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Contest Build: The Betrayer

Tags: #Character Build Agent  #Rank:Recognized  #Contest3 
  • Member
    August 25, 2015

    This build was made for the purpose of contesting in the 3th Building Contest. The theme was Holds so meand Teej decided to give it a shot. The idea started off quite fast and ended up being one of the most fun builds I’ve played in quite a time, so without further ado we proudly present… The Betrayer.

    After completing his daily routine, the Dawnstar guard went back to The White Hall. “What are my new orders, Sir?”The guard asked his superior. The task given to him raised suspicion. “Why do I have to check out the Dawnstar Sanctuary exactly?”. The answer given to him wasn’t exactly what he wanted to hear. People around town had been hearing strange noises coming from the Sanctuary, which caused worries and fear amongst the villagers. At the same time everyone was having nightmares, so this did it. The guard, however didn’t want to come even remotely close to anything related with the Dark Brotherhood. So instead he volunteered to look into the nightmares. After helping Erandur, he could hear Vaemina’s words inside of his head. Confused as he was, the guard ended up killing Erandur and keeping the Skull of Corruption. Before heading back to tell the Jarl what happened, he made sure to hide the Skull someplace safe. He couldn’t think of a better place than near the Sanctuary, as the townsfolk were scared of that place. After hiding the Skull, he went back to the White Hall and told the Jarl what happened. Jarl Skald was very pleased with him and promoted him to one of the higher ranks amongst the guards. His new orders were to investigate the Sanctuary at all cost. He even got permission to infiltrate the Dark Brotherhood if he found this necessary. The man wanted to do his duty as good as possible, after getting deceived by Vaermina. He infiltrated the Dark Brotherhood by doing the Aretino Contract, and being recruited by Astrid after repaying the contract. At first, he tried to act like he was one of them. The nerves that he’d be discovered were killing him, even though nobody seemed to suspect a thing. After getting his first contracts, he had to kill someone from Dawnstar! Convinced that this was necessary to keep his cover up, he did all of the contracts, and in the end even got promoted to listener by the Night Mother. Ever since that moment, the Night Mother whispered to him in his sleep, and even when awake! It drove him mad. After about a week of this, the man couldn’t take it anymore and gave in the ways of the Dark Brotherhood, now embracing their belief in the Night Mother, and Sithis. After killing The Emperor, the man had turned into an evil thing. After rebuilding the Dawnstar Sanctuary, he went back to Jarl Skald, ensuring him that the Dark Brotherhood was not involved into the Sanctuary at all. The Jarl was glad with this and promoted him to captain of the guard. What the poor man didn’t know was that the most corrupted man amongst his entire guard, was now the one leading it. While keeping up his position as righteous captain of the guard, he secretly kept receiving gold from the Dark Brotherhood, now located in the Dawnstar Sanctuary. Led by the man whose position in the guard was now high enough to prevent anyone from finding out the truth behind the Dawnstar Sanctuary…. 

                                                                                           Behold the new Captain of the Guard in Dawnstar

    Race: Breton or Nord. Nord is more for the roleplay, but both can make excellent listeners after embracing the Night Mothers call…. . The Bretons bonus to Conjuration and Alchemy also helps out a lot!

    Stone: Being from Dawnstar, The Betrayer is born under the Tower Stone. Not only does this fit the roleplay, it also turned out to be quite useful, since Lockpicking isn’t perked in this build, and having access to all the valuables in both The White Hall and Victim’s chests is a great plus!

    Stats Distribution: We went with 2|3|1 in Magicka|Health|Stamina. This build relies on magic (namely Conjuration) for summoning The Betrayer’s weaponry. Stamina is less essential as bound weapons require less Stamina for power attacks, and this build doesn’t has a AR that is very impressive, so Health is quite useful.

    Shouts: None, The Betrayer is but a regular guard. (Well not THAT regular but you get the point)

    Conjuration: Your primary skill. Not only does it give you access to the Bound Sword, which is your main weapon, once you embrace the ways of the Dark Brotherhood you will also be able to resurrect the dead bodies, left by your blade, in order to give you an extra ally in combat.

    Alchemy: This skill is your biggest utility skill. Not only does it allow you to restore health, magicka and stamina in battle, the poisons you create are deadly and allow even the toughest enemies to drop. It also gives you a nice funding project to get you some gold.

    Speech: As captain of the guard, you are very charismatic, and thus manage to get better prices off merchants, you can persuade and intimidate people way more easily AND , most importantly, you prevent your true intentions from being discovered.

    One-handed: A guard who can’t handle a sword isn’t of much use is he? Skilled in the use of the Bound Sword, you can both slit the throats of your enemies AND deal some nice damage in combat, accompanied by power bashes and deadly poisons.

    Sneak: Sometimes, a guard will have to be more subtle in order for his task to be completed successful. This also allows you to get rid of some enemies without ever being seen! Leaving only the big guys worthy of your time.

    Block: Power Bashes are an amazing tool! Not only do they allow you to disarm your opponent and stagger then, they are used for regular blocking as well. This skill goes hand in hand with One-handed and thus makes it especially useful in open combat.

    Archery: Barely perked, and still very useful. This gives us a ranged source of damage, allowing The Betrayer to pick off enemies from a distance. The limited perks prevent you from doing the sneak ranged attacks over and over, thus forcing you to keep moving quickly.

    When playing The Betrayer, you play like an assassin, but not exactly. You don’t spend most of your time slitting the throats of your enemies. You will be able to pick off weaker enemies like this, but only in order to resurrect them and let them tank the damage for you, while you smash both you shield and sword in your enemies’ face.

    Before we go into the general combat, let’s say a bit about the Alchemy tree first.  As you can see on the Perk Spread below, we are climbing up the Poison side of the tree. This is first of all because he’s with the Dark Brotherhood, it’s obvious that they taught him a thing or two about poisons and how useful they are. The Betrayer uses the Poison side, to especially shut down the strengths of his enemies. If you’re fighting a mage, hitting him with a Ravage Magicka Regen/Ravage Magicka poison should prevent the mage from using many spells. This forces them to go into melee combat, where you have the advantage. Other melee based enemies can be shut down by using a poison that damages there stamina/stamina regen. This prevents them from using as many power attacks as you, thus giving you the advantage. Of course, The Betrayer keeps some Healing potions with him, just in case. But generally the poisons are simply used to force your enemies into melee combat, or decrease their ability to fight. Archers are the only exception for this rule. The best way to deal with those is using Damage Health poisons combined with your bow of choice (We used the best we could find, and the Bound Bow as soon as we reached 50 conjuration). And indeed, since we don’t use quiet casting, you should have your bound bow or other bow equipped as standard, only switching to the Bound Sword as soon as  you forced your enemies into melee combat. Now we know this, it’s time to learn about general combat. Note that this covers both the scenario’s where you open up after using the bow, and another way to deal with combat by having the Bound Sword already equipped.

    This is what happens to people who question his motives

    When engaging in direct combat, it’s basic shield and sword play. When able to sneak however, you should start off with picking off the weaker enemies, and resurrecting them, followed up by charging the remaining enemies. This way you have the maximum efficiency of both your Conjuration as your Sneaking skills. This results in a sneak build with still some casual combat going on. And while you’re not doing any of these, you’re either leading the guard. Or secretly making money off the Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary.

    Before joining however, you rely much more on sneak, as your character still refuses to use Necromancy. This is why we took archery, to allow you to pick off the weaker enemies from a distance as well! For the perks taken, here’s a perk spread of level 50

     Thanks to Golden Fool for the awesome Perk Spread!

    The equipment of The Betrayer is quite predictable. As he is a guard (or at least he pretends to be a guard) he wears the armor of the Pale Guards. For the weapons, the bound sword is your best friend. Amulets and rings are optional and can be whatever you personally prefer really. Cost Reduction on Conjuration can be useful, but so can Fortify One-handed. It’s really up to you what you prefer, if you’re more playing like an assassin, it’s not that useful to have Fortify Health, while the warrior type may prefer this. Here’s a spread of the equipment used.

    Thanks for Golden Fool for the equipment spread! 

    When roleplaying The Betrayer, there are two phases of the build. Before and after giving in to the Night Mother’s voice. Before joining the Dark Brotherhood, you simply travel around Dawnstar, clearing dungeons. When there is a problem in town, you go to help. When in this phase, you don’t perk anything in the conjuration perk but the Bound Tree, as you refuse to keep yourself busy with things like necromancy. Quests that you can do at this point are the Civil War, as you are helping Ulfric regain his throne. You can also do the College of Winterhold to increase your effectiveness with Conjuration, without perking it. This allows you to level faster.

    Once you join the Dark Brotherhood and get spoken to by the Night Mother, you give in the the madness and start perking necromancy. Because the members of the Dark Brotherhood have showed you that this is just as useful as other magic. Thus you can now use the tactic to be less sneaky, and more… straightforward with your oponents.

    And with this the build ends! Our contest entrance from Team Teejega! I speak for both of us when I say that I enjoyed working together, and that the result was satisfying. We hope that, if you should decide to play this build, have as much fun as we had playtesting it and working together for the concept for this build. 

    Once more special thanks to Golden Fool for the amazing Perk and Equipment Spread!

  • Member
    August 25, 2015

    Glad to see the build up! It was a real pleasure working with you Teej! I hope we at least accomplished a somewhat decent build for this contest 

  • August 25, 2015

    I won't be able to read the whole thing before going to sleep so I'll read it in depth later. Nice work on the presentation for one. You've really done a nice job of balancing a nice look with simplicity (Which in my opinion is just as good as all the fancy self-made art pieces and ENB Screenshots). I especially like the Cooltext, I always have trouble getting a nice looking but legible one.

    Yep that's all for now. Expect a longer review when I wake up. (Leave a comment on my page reminding me if you want). I'll save off on the like for now but from what I read I definitely will like it 

  • Member
    August 25, 2015

    I'll echo Dragonborn's appreciation of the presentation. I also like the concept of the character's semi-two-faced metamorphosis. 

    I am wondering if you had any thoughts about adding a special tactics/abilities section? You mention alchemy in gameplay, but offer no specific potions / ingredients you prefer. Maybe some room for improvement there?

    Is the first picture too dark? Or is that just my screen?

    Either way, I enjoyed the build. Kudos!

  • Member
    August 26, 2015

    Very Interesting here! an everyday person becoming corrupted turning into the very thing he despises. Like Jekyll and Hyde. You  First time I've read a build like this. Fascinating!

    You know on a related note, your backstory on how this character gets promoted as he becomes more and more corrupt couldn't be any more realistic! it speaks for so many people in reality. Genius! 

  • Member
    August 26, 2015
    The corrupt guard concept is pretty cool, and going from infiltrating to running the DB is a nice twist. LOVE builds that use bound weapons, and going shoutless is also an uncommon slant... very cool :D Good work guys!
  • September 5, 2015

    Good job overall Teej and Omega.