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WiP Build: The Soul Leach (Modded)

  • January 27, 2019

    This is my first build (on this site)! I hope I can nail my presentation and make it look as good as some others I've seen like ones from Noodles. It's an idea I've had for awhile, inspired by something I saw on Pinterest. My goal is to create something unique in the way the character is played. You won't have a single perk in any directly damaging skill tree and we'll see how that works as I test the mechanics. This character will be a combination of a merchant, grotesque despite his charm, and a soul stealer, affluent despite his darkness.

    The gameplay style is a relaxed puppet master, with many of your trapped souls being forced to either fight for you or fuel your enchantments. Through certain mods I hope to attain a combat style wherein you can overwhelm your enemies with a single spell and the right auto-triggered abilities. The Ritual and Lady stones will play a big part in this, giving you passive summons (dominated souls) and Apocalypse's "Ocato's Recital" spell is another important factor. Additionally, some unique enchantments from Summermyst and the right Ordinator perks will make you an even greater commander. Basically, this build would be nothing without Enaisaion's mods. I will cover the mods in depth below.

    The roleplay style is a cross of mercantilism and magic. You steal people's very life force and souls for your financial gain through enchanting. Your opulent clothing and silver tongue contrast the dark leach within you. Dealing with stolen goods on the black market and manipulating shopkeepers to your will can help ensure you live a life of luxury, owning several estates across Skyrim. Basically, you'll do anything for money and influence, but siphoning souls is such fun and without a doubt your favorite method. Thus you are known as:

    Now, before getting into the meat and potatoes of the build, I'll cover the mod requirements. There are five mods essential to this build, and one completely optional mod.

        Andromeda - Unique Standing Stones of Skyrim  

    This mod is essential for its changes to both the Ritual and the Lady stone. This fantastic mod changes the blessings of each of Skyrim's thirteen standing stones. This build utilizes the Ritual and Lady stones' automatic summoning in conjunction with the Aetherial Crown to help build a soulless spirit army.

        - Apocalypse - Magic of Skyrim -

    This spell mod adds plenty of awesome new spells into the game, but we're only concerned with four. Ocato's Recital, Spell Twine, Soul Cloak, and Spectral Warband give us the right tools for the job. Ocato's Recital allows us to queue up three spells that cast for free when entering combat. Paired with Spell Twine, you can tie in three beneficial effects to be added when those three spells are cast. Soul Cloak is simply a tool for collecting souls from all nearby deaths rather than having to cast soul trap multiple times. And lastly (and this part still needs testing) Spectral Warband allows for the creation of more allies in combat by fabricating illusions of your summoned allies. 

        - Summermyst - Enchantments of Skyrim -

    Summermyst is an outstanding mod that adds all sorts of new and exciting enchantments into the game on top of the host of Vanilla ones. While I'll cover the enchantments needed for the build later, I'll og over a few just to demonstrate its necessity. Soul Harvest lets your clothing absorb soul energy and unleash it after gaining so much. King of the Lost adds to the ranks of your spirit army with an immortal ghost. Siphon Health absorbs health from enemies near you, useful since you won't have any targeted damaging abilities.

        - Ordinator - Perks of Skyrim -

    The last hard requirement, Ordinator is a perk overhaul that completely changes the way Skyrim is and can be played. That is why it's a requirement. This build won't function without perks like Vancian Magic, allowing you to cast a certain number of spells for free, or the many new enchanting perks, which will allow your enchanting skill to go beyond normal limits.
        - Imperious - Races of Skyrim - 

    Imperious is a great race overhaul mod that is needed for the Altmer ability Contingency, but with a couple small tweaks to stats and gameplay it could be left out. With Imperious's change to each race's abilities and powers, the Altmer gain an increase the potency of their enchantments. This is good with all the enchanting involved. Altmer also gain an ability where their skills become stronger upon reaching level 100. This is good for Illusion, which will be powerleveled to 100. Contingency is the new Altmer racial ability, but I will be covering that later.

          Cloaks of Skyrim -

    This mod is totally optional and really it could be any cloak mod. The purpose of this is to give us an additional clothing piece to enchant and might as well let it be a fancy cloak. 

     

    Class: Puppet Master

    Morality: Neutral Evil

    Race: Imperious Altmer

    Stats: All health

    Stone: Mage to Lady and Ritual

    Powers/Abilities: Contingency, Prowler's Profit, Requiem, Eclipse

    Shouts: Summon Durnehviir, Become Ethereal, Battle Fury

    Spells: Ocato's Recital, Spell Twine, Spectral Warband, Soul Cloak, Muffle, Invisibility

    Major Skills: Illusion, Enchanting, Speech

    Minor Skills: Alteration, Conjuration

    Character Customization: A character's appearance is, of course, not the most crucial part of a build, but can definitely help capture the essence and benefit the roleplay. The Sou Leach is imposing, but sickly. He is tall with sharp, srtiking facial features, but thin and grey-skinned with black eyes. I use RaceMenu so I was able to make him taller than usual and give him a sick grey skin tone, but without that mod the lightest skin tone would work and you'll be tall anyway by being an Altmer. I turned the weight slider all the way down, heightened the cheekbones and narrowed the jaw, then chose the completely black eyes. 

     

    Gameplay is one of the most important aspects of character building. What offensive and defensive capabilities will you have and what weapons and spells will you use to fight? In this case, none. Rather than fighting directly, summons do all the work, and you don't even have to actively summon them. The whole combat strategy relies on three main things: The Aetherial Crown, The Ritual Stone, and The Lady Stone. 

    Ritual Stone: The Ritual Stone is perhaps the most important aspect of this build's gameplay. With the Andromeda mod, the stone has two abilities, Mara's Mercy and Mara's Tears, and an unlockable power, Requiem. To get the additional power you must discover all thirteen stones. With Mara's Mercy you can summon up to four spirits from the violently slain corpses of your last battle. Mara's Tears can create a corpse, but that isn't of any use. Requiem allows you to power up your summoned spirits once per day, granting them 1000 points of health and a 50% increase to attack speed for 45 seconds. This will give you a small group of captured souls to serve you in each battle.

    Lady Stone: With Andromeda the Lady Stone summons a lunar familiar to fight for you. Essentially you have a sabre cat soul to add to your ranks of spirits given by the Ritual Stone. This lunar familiar is summoned every time you enter combat and lasts for 60 seconds. The Lady Stone also grants the ability Premonition, which highlights an enemy that could kill you with their next strike, slowing them and reducing their armor by 500 points. This will allow your "souldiers" (see what I did there?) and lunar familiar to take them out more easily. Lastly, the Lady Stone's unlockable ability is Eclipse, which allows you to target a specific enemy for your lunar familiar to attack once per day, to whom it deals 300% more damage and from whom it takes 50% less damage. 

    Aetherial Crown: I don't really need to explain the Aetherial Crown, as I'm sure everyone already knows what it does. With it, you can use the Ritual and Lady Stones together. I was afraid that the powers would cancel out because there were too many summons and only one of them would work, but after testing, I can confirm that four spirits and the luanr familiar will be summoned, giving you a small army. You'll also have a spectral shadow of yourself fighting, your own soul torn from your body, due to King of the Lost, but I'll cover that when I get to the enchantments.

    With those three things working together, all you really need to do is sit back and watch as your army takes on your enemies and maybe use the daily powers if they seem to be having a hard time. Next I'll cover the main spells: Ocato's Recital, Spell Twine, and Spectral Warband, and the Altmer racial ability Contingency.

    Ocato's Recital: Ocato's Recital is one of my favorite spells added by Apocalypse. It stores up to three beneficial, self targeted spells to be cast for free upon entering combat. I opted for Soul Cloak, Muffle, and Invisibility. Soul Cloak is another Apocalypse spell. It works like soul trap, but rather than having to repeatedly target and cast, it will capture the souls of any enemy that dies around you. Muffle and Invisibility I chose so I could disappear at the beginning of combat and stay out of the fray while my minions did the work. 

    Spell Twine: This spell will work well in conjunction with Contingency and Ocato's Recital. This spell adds effects that are activated when certain spells are cast, up to three spells. Settinng it to the same spells as Ocato's Recital gives you these effects whenever those spells are autocast. You can also tie in these effects with the spells you set up with Contingency. The effect needed for this build is Flow. Each stack gives 20% spell cost reduction for 5 seconds. Putting that on all three of the spells will help with casting Spectral Warband.

    Contingency: The racial ability for Altmers from Imperious allows them to weave spells into an autocast trigger whenever certain conditions are met. I'm not sure how many spells it can be used on yet, but I hope at least three. If so, tying it to the same three spells as Spell Twine will give you the three stacks of Flow everytime you meet the Contingency condition. Setting the conditon to be lowering then raising your spells makes it easy to get those three stacks.

    Spectral Warband: Another Apocalypse spell, this master level Illusion spell summons copies of each of your allies in combat. I have tested this and it will get rid of the lunar familiar, but I think it will be worth it to have your King of the Lost and Ritual Stone effects doubled. Using it wil lgive you ten allies rather than six. Flow and Fortify Illusion enchantments will help with casting this since you won't have very high magicka. 

    I have a lot of testing still to do, but this image will become my perkspread when I figure out which perks I'll need. I'm still not even certain that Spectral Wwarband will be necessary. The build might be strong enough without it.

  • February 10, 2019

    Added new content to this! I have the gameplay section like 80% done now and I finished the basic character info section. Please let me know of any glaring typos (I'm bad at typing) or formatting errors so I can attempt to fix them.

  • February 10, 2019

    Ah, before I say anything I do want to apologize for not dropping in earlier mate. Anyway, it's looking really interesting. The flow between each part of the gameplay is just amazing and creates a really fun looking character concept. Definitely an interesting build and I can't wait to see more :D

  • Member
    February 11, 2019
    Holy smokes. I’ve seen an enormous number of sneaky Illusion/Conjuration builds that use Enchanting on this web site, but this sucker takes that build type and makes something completely unique with it. I’m excited to see where this is going to go!
  • Member
    February 11, 2019
    Oh, and Contingency only gives you two spells with its effect, one for each hand.