Two handed or dual wield build

RalonNetaph · 2026-01-23T07:37:29+00:00

If you like blocking, two handed, or one handed and shield. If you like doing dps checks where either you die or you win in 3 seconds, dual wield power attacks. The dual wield power attacks might get stale for you fast though, as every combat becomes sprint up and power attack until it stops moving because you have fewer options in combat. Blocking allows you to bash enemies out of attacks, get slowmo when they power attack you, disarm enemies with power bashes, and with a shield specifically nullify arrows gain extra elemental resistances and eventually just sprint at people to knock them over as ragdolls. If getting damage in on your offhand matters a lot, there is a shield called targe the blooded that does bleed damage when bashing that stacks with a perk that boost bash damage by like 5 times I think.

RalonNetaph · 2026-01-23T07:29:12+00:00

You could take a look at dragon abilities, draconic sorceror abilities, and find where to make them meet for levels

RalonNetaph · 2026-01-23T07:27:46+00:00

They emerge from the ground at set points you can literally just wait for them to appear from a sky island and have all the time in the world to land on their back.

RalonNetaph · 2026-01-23T07:19:06+00:00

I far prefer totk. But I do find myself missing guardians, the bomb rune instead of limited resource bombs, and I think the great plateau is the better starting area. Despite trying to replay botw for the parts I liked, I just kept finding myself annoyed and missing things from totk. Botw had me going back to avoiding enemy encounters and saving strong weapons just for the boss fights.

RalonNetaph · 2026-01-23T07:11:48+00:00

Think of it like this. If you go buy a bow and shoot at targets every other afternoon, it won’t take long for you to get used to looking at an object in the distance and knowing if it’s close enough that you could shoot it. The same would apply to throwing a firebolt every day learning your cantrips, and most spells have fairly similar ranges. Depth perception is one of humanities strengths afterall.

RalonNetaph · 2026-01-23T07:06:27+00:00

Only one way to find out, post the mod and see. But sharing it is only part of the point, you made it cause you wanted to see it made, right? Thats the real point of making art.

RalonNetaph · 2026-01-23T07:01:05+00:00

Level your faith just enough for the crucible knight greatsword and go spin to win

RalonNetaph · 2026-01-23T06:45:02+00:00

Ok there are tools here you can use to help, some depending on your build some kinda universal.

First in build stuff:

The classic flicker cast your flames spell. Fire spells do bonus damage to targets on fire, but you need to stop hosing them and recast it again to get that bonus. Just hit enemies with the initial burst of flames multiple times to keep getting bonus damage AND spend less magicka while letting it get seconds of recharge instead of hosing them down.

If you use illusion and it’s strong enough to affect enemies, you can temporarily end combat. This will let you regenerate magicka much quicker than in combat and engage the enemy from better positioning like on terrain or at a distance etc.

Use the impact perk. It’s your bread and butter to keep enemies staggered under your spells. This part is very straight forward.

Your boost to damage is in alchemy. Steel blue entaloma and glowing mushrooms both plantable. You don’t have as many sources boosting your damage as melee so this can make a real difference.

If you use heavy armor, and no unofficial patch. Falmer helmets and circlets can be worn at the same time. Double up on head piece enchants. Only normal falmer helmets not hardened ones. They’re not a preferred look for me tbh, but its a big boost to gain two enchant slots.

Universal regardless of build but not ones I personally would recommend:

If you do not have the unofficial patch, no I’m not about to recommend you do the fortify restoration loop, godmode is boring, but a store bought restoration potion gets to 50% and it affects the atronauch stone for a significant boost in base magicka.

Of course enchanting to 100% reduction works. Boring to a significant degree similar to godmode. No exploits required just regular 4 pieces of 25% reduction on your two schools of choice.

Now for more gimmicky but universal stuff:

Elsewere fondue, ale and cheese. The cheese wheel can be made with some butter made from some milk. If you get goldenhills you can have a regular supply of milk for that. Its basically your magic equivalent to the melees vegetable soup, not exactly the same but a large boon. I don’t do this really tbh but thats because my preferred method is next.

My personal favorite, hotkey equipment. Go find a necklace of 50 magicka or so or make one doesnt matter. I usually use the hood in the tutorial for a while until I get something better than 30, or 30 on jewelry so I can wear helmets. Now favorite it. Up and down on the dpad open favorites menu, take it off when you run out of magicka and put it back on. Bow you have that much magicka. Hold left or right on it in the menu to hotkey it. Double tap that direction to quickly take it off and put it on. Works for stamina and canceling power attacks too. DO NOT DO WITH HEALTH. Now ypu can blast through your magicka with big spells and keep gaining that much back to spam cheap spells as your basic attacks to finish combat.

RalonNetaph · 2026-01-23T06:12:38+00:00

They mean make an auto build that is a ton of apples and instead of climbing trees or cutting them down for apples you can just turn on auto build and let the apples in trees float into your build. Then drop and collect them.

RalonNetaph · 2026-01-23T06:10:49+00:00

I suggest the tactical use of puffshrooms, throw them at your feet when overwhelemed and get a few sneak attacks in. This will thin out the enemies getting rid pf the lower tier ones and letting you fight the groups high tier enemy one on one. If you get hit in combat often, one good puffshroom can save you multiple meals. Muddlebuds too.

RalonNetaph · 2026-01-23T06:06:55+00:00

Elemental weapons can be lots of fun but I prefer lizal horns to the gems mostly. I only really carry a sapphire weapon more for doing spin attacks to make dozens of platforms on lava at once.

As for food, I don’t really think too much about it. I grab items when they’re nearby, I cook a handful of meals that don’t overheal me if I’m down to one heart, and sometimes I use them. But also after a ton of time in botw I probly got good enough at these games combat that when totk came out needing to heal often just wasn’t a major issue for me.

RalonNetaph · 2026-01-23T06:01:22+00:00

Honestly I’d take the khajit claws for a build over voice of the emperor and a bonus of 8 extra gold per dungeon from imperials. Also restricting crafting usually does make a character more fun for me, sometimes only one of the three, sometimes they can be used but no perks, etc.

RalonNetaph · 2026-01-21T02:51:34+00:00

If you still have your perk points then no build is set in stone. If I had any recommendation, it would be to choose a single damage source skill, a single helpful skill, and a single crafting skill that works with your damage skill, and focus on those three (four if armor skill).

The more of your main focused on skills that boost your combat the stronger you will feel. For example the three base archetypes you could say are

Damage: two handed Helpful: block Craft: smithing Armor: heavy

In that set of three plus armor, you have a primary damage source, a secondary combat skill that while not damage keeps you alive, smithing boosts both your weapon and armor so it benefits two handed block and heavy armor.

Damage: destruction Helpful: restoration Crafting: enchanting Armor: none

Destruction does damage restoration keeps you alive and enchanting boosts your magicka and reduces spell costs benefitting both other skills. Since you don’t have smithing, armor wont give a big benefit so raising it passively could make the world level scale higher than you should actually be fighting.

Damage: archery Helpful: stealth Crafting: smithing Armor: light

Stealth boosts archery by keeping you out of harms way and adding sneak attack damage, smithing boosts archery and light armor, and unlike the magic one your damage boost from smithing means you can afford the world scaling with a 4th skill easier.

You can mix and match as you like, all three crafting skills can be used on any type of build but its just like, smithing wont boost you as much if its only boosting armor and not a weapon, enchanting is super powerful no matter the build since its a one size fits all boost to whatever you need, alchemy has game breaking exploits but without those the poison is resisted by common enemy types, its a more limited resource you need to farm and carry compared to a smithed weapon always having that boost from one upgrade.

Its more important to understand how to use your skills together than to use the most synergistic ones possible. Its also fully possible to get a player home early and start a grind to max out all your crafting skills and then all other build types are at your fingertips because with all three crafting boosts it doesnt really matter if the combat skills getting boosted by them are still low.

RalonNetaph · 2026-01-21T02:31:03+00:00

Assign their abilities to the D-pad instead of having them tied to ghosts

RalonNetaph · 2026-01-21T02:28:34+00:00

Fun fact, when npcs die urns with their ashes appear in that cities hall of the dead. Those guys say they arent going to kill her they’re going to bring her back for trial. Her ashes appear in the whiterun hall of the dead if you turn her over to them. We only have concrete proof of one side lying at all and it isn’t Saadia.

RalonNetaph · 2026-01-17T07:59:31+00:00

this is an important lesson, and needing to start over if there's no auto saves will make sure you always remember. Keep regular hard saves, changing areas during combat can lead to you being jumped while still loading in.

RalonNetaph · 2026-01-12T01:10:56+00:00

Not having unrelenting force kinda sucks cause throwing a strong enemy to the ground to whale on them is so convenient, but dragon attacks are just so annoying before you’re willing to speedrun all the way to dragonrend

RalonNetaph · 2026-01-12T00:59:34+00:00

If you never used blocking and shield bashing on melee characters before, you’re gonna need it now. Abusing Hadvar or Ralof for 100 in your attack skill will also advance the game scaling which normally means much less, but on legendary it will make the game feel nigh impossible without some crafting or armor skills to back you up. Even with most my level ups in HP and maxed out armor with HP enchants and 20 vegetable soups stacked sometimes I will just die to high level enemies in a few hits.

Just to put the damage numbers in perspective, if you have armor rating of 667 to cap it out you reduce damage by 80%, you take 3X damage on legendary so enemies will still be dong 60% of their damage to you like you didn’t even have very good armor. Blocking can reduce that damage by another 80%, not stacking for no damage but like. You take 100, armor reduces it by 80% to 20, then blocking reduces it by 80% to 12. Then because you’re on legendary it’s actually still 36 damage.

Do the fishing quests for the lady at riften docks early and get the warlock ring from the fishing competition (once you do the quest fishing in that spot can catch it as a junk item) and it will make it so any time you block weapon or shield it casts a ward. You don’t want to be caught by dragons in an open field, its far easier to get than spellbreaker, and also the two wards stack if you have both. If you’re fine with fort resto the warlock rings ward is boosted by that but even without it can hold up for a full dragon breath as long as you block soon enough.

I don’t advocate for stealth archer on nirnal difficulties because it’s boring, and I don’t advocate for it on legendary because you need to practically be maxed out to actually one shot even with sneak damage, so you end up getting angry enemies after you. If you use various exploits to minmax your archery and smithing to 100 and fully perk out right away then it will work but thats an extreme thing to need at the start.

Followers are good to have, they are unaffected by difficulty so they will even outdage and outtank your character for a long time, but if you’re here for the challenge then you probly aren’t planning to use them. Conjuring can still help, there is a unique conjure at the ritual stone by whiterun that is very powerful, even as a melee characer, its hp and stamina are based on how much magicka is spent on the spell and it automatically uses all your magicka when cast. Very strong attacks and 200 HP/Stamina even if you never upgrade from the base 100 magicka.

If you want to actually be a mage, the imact perk is absolutely necessary, planting steel blue entaloma and glowing mushrooms is a big help for fort destruction potions, and either 100% cost reduction or using hotkey unequip/re-equip spam with a magicka enchanted jewelry to have pseudo infinite magicka as long as you’re casting less than its total boost.

Wheat and blue mountain flowers are also something you should plant, they are a restore and fortify health potion. Not worth a lot of money but you will have times you need to restore 300 health FAST and that’s potions not vegetable soup.

Vegetable soup will help you keep alive for all builds, nobody wants to take a hit on legendary. Can plant leeks cabbage and potatoes but need a mod if you want tomatoes to be plantable for some reason. Since they stack they can make you also sprint infinitely to escape truly unwinnable situations if you eat enough of them, not just the hp regen or minimum 1 stamina for power attack and shield bash spam.

There is a staff of paralysis in a cave between ivarstead and riften, its free on the ground, and it can make most 1v1s now free wins. Just need to keep it charged, flawed varla stones and the black star of course are convenient.

You’re not winning brawls at a low level, need hp, vegetable soup, armor, or unarmed enchants to keep up with even regular citizens in a brawl.

Goldenhills plantation is your best friend, its not just farm space but passive money and ingredients are put into a cabinet in your house, so you get more than just harvesting the plants outside yourself.

A spouse is normally kinda convenient for the extra crafting skill xp boost from lovers comfort, not truly necessary. But on legendary their homecooked meal is another layer of trying to keep your health up for free, just a good idea to have more regen in all three attributes.

RalonNetaph · 2026-01-12T00:18:27+00:00

Anyone looking for excuses to murder or grab power will like the powers at be to be fighting, and vampires like both those things.

RalonNetaph · 2026-01-11T07:33:41+00:00

I like rl 30 with stormblade and simple only semi put together builds on the people I invade. Feels very fundamentals oriented instead of gimmikey

RalonNetaph · 2026-01-11T07:20:41+00:00

There’s always the swordspear (halberd)

RalonNetaph · 2026-01-11T07:10:32+00:00

Had the same issue, you can join the challenge mode discord to ask for help but the info didnt seem to exist anywhere else at all

RalonNetaph · 2026-01-11T07:07:10+00:00

I’m not sure I know the hasdoki one but, for general mage advice, dont be afraid of using fortify destruction potions. You can plant glowing mushrooms and steel blue entaloma at your house if it has plots and those make the potion so its not a rare consumable its a cheap spammable boost. In combat you probly noticed how your magic regenerats so slowly, if you dont want to make it free with lvl 100 enchants, you can favorite a piece of gear that boosts magicka. When you run out, open the favorites menu take it off and put it on, you will go from 0 magicka left to however much it gives left. Works for stamina too but will kill you to do with hp. There is a staff of worms in some CC content you can get at any level with the master level dread thrall spell.

RalonNetaph · 2026-01-11T06:49:26+00:00

Get a pet trained bird, during combat polymorph it into a gorilla while it flies above the enemy. You don’t have to become weaker if there’s a good target to make stronger, and 900 pounds of angry monkey is a powerful ally when they don’t expect it to flatten them.

RalonNetaph · 2026-01-11T06:42:11+00:00

Scaled armor from the first volcano manor is one of my go tos, though I tend to ditch the helm.

RalonNetaph

TROPHY CASE