... Just don’t think too hard about the name.
L O R E
“The gods Mara and Dibella were once often at odds over who governs which aspects of the more intimate relationships between mortals. One day, to help settle their differences, Akatosh instructed them both to work together to create the perfect mortal man. Dibella departed and soon returned with an incredibly handsome statue cut out of a loaf of bread, presenting it to Mara. The mother-goddess, disappointed by the lifelessness of the statue, took it and swallowed it whole, and demanded that Dibella be less independent with her beauty. Mara said that true beauty could not be found by any one being alone, mortal or divine. To understand each other’s crafting styles, Mara suggested that the two goddesses spend a week in exclusively each other’s company.
Days passed, and the two divines gradually overcame their differences and became good friends. By the end of the week, they could give long speeches describing every aspect of each other’s mind. Despite this, the goddesses still could not think of a way to go about creating the perfect man. They had given up. Mara stood to go inform Akatosh of their failure, but as she rose, her stomach began to ache. Dibella rushed over and sat her pained companion back down. Mara did not understand what was happening. Had her last meal been poisoned? Had Akatosh already become aware of her failure, and chose this for her punishment? Dibella continued to comfort the mother-goddess for hours, waiting for the pain to go away despite her growing fear that it never would. She did not want to lose her newest friend.
After a whole day of constant aching, something incredible happened: the bread sculpture, crafted by Dibella and consumed by Mara, burst from her stomach, pulling its own way out with incredible strength. Naturally, Mara and Dibella screamed and backed away from the powerful little creature. However, the small man did not attack them. Instead, he raised a hand bathed in light, and slowly Mara’s open stomach wound began to heal.
Akatosh arrived soon after to find his fellow divines holding a beautiful man in their arms, and smiled. They passed the mortal to him, and he gently placed it in a wheat field down in northern Cyrodiil.
And that’s how I ended up here, naked on the border, I’m not a riotous drunk, please get these shackles off me.” - Me, honest-to-mum son of Mara and Dibella
The Master Baker is here to toast the competition and set up a hybrid bakery/temple in Skyrim. I tried to create a backstory that would, in essence, create an in-universe origin story for the phrase “bun in the oven”, with the Mara and Dibella myth functioning as a fable featuring Mara’s belly holding the same loaf of bread for several days. Somewhat inspired by traditional greek myths of the birth of gods.
You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to find good art of a baker in a fantasy setting.
Race: Imperial. Boosts to all the major skills except Speech, and usually considered the most attractive of the races. Unless you’re like me and metaphysically incapable of making an attractive character.
Stats: 1 Magicka / 1 Health / 0 Stamina. The build doesn’t use enough power attacks or carry enough items to warrant Stamina input, but it likes some Health to compensate for the lack of armour and some Magicka to fuel its spell use.
Stone: Mage -> Lord. It’ll really make up for the absolute lack of resistances in the build.
Difficulty: I played on Adept. Probably viable on Expert.
Skills & Perks (Level 20):
One-Handed (3) - Cutting bread is a whole lot easier with a knife. You don’t use many power attacks or any of the larger one-handed weapons, so there isn’t much need to go beyond the perk at the very bottom.
Perks - Armsman 3/5
Destruction (4) - You can’t bake without fire.
Perks - Novice Destruction, Apprentice Destruction, Adept Destruction, Augmented Flames 1/2
Restoration (3) - You’re the son of Mara; there’s no excuse for not being a good healer.
Perks - Novice Restoration, Apprentice Restoration, Regeneration
Speech (2) - You’re also the son of Dibella; you’re probably good at this.
Perks - Haggling 1/5, Allure
Enchanting (7) - This is mostly for gameplay purposes; you’re gonna need to enchant those clothes and weapons real good to make up for their lack of raw strength.
Perks - Enchanter 4/5, Insightful Enchanter, Corpus Enchanter, Extra Effect
Spells: Flames -> Firebolt -> Fireball, Flame Cloak, Healing -> Fast Healing
Equipment:
Baker’s Knife Set (Enchanted Daggers)
Chef’s Hat of Destruction + Restoration
Chef’s Tunic of Destruction + Restoration
Gloves of One-Handed + Magicka
Shoes of One-Handed + Resist Fire
Ring of Destruction + Restoration
Necklace of Destruction + Speech
The Knife Set: The Master Baker needs a lot of knives for the different kinds of bread (a.k.a. enemies) he works with. He carries, most prominently:
- A knife that bakes the bread as it is cut (Fire Damage + Fiery Soul Trap)
- A knife that drains heat from the bread, freezing it and warming up the user’s muscles (Frost Damage + Absorb Stamina)
- A knife that releases the bread’s nutrients immediately as it is cut (Absorb Health + Absorb Magicka)
- A knife that is blessed by the Baker’s mothers to protect him from evil (Fear + Turn Undead)
Baking: If a build called the Master Baker didn’t use any baked goods it’d be rather unusual. Unfortunately, the available baking recipes in modless Skyrim pretty much only give you two somewhat useful food items and a bunch of mostly useless ones. Why does this Master Baker exclusively make Juniper Berry Crostatas and Chicken Dumplings? It couldn’t possibly be because they give him a powerful health regeneration boost while all other available recipes give him very little. It’s obviously because after being dropped into the mortal world by his mothers, Juniper Berries were among the first ingredients he was exposed to: the town of his intended execution housed a woman who tended to use Juniper Berries in her mead brewing, so he took this as inspiration for his own recipes. Obviously. And the Chicken Dumplings? I dunno. He likes chicken.
It's so hard to find images of fantasy bakers, I resorted to searching for "bread mage". And honestly, this looks a whole lot cooler than my build.
Levelling: A lot of the levels in this build come from raising Enchanting so much; I personally love the power boost Extra Effect gives and found it much more mandatory to the build than some of the other perks like Respite and Haggling 2. I spent a good chunk of the first 10 levels powerlevelling Enchanting by buying out stores of their cheap weapons and armour and petty soul gems, and then reselling the resulting items to reduce the net loss. This (plus the grand soul gems you’ll have to buy for actually enchanting your items) does require a good supply of money, but luckily this build is best suited to clearing bandit camps and collecting bounties anyway, so most raids should net you a solid 250-300 gold minimum (100 from the Chief, 100 from the Steward, 50+ from the other bandits and loot). Luckily, this character also has a pretty good reason to grab the first point of Haggling early, making the whole process a decent chunk easier.
Roleplay: This part is a bit tough. One of the tougher parts of the build actually. This beautiful man helps everyone he can on his path to creating his temple: as a result, a lot of people want to marry him. As a symbol of love you are perfectly free to get married. You’re a good person, so try not to commit any crimes or sinful acts unless absolutely necessary or otherwise justified; for example, I had to steal from the Battle-Borns in an attempt to reunite an old Gray-Mane woman with her son.
There really isn’t much to the roleplay of this build, which makes it rather easy to fall out of. You’re just a run-of-the-mill benevolent pseudo-deity with a love of mortals and bread. Your goal is, above all else, to SPREAD THE LOVE.
Gameplay: Early on, the Master Baker has two main combat stances to switch between: dual fire spells and knife/healing. After the Master Baker empties his magical resources with fire spells, he’s forced to engage in close combat, which is what he has his daggers for, and he carries healing in his off hand to offset the damage he takes from his much physically stronger enemies.
However, once you’ve got your Absorb Health dagger, this dynamic changes. The reduced need for healing thanks to the constant draining allows you to dual wield, preferably pairing the Absorb Health knife with the Fire Damage or Frost Damage one. With Extra Effect, the Absorb Magicka also allows you to remove yourself from danger quicker and return to your onslaught of fire. Additionally, if you end up reaching 100% Destruction Reduction you’re never really forced to switch to your daggers, but if you need to drain some health or trap a soul they still serve a purpose, and the lack of Destruction Dual Casting makes them about as useful if not more at close range.
The Baker’s knives (as with any enchanted daggers) aren’t powerful in the sense that they have high base damage or dps, they’re powerful because they can repeatedly apply their enchantment faster than any other weapon (eg. you’ll absorb more health per second with a dagger than with an enchantment of the same magnitude on a sword). I realised over the course of designing this build that enchanted daggers are actually among the strongest types of weapon purely for this fact, with it compensating for their shorter range.
Overall the Baker’s main strengths are different depending on how far into the build you are: early on it’s the fact that he’s a decent mage with a reliable close-range backup once he runs out of Magicka. Because he has this backup, i was able to forgo Destruction Dual Casting (which is usually mandatory for pure mages as stunlocking compensates for their weak scaling). Later, it’s his surprising melee durability despite his lack of armour thanks to his Health Absorption, Lord Stone, Dumplings, and Crostatas. Naturally, any enemy that can one-shot him still does so, but his dagger usage ensures that his health can remain near full as long as he has an enemy nearby to attack.
Challenge Mode: No Daggers. Actual knives only. Enchant them sparingly, there’s a very limited supply.
The End Goal: This Baker wants nothing more than to settle down and finally operate his own bakery. Thus, the final checklist is as follows;
- outfit one of the Hearthfire Houses to the point where it can be a cozy home for yourself (and your spouse if you have one), as well as install an oven
- obtain all four of the Baker’s main knives
- make every potential marriage partner fall in love with you (optional)
The Post-Game: There were two dagger enchantments I originally had planned for the build until I realised they couldn’t be obtained until after level 20: specifically, the Absorb Stamina was originally meant to be Paralyze, and the Fear was originally meant to be Banish. I then learned that both of these enchantments pretty much only start appearing on weapons at level 22. If you so desire, you can continue to this level to hunt for the lost enchantments.
One Last Note: While checking through other builds on the site to see if a Baker build had been done before, I stumbled across the True Gourmet by Zimbu. While not a Baker or a child of the gods, the True Gourmet wears the same clothes, uses the same standing stones and stat spread, and even has a very similar skillset, dropping Speech and Restoration in exchange for Alteration and Alchemy. I think that the skill differences, quest choices (Gourmet does Dark Brotherhood, Companions, and some Daedric quests, while Baker does bandit-hunting), and entirely different backstory make the Master Baker original enough to stand on its own, but I feel the need to acknowledge this very similar build.
... Just don’t think too hard about the name.
L O R E
“The gods Mara and Dibella were once often at odds over who governs which aspects of the more intimate relationships between mortals. One day, to help settle their differences, Akatosh instructed them both to work together to create the perfect mortal man. Dibella departed and soon returned with an incredibly handsome statue cut out of a loaf of bread, presenting it to Mara. The mother-goddess, disappointed by the lifelessness of the statue, took it and swallowed it whole, and demanded that Dibella be less independent with her beauty. Mara said that true beauty could not be found by any one being alone, mortal or divine. To understand each other’s crafting styles, Mara suggested that the two goddesses spend a week in exclusively each other’s company.
Days passed, and the two divines gradually overcame their differences and became good friends. By the end of the week, they could give long speeches describing every aspect of each other’s mind. Despite this, the goddesses still could not think of a way to go about creating the perfect man. They had given up. Mara stood to go inform Akatosh of their failure, but as she rose, her stomach began to ache. Dibella rushed over and sat her pained companion back down. Mara did not understand what was happening. Had her last meal been poisoned? Had Akatosh already become aware of her failure, and chose this for her punishment? Dibella continued to comfort the mother-goddess for hours, waiting for the pain to go away despite her growing fear that it never would. She did not want to lose her newest friend.
After a whole day of constant aching, something incredible happened: the bread sculpture, crafted by Dibella and consumed by Mara, burst from her stomach, pulling its own way out with incredible strength. Naturally, Mara and Dibella screamed and backed away from the powerful little creature. However, the small man did not attack them. Instead, he raised a hand bathed in light, and slowly Mara’s open stomach wound began to heal.
Akatosh arrived soon after to find his fellow divines holding a beautiful man in their arms, and smiled. They passed the mortal to him, and he gently placed it in a wheat field down in northern Cyrodiil.
And that’s how I ended up here, naked on the border, I’m not a riotous drunk, please get these shackles off me.” - Me, honest-to-mum son of Mara and Dibella
The Master Baker is here to toast the competition and set up a hybrid bakery/temple in Skyrim. I tried to create a backstory that would, in essence, create an in-universe origin story for the phrase “bun in the oven”, with the Mara and Dibella myth functioning as a fable featuring Mara’s belly holding the same loaf of bread for several days. Somewhat inspired by traditional greek myths of the birth of gods.
You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to find good art of a baker in a fantasy setting.
Race: Imperial. Boosts to all the major skills except Speech, and usually considered the most attractive of the races. Unless you’re like me and metaphysically incapable of making an attractive character.
Stats: 1 Magicka / 1 Health / 0 Stamina. The build doesn’t use enough power attacks or carry enough items to warrant Stamina input, but it likes some Health to compensate for the lack of armour and some Magicka to fuel its spell use.
Stone: Mage -> Lord. It’ll really make up for the absolute lack of resistances in the build.
Difficulty: I played on Adept. Probably viable on Expert.
Skills & Perks (Level 20):
One-Handed (3) - Cutting bread is a whole lot easier with a knife. You don’t use many power attacks or any of the larger one-handed weapons, so there isn’t much need to go beyond the perk at the very bottom.
Perks - Armsman 3/5
Destruction (4) - You can’t bake without fire.
Perks - Novice Destruction, Apprentice Destruction, Adept Destruction, Augmented Flames 1/2
Restoration (3) - You’re the son of Mara; there’s no excuse for not being a good healer.
Perks - Novice Restoration, Apprentice Restoration, Regeneration
Speech (2) - You’re also the son of Dibella; you’re probably good at this.
Perks - Haggling 1/5, Allure
Enchanting (7) - This is mostly for gameplay purposes; you’re gonna need to enchant those clothes and weapons real good to make up for their lack of raw strength.
Perks - Enchanter 4/5, Insightful Enchanter, Corpus Enchanter, Extra Effect
Spells: Flames -> Firebolt -> Fireball, Flame Cloak, Healing -> Fast Healing
Equipment:
Baker’s Knife Set (Enchanted Daggers)
Chef’s Hat of Destruction + Restoration
Chef’s Tunic of Destruction + Restoration
Gloves of One-Handed + Magicka
Shoes of One-Handed + Resist Fire
Ring of Destruction + Restoration
Necklace of Destruction + Speech
The Knife Set: The Master Baker needs a lot of knives for the different kinds of bread (a.k.a. enemies) he works with. He carries, most prominently:
- A knife that bakes the bread as it is cut (Fire Damage + Fiery Soul Trap)
- A knife that drains heat from the bread, freezing it and warming up the user’s muscles (Frost Damage + Absorb Stamina)
- A knife that releases the bread’s nutrients immediately as it is cut (Absorb Health + Absorb Magicka)
- A knife that is blessed by the Baker’s mothers to protect him from evil (Fear + Turn Undead)
Baking: If a build called the Master Baker didn’t use any baked goods it’d be rather unusual. Unfortunately, the available baking recipes in modless Skyrim pretty much only give you two somewhat useful food items and a bunch of mostly useless ones. Why does this Master Baker exclusively make Juniper Berry Crostatas and Chicken Dumplings? It couldn’t possibly be because they give him a powerful health regeneration boost while all other available recipes give him very little. It’s obviously because after being dropped into the mortal world by his mothers, Juniper Berries were among the first ingredients he was exposed to: the town of his intended execution housed a woman who tended to use Juniper Berries in her mead brewing, so he took this as inspiration for his own recipes. Obviously. And the Chicken Dumplings? I dunno. He likes chicken.
It's so hard to find images of fantasy bakers, I resorted to searching for "bread mage". And honestly, this looks a whole lot cooler than my build.
Levelling: A lot of the levels in this build come from raising Enchanting so much; I personally love the power boost Extra Effect gives and found it much more mandatory to the build than some of the other perks like Respite and Haggling 2. I spent a good chunk of the first 10 levels powerlevelling Enchanting by buying out stores of their cheap weapons and armour and petty soul gems, and then reselling the resulting items to reduce the net loss. This (plus the grand soul gems you’ll have to buy for actually enchanting your items) does require a good supply of money, but luckily this build is best suited to clearing bandit camps and collecting bounties anyway, so most raids should net you a solid 250-300 gold minimum (100 from the Chief, 100 from the Steward, 50+ from the other bandits and loot). Luckily, this character also has a pretty good reason to grab the first point of Haggling early, making the whole process a decent chunk easier.
Roleplay: This part is a bit tough. One of the tougher parts of the build actually. This beautiful man helps everyone he can on his path to creating his temple: as a result, a lot of people want to marry him. As a symbol of love you are perfectly free to get married. You’re a good person, so try not to commit any crimes or sinful acts unless absolutely necessary or otherwise justified; for example, I had to steal from the Battle-Borns in an attempt to reunite an old Gray-Mane woman with her son.
There really isn’t much to the roleplay of this build, which makes it rather easy to fall out of. You’re just a run-of-the-mill benevolent pseudo-deity with a love of mortals and bread. Your goal is, above all else, to SPREAD THE LOVE.
Gameplay: Early on, the Master Baker has two main combat stances to switch between: dual fire spells and knife/healing. After the Master Baker empties his magical resources with fire spells, he’s forced to engage in close combat, which is what he has his daggers for, and he carries healing in his off hand to offset the damage he takes from his much physically stronger enemies.
However, once you’ve got your Absorb Health dagger, this dynamic changes. The reduced need for healing thanks to the constant draining allows you to dual wield, preferably pairing the Absorb Health knife with the Fire Damage or Frost Damage one. With Extra Effect, the Absorb Magicka also allows you to remove yourself from danger quicker and return to your onslaught of fire. Additionally, if you end up reaching 100% Destruction Reduction you’re never really forced to switch to your daggers, but if you need to drain some health or trap a soul they still serve a purpose, and the lack of Destruction Dual Casting makes them about as useful if not more at close range.
The Baker’s knives (as with any enchanted daggers) aren’t powerful in the sense that they have high base damage or dps, they’re powerful because they can repeatedly apply their enchantment faster than any other weapon (eg. you’ll absorb more health per second with a dagger than with an enchantment of the same magnitude on a sword). I realised over the course of designing this build that enchanted daggers are actually among the strongest types of weapon purely for this fact, with it compensating for their shorter range.
Overall the Baker’s main strengths are different depending on how far into the build you are: early on it’s the fact that he’s a decent mage with a reliable close-range backup once he runs out of Magicka. Because he has this backup, i was able to forgo Destruction Dual Casting (which is usually mandatory for pure mages as stunlocking compensates for their weak scaling). Later, it’s his surprising melee durability despite his lack of armour thanks to his Health Absorption, Lord Stone, Dumplings, and Crostatas. Naturally, any enemy that can one-shot him still does so, but his dagger usage ensures that his health can remain near full as long as he has an enemy nearby to attack.
Challenge Mode: No Daggers. Actual knives only. Enchant them sparingly, there’s a very limited supply.
The End Goal: This Baker wants nothing more than to settle down and finally operate his own bakery. Thus, the final checklist is as follows;
- outfit one of the Hearthfire Houses to the point where it can be a cozy home for yourself (and your spouse if you have one), as well as install an oven
- obtain all four of the Baker’s main knives
- make every potential marriage partner fall in love with you (optional)
The Post-Game: There were two dagger enchantments I originally had planned for the build until I realised they couldn’t be obtained until after level 20: specifically, the Absorb Stamina was originally meant to be Paralyze, and the Fear was originally meant to be Banish. I then learned that both of these enchantments pretty much only start appearing on weapons at level 22. If you so desire, you can continue to this level to hunt for the lost enchantments.
One Last Note: While checking through other builds on the site to see if a Baker build had been done before, I stumbled across the True Gourmet by Zimbu. While not a Baker or a child of the gods, the True Gourmet wears the same clothes, uses the same standing stones and stat spread, and even has a very similar skillset, dropping Speech and Restoration in exchange for Alteration and Alchemy. I think that the skill differences, quest choices (Gourmet does Dark Brotherhood, Companions, and some Daedric quests, while Baker does bandit-hunting), and entirely different backstory make the Master Baker original enough to stand on its own, but I feel the need to acknowledge this very similar build.
