All my characters (All 2 ) have archery as a fallback. My first character, light armoured, sneaky as hell, two hander barbarian was a split your skull in two with a beast of a weapon, but sneaking and archery are fundamental really, I think. Archery is a good fallback skill, and sneaking . . . who in their right mind would go traipsing about a crypt, without surveying their surroundings first, before announcing they are there? Mind now at level 40 I almost never get spotted when sneaking, and do nice sneak attacks with said two handed weapon.

My current character is a Greatsword-wielding Warrior who wears light armor. He uses no magic or shouts. No helm, either. He has to be fast and agile and stay focused or he dies. I 'm finding it very fun.

I use heavy armor, a sword, shield, archery, and sneak. I started by mastering all warrior abilities but 2-handed, along with alchemy and enchanting, then after I finally decided to smith my weapons and armor (assuming you could only do it once, but I was wrong. You're allowed to improve a single item more than once as long as you're actually able to make it even better) I finally started putting points into other areas, being archery and sneak. When I get to level 80, I'll have just enough to spend on all that I wish, aside from a single magic perk tree aside from enchanting.

So no, I don't dual wield. I also won't have the points to pickpocket weapons and armor. :confused:

My second character was a Orc 2h hvy berzerker used to crush all in his path, his companion was Sven who used to unlock the chests and doors I came across but eventually locks became to hard for him so found my thieving skills rising as I searched for a more competant locksmith.
But my Orc hit lvl 50 and the game was not challanging id face dragons head on and laugh as theyd shout fireballs or frost and id walk into them without hurt.

Now im back to being a sneak thief and loving it, but its my playstyle to a tee

1h + conjuration I love my flame atronach. That’s not very sneaky, just burst in summon and bash them to death. I started sneak + archer (never went for the dagger attack, seems to op) but lately I just wanted to literally storm the front door just bust down anything that stands in your way with little to no subtlety.

Same here. In every TES game (clear back to Daggerfall), it doesn't matter what I set out to play, i always end up as a sneaky sniper. And any games of similar style. And even a bit in real life - I used to be into (large-field, outdoor) paintball and I was always the guy shooting you from inside of a bush that you didn't think anyone could possibly reach without being seen.

You can have your stand-up "fair" fights with sword and board. You can announce your position to half the world by throwing huge fireballs around. But me? I'll take my time to examine the area, find the most advantageous position, and knock out the enemy before they even know I'm there.



I disagree with "easy mode", provided stealth is implemented well (and Skyrim does it better than most games). Yes, it gets you a lot of one-shot kills. No, you don't need to deal with in-your-face melee engagements (unless you screw up) or learning the timing of blocks and bashes and power attacks and so forth. But it still requires skill and can be quite difficult to pull off in some circumstances.

Well my female orc dagger assassin is really powerful and sixy! She can two shot many bosses on master with this combination. One-handed perks, sneak dagger perks, back stab, berserk. Seriously if you get the sneak on a boss and go berserk it is usually GG for that boss

Wood Elf Archer/Agent/Assassin, I don't pickpocket and I'm not investing perks into lockpicking.

Sneak (none of the higher perks since they don't do much for me as an archer)
Archery (Full tree)
Speech (merchant-part of the tree full)
Enchant (want the 2 for 1 perk so I'll have to invet quite a lot of perks in it sadly)

I use Light armor but don't acctually need it since I'm never detected, the only times I am detected is when I'm fighting
1. Dragons
2. When the last out of 6-10 guys managed to figure out where I am and get close to me and he usually dies before he's in swiping-range.
3. When I accidentally use another shout instead of Aura Whisper.

Once I've done all the quests I'm going to go back to my melee-orc and try that out past the first dragon-fight, might try doing a pure mage as well.

Sneak makes everything easy.

Though I mentioned my jack-of-all-trades character earlier, this thread actually inspired me to see what all the hubbub was about as it concerns the "Dual-Dagger, Archer, Sneak-Thief" build. So, I went down into the cave with Hedvar and used the expedient exploits of the moment. Left the cave as a level 20 with 51 in 1h (didn't think it would be prudent to keep upping damage perks, since it would eventually crush poor Hedvar and the skill progress would slow to a crawl) and 100 in Sneak.

The bear never even saw it coming. :ninja:

Upon reaching Riverwood, I took the Golden Claw quest (and a quick side gripe: I picked the first 2 Pickpocketing perks while I was leveling with Hedvar and I had a 78% chance to lift something nice from Lucian at the Riverwood Trader and kept getting caught. I must've tried, through constant reloading, about 6-7 times to get that damned thing and always fell into the 22% chance of getting caught. WTF? Statistics were not working their magic). I Silent Rolled past a Frost Troll, which felt AMAZING, and ganked all 3 bandits at the outpost. Upon reaching Bleak Falls Barrow, I took out all 3 sentry bandits with dual-dagger backstabs. It was awesome. I saved and quit before entering the barrow, though, because it was finally bedtime.

I'm sure this post will be met with some measure of scorn for both the build and the use of an exploit... but I worked the crap out of my main character. Hard, hard work and perseverence... so please forgive if I wanted a secondary character with some "easy" fun to it.

im everything, and it works! i usually run around with a mace and some sort of spell in the other. I just made a frigen mint load of money from making fortify health potions. im trying to get 100 alchemy.

I'm a Sword and Board man in Heavy Armor, but I Sneak all the time and have Muffle on my boots as well as my follower (on his boots, that is, though I'd like to Muffle him too sometimes). Sure my close-up Sneaking is pathetic, and I have no perks in it, but it means I can usually scope out situations and start combat on my terms. About once or twice an evening I pull off a backstab!

This seems well-balanced to me, by the way. I've practiced the skill up to the 50's and given up an enchanting slot, and Sneaking makes a solid contribution to my staying alive. But there's no way I could get through an area to steal something without being noticed.

Dual-Dagger :down:

I'm a warrior, I love charging headlong into fights, getting in faces. As for lockpicking, many many hours wandering the capital wasteland and mojave have turned me into Houdini-no lock has defeated me as of yet.

Shadow summoner knight.


Only way I can describe it/

I'm a full on warrior. Charge into battles with my Dwarven Armor and my trusty battleaxe. So much more fun than my earlier sneak archer.

I have a war axe and heavy armor. I use a staff or destruction if I have to for an enemy and use healing if I need it, although I mostly rely on potions. Sneaking makes me too nervous. I just charge in foolishly and start whacking.

Tbh I don't see much strategy in a raging rush, slaughtering everyone in the room.

well it doesn't FORCE you to do anything. No self respecting full mage is going to be picking locks or going to worry about missing out on another iron helmet & 10 gold if he had.
Since a mage also doesn't want to raise speechcraft by selling either - not picking locks isn't missed that much.

Pure warrior class for me.

1 and 2 handed,smith,block,heavy armour.

Never used a single point of mana or a ranged weapon and never will.

All that sneaking about is not for me either.I dont want it to sound like i enjoy mindless fighting because i dont.I just prefer the melee side - combat tactics and experience of fighting different types of enemy's and learning from it.

Playing a Axe and Shield Warrior... I drink a lot more potions, but its still a lot of fun.

And the Dragons? They usually don't land until you've done at least a bit of damage to them. I use a bow for that.

I'm a lvl 46 warrior fighting more or less naked (a steel helmet and fur armor without boots; I like the barbarian look ) with one-handed sword and a shield, on master level. It's rather funny when you get killed by one or two arrows or one bite of these terrible insects in Falmer dungeons. You have to be rather careful. :flamed:

Within the first 2 hours of playing Skyrim I took all my preconceptions about classes, archetypes, and all that jazz and threw it out the window.

I then reframed my thinking on this as "I am a guy in a world." I was a Breton so I had Conjure Familiar from the start, so that's handy. I then immediately got encouraged to use an axe, it hurt stuff pretty good so that's good. Later I was given a bow and "taught" to sneak. My thoughts were "Why would I approach enemies yelling 'Hey, look at me' when I can sneak up and fight them on my terms?" Never mind the bonus damage. Etc, etc., etc...

I'm a guy in the world who has learned, and is taught, how to do stuff and if it's useful I use it. In real life I don't say "Hey, if I do that thing this guy taught me how to do my life would be a million times easier.... but... no I'll do it the hard way."


TL;DR Yeah I sneak around 90% of the time because it just feels dumb to approach a hostile situation stomping my feet saying "Hi, I'm here to kill you."

To be honest I'd say being thieves/stealth characters are the easiest so but it's also fun to kill people by cutting throats or killing a room without anyone taking any notice that's why I think it's so popular.

The actual story of the game isn't set towards evil characters to me. The dragonborn song is talking about a hero getting rid of evil so I feel weird when not playing the main quest as a heroic Nord, that's why I haven't done much of it.

But to be honest I've been playing a thief and it's fun but after a while it does get a little repetitive. I've been playing on Master and only using loot I find. It's actually much more fun that way. Even now I have to run away after being chased, that's why I love my archer/assassin, he's not perfect or overpowered but good enough to be good if that makes sense... It's still a challenge for him. Probably because I've only put perks in Archery and Sneak at the moment and haven't play dual dagger/slit throat 30x sneak style haha. I'm extremely low defenced as I only use the armor I have found and I haven't spent perks into light armor. It feels much more real to me playing like this.

Personally though my first character was an Altmer pure destruction mage. It's my favourite way to play any game but unfortunately it's not as effective in Skyrim or at least not at first. I wish there were more elements and different styles of destruction spells. That's probably because any game I play I love having mages that have elemental powers

Warriors look fun and challenging. I want to make a Barbarian/Beserker (Nord 2H + LA) but I'm probably going to get my butt kicked on Master. Especially when I never smith or anything.

Look at me blabbering and I bet no one will read... Why do I bother typing out all of this? I guess to kill time and because I'm so indecisive typing to myself is like trying to decide on how I should play... I type out of my head it's like thoughtless speech that you can read

It's also worth noting that in my experience different enemies are "weak" to different tactics.

Draugr and Skeletons are really bad at detecting stealth so it's really effective against them. However Draugr really hurt when you try to melee them (especially deathlords and death overlords).

Forsworn on the other hand are really really hard to sneak up on and can slap you silly but are pretty weak against magic.

Melee works really well against trolls, spiders, bears, and other non-human (or former human) enemies and mages (once you close the gap, also archers a lot of times).

This is another reason I threw out "classes" and just use what works at the time. Just like in real life you use the tools that fit the job. You don't use a screw driver to pound in a nail and you don't use a hammer to put in a screw.