Learning to play a thiefalchemist - no TG, on Legendary

Post » Thu Dec 03, 2015 1:39 pm

Just wanted to share an interesting build for vanilla Skyrim. It's a khajiit thief with an emphasis on the stealth skills (not perking any other school) on Legendary difficulty. The only craft is alchemy and I'm not researching recipes from old builds or the internet, just what I can discover, remember, or figure out. Stalled the MQ and am operating independently of the Thief's Guild.

Here's the interesting part of the build: I figured a thief alchemist wouldn't really bother growing ingredients or smith ammunition, it would be more natural to steal them. However, with low speech, sneaking, and lockpicking skills, it's tough to escape from prison in the beginning and even harder to recover your stuff after it is confiscated, unless you serve your time (which is something a self-respecting thief would never do). So, my strategy has been to store everything someplace safe, wear just a robe and boots, take a carriage to each of the major cities, harvest all the free ingredients in the city grounds/gardens, then break into the alchemist shops at night. Its worked fairly well (always eat new ingredients immediately to learn their effects in case you get busted) and it's pretty exciting. If the PC is busted, there's nothing to recover from the confiscation, you just need to escape. I also plan to steal whatever is helpful from the fletcher in Solitude as my character doesn't smith. With the right Speech perks, you can fence stolen goods and dump extra potions profitably. Interestingly, only had one brush with thugs so far who were hired to 'punish' the PC, and just ran away from them.

In spite the theft approach to supplies, buying a Hearthfire house with a garden and alchemy station was key, as was the fishery at Windstad Manor up in Hjaalmarch. It was really hard to kill Morvarth, took many visits with increasingly powerful fortify marksman and sneak potions. Poisons (like paralysis, slow, or lingering health damage) don't work on vampires. Remember, am playing without any smithing or archery perks. So, you have to just whittle down a vampire with repeated shots until they die. Morvarth, however, regenerates so he's extra difficult. You gotta get him in relatively quick series of shots; I saved some Orchish and Dwarven arrows for him.

Am currently at level 26, have some good poisons (thanks to a steady supply of River Bettys from the fishery) and high Sneak. The plan is to get Krosis, then clean out some bandit holds (hello Valtheim Towers) to score some enchanted gear. Forsworn and human bandits are now easy marks thanks to the more powerful poisons. I may also bend the rules and take the Archery perks that relate to handling the bow (like Eagle Eye, Power Shot, Quick Shot, Hunter's DIscipline, Ranger) even though you have to take at least one Overdraw to reach the others.

Hope this starts some interesting plans for other console players.

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Jeffrey Lawson
 
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