Skyrim #3, my build

In my first run I distributed my skill points in a rather diverse fashion. That usually doesn’t result in a particularly good build, although Skyrim is easy and safe enough that it’s nearly impossible to screw up completely. Gradually over the course of playing I converged toward a few chosen skills, in particular archery since that became my preferred way of fighting (ranged fighting with slow motion, I’m a sucker for that.)

This run I’m drawing upon my experience of last time, and I‘ve right from the start focused my build somewhat more. For a long while I used archery — like last time — as my main way of fighting, with light armor, restoration and a bit of conjuring as supplementary skills. However, recently I started to develop other skills as well, including destruction, now that I’ve reached the end of the archery skill tree. Seems expedient, considering that archery no longer grants experience points toward levelling the character, impeding progress.

Well, at least that’s the case until the skill is made legendary, but making it legendary also means making it crappy again, so you want to have raised the level in another battle oriented skill in preparation (as well as having made corresponding changes in attribute distribution), into which you then put those freed up skill points. Hence the time spent developing destruction and conjuration, embarking on a new mid-game path as a mage.

So I made archery legendary and put those points into destruction and elsewhere, and now during fights I alternate between destruction and archery, as well as conjure up a friendly atronach now and then. Don’t take me for a conjurer of cheap tricks though, I’ve slowly developed conjuring for a good while, and those atronaches are pretty good by now. Both destruction and archery are pretty easy to develop quickly, esp this late in the game with plenty of magicka and stamina, and plenty of health and protective gear.

I enjoy switching between the two. Early in the game it’s probably best to specialize, but mid-game and onward it’s perfectly viable to go dual. It’s still a pretty focused build, all the parts work well together, and I use them all.

I optimize primarily for enjoyment and getting an appealing playing style, not power. For example, enchantment, once you‘ve become a truly deft enchanter, could very well have the best skill tree (having two carefully chosen powerful enchantments on each item is insane), but I don’t care for that style of playing, no matter how effective. I don’t want to collect enchantments, I don’t want to collect souls, I don’t want to recharge items frequently. I don’t want to think about enchantments at all, except as a pleasant surprise when I find a good weapon or gear with a powerful enchantment to play around with for as long as the charge lasts.

As for light armor and restoration, my thinking is along these lines:

Light Armor adds some extra protection, and has a great perk which makes stamina regenerate twice as fast, which is really good when doing archery (though when I finally got that perk, archery was no longer my sole way of fighting — I do run a lot though, for which stamina is also useful). Restoration has healing, which is useful pretty much all the time, and it also has a few nice passive perks like having healing applied also to stamina, and magicka being replenished faster, and not to mention a perk that basically lets you survive a deadly attack once a day. Dying isn’t fatal for the player, or even much of a setback, but it’s annoying, and getting rid of it is an enjoyment boost. Dying just isn’t my style.

In any case, I’m nearing the end of this run (not the end of Skyrim mind you, that’s practically unattainable.) It will likely be my last. I‘m done with the main quest, done with the Dragonborn DLC, done with the civil war, done with the Magnus staff quest, just to mention a few. I consider going for the platinum and then quit, would give me a final reasonably comprehensive objective and a solid note to quit on, while not involving too much work, given how far I’ve already come.