one of our "must train" skills, any advancement you can make on your own obviously reduces what you'll have to spend your training points on, and thus allow you to divert those training points into something else.

That's what I did. (Well actually I'm still doing it. Since I had no intention of ever using the spell in gameplay, it was a low priority training requirement.)

There's also one other thing you should consider if you start questing early, that I actually did for a while to help me out. Since I was relying very heavily on summons, and therefore I was being detected quickly anyway without the quiet casting perk, consider bringing a follower with you. Lydia was a great meat shield for me. Followers get the same bonuses as do enemies on the higher difficulties - i.e., more health, do more damage. So even though you're playing on a harder difficulty, your followers are also scaled up with that difficulty. Lydia doesn't get her ass handed to her on Master difficulty, because she's effectively a Master difficulty creature as well.

You'll level conjuration and archery extremely quickly firing away with your bow against everything when you have whatever housecarl you'd like and your best available summons between you and the baddies. One thing I liked to do (so as to still develop sneak), is tell Lydia to "wait here" while I went ahead to the next room. Snipe away, and then run back into the room with Lydia when the baddies give chase. Even though you told Lydia to "wait here", as soon as the baddies run in to attack you, she joins the fight, because she is sworn to protect her Thane (you) - you don't have to ask her to help. That along with a summons makes things a lot easier, especially when you're fighting something like a Draugr Deathlord - you need stuff to get in the way between you and him.

EDIT: One other thing, I feel the Dark Brotherhood gloves are totally superfluous. Even with low one handed skill and no gloves, I'm still one-shoting everything with assassin's blade perk.

EDIT2: Also, I would recommend doing some of the thieves guild missions from Vex and Delvin in the early going. Even though the numbers and heist jobs are the easiest and generally quite profitable, I actually recommend taking fishing jobs from Delvin, and either sweep or burglarly jobs from Vex. The reason is that this gives you a good supply of items in addition to money. People typically have more than just the item you're pickpocketing on them, and often times have some type of enchanted jewelry to boot to help with early enchanting. With the burglarly and sweep missions, you don't just steal the objects necessary to complete the quest - you clean them out of everything in the house. Take all the weapons and pickpocket the homes occupants while they sleep. Then improve and enchant all the weapons you just picked up, even if it's just iron daggers.

 

While true for the melee weapons, this definitely doesn't hold for Bound vs Mystic Bow. Both of them come equipped with 100 Bound Arrows, which are equivalent to Daedric (!) quality, 24 damage. So even if the bow DOES get an extra 6 points of base damage, from 18 to 24, the total after adding the bow and the arrows is only increased from 42 to 48. While obviously better, it's only very slightly so.

The perk-improved conjured melee weapons aren't exactly impressive either. Mystic Sword is only as good as Elven Sword improved to Superior (22 Smithing + perk so available as soon as you unlock Elven Smithing) or Flawless Iron Sword, if you want to compare to stuff you can make without Smithing perks. Likewise, Mystic Battleaxe is bested already by Exquisite Steel (40 Smithing + perk) or Superior Elven.

Still, unless you're planning on playing for extensive lengths with nothing but Bound weapons, it's three perks that will become obsolete as soon as your own crafted weapons match them.

On the positive side, being able to Soul Steal without having to try to craft the enchant into a sub-standard bow is a decent early game advantage. The melee weapons are easily matched yourself but the bow takes a while to best unless you somehow can acquire a practically limitless supply of Daedric Arrows early on. Even more so since both versions of Bound bow shoot extremely fast, being zero weight and all. So depending on how much of an archer you envision playing between being able to aqcuire the spell (and having the magicka to cast it) to being able to best it by crafting, it could be considered an early game necessity for greater good, much alike the three practically mandatory points in Pickpocket to be able to pickpocket train.

Also, since I didn't mention it yet, here it comes: My considered opinion is that the Elven (or Dwarven if you go Heavy armor side in Smithing) bow is the best available bow in the game once you fully improve it. Daedric bow obviously hits for more per hit, but its rate of fire is greatly hampered by its weight which directly translates into how long it takes to fully draw it. Hunting bow could quite possibly be the best of them all for this same reason, but it's hard to realize the potential of greater rate of fire manually and most of the time it's the first single hit from Sneak that matters the most anyway, and there the Hunter bow would obviously be at its weakest. Therefore I'd personally choose something in the middle ground, and it's precisely decisions like this one I really need to explain down to detail to avoid a gazillion of questions "but Daedric is better, ftw??".

While probably true, and certainly something worth mentioning in the guide, I can't really get an opinion how it plays out since my computer has issues with the summons in Skyrim. They just fail to materialize at all or do it with such extreme delay that anything <summon> in the name is practically useless for me. So I'm also effectively locked in putting Conjuration into the "should train" bin, and not only until I am able to get Bound Bow.

Obviously, but the point I'm intrested in is that whether actually trying to train it yourself is just needlessly subjecting oneself to torture compared to it taking considerably longer to get the same amount of level-ups once you're past the Impact hump. Opportunity cost and all that jazz.

See above. Plus, since the FMT goes primarily Destruction first - not because it's the best but because it's NOT something you necessarily want to be using against Giants and Overlords so better to get it off the way ASAP - I specifically do NOT want to have anyone that could potentially turn on me from excessive collateral damage tagging along. And collateral damage is what Destruction is all about once you start tossing Runes, Cloaks and Fireballs around.

True, and even if there were monsters that would actually require the gloves to be able to one-shot them, you forfeit other potentially much more useful enchants, such as improved Sneak that COULD be the thing that enables you to actually perform the backstab to begin with.

Totally agree here. It seems like many of the Thieves Guild quests are exactly tailor-made for someone that is still severely plagued by sub-standard gear, you need to make a LOT of these radiant quests before you start seeing some of the special ops anyway AND they give you a good reason for visiting a variety of cities so that you don't JUST travel so that you can refresh the inventory of the merchants available, like I did..

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Quick note. I'm doing the "restart from Riverwood just to check" routine now. Halted Stream Camp at level 8, Master difficulty, with nothing but Flames, Hunting Bow and Faendal as dps was a rather painful experience. I did collect the bounty quest there so that I also had the Bandit Chief to tackle at the same time.

It's still doable, but I was pretty much toast unless I started the fight with a Sneak attack with my bow on the Chief and utilized Faendal as "tank" until he kneeled down to catch a breath. After that it was backpedaling time for the exit, hoping to kill the Chief on my way out. Otherwise he'd pretty much just one-shot me as I re-entered the mine after healing to full and recovering a full magicka bar. I don't know how exactly but Faendal actually survived the ordeal, although I had no use of him past this point so I wouldn't consider sacrificing him just to get through this place a major loss anyway.

The experience gained during HSC put me dangerously close to over-leveling at a few places around level 9-14 range when I carried on with the pickpocket training so it pays to note that you do NOT want to do any crafting, transmuting or anything else that could incur a skill increase before you get some more breathing room past level 17 or so. In the case of FMT, it also helps that there's at least three skills you WANT to train early on, Speech, Destruction (to 40) and Conjuration (also to 40) so you can split the training so that you always train relatively low skills during this period.

Next stop: Finish my pickpocket training, get Merchant and start off with the cash flow by breaking into Alchemy. Been mostly just buying ingredients so far..

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Alternate path completed, and confirmed doable (although with a few tricky spots) even at Master difficulty level.

Destruction proved rather hard to use for early leveling, since Flames (or any other Novice spell for that matter) doesn't stagger with Impact, so you need at least Firebolt to stagger anything. However, since that puppy costs 41 base magicka to cast already and you need to dualcast it to stagger, we're at 114 magicka a pop, or around 100 with the appropriate skill levels. That just isn't sustainable for any prolonged combat situation without some serious magicka cost reduction gear. To make matters worse, the best you can create yourself at 60 Enchanting skill (even THAT takes a while) is around -19% cost, so the best you can get for quite a while (until 5/5 Enchanter at 80 skill, more or less) is about quarter cost with all four enchants. That's about 6 to 8 castings with a full magicka bar for the FMT, just about enough to kill one tougher baddie but you're in trouble if you need to drop two. And if you want to do it with Fireball AoE style, you're dry after just 2 or 3 casts.

In other words, you're better off by going Conjuration heavy - not necessarily perked, just in skill usage - in the very early game. I endured the buggy nature of summons just to test it, and once I finally managed to successfully summon the Frost Atronach out of the hearing range of a mob ahead, all I really needed was to cast Bound Bow to bring the opposition down, much better than anything I could get out of Destruction. For single targets and/or lesser enemies, Bound Bow alone proved to be quite adequate means of mob disposal. It really lives to its fame as an excellent weapon for quite a while. With just a couple of conjuration cost reduction enchants, doing the summon and getting your bow into action should be doable with just one full magicka bar, removing the agonizing magicka recovery wait in between and allowing it to be used in much closer quarters.

In terms of training, the path is thus clear: Once you're done with the absolute prerequisites (Speech 50, Destruction & Conjuration 40), you should concentrate training points on your other skills until you can craft the gear to support going Destruction-heavy, i.e. at least ~22 to 25 percent cost reduction per piece. Should be doable at 70ish Enchanting together with a Fortify Enchant potion from Alchemy if you don't want to wait all the way to 80 Enchanting.

Two of the absolute biggest obstacles on the way of the FMT are getting the Transmute book from HSC, and surprisinly enough, getting through the Ratway so that you can start the Thief Guild quests in earnest. The first two named thugs right at the entrance are no pushovers for an archer/mage with poor items unless you manage to fire off a summon so that they target it first instead of you. Took me half a dozen retries to even survive the fight, and redid it another half a dozen times to get some much needed training in how the tactic should be pulled off in practice.

However, both can be put off a while if you're willing to do Bleak Falls Barrow first to get a home to store your stuff in the meanwhile. Do NOT carry through with the follow-up quest, though, unless you want to do battle with dragons every now and then. You don't necessarily need to start transmuting the Iron Ores at once, just pile them up at your home until you actually can fetch the book - there's no immediate rush for it since you're limited by the amount of Iron Ore you can find rather than being able to transmute it all in due time. You'll be mostly crafting Iron Daggers from the much more numerous ingots anyway so that you have weapons to enchant with those lesser/petty stones, with the occasional improving of the various high value items you happen to acquire during your journeys.

Edit: I did all of the above (except for HSC) solo mostly to see if it can be done. Any reasonable player should bring a follower with them for a much more permanent solution as to who is going to do the tanking for you. But it's not really necessary in the strict sense of the word.

 

Hmm.. apparently the "best" way of doing things early on has very little to do with being an Assassin, with the summons, conjured bows, fireballs and all. That's more like a mage to me, to be honest. Besides, with such a broad spectrum of skills in use, the Assassin label seems rather misplaced.

I guess I'm better of staying off labels such as that and just call the build for what it is: A jack of all trades, master of all? The generalist? The versatile MTF (Mage-Thief-Fighter, considering the build order)? All-around answer to everything Skyrim? Grandmaster of flexibility? Now that I KNOW for certain such a build is not only possible, but potentially desirable for broader audiences as well. I just don't have a faintest idea what to call it without excluding potential readers due to a too narrow label I happened to select.

 

Ummm... perhaps a bit obvious, but how about simply, "The Bard"?

 

Considering the bad rap Bards have in a variety of games, Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale 2 included, that's not exactly what I'm after, although it DOES fit the description. Also, Bards in Skyrim are nothing of the like, being poets and singers foremost in-game.

Oh well.. Guess I'll come up with something. I kinda like the FMT, although the "Assassin" part needs to go.

 

Assassin doesn't work because the only assassin type thing you do is sniping for a large part of the character's career.

I guess what I need is a better description of what you see as the end game play style, as it's obviously changed significantly from the opening post. What are your new projected perk investments (aside from the obvious crafting ones)? Envision, for a moment, that you are level 81, and are about to enter Super Daunting Dungeon Whatever, With Mr. Badass Boss waiting for you at the end. How are you going through it? And how does that play style differ in any significant way from what you did in attaining level 81 to begin with?

All it takes is a little self-reflection and introspection on the part of the character you're role-playing. If someone asked him (or I guess her), "What do you do?" (s)he wouldn't say "A master craftsman". I think it can most easily be envisioned by asking 1) Where are the major perk investments beyond the crafting skills? and 2) What skills do you rely on regularly even if there isn't a heavy perk investment?

Let's take my character as an example, as this version is NOT a barbarian assassin by any stretch of the imagination. Let's see...

He dual wields and invested heavily in one handed.
He wears light armor and invested heavily in that.
He also uses a bow, and spent perks in archery.
He uses stealth a lot and invested a few points in it.

Hmmm... What do you call a character who wears light armor, dual wields, is proficient with a bow, and utilizes stealth....

That sounds a hell of a lot like a ranger, doesn't it?

It's hard to get more specific than that, as this particular flavor of ranger utilizes all parts of all the various kits. He's part archer, part stalker, and even a little beast master when you consider his heavy focus on summoning.

At it's heart the build is a ranger. Or perhaps a Ranger Summoner. Or perhaps, more appropriately because he also uses bound weapons for a long time, a Ranger Conjuror.

If you want a name, you need to be able to articulate what this character does beyond "a bit of everything".

 

The plan has only considerably changed at the beginning part. Where Destruction should have been is now instead archer/conjurer combo for as long as it takes to get that Destruction set online. The "problem" is that only Archery remains in active use at the endgame, whereas both Destruction and Conjuration stand back a bit to let dual-wielding own the stage, backed up by either Alteration, Illusion or maybe even both. The playstyle isn't even consistent through the character's career, and thus defies most attempts to label it as a whole. Beastmaster/Mage/Assassin for the luls? Those three phases have rather little to do with each others in terms of playstyle, but they also overlap each other to some extent.

For example, as I just did the Thief Guild quest where you chase Mercer through that HUGE Dwarven ruin, having not one but two (!) followers aiding me. That's just not compatible with throwing Fireballs and Runes around no matter how you slice it, so I went with my bow through the whole thing, one-shotting most everything with Sneak attacks. Kinda makes the experiment with Destruction rather futile to begin with..

Although I'd really like to include Destruction into my plan, the window where it's actually useful just keeps on narrowing on me. You can't really use it as your main dps without serious magicka cost reduction gear (apart from the occasional relatively weak monster), it can be really dangerous to your health unless you have Impact, it's rather incompatible with having any sort of a follower due to the large amounts of collateral damage and both melee AND Archery are just plain better dps pretty soon afterwards. Not to mention it takes literally ages to level so you'll itch to train it anyway in the end, forfeiting a sizeable amount of perks used to boost it from total hopelessness into at least somewhat serviceable status..

So, other than me really liking the idea of blowing stuff up with Fireballs, FMT v2.0 sounds more and more like it's going to do away with Destruction for good..

 

[RANT]
From the videos I have seen, it seems like the only destruction spells that really shine in terms of dps are the master level ones. I've seen videos of people playing on master difficulty taking out mobs with Firestorm, or taking out dragons with Lightning Storm in a matter of seconds. But they're master level spells. Most of the other schools of magic allow you to complete the proper ritual once you hit level 90, but destruction requires level 100. So you have to max out a slow-leveling school with sub-standard abilities before you're even allowed to take those spells.

And it's not cheap with perks either. Even if you wanted to specialize in just one element, you will need to invest in at least 10 of the 17 perks, and add two more for each additional element, and that's at a minimum. You could spend fewer perks in one handed, two handed or archery, and have it be far more effective long before it reaches level 100. (In fact, all three of those skills are pretty much "done" at level 80.)

I think the impact perk destroyed the entire tree. You cannot have - simultaneously - a skill that is high dps AND stuns the enemy. Especially not one that is available at skill level 40. And to me, that's the ONLY way that destruction is viable - dual cast everything, gear to completely negate magicka costs, and stun-lock everything to death.

And that makes it all or nothing. All master spells require you to equip them in BOTH hands, and everything not a master level spell has to be dual cast to have any effectiveness. You effectively have only one hand. The destruction school should have been set up to replace either melee or archery skills, but it fails on both counts. Add in that it doesn't really combine well with any other play style, and you're left scratching your head. Melee builds can utilize conjuration to great effect, since they're in the heat of battle anyway. Sneak utilizing characters can integrate illusion into their builds. Alteration and Restoration are more general purpose schools that don't necessarily need to be combined with anything as such to be incorporated into a build.
[/END RANT]

[RANT 2]The more I think about it, I don't think the concept of "thief" exists to any real extent in this game. Unlike warrior and mage, you can't really play as a thief in any meaningful way, because the thief path consists entirely of utility skills. Let's take the three crafting skills out of the mix for a moment as all characters can and should develop all of them, and look at the other five in each class.

You could sink all your perks into warrior skills, and have a very effective character. You have three offensive skills - one handed, two handed, and archery; one defensive skill - heavy armor; and one combination offensive and defensive skill - block. Similarly, the mage has three offensive schools - conjuration, destruction, and illusion; one defensive school - restoration; and one general purpose school that offers utility with some offensive (paralyze) and defensive (flesh spells) abilities - alteration. So you could sink all your perks into the mage skills and also have a very effective character.

You can't do that with the thief. Looking at their five, they have two that you're going to level whether you intend to or not - lock picking and speech; one that is entirely optional - pickpocket; one defensive skill - light armor; and one that only has indirect offensive ability when used in conjunction with one of the warrior skills - sneak.

In most RPGs thieves are utility characters, but their abilities are restricted to them alone - usually abilities to use equipment that are normally restricted to either mages or warriors, being able to hide, finding and removing traps, and picking locks and pockets. They represent a viable option by presenting a skill set to a player that will be difficult or impossible to obtain with other classes.

But because Skyrim incorporates an open character design, where any character can utilize any skill, combined with the lack of any direct offensive abilities among the thief skills, means there's really no such thing as a thief - you don't have to "give up" anything to obtain the thief skills, and you don't have to invest heavily in perks to make use of these skills. With sneak as the only indirect offensive skill, an assassin (or sniper in the case of bows) is the only thief-like variant available, specializing in one-shot skills, with the option of incorporating poisons into their play style.

So for the typical player, all characters will utilize some thief skills, but no character will specialize in any of them. All characters are part thief, but no character is all thief.
[END RANT 2]

But back to your character. We may be able to safely remove the "T" in naming your character. Just because you threw a few points each into sneak, pickpocket, and speech, that alone doesn't make you a thief.

So looking at your character, at the very least she's an archer, if she's using a bow of some type from the very beginning of the game all the way to the end game.

Given your description of your character, I'm a little confused that you do NOT plan on utilizing either conjuration or destruction much in the end game, but along the way you're spending considerable perks in those skills? Just counting the perks here:

You're spending six perks in conjuration to use bound weapons and conjure dremora lords, but you won't do that at high levels?

Assuming you want rune master, impact, and at least one augmented elemental perk, that's seven perks in destruction with no use at end game?

But you're also planning on using alteration, and even if you cast them for free, you're probably going to want 3/3 magic resistance and stability (to maximize the effectiveness of paralyze), so that's another 7 perks at a minimum.

I know you've committed at least 4 perks in illusion to get Quiet Casting, but if you're hoping to utilize illusion end game, you're going to need more than that. If you want those calm spells, I'd seriously consider a total of 9 perks (total - not in addition to the 4 you spent for Quiet Casting) to maximize the utility of the calm spells.

Add in 17 perks spent on crafting skills, 4 for pick pocket, 3 for speech, 4 for sneak, I'm up to 57 - and I haven't counted a single perk yet for any of the warrior skills. There's more than plenty to fully develop archery along the way, but your other main attack skill - dual wielding - isn't going to really come into it's own until you're about level 70, after you've developed everything else?

Hmmm... I guess it should work. It's definitely a very novel and unorthodox way to design a character - and yet potentially very effective. I totally misinterpreted your character - I thought of him more as an archer-mage character, and I see now that isn't the case at all. I've never even considered such a character design. At level 20, my character primarily relied upon conjuration, archery, one handed and light armor - and he'll STILL be doing that when he's level 81, assuming I get there. Every other perk I'm taking either augments those skills or brings quality of life improvements. And yet... I'm definitely starting to see the potential of this build you're working on.

You definitely need to re-write the guide. I mean, we've been talking about it for the past few weeks, and I'm only now starting to see how the plan has worked out. As a minor suggestion, you might actually want to propose the design in 3 ways. The first two ways would be for people who don't have the devotion that you or I do in getting a character up to level 70+. In one of them, you'd cut out the one-handed skills and make more of an archer-mage. In the second, you could eliminate the destruction skill, keep conjuration, and pick either illusion or alteration to go along with it. The third way is what you're doing - the "do everything" concept for those devoted enough to maintain a character for that length of time.

 

Thanks for the lengthy input.

This pretty much sums it up for Destruction, yes. It can be a fun way of obliterating things, and I LIKE using it just because it lets me blow up stuff. But other than style points, there's just too many issues to use it as a primary means of dps. In other words, I pretty much need to make two variants of FMT v2.0 both with and without it in active use, one going for style points and the original motto of "as many skills in active use as possible", the other going for more pure power and skipping the entirety of Destruction with training points alone.

The early leveling of Destruction doesn't necessarily hang on having Impact, as you could just stagger your enemies with a shield and roast them with Flames, switching over to an one-hander once you're out of magicka. I've seen this strategy used successfully in a few Let's Plays on Youtube, and got a bit of a /facepalm moment when I remembered it AFTER I had finally made it through HSC. But given how slow Destruction levels, this is more of a means to an end get some early points in Block and One-handed, rather than Destruction. But it's a worthy addition to the tips and tricks section nevertheless, especially to get through HSC early on.

Exactly. Also, since you can only really combine two different things to boost with your major enchant slots simultaneously, dropping Destruction sounds even more lucrative. For the FMT v2.0, I could see combining Archery with either Illusion, Alteration or maybe even Conjuration during her career. Especially Illusion and Alteration are pretty much mutually exclusive choices, all depending on wheter I end up liking Calm/Frenzy or (Mass) Paralyze more as they're both just different form of crowd control and I shouldn't ever need both simultaneously.

Enchant choices are also dependant on whether you expect to go melee or not. Having a weapon enchanted with Paralyze removes a big part of the incentive of having Alteration enchants. Having Paralyze on my bow is a bit redundant as I'm mostly expecting to one-shot stuff with Sneak attacks with it. As noted before, Conjuration is fine with just the perks and there's a double advantage of actually picking them early as you can get Bound Bow and Frost Atronach online without sacrificing slots for Conjuration magicka cost reduction.

If you only talk about the skills that actually fall under the Thief heading, you're right. Considering that daggers are exempt from Fortify One-handed enchants and the Sneak multiplier for just them is as extremely high as it is, one could argue that Dagger is the missing "seventh" thief skill. Just that there's no point in splitting One-handed and Dagger skills into separate skills, from game design perspective.

Which was and still is a patently stupid way of making a character class viable. Compare to Impact and what it did to Destruction?

Further anecdotal evidence from the industry giant called Blizzard itself. They too did consider Paladins and Shaman in World of Warcraft balanced since you couldn't originally bring both into a raid group, Paladin being Alliance-exclusive and Shaman only for the Horde. Both of them had extremely strong buffs, to the point of a raid group being better off bringing a couple of either for their buffs alone, sitting AFK rest of the time. This in turn was used as an excuse to keep both of them weak in other gameplay aspects, such as Paladins having just plain worthless dps. I should know, I've played both a Paladin and a Rogue, one of the top contenders for top melee dps spot extensively.

After several years' worth of convincing, Blizzard finally realized that it's better to spread the buffs and abilities around a bit, so that you can pick from at least two or three different classes and still get a certain bonus, greatly adding to the flexibility of how you could go about building a raid group.

I don't agree here. There's plenty of thief stuff available, you just need to let go of the notion that it must sit under Thief heading to count as a thief ability.

Let's see, we have the following classical thief abilities covered:
- Backstab. Check.
- Ranged sneak attack for snipers. Check.
- Poisons. Check, with great variety.
- Stealth. Covered by Sneak and/or Invisibility (Illusion/Alchemy). Check.
- Move Silently. Covered by your armor choice, Muffle (Illusion/Enchanting) and the perks in Sneak tree. Check.
- Set trap. Pray tell me, what OTHER uses is there for a Destruction Rune? You just need to back it up with Quiet Casting (Illusion) if you want to set traps near enemies. Check, although multi-trapping is out.
- Use any item. Everyone has this, regardless of class, so Check/Not applicable.
- Detect Illusions. Not needed, as enemies do not use illusions.
- Lore. Not needed, as there's no identifying stuff in Skyrim.

Also, the AI in Skyrim allows the use of actual thief tactics such as diversions to great effect. The proper usage of cover, lightning and existing structures such as pre-existing traps can, in some cases, separate the skilled thief from a dead one. Being a thief in Skyrim is just as much of a playstyle choice as it is a way to construct a character build.

See above. If anything, most of the perk choices is what ENABLES the FMT to ultimately become a successfull assassin. Just that there's sizeable portions in the character's career that plays as anything but, especially if Destruction is still in the picture.

Now that you pointed it out, that's actually the ONLY thing that has a strong representation in what skills are actually used a lot all through the character's career. Destruction may or may not have a window of actual viability AND desireability during the mid-game, but Melee is developed late, not because it's not good, but because it's TOO good. You definitely do not want to switch over from using Melee to Destruction, pretty much ever. Hence, you go Destruction first, or not at all. And while Archery is used all through the career, there's no point in using it EXCLUSIVELY either to bring down the opposition, if you want to train other skills.

Thanks for the question. I just realized that it's not readily apparent from my descriptions that there are several factors playing into why I choose the skills I use at certain points.

In no specific order, these include:
- What is STRONGEST for the situation. This is what I use if I have to get through a tight spot. Often times, this is NOT the stuff I'd rather want to be using.
- What can be ADDED just because you want to train certain skills. Pre-casting Runes and Cloak spells is obviously more about putting Destruction into use, rather than a major dps/survivability increase. Casting Waterbreath just because it looks like it COULD be needed and Muffle just because you're in potentially hostile territory (ie. any dungeon) are covered here as well.
- Cast order considerations. Why waste a Sneak attack opportunity AND cast exp by placing a summon from Sneak, when you could start with a sneak attack, THEN cast the summon? Also, +armor spells are neither needed nor very useful casts outside combat mode.
- Putting all of your skills and stats into use. Although I could get through an easy fight undamaged by, say, letting my summon tie it up while I shoot it full of arrows, I would miss an opportunity to get some easy training for my armor and/or Restoration skills by letting it hit me. And while I'm at it, why not let my inner sadist loose and roast it with Flames?
- What gets the job done with least amount of hassle. No summons unless I need a tank, no Bound bow just to drop the last sliver of health from a mob that barely managed to kill my summon, no Pacifying a mob I can one-shot with any non-sneak attack and so forth.

The last point is the catch-all phrase. Hence, there's no need for either Dremora Lords nor Fire Storms if I can take down the opposition without them left-handed and blindfolded, AND both relevant skills are already maxed so that I don't even need the cast exp. They're simply relegated from the position of go-to alternative for enemy disposal into an extra ace up the sleeve I can pick up whenever needed.

I was only planning to take Novice-Expert Conjuration, since I don't see two extra perks really worth it to get a slight boost to Bound Bow that will get superceded eventually. Finding enough filled Soul Gems has never been a limiting factor to my crafting, as anything Greater or smaller turns into a profit as soon as I can get Banish even if I just buy the stones. Especially since I'm most often running out of places to sell off my potions and I'll have Merchant early to be able to trade the excess for Soul Stones.

Dremora Lords ARE the long term reason why I pick those points, so that I can count off Conjuration from my enchanting needs. Getting good use out of Adept Conjuration along the way is just an extremely handy bonus. Still, I'm not planning to sic a Dremora against every single monster I meet, especially as long as I could use the damage he does as training for my own Archery/One-handed/Destruction skills instead.

Rune Master is useless as I can just Sneak to where I want a Rune placed. Augmented Fire AND Augmented Frost aren't there mainly for the Destruction spells themselves, although they obviously help greatly if I actually do some training on it myself, but to boost my favourite weapon enchants, Frost + Fire damage. They not only multiply the effects, but each others as well if I put both of them in a weapon. You get 25+25 added damage without relevant perks, 31+31 with the perks in the Enchanting tree, 46+31 with just either one of Augmented <Element> but a whopping 81+81 if you have both plus a maxed +enchanting potion. That's like adding a cast of Icy Spike AND Incinerate on EVERY hit with such a weapon, without the hassle of actually using Destruction skills or the related magicka cost.

The only perk points hanging loose here are Destruction Dual casting and Impact, depending on whether the character plans to use the actual Destruction spells or not during training.

Alteration is the tree that I adjust the most based on my needs elsewhere. Every additional point besides the five needed for 3/3 Magic Resist gives additional benefits, especially if picked rather early. Adept Alteration affects all the major utility spells - Transmute and Waterbreathing being the big ones but Detect Life and Telekinesis benefit as well - AND gives an additional +20 from my armor buff since I can upgrade to Ironflesh. Stability is kinda OK even if it only affects the armor spells, but paired with Expert Alteration, it allows the use of single target Paralyze with the FMT's base magicka bar without any cost reduction items but with much greater duration. Master Alteration is enough to drop the enchants requirement from three to two slots to cast Mass Paralyze, and finally, Atronach keeps Lightning-using enemies from draining your magicka bar indefinitely.

So anywhere between five to ten points here, depending on how my needs elsewhere pan out.

True. Illusion is a bit strange in that the points past the four needed for Quiet Casting are an either/or decision. Either you take all five of them to be able to Frenzy everything, or just abstain from using the mind affecting spells to any reasonable degree. The magicka cost perks aren't going to enable anyone dual-cast much of anything, and going all the way to Expert just for Invisibility doesn't sound like good idea given how many points that requires. This also means that unless you have the enchant slots to burn to bring down the magicka costs, Illusion isn't probably something you want to deal with.

The FMT v2.0 is clearly going to be a 70+ point build, all the way up to 81 with all the options, although I'll make sure to point out that only about 60 of those are required for almost full end game effectiveness. For example, when you already can summon Dremora, have maxed armor and fully developed Archery, it's not like you'll NEED Illusion or even One-handed nearly as much. They're just additional tools available later on.

Exactly, that's the beauty of it all. By being selective in what perks to take and when, it's completely okay to burn a few just to boost a few key skills along the way that will later fall into (relative) disuse. Trying to put a label on a character that effectively goes through three very distinct phases of development, with a complete reworking of everything down to play style and enchants at each transformation is not only tough, it's counterproductive.

Of course it's possible to stay at any stage, max the relevant skills and complete the game without advancing to the next phase. That's totally fine, but that kinda misses the point of the build and is quite probably easier done without all the preparations needed for a true three-phase development.

I'm not sure what the build without One-handed brings to the table that hasn't already been tried? Archer-Mage is a tried and true concept, but as I see it, you're only halfway "there" if you choose to ignore One-handed to round off the build. Rather, there are excellent powergame reasons to skip the entire phase where Destruction is heavily used as it just doesn't compare favourably to either Archery or One-handed due to its nature.

However, there's no actual need to delay improving one's One-handed skill, other than me considering it's a bit TOO effective for its own good. So I guess the alternate path goes directly from being an Archer-Mage into the more assassin-like stuff with Daggers to keep the development time and maximal attainable level down a notch. This probably also means that there's very little need to go heavily into, say, Illusion, as once you get Melee going, that pretty much becomes your go-to solution to everything.