This is my first Elder Scrolls game and thus far I've been a chronic re-starter since I really want to experience all of the various playstyles available to me. However, I think I have finally reached a point where I want to create one established character and do a complete playthrough (i.e. complete every quest and do everything the game offers me). I wanted to choose a character that would give me a fun playstyle while still being moderately challenging and trying my best to reconcile my character with TES lore whenever it is rationally possible. Here is my proposed character build and playstyle:

Race: Wood Elf (Bosmer)
Role: Thalmor Assassin
Weapons: Bow and dual-wielded daggers

Perks (edited following feedback):
Archery - all perks except Hunter's Disciplines and Ranger
One Handed - Armsman (5/5), Bladesman (3/3), Dual Flurry (2/2), and Dual Savagery
Smithing - Steel Smithing and Arcane Blacksmith
Light Armor - complete tree
Sneak - complete tree
Lockpicking - Novice Locks, Apprentice Locks, Adept Locks, Golden Touch, Treasure Hunter
Alchemy - all perks except Snakeblood and Purity
Illusion - complete tree

Difficulty: Expert - I've tried Master and it frankly is just too frustrating for me. I understand people who like the challenge but I like my games to be challenging without causing me to rage and Expert offers that balance to me.

Playstyle type: I'm going to be smithing/enchanting/alcheming (?) as much as I am allowed without any of the perks. My main way of getting gear is going to be treasure hunting and purchasing at shops though, which is why I invested heavily in the Speech tree. This will also help with my more "thief" based character, by allowing me to get out of trouble when I get a bounty and allow me to resell stolen goods to any vendor eventually.

What I need your help with:

1) My main stumbling block (with this being my first TES game) is the lore and how my character should be responding in certain situations. For some reaon I thought that the Thamlor were allied with the Empire but from reading the wiki page it appears that this is not the case. Should my character ally with the Stormcloaks instead, despite their possible racist tendencies and worship of Talos? I'm appealing to you Loremasters here to help me define which allegiance is the "most likely" for a Thalmor character.

2) If you have any suggestions about the character build (i.e. perks I should be using or not using) I would love to hear them. I've only gotten up to about lvl 25-30 on any of my other characters so I haven't experienced many of the higher-level perk skills.

Thanks! TLDR

A few thoughts:

• The speech are lockpicking perk trees are the worst in the game, and utterly useless. The only one I'd find even remotely worthwhile is the treasure hunter perk in Lockpicking, since you said you won't be crafting gear.
  
• Critical shot is... well, critical for an Archer build. Take the 3/3.
  
• I'd suggest at least 2 points in smithing to get Arcane Smith, so you can at least improve the items you have.
  
• As a stealth archer, I found the game to be abysmally easy. Adding Restoration and Illusion will only make it more so. To really RP a thief character, I'd say no magic (that's what I did).
  
• I wouldn't perk up the Light Armor tree so that you actually have to stay stealthed. It adds a fun element to the game knowing you'll be one shot if you're found.
  
• If you wanted to go the "arcane archer" route, grab some relevant perks in Conjuration and use the bound bow.

Create a character, and explore all the possibilities from within the game. Perk what you like then. There is no penalty for using and gaining skills increases.

Do it, im not seeing a problem. Is this optimal? No. But this is a sandbox game, there is no need to "beat" it. Do what you like or it will be another restart candidate.

Thalmor assassin? You do know that you can't join them right? Looking at your skills and perks it looks to me like your a nightblade. Your basically a Assassin-Mage. Its a great build, its suitable lore wise for Dark Brotherhood, Thieves Guild, and Mages Guild.

I play pretty much the same build, except instead of speech, I took pickpocket. Very handy, especially for stealing back gold you paid for trainers and bribing the guards. It's a very fun playstyle with a lot of power. Illusion and sneak being all you ever need. I too took archery up to quick shot (Mark of Death and a nice bow will take down Elder and Ancient dragons on Master) Pickpocket came in handy when leveling a skill I didn't use too much like Light Armor and Archery. If you find it fun knowing you can be 1 shotted then skip perking Light Armor, however if you want some durability perk it, I did and it's awesome, especially with the perk Shadow Warrior. I can take a few hits when its 3v1 so I can get off a sneak attack mid fight.


It's funny how many people will comment on this perk and probably have never used it. Treasure Hunter isn't going to give you a bunch of awesome loot. What it does do is increase the amount of loot in certain chests. This could be an orcish mace, or ebony armor of destruction. You'll find a lot of generic items with it though. The perk really boils down to more gold. I wouldn't count on it to gear your character out.


With illusion, your life will be easier just backstabbing. I use the bow and Mark of Death for dragons, and going up the left side to Quick Shot is more than enough. If you want to focus mostly on the bow, then you can't go wrong with Critical Shot and Ranger for that matter.

As far as how your character would respond to certain situations, I think your build is fine for whatever you want to do. I mean usually there's only way to complete a quest anyway. You either do it...or you don't and it'll just sit in your journal. There's really not a lot of choices in how you go about quests in this game. Like I wanted to use the Ebony Blade, but I couldn't find people who trusted me that desereved to die to use the blade on...so I didn't use the blade. That pretty much sums up Skyrim roleplaying. You either do or you don't, unlike a game like New Vegas where you have options and those options matter. Like with the blade, I wanted to "help" evil people and then kill them later with the blade after they trusted me, but I couldn't roleplay that, because there aren't any truly evil npcs you can help. There's only the bad guys and that dragon born guy that saves the world.

Yes the only reason I have points invested in lockpicking is to get the treasure hunter perk (the gold one is a nice bonus too I guess). As far as the Speech tree goes - I would probably agree that it is not all that useful but I can't really see what I would be spending the perks on outside of this - I guess probably alchemy. I like having the Bribery and Fence perks if I am going to be stealing a lot of items.


Is it really that useful? Best case it will give me a critical once out of every five shots... doesn't really seem worth it given that you have to spend 3 perk points on it. I'll give it some though though.


Yeah this is a good suggestion - I had it in the original build and got rid of it for some reason... I'll probably add Arcane Smithing back in.


I've heard that it becomes easy with Illusion but since I wanted to do all of the questlines, I wanted to have SOME ability in magic for the College of Winterhold questline (otherwise it seems kinda stupid). Illusion is definitely the most realistic magical school for a thief/sneak type character. I'm only investing in the Restoration tree a little bit so that I can get to +50% magicka regen which seems like a pretty good perk for not that much investment.


I hear what you are saying here but the bow is probably not going to be my primary method of killing. I'm only going to whip it out when I'm sneaking around in order to stealth-kill the unaware enemies and then finish off the rest of them with my dual-wield daggers. I need some form of protection since I will be going hand-to-hand quite a bit.

Very good feedback! That is exactly what I am looking for thank you

I never said the loot would be awesome, but if OP wants a full suit of glass armor without crafting this is a much faster way of getting it.

There is a faster way, buy it from a blacksmith. I've seen them start selling it as soon as level 25. You're not going to get full suits of anything decent from Treasure Hunter. You many find one or two pieces from the perk maybe not maybe more than two pieces. Getting high end stuff like glass is going to more of a sure thing by buying from a smith or finding it laying around a dungeon. You will get more loot of from Treasure Hunter, but it won't all be good loot. And it will depend on your luck. I've had Treasure Hunter for 10 levels and have never found a piece of enchanted glass, ebony, or deadric weaponry for example. I am level 50. I do have piles and piles of gold though.

1. you can't do everything in the game, you can't join both the imperials and stormcloaks for example. There are a few other cases, but I won't spoil them, although they are few and far between, and you will be able to do like, 99% of the content, just not all

2. You can't join the Thalmor, and they attack you on sight after a certain point in the main quest. (I thought this was disappointing, Thalmor faction would be a great RP addition for elves, neither side in the Civil war is appealing to elves and thus your character)

3. If you want to know the lore, read every book you can find, not only does it increase you skills occasionally, but there are a lot of really interesting little fables and short stories, although I could never stand to read the in game history books.

4. Lockingpicking tree is useless, just pick up every lockpick you find and you will soon have more than enough

5. You have too many perks, you will never get them all on one character

Personally I found lockpicking really easy. I don't have a single perk in it and can still pick master level locks with ease. I might break 2 or 3 locks trying to pick a master lock but its not hard once you get the hang of it. If you are on console its even easier, a little harder on PC but still doable without the perks.

I never really tried the speech tree so I can't give any feedback on that tho.

The light armor tree works great with assassins, especially with the windwalker and unhindered perk. Great for staying mobile in battles.

I did the same for the 1 handed tree but I think if i remember correctly Bladesman does not work on daggers, ill try to find a source to prove this in a bit.

I would agree that lockpicking is not a very useful perk set (though I have been known to destory 20+ locks on some master chests). Lockpicks are cheap enough that you can just buy a crapload of them and trial and error your way to opening the chest. As I said before, I only invested points in lockpicking to get the Treasure Hunter perk (and the Golden Touch perk to a lesser extent).



That would be very stupid if true (and probably a bug I would think). It should be easy enough to verify if I spend a perk point on it and then see the damage power of my daggers has not increased, but would like to know if anybody knows for sure.

I went down the archer/stealth route, i started to find it a bit ludicrous when I was pumping arrows into someone from about 3 yards away and the only reaction I was getting from them was "is someone there?". This is with sneak skill of around 40, god knows what its like on higher levels. This was on master. Ruined the game for me and I restarted with a Melee build.

Whatever you do, i recommend Master level. Its not that different than expert, and if you dont you'll be constantly thinking 'should I try master?'

Yeah I figured this was probably the case - thanks for confirming it though


I am actually intending to take time to read the books on this playthrough to familiarize myself with the lore a bit more - good advice. Too bad that you can't officially affiliate yourself with the Thalmor


? I'm fairly certain that you can have up to 81 perks - I used the perk calculator at skyrimcalculator (dot) com to build up this class - very useful for planning ahead!

I've already tried Master difficulty and frankly it just isn't for me. I like to balance my "challenge level" and my "fun level" when playing the game and for me personally, expert is a good balance. Master I was just getting pissed off when I get worked over by a couple of scrub bandits with iron daggers when I had a Dwarven Sword (Fine) with quite a few one-handed perk boosts. Plus I was getting two-hit by bandit chieftains which wasn't much fun either.

Similar here.... Thief/Assassin. Did the Thieves Guild and then Dark Brotherhood quest lines. Mainly for the armor, as it is good Light Armor (and looks really cool).
Main Perks I enlisted are (and this is using minimal spell casting):

-Light Armor- for increasing current armors, without utilizing the enchanting/smithing trees. Only use Arcane Enchanter or Work Tables at say War Maidens... and then just to benefit from better sales of items really. Keeps things a bit more balanced than getting too OP. Benefits of this are mainly for defenses really.... especially if using Daggers only method, will need a bit of protection here.

-1 Perk in the One-Handed- to benefit from mainly using Daggers (which you will find that you might be using a sword just as much), and only using the enchanted items found in game, or by what I can use from Arcane Enchanter (which will ultimately be lesser than found or bought items). Going any further will not do anything for Daggers, but you get at least some benefit from the first initial perk select.

-Lockpicking- which is just a Thieves thing, and while it certainly is not too difficult to master with acquiring a massive amount of lockpicks, is actually much easier with the Perks (and items with enchantments for it)... meaning, opening a Master lock as quick as a Novice lock, just efficient. Plus the benefits of the Treasure Hunter as others eluded to.

-Speechcraft- this is more so for increasing the skill for better prices for items bought or sold. If you are like me, and only using found or bought items, then you want this perk. ALSO, it is beneficial more than what others deem it, because you can after a while do things like Invest with a Store Owner and so on, which increases the amount of money they have on hand so you can sell items without them running out of money...AND enabling it so that you can sell any item to any vendor... instead of hiking to the next town, or spending time in Loading Screens going to the town just to sell items you cannot where you are at. When you think of this... think of your carrying capacity. Loading Health and Stamina will be your mainstays... but, still will run out of room to carry amounts, and why not be able to sell wherever... and get better prices?

Alchemy- being an Assassin as well as Thief, it is more of your Trade skill really. Creating Potions and Poisons to assist in killing, paralyzing, fortifying health, curing etc etc. Also a good revenue for yourself.... keep only the ones you need, easy to make and find ingredients. Will be extremely useful if planning on attempting to use Daggers only. Not impossible to do, but also just improbable that you will use ONLY daggers. Many situations like Daugr Lords and such, will require more than what Daggers will be able to accomplish. Will need Sneaking and Bows as well.

Sneak- THE skill perk for Thieves and Assassins. Obvious reasons to get, and what importance it plays.

Archery- have only gotten to the halfway mark in this tree... but see utilizing all of it as being a benefit (for things like the higher Daugr Lords etc as mentioned earlier). I did put points into the Zoom/Aiming slot... which slows time by 50%. Takes some getting used to, but is actually incredibly beneficial when dealing with those higher leveled enemies, or larger quantities thereof. Just slot an arrow like normal... which will be normal speed... then zoom, which slows time... and shoot... do over and over (or keep aiming at 50% slowed time) and can get off more shots than normal. Also getting Quickshot helps with the numbers too.

Spells- bought the books only, but helpful for Thief/Assassin...
Magelight/Candlelight (optional but can be beneficial),
Detect Life (very helpful in sneaking and backstabbing),
Conjure=Blade/Axe/Familiar/Atrionch (optional and rarely use after say level 25, but helpful for 'Boss type' battles or help if needed early on, can always enlist a follower though),
Healing/Fast Healing/Healing Hands (for times when you need the heals and don't have the food or potions, or to keep a follower going).
Clairvoyance (just useful in general to stay on task)
Shouts- get what you can and use what you got, don't have to... but will use some in certain instances... and hey, why not you ARE a Dragonbourne after all.

Once you hit level 30, leveling is really slow, even slower past level 50, and the only way to get to level 81 is to level up almost all of your skills to 100, which takes a lot of painful grinding. Theoretically, you could get 80 of those perks (you don't get a level 1 perk), but it would be so excrusiatingly boring that I wouldn't recomend it. (It took me 50 hours to hit the level 30 mark, and then another hundred on top of that to hit the level 50 mark, by then, I had 4 skills maxed out to 100)

Aha I see what you are saying. I'll probably keep the build to 81 perks then but prioritize the ones that are more important (combat) over the ones that are nice to have but not essential (lockpicking + speech)

i find that the more planning you do, the less fun the game is. just pick the game up, put it in, and go. play what feels right, play what feels good, and RP your way through the game..that's what I did, and it was 10x funner than trying to spreadsheet my character before i played lol.