The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Character Building Guide: Dark Elf Race

Now that we have covered some of the basics of the game together with some useful tips which will help you during your journey, it’s time to cover another important element of Skyrim: character building. Skyirm offers a lot of freedom in creating characters to your likings: players will be able to choose the race of their character, race that will ultimately influence how good their character will be in some fields. Each race has unique abilities and stats, making each race excellent only in specific fields: obviously not all races are good at magic or physical attacks so you’d better know beforehand about each race’s traits. And you better make your choice carefully since, unlike Oblivion, you won’t have a second chance and once you’ve picked a race, you’ll be stuck with it.

At the beginning of the game, if you experiment with multiple race choices, you’ll notice that the base value for each skill is 15. At the same time you’ll notice how not all skills start with 15: this means that that specific race comes with a bonus for that particular skill. All races come with either a +5 bonus or +10 bonus: skills they’re not too good at won’t be getting any bonus. As you can see while all races can become decent at everything, you’ll need to put in some extra work if those skills you want to invest in come with no bonus.

As we already said, each class comes with some special innate abilities: some are always active, some are weaker versions of skills that can be learned during the game and others can only be activated once per day. These skills, while incredibly useful at the beginning, don’t really influence the game later on so don’t make your choices just by looking at the innate abilities of each class: these abilities should only complement your fighting style, rather than becoming the basis for it.

• Dark Elf Race

The Dark Elves, also known as Dunmer, are a tradition heavy people, really disciplined. They’re known to be ruthless in war and pretty good at it. As far as character building goes, they’re pretty balanced and are proficient in combat magic, archery and weapon use. Since they’re the most balanced race in the game, you may want to make your character a dark elf if you’re unsure of your playstyle. They also come with an extra resistance to fire.

Innate Abilities:

• Ancestor’s Wrath : For 60 seconds, opponents that get too close take 8 points per second of fire damage.
• Resist Fire : Your Dunmer blood gives you 50% resistance to fire.

Skill Bonuses

• Alchemy: +5
• Alteration: +5
• Destruction: +10
• Illusion: +5
• Light Armor: +5
• Sneak: +5