The Spellfork
There have been a few builds made for Skyrim that have utilized a set of self-enchanted weapons solely for their enchanting effects. This build is in the same vein as them, but notably differs in using what I believe to be the ultimate enchanter’s weapon: the almighty fork! This is due to several different properties it has. First is the damage, or lack thereof. Due to the way it’s programmed into the game, an unenchanted fork will always deal a measly one point of damage per swing, meaning that you have to pretty much entirely rely on enchanting for damage. Secondly, it has the swing speed of a dagger, allowing you to pile on the enchanting damage fast, and since it’s a one-handed weapon, you can dual-wield forks to mix and match enchanting effects and reap the benefits of Dual Flurry. Finally, the fork has a measly weight value of 0.5, making it easy to carry a lot of them. Now then, let’s get on with the build!
Race: Altmer gives a nice +5 boost to Destruction, Conjuration and Enchanting, and the +50 Magicka and Highborn make it easier to spam Destruction spells at range.
Stone: The AR and magic resistance boost of the Lord Stone is greatly appreciated for this build.
Stats: 1/3/0. The focus is on using your enchanted forks for melee combat, so having a large pool of health helps, but you’ll want some magicka too. Stamina is more or less unnecessary.
Shouts: Become Ethereal is nice for casting master-level Destruction spells uninterrupted, as is Slow Time since it effectively boosts your attack speed. Use the dungeon backdoor glitch to get the words for Slow Time located in Korvanjund and Labyrinthian.
Quests: Only three things are required here: The Black Star (important item for the Spellfork), the Main Quest up to the completion of Dragon Rising (for access to shouts) and First Lessons (for access to the College of Winterhold). Beyond that, feel free to do whatever quests you’d like.
Skills
Enchanting: The absolute core of the build, necessary for creating the enchanted forks as well as some enchanted armor. Grab all the perks in this tree.
Destruction: No matter how hard you enchant your forks, they’ll always be limited to melee range, so it’s nice to have some Destruction spells as a ranged-offense component, and having a high Destruction skill level will increase the number of charges on most of your forks. Since you’ll be using every spell in this school of magic except for Blizzard (due to the way it’s glitched), you’ll want to grab all the perks in this tree.
Conjuration: While you can always enchant a weapon with Soul Trap, I generally prefer the spell version since it lasts for a full minute, which more than enough time to finish off your target. I also perked my way up to Expert Conjuration and grabbed Conjuration Dual Casting as well for the Banish/Command/Expel Daedra spells. That way, I didn’t have to use up one of my weapon enchantment slots for Banish. Also, I've never really bothered with the Banish spells before, so I thought I’d give them a shot with this build.
One-Handed: This skill is worth perking for one reason and one reason only: Dual Flurry. With both ranks, your strikes will be lightning fast, boosting your damage output even further. You’ll have to waste a perk on the prerequisite rank in Armsman but it’s worth it.
Light Armor: You’ll want some form of defense against physical attacks, and light armor fits the bill, simple as that. Grab all the perks in this tree except for Wind Walker.
Speech: Not strictly necessary, but the Merchant perk makes it a lot easier to sell off the stuff you make while training Enchanting. Also, the prerequisite rank in Haggling and Allure will lower the cost of purchasing filled soul gems.
You should have 50 perks once the build is completed.
Equipment
Before we get into the enchanted forks, let’s talk a bit about armor enchantments. First off, I recommend that you disenchant the Shield of Solitude for its stronger version of the Resist Magic enchantment. Which light armor you ultimately choose to enchant is up to you; I went with a set of Glass since it has a high armor rating (by light armor standards) and I haven’t used it in a while. Specific enchantments are as follows, with the second enchantment being added by Extra Effect:
Sage’s Helm (Destruction/Conjuration)
Mage Amulet (Health Regen/Magic Resistance)
Armor of the Arcane (Health Regen/Destruction)
Battlemage Gauntlets (Light Armor/Magicka)
Ring of the Warlock (Health Regen/Magic Resistance)
Boots of Resistance (Resist Fire/Shock)
Now then, weaponry. Until you can get your hands on some forks, iron daggers make a decent substitute, which is good since the version of the fork that you can actually use as a weapon is somewhat rare. Here are the locations where they can be found:
- Honeyside – After purchasing the porch upgrade, one can be found on the table outside.
- Redwater Den – Nearby a forge sitting on a table next to a bottle of Black-Briar Mead.
- Hearthfire Homestead – One appears in a tray on top of a desk when the desk furnishing is added in the small back room of the Main Hall. If a kitchen is added a few may appear on tables and boxes.
- Bloodskal Barrow – Can be found on a table in one of the towers at the barrow entrance.
- Moesring Pass – On a barrel.
Note that all of these locations respawn with the exceptions of the Homestead and Honeyside, making it easy to pick up plenty of forks for use. Here are my recommendations for enchantments:
Heat Lightning: (Fire/Shock Damage) General purpose damage dealer, definitely a prime candidate for being hotkeyed. In most situations, you’ll want this in your main hand. While you can swap out Fire Damage for Chaos Damage, I think it’s too overpowered an enchantment for this build.
Debilitator: (Absorb Health/Paralyze) With no Restoration or Alchemy to rely on, this will be your primary means of healing. Combined with the Paralyze effect, it’s the ideal choice for your off hand.
Magebane: (Damage/Absorb Magicka) As the name implies, this is useful for eliminating mages. The Absorb Magicka part also makes it useful for replenishing your own reserves.
Purifier: (Fire Damage/Turn Undead) As you might’ve guessed from the name and effects, this is your weapon of choice for dealing with the undead, and may as well be glued to your hand while in Nordic Ruins.
Chilling Dread: (Frost Damage/Fear) This is a really fun weapon. The fear effect makes enemies run away, but due to the frost damage they can only run at half speed, making it easy to hit them with follow-up strikes.
Let’s talk about the synergy between Enchanting and the Augmented Element perks from the Destruction tree. This is sort of common knowledge for many on the Blog but I’ll explain here anyway. First, the Augmented Element perks increase the effectiveness of their corresponding elemental damage enchantment. For example, Augmented Flames (2/2) will boost the effectiveness of the Fire Damage enchantment on Purifier by 50%. That’s pretty cool in of itself, but what makes it even better is that the same bonus is also applied to the weapon’s second effect. So, going back to the Purifier example, Turn Undead’s effectiveness is also increased by 50% by virtue of the synergy between Augmented Flames and the Fire Damage enchantment. What makes this absolutely fantastic, however, is when this synergy is used for two different elements on the same weapon, as is the case with Heat Lightning. Having both Augmented Flames (2/2) and Augmented Shock (2/2) increases the effectiveness of both the fire damage and the shock damage by 100%! If that doesn’t get you excited about Enchanting then I don’t know what will.
Replies
A build that uses a fork as its main weapon, interesting to say the least!
Never underestimate the power of the Fork, great Build once again Albino - you hit Rank:Apprentice