For this build, your primary skills are going to be One-Handed, Heavy Armor, and Block. In practical terms, if you want to play as a loner, this playstyle is one of the only viable methods for the later game (the main alternative being sneak-focused). In roleplay terms, this is a really fun way to approach all of the daedric artifact quests. Truly one of the fantasy archetypes, the Paladin is the tanky do-gooder, seeking to crush evil from the world and all that stuff. Plus, there’s just something especially satisfying about sitting back and watching your magical goons beat up your enemies. Then a fight goes something like this: your elemental tanks charge your enemies as you hang back in your turtle shell, sending bolts of destruction towards them from a distance.Įven in extremely late-game fights, the high protection offered by your armor will massively offset what little damage you actually take, and a decent destruction spell will supplement your atronachs damage to make quick work of anything that faces you. Get yourself a suit of decent heavy armor and a shield, and equip a destruction spell in your main hand. The Twin Souls conjuration perk coupled with one of the master-level Thrall spells lets you summon two permanent atronachs, which are almost stupidly powerful tanks that will charge your enemies. The basic idea is this: max out conjuration, heavily invest in blocking and heavy armor, and get yourself a decent destruction spell. I debated placing this build among the ranks of the purely fun builds simply because of how memable it is, but its efficacy speaks for itself. Keeping with the theme of “conjuration fricken rules,” let’s take that to its logical extreme. There’s really no better way to hit the ground running. All that isn’t even to mention the further benefits of conjuration investment or that more bound weaponry becomes available as you level. The perks of using a bound sword over a real one are countless: it weighs nothing, simply conjuring your sword in the presence of an enemy levels conjuration on top of the one-handed leveling from the fight, it benefits from all “fortify one-handed” enchantments and potions, and further perks in the conjuration tree can give it all the benefits of a well-enchanted sword.
Furthermore, obtaining the Level 20 conjuration perk Mystic Binding raises its stats to those of a Daedric sword, essentially letting you use one of the best swords in the game as early as Level 3. The sword itself has the base stats of an Orcish sword, which easily outclasses all the steel and iron stuff that the game gives you at the start. From there, if you make a beeline for Whiterun, you can almost immediately buy a Bound Sword spell tome from Farengar, Whiterun’s court wizard.īound Sword is a Novice-level conjuration spell. Playing as a Breton gives you a kickstart for this, as Bretons start the game with a Conjure Familiar spell that allows you to start leveling conjuration right out of Helgen. The core skill, and your natural choice for early investment in this build, is the conjuration school of magic.
It’s essentially a more specialized type of spellsword centered around the use of bound weapons. I honestly can’t think of an early-game build more powerful than this one. With that in mind, let’s get to our picks of the best Skyrim character builds! 1. As a quick disclaimer, we’ve left out Stealth Archer (we figure most players understand how strong it is). We’ve picked out a few of each, but we’ll start with the most powerful builds. The second is more interesting, centering around unorthodox builds that offer the most novel experience. The first is more powerful, considered to be the best Skyrim builds for legendary difficulty playthroughs. There are two pretty distinct versions of Skyrim builds.