Character Archetype: The Spellsword

Race: Dark Elf

Gender: Female

Statistic Focus: Health 40% Magicka 30% Stamina 30%

Primary Skills (you’ll want to level these ASAP): One-Handed, Destruction

Secondary Skills: Light Armor, Illusion

Stone Ability: Lover Stone

Essential Perks: Armsman (One Handed), Fighting Stance (One Handed), Destruction Rank Perks, Augmented Flames/Shock/Frost (Destruction), Impact (Destruction), Agile Defender (Light Armor)

Weapons: One-Handed weapon and spell

Armor: Light Armor for speed and mobility. Look for enchanted armor that increases your maximum Magicka or Magicka regeneration rate

Follower: if you want a tank to absorb damage, use a warrior like Lydia or Vorstag. If you want anged support, use Jenessa or Marcurio.

Advice:

·       As a Dark Elf, you might have to work a bit harder to level up your one-handed skill (which doesn’t come with a bonus), but the rest of your skills are a good fit.

·       A spellsword is all about flexibility, switching between weapons and spells as the situation demands, aggressively creating and exploiting enemy weakness.

·       Use Destruction spells to soften up foes from a distance before they can get close to you. Use Flames on weaker enemies to cut down their health, Frost on stronger opponents to slow them down, and Shock on mages, to drain their Magicka.

·       Your best defense is a good offense.

·       It’s pretty effective, at earlier levels, to use your Flame spell in one hand while you chop away with a One Handed weapon in the other.

·       As your enemies level up with you, it becomes really important to stagger them. Take the perks Fighting Stance (to power attack more frequently) and Impact (to let spells stagger enemies)

·       Your racial ability is Ancestor’s Wrath, a Flame Cloak spell. Use this at earlier levels to inflict damage at close combat, or if you’re surrounded by a few enemies. Watch out though, at higher levels, using the actual Flame Cloak spell is much more effective and powerful (unless you want to conserve Magicka)

·       Being a spellsword, you can focus your attention almost solely on offense, but it’s a good idea to learn a few Ward spells (for facing mages) or a Flesh spell (like Oakflesh, Stoneflesh) to increase your armor rating against some of the tougher bad guys. Neither one of these should slow you down too much

·       It’s really important that you balance your One Handed and Destruction skills. If one falls behind, it won’t be much use to you

·       Since spellswords don’t use blocking or shields, your armor is your only real defense. Don’t neglect Light Armor perks!

·       When you’re facing a large group of enemies, using Illusion spells like Fear or Frenzy are a huge help because that will disrupt the bad guys and give you the chance to fight one at a time.

·       Your skills as a spellsword are pretty wide-ranging, so the Lover Stone is a pretty good way to keep them pretty advanced. If you notice that one skill is falling behind, you should switch to a specific (Warrior, Mage, Thief) stone to balance your skills out again.

Note: When you meet the leader of the greybeards in the main questline, you can meditate with their leader to attain the perk Force Without Effort (Fus), which allows you to stagger 25% less and enemies to stagger 25% more.