It was an important time for the tribe, Naming Day was upon them. As per ritual all the new hatchlings were gathered to recieve the Hist's sap and get a name. The Hist would reveal the role, appearance and ability of each hatchling. That is, it would have if not for the fiery explosion eminating from the second to last hatchling, killing an elder and the unlucky follow-up. A name was given to the young Argonian, Ash-Scale and branded eternally unlucky, most likely dangerous.
The leader of the tribe, a most renowned witch doctor, took the little thing under his wing in the hope that his skills might be able to balance it's unstable, hidden potential. Years of secluded study, meditation and ingestion of varies elixirs were planned out for him. Things looked great, right up until the point where his fiery ego got the better of him and he lost control completely. Once he regained consciousness he found himself lying in the smoldering remnants of the witch doctor's hut. In his shame and grief he did the only thing he could think of...run.
The Ash-Scale
When fully released, woe unto you
Fire is the theme here if you haven't guessed it yet. Fire everywhere, but with a twist! The idea behind the build is to have a young Argonian with a tremendous untapped potential of virtually unlimited fire power. The way I simulated that is by making a "non-mage" who's magicka comes from (two) items instead of himself and is capable of enhancing fire spell damage or cast spells which he shouldn't be able to with drinking potions and the new Dragonborn powers that let him access his dormant powers.
The build is extremely opportunistic with it's wide spread and capable of doing almost anything. Sneaky sneaky? No problem. Toe to toe as a light armored knife fighter? Absolutely. Boom Boom spells? Yes!
Race; Only one option here, Argonian. I made mine as skinny as possible with a nice warm, earthly brown colour and red "eyeliner". Ash-Scale is a young Argonian, somewhat underdeveloped. The thin body in armor with the big head looks very gecko-like.
Stone; The Lord. He's a quite rare breed of Argonian, he deserves some status whether he knows it or not. It will go nicely with his perks and skills. Agent of Mara, the stone and 1/3 Magic Resistance brings it to a total of 50%. With the use of our homemade elixirs we can push it to the max whenever we need it.
Armor; The goal is to wrap ourself in a nice full set of Light Chitin or Morag Tong Armor. The organic look really fits an angry marsh dweller. Light Chitin is red and slightly more sturdy than Morag Tong, but the latter looks nice and muddy. I tend to carry both sets for whatever mood I'm in and variation. At the very early levels wear Leather Armor/Bracers/Boots with an Adept Hood. Easiest way to get the hood is by going to Markath and end the life of that silly Vigilant Tyranus who just has to stick his nose where it doesn't belong.
Enchants; Just because we're not "using" Enchanting or Smithing, does not mean you should not improve your armor/weapon. Improvements, no matter how tiny, get boosted a lot by Custom Fit, Matching Set and Assassin's Blade.
Use a Grand Soul gem to slap +20 magicka on your helm, gloves and -% cost on Alteration for your chest. If you're unable or can't be bothered to look for a Muffle enchant for the boots you'd have to spend an extra perk on Silence in the Sneak tree. There's no real rush for the enchants (because you dont rely on them) apart from Muffle, which is much easier to obtain at lower levels (10-20). At higher levels it gets pushed out of the possible inventory by enchants that are considered "more valuable" by the game.
Use Fiery Soul Trap for your dagger of choice. It's cheap, barely uses charges and still benefits from Augmented Flames. Having no enchanting and randomly finding an Ebony Dagger of the Inferno makes you really, really appreciate the find. I jumped up and down in my chair for a couple of minutes like a happy kid when i found it in one of my playthroughs.
Shouts; The only ones I actually used are Fire Breath and Dragon Aspect. Bend Will on a Fire breathing Dragon for epicness, but that's it. I could make up something fancy but the truth is that most of the time you could shout something it should be fire.
Level 50 perks
I've included a link as to show where your Ash-Scale should be at when you reach level 25 as I can imagine it's quite overwhelming with so many perk trees. Level 25 perk spread
Luckily for you the dear old witch doctor was well educated. Besides passing on his extensive knowledge of alchemy, he possesed quite the collection of books left behind long ago by the Imperials whenever they had the silly idea of building trading outposts or temples only to abandon them to the marsh. In particular about infamous objects with magical properties.
How it works
This build uses two specific magical items: Ring of the Erudite and the Necromancer's Amulet. Our flaming gecko will seek them out, no matter what the cost. The items will give him the magicka to let off some steam and relieve parts of the ever building pressure. The deaths of his tribe members weigh heavily on our young friend and he's quite determined to stay in control to the best of his abilities.
This is not a vampire build however, so cure yourself as soon as you have the ring. Their weakness to fire makes you sick to the stomach. No wonder Harkon only tells you afterwards.
These two items will be the base fuel on which your inner fire will burn. Combined both they will add a ludicrous amount of 150 magicka.
- With 15 levels of free magicka you can invest much more into health and stamina without losing the ability to cast.
- Recovery and the Ring of the Erudite will give you borderline obscene magicka regeneration, making sure you'll start a fight with a full blue bar.
- Respite nullifies the crippled stamina regen the amulet has and gives the Ash-Scale unlimited stamina reserves.
- Alchemy, in turn, will alleviate the health regen penalty with our "hist-concoctions" for when we really need Histskin, boost our fire damage with special fortification potions and weakness to fire poisons and super-charge our magicka regen in combat. Throw in a couple of paralyse poisons and you have quite a nasty party.
- The extra health combined with a Flesh spell and your peerless healing make you incredibly durable even without all those tasty Light Armor perks.
- Alteration has another very nice addition that goes absolutely beautifully with this build; Ash Shell. Don't want to fight everything? You dont have to! Shroud them in ash and focus on other things. One of the things that make me smile every time is to Ash Shell something, kill it's friends, drop back in sneak and stealth attack the crap out of it when it starts moving again.
It doesn't stop there though. Remember the amulet? Besides +50 magicka it also gives -25% cost on your Conjurations. When you get to Riverwood buy the Raise Zombie spell. The Necromancer's Amulet lets you use it quite easily without any perks (tbh it should have been on the amulet itself). Don't worry! This is not a zombie build. You'll only use that low level spell, no perks needed. Raise Zombie is a life saver at lower levels as you can resurrect something to take the heat off you. Restless Draugr casters and Death Hounds are my all time favourites. Obviously this has another purpose since you'll out-level the spell's use. If you actually use it regularly at your lower levels it will raise conjuration all the way to 40. With Conjuration at that level you'll be able to buy the Conjure Ash Spawn. Our big, fat magicka reserve will allow you to cast it whenever you feel like it without a single perk wasted.
Now the fiery Ash-Scale wearing the Necromancer's Amulet can raise burnt up dead people, how awesome is that! They are very resistant to fire (75%) so blast away with your spells.
Stats
Since we're getting 150 magicka from our two items we're sort of working backwards here. At level 20 you'll be sitting on roughly 320 magicka, 240 health and 120 stamina. At level 50 these numbers will look like this: 430 magicka, 400 health and 150 stamina. Remeber that these numbers are not set in stone. The massive healthpool will keep you alive and works nicely with Histskin. The stamina ended at 150 so that you can refill it in one cast of Close Wounds (raised with Regeneration) with very little wasted. At lower levels it will help you work with the damaged stamina regeneration untill you get Respite.
Being able to instantly refill all of your stamina means endless power attacks whenever you please and non-stop sprinting. When you're sprinting through the world with your healing spell out in third-person you look almost exactly like those lizards that run on water. Bonus!
I hope you have some buckets Hermy.
Powers and abilities
All the powers and abilities enhance either the fire damage output or work in tandem with the rest of his skillset. The best part of this build (I find) is that everything feels very "organic". None of it is absolutely necessary to function from the start according to the base we set out for the character and really defines the "growth" or "evolution" of our tiny Argonian friend as he travels around the world.
- The powers Secret of Arcana (30 seconds no magicka cost) and the Root of Power from the Tree Stone (75% less cost on spells for 1 minute) let you fully tap into your dormant powers and "hulk out" in a way that will have Alduin and Miraak run scared. Throw out multiple Firestorms, blast everything to bits with non-stop Incinerates or cover everything in Wall of Flames. These powers really don't care that you dont have all the Destruction perks. Burn it all!
- Agent of Mara for the passive 15% magic resistance, as stated above.
- Mora's Boon gives you a full reset which you can use either as a life-saver or to double your damage.
- The Flame Within from meditating with Paartunax on the word Yol gives 25% extra Fire Breath damage.
- Dragonborn Flame is the obvious choice from the Epistolary Acumen. Spawn a Fire Wyrm when you kill something with your Fire Breath, delicious.
- Seeker of Shadows from the book Sallow Regent. You were probably expecting the caster one, but this one will actually help us where we need it. +10% more effective stealth abilities translates into +10% on the Thief class trees. Slightly better potions, armor, stealth, etc. Pretty nifty.
All in all this has been an extremely fun character for me. The wide spread and variations of playstyle can carry it up way beyond level 50 without leaving a stale aftertaste.
The combinations are endless, from straight up casting boosted fire spells, to stealthing in invisible and burning the paralysed boss to a crisp, to classic spellblade fights casting and slashing with weakness to fire poisons while cloaked in flames. Choosing to either burn your entire magicka reserves while under the effect of a potion or whithering them down in a longer fight is up to you!
Miscellaneous info
I've had several playthroughs with multiple variations and tweaks before I finally made up my mind.
Any combination with Ahzidal's Ring of Arcana and/or Slow Time resulted in a completely broken and boring game (alchemy boosted Ignite spam).
The limited use of different Shouts is to make sure you use Fire Breath as much as possible. Dragon Aspect let's you breathe fire even more and boosts almost everything you do.
The only factions you'd have to seek out and join (unfortunately) are:
- The Companions, Proving Honor is needed for Fire Breath. It's best to get this out of the way as soon as possible since Farkas is an insufferable tool when it comes to sneaking.
- The College of Winterhold. The game forces us to atleast have a chat with Feralda if we want access to the higher level fire spells and/or ritual. You can find a free Flame Cloak spellbook on the beach east of Dawnstar, pick it up early. You'll be able to cast it a lot sooner before you even get to Adept Destruction.
- The Volkihar Vampires for the Rings of Blood Magic quest. Most of the time I immediately cure myself after getting it. Curing yourself is real easy. Any innkeeper has the rumour that Falion in Morthal is an expert on anything (un)dead, which leads to the Rising at Dawn quest. Getting the Black Soul gem is easy aswell. One of the first things you should have done is take the walk to Ironbind Barrow for the Fiery Soul Trap enchant. The last boss drops 2 Black Soul gems.
The quest to get your hands on the Necromancers Amulet can and should be done as soon as possible. Blood on the Ice is less buggy than people believe. The quest only starts when certain conditions are met;
- You have to enter the city between 7pm and 7am (after midnight)
- You have to have been to Windhelm area 3 times already (you can run between Windhelm stables and Brandy-Mug Farm)
- Tova Shatter-Shield and Arivanya need to be alive.
This pretty much covers it (I hope). Thanks for suffering through the text and if anything is not clear or you have suggestions/tips/flames do not hesitate. It has been very therapeutic for me writing this out, at least it won't haunt me in my dreams anymore.
It was an important time for the tribe, Naming Day was upon them. As per ritual all the new hatchlings were gathered to recieve the Hist's sap and get a name. The Hist would reveal the role, appearance and ability of each hatchling. That is, it would have if not for the fiery explosion eminating from the second to last hatchling, killing an elder and the unlucky follow-up. A name was given to the young Argonian, Ash-Scale and branded eternally unlucky, most likely dangerous.
The leader of the tribe, a most renowned witch doctor, took the little thing under his wing in the hope that his skills might be able to balance it's unstable, hidden potential. Years of secluded study, meditation and ingestion of varies elixirs were planned out for him. Things looked great, right up until the point where his fiery ego got the better of him and he lost control completely. Once he regained consciousness he found himself lying in the smoldering remnants of the witch doctor's hut. In his shame and grief he did the only thing he could think of...run.
The Ash-Scale
When fully released, woe unto you
Fire is the theme here if you haven't guessed it yet. Fire everywhere, but with a twist! The idea behind the build is to have a young Argonian with a tremendous untapped potential of virtually unlimited fire power. The way I simulated that is by making a "non-mage" who's magicka comes from (two) items instead of himself and is capable of enhancing fire spell damage or cast spells which he shouldn't be able to with drinking potions and the new Dragonborn powers that let him access his dormant powers.
The build is extremely opportunistic with it's wide spread and capable of doing almost anything. Sneaky sneaky? No problem. Toe to toe as a light armored knife fighter? Absolutely. Boom Boom spells? Yes!
Race; Only one option here, Argonian. I made mine as skinny as possible with a nice warm, earthly brown colour and red "eyeliner". Ash-Scale is a young Argonian, somewhat underdeveloped. The thin body in armor with the big head looks very gecko-like.
Stone; The Lord. He's a quite rare breed of Argonian, he deserves some status whether he knows it or not. It will go nicely with his perks and skills. Agent of Mara, the stone and 1/3 Magic Resistance brings it to a total of 50%. With the use of our homemade elixirs we can push it to the max whenever we need it.
Armor; The goal is to wrap ourself in a nice full set of Light Chitin or Morag Tong Armor. The organic look really fits an angry marsh dweller. Light Chitin is red and slightly more sturdy than Morag Tong, but the latter looks nice and muddy. I tend to carry both sets for whatever mood I'm in and variation. At the very early levels wear Leather Armor/Bracers/Boots with an Adept Hood. Easiest way to get the hood is by going to Markath and end the life of that silly Vigilant Tyranus who just has to stick his nose where it doesn't belong.
Enchants; Just because we're not "using" Enchanting or Smithing, does not mean you should not improve your armor/weapon. Improvements, no matter how tiny, get boosted a lot by Custom Fit, Matching Set and Assassin's Blade.
Use a Grand Soul gem to slap +20 magicka on your helm, gloves and -% cost on Alteration for your chest. If you're unable or can't be bothered to look for a Muffle enchant for the boots you'd have to spend an extra perk on Silence in the Sneak tree. There's no real rush for the enchants (because you dont rely on them) apart from Muffle, which is much easier to obtain at lower levels (10-20). At higher levels it gets pushed out of the possible inventory by enchants that are considered "more valuable" by the game.
Use Fiery Soul Trap for your dagger of choice. It's cheap, barely uses charges and still benefits from Augmented Flames. Having no enchanting and randomly finding an Ebony Dagger of the Inferno makes you really, really appreciate the find. I jumped up and down in my chair for a couple of minutes like a happy kid when i found it in one of my playthroughs.
Shouts; The only ones I actually used are Fire Breath and Dragon Aspect. Bend Will on a Fire breathing Dragon for epicness, but that's it. I could make up something fancy but the truth is that most of the time you could shout something it should be fire.
Level 50 perks
I've included a link as to show where your Ash-Scale should be at when you reach level 25 as I can imagine it's quite overwhelming with so many perk trees. Level 25 perk spread
Luckily for you the dear old witch doctor was well educated. Besides passing on his extensive knowledge of alchemy, he possesed quite the collection of books left behind long ago by the Imperials whenever they had the silly idea of building trading outposts or temples only to abandon them to the marsh. In particular about infamous objects with magical properties.
How it works
This build uses two specific magical items: Ring of the Erudite and the Necromancer's Amulet. Our flaming gecko will seek them out, no matter what the cost. The items will give him the magicka to let off some steam and relieve parts of the ever building pressure. The deaths of his tribe members weigh heavily on our young friend and he's quite determined to stay in control to the best of his abilities.
This is not a vampire build however, so cure yourself as soon as you have the ring. Their weakness to fire makes you sick to the stomach. No wonder Harkon only tells you afterwards.
These two items will be the base fuel on which your inner fire will burn. Combined both they will add a ludicrous amount of 150 magicka.
- With 15 levels of free magicka you can invest much more into health and stamina without losing the ability to cast.
- Recovery and the Ring of the Erudite will give you borderline obscene magicka regeneration, making sure you'll start a fight with a full blue bar.
- Respite nullifies the crippled stamina regen the amulet has and gives the Ash-Scale unlimited stamina reserves.
- Alchemy, in turn, will alleviate the health regen penalty with our "hist-concoctions" for when we really need Histskin, boost our fire damage with special fortification potions and weakness to fire poisons and super-charge our magicka regen in combat. Throw in a couple of paralyse poisons and you have quite a nasty party.
- The extra health combined with a Flesh spell and your peerless healing make you incredibly durable even without all those tasty Light Armor perks.
- Alteration has another very nice addition that goes absolutely beautifully with this build; Ash Shell. Don't want to fight everything? You dont have to! Shroud them in ash and focus on other things. One of the things that make me smile every time is to Ash Shell something, kill it's friends, drop back in sneak and stealth attack the crap out of it when it starts moving again.
It doesn't stop there though. Remember the amulet? Besides +50 magicka it also gives -25% cost on your Conjurations. When you get to Riverwood buy the Raise Zombie spell. The Necromancer's Amulet lets you use it quite easily without any perks (tbh it should have been on the amulet itself). Don't worry! This is not a zombie build. You'll only use that low level spell, no perks needed. Raise Zombie is a life saver at lower levels as you can resurrect something to take the heat off you. Restless Draugr casters and Death Hounds are my all time favourites. Obviously this has another purpose since you'll out-level the spell's use. If you actually use it regularly at your lower levels it will raise conjuration all the way to 40. With Conjuration at that level you'll be able to buy the Conjure Ash Spawn. Our big, fat magicka reserve will allow you to cast it whenever you feel like it without a single perk wasted.
Now the fiery Ash-Scale wearing the Necromancer's Amulet can raise burnt up dead people, how awesome is that! They are very resistant to fire (75%) so blast away with your spells.
Stats
Since we're getting 150 magicka from our two items we're sort of working backwards here. At level 20 you'll be sitting on roughly 320 magicka, 240 health and 120 stamina. At level 50 these numbers will look like this: 430 magicka, 400 health and 150 stamina. Remeber that these numbers are not set in stone. The massive healthpool will keep you alive and works nicely with Histskin. The stamina ended at 150 so that you can refill it in one cast of Close Wounds (raised with Regeneration) with very little wasted. At lower levels it will help you work with the damaged stamina regeneration untill you get Respite.
Being able to instantly refill all of your stamina means endless power attacks whenever you please and non-stop sprinting. When you're sprinting through the world with your healing spell out in third-person you look almost exactly like those lizards that run on water. Bonus!
I hope you have some buckets Hermy.
Powers and abilities
All the powers and abilities enhance either the fire damage output or work in tandem with the rest of his skillset. The best part of this build (I find) is that everything feels very "organic". None of it is absolutely necessary to function from the start according to the base we set out for the character and really defines the "growth" or "evolution" of our tiny Argonian friend as he travels around the world.
- The powers Secret of Arcana (30 seconds no magicka cost) and the Root of Power from the Tree Stone (75% less cost on spells for 1 minute) let you fully tap into your dormant powers and "hulk out" in a way that will have Alduin and Miraak run scared. Throw out multiple Firestorms, blast everything to bits with non-stop Incinerates or cover everything in Wall of Flames. These powers really don't care that you dont have all the Destruction perks. Burn it all!
- Agent of Mara for the passive 15% magic resistance, as stated above.
- Mora's Boon gives you a full reset which you can use either as a life-saver or to double your damage.
- The Flame Within from meditating with Paartunax on the word Yol gives 25% extra Fire Breath damage.
- Dragonborn Flame is the obvious choice from the Epistolary Acumen. Spawn a Fire Wyrm when you kill something with your Fire Breath, delicious.
- Seeker of Shadows from the book Sallow Regent. You were probably expecting the caster one, but this one will actually help us where we need it. +10% more effective stealth abilities translates into +10% on the Thief class trees. Slightly better potions, armor, stealth, etc. Pretty nifty.
All in all this has been an extremely fun character for me. The wide spread and variations of playstyle can carry it up way beyond level 50 without leaving a stale aftertaste.
The combinations are endless, from straight up casting boosted fire spells, to stealthing in invisible and burning the paralysed boss to a crisp, to classic spellblade fights casting and slashing with weakness to fire poisons while cloaked in flames. Choosing to either burn your entire magicka reserves while under the effect of a potion or whithering them down in a longer fight is up to you!
Miscellaneous info
I've had several playthroughs with multiple variations and tweaks before I finally made up my mind.
Any combination with Ahzidal's Ring of Arcana and/or Slow Time resulted in a completely broken and boring game (alchemy boosted Ignite spam).
The limited use of different Shouts is to make sure you use Fire Breath as much as possible. Dragon Aspect let's you breathe fire even more and boosts almost everything you do.
The only factions you'd have to seek out and join (unfortunately) are:
- The Companions, Proving Honor is needed for Fire Breath. It's best to get this out of the way as soon as possible since Farkas is an insufferable tool when it comes to sneaking.
- The College of Winterhold. The game forces us to atleast have a chat with Feralda if we want access to the higher level fire spells and/or ritual. You can find a free Flame Cloak spellbook on the beach east of Dawnstar, pick it up early. You'll be able to cast it a lot sooner before you even get to Adept Destruction.
- The Volkihar Vampires for the Rings of Blood Magic quest. Most of the time I immediately cure myself after getting it. Curing yourself is real easy. Any innkeeper has the rumour that Falion in Morthal is an expert on anything (un)dead, which leads to the Rising at Dawn quest. Getting the Black Soul gem is easy aswell. One of the first things you should have done is take the walk to Ironbind Barrow for the Fiery Soul Trap enchant. The last boss drops 2 Black Soul gems.
The quest to get your hands on the Necromancers Amulet can and should be done as soon as possible. Blood on the Ice is less buggy than people believe. The quest only starts when certain conditions are met;
- You have to enter the city between 7pm and 7am (after midnight)
- You have to have been to Windhelm area 3 times already (you can run between Windhelm stables and Brandy-Mug Farm)
- Tova Shatter-Shield and Arivanya need to be alive.
This pretty much covers it (I hope). Thanks for suffering through the text and if anything is not clear or you have suggestions/tips/flames do not hesitate. It has been very therapeutic for me writing this out, at least it won't haunt me in my dreams anymore.
+1
