Tamriel Vault - Character Build : Daedric Soul Reaver

Member

May 9, 2018

Hi all, its me again. Not dead yet. Finished up an Argonian character a while ago now and I forgot to post the build. :P

With courtesies out of the way, lets get into the build, shall we?

THE DAEDRIC SOUL REAVER

BACKSTORY

Born in a swampy alcove near Shadowfen in the Imperial province of Black Marsh in 4E 171, Lucifer grew up in the bogs of the general Shadowfen area. When most young argonians were learning how to swim, hunt in the water, and gather underwater flora for either alchemy or food, Lucifer was out practicing magic or hunched over a book of some sort. In fact, as ironic as it is, Lucifer hated being wet, hated *even being near* water. But in his rebellious mindset, he often did the exact thing he was told not to do. Like practice necromancy. He spent countless nights out in the swamp, killing things and then raising whatever he killed, to help him kill the next unfortunate creature, and the cycle would go on and on until dawn or he grew too tired to go on. At the age of 23, he was now able to raise dead permanently and he started to delve into other magics. First, it was other forms of Conjuration, then when he mastered that, he dabbled into Alchemy. One day he went out in search of ingredients for him to practice on, taking with him a mortar and pestle to practice as he went. Mind you, he’d done this before…. however, this time he gotten himself lost, straying too far North. He wandered aimlessly for days....

(Link to the rest found here)

GAMEPLAY

RACE : Argonian. The racial power will be invaluable in large or tough fights. (Unless you have a race overhaul. In which case, your on your own. :P )

EARLY GAME : During the earlier stages of the game I would suggest investing in as much health as you can. Potions, attribute points, enchantments. Anything to make your growing character more likely to survive a melee fight.

STATS SPREAD : 2/2/1. If you cant remember or keep track, I'd recommend always keeping magicka 150-300 points above health and 400-500 points above stamina. During the earlier stages of the game, go for health until the base health is at 200-250, then get your magicka up to a better level.

STANDING STONE : Go for the Mage Stone until later levels. Once you feel comfortable with your skills, change to the Atronach stone.

EQUIPMENT : Daedric Armor, gauntlets, and boots + the Helm of Yngol and a necklace and ring of your choosing. Enchant the items with as many enchantments as possible for your mod setup. I recommend Tragedy in Black - Enchanting Remastered to achieve the same results I did.

SPELLS : Incinerate, Summon Dremora/Dremora Lord, Summon Wrathman, Dead Thrall (with a mod to improve it), Detect Dead and Detect Life. I'd STRONGLY recommend Apocalypse - Magic of Skyrim and More Apocalypse - Addon for more spells to give you a wider variety of creatures to summon.

COMBAT : The build is going to use reasonably decent amount of fire based destruction magic at close quarters, but mostly your followers and summoned creatures should be doing a majority of the killing. You should start a battle by summoning 2 or 3 Dremora/Dremora Lords, then buff them with a spell of your choosing afterwhich you should switch to a fire spell and join the fight. Reanimate a fallen enemy if you deem it neccessary. This tactic will be stronger against undead, because of their weakness to fire, but will work fine against everything else too. If your fighting a dragon, then wait for it to land to do damage if your as bad a shot as I am. But if ranged combat is your speciality, then I see no reason to suggest you don't engage.

COMPANIONS : Inigo, Serana, Jordis, and/or Lydia are all viable options. The best choice is a follower that can engage in close quarter combat, because you (the player) are engaging the enemy at a distance. I prefer a combination between Inigo, Serana, and Lydia.

USING THE ENVIRONMENT : This character does not use rune spells and therefore will rely on the terrain to aid in combat. Such as attaining the high ground in order to support his allies (either summoned creatures or followers) or trees and large rocks as cover.

FACTIONS AND QUESTLINES

(in the order of when you should join)

-- College of Winterhold (grow the character's talents further and get a feel for Skyrim)

-- Thieves Guild (obtain sufficient funds to explore Skyrim and further the character's interests)

-- Volkihar Clan (character hears rumors of the Dawnguard and gets an offer he cant refuse...)

-- Dark Brotherhood (character is hired to kill an orphanage mistress while in Windhelm and investigates)

-- Stormcloaks (Balgruuf refuses to aid the character during the Main Questline. So the character fixes that problem....)

SKILLS

MAJOR SKILLS : Conjuration, Destruction, Enchanting, Heavy Armor, Sneak, Smithing

MINOR SKILLS : Alchemy, One Handed (use a mace in case you run out of magicka), Speech, Restoration

PERKS : At end game, you should have all perks in Enchanting/Heavy Armor/Conjuration/and Smithing, most perks in Destruction (all fire based perks + Dual casting perk and novice-expert), several perks in 1 Handed/Alchemy/Speech/ and Restoration, and all relevent perks in Sneak

SHOUTS & POWERS

Vampire Lord Form, Fire Breath, Unrelenting Force, Storm Call, Call of Valor, Dragon Aspect, Drain Vitality, Dragonrend. I recommend DragonFire - Tactically Enhanced Breath Shouts and Thunderchild to enhance the vanilla shouts and add new ones. I would recommend Better Vampires and Royal Bloodline to enhance vampires.

VAMPIRISM

Contrary to my previous build, The Planewalker, this character is a vampire in its truest form. They love the overwhelming feeling of power coursing through them, the hunger for blood. But despite all of this, the character is not evil or insane. He is practical above all else and has a mild craving for blood. Mods that enhance vampires are a requirement, as I used them enough to make them a soft requirement. As stated in the Shouts and Powers section, I recommend Better Vampire's and Royal Bloodline.

PERSONALITY

Impatient, confident, less gruff with kids, witty, hasty, wrathful, fascinated by blood after aquiring vampirism.

APPEARANCE

For simplicity's sake, I have uploaded a preset to the Nexus if anyone wants to have the same appearance that my character had. This is far from mandatory, but more-or-less just in case someone wants it. The preset can be found here

REQUIRED MODS

-- Mod Organizer or Mod Organizer 2 : To effectively manage your mods, you need a management utility. Manual installation is almost like commiting suicide whilest using Vortex or NMM is a just bad idea. Vortex isn't nearly complete yet and isn't even very functional and NMM is just simply too old and has never worked for me. But above everything else, neither can offer as much as Mod Organizer can.

-- Royal Bloodline and Better Vampire's 8.2 or higher : As a vampire, these mods -- or similar ones of your choosing -- will enhance vampirism overall and I have used the abilities of both mods a decent amount in this playthrough. The abilities I used the most were from Better Vampires, so if you wish to use something else instead of Royal Bloodline, your more than welcome to do so.

-- Apocalypse - Magic of Skyrim and More Apocalypse - Addon for Apocalypse : As a magic using character, you'll want more variety in your spells. Reanimation, daedra summoning, fire based destruction spells, etc. The daedra in vanilla is horribly dull and unvaried, but with Apocalypse and More Apocalypse this is not the case as much. If you've played Oblivion, then you'll recognize a lot of the summoned creatures. The fire spells that come with Apocalypse are also sure to add a little spice to your arsenal.

-- Thunderchild - Epic Shouts, Thundering Shouts, and DragonFire - Tactically Enhanced Breath Shouts : The vanilla shouting just sucks from everyway you look at it. Terribly unbalanced, uninteresting effects, the cooldown on the shouts is too long for all shouts, etc. The 3 mods working together will give you a more interesting shouting experience. Thunderchild will add new shouts, Thundering shouts enhances the audio of shouts, and the Enhanced Breath Shouts mod will make the breath shouts work like the dragon shouts do. I would also recommend you either turn off the shout cooldown or lower it considerably either by a mod or console command. You only need to change the cooldown once, if you decide to.

-- Andromeda - Unique Standing Stones of Skyrim : My choice in standing stones hinges on the assumption that your using this mod. It is REQUIRED for this build's information on this page to be correct. If you choose to not install the mod, the entire build will have a different feeling to it.

-- Volkihar Castle Reborn : This mod is beyond worth it, it's the best Volkihar Castle overhaul out there. This character and their family (if you choose to have one) will be living here. This mod enhances the Castle by adding the ability to clean up the castle, add vampire guards, repair the towers and other areas to make them usable again, and much more. The images on the mod page look like crap, but with the Temple of Molag Bal mod, Imaginator, Dynavision and an ENB or SweetFX preset it can look awesome.

-- Never Talk to NPC's : I know this may seem strange to put this mod in the Required Mods section, but it has critical changes to the Stormcloak questline. With this mod, you should be able to recruit Balgruuf to the Stormcloaks instead of fight him. Since he is intended to be neutral, it made no sense that he chose a single side in the war reguardless of the player. More details of the mod on the mod page.

-- Tragedy in Black : This mod is required because it adds perks to the Enchanting tree and in addition to making your enchantments more powerful, it also allows you to give an item up to 5 enchantments which will of course be extremely useful. Whether or not you utilize these features is completely up to you.

-- Better Dead Thralls : This mod enhances the Dead Thrall spell to be what it should have been. Has a minor conflict with Master Spells should be Masterful mod, but it wont cause any major problems. It allows you to manage your reanimated minions by giving them armor and weapons, fixing several issues with the original spell, and most importantly it makes the minions last longer in combat.

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Fore's New Idle's in Skyrim - FNIS -- Relathionship Dialogue Overhaul -- Follower Commentary Overhaul -- Immersive Amazing Follower Tweaks -- Less Tedious Thieves Guild -- Master Spells Should be Masterful -- Epic Male Argonian Shouting -- Skyrim Community Uncapper

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CLOSING NOTES

Questions, comments, concerns, and critisism's are of course, as always, welcome. Just dont forget to put in detailed information in the post. A sincear thank you to the authors of the images above and I'll see you all in the next build. :)