Deadhand
PLEASE DON'T EAT THOSE SOCKS!
This may have been obvious to some, but the way my mind works it took me a while to stumble upon it, and wanted to make it common knowledge, as it is a nice little work-around to being magicka short when leveling the 5 different magic schools.
First off, I am primarily a ranged assassin, that being my maxed archery and sneak. From there I maxed blacksmithing and enchanting as I knew I could make some sick armor and weapons, and ridiculous enchants to really buff my ranged assassin role, so I did.
At the point where I had a Legendary Daedric Bow with 136 base damage plus 31 fire and 31 frost damage and a full set of Daedric Armor (Legendary) with + to archery where ever I could (a total of +120% to archery) as well as other helpful stats, and I was basically one-shotting regular mobs and 2 to 3 shotting "boss" mobs on master, it was time to level my caster schools.
I went to the college and obtained master robes for every school. Very helpful. Then I started to craft the head/hands/feet/ring/neck pieces for these sets. My roommate and I had several discussions on what was better, +magicka regen (which I like) or simply +magicka. He liked having a bigger pool to try to knock down the foes before he had to regen. I liked the fast regen, as I am a good kiter, and well practiced, so if I didn't knock them down with my first go around, I could kite and regen fairly easily.
While creating these "off set" pieces to match up with my robes, I attempted to create an alternate to the robes, something with some armor rating. With the robe enchant (+% reduction to school cost, +% magicka regen) you could only get a small amount of reduction, and an even smaller amount of regen. With double enchants your options from there were to add a high +% reduction or a higher +% magicka regen, but either one didn't matter, as it was never as good as the robes.
Once I reached +75% reduction to a school through head, neck, and ring solely, I realized, with the master robes I was either at 95%, 97%, or 100% reduction (the master robes vary from 20%, 22% to 25% reduction.) I then realized that I could cast all my resto spells free of charge! Finally from there I remembered that the enchants to the body for reduction to a school's spells, with a grand soul, was static at 25%! All you have to do then is create 4 pieces, head, ring, necklace, and body with 25% reduction to a certain school's magicka cost, and all the spells in that school are free of charge. =)
I had already maxed my alteration and illusion, but this made maxing restoration really easy, and destruction is coming along quite smoothly. My current caster set is a full Dragonplate armor set with 25% reduc to destro and resto, and it has been absolutely amazingly fun leveling this way, as all my perks aren't going to any caster school, the ability to free-cast all my best spells make being a pseudo-caster still fun.
Just a little FYI with some background story. I love the things you can do in this game!
First off, I am primarily a ranged assassin, that being my maxed archery and sneak. From there I maxed blacksmithing and enchanting as I knew I could make some sick armor and weapons, and ridiculous enchants to really buff my ranged assassin role, so I did.
At the point where I had a Legendary Daedric Bow with 136 base damage plus 31 fire and 31 frost damage and a full set of Daedric Armor (Legendary) with + to archery where ever I could (a total of +120% to archery) as well as other helpful stats, and I was basically one-shotting regular mobs and 2 to 3 shotting "boss" mobs on master, it was time to level my caster schools.
I went to the college and obtained master robes for every school. Very helpful. Then I started to craft the head/hands/feet/ring/neck pieces for these sets. My roommate and I had several discussions on what was better, +magicka regen (which I like) or simply +magicka. He liked having a bigger pool to try to knock down the foes before he had to regen. I liked the fast regen, as I am a good kiter, and well practiced, so if I didn't knock them down with my first go around, I could kite and regen fairly easily.
While creating these "off set" pieces to match up with my robes, I attempted to create an alternate to the robes, something with some armor rating. With the robe enchant (+% reduction to school cost, +% magicka regen) you could only get a small amount of reduction, and an even smaller amount of regen. With double enchants your options from there were to add a high +% reduction or a higher +% magicka regen, but either one didn't matter, as it was never as good as the robes.
Once I reached +75% reduction to a school through head, neck, and ring solely, I realized, with the master robes I was either at 95%, 97%, or 100% reduction (the master robes vary from 20%, 22% to 25% reduction.) I then realized that I could cast all my resto spells free of charge! Finally from there I remembered that the enchants to the body for reduction to a school's spells, with a grand soul, was static at 25%! All you have to do then is create 4 pieces, head, ring, necklace, and body with 25% reduction to a certain school's magicka cost, and all the spells in that school are free of charge. =)
I had already maxed my alteration and illusion, but this made maxing restoration really easy, and destruction is coming along quite smoothly. My current caster set is a full Dragonplate armor set with 25% reduc to destro and resto, and it has been absolutely amazingly fun leveling this way, as all my perks aren't going to any caster school, the ability to free-cast all my best spells make being a pseudo-caster still fun.
Just a little FYI with some background story. I love the things you can do in this game!
