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How to make a totally badass Unarmed Khajiit on PS4

Tags: ##Khajiit  ##unarmed 
  • Leader
    March 1, 2018

    In this guide, I’m going to share my experience of creating a viable and fun Khajiit in Skyrim SE using only vanilla assets (PS4 mods). It has gestated from thinking about how I could re-create my ESO character, San-daro (or more properly her great-great-great-great granddaughter) in the fourth era.

     

    As we all know, unarmed is barely a thing in Skyrim – sadly there is no unarmed skill tree to play around with. There are few builds on this wonderful site which find ways around this restriction, but they generally involve exploits or glitches. Now, I should explain it’s never been my playstyle to stand there creating overpowered fists through some weird glitch in the way that enchantments stack. Each to their own, of course, but I was looking for something a bit more organic and roleplay friendly.

     

    So, here we go…

     

    RACE: Obviously, I went Khajiit because – well, San-daro is a sleek and beautiful Khajiit. Khajiit get +15 unarmed bonus due to their claws, which is actually pretty devastating at low level. The issue with unarmed is finding a way for it to scale, but we’ll come to that later…

     

    Now the character creator in Skyrim has a limited range of options for customising a Khajiit – variations of similarly coloured Cathay. Download the mod Skyrim Fur Colors to gain access to 15 new colours. You can make a pink or green tinged Khajiit if you want, but – most importantly for San-daro – I was now able to make a black Khajiit.

     

    DIALOGUE Vanilla Skyrim barely recognises that you are a Khajiit – apart from a few borderline racists comments from NPCs about ‘you’d make a fine rug’ – which is admittedly funny the first few times you hear it!

     

    Fortunately, the answer is at hand in the form of an incredible mod called ‘Khajiit Speak’. This completely changed ALL the dialogue so that you now talk to everyone in the distinctive Khajiit style. The author of this mod has done a thorough job – not simply doing a find and replace so that ‘I’ is replaced with ‘Khajiit’, but carefully tweaking all the dialogue to reflect Khajiit speech patterns and rhythms in a way that actually makes dialogue feel different and fresh. This mod is an absolute must for ANY Khajiit character (not just unarmed)

     

     

    ROLEPLAY The next mod I want to discuss is called ‘Amazing Race Tweaks: Khajiit’. This is part of a series (the author has also done Argonian, Nord and Dunmer, and will hopefully complete the set in due course). What it does is make Khajiit’s more cat-like, which actually makes sense when you think about it. This is what it does:

     

    • Increases jump height, so that – just like a cat – you can fall a lot further than humans without hurting yourself

     

    • Gives you the cat-like ability to be able to walk silently, so you don’t need a muffle spell or enchantment

     

    • Adds a new racial power that replicates the Shadow Stone, allowing you to become undetectable for a whopping 3 minutes once a day

     

    • Ever heard the phrase ‘cat got your tongue’? Well, you now get 20% better prices from merchants

     

    • You get a new daily power in the form of a Khajiit curse that reduces the armour rating of your foe. This is a real ‘get out of jail free’ card when in a tight corner with a boss!

     

    • Most importantly – your claw damage now scales with the Armsman perk (one-handed). No longer are you gimped with fixed claw damage, you can perk Armsman and increase your unarmed damage as you level. This is a game-changer.

     

     

    KILL CAMS What’s the point in being a Khajiit badass if you can’t enjoy the fruits of your labours? I installed a mod called BIG Ultimate Kills, which dramatically increases the rate at which kill cams trigger. The unarmed kill cams are particularly awesome, with pro-wrestling fans instantly recognising the various suplex and body slam moves!

     

     

    COMBAT Obviously the scaling claw damage added by the ART mod really starts to make you viable as an unarmed Khajiit but there a couple of other mods that I recommend to make your attacks even more violent.

     

    Deadly Khajiit Claws and Night Vision: This little mod boosts claw damage by 65% (as well as the Night Eye power to an hour). It’s not compatible with the mod above (does NOT stack) but it can be used as an alternative. However, it WILL stack with the Gloves of the Pugilist that you can grab from the Ratways in Riften – so with Khajiit +15 claws, the extra +10 from the gloves, and 65% boost from this mod, and you are doing some pretty brutal damage.

     

    Phenderix Elemental Fighter: this is part of a bigger mod that overhauls lots more stuff, but for this build you only need this module. What it does is add a new NPC in the Sleeping Giant in Riverwood who sells a series of rings that add ‘elemental’ damage to unarmed attacks. There’s a few different ones – fire, lightning, shock, paralyze and poison that do slightly different things, added to which they all have the requisite visual. It’s especially satisfying to wear the paralyze ring – you can sneak up to a foe, hit them with the paralyze fist, and then beat them to death at your leisure as they lie on the ground helpless!

     

    I should say that if you use Elemental Fighter you are on the verge of being overpowered – as it WILL stack with ART. With the ART boosts, Armsman perks, the Gloves of the Puglist AND an elemental ring you can be packing well over 130 damage from your fists. I was able to go on a killing frenzy around Whiterun killing everything, including guards! Use with care…

     

     

    SUMMARY

     

    This is more of a ‘how to’ than a fully written up ‘build’, but if you follow this guide then you can make a totally viable unarmed Khajiit without needing to use mods on PC or Xbox1 that can’t be used with PS4

     

    The synergy of skills and boosts pushed this playthrough into the thief. I took the Thief Stone straight out of Helgen, and headed for Riften to join the Thieves Guild. I perked the thief skills – Speech, Sneak, Pickpocketing, Lockpicking and Light Armor, with a few into One-Handed for the Armsman perks. I became Guild Master of the Guild by around Level 22, with enough money to have a fully-upgraded Honeyside, plus about 30K in gold.

     

    I can now swan around Riften in Nightingale Armour – stealing whatever takes my fancy, and taking on heist or larceny Guild quests whenever my cash stash starts to run dry. It’s a ton of fun, and a somewhat different way to experience Skyrim.

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Member
    March 1, 2018

    Awesome resource here! This is quite the collection of mods you've got here and it sounds like loads of fun to play. I love the addition of the Phenderix Elemental Fighter ring damage. That's something I wouldn't have thought about here. 130 dmg with your fist is insane. May your claws lead them to fiery sands! xD 

    Nicely done!

  • March 1, 2018

    Good to see that ART is out for Khajiit, used to be a big fan of it for PC but slowly got overwhelmed by how much it adds to each Race. Anyway, really interesting guide here Paul, like the interesting combination of Mods that you've used, including the Roleplaying based mods you've mentioned. 

  • Member
    March 1, 2018

    Poor Heimskr! :D His braying got under your cat's fur and her tail in a knot. I was actually going to mock slightly, sort of hold it over you that Xbox players have better mods in the same way PC players do to Xbox players... like a bullying teir, you know? But this project has actually silenced those words on my lips because it's pretty damned good. I've yet to commit to a fully unarmed character, but to be honest, I can see myself going with the mods you've chosen.

    So incredible work, Paul :) Also, it's nice to see San-daro's legacy yet lives.