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Character Build: The Keerilth

Tags: #Character Build Dual-Wield  #Character Build Bound Weapons  #Character Build Vampire  #Race:Bosmer  #Rank:Legendary  #Hall of Fame Build  #Build of the Week 
  • September 2, 2012

    Revamp for my favorite vamp playthrough! I posted this build awhile ago and I'm happy to say it reached decent success, but I want to see if I could push it to the next level. As some of you may know, this build was inspired by (obviously) the Keerilth vampires of Valenwood, first mentioned in the book, Immortal Blood. Set apart from the usual vampire with the unique ability of control over mist. The Keerilth is a vampire barbarian found in the misty forests of Valenwood. They are noted for their amazing ability to transform into a cloud of mist and manifesting the mist into weapons and armor. The Keerilth is an extremely predatory creature of instinct, stalking its prey before striking from the shadows.

     

    Race: Bosmer Vampire

    Skills: Conjuration, One-Handed, Illusion, Sneak, Enchanting, and Alteration.

    Stone: Shadow Stone- Great for ambushes, combined with the Muffle spell, you become a non-existant shadow, unseeable and completely silent.

    Shouts: Become Ethereal fits this perfectly. From representing the Keerilth's mist form to allow sudden dual wield power attacks to escaping by jumping off cliffs. My new favorite shout!

    Equipment: The Mourner's Clothes, Miraak's Boots (they have an armor rating but don't interfere with Mage Armor), Ulfric's Bracers, Ring of Namira, any circlet and necklace.

    Suggested Enchantments: Fortify Conjuration, Illusion, or Alteration. Muffle. Fortify One-Handed.

    The Build

                  Conjuration is an important part of this build, it gives us a very important tool, Bound Swords! They're completely weightless which allows for a ton of power attacks, are only novice level spells, give you a huge amount of XP, and, of course, are of Daedric quality! This is incredibly important as I didn't take Smithing, nor did I ever touch a forge or a workbench, which was very satisfying. It's also good to note that even though I didn't put any perks into Atromancy or Necromancy, the Frost Atronach is still very powerful, especially due to it's ground pound attack that will stagger anything in the game!

               Illusion will allow us to get off sneak attacks and ambush our enemies at very early levels. You could make an argument that I wasted 2 perks in this tree by later levels, but I think 'wasting' 2 measly perks is worth being able to get off sneak attacks by level 1. Very unperked and very straightforward use of this tree, but this skill is critical nonetheless.

              One-Handed is used to increase our damage done with the Bound Swords as well as increase our attack speed by 35%. It gives us access to Fighting Stance which reduces our power attack cost to only around 30 stamina points. The Critical Charge is mainly used in combination with the Silent Roll perk in the Sneak tree, this combo will give us huge power behind our first strike! The Dual Savagery perk (dual wielding power attacks do 50% more damage) is a very important perk, especially since we aren't taking Smithing or using self-enchanted weapons. This perk (and build itself!) is increased even further with the Dragon Aspect shout (Explained in the Combat Section).

              I debated on putting perks into Sneak as my detectability was already covered by the Muffle spell, but the call of 6x damage, Silent Roll, and Shadow Warrior was too strong to refuse. I already covered the use of Silent Roll and 6x damage is self-explanatory, so let's talk about Shadow Warrior. Turn invisible for 1 second while shrouded in something that resembles mist? Yes, please, thank you very much. This allows to perform sneak attacks in mid combat, it also gives us time to pop either our Shadow Stone power or the Embrace of Shadows to slink back into the darkness once more.

              I debated on Enchanting, I was pretty powerful without. You might call this a late game add-on, and you'd be right. But that doesn't mean it isn't a very powerful add-on that allows us to focus on magicka less. Enchanting is very easy to level up late game due to my hoarding soul gems and the auto-soul trap ability the Bound Swords get. I just took ranks in Enchanter and up to Corpus Enchanter, Extra Effect would've been massive overkill! With fortifying my magical schools, muffling my footsteps (thus removing the need to use Muffle), and increasing my already massive damage output; this really took some weight off my shoulders.

              Alteration, possibly my favorite magical skill. Alteration will act as our 'mist skin' so to speak. It gives us a pretty decent armor rating while letting us be completely weightless. You may have noticed I didn't take Restoration or Alchemy, Alteration's weightless armor allowed me to duck, dodge, and, if the situation called for it, bailing the hell out of there! It also gives us some fun little utility spells, I had a lot of fun with Detect Life and using it as my advanced vampire senses. 

    Combat:

       Open Combat is largely spent dodging around and getting in fast swipes before backing out of reach. My main strategy was striking fast, staggering opponents with my weightless weapons, dodging attacks with my weightless armor, and slinking back into the shadows. Become Ethereal is used for a plethora of uses. In combat it is used to dodge attacks, escape off cliffs, and emergency power attacks. I'll explain the last bit, low health, no invisibility powers left, no corpses of which to feed, and one powerful enemy left, like a Bandit Chief. Just Become Ethereal, wait for an opening (right after they try to attack) and perform (a free of cost) dual wield power attack, staggering them just in case you need to perform another one. Perhaps my favorite addition from Dragonborn is the amazing Dragon Aspect shout. It increases your armor by 100 (this brings it up to 400 AR), it reduces shout cooldown by 20% (which lets us use our key shout, Become Ethereal, more often), it adds 25% frost and fire resistance (very helpful for a vampire), the ancient Dragonborn (he can serve as another distraction and he doesn't care how many Conjuration perks you don't have), and lastly, 25% more damage from power attacks, sounds meager at first, but when combined with a dual wield power attack and the Dual Savagery perk, it's a total of 75% more damage!

       In Stealth, your main priority is to measure out the distance for your Critical Roll Charge. This will either one shot them or at the very least damage them heavily and stagger them (thus allowing you to hit them again, so a free kill either way). Infiltration is done easily by using Muffle+Invisibilty, I typically use this to get right behind the strongest enemy in the area, and do several dual wielding power attacks (normally the first three strikes will be stealth strikes thus doing 6x times damage). Shadow Warrior is typically used to lose enemies or get sneak attacks mid combat, but my favorite use is using it to go straight into the Shadow Stone, which provides us to easily sneak attack them, or just chill out and let our health regenerate. The Mistborn flurry (my stupid personal name for the not-exactly-special-move, Dragon Aspect+Dual Savagery+Dual Wielding power attack) becomes even more powerful (specifically 6x times more powerful!).

    Special thanks to TZ for the awesome video!

    Level 45 Perk Spread:

    Conjuration: Novice, Mystic Binding, Soul Stealer, Oblivion Binding.

    One-Handed: 5/5 Armsman, Fighting Stance, Critical Charge, 2/2 Dual Flurry, Dual Savagery.

    Illusion: Novice-Apprentice, Animage, Kindred Mage, Quiet Casting.

    Alteration: Novice-Expert, 3/3 Mage Armor, 3/3 Magic Resistance, Stability.

    Sneak: 1/5 Stealth, Backstab, Muffled Movement, Light Foot, Silent Roll, Silence, Shadow Warrior.

    Enchanting: 5/5 Enchanter, Insightful Enchanter, Corpus Enchanter.

    Closing Statements:

    This was my first posted build, and it does hold a special place in my heart (even if it isn't my favorite build). Thanks to everyone who enjoyed the build.

    And a special thanks to Ponty, for the pics as they actually bear a lot of resemblance to my personal Keerilth, I think it's the mohawk, and Vix, for partly inspiring the mechanics of this build, without him this would probably not be here.

    For anyone who says Bound Weapons and Flesh spells aren't very good as endgame weapons/armor, I cordially invite you to try this build on Master and see just how powerful these skills actually are.

  • September 2, 2012

    Nice build, its pretty cool that all the vampire factions are being posted. I was planning on making a build for The Cyrodillic Vampyrum Order, but I couldn't find out enough about them to do it. I hope yours will be a lot better than what mine would of been. +1

  • September 2, 2012

    Matthew, I think you made a very fun playable build with just a little information.  I am also glad that you made this one a bit more "beast-like" with the cannibalism and tons 'o blood!  So as far as mandatory quests, you would suggest going through the Thieves Guild?  Anything else you suggest?  Very nice build, Matthew...I do likes it!  

  • September 2, 2012

    Thanks Kyne! Well I would say Thieves Guild is recommended, mainly for Chillrend( strong as Dragon Bone sword and has the icy mist aura and good effects), Nightingale Blade( it's effect and look are very vampiric), as well as the bow, and Nightingale Powers( I would choose Subterfuge, as a replacement for illusion). You can do the Vamps, I just chose not to, but the benefits would be really good, Vamp Lord, Potions of Blood, blocking the sun. Definitely join the College for new spells. You can complete, as Morokei would be quite a prize. You're choice there, same with the DB, up to you. No Companions(faction), not up to you :P I really just run around and kill stuff. Oh yeah, if you find a random dungeon, and a quest giver is inside, complete it, then kill them and eat them, I even killed Namira's followers ;)

  • September 8, 2012
    Wood elves are still pussies. =X
  • September 8, 2012

    At least I don't play a race that sleeps all day and licks itself :P

  • September 8, 2012

    Perhaps, but Keerilth>Khajiit>Bosmer =P

  • September 8, 2012

    Some vampires consider themselves separate from their base race. And please, what can a Khajiit vampire do? Keerilths can dissolve into mist. Khajiit vampires... sleep 18 hours and lick themselves :P In all seriousness I would really like to see an RP heavy Khajiit Vampire build.

  • November 13, 2012

    Ok, just updated this. Added a new picture (courtesy of Narmis), changed the perks around, improved the strategies, changed the introduction, et cetera, et cetera.

  • November 13, 2012

    Not really part of the lore per say, but I kinda imagined the Frost Atronach as "frozen mist monster." I actually meant to mention Vampire Lord Honestly, enchanting WAS a late game add-on, but I could add in the enchantments I used. I really only mentioned regularly used shouts, but I probably should put in Storm Call. Yeah, I didn't do DG until VERY late game, despite having it I'll improve it a little bit more, thanks for the suggestions Ben Oh, on healing, I really didn't need to that often, between turning ethereal and the cannibalistic regen. I didn't really need it (though I only played on Expert). You could use Restoration, which would allow for Necromage. Or alchemy which could help your survivability.