Hello everyone and welcome to my first build in the Skyforge. This build is based on the Dancer class from Fire Emblem: Three Houses , a very popular JRPG turn-based game. Without further do, let’s dive into it:
"You won't meet a finer dancer in all the realms! Her moves inspire soldiers to work twice as hard!"
What we have here is a very special type of support role: It does not have a high deffense or attack. His healing spells are fine but not big deal... So what is it special about it? Yes, you already guess it: Dancing!
According to Fire Emblem, the highlights of the Dancer class are:
- Unique ability to utilize the Dance command on an allied unit who has taken an action that turn. Their Dance revitalizes the unit, allowing them another full turn of movement and action.
- Traditionally a female-exclusive class.
- Swords tend to be the preferred weapon of choice for Dancers.
- Dancers tend to focus on strengthening their Speed, Dexterity and Luck in most cases, allowing them to dodge attacks.
- Low strenght and frail defensive stats, but decent HP that ensure their survivability.
Another really cool thing about the dance class is that you need to win a contest to unlock it. Winning will depend on how high your charisma skill is, and the contest will only be available once in the entire course of the game.
So with all of this said, let's bring this class to life in our precious Skyrim!
Note: The Mods for this build are OPTIONAL. I made this build to be Vanilla friendly, so feel free to try it with and without mods and use whichever version fits you better.
- TK Dodge: I would say this is the only required mod that would make the build funnier and more challenging. (Just download SE version. Not AE, not RE, not NG, without any patch. If you have "Missing reference tkuc" error with nemesis, try to reinstall Precision if you have one with selected tk dodge option and make sure you sort your plugins)
- Dancers and Dragons: Even this mods adds a new gameplay experience as a "Dancer" in combat (that is the whole point of this build), I didn't like it that much. Try it by yourself.
- Apachii Divine Elegance Store: With this mod you could acces tones of cool-looking clothes, including the dancer ones. Apachii Hairs also would be cool.
- Race: Redguard Female
- Standing stone: The Lady stone (+25% Stamina and Health regeneration)
- Stats: 2-1-0 (Till 250 Magicka) then all points in Health.
- Equipment:
- Rebel Princess Armor (Modded) or:
- Tavern Clothes (Health/Illusion)
- Boots (stamina regen/carry weight)
- Ring (Alteration/illusion)
- Amulet of Talos
- Circlet (restoration/illusion)
- 2 Scimitars (Fire/Soul trap)
- Major skills:
- Minor skills:
- Alteration
- Restoration
- One-handed
- Shouts:
- Become Ethereal
- Elemental fury
- Battle Fury
- Whirlwind spirit
When you were little, you were sold by your parents to a clan of Alik'r warriors. Although that might seem like a bad thing, the truth is that they raised you as one of their own in their nomadic family wandering the desert. You grew up and developed the skills necessary to survive in such harsh conditions, such as knowing how to handle a curved sword and some eloquence, but without a doubt, your passion was dancing.
Every night, around the campfires where you and your people would gather to tell stories and eat, you would always dance to the rhythm of the ancestral music from the Hammerfell deserts. When you danced, the world stopped, and when you finished, everyone would burst into applause and cheers. Your passion was undoubtedly genuine, and you wanted to learn more about all types of dances and cultures from Cyrodiil.
You set your sights on reaching Skyrim after hearing stories about the Bards College and the knowledge stored there. However, an ambush took you by surprise. Not knowing how fate spared you from that situation, your new goal is to discover the strange power that emanates from your voice after the Dragon attack, in addition to continuing with your plans to become a great dancer and expand your repertoire of movements.
Now that we know a bit more about our character, let's define the playstyle.
Combat⚔️
- The Dancer class is a support role, so direct combat, stealth, or combat magic are not our thing. We want to get a companion as soon as possible. Uthgerd the Unbroken or Lydia are great options, but any follower with good heavy armor and melee combat-style will do the trick.
- Our mission on the battlefield will be to make things easier for our companions through dancing, which we’ll perform with a combination of Illusion magic, shouts, powers, dodging and enchanting our follower's equipment. Everything combined will create our unique powers, wich we will talk about later.
- In short, our followers will handle the heavy lifting while we apply buffs, and occasionally, we’ll deliver some fatal blows to finish the job, capture souls, or manage dangerous situations. We will try to avoid damage at any cost since we will not wear any armor. Our HP pool will be our best friend in order to survive in combination with our ability to dodge (with or without mods) and reposition ourselves: Use 1 word of Whirlwind sprint to reposition quick and don’t stop moving around while other powers are on cooldown.
- Heal yourself and others just when are very close to dead (Close wounds and Heal others) and use double charged attacks to strike and support in some tough situations.
Playstyle🎭
- Always travel with companions and help most people in need that you encounter, with a special soft spot for women like Carlotta Valentia, Olfina Gray-Mane, Saadia (who may be the most important), etc. Solidarity among women is something you were taught from a very young age, regardless of race. However, our character isn't a saint, so there will be situations where the balance will need to tip in our favor.
- Loot corpses to make profit from your adventures and level up Speech by selling to all kind of merchants.
- Always split money with followers since you are a team.
- Give enchanted jewerly and equipment to your companions to boost their abilities.
- Never engage combat if is not essential to finish a quest or it is a life/death situation.
With that being said let's jump into the main objectives of our character, being the most important the gradauation from the Bard's Collage.
- Once we leave Helgen, we will continue the main quests till "Blade in the Dark", since it is a very good moment to take a break until the party in the Thalmor Embassy takes place. During that time we learned the Whirlwind sprint shout from the Graybeards, and the first word of Become Ethereal, two important shouts for this build. We also met the jarl's court wizard and learn some core spells like Courage, Fury and Oaklflesh and level up a bit our Illusion, Alteration and Restoration skills.
- Now that we took a rest from the Dragons problem, we will head straight to Solitude, so we can Join the Bard's College and start our class promotion quest to become a proper Dancer. On our way we will take the Lady Stone blessing (Lake Ilinalta).
Dancer Promotion🏆
Just like in Fire Emblem: Three Houses, there are a series of requirements and steps to follow before you can turn a character into the Dancer class. To do the same in Skyrim, we will need to achieve the following:
- Go through the main quest until you kill Sahloknir.
- Get a melee follower.
- Find and wear the Tavern Clothes, this will be the main outfit for the dancer.
- Get 2 scimitars. ("In time of need" siding with Sadia will help you)
- Go through the Bard's College questline, retrieve King's Olaf lost verse and improvisse the missing parts with the higher score possible. (you need level 50 on speech for that)
- Celebrate the False King burning festival.
"Solitude wouldn't be the same without the Fire Festival. City owes you a debt of gratitude." Solitude Guards.
- Now that we are a certified dancer by the Bard's College we can do the rest of the quests for them, but more importantly, we will have access to our unique powers section!
The rest of the missions we can do to continue with the dancer's story are:
- Finding the rest of the words of power for Whirlwind spirit, Become Ethereal, Battle Fury (Solstheim) and Elemental Fury.
- Visiting Solstheim in order to adquire "Bardic Knowledge" from the Black Books.
- Adquiere the "Agent of Diabella" power by helping the temple's priestress in Markarth.
- Visit the College of Winterhold to max Illusion and unlock the master spells. You can finish the questline and leave the leadership to Tolfdir. (Just give up the Archmage robes and leave)
- Find the Remant scimatar. (Interception quest, for Anniversary Edition. Look for a Redguard in Shore's Stone)
- End the threat of dragons by defeating Alduin.
After that fell free to help the Dawnguard and also end Miraak threat, encouraging the Imperials or the Stormcloaks in the civil war etc. From now you are free of do whatever mission you like, considering that our character is neither evil nor has extraordinary combat skills.
The dancer's playstyle is defined by her unique powers, which are a series of dances that will trigger different kinds of effects on our allies, ourselves, and our enemies. This powers will combine different spells, powers and shouts that we should acquire first. The powers are as follows:
Bravery Dance (Courage/Rally+Flesh Spell): You and your teammates get a boost on defense, health, stamina and will not flee from combat.
Fury Dance (Fury/Frenzy+Become Etheral+Reposition): A dance that will make enemies attack each other while you move with grace being untouchable.
Dancing blades (Elemental Fury+Double charged attack+Adrenaline Rush): A dance of swift attacks with your swords that take down dying enemies and restore your stamina.
Dancer's Seduction (Agent of Diabella+Dual wielding attacks): Your dancer training causes the opposite sex to take 10% more damage.
Dance of the Forgotten Sands (Call to arms+Dual cast flesh spell+Bardic knowledge+Battle Fury): A dance from the deep desert that will make you and your allies almost invincible, making them hit faster, improving their stats and stamina regeneration at the cost of all your resources.
And with that, we’ve reached the end of the build. I hope you like it and have fun trying it out. It’s definitely not the most optimized or perfect build, but I think it captures the essence of the Dancer class from Fire Emblem.
I could recommend that, to get the feeling of supporting as many allies as possible and truly feel like an RPG support character, you install UFO mod (Ultimate Follower Overhaul) and make a party of 4-5 adventurers.
Other than that, thank you very much for reading the build to the end, and feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments so I can improve in future builds! Best regards to everyone!
Replies