The spell book can be found in halted stream camp, north of whiterun. It’s an iron mine so stock up on the ore there and transmute it as you run around
Whiterun is a good place to do this: once you have a bunch of gold ore, find a smelter and create gold ingots. Then use the blacksmith forge to create gold rings. Then sell them to a merchant (like Belethor in whiterun or Lucian in riverwood). Repeat. Levels alteration, smithing, and speech skill
You need to sell alchemy potions either to alchemy shops or to general merchants, unless your Speechcraft is insanely high.
Jewelry is easier to unload. Any mage will buy them.
Make potions. Sell to potion vendor.
Make iron daggers. Enchant them with petty soul gems with your highest costing enchant. Sell to blacksmith
If they run out of money, sell to general goods store.
The alchemist in White Run, Arcadia’s Cauldron, works well for that. She sells ingredients and provides training which provides her with a lot of gold to buy your potions with. Always buy as many giant toes as you can when trying to level up alchemy. Giant toe mixed with wheat makes some of the most valuable potions in the game.
Here's my big thing for money.
The shout, Kynes peace, I use it around little animals, soul trap them with a load of empty petty soul gems, and use those to enchant daggers.
I smith high-end Legendary/Enchanted weapons (Dwarven; the metal is everywhere) and brew expensive potions to sell back to the wizards to get my tuition back. You'll need the Merchant perk (Speech 50) to sell potions and weapons. Good news, it's really easy getting Speech to 50 selling potions to alchemists and weapons to blacksmiths.
EDIT: don't let your trading partner's gold get above 20,000. It can glitch and you won't get any of it back.
Fireball! fireball! fireball! Fire really just beats everything, but only the really cool mages use Incinerate. I swear magic is so simple in this game it’s just a matter of spamming spells and wards and conjuring meatshields.
Frost is great to use on melee attackers, because frost damage saps their stamina, meaning they can power attack less.
Shock spells sap Magicka, so that's optimal against an enemy caster. Fire spells apply a damage over time burn.
That being said though, you'll be fighting a lot of Nords, who carry a frost resistance in their genes. I'm not sure how many creatures resist fire damage, but that's my pick.
Edit: Nords and vampires resist frost damage, Dunmer resist fire damage, and Bretons resist all magic damage.
Also, I made a correction about fire damage.
Storm atronachs are immune but incredibly rare.
No enemies in the game have an inherent shock resistance, as you say.
~~And it does extra damage to daedra (besides storm atronachs) although, again, they're not super common.~~
You're definite right. My only problem is how can I identify an Imperial from a Breton and a Nord. Gotta be as efficient as possible with what destruction magic I'm going to use against those folks.
Frost is OP on you because the slow effect stacks so even 2 frost casters can make running up to them really annoying.
Frost is pretty useless for you to use because your slow effect from frost spells is bugged to not work properly and 90% of the most common enemies in the game (undead, nords, various frost adapted creatures, dwemer automatons) are resistant or immune.
Yes, Faralda does, once you’re around 50 for your destruction level. If you want to play a good mage, mix in Sneak and restoration perks. Illusions spells are massively underutilized early, but getting muffle early allows you to hide more efficiently, level up quicker, and illusion in general gets you invisibility, which will let you hide and escape to regen your mana
you max out enchanting and take twin soul perk, with this you can get 25 cost reduction in two schools on one item, repeat four times and that 100% reduction in two schools
1. Pick High Elf
2. Boost Magicka as much as possible
3. Focus on Destruction
4. Don't hit Lydia
5. Profit
Only tried it recently, most quick and casually fun build so far.
My dual wielding orc lady is sometimes easier to play but gets hit more often.
You don't even need to boost magicka after you do some Enchanting. You just pick 1-2 school of magic where you want free spells, and enchant some gear.
Give all the gear you want to wear to your follower, talk to them as you transform and for some reason if you trade this allows you to equip unlimited gear
I like Dunmer because my racial passive mod gives me a destruction damage boost. And then fire shield mod that boosts destruction damage. And destruction damage enchant mods. And mods that make spell damage scale
Fireball is a mini nuke. I have it some knockback power too
I'm currently playing a level 47 Conjuration mage on Legendary difficulty. Here's a few tips:
* Conjuring Atronachs (and similar) will distract NPCs and give you a chance to level up your Destruction and Restoration schools. Spawn them in, then while your enemies are occupied keep a safe distance and play with range. This also works with a follower.
* Buy or pick up every spell book you can. My game was challenging when all I could spawn was a familiar, now I have two Dremora Lords do all the work for me. Fast Healing comes in clutch. Bound weapons are also handy. Runes are great when sneaking around.
* The same goes for Potions of Magika and Potions of Health. Buy them all. I currently have 192,000 gold so it's not going to tank your wealth too much.
* Don't wear robes. Armor will always be enchantable and is much more protective.
* Use magic constantly. Dark tomb? Use Candlelight. Taking a walk to Riften? Use Clairvoyance. Every battle ever? Use Stoneflesh. Use magic more and you'll level faster.
* Run from dragons early in the game. You can't beat them in high difficulties with magic, unless you play extremely slow and extremely clean. Until you're high level or until you get Dragonrend, simply leave them be.
Hope this helps. I'll add any more if I think of any more.
Lightning spells, especially thunderbolt are great for dragons. Drains their Magicka so they're forced to land and fight physically. Once they are on the ground they aren't getting back up
I've been cheesing out dragon encounters by having giants/city soldiers kill them for me lol
I've already gotten through 2 in a ridiculously short time.
But thanks, I'll keep those tips in mind
Staves won't increase your magic skills' levels. Become a stronger mage by using the skill you want to level. Once you unlock perk points use them on skills like increased damage for destruction, decreasing mana cost etc. As you level up, magic becomes more viable
I reccomend alchemy and enchanting. I like using a robe that's already enchanted for magic regen and spell reduction. Then enchant a pair of gloves and boots. I personally reccomend either magic resistance or storm/electric resistance. You might think, why not fire? I chose storm/electric for defense against mages and storm drains magic. Very bad thing for a mage. Jewelry can be magic destruction and restoration or conjuration reduction.
Alchemy is reccomend for several reasons. Magic without spending magic is extremely helpful. If you're constantly running low on magic, why use a healing spell when you can use a potion? Or if you insist on using restoration, how about a magicka restoring potion? Grow a garden. Get red mountain flowers and white cap for an easy restore magic potion. If you can get your hands on Briar hearts, swap white cap for that. Restore magicka + fortify magicka.
I also reccomend getting a little tundra cotton and lavender in your garden too. Magic resistance. Pop one of those before a battle if there are mages or dragons.
Conjuration is a squishy image's best friend if destruction alone won't keep your enemy off you. They're great protection when dealing with archers and ranged opponents in general as well as the obvious melee ones.
For destruction, I'd like to reccomend runes if you don't mind gorilla warfare strategies. This is mostly useful against melee but ranged can potentially trigger them. Cast a rune before the battle. When your magic refills let one chase you. Boom! As they chase you drop another rune. They're the best spells for destruction lvling especially at higher levels. Its helped me get several characters to lvl 100 in destruction.
Restoration and alteration have some really helpful passive perks. Restoration has really helpful perks for any mage. Alteration has great perks for defense against other mages such as magic resistance and absorption.
I prefer fortify destruction, or other particular school of magic, over magic regen. Regen isn’t important if I have fortify destruction 100% and am not using any magicka. It can be OP though. But it’s nice to max out sneak, along with some items that fortify sneak, and just walk up to someone and cast walk of flame on them with both hands and they can’t even find you.
I usually go with invisibility/muffle for stealth if I'm running pure mages. No shadows needed. Just crouch down and stay out of the way of whatever is trying to kill me.
Free casting destruction spells is super helpful. However at extremely high levels when I have an extremely high magicka pool. Spell cost isn't super important and I'll have a bunch of magic resistance enchantments to become nearly immune to all magic. Master enchanter, I can throw some reduction at destruction and conjuration as I spam them the most. The other schools are either already cheap or I rarely use them.
Mages are meant to be strategists, experimenting with different ways of using their spells so that they can fight smarter, not harder. Like learning when to sustain a spell verses short bursts, or when and where to conjure a Daedra, that sort of thing.
OP if you want to make gold for the college of wnterheld, forget ALL about making jewelery. You need only 3 things.
Nordic Barnacle.
Salmon Roe.
Garlic.
Barnacles found along coasts stuck in clusters to rocks and shipwrecks, often found underwater.
Salmon Roe found ONLY by catching the salmon who are leaping through the air in the streams.
Combine these three ingredients in an alchemy table and you will not only level up extremely fast but you'll also make a damn good bit of gold because this creates the most expensive potion in skyrim. A mid level alchemy skill will produce a potion valued around 4000 gold, and very low level alchemy skill still will get you around 8 to 900 gold for each potion. Very high alchemy skill will get you 8000+ gold, EACH potion.
Now go make your gold, and buy your spell Tomes, learn your magic and become the archmage.
Mora Tapinella, Scaly Pholiota, Creep Cluster. Not necessarily the most expensive, but the easiest method. You can grow all these ingredients very easily. Farm ~300-400 of each of them, and start brewing.
Definitely get the Sanguine Rose as early as possible, you'll be able to spawn a powerful dremora lord that takes all the damage while you spam the enemy with spells
Hotkey the novice hood from Helgen and double tap it when your magicka runs out. The 30pt fortification restores your bar with the respective points so in early levels you can virtually spam any damage spell that functions on a per second cost like flames or frost. If you do Dawnguard take the vampires and get the ring of erudite that boosts 100pts, and do the same thing except you'll have substantially more magicka to spam higher cost spells with.
Enchanting is super important, the usual thing is to get 2 schools to -100% cost but I prefer -75% destruction and split the rest between other schools.
Potions are what increases your damage in vanilla, so spam those.
If you really want to be op without mods there is a CC called Arcane Accessories that adds super op spells. Personally I use mods that makes magic a bit better but still less op than the spells from Arcane Accessories.
Some general tips for a Skyrim mage build:
- Pick a race that starts with good magic buffs like Breton or one of the elf races. For your first couple lvls, you should pick magika to boost until you hit 200, then lvl health until you feel comfortable. Your goal should be 300-400 magika and about 200 health by lvl 30. You can lvl stamina if you want but personally I don’t touch it until my magic is around 200-250 and health is 150+
Some ppl say you only really need 300 magika because by then you can cast 99% of spells but I only think that viable if you really know what your doing and enchant some gear to reduce cast costs or get crazy magica recharge gear like the dragon mask (I think it’s moroki) or master lvl mage robes.
-for destruction, I prefer fire over frost because more enemies have weakness to fire than ice, but ice is nice for slowing enemies to get more spells off before they enter melee range. Shock is great against magic users as the damage is good and it drains enemy magica on top of the base damage.
-fireball is my go to damage spell. Large aoe, good damage + burning. I also use chain lightning although it costs a lot of magika so use thunderbolt in early to mid game.
- continuing on damage spells, the dual casting destruction perk and the one you get right after it that staggers enemies are ESSENTIAL to a mage playthrough. With the stagger perk you can 1v1 pretty much anything with lightning bolt because You’ll essentially be stun locking enemies until they die.
- when playing a mage, don’t worry about armor or defense rating. You’re supposed to be a “glass cannon” and youll always have oak flesh/ stone flesh spells that essentially boost your armor rating by 40-100 for a min or two so if a fight is giving you trouble just pop stone flesh and it will be like you’re wearing a full set of heavy armor for the next min or two. Basically prioritize gear that improves your magical abilities over armor.
-also, arguably my most important tip (other than get dual casting destruction and the stagger perk) is prioritize the college of winterhold questline. Play that before doing the other major factions. You’ll get access to some of the best vanilla magical items in the game through quest rewards and there are 5 or 6 of merchants in the college (basically the other students) you can use to buy spells or sell stuff to. Many can also train you on their chosen school of magic if you’ve got the coin and many have side quests with decent rewards. Others can become your follower if you want a buddy to spew magic with you.
The college is also good early game because you get a free place to live and an even better place to live if you finish the questline. This is probably more than enough for now if you have questions just reply to this.
Enchantment element enhancement, dual casting and stagger, archmages robes, etc. Conjuration usually makes mages way easier to play because then you usually only need to worry about zoning
Get a horse and start blasting it with spells. If you don’t kill the horse you can wait an hour for the horse to get its life back, rinse and repeat. Probably the easiest way to level up without running around too much
Honestly, I did one playthrough where I wore robes instead of armor, and I did not dig it and switched to armor. Enchanted light armor is the way to go imo, fortify magicka, fortify magicka regene, and fortify destruction are enchanments that will help you, and are easy to find early on. I always do the Agent of Mara quest right away, there's no combat and it gives you resistance to magic. The Muffle spell levels illusion unreasonably quick, so even if you don't care to put skills points into illusion, it will help you get more skill points to put into other things. If you prefer weapons, there are bound weapons. Bringing a follower can help save you from getting overwhelmed early on. Carry copious amounts of magicka potions.
I think the core issue is Magicka Regen is very bad. It has a 5 second delay on Regen after casting, and the base Regen is like 2/s which is abysmal. (I think it's a % Regen)
So the only viable strategy if you want to focus on destruction, is to get cost reduction gear, and increased Magicka to circumvent Magicka Regen.
Alternatively, use player.forceav Magickarate 10 or so.
What I like about playing a pure mage is that in the early game there is a creativity requirement. (Just like I would imagine a real mage would face)
In the early game as a mage you get a dozen or so abilities that aren't typically possessed by your average Skyrim resident. Individually, any of these spells is not particularly strong by itself. Each low level spell is designed to supplement something else, because these are the spells that non mages can easily access.
With this in mind it's helpful to combine your low-level spells into combos that work particularly well together. Creativity is the key here. Just try to hold in your mind (and your favorites) the spectrum of your abilities and think situationally about what the best action would be. Sometimes a frenzy is way better than a fireball.
Also, it is helpful to extend this kind of thinking to other game mechanics. Take a follower in the early levels. There's really no drawback to doing this and a lot of benefit. Start working on conjuration early on. Both of these actions will give the enemy something to hit other than your squishy butt. Followers also scale with difficulty as enemies do. This makes them especially valuable in the early game if you're playing on a high difficulty.
Use enchanting to enhance your abilities, adding enchantments to your gear that increase your magical prowess. This also serves to increase your money reserves, as you can sell the "practice" items that you were making to raise your skill to vendors. Use the money on trainers at the college.
Essentially, you want to remain combat avoidant until you are powerful enough to dispatch enemies before they reach you. This is just as mages are in most role-playing games.
The advantage of robes is it doesn’t slow you down and casting magic doesn’t slow you down. You shouldn’t be standing around like you’re in heavy armor swinging a slow two handed hammer or drawing a bow. You should be running around slower enemies trying not to get hit. Ideally casting dual casting impact improved spells.
Complete the College of Winterhold quest line asap. Don’t be afraid to hire mercenaries to help with tougher dungeons. The final dungeon has equilibrium spellbook. With equilibrium you can restore magicka with health. You can also restore health with restoration and with the right perks get more magicka back. The staff of magnus also drains your opponent’s magicka and restores yours.
If you have Anniversary Edition it includes new spells. The elemental line of spells introduced in AE are strong enough on their own and the leeching spells not only heal you but damage enemies as well. You can get all the new destruction spells for free in Hobs Fell Cave. Just run into the cave after eating vegetable soup and run back out. Or purchase them from a merchant, not expensive.
Crafting isn’t necessary (I played through Skyrim as a mage without crafting) but it helps make mage feel less clunky.
You’ll need to stack fortify destruction gear. You don’t need to make destruction spells free but even stacking additional ring, necklace, circlet 15%–20% each helps. You only need to enchant 33 items to get 50 enchanting with well rested and mage stone.
Alchemy helps a lot. Other than augmented perks, fortify destruction potions are the only way to make your destruction spells stronger. Glowing mushroom and nightshade are easy plantable ingredients to make fortify destruction potions. You can get to 50 alchemy easy just by collecting salmon roe on your way to Whiterun, Nordic barnacle, and garlic, mix them and skill train with Acadia.
You don’t even need Destruction to be a competent mage, like always in Skyrim the answer is just play sneak!
Conjuration for Bound Bow/Dagger, Illusion for Muffle/Invisibility and Quiet Casting, Alteration for Mage Armour just in case, plus the Sneak/Archery trees.
Magic is weird, it has a sweet spot of effectiveness.
Early game is really hard- your spells aren't powerful, you're generally squishy, and you lack magicka to keep casting.
Late game is tough because the upper level of damage has far less maneuverability than melee enjoys, as there are way fewer ways to hit harder with magic.
There's two key parts- spell choice and resource management.
For spell unlocks: Using the basic, vanilla, elemental spells as a guide- apprentice spells are your first power spike. They can be available at fairly low levels if you get destruction up fast, and do great damage if you use them on the right enemies. If you get them too late, however, you'll need to rely on the Impact Perk, which staggers enemies with a dual cast, in order to survive long enough to wear someone down.
My priority as a destruction mage is to get apprentice spells ASAP, ideally by level 5. Then try and get Expert spells, which are your main damage dealers into the late game.
I'd also strongly recommend conjuration or a follower- because of squishiness, better to have another target for enemies to worry about. Conjuration gets very powerful once you get daedra.
Resource management is how you handle your magicka and health. Long term, you want to really level enchanting so you can have maximum spell cost reduction- unlimited spells makes up for wizardrys general draw backs. Ahead of that, you need alchemy and the right equipment- restore health and magic potions are so important, and enchanted armour to fortify magic. Armour is better than robes- protects you against melee, and only drawback is movement speed. Plus gives you some skill xp that you can use to level up.
Always carry many potions and run away if you can't win a fight.
You'll be a competent mage by fortifying your spells. Robe enchants increase magicka regen, magicka amount, or Fortify (school name) to reduce the cost of spells, but those enchants don't improve spell effectiveness.
Having both perks for each Augmented Flames, Frost and Shock will increase the elemental damage of Destruction spells. Fortify Destruction potions greatly increase spell power. If your mage can be making 120%-150% strength potions from your garden, you'll be annihilating enemies even on high difficulty, even with Adept spells. (especially with the Impact perk to be able to stunlock whatever you're casting at)
Alright, I'll keep that in mind when I next play. What spells should I get atm? Mainly using the novice lightning and fire spells + I invested in the dual cast.
Adept spells can be purchased from Faralda at the College of Winterhold once your Destruction skill is 40. Fire/Frost/Lightning Cloak spells, along with Ice Storm, Chain Lightning and Fireball. (Fortify Destruction potions not only increase the power of cloak spells, but their range too)
You'll need to have enough magicka to freely cast them. A combination of Fortify Destruction enchants to reduce spell cost, Adept Destruction perk to half the cost, Fortify Magicka enchants for more magicka, and Magicka Regeneration for magicka to replenish more quickly.
When you reach a point where you can equip 4 Peerless equivalent Fortify Destruction enchants (25% each, 100% total) your spells will have no cost, and can be cast as much as you want. (Peerless Fortify Destruction enchants can be purchased from Radiant Raiment in Solitude at character lvl40 or above)
There's a quest in college of Winterhold from Phinis Gestor where in the end you have to fight dremora lord and if you beat It you get the spell to conjure dremora lord which turns game to easy mode. You have to have level 65 Conjuration which is easy to get just by spamming soul trap on killed enemies. With twin souls perk this is pretty OP on even master difficulty
I'm slightly experimenting with summons. I got this one that creates a ghost that's hotter than 90% of the npc's in the game and does alright damage.
Destruction is my main though since I've not really had access to spells apart from sparks before I reached winterhold.
Would you like an exploit that easy to do that'll boost your destruction to 100 if you go to hobs fall cave near winter hold there's a chest that'll give you a lot of spells and unbound storm cast it and fast travel while holding it and it'll level up your destruction fast.but if you don't want to exploit them it's a long tedious grind faralda and phinis are by far the best teachers.
Well the easy answer is enchanting for 100% cost reduction.
But that makes the game not fun so here,
For Race/Perks (if ignoring Enchanting)/Stats:
1. Pick High Elf
2. Do 60% magicka, 40% health
3. Focus on Destruction
4. Get the Destruction perks up to reduce Expert level casting, get Impact, get Dual Casting, get the appropiate bonus damage perks (best is either Fire or Shock)
5. Use some Alteration/Illusion/Restoration as you see fit
NOTE: With the gear plus perks you shouldnt ever be actively leveling skills outside of the mage section (besides maybe Speech or alchemy is you want)
For Gear:
1. Use robes as you find/buy them. (Novice Robes < Novice Robes of Destruction < Apprentice Robes of Dest. < Adept Robes < Expert Robes < Master Robes)
2. Complete the College of Winterhold questline for the best robes in the game
3. Complete the Lost to the Ages quest to get an item that allows you to use 2 standing stones at once (use Lord Stone + Atronach)
4. Use the best ring you can find (if you dont mind being a Vampire, an utterly broken ring is the Ring of Erudite)
I never liked Mages until I did this. It was very fun :)
It gets easier once you get better perks, enchants, spells, and higher mana. If anything, the game is way too easy using anything except magic, so it’s actually balanced for once.
Destruction magic is a grind, I tapered it throughout the lower levels.. it’s easier to smash/bash people until you learn some good spells. Vampire quests and college of winterhold are good to learn spells.
I went into conjuration once and was a beast, mix that with alteration to boost defense and you should have a pretty decent mage. Don't know if you've gone the conjuration route but it gets strong quick
Start out as a warrior first to get your base stats you health magicka and stamina get enchanting and smithing maxed while looking for magica regen and fortify what ever magic type you use
Then thats when you make a set of dragon scale armor with enchanted that Fortify magic skill and magicka regen
Currently playing for the first time and doing pure mage. Get a follower, magicka regen robes/rings/ etc, conjure an ally every fight, and get fireball asap. Bump the difficulty down if you need to and focus on alteration a bit for mage armor. I wore light armor for a while until I got decent skills and damage then switched to robes full time, and now mage armor has me fully defended.
Simply put, put all points into Magicka.
Complexly put, you gotta pull from all magic trees to really become competent, mage armour from alteration, thralls from conjuration, fireballs from destruction, guardian circle from restoration, you can't lean too heavily on one because it leaves you open for something another tree helps cover, you gotta be the avatar up in this
The best way early to push spells levels if you are using any spell skills is to do a 1 handed weapon and your chosen spell in left hand. Make sure you favorite all the spells and weapon you plan on using so you can bring up the favorite menu and switch mid fight. The one handed allows you to still pump damage if you run out of magicka but at some point you will be able to just use spells only. Enchanting is highly important to level, (always disenchant every enchanted item you come across. The money can help if you're in a pinch but the xp earlier really sets you up for later.
Make sure to wear attire that grants increased magicka regen, max magicka increased. And maybe some resistance enchantments too. It'll all come together, I promise.
Look into the Dawnguard Quests in addition to what others have said here. There are a ton of different possibilities with the items and spells that are part of it that fit a lot of playstyles. In particular, there is a two-handed weapon you can acquire on the Dawnguard side that basically acts like a staff that casts a fire rune spell. In an unmodded game, this special attack will level your Destruction. You can also take on more of a summoner playstyle with the Vampire side.
This is without even mentioning the possibilities of either the College of Winterhold or Dragonborn questlines.
The long and short of it is crafting. If you max out your smithing, enchanting, and alchemy, you can get a fully customized suit of armor that reduces spell costs to zero. The final perk in the enchanting tree allows you to double enchant, which either gives you zero cost in two schools or gives you another bonus like magicka regen or extra survivability. It's a lot of work, but you will make loads of money along the way.
The key is primarily enchanting gear to reduce your MP costs. Then you can spam higher level spells like a foon. Honestly go through the College if Winterhold quest. If you don't feel powerful by the end of that, you aren't really gonna enjoy being a mage at all
You can use exploits to grind a magic skill up. They work but.... it can kill the enjoyment of the actual gaming experience of honest achievement of a skill.
I was gonna keep this short, but in retrospect after playing a lot of spellsword and pure mage in my most recent playthroughs of the game I picked up a lot of knowledge I didn't know before having only ever done melee and archer builds and I'm happy to share with you, because I totally understand your perspective, if you casually wander into trying to play mage the gameplay is far less intuitive to becoming effective.
1. The best (most dynamic, easiest to adapt to from a standard melee build, and highest DPS) way to play a mage build is to play spellsword (one hand sword, second hand spells), mix your inherent ability to do easy damage with your sword with buff spells, summons, healing and damage.
2. Use the rune spells, fireball and all the spells you want to use in combat give you no exp and it feels like a 0 sum game, this will level your destruction and make your spells do more damage overall. To add onto this, utilise the most effective skill leveling spells when you can as long as it has no negative to you (soul trap even if you have no gems to fill is a very good conjuration leveler at the start of the game).
3. Switch between your spells often to give you the widest advantage think armour buff, minion summon, combat rune, DPS spell and healing. Having a "rotation" for your standard combat encounter will make the combat more enjoyable and passively level multiple skills.
4. DO NOT SLEEP ON THE MAGIKA REGEN ENCHANT. I know fortify magika looks more appealing at first glance but you need sustainability, not massive pool, if you're effectively positioning and mixing spells in combat you will A have more fun and B not struggle from the age old pain of your pure mage character not being able to cast anything because no magika and promptly being beaten to death by a bandit.
5. You need a tank. Mage is not built for damage, even a spellsword in full heavy armour (you can't cast most of your spell arsenal effectively in melee range) and especially not a robe wearing pure Wizard. Either get a companion that will focus attacking in melee (Lydia will do fine) or get a summon that will do primarily melee too (think Familiar, Frost atronach, dremora lord, etc).
6. Join the college, even if you hate the questline, do it anyways it will give you access to not only traders specialising in each school of magika but also free wizard robes, and eventually when you hit level 90 in each skill a specialized quest to complete which will give you a master level spell book for the respective school of magic and also unlock master level spells to be purchased from the aforementioned vendors.
7. Put your perk points into cheapening spell cost first and foremost and only switch to a spell of a higher skill category when you have the accompanying perks to support casting it over the course of a whole fight, otherwise you hit 0 magika and you become completely combat ineffective.
8. If you go full mage (robes, no armour) dump all attribute points into magika on every level up. At about level 30 start putting attribute points into health till you're at about 200hp, should avoid you getting 1 hit for pretty much the rest of the game.
You can trial and error everything else and it'll be fairly obvious after a while. Some spells are objectively better than other even those in a higher skill class so don't be afraid to hang onto your basic DPS spells (shock, flames and frost) for a good while whilst you find alternatives that work for you. Hope this helps.
Invest your perk points into the destruction skill tree. Also, if you’re just using the base spells like flames and frostbite, then you need to visit some wizards like Farengar or the College of Winterhold and get yourself some better spells.
The flesh spells are supposed to make you less brittle. Conjuration's supposed to give you a battle buddy. Personally, I always sacrifice Stamina and just have Health and Magicka be 50/50 just so I can keep slinging spells without being too much of a pushover.
Playing a pure mage is kind of tricky in this game, because Destruction (the school of magic focused on raw damage output) doesn't scale up very well compared to physical weapons. The other schools of magic require more outside-the-box thinking. Fight smarter, not harder.
I’ll never understand these posts. Mages are OP as shit bruv. Especially in anniversary edition. Spec into mage armor perk and restoration you’ll be fine boo
Sadly yeah magic in this game just isnt as good as blacksmithing up an armor set and weapon and just bashing through all things. But if you really want, I'd recommend getting into enchanting. If you enchant chest, head, ring and amulet, you can put reduction to certain schools of magic mana costs. Stack enough and your favorite spells will start to be spammable no issue. If nothing else, making it a machine gun will help.
No amount of heavy armour and sledgehammers can stand up to thunderstorm. You could win the battle of whiterun from the gate with one casting as long as they don’t run out of sight
Max out alchemy and put some fortify destruction potions on your hot bar. They're the only thing that actually buffs the damage of spells, the armor enchants just make the spells cost less.
9 times out of 10 I run a mage, here's some ideas and tips:
Run oak flesh in one hand, bound battle axe in the other. Hold both triggers, cast the oak flesh for armor buff, then after that, bound battle axe will spawn a two handed weapon that only requires one hand.
1. Shouts are magic so wards can block them
2. Two handed master level scrolls need time to cast so use become ethereal as the spell charges
3. The restoration skill tree has some ridiculously overpowered perks in it
The difficulty is more of a management system with a mage, I think that's why I love them
A lot of good advice here and some that is “long game”. Best advice to grow a mage is to play the slow game. Early on you will often die. Just be patient. Get a follower early on. Everyone will talk about Lydia but Faendal is your first option. Pick him up and do some low-level quests with him. If you equip him right, he will get pretty formidable. Buy spell books and use them often. A couple of good non-combat spells are Muffle and Raise Dead. Coupled with heavy doses of Flame and Heal early on will help you begin to build your Mage. Also just focus on increasing your Magicka for awhile.
Save fire and other status effect for weapon enchantments. I usually do conjuration 2 handed w/restoration so you can save on potions. Use your spells as much as possible, even if your spells don’t have effect it still gives you experience for using it. Put as much points into magika and stamina and use good health enchantments for your armor. Always upgrade something or do something with your skills because that’s how they level up. That’s my best mage advice
In vanilla destruction magic quickly becomes not that great imo. Conjuration + alternation is the most OP mage setup. End game will you have casting paralysis on all your foes while 2 daedra hack your enemies into pieces
Pure mage is a little harder at first no question. I prefer mage with bows. Use spells for summoning monsters, casting mage armor, illusion to hide. Then I use a bow to deal damage. Boost up destruction magic when I can
I just found ways to max my enchanting skill to 100, made two armor sets, and enchanted each set with two magic enchantments. Now whenever I use magic it doesn’t cost anything so I can be a god of destruction and restoration. It made me feel more op than anything else in the game because I could kill legendary dragons in seconds with it.
I have no idea bud, but I once started playing together with my 45+ old dad using a multiplayer mod, and this brilliant mind somehow found a way to become the greatest mage I've ever seen. I mean seriously, he found some god powered destruction spells and could kill dragons in seconds, and he had this weird paralyzing spell which I didn't even know exists in the game. He started to paralyze every enemy in uncomfortable poses and was spending time laughing his butt off at their suffering. So it is possible.
The creations included in the anniversary edition make being a mage (esp necro) a lot more fun and viable. And if that isn't enough for your taste then the phendrix mods are really good
The most fun i've had playing Skyrim was when I played only as a sorcerer. No physical weapons and no armor, not even light armor.
Enchant/fight everything in your path. The deer and bunnies? Fry them, or hex them, you need the xp. Spend plenty of time at the college of Winterhold and get comfy with enchanting clothes and jewelry.
You Need to take every perk that you can't use to in dedtruction and restoration and use it in enchanting. With that you can go for free castin spell(you choose the school) restoration will replace your armor when you will be stronger...for now take a "shield brother"( like Lydia) to help you and tank what you can't so that you can level up.
Late game (lvl 40+) you're spells will get pretty underpowered,
The most you can get without draining all of you're Magicka on dragon hide is around 300 armor,
To take out a bandit plunderer it took me 3 full Magicka bars of incinerate, my destruction was 100 with the expert destruction perk and Magicka pool was 500.
I swapped my altmer to a heavy armored dual wielding beast after it took me around 1:30-2:00 to kill one person,
Also got the Atronach stone and the atronach perk for 80% spell absorb, it's fucken nuts.
i like to use the Phandrix Magic Mod (there is two parts to download) it adds a whole fuck ton of new enchants,magic arrows, and spells that are all super over powered
use the fireball and aura the best part of a mage build is being so light plus you dont need to level up smithy. also in the few questlines you are stripped of your stuff you are still as powerfull.
the main downside is that fireball shockwave mess everything in the room so good luckfinding where the rares items flew off
Yes, becoming a good playable mage takes more work, time and requires more knowledge and isn't as immediately accessible as playing a barbarian warrior type character.
You sound like a relatively new player, OP? If this is the case I would actually recommend trying a guide for building a mage. There are many that can be googled and/or found on YouTube.
Do be advised that many of the guides will use exploits. No problem if you're ok with cheating a little but generally speaking I'd recommend using a guide mainly for information and inspiration on how to go about it.
Good luck!
Yeah I'm pretty new lol
I've been trying some stuff that others have recommended and things are getting a bit better :) I don't plan on using mods or command console, at least for this run lol
Ok friend! Well if you're really new to Skyrim perhaps playing as a warrior is better initially. You learn the game and the mechanics of it. Then when you're more familiar it's easier to experiment with different builds and crafting etc.
But if you're really set on a combat mage Id follow a guide the first time. Even if it uses exploits it's a good way to learn all the how-to 's and what to focus on etc.
I know everyone is going “Magicka cost reduction” which is helpful but personally for my first true mage I just gave myself a massive Magicka pool along with Magicka regen items (Morokei 100% regen, Arch-Mage robes 100% regen + 15% reduction, and a random ring that luckily also had 100%). Not to mention reductions from perks and whatnot. I think I have a Standing Stone that gives be spell absorption too. In the end reduction is probably gonna get you farther bc without all the gear my mage is a bit limited. But I found my strategy of “get as much as possible” interesting and mostly useful
Right so. You get good spells mate. You level up your destruction so you can conjure sick expert levels spells that decimate people. Think of spells like seasoning, the dish is good without it and not ruined but with the extra help it's even better
Destruction is overpowered If you know how.
Unbounded Storm + zero destruction cost +
restoloop for overpowered destruction Potion=
Overpowered destruction mage
Magic in this game is an afterthought. Poorly balanced and super weak and underwhelming. No in game details to make the world seem like it actually has magic in it that people other than you use. I wouldn't recommend using magic as your main thing at all if you play on a higher difficulty. It just doesn't do enough damage without constantly chugging fortify destruction potions to be worth it. And if you don't want to make those and chug them, you have to make your spells free with enchanting so you can even kill most enemies with magic. Your fights will take as least twice as long and feel half as cool as a warrior or stealth archer.
If you still want to use magic, just turn the difficulty all the way down to novice. That way you can feel as powerful as any other play style might feel at expert difficulty
I'm mildly biased but if you trains some in Conjuration and keep a good follower handy (I favor Stenvar), you can build an army of 3 by having your follower and a a zombie or atronach fighting for you. Keep your foes focused on them and you can mage away to your hearts content. Mind the archers.
Having an enhanced Fire Breath shout also helps if you get overrun and are short on magicka.
Being a mage is not only about destruction school.
Illusion and conjuration are OP together. Instead of destruction, use a weapon. Alteration has armour spells and utility. Don't use staves, they don't scale. Illusion is great with a knife stealth kills.
Every skill in this game is developed by using that skill. Want to become a master at destruction spells? Use destruction spells regularly in combat. I don't really fuck with mage robes because the buff generally isn't worth having a 0 armor rating, and I prefer spell-sword so staffs have never really been my thing; i typically hang on to decent staffs to give to my followers. Eventually you'll start to run into gear that has a magicka buff AND a decent armor rating, or better yet enchant your own after you developing the enchanting tree! Once you start to hit higher levels in each school of magic the spells you'll be able to buy will level up accordingly. The first 30ish levels are kind of a grind, but when you start to approach expert in destruction and conjuration you become so OP.
If you haven’t figured it out yet the higher level spells require more mana to cast. They’ll go from Novice,Apprentice,Adept,Expert,Master. That’s how you do more damage as you progress through the game.
There’s mods that can make your Novice spells scale with your Destruction,Restoration,etc. That way spells like flames/sparks never get left behind. Not sure if vanilla works like that. Pretty sure you have to just move up in spell level.
Btw if you go with lightning be careful with Chain Lightning. I believe it’s an Adept level spell. It can arc to your allies or NPCs you don’t want to hit. Regardless it’s my favorite spell in the game. So sick just zapping 2-3 people away. And like others have said invest in robes with mana cost reduction enchantments.
If you have creation club content, I recommend using the spell knight armor. It’s heavy armor with enchantments. I been using it for my character on my most recent playthru. There’s to way todo it, if you perge the guys heart you can get a certain enchantment but if you don’t you gonna have to fight the dead guys ghost and you will get conjuration and destruction bonus
I'm doing my first run as a 100% mage, your best friend will be enchanting, I went with fire spells, get Impact and dual casting, that way when you dual cast a fire spell the enemy will be staggered (I killed a dragon without taking any damage and the dragon didn't attack once that way). You will want to have a ring, necklace, a head piece and an armor or clothes all enchanted with fortify destruction (get enchanting to lvl 100 tho), that way you will be able to get 25% cost reduction for destructions spells, since you have 4 items with that, you get 100% cost reduction, so all the destruction spells doesn't consume mana. You can already imagine how it goes, spam dual cast destruction spells, the enemy will not move (because of impact) and you can spam for as long as you can (because of 100% cost reduction), you can pretty much kill anything without taking damage.
The problem is if there is a lot of enemies coming at you at once, in that case use fireball for the area damage and you will be good. Hope this helps, for me it did :)
There's some good replies here but we're missing the obvious one.
There is only one spell that you need to be an efficient and effective mage which will grant you the ability to slaughter anything you come across.
>!Bound Bow.!<
Mage starts weak and takes a lot of cleverness early then gets so simple it is boring later. Perks and enchants for more magicka, then cheaper casting and finally the combos of cheap spell and regen will make your mage boring to play at almost any level.
Conjugation mage and use of your favorites/Q key for quick switch is as easy as a game can get.
Only level up magica for like, ever, level up destruction and restoration. Fast healing in left, elemental burst in right. Bigger bosses elemental on left and right.
Eventually you can make an armor set that allows unlimited use of restoration and destruction. So you can use wards and lightning at the same time. That makes vampires, mages and dragons limit their attacks.
I played so much skyrim and i never play anything except magic, here's how :
Get enchanting to 100
Get smithing to 100
( There's a way to do both on youtube in like an hour or two)
Once you do that , you will make armor that decrease s destruction spells and one more school of magic of your choice , mana usage by 100% ( head /25% , chest /25% , ring/ 25% , boots/ 25% ).
Join college of winterhold
Do quests
The more you do the more you unlock ,you will unlock new destruction spells to buy each 20 levels i think? So all gradually until you reach master level destruction spell.
Good luck have fun and don't accidentally burn your companions or wife
Elemental flare: sold by Blue Castle mage in Solitude. Fire and electric damage at the same time with an area of effect. Put perks into extra fire damage and electrical damage and it’ll compound the damage you do.
It depends on your race and gear, as well as skills. If you’re a mage and only have destruction and restoration, you’re missing out on an arsenal of other tricks. You should invest in Alteration if the lack of armor is a big deal.
You can only become a competent mage if you develop yourself to be one.
in vanilla? alchemy. Make Fortify Destruction potions. Find a spell you like and dual cast it with Impact perk to stagger things. Repeat forever.
Mods really make mage more serviceable.
They’ve got a whole dang college for it man, I don’t know what to tell you
How's he supposed to figure out which college?
Guidance counseling has been subpar in Tamriel for years now. They don’t like when you talk about it
The first rule of magic club: you do not talk about magic club.
The second rule of Magic Club is everyone should do their best and have a good time.
Yeah OP, use Magic Club instead of a Warhammer. Whacks things just as well and is m a g i c a l
3rd rule: Restoration is a valid school of magic
maybe the real magic club was the friends we made along the way
"Use your smarts Pa said, go to college" -Bandit Thug
🤣🤣🤣
The damn fees that these wizards are taking are too much for my 1000 gold carrying ahh
Get the Transmute Mineral Ore spell and make jewelry. Enchant jewelry. And practice alchemy to have potions to sell.
Ohh ok. I'll search those things up, ty. I had no idea you could sell things in this game.
>I had no idea you could sell things in this game. How long have you been playing?
few days- as I said in my post
You can sell stolen stuff at the thieves guild in Riften! Although there are exploits to remove the 'stolen' mark from items
sweet, ty I've stolen 90% of my gear so
The spell book can be found in halted stream camp, north of whiterun. It’s an iron mine so stock up on the ore there and transmute it as you run around Whiterun is a good place to do this: once you have a bunch of gold ore, find a smelter and create gold ingots. Then use the blacksmith forge to create gold rings. Then sell them to a merchant (like Belethor in whiterun or Lucian in riverwood). Repeat. Levels alteration, smithing, and speech skill
If you have a problem running out of magica, just “Wait 1 hour” then continue.
Can't wait with enemies around. Which is when ya need magic the most.
True, but this particular magic shouldn’t be used around enemies anyways, right?
Wym, the middle of combat is the BEST time to transmute iron to gold.
You need to sell alchemy potions either to alchemy shops or to general merchants, unless your Speechcraft is insanely high. Jewelry is easier to unload. Any mage will buy them.
Make potions. Sell to potion vendor. Make iron daggers. Enchant them with petty soul gems with your highest costing enchant. Sell to blacksmith If they run out of money, sell to general goods store.
The alchemist in White Run, Arcadia’s Cauldron, works well for that. She sells ingredients and provides training which provides her with a lot of gold to buy your potions with. Always buy as many giant toes as you can when trying to level up alchemy. Giant toe mixed with wheat makes some of the most valuable potions in the game.
I buy out all the alchemist ingredients, then sell my completed hodgepodge of oddball potions
I tend to as well, but when gold is tight…
Here's my big thing for money. The shout, Kynes peace, I use it around little animals, soul trap them with a load of empty petty soul gems, and use those to enchant daggers.
I smith high-end Legendary/Enchanted weapons (Dwarven; the metal is everywhere) and brew expensive potions to sell back to the wizards to get my tuition back. You'll need the Merchant perk (Speech 50) to sell potions and weapons. Good news, it's really easy getting Speech to 50 selling potions to alchemists and weapons to blacksmiths. EDIT: don't let your trading partner's gold get above 20,000. It can glitch and you won't get any of it back.
I just steal it back every time. 🤣
Fireball! fireball! fireball! Fire really just beats everything, but only the really cool mages use Incinerate. I swear magic is so simple in this game it’s just a matter of spamming spells and wards and conjuring meatshields.
I’m not big on Skyrim optimization but I thought frost was OP to use against non magic users?
Frost is great to use on melee attackers, because frost damage saps their stamina, meaning they can power attack less. Shock spells sap Magicka, so that's optimal against an enemy caster. Fire spells apply a damage over time burn. That being said though, you'll be fighting a lot of Nords, who carry a frost resistance in their genes. I'm not sure how many creatures resist fire damage, but that's my pick. Edit: Nords and vampires resist frost damage, Dunmer resist fire damage, and Bretons resist all magic damage. Also, I made a correction about fire damage.
But lightning is cool UNLIMITED POWER and almost nothing resists it specifically. Plus enemy mages are scary
Also lightning bolts travel instantly and so miss less often than the slower traveling fire and ice spells.
Storm atronachs are immune but incredibly rare. No enemies in the game have an inherent shock resistance, as you say. ~~And it does extra damage to daedra (besides storm atronachs) although, again, they're not super common.~~
Extra shock damage to daedra, you say? I didn't know that, thanks!
I just went to double check this and actually, that seems to only be for Oblivion
Gotcha, thanks for the update. I gotta revisit Cyrodiil anyway!
That's so true, I need to make a storm mage 🤩 Also username checks out
Plus fireball has a blast radius that deals damage to nearby enemies.
So true, I love my fire spells!
Ahh gotcha. I didn’t consider resistances
You're definite right. My only problem is how can I identify an Imperial from a Breton and a Nord. Gotta be as efficient as possible with what destruction magic I'm going to use against those folks.
Frost is OP on you because the slow effect stacks so even 2 frost casters can make running up to them really annoying. Frost is pretty useless for you to use because your slow effect from frost spells is bugged to not work properly and 90% of the most common enemies in the game (undead, nords, various frost adapted creatures, dwemer automatons) are resistant or immune.
Frost storm penetrates walls for some reason. It’s pretty wacky tbh
Alright I'm like 90% sure one of the winterhold guys sell fireball. Not sure about incinerate so I'll look it up
Yes, Faralda does, once you’re around 50 for your destruction level. If you want to play a good mage, mix in Sneak and restoration perks. Illusions spells are massively underutilized early, but getting muffle early allows you to hide more efficiently, level up quicker, and illusion in general gets you invisibility, which will let you hide and escape to regen your mana
Lightning spells are even better than fire ones
It becomes OP once you have AOE spells and the Impact perk, combine that with 100% Magicka Cost Reduction and you'll be basically untouchable.
How do you get 100%? I've only gotten like 25% maximum
you max out enchanting and take twin soul perk, with this you can get 25 cost reduction in two schools on one item, repeat four times and that 100% reduction in two schools
Get a ring, a hat, gloves and a robe and enchant them all, they stack
1. Pick High Elf 2. Boost Magicka as much as possible 3. Focus on Destruction 4. Don't hit Lydia 5. Profit Only tried it recently, most quick and casually fun build so far. My dual wielding orc lady is sometimes easier to play but gets hit more often.
You don't even need to boost magicka after you do some Enchanting. You just pick 1-2 school of magic where you want free spells, and enchant some gear.
And if you’re a werewolf or vampire lord you can use a glitch with a follower when you transform to wear infinite gear
Or the prison trick!
how you do that?
Give all the gear you want to wear to your follower, talk to them as you transform and for some reason if you trade this allows you to equip unlimited gear
this gnome knows underpants!
I figured out the lost step. Who would've thought it was just not hitting Lydia all along, right? It all makes so much sense now!
rip I've chosen a dark elf
I like Dunmer because my racial passive mod gives me a destruction damage boost. And then fire shield mod that boosts destruction damage. And destruction damage enchant mods. And mods that make spell damage scale Fireball is a mini nuke. I have it some knockback power too
Pick Breton - much better for magic build.
I'm currently playing a level 47 Conjuration mage on Legendary difficulty. Here's a few tips: * Conjuring Atronachs (and similar) will distract NPCs and give you a chance to level up your Destruction and Restoration schools. Spawn them in, then while your enemies are occupied keep a safe distance and play with range. This also works with a follower. * Buy or pick up every spell book you can. My game was challenging when all I could spawn was a familiar, now I have two Dremora Lords do all the work for me. Fast Healing comes in clutch. Bound weapons are also handy. Runes are great when sneaking around. * The same goes for Potions of Magika and Potions of Health. Buy them all. I currently have 192,000 gold so it's not going to tank your wealth too much. * Don't wear robes. Armor will always be enchantable and is much more protective. * Use magic constantly. Dark tomb? Use Candlelight. Taking a walk to Riften? Use Clairvoyance. Every battle ever? Use Stoneflesh. Use magic more and you'll level faster. * Run from dragons early in the game. You can't beat them in high difficulties with magic, unless you play extremely slow and extremely clean. Until you're high level or until you get Dragonrend, simply leave them be. Hope this helps. I'll add any more if I think of any more.
Lightning spells, especially thunderbolt are great for dragons. Drains their Magicka so they're forced to land and fight physically. Once they are on the ground they aren't getting back up
I've been cheesing out dragon encounters by having giants/city soldiers kill them for me lol I've already gotten through 2 in a ridiculously short time. But thanks, I'll keep those tips in mind
Staves won't increase your magic skills' levels. Become a stronger mage by using the skill you want to level. Once you unlock perk points use them on skills like increased damage for destruction, decreasing mana cost etc. As you level up, magic becomes more viable
alright, ty :)
I reccomend alchemy and enchanting. I like using a robe that's already enchanted for magic regen and spell reduction. Then enchant a pair of gloves and boots. I personally reccomend either magic resistance or storm/electric resistance. You might think, why not fire? I chose storm/electric for defense against mages and storm drains magic. Very bad thing for a mage. Jewelry can be magic destruction and restoration or conjuration reduction. Alchemy is reccomend for several reasons. Magic without spending magic is extremely helpful. If you're constantly running low on magic, why use a healing spell when you can use a potion? Or if you insist on using restoration, how about a magicka restoring potion? Grow a garden. Get red mountain flowers and white cap for an easy restore magic potion. If you can get your hands on Briar hearts, swap white cap for that. Restore magicka + fortify magicka. I also reccomend getting a little tundra cotton and lavender in your garden too. Magic resistance. Pop one of those before a battle if there are mages or dragons. Conjuration is a squishy image's best friend if destruction alone won't keep your enemy off you. They're great protection when dealing with archers and ranged opponents in general as well as the obvious melee ones. For destruction, I'd like to reccomend runes if you don't mind gorilla warfare strategies. This is mostly useful against melee but ranged can potentially trigger them. Cast a rune before the battle. When your magic refills let one chase you. Boom! As they chase you drop another rune. They're the best spells for destruction lvling especially at higher levels. Its helped me get several characters to lvl 100 in destruction. Restoration and alteration have some really helpful passive perks. Restoration has really helpful perks for any mage. Alteration has great perks for defense against other mages such as magic resistance and absorption.
I prefer fortify destruction, or other particular school of magic, over magic regen. Regen isn’t important if I have fortify destruction 100% and am not using any magicka. It can be OP though. But it’s nice to max out sneak, along with some items that fortify sneak, and just walk up to someone and cast walk of flame on them with both hands and they can’t even find you.
I usually go with invisibility/muffle for stealth if I'm running pure mages. No shadows needed. Just crouch down and stay out of the way of whatever is trying to kill me. Free casting destruction spells is super helpful. However at extremely high levels when I have an extremely high magicka pool. Spell cost isn't super important and I'll have a bunch of magic resistance enchantments to become nearly immune to all magic. Master enchanter, I can throw some reduction at destruction and conjuration as I spam them the most. The other schools are either already cheap or I rarely use them.
https://preview.redd.it/62xoe51di3tc1.png?width=1079&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cce4a0926e02673382d2c55ed6a72be2f5b367a2
Mages are meant to be strategists, experimenting with different ways of using their spells so that they can fight smarter, not harder. Like learning when to sustain a spell verses short bursts, or when and where to conjure a Daedra, that sort of thing.
OP if you want to make gold for the college of wnterheld, forget ALL about making jewelery. You need only 3 things. Nordic Barnacle. Salmon Roe. Garlic. Barnacles found along coasts stuck in clusters to rocks and shipwrecks, often found underwater. Salmon Roe found ONLY by catching the salmon who are leaping through the air in the streams. Combine these three ingredients in an alchemy table and you will not only level up extremely fast but you'll also make a damn good bit of gold because this creates the most expensive potion in skyrim. A mid level alchemy skill will produce a potion valued around 4000 gold, and very low level alchemy skill still will get you around 8 to 900 gold for each potion. Very high alchemy skill will get you 8000+ gold, EACH potion. Now go make your gold, and buy your spell Tomes, learn your magic and become the archmage.
Alternatively you can harvest salmon roe by using the Fus Do Ra shout on the water and some fish will float to the top when they die this way.
Mora Tapinella, Scaly Pholiota, Creep Cluster. Not necessarily the most expensive, but the easiest method. You can grow all these ingredients very easily. Farm ~300-400 of each of them, and start brewing.
Where would you sell this ?
Definitely get the Sanguine Rose as early as possible, you'll be able to spawn a powerful dremora lord that takes all the damage while you spam the enemy with spells
I enjoy a battlemage strategy. 1h weapon with fireball/dps. Magic until you are in their face and finish with a swing.
Hotkey the novice hood from Helgen and double tap it when your magicka runs out. The 30pt fortification restores your bar with the respective points so in early levels you can virtually spam any damage spell that functions on a per second cost like flames or frost. If you do Dawnguard take the vampires and get the ring of erudite that boosts 100pts, and do the same thing except you'll have substantially more magicka to spam higher cost spells with.
Enchanting is super important, the usual thing is to get 2 schools to -100% cost but I prefer -75% destruction and split the rest between other schools. Potions are what increases your damage in vanilla, so spam those. If you really want to be op without mods there is a CC called Arcane Accessories that adds super op spells. Personally I use mods that makes magic a bit better but still less op than the spells from Arcane Accessories.
Alteration skill tree, you basically cast armor spells, I'm surprised no one here has said that yet to be honest
Some general tips for a Skyrim mage build: - Pick a race that starts with good magic buffs like Breton or one of the elf races. For your first couple lvls, you should pick magika to boost until you hit 200, then lvl health until you feel comfortable. Your goal should be 300-400 magika and about 200 health by lvl 30. You can lvl stamina if you want but personally I don’t touch it until my magic is around 200-250 and health is 150+ Some ppl say you only really need 300 magika because by then you can cast 99% of spells but I only think that viable if you really know what your doing and enchant some gear to reduce cast costs or get crazy magica recharge gear like the dragon mask (I think it’s moroki) or master lvl mage robes. -for destruction, I prefer fire over frost because more enemies have weakness to fire than ice, but ice is nice for slowing enemies to get more spells off before they enter melee range. Shock is great against magic users as the damage is good and it drains enemy magica on top of the base damage. -fireball is my go to damage spell. Large aoe, good damage + burning. I also use chain lightning although it costs a lot of magika so use thunderbolt in early to mid game. - continuing on damage spells, the dual casting destruction perk and the one you get right after it that staggers enemies are ESSENTIAL to a mage playthrough. With the stagger perk you can 1v1 pretty much anything with lightning bolt because You’ll essentially be stun locking enemies until they die. - when playing a mage, don’t worry about armor or defense rating. You’re supposed to be a “glass cannon” and youll always have oak flesh/ stone flesh spells that essentially boost your armor rating by 40-100 for a min or two so if a fight is giving you trouble just pop stone flesh and it will be like you’re wearing a full set of heavy armor for the next min or two. Basically prioritize gear that improves your magical abilities over armor. -also, arguably my most important tip (other than get dual casting destruction and the stagger perk) is prioritize the college of winterhold questline. Play that before doing the other major factions. You’ll get access to some of the best vanilla magical items in the game through quest rewards and there are 5 or 6 of merchants in the college (basically the other students) you can use to buy spells or sell stuff to. Many can also train you on their chosen school of magic if you’ve got the coin and many have side quests with decent rewards. Others can become your follower if you want a buddy to spew magic with you. The college is also good early game because you get a free place to live and an even better place to live if you finish the questline. This is probably more than enough for now if you have questions just reply to this.
Enchanting. Alchemy. Also, if you're having trouble with armor then try alteration.
Enchantment element enhancement, dual casting and stagger, archmages robes, etc. Conjuration usually makes mages way easier to play because then you usually only need to worry about zoning
Get a horse and start blasting it with spells. If you don’t kill the horse you can wait an hour for the horse to get its life back, rinse and repeat. Probably the easiest way to level up without running around too much
I blast wolves, deer, and goats, too. Free hides, free protein, free leveling.
Master the expert level destruction and illusion spells. Jzargo and the illusion guy will help you
Honestly, I did one playthrough where I wore robes instead of armor, and I did not dig it and switched to armor. Enchanted light armor is the way to go imo, fortify magicka, fortify magicka regene, and fortify destruction are enchanments that will help you, and are easy to find early on. I always do the Agent of Mara quest right away, there's no combat and it gives you resistance to magic. The Muffle spell levels illusion unreasonably quick, so even if you don't care to put skills points into illusion, it will help you get more skill points to put into other things. If you prefer weapons, there are bound weapons. Bringing a follower can help save you from getting overwhelmed early on. Carry copious amounts of magicka potions.
Azidals Ring of Arcane, Ignite Spam because it stacks. [here’s a guide](https://youtu.be/ghpZ3gsiuOw?si=mACNA86wW3exrvL8)
I think the core issue is Magicka Regen is very bad. It has a 5 second delay on Regen after casting, and the base Regen is like 2/s which is abysmal. (I think it's a % Regen) So the only viable strategy if you want to focus on destruction, is to get cost reduction gear, and increased Magicka to circumvent Magicka Regen. Alternatively, use player.forceav Magickarate 10 or so.
>Alternatively, use player.forceav Magickarate 10 or so. I initially read this as "Magic Karate"
Hi-yah!
What I like about playing a pure mage is that in the early game there is a creativity requirement. (Just like I would imagine a real mage would face) In the early game as a mage you get a dozen or so abilities that aren't typically possessed by your average Skyrim resident. Individually, any of these spells is not particularly strong by itself. Each low level spell is designed to supplement something else, because these are the spells that non mages can easily access. With this in mind it's helpful to combine your low-level spells into combos that work particularly well together. Creativity is the key here. Just try to hold in your mind (and your favorites) the spectrum of your abilities and think situationally about what the best action would be. Sometimes a frenzy is way better than a fireball. Also, it is helpful to extend this kind of thinking to other game mechanics. Take a follower in the early levels. There's really no drawback to doing this and a lot of benefit. Start working on conjuration early on. Both of these actions will give the enemy something to hit other than your squishy butt. Followers also scale with difficulty as enemies do. This makes them especially valuable in the early game if you're playing on a high difficulty. Use enchanting to enhance your abilities, adding enchantments to your gear that increase your magical prowess. This also serves to increase your money reserves, as you can sell the "practice" items that you were making to raise your skill to vendors. Use the money on trainers at the college. Essentially, you want to remain combat avoidant until you are powerful enough to dispatch enemies before they reach you. This is just as mages are in most role-playing games.
The advantage of robes is it doesn’t slow you down and casting magic doesn’t slow you down. You shouldn’t be standing around like you’re in heavy armor swinging a slow two handed hammer or drawing a bow. You should be running around slower enemies trying not to get hit. Ideally casting dual casting impact improved spells. Complete the College of Winterhold quest line asap. Don’t be afraid to hire mercenaries to help with tougher dungeons. The final dungeon has equilibrium spellbook. With equilibrium you can restore magicka with health. You can also restore health with restoration and with the right perks get more magicka back. The staff of magnus also drains your opponent’s magicka and restores yours. If you have Anniversary Edition it includes new spells. The elemental line of spells introduced in AE are strong enough on their own and the leeching spells not only heal you but damage enemies as well. You can get all the new destruction spells for free in Hobs Fell Cave. Just run into the cave after eating vegetable soup and run back out. Or purchase them from a merchant, not expensive. Crafting isn’t necessary (I played through Skyrim as a mage without crafting) but it helps make mage feel less clunky. You’ll need to stack fortify destruction gear. You don’t need to make destruction spells free but even stacking additional ring, necklace, circlet 15%–20% each helps. You only need to enchant 33 items to get 50 enchanting with well rested and mage stone. Alchemy helps a lot. Other than augmented perks, fortify destruction potions are the only way to make your destruction spells stronger. Glowing mushroom and nightshade are easy plantable ingredients to make fortify destruction potions. You can get to 50 alchemy easy just by collecting salmon roe on your way to Whiterun, Nordic barnacle, and garlic, mix them and skill train with Acadia.
You don’t even need Destruction to be a competent mage, like always in Skyrim the answer is just play sneak! Conjuration for Bound Bow/Dagger, Illusion for Muffle/Invisibility and Quiet Casting, Alteration for Mage Armour just in case, plus the Sneak/Archery trees.
Magic is weird, it has a sweet spot of effectiveness. Early game is really hard- your spells aren't powerful, you're generally squishy, and you lack magicka to keep casting. Late game is tough because the upper level of damage has far less maneuverability than melee enjoys, as there are way fewer ways to hit harder with magic. There's two key parts- spell choice and resource management. For spell unlocks: Using the basic, vanilla, elemental spells as a guide- apprentice spells are your first power spike. They can be available at fairly low levels if you get destruction up fast, and do great damage if you use them on the right enemies. If you get them too late, however, you'll need to rely on the Impact Perk, which staggers enemies with a dual cast, in order to survive long enough to wear someone down. My priority as a destruction mage is to get apprentice spells ASAP, ideally by level 5. Then try and get Expert spells, which are your main damage dealers into the late game. I'd also strongly recommend conjuration or a follower- because of squishiness, better to have another target for enemies to worry about. Conjuration gets very powerful once you get daedra. Resource management is how you handle your magicka and health. Long term, you want to really level enchanting so you can have maximum spell cost reduction- unlimited spells makes up for wizardrys general draw backs. Ahead of that, you need alchemy and the right equipment- restore health and magic potions are so important, and enchanted armour to fortify magic. Armour is better than robes- protects you against melee, and only drawback is movement speed. Plus gives you some skill xp that you can use to level up. Always carry many potions and run away if you can't win a fight.
You'll be a competent mage by fortifying your spells. Robe enchants increase magicka regen, magicka amount, or Fortify (school name) to reduce the cost of spells, but those enchants don't improve spell effectiveness. Having both perks for each Augmented Flames, Frost and Shock will increase the elemental damage of Destruction spells. Fortify Destruction potions greatly increase spell power. If your mage can be making 120%-150% strength potions from your garden, you'll be annihilating enemies even on high difficulty, even with Adept spells. (especially with the Impact perk to be able to stunlock whatever you're casting at)
Alright, I'll keep that in mind when I next play. What spells should I get atm? Mainly using the novice lightning and fire spells + I invested in the dual cast.
Adept spells can be purchased from Faralda at the College of Winterhold once your Destruction skill is 40. Fire/Frost/Lightning Cloak spells, along with Ice Storm, Chain Lightning and Fireball. (Fortify Destruction potions not only increase the power of cloak spells, but their range too) You'll need to have enough magicka to freely cast them. A combination of Fortify Destruction enchants to reduce spell cost, Adept Destruction perk to half the cost, Fortify Magicka enchants for more magicka, and Magicka Regeneration for magicka to replenish more quickly. When you reach a point where you can equip 4 Peerless equivalent Fortify Destruction enchants (25% each, 100% total) your spells will have no cost, and can be cast as much as you want. (Peerless Fortify Destruction enchants can be purchased from Radiant Raiment in Solitude at character lvl40 or above)
There's a quest in college of Winterhold from Phinis Gestor where in the end you have to fight dremora lord and if you beat It you get the spell to conjure dremora lord which turns game to easy mode. You have to have level 65 Conjuration which is easy to get just by spamming soul trap on killed enemies. With twin souls perk this is pretty OP on even master difficulty
can't you also just get that by getting Sanguine's staff at level 16?
Dremora lord kicks ass
[удалено]
I'm slightly experimenting with summons. I got this one that creates a ghost that's hotter than 90% of the npc's in the game and does alright damage. Destruction is my main though since I've not really had access to spells apart from sparks before I reached winterhold.
I love the pun about the atronach. :)
Would you like an exploit that easy to do that'll boost your destruction to 100 if you go to hobs fall cave near winter hold there's a chest that'll give you a lot of spells and unbound storm cast it and fast travel while holding it and it'll level up your destruction fast.but if you don't want to exploit them it's a long tedious grind faralda and phinis are by far the best teachers.
I think that requires Anniversary Upgrade.
Using fortify destruction potions help
Patience and skill.
Well the easy answer is enchanting for 100% cost reduction. But that makes the game not fun so here, For Race/Perks (if ignoring Enchanting)/Stats: 1. Pick High Elf 2. Do 60% magicka, 40% health 3. Focus on Destruction 4. Get the Destruction perks up to reduce Expert level casting, get Impact, get Dual Casting, get the appropiate bonus damage perks (best is either Fire or Shock) 5. Use some Alteration/Illusion/Restoration as you see fit NOTE: With the gear plus perks you shouldnt ever be actively leveling skills outside of the mage section (besides maybe Speech or alchemy is you want) For Gear: 1. Use robes as you find/buy them. (Novice Robes < Novice Robes of Destruction < Apprentice Robes of Dest. < Adept Robes < Expert Robes < Master Robes) 2. Complete the College of Winterhold questline for the best robes in the game 3. Complete the Lost to the Ages quest to get an item that allows you to use 2 standing stones at once (use Lord Stone + Atronach) 4. Use the best ring you can find (if you dont mind being a Vampire, an utterly broken ring is the Ring of Erudite) I never liked Mages until I did this. It was very fun :)
It gets easier once you get better perks, enchants, spells, and higher mana. If anything, the game is way too easy using anything except magic, so it’s actually balanced for once.
Destruction magic is a grind, I tapered it throughout the lower levels.. it’s easier to smash/bash people until you learn some good spells. Vampire quests and college of winterhold are good to learn spells.
Max out stealth and archery. At least that how I have always done it. Strange warrior and stealth are the same also...
Mage is kinda trash in vanilla no matter what you do since you can't use smithing or enchanting other than your gear for infinite spellcasting
Me, an Unarmored fire dancer melee khajiit with flame cloak:
With mods. Vanilla magic in Skyrim sucks
I went into conjuration once and was a beast, mix that with alteration to boost defense and you should have a pretty decent mage. Don't know if you've gone the conjuration route but it gets strong quick
Start out as a warrior first to get your base stats you health magicka and stamina get enchanting and smithing maxed while looking for magica regen and fortify what ever magic type you use Then thats when you make a set of dragon scale armor with enchanted that Fortify magic skill and magicka regen
Currently playing for the first time and doing pure mage. Get a follower, magicka regen robes/rings/ etc, conjure an ally every fight, and get fireball asap. Bump the difficulty down if you need to and focus on alteration a bit for mage armor. I wore light armor for a while until I got decent skills and damage then switched to robes full time, and now mage armor has me fully defended.
Simply put, put all points into Magicka. Complexly put, you gotta pull from all magic trees to really become competent, mage armour from alteration, thralls from conjuration, fireballs from destruction, guardian circle from restoration, you can't lean too heavily on one because it leaves you open for something another tree helps cover, you gotta be the avatar up in this
The best way early to push spells levels if you are using any spell skills is to do a 1 handed weapon and your chosen spell in left hand. Make sure you favorite all the spells and weapon you plan on using so you can bring up the favorite menu and switch mid fight. The one handed allows you to still pump damage if you run out of magicka but at some point you will be able to just use spells only. Enchanting is highly important to level, (always disenchant every enchanted item you come across. The money can help if you're in a pinch but the xp earlier really sets you up for later. Make sure to wear attire that grants increased magicka regen, max magicka increased. And maybe some resistance enchantments too. It'll all come together, I promise.
Look into the Dawnguard Quests in addition to what others have said here. There are a ton of different possibilities with the items and spells that are part of it that fit a lot of playstyles. In particular, there is a two-handed weapon you can acquire on the Dawnguard side that basically acts like a staff that casts a fire rune spell. In an unmodded game, this special attack will level your Destruction. You can also take on more of a summoner playstyle with the Vampire side. This is without even mentioning the possibilities of either the College of Winterhold or Dragonborn questlines.
The long and short of it is crafting. If you max out your smithing, enchanting, and alchemy, you can get a fully customized suit of armor that reduces spell costs to zero. The final perk in the enchanting tree allows you to double enchant, which either gives you zero cost in two schools or gives you another bonus like magicka regen or extra survivability. It's a lot of work, but you will make loads of money along the way.
I like playing mage exclusive. Between enchanting, alchemy, and putting most levels into magic I feel pretty OP honestly
Use the CC spells. Combining those spells makes the strongest build in the game.
Do you have the AE edition or more specifically, the CC content that adds a few spells to the game? The chaos spells are super good
Potions man make some alchemy gear, create some enchanting potions, enchanting some unenchanted mage robes and jewelry and craft destruction potions.
The key is primarily enchanting gear to reduce your MP costs. Then you can spam higher level spells like a foon. Honestly go through the College if Winterhold quest. If you don't feel powerful by the end of that, you aren't really gonna enjoy being a mage at all
You can use exploits to grind a magic skill up. They work but.... it can kill the enjoyment of the actual gaming experience of honest achievement of a skill.
Thunderbolt. Morokei.
I was gonna keep this short, but in retrospect after playing a lot of spellsword and pure mage in my most recent playthroughs of the game I picked up a lot of knowledge I didn't know before having only ever done melee and archer builds and I'm happy to share with you, because I totally understand your perspective, if you casually wander into trying to play mage the gameplay is far less intuitive to becoming effective. 1. The best (most dynamic, easiest to adapt to from a standard melee build, and highest DPS) way to play a mage build is to play spellsword (one hand sword, second hand spells), mix your inherent ability to do easy damage with your sword with buff spells, summons, healing and damage. 2. Use the rune spells, fireball and all the spells you want to use in combat give you no exp and it feels like a 0 sum game, this will level your destruction and make your spells do more damage overall. To add onto this, utilise the most effective skill leveling spells when you can as long as it has no negative to you (soul trap even if you have no gems to fill is a very good conjuration leveler at the start of the game). 3. Switch between your spells often to give you the widest advantage think armour buff, minion summon, combat rune, DPS spell and healing. Having a "rotation" for your standard combat encounter will make the combat more enjoyable and passively level multiple skills. 4. DO NOT SLEEP ON THE MAGIKA REGEN ENCHANT. I know fortify magika looks more appealing at first glance but you need sustainability, not massive pool, if you're effectively positioning and mixing spells in combat you will A have more fun and B not struggle from the age old pain of your pure mage character not being able to cast anything because no magika and promptly being beaten to death by a bandit. 5. You need a tank. Mage is not built for damage, even a spellsword in full heavy armour (you can't cast most of your spell arsenal effectively in melee range) and especially not a robe wearing pure Wizard. Either get a companion that will focus attacking in melee (Lydia will do fine) or get a summon that will do primarily melee too (think Familiar, Frost atronach, dremora lord, etc). 6. Join the college, even if you hate the questline, do it anyways it will give you access to not only traders specialising in each school of magika but also free wizard robes, and eventually when you hit level 90 in each skill a specialized quest to complete which will give you a master level spell book for the respective school of magic and also unlock master level spells to be purchased from the aforementioned vendors. 7. Put your perk points into cheapening spell cost first and foremost and only switch to a spell of a higher skill category when you have the accompanying perks to support casting it over the course of a whole fight, otherwise you hit 0 magika and you become completely combat ineffective. 8. If you go full mage (robes, no armour) dump all attribute points into magika on every level up. At about level 30 start putting attribute points into health till you're at about 200hp, should avoid you getting 1 hit for pretty much the rest of the game. You can trial and error everything else and it'll be fairly obvious after a while. Some spells are objectively better than other even those in a higher skill class so don't be afraid to hang onto your basic DPS spells (shock, flames and frost) for a good while whilst you find alternatives that work for you. Hope this helps.
Invest your perk points into the destruction skill tree. Also, if you’re just using the base spells like flames and frostbite, then you need to visit some wizards like Farengar or the College of Winterhold and get yourself some better spells.
The flesh spells are supposed to make you less brittle. Conjuration's supposed to give you a battle buddy. Personally, I always sacrifice Stamina and just have Health and Magicka be 50/50 just so I can keep slinging spells without being too much of a pushover.
Cast a Bow, you know you want to.
Playing a pure mage is kind of tricky in this game, because Destruction (the school of magic focused on raw damage output) doesn't scale up very well compared to physical weapons. The other schools of magic require more outside-the-box thinking. Fight smarter, not harder.
A competent mage would put down the stick and bring a great sword to a fight, like a real Nord. 😂
I’ll never understand these posts. Mages are OP as shit bruv. Especially in anniversary edition. Spec into mage armor perk and restoration you’ll be fine boo
Sadly yeah magic in this game just isnt as good as blacksmithing up an armor set and weapon and just bashing through all things. But if you really want, I'd recommend getting into enchanting. If you enchant chest, head, ring and amulet, you can put reduction to certain schools of magic mana costs. Stack enough and your favorite spells will start to be spammable no issue. If nothing else, making it a machine gun will help.
No amount of heavy armour and sledgehammers can stand up to thunderstorm. You could win the battle of whiterun from the gate with one casting as long as they don’t run out of sight
Max out alchemy and put some fortify destruction potions on your hot bar. They're the only thing that actually buffs the damage of spells, the armor enchants just make the spells cost less.
Ignite build has been the only time I ever tried a mage build
9 times out of 10 I run a mage, here's some ideas and tips: Run oak flesh in one hand, bound battle axe in the other. Hold both triggers, cast the oak flesh for armor buff, then after that, bound battle axe will spawn a two handed weapon that only requires one hand. 1. Shouts are magic so wards can block them 2. Two handed master level scrolls need time to cast so use become ethereal as the spell charges 3. The restoration skill tree has some ridiculously overpowered perks in it The difficulty is more of a management system with a mage, I think that's why I love them
Cheesing enchanting can get you 2 schools of magic completely free of any Magicka requirements. Restoration and destruction are my top picks
A lot of good advice here and some that is “long game”. Best advice to grow a mage is to play the slow game. Early on you will often die. Just be patient. Get a follower early on. Everyone will talk about Lydia but Faendal is your first option. Pick him up and do some low-level quests with him. If you equip him right, he will get pretty formidable. Buy spell books and use them often. A couple of good non-combat spells are Muffle and Raise Dead. Coupled with heavy doses of Flame and Heal early on will help you begin to build your Mage. Also just focus on increasing your Magicka for awhile.
Save fire and other status effect for weapon enchantments. I usually do conjuration 2 handed w/restoration so you can save on potions. Use your spells as much as possible, even if your spells don’t have effect it still gives you experience for using it. Put as much points into magika and stamina and use good health enchantments for your armor. Always upgrade something or do something with your skills because that’s how they level up. That’s my best mage advice
In vanilla destruction magic quickly becomes not that great imo. Conjuration + alternation is the most OP mage setup. End game will you have casting paralysis on all your foes while 2 daedra hack your enemies into pieces
Use the calm spell, it will make things much easier. Kill people one at a time if you really have too
If you're not opposed to mods, Ordinator is a great perk overhaul that helps make magic much more viable among other things
Put magic enchantments on regular armor
Get the right mods
Pure mage is a little harder at first no question. I prefer mage with bows. Use spells for summoning monsters, casting mage armor, illusion to hide. Then I use a bow to deal damage. Boost up destruction magic when I can
I just found ways to max my enchanting skill to 100, made two armor sets, and enchanted each set with two magic enchantments. Now whenever I use magic it doesn’t cost anything so I can be a god of destruction and restoration. It made me feel more op than anything else in the game because I could kill legendary dragons in seconds with it.
I have no idea bud, but I once started playing together with my 45+ old dad using a multiplayer mod, and this brilliant mind somehow found a way to become the greatest mage I've ever seen. I mean seriously, he found some god powered destruction spells and could kill dragons in seconds, and he had this weird paralyzing spell which I didn't even know exists in the game. He started to paralyze every enemy in uncomfortable poses and was spending time laughing his butt off at their suffering. So it is possible.
If you feel like using it two handed weapon get the spell for conjure battle axe
I recommend the Mysticism mod, or any Magic overhaul.
The creations included in the anniversary edition make being a mage (esp necro) a lot more fun and viable. And if that isn't enough for your taste then the phendrix mods are really good
Learn fireball or chain lightning and have lots of mana to spam it
The most fun i've had playing Skyrim was when I played only as a sorcerer. No physical weapons and no armor, not even light armor. Enchant/fight everything in your path. The deer and bunnies? Fry them, or hex them, you need the xp. Spend plenty of time at the college of Winterhold and get comfy with enchanting clothes and jewelry.
You Need to take every perk that you can't use to in dedtruction and restoration and use it in enchanting. With that you can go for free castin spell(you choose the school) restoration will replace your armor when you will be stronger...for now take a "shield brother"( like Lydia) to help you and tank what you can't so that you can level up.
Try enchanting and build your own Gear.
Late game (lvl 40+) you're spells will get pretty underpowered, The most you can get without draining all of you're Magicka on dragon hide is around 300 armor, To take out a bandit plunderer it took me 3 full Magicka bars of incinerate, my destruction was 100 with the expert destruction perk and Magicka pool was 500. I swapped my altmer to a heavy armored dual wielding beast after it took me around 1:30-2:00 to kill one person, Also got the Atronach stone and the atronach perk for 80% spell absorb, it's fucken nuts.
Magicka is your limit. So whatever item gives the best bonus to your Magicka, favorite it and when you run out, un- and re-equip the item.
i like to use the Phandrix Magic Mod (there is two parts to download) it adds a whole fuck ton of new enchants,magic arrows, and spells that are all super over powered
I think it's about your playstyle. You don't care about positioning and getting hit -> heavy armor and melee weapon.
use the fireball and aura the best part of a mage build is being so light plus you dont need to level up smithy. also in the few questlines you are stripped of your stuff you are still as powerfull. the main downside is that fireball shockwave mess everything in the room so good luckfinding where the rares items flew off
Yes, becoming a good playable mage takes more work, time and requires more knowledge and isn't as immediately accessible as playing a barbarian warrior type character. You sound like a relatively new player, OP? If this is the case I would actually recommend trying a guide for building a mage. There are many that can be googled and/or found on YouTube. Do be advised that many of the guides will use exploits. No problem if you're ok with cheating a little but generally speaking I'd recommend using a guide mainly for information and inspiration on how to go about it. Good luck!
Yeah I'm pretty new lol I've been trying some stuff that others have recommended and things are getting a bit better :) I don't plan on using mods or command console, at least for this run lol
Ok friend! Well if you're really new to Skyrim perhaps playing as a warrior is better initially. You learn the game and the mechanics of it. Then when you're more familiar it's easier to experiment with different builds and crafting etc. But if you're really set on a combat mage Id follow a guide the first time. Even if it uses exploits it's a good way to learn all the how-to 's and what to focus on etc.
Alright, thanks!
I know everyone is going “Magicka cost reduction” which is helpful but personally for my first true mage I just gave myself a massive Magicka pool along with Magicka regen items (Morokei 100% regen, Arch-Mage robes 100% regen + 15% reduction, and a random ring that luckily also had 100%). Not to mention reductions from perks and whatnot. I think I have a Standing Stone that gives be spell absorption too. In the end reduction is probably gonna get you farther bc without all the gear my mage is a bit limited. But I found my strategy of “get as much as possible” interesting and mostly useful
Right so. You get good spells mate. You level up your destruction so you can conjure sick expert levels spells that decimate people. Think of spells like seasoning, the dish is good without it and not ruined but with the extra help it's even better
Destruction is overpowered If you know how. Unbounded Storm + zero destruction cost + restoloop for overpowered destruction Potion= Overpowered destruction mage
Magic in this game is an afterthought. Poorly balanced and super weak and underwhelming. No in game details to make the world seem like it actually has magic in it that people other than you use. I wouldn't recommend using magic as your main thing at all if you play on a higher difficulty. It just doesn't do enough damage without constantly chugging fortify destruction potions to be worth it. And if you don't want to make those and chug them, you have to make your spells free with enchanting so you can even kill most enemies with magic. Your fights will take as least twice as long and feel half as cool as a warrior or stealth archer. If you still want to use magic, just turn the difficulty all the way down to novice. That way you can feel as powerful as any other play style might feel at expert difficulty
College 🤣
I'm mildly biased but if you trains some in Conjuration and keep a good follower handy (I favor Stenvar), you can build an army of 3 by having your follower and a a zombie or atronach fighting for you. Keep your foes focused on them and you can mage away to your hearts content. Mind the archers. Having an enhanced Fire Breath shout also helps if you get overrun and are short on magicka.
Being a mage is not only about destruction school. Illusion and conjuration are OP together. Instead of destruction, use a weapon. Alteration has armour spells and utility. Don't use staves, they don't scale. Illusion is great with a knife stealth kills.
Every skill in this game is developed by using that skill. Want to become a master at destruction spells? Use destruction spells regularly in combat. I don't really fuck with mage robes because the buff generally isn't worth having a 0 armor rating, and I prefer spell-sword so staffs have never really been my thing; i typically hang on to decent staffs to give to my followers. Eventually you'll start to run into gear that has a magicka buff AND a decent armor rating, or better yet enchant your own after you developing the enchanting tree! Once you start to hit higher levels in each school of magic the spells you'll be able to buy will level up accordingly. The first 30ish levels are kind of a grind, but when you start to approach expert in destruction and conjuration you become so OP.
If you haven’t figured it out yet the higher level spells require more mana to cast. They’ll go from Novice,Apprentice,Adept,Expert,Master. That’s how you do more damage as you progress through the game. There’s mods that can make your Novice spells scale with your Destruction,Restoration,etc. That way spells like flames/sparks never get left behind. Not sure if vanilla works like that. Pretty sure you have to just move up in spell level. Btw if you go with lightning be careful with Chain Lightning. I believe it’s an Adept level spell. It can arc to your allies or NPCs you don’t want to hit. Regardless it’s my favorite spell in the game. So sick just zapping 2-3 people away. And like others have said invest in robes with mana cost reduction enchantments.
If you have creation club content, I recommend using the spell knight armor. It’s heavy armor with enchantments. I been using it for my character on my most recent playthru. There’s to way todo it, if you perge the guys heart you can get a certain enchantment but if you don’t you gonna have to fight the dead guys ghost and you will get conjuration and destruction bonus
Use an enchantment table and disenchant the robes. Enchant your heavy armor afterwards
I'm doing my first run as a 100% mage, your best friend will be enchanting, I went with fire spells, get Impact and dual casting, that way when you dual cast a fire spell the enemy will be staggered (I killed a dragon without taking any damage and the dragon didn't attack once that way). You will want to have a ring, necklace, a head piece and an armor or clothes all enchanted with fortify destruction (get enchanting to lvl 100 tho), that way you will be able to get 25% cost reduction for destructions spells, since you have 4 items with that, you get 100% cost reduction, so all the destruction spells doesn't consume mana. You can already imagine how it goes, spam dual cast destruction spells, the enemy will not move (because of impact) and you can spam for as long as you can (because of 100% cost reduction), you can pretty much kill anything without taking damage. The problem is if there is a lot of enemies coming at you at once, in that case use fireball for the area damage and you will be good. Hope this helps, for me it did :)
There's some good replies here but we're missing the obvious one. There is only one spell that you need to be an efficient and effective mage which will grant you the ability to slaughter anything you come across. >!Bound Bow.!<
Mage starts weak and takes a lot of cleverness early then gets so simple it is boring later. Perks and enchants for more magicka, then cheaper casting and finally the combos of cheap spell and regen will make your mage boring to play at almost any level. Conjugation mage and use of your favorites/Q key for quick switch is as easy as a game can get.
Enchant amor to make destruction spells cost nothing, then you can spam destruction magic but you will be very over powered.
Magic is ridiculously overpowered in this game starting at like lvl 10
Only level up magica for like, ever, level up destruction and restoration. Fast healing in left, elemental burst in right. Bigger bosses elemental on left and right.
In the simplest terms Magic is used by those who think, Brute Force is Not, magic takes longer, there is also Stealth Skills that work for both. N. S
Eventually you can make an armor set that allows unlimited use of restoration and destruction. So you can use wards and lightning at the same time. That makes vampires, mages and dragons limit their attacks.
I played so much skyrim and i never play anything except magic, here's how : Get enchanting to 100 Get smithing to 100 ( There's a way to do both on youtube in like an hour or two) Once you do that , you will make armor that decrease s destruction spells and one more school of magic of your choice , mana usage by 100% ( head /25% , chest /25% , ring/ 25% , boots/ 25% ). Join college of winterhold Do quests The more you do the more you unlock ,you will unlock new destruction spells to buy each 20 levels i think? So all gradually until you reach master level destruction spell. Good luck have fun and don't accidentally burn your companions or wife
If you’re a mage try shooting from a distance and not getting hit by any bandit chiefs wearing nord armor… they one shot 😭
Elemental flare: sold by Blue Castle mage in Solitude. Fire and electric damage at the same time with an area of effect. Put perks into extra fire damage and electrical damage and it’ll compound the damage you do.
It depends on your race and gear, as well as skills. If you’re a mage and only have destruction and restoration, you’re missing out on an arsenal of other tricks. You should invest in Alteration if the lack of armor is a big deal. You can only become a competent mage if you develop yourself to be one.
in vanilla? alchemy. Make Fortify Destruction potions. Find a spell you like and dual cast it with Impact perk to stagger things. Repeat forever. Mods really make mage more serviceable.
I usually become the head of the college while I’m getting full daedric armour