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WiP Character Build: The Summer Wolf (Survival Mode)

Tags: #Character Build Scout  #Roleplaying  #Mods  #Long-Chapper Build  #Judged Contest  #Totems of the Seasons Series 
  • June 7, 2018

    Alright, you may recognize the art style if you are familiar with my Winter Bear, a build that uses Survival Mode and a quest to trigger the build's story arc. A conversation with Paws (I highly recommend you have a nice long discussion with Paws, creative things often spring from it) became a well-spring for turning the Winter Bear into a series of builds that take a look at the Seasons, Atmoran Totems, animal characteristics, patron cities, and different "trigger quests" as a means for four Nord builds to experience the Civil War in very different ways. The first build in the series, though, at the time, I didn't think it would become a series was the Winter Bear, a hardened battle veteran who is triggered by the Missing in Action Quest to come out of hybernation and liberate Skyrim. 

    Blah, blah blah blah, I talk too much when I should keep shit simple. As with my Winter Bear, she's based around the mechanics of survival mode, but you can play her Vanilla. Because now she is a Pure build. 

    Recommended Mods

    Rustic Weathers and Lighting - Make your Skryim bleak and harsh to match the gameplay!

    M Rens Skyrim Nature Overhaul - Makes Skyrim's vegitation prettier without your console lagging. 

    ELE Interior Lighting Overhaul - Now make the interiors of Skyrim bleak and dark. 

    Immersive Citizens AI Overhaul - Because npc should do interesting things. 

    Realistic Conversations - Because Suusi Long-Summer isn't the center of Nirn.

    Better Horses - Because at 9500 septims a pop, you need this mod. :D Makes horses a wee bit faster and essential and also not prone to attack everything in sight.

    Build Proper

    Race: Nord

    Gender: female

    Name: Suusi Long-Summer

    Season: Summer

    Totem: Wolf, Suusi is Finnish for Wolf in some dialects, it is also susi, so depends. It can also mean "mouth" from what I understand.

    Patron city: Solitude eventually, but starts off in Riften.

    Blessing: Kynareth and Mara

    Power: Battlecry

    Backstory: The gist of it. This quest uses Angeline Morrard's miscelaneous quest in Solitude as the trigger for the build's participation in the Civil War. Suusi Long-Summer grew up poor in Solitude, living on the streets. Family was known for not fighting in the Great War, hence the name Long-Summer, which in some Medieval circles implied a lack of battle prowess because summer is a time of plenty and ease. She was friends with Angeline's daughter, Fura,  and both she and Fura ended up joining the Legion. She deserts though when the fighting gets too intense for her and with nowhere else to go, she turns bandit/scavenger. We see these guys, the random encounter scavenger also the band of bandits impersonating the legion. Both random encounters are basises for this build as there is always a magic user in the second group that impersonates the Legion. So, Suusi and her band of scavengers come across the battle where Angeline Morrard's daughter dies. Yeah, she scavenges the corpse of her once dear friend. She is then caught as a deserter and taken to Helgen for execution. Nope, definitely not the illustrious beginning the Winter Bear has. She is surly and hard, with a chip on her shoulder. 

    Standing Stone: Steed, warrior, or lady, these are the stones of the summer months. 

    Difficulty: Expert, can bump it up to master for a challenge. 

    Major Skills: One-handed, unperked archery for dragons, unperked restoration. 

    Roleplaying and Quests: Bandit bounties, misc quests, anything to survive in this new harsh world of my mod creation. I did the main quest up until Dragon Rising just to get dragons in the air,  but she's not Dragonborn. I highly recommend the Thieves Guild, but don't progress in the mainquest of the Guild. Instead, only do the minor jobs for Delvin and Vex. She's not guildmaster material, in fact, she's not even very good at that. Have her get caught several times. Jail and her are friends. When a job finally takes her to Solitude, that's where the fun begins. What I love is that you're relying on chance to take her back to Solitude, so your level when you get there may be different. Seeing Angeline changes everything. Do Morrard's quest and after that she is obligated to join the Legion, for real this time. She stops her life of cowardice and becomes the Summer Wolf. The rest of her story is about becoming what Fura Morrard wanted to be. Help the people of Solitude, take no more jobs for the Thieves Guild. Optional is the Dark Brotherhood branch. It really depends on how your quests work out. Destroying the Dark Brotherhood would be great, especiallly if her Guild jobs take her to Windhelm before Solitude. I can totally see her killing Astrid out of sheer luck and fear than anything else. Civil War for the Legion with the Shield of Solitude being a major rallying point. 

    Gear: A mashup of heavy and light armor, but possibly looking at the Savior's Hide, stormcloak officer's bracers, Heavy helmet and heavy boots. Other armor choice is studded imperial armor or dawnguard light, the red variety.  

    Weapons: She broke her oath, both to her friend and her Legion, she will not break it again, so Bolar's Oath Blade is what I want to use, though I will also have a mace and an axe in inventory for the right hand. The stamina drain is great for most of the enemies she'll encounter and the fear enchantment will actually benefit her since she caps so low. On the off-hand, the Blade of Woe.

    Follower: She's a lone wolf. Save her horse.

    Lycanthropy: This is a wolf who doesn't need lycanthropy to be a wolf. In fact she will probably strip the skin of one and wear it. 

    To do: A lot, but not as much now that I nixed the overhaul. I'll be streaming this build on occasion, so I'll let you know. 

    The Long-Chapper

     

  • Member
    June 8, 2018
    Cool start/theory I haven’t actually ever seen a survival mode build not sure if there’s is another one in the vault I am intrigued let me know how goes.
  • June 8, 2018

    Heck yeah. I'm down and it's looking good. So much mod stuff for now so I'll need to see some story stuff before having a proper opinion. But yeah, looks good, sounds good. Not sure if I've got anything else to say for now, you know. I've been meaning to delve into TGIO, I was super interested in it back when it came out but then ended up over on the Xbox and never got around to it.

  • June 8, 2018

    Zalyius said: Cool start/theory I haven’t actually ever seen a survival mode build not sure if there’s is another one in the vault I am intrigued let me know how goes.

    My Winter Bear is the first Survival Mode build on the vault. It's a challenging build that only perks one skill; Two-handed.  

    The Winter Bear

  • June 8, 2018

    Dragonborn2021 said:

    Heck yeah. I'm down and it's looking good. So much mod stuff for now so I'll need to see some story stuff before having a proper opinion. But yeah, looks good, sounds good. Not sure if I've got anything else to say for now, you know. I've been meaning to delve into TGIO, I was super interested in it back when it came out but then ended up over on the Xbox and never got around to it.

     

    Oh yeah, more than likely, I will approach the backstory in much the same way I approached Tysnal's story from the Winter Bear, so you will get more story. But because it's a relatively new mod for Vaulters, I'll need to go into the mechanics of TGIO pretty heavily. All I'm saying is that daggers get their due and he has removed the crutch of elemental protection for shields. On the plus side, you can deflect arrows from the beginning if you block right and the deflect perk simply increases your chances of a successful deflect significantly. Archery now also consumes stamina, so the concepts are not new to someone who has say played Wildcat, Smilodon, or Requiem or YASH in that respect. Armor means something now, but you really need to choose light or heavy and you get the protection from heavy, but dammit, with how heavy heavy armor is, you will be looting a lot less. I am playing this on the mod's default difficulty. It was designed for Legendary difficulty, doesn't  make it such a health sponge fest,  but don't think it's some status or something, he just designed the mod that way. 

    The little camping tools mod is rather cool. I restarted the game last night and managaged to scrounge up enough raw materials, spending most of what I made from selling stuff from Helgen, to construct a makeshift shelter kinda in that empty little room near the drawbridge just before you enter Whiterun with an alchemy table, cooking spit, some storage, and a little bedroll. I have Eli's tundra homestead from the CC installed, but I'd like to avoid a house like that so early in the game and opt for either makeshift housing, Lund's hut, Katla's farm, or one of the hearthfire homesteads built small until I can afford Proudspire, which god, will be sooooo expensive.  Who knows, what I may do instead is make a seperate thread in Modder's Conclave explaining the mod in detail and then linking that to the build so yeah, it's not so full of mod. 

    Coincidently, Deebs. YASH2 Lite has made it to Ps4, with a survival mode edition. I almost used that mod instead, but then I read the author added extra carry weight and said no. I may try it for the magic characters for this series though, because YASH does mess with magic perks and I want to try that. 

    YASH2 LITE 

  • June 8, 2018

    Oh and here is a video that looks at TGIO. The video maker's one complaint is the lack of modularity. Depends on your outlook. I personally like having one mod that does it all. 

     

     

  • June 14, 2018

    Level 18 and FINALLY alchemy is at 25 and she's done perking that skill. Whew, took training, which at 1000 a pop is no joke, making and selling sheeeet potions and gathering ingredients to repeat the process, all why not doing it in one session so it's not "grindy".  This is a dabbler build, more skills, lightly perked rather than one or two trees dominate. It will well-duplicate her "greenness" but at the same time, once she hones how to use these skills, she'll be deadly. And I actually figured out how to pretty much get her experience in Vanilla too. 

    Perk and do crafting skills first. She'll be pretty gimped combat-wise and on a higher difficulty she'll feel it, so I'll make some notes in the build itself for Vanilla or people only using CC. 

    Grabbed Faendal as a temporary follower, but I'll ditch him for Benor later. She's just arrived at Riften, home of the thieves guild and yay, Maul told me about Auretino. With a strong enough combo of poisons, she may be able to take down Astrid and get the blade of woe.

  • June 20, 2018

    Doing thieves guild jobs. Haven't received one for Solitude yet, but I got the Blade of Woe. Damn, what a fight, Astrid is no joke with this mod installed. Suusi really had to fight like a wolf to get the upper hand. And... to be honest, the weapon is underwhelming with this mod installed, only Elvish in quality and it weighs more, but I'm gonna stick with the weapon, especially for what it symbolizes. I'm curious about the Razor, so I may for interest check out the game's unique daggers. I'm also curious still about the Savior's Hide and Linwe's hood. I already found her final gear for her gauntlets, I have Immersive patrols installed and stumbled across a stormcloak/Imperial. Imperial officer's gauntlets look awesome, like claws. Can't beat the look and I was able to buy a grand soul gem and enchant it (unperked) with fortify one-handed. 

  • June 26, 2018

    I'm not liking that she's crafting so much, this is the problem with big overhauls like TGIO and YASH, they almost force it to survive, Requiem did the same thing. Rethinking this, so decided to pull from the competition. I am still a huge fan of the concept and all the seasons actually, but I may try something different. The Winter Bear was simply straight up Vanilla with Survival Mode and yet it was so satisfying. Sometimes less is more. 

  • June 30, 2018

    Restarted her and woah, much happier, even streamed the beginnings of the build on Twitch. I shall make the edits appropriately tomorrow, build's fat has been trimmed and it's playing, at least I think it's playing great. Who knows? Probably people watching my stream were laughing the whole time at my lack of skillz.