-This is my second play-through of the game.
Bound Bow is an extremely powerful bow, especially considering how early in the game you can obtain the weapon. However, I did a quick simulation play-through to get to level 14 using ~ and coc'ing for the DB armor, afterwards simulating my test via 'Golden Claw' and I wasn't too sure on its viability for a few reasons.

Long story short, I feel that for the assassination game play, quiet casting is almost a necessary evil [I personally hate illusion magic, and would have no idea how to level it up.] in order to effectively play an assassination archer based on Bound Bows. So I ask you, is it worthwhile, going 51 points into Conjuration, AND 50 points into illusion to use the bows? How quickly does Illusion magic level?

So, as for the power of the weapon, I'm more than convinced its a great addition and worthwhile to go into the Conjuration tree specifically for an Archer's purpose.

HOWEVER, in the assassination play style it can be burdensome. On my run through of Golden Claw, I noticed that even with 40 sneak, I was being looked for entirely too much. On my previous game play at 40 sneak I could walk up to someones back, pickpocket them, lunge, miss, and re-lunge for the kill, without ever being anything less than 'hidden'.

When I recast my bow, however, enemies were seeing me from annoyingly long distances. Unrealistically long distances. Through walls, distances.
My specific example is me nearing the end of the first section of the Golden Claw cave, and the Durdge are standing like statues in the little imprints on the walls. I killed them, and I knew the next kill was two turns away, so I refreshed my bow to ensure it didn't run out on me. Imagine my surprise when I recast it, and I was being looked for by three of them, so many curves and bends away. Of course, they didn't find me, and returned to their original spot, but none-the-less it is annoying.

Here is something that I learned / discovered about the Bound Bow.

It is nearly as powerful as an non-exploited legendary Deadric with Deadric arrows, which is very difficult to obtain or keep a healthy level of until late game [This of course isn't including enchantments].

Bound Bow = 36 Damage
Daedric Bow = 29 Damage

* Under the assumption you aren't abusing Smithing to tell via Fortifying*

100 Smithing = 11~ Damage to Bows
Legendary Bow = 40 Damage


Leg. Deadric Bow + Eleven Arrows = 56 Damage
Leg. Deadric Bow + Ebony Arrows = 60 Damage
Leg. Deadric Bow + Deadric Arrows = 64 Damage
Bound Bow + Bound Arrows = 60 Damage

Bump. :[

You are NOT being seen, you are being heard from three rooms away.

As an Assassin, Illusion is far more important to your role than any other school of Magicka. I'm guessing that you don't know what Spells and Perks are available, so let me just say that Sneak and Illusion go together like Enchanting and Smithing. Taking Quiet Casting is a no-brainer.

It is a viable playstyle. Leveling Conjuration and Illusion gives you access to abilities that a standard sneak/archery rogue wouldn't use as much, such as invisibility and all your spells being silent, or the ability for your Bound Bow to Soul Trap on its own and banish Undead and Daedra, or the ability to call summons and frenzy or calm or fear your enemies if you get in trouble. Plus, you'll never have to worry about carrying and retrieving arrows. Actually, an Arcane Archer is what I'd like to make my next character.

As for leveling Illusion, I understand the best way to get a quick start is to use Muffle as often as you can.

@ Sokar Rostau- I'm pretty sure I specifically said in my example that I was being 'looked for' by casting the spell. When an enemy hears you they tend to look for you, until your status goes to hidden. In fact, ctrl f reveals that the first [and only time, thus far, until NOW --->] the term 'seen' is used, is when you used it. I'm glad, though, that for a few seconds I could provide you the opportunity to test delusional superiority over pplz on the interwebz, dawg.
At any rate, your post was a botheration. That in no way answered the question. Shoo.

That seems like a good balance, too... Sneak, Archery, Conjuration, Illusion, generic light armor level ups occasionally, and occasional lockpicking, gives you a consistent 5-ish trees to feed your character experience. Here's a question for you...
If you were to play that arcane archer you want to roll, do you think you'd invest in pick pocketing early game? That decision keeps leading me to my downfall, I think. Pick pocketing is too easy to level, and the potential purse is absolutely insane, making my greedy self always gravitate toward it... And then I realize that I'm level 20 with 80 pickpocketing and 40 archery. :[

Basically, I'm asking do you think I should lay off the pickpocketing for a while?

Using a Bound Bow along with the perk that increases the damage it does will make the bow do exactly the same amount of damage that a deadric bow will do if you upgrade it with 100 smithing. The only difference is you can enchant the daedric one and not the bound one. I guess infinite bound arrows (which are as powerful daedric arrows) is something the bound bow has going for it, as well as the fact that it is available much earlier than a daedric one.

If you are going to invest in smithing and enchanting, there is no reason not to immediately switch over to a daedric bow whenever you can. If you are not going to, however, the bound bow is an acceptable, although inferior, alternative. Quiet Casting seems like a necessity as well.

No sir, I don't like it. It's hard enough levelling conjuration as a conjurer. I don't even want to think about levelling conjuration as an assassin.

100 Conjuration < 100 Smithing imo.

WTF? You answered your own question then. Why did you even bother to post when you already knew the answer? The Quiet Casting Perk means that they will not hear you cast a Spell.

If you can't be bothered to look up what the Illusion School involves then your reply to me is nothing more than trolling.

Since you're obviously lacking in the "bothering to read" skill, let me make this simple for you.

Illusion and Stealth are complimentary skill sets. Quiet Casting is a no-brainer for ANY stealth-based caster.

EDIT to Add:


Drop the superiority complex.

[Remain Silent] is always my favorite answer when playing the DB questline, ya know? Something about you, though. Jeez.

The post was asking if it is worthwhile going 101 points into magic trees as well as sneak, and archer, just to use bound bows, over normal weaponry?

Angry teenage punk. inb4 I'm 2X

While this is true, please don't take this advice, and I'll tell you why.
smithing makes this game trivial. If you want to run around room to room like a god, then be my guest and ignor my post. But if you seek the thrill of feeling vulnerable but being able to stop enemies b4 they get to you, go for the path you're going on.

Conjuration is not hard to level, you have trainers if you really want to fast level. And besides the point of a rpg isn't to speed level is it.

I am a conjuration assassin myself. I actually leveled conjuration all the way up to 100 because I summon as well. There are fights that you can't sneak through. For that you really need tanks in front of you. Summoning 2 daedra lord is awesome, as they can take alot of damage and deal tons. Atronarchs are great for additional ranged dps if you need it. The frost one has ton of health and can slow enemies. The storm one casts chain lightning and has a good aoe damage move. Fire one explodes on death which is unique and cool.

If you don't want the rest of conjuration tree, I'd stop at 50. I'd focus on sneak and archery. Sneak gets very good @70, thats the point where you can literally sneak right behind someone.

What do you think about Lockpicking, Ish?

One of my characters is almost a pure conjurer and I can clear out an entire dungeon using summons only and still only get one or maybe two skillups by the end of it. The thought of doing that on my assassin just gives me chills. Part of it's probably my own fault I suppose. Since bound weapon damage is partly dependent on your conj skill, if I was to use it I'd feel like I had no choice but to get it to 100 if I didn't want a broken build.

Like you I do think smithing is maybe a little OP, but even foregoing smithing I still wouldn't use conjuration. Different strokes for different folks though, if you enjoy it then it's obviously working for those that do.

You don't need all conjuration perks for bound weapons? Only the ones that apply to weapons and the skill perk up to adept since there are no higher bound weapon spells.

You don't like being wrong, do you? Interesting that you decide to use that [Remain Silent] option after I quoted you stating that which you adamantly deny, isn't it? I turned 36 in August thank you very much. Now, are you going to troll or listen?

"Going 101 points into... " is a concept that has no real place in this game. Those points come with no effort whatsoever and if you ever want to "finish" a character you will be required to get 100 in every Skill anyway. All that matters is how you spend your Perks.

Bound Bow is an Adept Spell. You are NOT a mage so you have little choice but to take Adept Conjuration (rank 50) to mitigate the Magicka cost. There's also little point in Bound weapons if you don't take them all the way and get Oblivion Binding. This is a total of 11 Perks.

Quiet Casting is a necessity for any Stealth-based caster. Period. The fact that 11/15 Illusion Spells serve to enhance your Sneaking in some way makes whether you are going to invest in the constellation a moot point. Minimum of four Perks required here, but there's no reason not to fill out the Illusion constellation.

That's 15 Perks out of 80.

I played a mage-assassin character. I ran with Illusion, Archery, Conjuration, Sneak and Alteration. The idea was simply that I would use magic for my armour and weapons, and use Conjuration to provide distractions/meat while I run back into the shadows.

Originally, I just wanted to try a character with bound weapons because they looked so cool. Since I was planning on using Conjuration for my weapons I thought going into Smithing was kinda pointless and so I also had doubts over picking up an armour type. Mage armour seemed like it would provide more protection than non-smithed light armour, with the additional benefits of allowing me access to detect life and paralyse spells, so Alteration was picked.

While playing, I found that going without silent casting was doable, you simply had to predict the encounters well. The bow tended to last long enough and was powerful enough to sneak attack everyone. But being able to cast silently really made the whole build more powerful. There is nothing more fun for me than sending a summon, silently, into a group of enemies far away then silently taking each of them out with your bow as well.

Additionally, when I did get illusion up high and my spells could hit my summons, I found that in open battles, summoning then casting courage et al made life easy enough.

Early on Conjuration raised rapidly, due to summoning 2 swords and a flame/frost A, and Alteration followed reasonably close by due to constantly casting and recasting stone/etc-flesh. Sneak did not need to be that heavily invested into early on, since I was just in cloths, though I got to 3x bonus for bows soon enough. I found I had to focus on Illusion for a while before I levelled up to high, but once I did I did not regret it.

Hope this helps, I had great fun with this type of character.

Never add perks into lockpicking. Lockpicks are everywhere, and master locks are not difficult enough to unlock to justify adding perks into the tree.

Being a bound bow assassin relies almost completely on the illusion perk of spells being able to be cast silently, until you earn that perk, it will be very difficult for you to avoid getting caught casting that very very loud bound spell.

*upon reading, comment was too incendiary*

Not to mention that the thieves guild questline makes the lockpick skill completely redundant.

eeerm, i started a second playthrough as a mage, and went into the first dungeon (Golden claw temple) and zombified every enemy i killed, and from level 2 to level 7, my conjuration had gone up to 51, all in the same dungeon... revive an enemy, let him fight the next, as long as they stay alive and figght your conjuration skill goes up, it was pretty easy

Yup. I'm currently playing as an assassin mage, specialising mainly in Conjuration, Illusion, Alteration, Sneak and Archery (with a bit of Destruction and One-handed). I've tried to keep most of my skills level, but Conjuration is one of the skills I've never had to power-level to keep up.

Conjuration, especially as a sneaky character, is all about being able to keep battles ticking over in your favour by reanimating every enemy you kill. Keep your team fresh and in control by constantly reviving the most powerful enemy on the battlefield. I had a snowy sabre cat for ages that way I loved him too. I wish I could have kept him forever but then he turned into a pile of ash

Youre the only one that can decide if its worthwhile to level illusion.
But I do know that it levels quite fast using muffle.

*shrug* On that toon I'd summon a flame atronach, let it fight, summon another one when it died, let it fight, rinse repeat. I got probably 2/3x more sneak skillups, and probably more lockpicking, and definitely more destruction (when the atronach decides to stand and try to fireball a wall to death for five minutes), than I did conjuration.

Your numbers are off. You added archery bonus to the bows base value but not upgraded (smithing) value.

Ingame on my latest conjurer/archer:

Base values with slight bonus
Currently with 20% bonus from an item and 60% bow damage from 3/5 perk.

Ebony base bow (no smithing)+daedric arrows = 42+24 = 66
bound bow (with all bound perks)+ bound arrows = 59 + 24 = 83

Smithing (not maxed):
Did the following tests with and without the ebony smithing perk (Im at 84 smithing and had some perk points to spare, but didnt get ebony perk yet) and no other smithing bonuses (no pots, items)
Without ebony perk the smithing bonus results in: Ebony bow exquisite + daedric arrows = 53 + 24 = 77.
With ebony perk the smithing bonus results in: Ebony bow epic +daedric arrows= 62 +24 = 86

Conclusion:
As you get higher +bow % damage the bound bow becomes closer to ebony superior/exquisite in total damage. This is before including any bow enchants for extra damage and with 84 smithing (with perks).

ps: Conjuring is still pretty great. The Dremora do roughly 150-170 damage per melee hit and when you have two thats quite a lot.