Hi guys. Long time no post. Wasn't sure which group (if any) this belongs in, but I wanted to share this as it took me a long time to prepare. I thought i'd post it in roleplay since this is essentially a set-up to a well-known and much-loved character build that is very RP-heavy, but lacks the full-scale 'build' quality of a proper Character Build.

As you know, Skyrim: Remastered is right around the corner, and in truth it makes me a little sad. Skyrim has been my favourite game for the last five years. Steam reckons I have clocked up over 1,000 'hard saves' and over 1,500 hours of gameplay; most of it admittedly through experimenting with different builds and playthroughs. In all likelihood, most people will be ditching this game in favour of the Remaster; on which all of the gameplay stats will be reset. In short: Our game is not long for the scrap heap.

So I figured I've got time for one last playthrough, with a plan to make it just a little bit special. I'm sure we're all familiar with the legendary Mason and - what is quite possibly his greatest work - the 'Seraphim' build. Well my playthrough is heavily inspired gameplay-wise (and a complete rip-off RP-wise) by the Seraphim. However, my issue with it is that to me, an Angel of the Divines is someone who is far beyond the abilities and constitution of mere mortals, but without being full-on immortal like the Aedra or Daedra. Sure, you can supplement with ridiculous resto-looped enchanted gear to give her ridiculous stats, but if she ends up in jail and is stripped of her gear, she's effectively a pathetic mortal in rags. No, an Angel deserves raw, unmatched power and the only way you're truly going to get that is by putting the hours in and grinding on a scale not seen before.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: A level 1,000 build. Or as I like to call it: The Seraphim's Final Form.

Try and ignore the fact that she looks like a stripper in bandit gear; there's a reason for that. I wanted to avoid having a scenario in which the Seraphim 'becomes' stronger and eventually reaches level 1,000 in a few years' time. I want her to start questing through Skyrim at level 1,000. So I started a game using the 'Live Another Life' mod, and I fast-travelled to the 'Community College' (also courtesy of a mod) where she'll have all the tools to begin her power-levelling in earnest. Furthermore, I set the timescale to zero, so that even after the many, many, many hours of grinding later, she'll still begin her adventure at about 9:30am on her first day in Skyrim.

Hence the reason for the lv1 bandit getup. This is now a hard-save starting point from which she'll begin her missions.

The stats are about what you'd expect (incidentally I named my Angel 'Cassiel'. Kudos if you know where the name comes from). I used the skill trainers in the Community College to help with levelling for all the relevant skills she'll use, too (hence the plethora of level 90 skills). The reason for this is I didn't want her going out into the wild at level 1,000 only to be armed with a 'Flames' spell and a level 15 destruction skill, and taking a million years to defeat a mudcrab.

Also, the keen-eyed among you will notice that the number of available perk points seems extremely low for her level, and that's because I encountered a bizarre bug in the game: The game is coded to only allow up to 255 perk points available. As soon as you hit 256, the number resets to zero. It'll still count up from zero there onwards, but basically you get to 255 and then back to zero again. Hence 55 points.

Also, the stats give certain boons that begin to separate my build from Mason's build. See, Mason's 'Seraphim' gets a lot of her resilience through the Ultimate Atronach exploit which grants her 78% spell absorbtion, making her extremely powerful against magi. Furthermore, by utilising a very specific combination of potions and magicka points, he is able to perform a constant stream of concentration spells.

Cassiel has no need for such parlour tricks. Her fully-perked Alteration skill gives her an already impressive resistance to spells. Also, during battle, health regenerates at a rate of 0.49% per second, which on a 4,290pt health bar equates to 210pts of health regen per second. Mortals can hit her as hard as they like; she'll laugh it off. As for magicka, well magicka regeneration aside, she has 3,000pts of it and nearly all her skills are maxed. She can fire that Lightning Storm for a full minute before tiring.

Now would be a good time to point out that because this is my last playthrough of Skyrim in its current form, and because I wanted to make it special, I wanted to do this all (semi)legitimately. Granted I abused the spell-spamming exploits on a collossal scale, but beyond the mods and the console command to freeze time, I used no console commands. That would be cheating, and i'm not entirely convinced that everything else scales up with them anyway (e.g. carryweight scaling up with stamina).

These next two pictures will show the skills I spammed - and just how much work has gone into this.

Yup. Muffle-spam to level 100. Rinse and repeat 1,285 times. I had dreams to the constant soundtrack of the muffle spell firing away. And the worst part? After 1,285 legendaries, you're half-way there...

I abused the Telekinesis/Fast Travel exploit a lot before I realised that the Community College has so many people in it that 'Detect Life' was a far more viable option. Oh, and in case you're wondering, I did level up the crafting skills to enable me to enchant my gear with alteration/illusion enchants to allow for endless spamming. I think I would have killed myself otherwise.

Did you know that at level 900+, it takes around 450 skill points just to level-up once? I BLOODY DO NOW...


I haven't actually playtested this yet, as it is gone 1am here and I only finished getting Cassiel to this level an hour ago, so it's probably not fit for it's own Character Build page yet (not by a long way). But I wanted to share it with you guys; see what you thought. Has anyone else hit 1,000? Has anyone here been crazy enough to go higher? And if you have gone higher, could you let me know what medication you were taking, and where I could get some, please? Because getting this far took the patience of a saint. You could even say, the patience of an Angel...

Sorry. A clear sign that i'm lacking sleep. Goodnight!

Okay, so I've spent most of today playtesting this, and I've come across a few interesting things.

I have 'Apocalypse: Magic of Skyrim' installed and active as a mod. Included with it is a Restoration spell that always caught my eye, but was always unusable, which was 'Finger of Death'. What it does is instantly kills the target, but the caster takes 125% of the damage inflicted. So if your target had 100 health, you'll take 125pts of damage. It was unusable because the 'recoil' ignores any resistances, and the only thing you could kill with it without dying were things like rabbits, foxes and - at a stretch - deer.

However, with 4,290pts of health, you can fire away all day long. I also liked the idea of an angel having a one-hand spell that turns enemies into ash in an instant of blinding light. So I spammed it maliciously.

Here's the interesting part: A message comes up in the top left of the window telling you exactly how much damage you took per cast. So I kept a bit of a list.

Frost Troll: Killing it hits you with 525pts of damage. Fair.
Bandit Chief: Typically around 600pts of damage.
Nightlord Vampire: A doozy, this one: 1,250pts.

Skooma Addict who tries to sell you some Skooma on the side of the road?
No idea. Even with a full health bar, I died trying.

There y'go, folks. "Health"iest foe in Skyrim is a skooma addict (until further notice). Who'da thunk it?

Also: I may need to revisit the maths behind my health/stamina/magicka regeneration figures, because as far as I can see they recover far faster than what i've quoted...

[blockquote][b][url=/profile/Legion]Legion[/url] said:[/b]

This is madness and I love it. I had to struggle to hit level 50 just once, and that was only for the achievement. 

[/blockquote]

The funny thing is that some of my all-time favourite builds top-out at level 25 or so when completed. They're builds like simple hunters/huntresses where you're only really raising maybe three skills. Some of my more complicated builds (such as my 'Gunthor the Dwarf', if that's still around on this site anymore) are huge in size, and even then we're talking level 55-60? So a level 1,000 build is - for me - unprecedented.

However, all of my builds have one thing in common: A heavy roleplay element. Sure, my simple huntress could make money by being a bow-for-hire and blur the lines between 'huntress' and 'assassin', but it's far more fun focusing on hunting wildlife, eating 3 meals a day with whatever you managed to hunt that day, and selling the pelts off to merchants in the cities.

On the other extreme: Angel of the Divines who has come to crush those who threaten Tamriel.

Once i've finished playtesting this, i'll do a proper character build for this and put it in the appropriate group. However for now, i'm just enjoying what for me is uncharted waters, and relishing the roleplay element of such a build.