The Rogue archetype in Enshrouded focuses on stealth and speed to win fights. This playstyle uses both bows and daggers to gracefully dart around the battlefield, all while pelting enemies with ranged shots and devastating backstabs, and in Update 8, the Rogue playstyle got even more powerful thanks to updated skills that support its main weapons. The following is a Rogue build for Enshrouded that leans toward the swift and agile assassin fantasy; with this setup, you’ll be dashing in and out of combat while raining down explosive death on your enemies.
Enshrouded: Where to Find Paper Reed
Paper Reed is one of the many resources added to Enshrouded with the Wake of the Water update. Here’s how to find them.
Enshrouded Rogue Playstyle Overview
This build mainly focuses on using daggers as your main sources of damage. This weapon type is fairly weak if you use it like any other melee weapon — while they have the advantage of speed, the upfront damage they deal doesn’t quite compare to the heavier weapons in the game. However, the Assassin path of the skill tree provides a number of upgrades for daggers that significantly improve their effectiveness when certain conditions are met. As such, here’s what you can expect from this build:
- Agile fighting style with daggers that relies on dodge attacks
- High single-target damage with Poison, Backstabs, and Critical Strikes
- Excellent crowd control utility using bows and explosives
- Surprisingly good melee area damage
- Decent passive lifesteal and Stamina/Mana Regeneration
This doesn’t mean that you’ll only be using daggers, though. Bows still play a major part in the Rogue archetype’s playstyle in Enshrouded, and with this build, you’ll be able to swap between the two weapon types on the fly, or focus on just one of them depending on your preferences without sacrificing much power. However, for simplicity’s sake, this guide will focus more on using daggers.
Skill Tree
Dexterity will be your main stat with this build. Get as much of it as you can.
The most important Assassin skills you need to make daggers in Enshrouded good are:
- Evasion Attack: When equipped with a melee weapon, you can perform a dashing evade attack by attacking while dodging.
- Strategic Maneuver: Allows you to perform sideways dodge rolls that make reaching the enemy’s back easier while using target lock.
- Dagger Specialization: Unlocks a special attack for daggers.
- Expose Weakness: Critical Strikes with daggers increase the damage enemies take by 25% for 5 seconds.
- Venomous Blades: Daggers with the Venomous Blades perk now have a 25% chance to poison enemies.
- Venom Mastery: Increase Venomous Blades’ damage by 100%
While you’re leveling your character up, try to get these passive skills as soon as you can, and in descending order. Evasion Attack and Strategic Maneuver take priority over dagger skills. This is because both of these are crucial to landing Backstab combos.
Afterward, grab the following skills:
- Shell Shock: Your Ranged Explosives stun enemies for 2 seconds, but consume Mana for every enemy they stun.
- Slice and Dice: Critical Strikes with daggers increase the base damage of your next bow shot by 50%.
- Dagger Mastery: Increase the damage you deal with daggers by 5% per point.
- Backstab Mastery: Increases your Backstab damage by 20% per point.
- Fatal Precision: Increases your Critical Strike Chance by 1% and Critical Strike Damage by 3% per point.
Once you get these skills, you’re free to take anything else that you’d prefer. WIth this setup, you’ll be able to deal maximum damage with daggers, and your bow will also be able to stun big groups of enemies by using Explosive Arrows. Unlike the typical Warrior/Barbarian build where all you have to do is swing your weapon, your overall playstyle with this setup will look something like this:
- Lock onto a target.
- Use Strategic Maneuver to reach your target’s back. This is best done while the enemy is in the middle of an attack animation..
- Use Evasive Attack, then immediately follow-up with a heavy attack to deal high burst damage while facing an enemy’s back.
- Use your bow with Explosive Arrows to deal with crowds or finish off wounded enemies.
Weapons and Armor
For this build, you have two options: either build for Critical Strikes or Backstab damage. While you can definitely have both, it’s usually better to focus on just one of these while you’re still trying to get good gear. You can choose between crit and Backstab by wearing a helmet or gloves from either any of the melee DPS sets from the Blacksmith, or the Backstab/Sneak Attack sets from the Hunter.
Use Rogue/Assassin armor pieces for your chest, pants, and boots. These provide you with much-needed Mana and Stamina.
We recommend going all-in on Backstab damage first as you’re leveling up, as it’s a lot more consistent (provided you can actually hit those Backstabs). Later on, once you max out your skills and fully-upgrade your gear, you can use a crit-based helmet to increase your Critical Strike Chance.
The same idea applies to weapons, though there’s one more thing you need to factor in here: in order to take advantage of the Venomous Blades and Venom Mastery skills, your weapon needs to have the Venomous Blades perk as well. The Crystal Knives are great for this build, though you’ll have to be quite lucky to get them. If you don’t have any poisonous daggers yet, consider taking any skill points out of the aforementioned skills in favor of something else.
As for your bow, anything will do since they’ll mostly be here just to deal AoE damage (and deal with flying threats). You don’t need anything specific; just make sure to upgrade whatever you have so it stays relevant against high-level enemies. Shadowbane and any other bow with Stamina Leech are pretty good, as they’ll help feed this build’s Stamina-hungry playstyle.
You’ll need Explosive Arrows to make use of the Shell Shock skill. You can craft basic ones by bringing Flint, Tar, and Clay to the Hunter. Later on, craft an Eternal Ice Arrow so you always have a reliable ammo type for ranged combat. Otherwise, just use the highest-tier arrows you can make.
Rings
- Commander’s Ring is great for the extra Health Leech it provides when fully-upgraded. You can get this by beating the Fell Wispwyvern boss.
- Ring of the Ancients is good for pretty much every build in Enshrouded thanks to the Critical Strike Chance and skill point bonuses it provides.
- Ultimate Ring of Stamina is perfect for this build. The flat Stamina and Stamina Regeneration bonuses alone are great, and you’ll get much more value out of it once you start investing in bow skills.
You can farm all sorts of gear by opening and revisiting chests in the world. Those found in higher-level areas (like the Sun Temple in the Kindlewastes) will yield better stuff compared to the ones in lower-level regions.
Don’t forget to eat for additional Stamina Regeneration, Critical Strike Chance, and Melee Damage.
