Skyrim Character Building » Discussions


Character Build: The Sword-Singer

  • Member
    August 2, 2013

    For sure. I don't advocate spamming it, but it's nice to have in emergencies. Definitely saved me a few times when I first shifted from the Blades Sword to the Shehai (before Mystic Binding and Fortify One-handed enchantments). I liked that too from a roleplaying perspective, like the Shehai was unreliable/weaker while my character was still learning to summon it properly.

  • Member
    August 2, 2013

    One of the best builds I've seen posted on this site for a long time: great gameplay, lore, and roleplay all put together with an excellent presentation. Easy +1.

  • Member
    August 2, 2013
    Awesome work! Insta +1 I'm happy to have helped in creation of this masterpiece! Rich lore background intertwined with deep roleplay and elegant combat (I love that fighting style!) - what's not to love! The use of potions as crystals is ingenious, great touch with that!
  • Member
    August 2, 2013

    Average....

    jkZ quality build happy to give it my +1

  • August 2, 2013
    Fortify marksman? Does it effect something else? Great build! +1
  • August 2, 2013

    If I wasn't such an archery nut, I likely would have created a build like this, instead of my Bow-saint, but what I learned puts me in a good spot to critique this build. You have my like, but here are a few things I noticed:

    1. why name the build sword-singer if the character will become an Ansei?

    2. the Shehai should be the focus of this whole build, yet there isn't a single screenshot of your character wielding it and very little explanation of how he finally learns to materialize it, and why he takes so long to do so (I presume it's because the ancient falmer set takes a while to obtain).

    3. IMO the choice of Ansei apparel is a bit disappointing. A glass helmet looks very Hunding-like (that weird bulge in the back), and you could have easily worked a whole glass set into the build by tying it in with the crystals (a concept which I really liked). Of course, your Ansei is his own man / woman, and thus doesn't have to resemble Frandar, but I think it would have helped gel your ideas together.

  • Member
    August 2, 2013

    Oh yes, my friend! Fortify Marksman potions (i.e., not enchantments, nor unfortunately the Blessing of Auri-El) actually buff damage for all physical weapons. And they apply sepearately, which is even better, for a net of +264% One-handed damage on your Shehai.

  • Member
    August 2, 2013

    How do people find the patience to find this stuff out? I'm not trying to offend, but that would take so long to figure out.

  • Member
    August 2, 2013

    All good questions. In fact, all things I was torn about, and ended up discussing with Matt. For the name, I was throwing around a few different ideas — The Ansei, The Path of the Ansei, The Child of the Sword (Matt's idea), etc. The Ansei was out because you spend the first half of gameplay as, well, not an Ansei. Whereas the entire play through is spent as a Sword-Singer: All Ansei are still Sword-singers, just of a higher rank. Not all Sword-singers are Ansei. The fact that "The Sword-singer" is short, simple, and still accurate are all contributing factors.

    Vazgen kindly put together a huge batch of screenshots for me, which I'll rehost on a site like imgur so that they can all be viewed from a single page as an album. There are plenty of images with the Shehai in that album. I would've put one in, but I couldn't think of a good spot for it, and I wasn't sure whether another image would've started to oversaturate the write-up with pictures. (I know there's still a hell of a lot of text, despite all the cuts I made, so perhaps there is room somewhere.) [EDIT » There is a stretch of text in the Gameplay for the Ansei section, so I might try to squeeze in one more screenshot there, once the album is up.]

    As for the nature of the Shehai, I would have expanded more upon it if I hadn't already been at over 1500 words. I was afraid the build was already too long (and to be honest, I think the current length will scare away a lot of people). I included some links to relevant lore that should help people decide how to assimilate the Shehai into gameplay. Essentially though, from the moment you are capable of summoning a Shehai — however weak/unformed/inconsistent — you may become an Ansei. So in a way, yeah, it was limited by the armor, since it's one of the easy ways to visually distinguish the two builds. Also limited by the skills, since I wanted his combat skills and Alchemy to be sufficiently well trained before he ascended to the first rank of Ansei.

    As for the armor, as I said in reply to Ponty, this was one of about half a dozen sets that Matt and I were discussing. Glass was indeed one of the finalists for the armor style. The connection to crystals was something that hadn't occurred to me, and I really like that. The main reasons for not choosing glass were: (1) You can't obtain it with any semblance of predictability until level 36, which was simply too far along to begin the Ansei portion of the play through in my opinion. I originally started it at level 30, but even that just dragged too long for my liking. Level 25 felt just right, but that would have been more than 10 levels too soon to acquire glass easily.

    Furthermore, on a visual level, the glass felt like way too much of a departure from the style of the first set of gear. For me personally, after playing with the first set through 25 levels and many hours, I simply needed a hood (or maybe a circlet) and the armor to be relatively slim and streamlined. Glass definitely hearkens to the Hunding armor, so by all means it's a good choice if you were to try this build yourself. But personally the Ancient Falmer just made more sense and worked better aesthetically within the broader context of gameplay. And as you say, the Ansei is his own person, not necessarily a copy/paste of Hunding himself.

  • Member
    August 2, 2013

    Awesome stuff, Teccam! I am loving the aesthetic of the build and the lore you put into it, really sells the concept. Enchanting is a bit odd here for me though.