Hate wearing high-end gear that makes you look like Lord Sauron, the Green Lantern or Batman? Tired of doing boring quests for boring NPCs? Fed up of being the hero of the day? Then this challenge is for you.

The feral archer is slightly inspired by indigenous peoples of brazil, and is basically a character that was raised by wolves. He is restricted to the following equipment:

• long bow
  
• iron arrows
  
• fur and hide (enchanted hide is fine, if you can find it)
  
• any enchanted jewelery

He learned leatherworking, woodworking, and how to use poisons for hunting. That means you may level smithing for the purpose of improving your long bow, and crafting leather armor to sell. You may use and abuse alchemy, to improve your damage output, control opponents, and heal. You may level and even perk sneak, but you must never sneak attack (it's overpowered). Use it for tactical positioning and avoidance only. You must not perk Ranger in the archery tree as it's also overpowered. You may not use any magic or melee weapons whatsoever. You may not pick up any loot that you can't use.

The character ventured into Skyrim to find more and bigger game to hunt, when the harrowing ordeal at Helgen happened. As a result, his distrust of man and mer turned to hatred, and he will go out of his way to kill them, when safe to do so. He aims to protect the wilds and its beasts. He will never enter any city (too dangerous), will only enter small towns for killing sprees, and will never speak with any man or mer (not that he can even speak ). He will however trade with the beast races (hopefully the caravans will provide you with enough iron arrows).

Suggested races: Redguard (looks the most indigenous of all the races), or Khajiit.

The final rule is that you must have fun.

BTW, can you unlock shouts even if you haven't started the main quest, by killing the hand-placed dragons?

Sounds fun but explain to me how exactly sneak attack with a bow is overpowered... Also why can't we use a hunting bow as it's still a natural wooden bow...

Sneak is horribly overpowered because you can chain sneak attacks all day with no chance of the monsters ever detecting you. It's basically godmode except that now and again you may have to move a few feet away to avoid being detected . Godmode-lite, if you will.

I think the long bow looks more primitive and indigenous, but if you dig the hunting bow, sure, why not.

I don't find the sneak attacks with the bow keep me from being detected that well but ok...

Interesting concept. I might try something similar or inspired by this on my next character. Forsworn armor, bows and arrows could be added to the items you can use perhaps.

So basically:

Archery
Alchemy
Light armor


And the use of smithing and sneak (without perks). Plus using enchanted items of leather and hide that you stumble upon?

Will keep this topic in my favourites and might refer to it later for a try out.

Thanks for the idea.

Well the idea is that he crafts his long bow and arrows (maybe in a mod), and doesn't trust other weapons. But feel free to adapt the rules to your own preferences.

Yes, I see. Also I notice you said only use hide and fur, which makes more sense than leather for that character.

For the jewellery, only jewellery you find? Because caravans do sell some IIRC.

What difficulty level do you suggest?

EDIT:

What do you suggest we do/use at the beginning of the game? Not pick up any gear, weapons, until we find a bow? Just walk naked until we can make some hide stuff?

The more I think about it, the more I like this idea. I suggest not picking up books of any kind also.

I guess you could buy some shiny stuff to wear from the caravaneers.


I suggest adept. Any higher and your opponents will start looking like porcupines.


You can grab some fur gauntlets and boots from the dead stormcloak, then use his axe until you get a long bow soon after. After you escape, you can go into the mine nearby and get some hide pieces. The biggest challenge will be getting a nice stock of iron arrows early on. You may have to ransack Riverwood.

How I wish you could craft arrows . Going to see if there is a mod for that.


Yes, as he's illiterate .

There is a mod that lets you craft arrows: Val's Crafting Meltdown. It also lets you melt down unwanted armor, weapons and other crap into component parts. I think it's also a part of Tyranis (the super-mod, lol). Haven't tried it yet myself; just heard lots about it.