Damn those Stormcloaks! It’s all their fault that we’ve been captured. Lokir and I stole a pair of horses so we could flee back to my homeland of Hammerfell. We made a killing off of raiding small settlements in Cyrodiil and all we had to do was escape the law to be set up for life. We crossed the border into Skyrim, expecting only a few guards to deal with. Imagine our surprise when we saw the Imperial Legion waiting for us. Turns out we ran into a trap set for Ulfric and his men. Now the Imperials have imprisoned us and took everything we had. If I ever get out of here, I’m gonna make a new start in Skyrim. With the civil war going on, all these small little hamlets will be easy pickings…
The Raider
It’s no secret that mounted combat turned out to be a pretty underwhelming addition to Skyrim. Even so, it’s disappointing to see how there are almost no builds that seriously incorporate it. To be fair, a lot of this has to do with how limiting it is, but even so, I think there’s some untapped potential to be had here. So, loosely inspired by Mongolian light cavalry, I set out to create a build with some interesting roleplay that centered on mounted combat.
Race: Redguard is my personal choice. They get +10 to One-Handed and +5 to Smithing and Archery, and their poison resistance stacks with the Snakeblood perk for poison immunity. Furthermore, Adrenaline Rush is a great racial power, especially when paired with dual scimitars and Elemental Fury.
Stone: This build is pretty light when it comes to defenses, making the Lord Stone the ideal choice.
Stats: 0/2/1. With no magic being used, all you need to focus on is Health and Stamina.
Shouts: Elemental Fury is the bread and butter of this build, enabling you to tear your enemies apart with ease. Whirlwind Sprint is great for either advancing upon or fleeing enemies. Finally, the first word of Unrelenting Force is useful for staggering opponents (since bashing is impossible while dual-wielding) and all three words can be used to scatter whole groups of enemies. None of the words for Elemental Fury are quest-locked, but for Unrelenting Force/Whirlwind Sprint, you’ll need to complete the Main Quest up through The Horn of Jurgen Windcaller before you rack up a huge bounty.
Skills
One-Handed: Your melee offense comes from a pair of Scimitars (though you’re limited to only one of them while on horseback). To get the Scimitars, either kill the pair of Alik’r that give you the In My Time Of Need quest, or pick them off the corpses of the corsairs on The Dainty Sload. Key perks are Armsman, Fighting Stance, and the dual-wielding perks. At higher levels you can also grab Bladesman and the remaining power attack perks.
Archery: Your ranged offense comes from a simple Hunting Bow. Perk your way up the left side to Bullseye, and grab both ranks of Steady Aim as well; it makes aiming on horseback a lot easier.
Light Armor: For protection, the Raider wears a full set of Scaled Armor. If you’re on the PC and have the Unofficial Skyrim Patch installed, use the Scaled Horn Armor (since the patch enables you to temper it). Perkwise, you should aim to pick up pretty much everything. As a side note, for jewelry, simply use anything you find with a useful enchantment.
Smithing: Since the Raider isn’t very welcome inside city walls, he needs to know how to improve and maintain his own equipment. Key perks are Steel Smithing for the Scimitars/Hunting Bow and Advanced Armors for the Scaled Armor.
Alchemy: Potions are the Raider’s only means of healing, and creating concoctions to aid with combat adds a little more depth to gameplay. Gathering ingredients as you travel place to place also gives you something more to do with the Raider. Perk your way up to Benefactor and Concentrated Poison; at higher levels you can also take Green Thumb and Snakeblood.
In total, you should have 50 perks when the build is completed.
Horse and DLC Options
As soon as you can, you’ll want to do Promises to Keep. Speak with Louis Letrush and then do whatever you have to in order to get into Riften Jail. Speak with Sibbi Black-Briar, ideally persuading him to give up his stash key, then complete the hidden optional task of talking to Maven about the situation (doing so may trigger a glitch where it completes the task of stealing the lineage papers, but you’ll need the lineage papers regardless in order to advance the quest). Go to Black-Briar Lodge (entering through the northern door, as it has the weakest lock), slaughter the mercenaries, and steal anything of value, including the lineage papers (if the quest marker isn’t showing up for you, just know that they’re found on an end table in the basement) and Frost himself. Return to Louis and talk to him, but instead of giving him the horse, choose the option to kill him. Boom, instant horse.
Frost is better than a generic horse, as he has more Health and Stamina, but he is not invincible. Should he die, you’ll need to replace him with a generic horse. One can be bought at any of the stables outside the walls of the major hold capitals. Alternatively, winning a brawl with Hofgrir and gathering wheat for Katla will let you use horses from Riften Stables and Katla’s Farm (where Solitude Stables is located) respectively for free. If the owner of a horse dies to someone other than you, then their horse is free for the taking (as seen in the military forts during the Civil War questline). Sometimes unowned horses can be found wandering the wild as well. You could also steal a horse, but even ignoring the fact that the 50 gold bounty stacks each time you mount the horse, every time you dismount, they will run home (with the exception of Frost, who is no longer considered stolen following the completion of the related quest anyway), making it an impractical long term solution.
There are a couple of other horse options to consider. If you’re up for doing the Dark Brotherhood questline, Shadowmere’s a great choice. Compared to Frost, he has a little more Stamina, a lot more Health, and absurdly fast Health Regeneration. Alternatively, for those with the Dawnguard DLC, you can get Arvak. He has the same stats as any other horse, but he can be summoned in places where other horses can’t go such as Blackreach, the Soul Cairn, and Solstheim. The Raider will spend little, if any, time in the first two places, but Arvak is your only means of having the true Raider experience with the Dragonborn DLC. That being said, I personally eschewed both Shadowmere and Arvak in favor of Frost for aesthetic purposes.
Speaking of DLC, joining the Dawnguard gives you access to crossbows, which, from a gameplay standpoint, are the best ranged weapons for the Raider, particularly if you decide to pick up the Dwarven Smithing perk and make yourself an Enhanced Dwarven Crossbow. Mounted Combat really doesn’t let you bring the standard bow’s superior rate of fire to bear, favoring instead the superior damage per shot of the crossbow, not to mention its staggering and potential armor piercing effects. I also think its animation works better for mounted combat (fire, then reload rather than draw, then fire). Again, as with the horse options, I chose to stick with the Hunting Bow for aesthetic reasons.
Roleplay
Rule One: As a Raider, there is no fast traveling, as you will go everywhere on your horse as much as possible. I know that a lot of builds do this already for enhanced realism, but in the Raider’s case, a good portion of the action comes from all of the looting and pillaging you do going from one place to another. Secondly, in general, you’ll want to avoid doing quests, though there are obviously exceptions. You are much more likely to lop a person’s head off than help them, so only take the quest if its reward greatly exceeds the value of killing and looting them. Even when you do end up on a quest, act in the most self-interested and cruelest way possible (you can already see how to do that with Promises to Keep).
Now then, onto the actual raiding business. Your primary targets are small settlements that you can easily get in and out of (e.g. Shor’s Stone) as well as bandit camps and travelers on the road, though if you’re feeling particularly brave, you can also target Orc Strongholds and minor hold capitals. Make your way in there, kill anyone who opposes you (beware anyone marked as essential, however), take anything that isn’t nailed down, and get out. If the situation is too hot, don’t hesitate to make a hasty retreat via your horse. Needless to say, this will rack up a large bounty pretty quickly, which is fine, since you can kill any guards that come after you, but it’ll make your life difficult should you try to visit any of the major hold capitals. As such, I would avoid them much as possible, and complete any quests or other pieces of business in there before your bounty gets too high.
So, after raiding several settlements, you should have plenty of stolen goods. Unfortunately, without the Fence perk, selling them is limited to the fences unlocked by the Thieves Guild questline. Tonila is located within a major hold capital and thus should be avoided, but completing Dampened Spirits will let you use Mallus Maccius at Honningbrew Meadery, which is located just far enough outside of Whiterun that you only need to worry about a couple of guards and not the main garrison. As an added bonus, Honningbrew Boilery (the adjacent building with the giant vats) as well as the basement area never respawn, making them ideal for storing any items you don’t want to sell, and there’s an Alchemy Lab available in the tunnel section of Honningbrew Basement. As with the Main Quest, you’ll want to work your way through the Thieves Guild questline before you get too large a bounty; I did it while I was in the Riften area doing Promises To Keep.
Alchemical Concoctions
Potion of Canis Root, One-Handed Ingredient, and Marksman Ingredient: With the Raider, I mostly stuck to simple, single-effect concoctions, but this was the exception. Aside from the fact that both your sword and bow damage will be boosted, due to a glitch, fortify marksman potions boost all forms of physical damage, not just archery damage. Thus, with the addition of fortify one-handed, your sword damage will be boosted twice as much.
Restore Health: As your primary means of healing, you'll want to have a bunch of potions with this effect on you at all times.
Restore Stamina: Given the importance of Stamina to a dual-wielding build, the usefulness of this effect should be obvious.
Resist Magic: The Raider is somewhat light when it comes to magical defenses, so this is a nice effect to have.
Paralysis: A great poison for tight situations; just hit a strong enemy with this to give yourself some breathing room.
Combat
In general, you’ll want to fight on horseback as much as possible. With the bow, keep your distance and try to stay mobile while placing your shots; NPCs in Skyrim have good aim, but are terrible at leading their targets. With the Scimitar, charge in, take a swipe at them, and then get out before they can react, repeating the process as necessary. The Scimitar has short range, so you’ll want to get as close to your targets as you can when making a pass.
Of course, for dungeons and the like, you’ll have to fight without the benefit of your horse. Dismounting hinders your mobility, but lets you use your second Scimitar as well as your array of shouts and powers. Pretty standard dual-wielding tactics apply here, just let loose with power attacks, Elemental Fury, and (if needed) Adrenaline Rush.
So overall I thoroughly enjoyed this build. Sometimes I would get bored with Skyrim and start killing random people, but this was the first time I seriously made a build out of it. If you liked this, then be sure to check out my other builds to see more!
Replies
Thanks Aysleph
Hey Albino, never tried mounted combat myself. Also, don't forget your Rank:Novice tag
While begining on this class I went to Riverwood for the first time. I did what I needed to do and then began raiding it, things were going smoothly I killed most of the townsfolk and took stuff until my invantory was full. In order to fill my invantory I went into Alvor's house and took some stuff. Hadvar remained unhostile but acted as if there was an enemy near by. He then went outside and started attacking some child who had witnessed me kill both of his parents.
I enjoyed the uniqueness of this build. There aren't many builds that utilize mounted combst or integrate a horse into the playthrough to a large extent. I also like the roleplaying aspect of this character. I feel like this could be a fun alternate playthrough for when I don't feel like doing the usual Skyrim questing. Nicely done!