Stealth build tips?

[Tiberius]

Hello fellas. I've been playing Enderal for quite a bit now. Tested both melee and magic builds, and i'd like to return to my one true love: stealth builds. However, i would like to ask for some tips from more experienced players, since i don't want to dive head in into something that can potentially end up pissing me off.

Now, as far as i understand, stealth works differently in Enderal. And i noticed this myself. It's harder to sneak around early at least.

Since i play on iron path only, I imagine this wouldn't be easy. And it shouldn't be, however, i don't want to end up being unable to kill anything because my damage is horrible.

Now i initialy wanted to go for a dagger sneak build, but without enough sneak that's super bad early on: hard to get a hit in, and it does terrible damage = no go. I wouldn't mind a stealth bow build as well, provided that it actually works. I will not go for a psionics build however, since i feel like it's way too hard to pull of early, with all the skellies roaming around everywhere. However, it doesn't sound all that bad and i would try it as a last resort.

In case you know some pieces of armour, weapons, or a certain order i'd have to sink my talents in, i would apreciate. Evidently infiltrator is necesary, but wouldn i have to go for vagrant as well? Also, is phasmalism viable with this? Are the phantasms terrible at sneak (and is there any sneak inclined phantasm, or should i forget it altogether?)

Thanks in advance!

[Jouchebag]

I started with the TES meta rangerogue, myself. I learned how wrong my build was in so many ways, mostly because I was trying to make another TES character. You've already got the right idea. You know what you want, just not precisely how to get there.

You know stealth is crap early on. You need a minimum of 50 skill for it to be even somewhat effective. This is easy enough to deal with provided you don't spread your points too thin.

You seem aware, also, that bow damage tends to be weaker than most other forms of DPS in the game even with all bow talents applied. Until you get your sneak high enough to drop back into hiding after taking a shot, assume whatever you shoot at is going to come try to eat your face and start kiting. In fact, I spent most of my rangerogue time kiting enemies til my sneak was like 70+. There's really no magic solution or set of talents to fix this lack of ranged damage, it's just something you have to get used to.

I'm sure you're aware of the fight with Alyx and Devra. Honestly, it was a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ nightmare with a rangerogue. I'm not sure if you max sneak if you can hide in that fight, but it's a small room with no kiting space and nowhere to hide while your screen is full of lightning and you're trying to aim a bow. Having a strong melee build by that point (or better magic support) would have helped.

As far as gear goes, even though it's not very RP-like, heavy armor is the better gear in any instance when you're not in stealth. It wouldn't be a bad idea to wear light armor (or no armor) but train heavy and swap gear when you have to manage bad guys without space to kite (like the previously mentioned boss battle).

Light armor talents don't do anything for your damage, bow or stabby. The best thing it does is increase stamina regeneration. You could easily extrapolate that light armor is only ever really better than heavy armor if you're running around the overworld (for it's stam regen and that it doesn't slow you down) or in stealth (heavy armor reduces sneak effectiveness) but at pretty much any other time or place, heavy armor is better.

There's nothing you can do to make bows as effective as melee or magic, it's just designed to be that way because it has the added bonus of extreme range and more easily maintaining stealth. A melee build will do a bit more damage and a magic build (particularly Ele) has been known one-shot bad guys without needing stealth. Light armor is fine as long as you're not currently being attacked, which is almost never until your sneak gets really high, but heavy armor would serve you better when you, inevitably, are taking damage.

Vagrant talents if you plan to use light armor only or really want the alchemy bonuses for whatever reason. If you take my advice and instead build on Keeper's Heavy Armor talents, your life will be a good bit easier especially if you want to use a stealth melee build. It's not likely that you'll get as good as The Dragonborn and be able to roll-stab-clear entire rooms without being seen. Plan to take damage or kite because stealth is just not as effective.

I actually never combined Phas with my rangerogue so I'm not sure how it affects stealth, but it's probably not a bad idea to have a tanky summon between you and bad guys. It just didn't align with the "RPness" of the [weakass] character I was trying to make.

Which is really what it boils down to: If you want to make the game easier you'll have to give up some of that roguishness because it's not the easiest way to play Enderal, like it was in previous TES (and FO) games. The devs went out of their way to almost discourage the use of that meta class. Sneak is hard, bows are weak, and bad guys soak up arrows like pincushions.

[ÄmJii]

You can make up for lacking DPS with Enchanting. Slap "Fortify Archery" on every piece you can (rings and gloves, probably amulets too if you don't mind missing out on Apparitions) and your damage will skyrocket. Handicraft is quite lackluster crafting skill, you're better off with Alchemy and Enchanting.

[Jouchebag]

Enchanting helps for sure, but it helps every build evenly for the most part. There's ways to use enchanting to get any build to be much more effective.

Since it's an iron path run, I assumed he was already going to be cheesing enchanting, making gold with alchemy, and planning for where those precious learning points end up ten levels in advance, etc. Y'know: "Playing smarter, not harder."

It's just bows do less damage compared to any other method and the need to aim them is another factor of challenge, especially in some locations, around certain objects, against odd enemy types or when you have lightning in your face. There's definitely easier ways to play but the OP has been there, done that.


Personal note: I always wished Skyrim (and thus Enderal) had location damage or at least headshot detection.

[Tiberius]

Originally posted by Jouchebag:

Enchanting helps for sure, but it helps every build evenly for the most part. There's ways to use enchanting to get any build to be much more effective.

Since it's an iron path run, I assumed he was already going to be cheesing enchanting, making gold with alchemy, and planning for where those precious learning points end up ten levels in advance, etc. Y'know: "Playing smarter, not harder."

It's just bows do less damage compared to any other method and the need to aim them is another factor of challenge, especially in some locations, around certain objects, against odd enemy types or when you have lightning in your face. There's definitely easier ways to play but the OP has been there, done that.


Personal note: I always wished Skyrim (and thus Enderal) had location damage or at least headshot detection.

I can agree with the location damage bruh. Plenty of times i ended up turning a mob's head into a rooster tail of arrows while it was at about 50% hp. They could have copied Fallout's system if they were not so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ lazy. But i digress.

In terms of archery, what i find unbalanced in this instance of the game is the enemy archers. A simple bloody skeleton with a bow is tankier than a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ full plated "draugr" AND two-shots you in heavy armor. Bruh, what is this? I also dealt with bonerakers and ♥♥♥♥, and it wasn't fun. What were the devs thinking with spamming so many trash mobs on the map? Every two steps i get monched by wolves/skellies/bandits that literally have super ♥♥♥♥ drops. It was fun fighting them the first 999 times, but after a while, i feel like rushing past them.

Now, truth be told, i was never really the "meta build" type of player. I played what i fancied, for as along as i fancied it. And there's something satisfying about instashoting someone while the rest of the enemy team knows nothing. However, I am more than willing to give up on trying to make it work if it's a giant pain in the ass. I'm all about fun mainly, effectiveness after (min-maxing is boring for me, but i like things to be tidy (a.k.a. not having 999 points spread on 999 skills).

If you think that making this work is too much of a hassle i'm more than willing to try anything else, so long as it's fun (got bored fast of swinging my axe, despite it being the most effective build i went with so far). Despite going mage 3 times, i actually never went for elementalist (went entropy, psionics and something else, can't remember since it was at the start).
The thing is, I want to mix challange with fun. I personaly liked playing melee in Fo4 Survival simply because i found it satisfying to always be on the edge of death while also leaving a red paste behind of various squashed viscera.

So yeah, thanks for the advice mate. Now I'm somewhat on the edge about this. If you have an idea about a fun build, by all means, tell me, and i'll ditch this lmao.

Edit: to be clear, i like a difficult, intresting game, but i prefer the dificulty to not be artificial (aka super buffed enemies that have 2 moves). I am not complaining, just asking for advice.

[Purpleganja]

I never went combat stealth in enderal ( only stealing steath), but I'm really into phasmalism. I noticed that all apparitions have 100 stealth skills and go into stealth when you do and never seem to be detected before me.

I also play on iron path, and I'm sure you can make anything work with phasmalism and enchanting.

Ie: You could open with a backstab and retreat to hide behind your apparition. Pop some invisibility potion to lose aggro and go back to slash mobs fighting your apparition with dual wield.