Overview
A guide detailing how to create a build centered around a unique playstyle. This build is all about Draining enemies of all their resources until they have nothing left to fight back with.
Introduction and Quick Dislcaimer
Hello and welcome to my second steam guide! My first guide was a Fallout 4 build guide that I didn’t expect to see any traffic at all. It did, however, so I decided to write another guide! This one is for Skyrim, as I’ve had quite the Elder Scrolls itch lately. You will be able to create this build on both Skyrim Special Editon as well as Skyrim Legendary Edition, as all the mods I used to create the build are available for both games.
Quick Disclaimer: I did not come up with the idea for this build. I got the idea from u/axelnight on a reddit thread detailing people’s favorite Ordinator builds
. I liked the idea, and decided to flesh it out more and create an entire build guide for it. As u/axelnight called it, I give you The Winter Wraith.
Mods
First things first, you’ll need some mods. I will only list the mods that I used features from to create the build. I have a gigantic mod list, and if I just gave you my load order, we would be here all day.
1.Ordinator – Perks of Skyrim
SE:Nexus Link[www.nexusmods.com]
LE:Nexus Link[www.nexusmods.com]
2.Imperious – Races of Skyrim
SE:Nexus Link[www.nexusmods.com]
LE:Nexus Link[www.nexusmods.com]
3.Apocalypse – Magic of Skyrim
SE:Nexus Link[www.nexusmods.com]
LE:Nexus Link[www.nexusmods.com]
4.Andromeda – Unique Standing Stones of Skyrim
SE:Nexus LInk[www.nexusmods.com]
LE:Nexus Link[www.nexusmods.com]
5.Wintersun – Faiths of Skyrim
SE:Nexus Link[www.nexusmods.com]
LE:Nexus Link[www.nexusmods.com]
6.Summermyst – Enchantments of Skyrim
SE:Nexus Link[www.nexusmods.com]
LE:Nexus LInk[www.nexusmods.com]
That’s all you need to start playing this build! Just 6 mods, all by the same amazing mod author: Enai Siaion. Any other mods you want to use are up to you, but keep in mind that the more you add, the more compatibility issues you will need to deal with. I cannot help you if you have a load order issue. This is a build guide, not technical support.
I would also like to point out that while these 6 mods are the only ones you need, I did play-test this build with difficulty mods installed. This is a fair warning to those who don’t want to be super-mega OP, because I would imagine that with only these 6 mods, as vanilla as skyrim can get for this build, that you would be OP beyond imagining. I tested this build on Legendary with OBIS – Organized Bandits in Skyrim, Deadly Dragons, and Advanced Adversary Encounters. BE SURE TO BALANCE YOUR OWN GAME ACCORDING TO WHAT YOU FEEL IS FAIR FOR YOU!
Race and Attributes
Altmer: High elves or Altmer have a significant advantage over other races when it comes to playing as a mage. They start with the highest base magicka of all races, the highest base magicka regen of all races (Though that doesn’t matter and you’ll understand why later) and have some racial passives that benefit mages to a high degree. Speaking of the racials, lets go over those now:
Elven Supremacy: Skills are more effective upon reaching skill level 100.
This skill doesn’t help at all in the early game, but can be a big deal in late game. It boosts your skills above 100, and when it comes to things that scale with skill level like destruction, the extra skill levels you get from this can give you a little extra damage that is nice to have.
Gold and Glass: When low on Magicka or Stamina, it regenerates faster at the cost of reduced armor and magic resistance.
This is quite honestly horrible for this build. It is decent in the early game for helping keep your magicka topped up, but once we get a key perk later on, Gold and Glass will be constantly active, giving you an almost permenant hit to your armor and magic resistance.
Shimmering Threads:Weapons and armor are weaker, but enchantments are stronger.
This makes up for Gold and Glass not being very good for the build. As a slight spoiler, we won’t be using any smithed armor or weapons for almost the entire game, and therefore the only drawback of this perk is null and void for us. This makes ALL enchantments stronger, not just enchantments you make yourself. Those mage robes in Helgen keep? They get buffed by this.
Lastly we have the unlockable power. Sometimes these Racial Powers can be hard to unlock, but Altmer have it easy. Just collect butterflies. After you catch 20 of them, you’ll unlock this power. (It says pluck 40 wings off of butterflies, but you get two wings for each one, hence only catching 20.)
Contingency: At will – Weave spells into an auto-cast trigger with specific conditions.
You can do some really crazy stuff with this. Most people I’ve talked to just set a healing spell in it to trigger on low health as a last resort, however I think you can do some way more complex and interesting things with it than just a simple healing spell. Despite play-testing this build while having it almost the entire time, I have not done an entire playthrough with this build yet, so I have not gotten to play around with Contingency as much as I’d like. I don’t know much about what else Contingency can allow you to do, but I’m certain that it has far more potential than healing spells and flesh spells.
Attributes: This was hard to decide on. You need a relatively large magicka pool to cast lots of high level spells, but you don’t want to be too squishy either. You also will want a little bit of stamina to power attack with occasionally since this build does use a bound sword. In the end I went with:
50% Magicka – Enough to do what you need to do.
30% Health – Still squishy, but we can fix this with spells
20% Stamina – This will be enough for your power attacking needs.
Standing Stones
The Atronach: The most powerful stone from vanilla skyrim makes a return in this build, but with a shiny new coat of paint. Compared to vanilla skyrim, Andromeda’s version of the Atronach stone is still pretty OP, but can be a build defining decision to make. To go over what the Atronach stone offers:
Corrupted Arcana: Magicka does not regenerate. Each death within 50 feet restores Magicka equal to 25 times their level.
This is what I meant by a build defining decision. Making the choice to forego your Magicka regen in favor of finite amounts of Magicka can be a tough choice. However, in practice this is nowhere near as bad as it sounds. The deaths do not need to be enemy deaths. If you have conjuration summons and they die, you’ll get Magicka back.
Oblivion Bound: If you have Magicka remaining, spells are 25% more effective and cost 50% less Magicka.
This second passive also helps to manage your finite amounts of Magicka by decreasing their costs, and upping their damage. Our build defining perk will help us have lots of Magicka during fights, so this passive will almost always be active, buffing our damage, and decreasing Magicka costs.
Next we have the unlockable power. It is obtained by discovering all standing stones. This works the same with other standing stones.
Devour from Within: 1/day – Paralyzes a living target, absorbing 50 Magicka for 10 seconds. When depleted, absorbs Health instead.
While the Magicka absorption is very high, most enemies don’t have very much Magicka to drain, and we don’t really need the Magicka absorption either, we have so many ways to refill Magicka in this build that it’s really not necessary. What is nice, though, is the paralyze. We do not use an enchantable weapon, and therefore cannot get the paralyze enchantment. You could use the paralyze spells to get access to paralyzing someone, but this is super easy to aquire comparatively, which is why it’s useful. Earlier access to paralyzing enemies is never a bad thing.
The Apprentice: If you would like a second standing stone effect (and I highly recommend it) you can store another one in the Aetherial Crown, and I would recommend the Apprentice stone for it. To go over what the Apprentice stone offers:
Prodigy: Novice spells cost no Magicka and all other spells cost 15% less Magicka.
More Magicka cost reduction, with the added bonus of some free spells mixed in. Very nice indeed. (Although the free novice spells don’t matter because we get a perk for the build that also gives us free novice spells.)
Sorcerer’s Apprentice: Spells you cast are either 50% more effective or 50% less effective than intended. (The former is more likely.)
At first I thought this sounded like a bad thing, because there’s a chance your spells are weaker. It is not a bad thing at all. Yes, you will throw out the occasional weaker spell, but more often than not your spells will be significantly more powerful. This extends to more than just damage spells but I’ll go more into that later.
Unlockable:
Vaporize: 1/day – For 30 seconds, prevent a killing blow by annihilating the attacker. No effect on massive targets.
This can be a decent last resort, but I ultimately found it not very useful.
Major Skills and Perks (Alteration)
Strap yourself in and get ready to read, these next few sections are all about your skills. I needed to split each skill into it’s own section, as I had too much to say to fit it all into one section. As you read you might be able to pick up on how things synergize together, and you’ll really start to understand how everything comes together to create the build. I’m going to split your skills into two parts: Major Skills and Minor Skills. There are 3 Major, and 2 Minor Skills. I will only be mentioning the strongest or most important perks so as to keep this as short as possible. So without Further ado, lets start with our Major Skills:
Alteration: With no heavy or light armor, Alteration is how we get our defense. Ordinator’s alteration tree is so much more than just for mage armor perks though. We have some extremely cool perks in this tree that synergize really well with many different things.
–The Monarch(1/1): You cannot regenerate Magicka and lose 10 points of Magicka per second but absorb 25 points of Magicka per second from living creatures within 20 feet, whether friend or foe.
This is the perk that makes the magic happen. The single most important perk in the build. This perk does something that most every other Skyrim build I have ever made struggled doing: dealing with enemy mages. Yes, you need to be relatively close to them to drain their Magicka, but being a battlemage using the bound sword, you’ll be in range for this to drain Magicka most of the time. Keep in mind that this perk specifies LIVING targets. So no vampires, no draugr, and no reanimated minions. You can however, bring a follower with you, preferably one who does not use magic, and use them as a Magicka battery. The Monarch still absorbs Magicka even if the target has none left to drain, so having a follower with you will give you Magicka often, even outside of combat.
–Nullifier(1/1): You radiate a dampening field, preventing enemies within 25 feet from regenerating Magicka and Stamina.
Perfect synergy with Monarch here. Almost the same distance, and it helps keep those mages shut down once Monarch drains all their Magicka to make sure they can’t cast any more spells, the most particularly annoying thing they cast being wards. This also prevents melee opponents from getting any more power attacks off during the fight.
–Arcane Thesis(1/1): Grants the “Arcane Thesis” power: use it to master the spell you are dual casting. A mastered spell is 20% more powerful or lasts 40% longer. Only one spell can be mastered.
You have a few choices of what spell to master with this perk, and the obvious choice is your most used destruction spell, however, I do think there is value in mastering a flesh spell to increase the duration of the spell. Dragonhide comes to mind as one that can make good use of being mastered when stacking the increased duration with other things that increase duration.
–Welloc’s Dormant Arcana(1/1): Choose a spell type (Armor, Cloak, Conjure Daedra, Conjure Undead, Invisibility) and 3 magic effects (Fortify, Regenerate, Waterwalking, …). The chosen magic effects will activate whenever you are affected by the chosen spell type.
I chose the armor spell type and gave it +Magic Resist, +Destruction Magnitude, and +Movement speed.
–Spellblade Branch(3/3): There are three perks in this branch that synergize with the sword main-hand spell off-hand playstyle that this build adopts. Take all three perks: Spellblade, Energy Roil, and Rend Resistances.
–Home Mythal(1/1): Summons a permenant magical field at the location where you learn this perk. Alteration spells gain x2 duration if cast within 5000 feet, and x20 duration if cast within 250 feet. Additionally, Vancian Magic can be recharged by sleeping within 250 feet.
This perk is optional, but I used it to stack duration buffs for Dragonhide. This is a big boost to Dragonhide’s duration, and with all kinds of different effects stacking at once, casting this near your Home Mythal can easily result in a Dragonhide that lasts several real life hours.
Major Skills and Perks (Destruction)
Destruction: Destruction is a lot more simple than Alteration in terms of synergies. It mostly deals with the big damage you’ll be able to put out. You could use Fire or Shock magic, but I would recommend Frost instead, and the perks will explain why:
–Merciless Cold(2/2): Frost spells and effects cast on others are up to 20/30% more powerful, based on the target’s missing Stamina percentage.
With frost spells, you’ll be draining enemies Stamina that they won’t be getting back thanks to Nullifier. This means that in an extended fight, your spells will be doing a constant 30% more damage. Ice spells also help to slow melee attackers down, which is another reason why we go the Frost route.
–Crystalize(1/1): Frost spells freeze the blood of their targets, halting Stamina regeneration for 5 seconds. If the targets are not resistant to frost, frost spells also reduce armor by 125 points for 5 seconds.
What is important here is the armor reduction. Nullifier takes care of stopping stamina regen, so that part of the perk isn’t needed, although in the early game before you get Nullifier, this could be helpful.
–Shatter(1/1): Frost spells that hit a frost resistant target fragment and explode in a 15 foot area, reducing frost resistance by 25% for 10 seconds. This effect stacks.
A lot of people underestimate Frost magic. They say that there are too many frost resistant enemies in Skyrim for it to be viable. While not entirely wrong, It can still be decent in Vanilla. Ordinator on the other hand, offers us an out. This perk is what makes Frost magic OP in my opinion. Being able to deal progressively more damage to an enemy who was previously almost immune to your attacks by stacking this debuff on him makes the downside of Frost magic go away.
–Hypothermia(1/1): Frost spells paralyze living targets below 25% Health if they are not Frost resistant.
This is another way to paralyze enemies. It is still nowhere near as consistent as a paralyze enchant or spell, but this perk is important because it helps set up a very reliable form of crowd control later on in the tree.
–Winter’s Majesty(1/1): You radiate freezing cold, reducing the Frost resistance of enemies within 25 feet by 50%. This penalty is applied on top of Shatter.
Another absolutely incredible enabler perk. You’ll have to stack Shatter even less with this perk, and conveniently, it is yet another aura ability that is about the same range as The Monarch, so you will be in range for this to be active at almost all times.
–Glacial Prison(1/1): Frost spells immobilize (non-essential) targets in a block of ice for 6 seconds, reducing magic resistance by 25%. This effect has a 120 second cooldown, but killing a victim affected by Glacial Prison or Hypothermia immediately ends the cooldown.
This is the reliable form of crowd control I was talking about. With the high amount of damage you can deal, you’re going to be killing enemies affected by this and Hypothermia all the time, refreshing it’s cooldown and allowing you to fully freeze another enemy.
–Elemental Specialization(1/1): You may choose one element (Fire, Frost, Shock). Spells and effects of that element are 15% more powerful, while spells and effects of the other two elements are 15% weaker.
While you could definitely not take this perk and occasionally use other types of magic, you can definitely probably assume by now that I’m going to recommend you specialize in Frost. Between Winter’s Majesty and Shatter, you don’t really need to use other spell types unless the enemy is Frost IMMUNE, but you have your bound sword for that, as well as maybe a follower or conjuration summons.
Something else you may want to consider from Destruction is the Rune perks: Runecaster and Ancient Seals. The former lets you cast runes from further away and place more of them, the latter removes the instant damage effect from runes in favor of a 10 second burn effect that deals 15% damage per second.
With Intuitive Magic, you’ll be able to cast runes for free, making runes a MUCH better choice of a free spell than the spray spells like frostbite, flames, and sparks. You WILL have Intuitive Magic anyways, since you need to pick it to unlock The Monarch. Completely optional, but I think it’s very worth it to get these and cast runes as your main source of free spells.
Major Skills and Perks (Conjuration)
Conjuration: There will not be a single fight where you don’t get use out of this skill. You really only need the Mystic Binding branch of this skill, but there are a couple other interesting things Conjuration offers that you might want to consider.
–Soul Raider(1/1): Bound weapons cast Soul Trap on targets for 5 seconds. After trapping 250 souls, all bound weapon perks last twice as long.
This perk is great to have. With this, you won’t need to have Soul Cloak from Apocalypse at all. Many builds have Soul Cloak inside their Ocato’s Recital (Another Apocalypse spell) but you won’t need it here, considering this perk. It also has some slight scaling in that the soul trap effect can be increased to 10 seconds later in the game once you’ve trapped enough souls.
–Void Burn(1/1): Bound Weapons brand victims with unholy energy for 5 seconds, halting Magicka and Stamina regeneration while draining 15 points per second. When both are depleted, the energy starts devouring their flesh, dealing 15 points of magic damage per second.
This lasts for 10 seconds with the Soul Raider bonus, and can deal a lot of damage. This is available pretty early in the game, as Conjuration levels really fast since you will be using your bound sword in every fight. Being available so early makes this a nice early source for being able to start draining enemies of their resources.
–Hollow Binding(1/1): Bound weapons cut through flesh and spirit, reducing magic resistance by 30% for 5 seconds.
This is even more magic resistance being stripped. By this point, you have so many things that strip resistances, that enemies should not have any resistances left to strip. I am unsure if magic resist can go negative, but if it can, then that is just icing on top of the high frost damage cake.
–Covenant of Coldharbour(1/1): Hollow Binding reduces magic resistance by an additional 30% if you control a summoned Daedra or other non-undead minion.
This is another boost to the magic resist stripping, but it only applies to having a summoned minion out that is not undead. That’s fine because we don’t use reanimated undead anyways since most of the stronger perks in the necromancy tree of conjuration require you to cast Fire or Shock spells on your reanimated minions, and as you already know from reading the Destruction section, we don’t use anything but Frost.
The other three branches in conjuration are all optional. If you want to use summons, go ahead, they can be very strong.
–Atronach/Daedra Branch: In Axelnight’s original post about this build, it was mentioned that you could use the perk Rat King to summon skeevers at the beginning of each fight to serve as tiny Magicka boosts from The Monarch to get things started. However, I do not believe this actually works. To be fair, it was hard to notice because I was sucking Magicka from my follower the entire time I played, but The Monarch specifies LIVING targets, and the Rat King perk says it summons 3 UNDEAD skeevers. What you CAN suck magicka from, however, is summoned Daedra. I used this branch to not only help me in combat, but to suck Magicka from them as well. With the Elemental Potency perk, you can raise Potent Frost Atronachs, which you not only can suck Magicka from, but they also have an aura once you get the Unleash Hell perk which reduces enemies armor and magic resistance. Frost Atronachs are also melee based, so they don’t need their Magicka to be able to function, unlike the Flame and Storm atronachs. Dremora Lords could also be reliable summons to use, as they don’t need Magicka either, but I thought Dremora Lords were just a little too OP, and I wanted to be the one who did the damage, not my summons.
–Necromancy Branch: While there are some strong perks in this branch that need fire and shock spells, you can definitely still use Fire and Shock spells to activate said perks and then continue using your Frost magic. While you can’t drain Magicka with The Monarch from reanimated undead, depending on the kind of body you reanimated, that could be a good thing. Certain spells like Necrowitch from Apocalypse are magic based, and they need their Magicka to function. Since something like a Necrowitch is considered undead, The Monarch does not drain any of their Magicka. This is definitely still a viable branch to go with if you want summoned minions.
–Skeleton Branch: Finally we have the Skeleton making branch. Personally I’m not a big fan of this one, but that does not mean that it is a bad branch to go with. I just don’t like the tedious things this branch requires you to do sometimes. The skeletons have the unique advantage of never being able to be destroyed, only temporarily defeated. The only way a skeleton can be truly defeated is if It’s timer runs out. The timers on the skeletons are real life timers, so eventually you won’t really need to worry so much about constantly re-making your skeletons, as they’ll last almost a full day of real time. However, I personally don’t like it because of two things. Needing to collect the bones, and the constant blocking of pathways because of how many skeletons you have. First, the bones that drop which are needed to craft the skeletons weigh quite a lot, and if you don’t keep track of which bones you need and which you don’t, you can easily encumber yourself very quickly. The sheer number of skeletons you can have also bothers me. The number of skeletons you can have is based on how much base Magicka you have. When you get to higher levels, you can have upwards of 10 skeletons following you around at all times. The skeletons do one of two things when there are that many of them. They either block the pathway, or they glitch out and a lot of them will just sit there at the entrance, while one or two of them actually function properly and do the dungeon with you. Despite this, they can still be quite powerful. Gaining access to skeleton mages, whom which you can’t drain their Magicka because they are undead. As well as Fire Ritual which can be a massive buff to the skeletons. All in all, this is also a viable branch, I just personally don’t like it.
Minor Skills and Perks (Enchanting)
Enchanting: While Enchanting is an integral part of just about every build you come across, I personally feel like it is almost never a primary skill, because you will level it, probably only use it once to craft your final gear set, and then proceed to never use it again. This build does make more use of it than just enchanting gear, but it isn’t so much of a big deal that it qualifies making it a Major skill.
–Spellscribe(1/1): Grants the “Spellscribe” power: use it to store the spell you are dual casting. Your power attacks and power bashes unleash the stored spell for free, with a cooldown based on Enchanting skill. Only works with spells that affect other targets.
This can be a very fun perk to play around with, and is the sole reason this build wants to have any stamina at all. Having just that little bit of stamina not only helps your bound sword do more damage with the one-handed power attack perks, but allows you to fire off quite a few free spells, which can be anything that’s dual cast. Free expert level destruction spells? Yes, please.
–Power Echoes(1/1): Spellscribe activates twice before going on cooldown.
TWO free expert destruction spells before cooldown? Double yes, please.
–Might and Magic(1/1): You are adept at weaving blade and magic. Spells cast with your left hand are 10% more effective if you are wielding a weapon on your right hand. Attacks with a weapon in your right hand deal 10% more damage if you are holding a spell in your left hand.
Just like the Spellblade branch in Alteration, this helps with the Sword Main-hand Spell off-hand playstyle.
–Regalia(1/1): New enchantments placed upon robes, circlets, hoods and necklaces are 30% stronger.
This perk is what makes using robes instead of light or heavy armor viable. By having such a strong boost paired with all the other perks in Enchanting that boost enchantment strength, Robes end up with the best enchantments over Light or Heavy armor.
–Miracle(1/1): You put your heart and soul into the next item you enchant at an Arcane Nexus, placing up to three enchantments upon it that are 25% stronger. Try as you might, you will never be able to repeat this feat.
This perk is kind of hit or miss for me. I love that you can put three enchantments on something, but I always have trouble deciding what SINGLE item to put three enchantments on, especially since each item slot has different sets of enchants you can use, so finding the perfect set of 3 enchants for a specific piece of gear will vary from build to build. Typically I use Miracle on my weapon, but you can’t enchant bound swords, and so I got stuck deciding enchants, and never managed to use this perk to enchant anything yet.
Minor Skills and Perks (One-Handed)
One-Handed: When I first played Skyrim all those years ago, and I discovered the bound weapon spells, I originally didn’t believe that the warrior skills affected their damage. I had no proof of this, I was 14 years old at the time, and I thought I knew everything when in reality I didn’t know what I was talking about at all. I know now that the warrior skills do affect their bound weapon counterparts, and are very nice for increasing their damage further. Keep in mind that while in Axelnight’s original post, he did prefer to use the bound dagger, and used the dagger perks instead; I used the bound sword with the sword perks because it’s convenient and I prefer sword over dagger. Sword is more convenient because it’s always available for sale from Farengar in Whiterun, where as dagger is gated behind the Dragonborn DLC, where many tough enemies make their home.
–Clash of Champions(3/3): Attacks with swords reduce the target’s attack damage by 10/15/20% for 3 seconds.
I took this perk really early on so that I could take just that small bit more damage. It’s not much, but it can be a helpful debuff to have in addition to all the debuffs your bound sword already applies.
–Windswept(1/1): Sideways power attacks with a sword fling targets backwards up to 6 feet, dealing up to 40% more damage based on distance traveled
This just knocks enemies back, they’re staggered, not ragdolled. It’s useful to push an enemy back quickly if they get too close so that you can either kill them with a spell, or heal up.
–Judgement(1/1): Slaying an enemy under the effect of Clash of Champions restores 100 points of Stamina.
Personally this is the perk that makes me prefer sword over dagger. Restoring a decent amount of stamina relatively reliably lets me get more power attacks off, meaning more free spells from Spellscribe.
–Wandering Warrior(1/1): Whenver you defeat at least 4 humanoids and/or animals in a single battle, you gain a permenant +1% bonus to one-handed damage. This effect stacks up to +20%.
As a level 100 perk, this might be a little weak compared to other level 100 perks, but what I like about this is that the bonus is always active. A lot of perks in Ordinator are conditional, so to have a 20% non-conditional boost to damage, it’s really nice.
–Overrun(1/1): Can perform a one-handed sprinting power attack that deals up to 50% more damage and critical damage to a target above half Health. The higher the remaining Health Percentage, the more damage and critical damage is dealt.
This basically allows you to do the same sprinting power attack from vanilla Skryim. It’s good to have.
Spells
Now that you understand Perk synergy and how the more important things work together, those perks won’t do much without spells to channel their effects. Apocalypse’s spell descriptions sometimes do not specify the exact amounts of things, in which case they are replaced with an X, meaning that that value will change depending on how high your skill level is with the school the spell is from. So lets go over some of the required spells, and some spells you might want to consider using. Optional Spells are preceded with an !.
Bound Sword/Bound Dagger: The vanilla spells. The choice here is yours whether or not you want to use Sword or Dagger. Make sure you switch your One-Handed perks around accordingly if you decide to use Dagger.
Ocato’s Recital: Stores the (beneficial self-targeted non-concentration) spell in your left hand and casts it for no cost whenever you enter combat. Up to 3 spells. Empty left hand to reset.
If you’ve played with Apocalypse before, then you probably know what this spell is and what it does. Commonly regarded as the single most powerful spell in Apocalypse, Ocato’s Recital can store buffing spells in it and cast them every time you enter combat for free, with no cooldown. Put your flesh spells in here early on to help level alteration quickly. You can put cloak spells in here, your bound sword, even something like the spells from the Tome of Many Pages perk in restoration that boost your skill levels. Personally I like to find more creative spells to put in here than things like my flesh spells or Soul cloak, so feel free to experiment with it and try new combos. You can always reset your Ocato’s at any time by casting it again with an empty left hand if you don’t like the combo you’ve made.
Dragonhide: Another vanilla spell, but this one is very important because it keeps you alive. Dragonhide gives you a flat 80% damage reduction as long as it is active. Damage reduction from armor rating is capped at 80%, so with just this one spell, you are getting the same damage reduction in robes as someone with a fully crafted heavy armor set that’s fully perked out. Granted, this only lasts for half a minute, but with Fortify Alteration effects, and some of the perks we picked, you can easily get this duration to well over an hour of real time. You can follow this quick tip here[tamrielvault.com] if you would like to know what is needed to get super long Dragonhide casts, but I didn’t take Vancian Magic like this tip says you should, so my Dragonhide lasted significantly less than 9 hours, but it was still long enough to be happy with.
!Spell Twine: Bind a chosen effect to the spell in your left hand. It is triggered whenever the spell is cast. Up to 3 spells. Empty left hand to reset.
In a similar vein to Ocato’s, this spell can store three spells, except it buffs them when cast, instead of auto-casting them. I don’t believe the effects apply to spells that are cast by Ocato’s, so I just used my spell twine on my most used destruction spells and my bound sword. Putting something like reduced destruction spell costs on a spamable destruction spell was fun, like putting that effect on Ice Storm, resulting in each subsequent Ice Storm being cheaper to cast.
!Battletide: Steals X points of armor rating from each nearby target for X seconds. The caster gains the total amount stolen.
While we don’t necessarily need the armor rating from this, it never hurts to have another way to steal stats from an enemy, that is what this build is all about, after all, draining enemies of all their resources.
!Sotha’s Maelstrom: Emit radiation that reduces the magic resistance of nearby enemies within X feet by 5% per second, up to 100%. Lasts X seconds.
More magic resistance draining. It’s not needed, but you can use it if you want.
Fracture: A layer of thin ice deals X damage to Health and Stamina for X seconds. The ice shatters for X damage when struck by a different frost spell.
Normally I would say just use whatever destruction spells you like, but this is a really nice mark ability, and with Intuitive magic, ITS FREE! I would say this is mandatory.
Tree rings: Caster receives 10 layers of tough plant skin, each increasing maximum Health by X points. Layers gradually fall off over the course of X seconds.
This spell is a great Health buffer to put into your Ocato’s Recital. In the beginning of the guide I mentioned that I built squishy, and that we could fix that later on with spells. Between this spell and Dragonhide, you will be pretty durable. I don’t want to say you’ll be MORE durable than someone with light or heavy armor, but you most certainly won’t notice that you’re wearing robes instead of armor, that’s for sure.
Religion
With the relatively new mod Wintersun – Faiths of Skyrim, we get access to worshiping a god to gain extra benefits. As in real life, Ultimately who you decide to worship is up to you, however there are a few that are of note for this build in particular.
Zenithar: I personally think this is one of the strongest gods in Wintersun. Zenithar has easy to follow tenets, no worship requirements to meet, and has incredibly strong bonuses. To go over them:
–Shrine Blessing – Fortify Smithing: Able to improve items 10% better.
The Shrine blessing is rather useless to this build, so we’ll ignore it.
–Follower – Work Ethic: Learn Smithing, Alchemy, and Enchanting X% faster and they are X% better (based on favor with Zenithar).
This is why Zenithar is so strong in my opinion. I don’t know the exact numbers on it, as I’ve only recently started playing with Wintersun, but I would imagine that these numbers are significant enough to be worth getting.
–Devotee – Invisible Hand: Pray to Zenithar to buy and sell items directly.
I believe this gives you access to a portable shop. I have not gotten far enough with Zenithar to know if this is the case, but I think it is safe to assume that it means that the shop opens when you use your Meditation power, which you get as soon as you pick a god to worship first. If it works as I think it does, then this is fantastic.
Auriel: Auriel unfortunately has some strict worship requirements, in that only Altmer, Bosmer, and Breton can worship him, however, this build IS an Altmer, so Auriel is worth a mention here.
–Shrine Blessing – Fortify Archery: You are 10% more effective with missile weapons.
Just like Zenithar, this is useless for our build.
–Follower – Father of Mer: Learn all skills X% faster (based on favor with Auriel).
Being able to level all your skills faster is really nice, especially when you get Auriel’s Devotee bonus. Speaking of which:
–Devotee – Path to Alaxon: Attaining level 100 in a skill improves that skill by X% (based on favor with Auriel).
This is basically a second Elven Supremacy on top of your racial passive Elven Supremacy. Stacking the two of them results in really nice damage. Consider Auriel for your final build.
Syrabane: Personally I think this is the best god you can start with for this build. His bonuses can make the early game much easier on you, and if you are lucky, you may not even need to spend gold buying spells. He has extremely easy to follow tenets, so you’ll gain favor with him very quickly.
–Shrine Blessing – Regenerate Magicka: Regenerate 2% of your maximum Magicka per second.
This can be helpful early game when you don’t have the Monarch yet and still need natural Magicka regen, keep in mind that it is a shrine blessing, though, so you’ll need to first find the shrine, and then keep going back to it to refresh the buff if needed.
–Follower – Knowledge Seeker: You are more likely to find spell tomes and scrolls on enemies you kill.
This is the reason you should worship him early on. You will find random spells and scrolls everywhere with this. You might find a necessary spell, or you might find high value scrolls that you can sell to buy the necessary spells. Either way, this is fantastic for early game. Couldn’t recommend Syrabane enough just for this one effect.
–Devotee – Reach for the Stars: Learn all Mage skills X% faster (based on favor with Syrabane).
Between this and the Mage stone (before you get Atronach or Apprentice stones) you’ll level your skills super fast. You will also get this effect early because of Syrabane’s tenets making it easy to gain favor with him.
Hermaeus Mora: In order to worship Herma Mora, you will need to first complete his Daedric quest “Discerning the Transmundane”, which I know I personally have had trouble with in the past, sometimes you just don’t come across the enemies you need blood from. When you have completed his quest, though, he proves to be quite beneficial to mages of all types.
–Shrine Blessing – Fortify Corpus: Spells and effects you cast on yourself last 15% longer.
This can be useful to stack duration on Dragonhide. Quite honestly this is the most useful shrine bonus for this build.
–Follower – Demon of Knowledge: Find Eldritch Pages on corpses. Similar pages can be bound at a tanning rack to create Eldritch Tomes that improve your magic and shouts.
Creating the Eldritch Tomes is what gives you favor with Herma Mora, and so creating them is beneficial not just for the boost they can give to your spells, but also to generate favor.
–Devotee – Omniscience: Pray to permenantly raise a skill of your choice by one level. Costs 5% favor.
Can be useful to help leveling go faster. Be careful not to use too much favor, though.
Be on particular lookout for an Item called “Lantern of the Ancestors” if you are worshiping an elven deity like Auriel or Syrabane. I won’t spoil what it does, just remember to look for it. If you see it, take it, it is quite useful.
Gear
This will be the shortest section by far. You’ll want to fully enchant any set of robes you like. With all your enchanting perks, Zenithar’s worshiper bonus, and Altmer’s Shimmering threads, you can create some incredibly powerful enchantments for your robes. I personally am not fond of the vanilla robe designs, so I went with the Tribunal Robes from the Immersive Armors mod, however vanilla robes will work just fine if you aren’t keen on installing more mods.
Some Enchantments you may want to consider are:
Amplify Alteration: Alteration spells and effects last X% longer.
I would recommend enchanting a second set of robes with this enchantment on them, and switch to it when you’re casting Dragonhide at your Home Mythal.
NOTE: This is different from Fortify Alteration. It comes from the Summermyst mod.
Fortify Speed: You move X% faster.
Windfall: 3% chance per second to restore X points of Health, Magicka, and Stamina.
Fortify One-Handed
Resist Frost
Resist Shock
Resist Fire
This one I find particularly important if you are playing with dragon difficulty mods.
Negate Magic: Having 150% or more resistance to an element grants immunity.
This could be useful if you are having particular trouble against a certain element and need to stack resistances.
Siphon Health: Absorbs Health based on level from enemies within X feet.
Final Notes
So that’s it! With all that done, The Winter Wraith build is complete. There’s some things you can do with the build from there. If you like your summons a lot, the Commanding Presence branch in the illusion tree is good at buffing your allies. I also heard that the Descending Light perk in the Restoration tree works even when you have something that disables your Magicka regen like The Monarch or The Atronach stone. Regardless, you might want to branch into Restoration anyways simply for heals, or some of the other niche perks in there.
Update: After playing the build for a few more hours, I have discovered that you can actually use poisons on Bound weapons. You learn new things everyday I guess. This means that you could easily make use of Ordinator’s amazing Alchemy tree with this build. There’s some really incredible things you can do with that skill tree, like the Oils or creating a side effect chain with the Witchmaster perk. This also would give your bound weapon a reliable way to paralyze enemies, even without access to enchantments, since you can make paralysis poisons.
Once again, I want to thank u/axelnight for the wonderful idea for this build, and also for the permission to use his idea to make this guide. I put a lot of work into fleshing his idea out more, and going into detail with every little thing there was to explain.
I also want to thank Enai Siaion for creating the mods I used in this build. They really are incredible pieces of work, and I don’t play Skyrim without them. Please go support him, he deserves it.
Enai’s Nexus page[www.nexusmods.com]
Enai’s Patreon[www.patreon.com]
With that, I hope you enjoy playing The Winter Wraith as much as I did. If you enjoyed this build guide, be on the look out for another guide I have coming in the next few months for a Modded Paladin playthrough. Thanks for your time!