Hello there,

After about 350 hurs of Skyrim, I got bored of the classes I've chosen so far.
So I was thinking about a fun build, that has a bit of everything in it. Magic, melee, marksmanship and stealth.

I came up with the Idea for a stealthy conjuration archer. Summoning atronachs for tanking, then stealthy-snipe the hell out of foes, exclusively using a bound bow. Also, for melee combat, I plan on using nothing but a bound sword. Here's the level 81 build I came up with so far:
skyrimcalculator . com/#89306

Any advices to max this out? I felt bad because of the 1/3 bladesman, but it seemed to be the least useful perk to me. Silent casting felt pretty important for me build, though pretty expensive, because of the perk waste. I won't change anything on the crafting skills though, because I want to max out my armor.

Also, I have no clue how to disperse the magicka/health/stamina. I could enchant the armor so conjuration wouldn't cost anything, which would make to many points in magicka redundant. What do you think?

And last but not least: Any race suggestions?

Let me hear your opinions!

PS: Why the hell can't I post links? o.O

Remember that maxing out is not that important it is single player FUN is important.

You will need the perks that allow you to spawn summons further away from you so that you can use them as decoys while you pump things full of arrows.
Before you have access to really powerful summons the damage output will be the Bow and the summon will be a decoy. So early bow perks are a must. When you get your dremora lord or two you won’t need to do any damage to defeat any enemy.

Archers get difficult starts, an arrow or two doesn’t do much damage and then the enemy is close to you. Early summons are also notoriously bad at getting attention of enemies and leave you exposed. My way of fixing this was to use poisons. They increase the DPS enough to not worry as much about a Bandit Chief that saw you sneaking and chose to avoid your summon.

Buy arrows, get marksman skill high. Cast bound bow... own.

If you plan on enchanting armor for 0 cost conjuration spells. I would say dump everything in health. You won't need magic and you will only need stamina for running, which wearing light armor you will be able to run for awhile anyways.

I would not put perks into smithing for one. You can get smithing to 100, make armor than enchants smithing and make legendary gear with 0 perks in smithing. Sure you have to buy/find armor instead of making it, but for an archer you will probably have light armor instead of heavy anyways. Glass is not hard to come by.

Well if it were me, I would pull a few perks out of Agile Defender/Matched Set (don't need them with your Smithing, Alchemy and Enchanting perked, you should be able to hit the armor cap easily enough) and pick up Hypnotic Gaze, Aspect of Terror and Rage (and maybe even master of the mind) in the Illusion tree. Or, keep the perks in light armor and take them out of smithing. Either way, Illusion spells are fun and useful for a sneaky archer type. Plus, it would make those "wasted" perks you spent to get silent casting less wasted.

As far as race, I'd go with Dunmer because they make cool nightblades. I have a similar build right now with a Dunmer who only uses bound sword and bow for weapons.

You can train up Archery by shooting your own summons... cheezy meter on high.

Thanks for the tip, Dudeski. Noted: Use poison on weapons. As often as possible. I thought about the conjuration range myself, so both ranks of the Summoner perk are in for triple atronach range. Oyeah.

Noxious: Thanks! I'll focus on health then. I'll need a bit of stamina for the Eagle Eye perk, though. Also I HATE to quickly run out of stamina while sprinting. xD
And the smithing part: I don't like the looks of elven/glass armor. I'd use the dark brotherhood armor if I could. Only problem is that stock enchantments are damn weak when playing on master. So I might use dragon armor as soon as i'm lvl 60 or higher, it's powerful, can be enchanted and looks good (enough).

@Turiya: There is an armor cap? Could you tell me how high it is?
And stupid me was wondering why I don't really see the difference between 1200 and 3000 armor rating. This saved me a few perk points, FAT THANKS!

EDIT: I figured out, seems to occur at 567. Damn, this can save me up to 5 perk points. Awesome.

lol, you don't need anywhere near 1200. The cap is 567.

EDIT: Depending on what kind of armor you are going to wear and how much you want to exploit alchemy/enchanting, you could probably save about 10 perks because you can pull perks out of smithing and light armor and still hit the cap by boosting smithing with alchemy and enchant.

Yeah, I feel kind of stupid now. But setting Agile Defender on 1/5 would make me reeeally squishy at the beginning, wouldn't it? Or would sneaky behavior compensate that well enough?

I use this temp as well, its damn fun! the bow one hit kills most. throw some atronachs out, if the rooms full. and always hide in the shadows, my friend....

Sure will, thanks!

i don't think it's pratical to sneak shot once you started a fight especially with summoning.

if you wanna play along as summoner, sneak is not practical.

I'll see how it works out, thanks.

the bound weapons are super op at low levels because of the perk mystic binding which turns the bound weapons from steel quality to daedric... and you can get it at level 25 conjuration

Well, you will get a little more challenge early on, but the benefit will be more perks later on. Your call, but yes it can be done. As another poster mentioned, with Mystic binding, a bound bow is an extremely powerful weapon at low levels, equal to exquisite daedric. Bound sword is pretty good too, something like unsmithed daedric. Plus, you will have your summons to keep hostiles off your back, so you should not be getting hit too much.



Depends on how you do it. You could sneak in with bound bow, take a few shots and summon when discovered to cover your tracks while you get hidden again. Bound sword works better for this playstyle than bound bow because you can cast spells with your other hand. Bound bow is two handed, so you loose it if you want to cast another spell, and then to recast your bound bow takes a lot of magicka. Also. bound sword is much more magicka efficient than bound bow.

Illusion, however, may make more sense with a sneaky build. Sneak in, if you encounter a single hostile, take it out with a sneak attack. If there are multiple hostiles, hit them with frenzy and clean up what is left after they are done fighting each other, either with your summon or your bound weapons.

I hear that rangers are awsome to play as when you get to a higher level cause you can 1 hit lots of things if ya sneak attack them.

Don't bother with Bladesman; the critical damage is calculated only on the weapon's base damage. Bound Sword has a base damage of 9, which means you'll be doing a whopping 3 extra damage with the first level of this perk.

And sneak, Destruction and 1/2 hand weapons

Thanks a lot for all the replies!


Ah, okay. Thanks to the armor cap I saved 5 perk points, two of them were invested in bladesman 3/3. Thanks anyways!


I guess I'll just try myself and figure out what works best for me. My "plan" was to summon one or two atronachs, then crouch down so foes loose track because of the Shadow Warrior perk. It should just work fine to snipe one after another then. I could be mistaken, of course... If that's the case, tell me, please.

Okay, with all these tips from you guys, I tweaked the build quite a bit. Special thanks to Turija, you really helped me out a lot.
skyrimcalculator . com/#90041
I guess I'll wear Worn Shrouded Armor, and enchant it so illusion and conjuration don't cost mana. Saves me a lot of perk points for illusion, and just looks way better. That way I have one perk point left, and no clue where to put it. Maybe I should put it into Steel Smithing, then deselect Illusion Dual Casting and invest it into Arcane Blacksmith, just in case? Any final recommendations for the Health/Stamina balance?

Another few questions apart from perks and the build itself:
1. Despite their elemental types, is there any difference between the atronachs according to melee damage/armor? If so, which one would be best for tanking physical attacks?
2. With sneaking on 100 and Muffled Movement + Silence perked, do I still get any benefits from the Muffle and Fortify Sneak enchantments?
3. Is it possible to improve Worn Shrouded Armor set?
4. Can I disenchant the Shrouded Gloves?

You are very welcome. Happy to help. One thing I should point out on the Illusion dual casting perk, unlike other schools where dual casting just increases the duration of the spell, the Illusion dual cast perk doubles the maximum level of any level-based spell and it stacks with Animage, Kindred Mage, Hypnotic Gaze, Aspect of Terror and Rage. So if you want to be able to affect high level NPCs with your Illusion spells you need dual casting.

I honestly don't know.


The muffle perk gives you .5 Muffle, and the maximum you can get is 1.0 (no additional benefit beyond that). So a muffle enchantment will give additional benefit to the perk. I think you can enchant stuff with 1.0 muffle, which would make the perk superfluous. The spell also gives you 1.0, while it is in effect. The Fortify sneak bug was fixed with patch 1.3, so that should give you additional benefits, since it affects your ability to remain undetected, while muffle just makes you quieter. I don't know all the behind the scenes math on how those work together but it would make sense that muffle and sneak fortifications would stack.


According to the UESP, the Worn Shrouded Armor cannot be improved and the shrouded gloves cannot be disenchanted.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Specialty_Gear
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Shrouded_Armor#Shrouded_Armor

If you're going sneaky archer (which I sort of assume if you're using decoys) there's a perk in the illusion tree that makes all spells cast silent. Combined with the extra range perk from the conjuration tree you can silently summon something right in the middle of a group of mobs and then sneak bow attack for extra damage.

Might want to consider master difficulty if you're doing this.

I don't know about this. You may have to try it. I can say that even without shadow warrior, I have landed backstabs on bandits while they were actively engaged in combat with one of my followers, so it seems like it should work. I don't have that much experience with shadow warrior because once I got that perk, I made a bunch of new characters and started playing them, so I have not done that much with shadow warrior. I have never combined it with a summons.

One thing about the shadow warrior perk I do know is that it is really easy to become hidden if there is any type of shadow to hide in. Also, even without shadows you can get the backstab bonus after you have been detected by tapping sneak and executing a quick attack. Basically when you activate shadow warrior it makes you invisible and undetectable for a second or two. If you land an attack during this time, you will get the sneak attack bonus, but you have to be quick. But I have never tried using shadow warrior while I had a summon actively engaged in combat.

Be sure to let us know how it works!

The best Tank Atronarch would be the Frost Atronarch imo, because he is big (he can catch alot of arrows and spells) and he can slow down enemies with his frost attack

Slowing enemies down is essential for archers in my opinion, that why i use frost runes + slow potions with my archer.

Okay, so I'll need that one. Thanks again!


Okay, thanks!


Damn, this makes things really complicated. I can't run around with an armor rating of 70 - Playing on master, I'd die every few minutes. What should I do now? I can't put dragon smithing in again, I'd loose illusion. It would cost me 5 to 6 perk points.


I sure will!


Well, the size of the Frost Atronach might be more of a disadventage - Bigger = easier to hit = more hits = less health duration. Slowing foes down might indeed be beneficial, though. Thanks!

I'm sorry if my english sounds odd to you, by the way. It's not my mother tongue.