Just cant continue Mage.....

[XhoppX]

First of all Hi, Im new to the forums and have been playing TES since Oblivion. I have 2 other characters and decided to try a straight up Mage. I chose an argonian because they seem to be the most customizable as far as their looks and i dont have an argonian yet either...anyway it has been a very difficult start with the College of Winterhold questline. My magic is weak as Im just starting out. I have never used a Mage in the past and maybe Im just not using everything properly. My question is...are Mages typically difficult to get started, or is it just me?

 

[seanjohn2800]

Well, Magic is definitely a backup in the very beginning, at least it is for me. The trick is not to spread across all the schools of magic, rather pick two, and excel in those. I find destruction and illusion particularly useful, as many probably do. Being an all-round character, I can't give much more help than that, just remember that...lightning magic is bad ass.

 

[XhoppX]

yes destruction is a no brainer...and i want my Mage to wear robes so ill definately need those armor spells that i believe are under alteration

 

[seanjohn2800]

ah, i see. I feel like going with robes would be nuttin' myself, because you have to give up a good many perks to alteration. But I forget that a pure mage won't need to level 1/2 handed or archery as much. Surely you'll level up one of the three crafting skills, I assume. Will you try and level up sneak or speech at all, or will you rush in, speels blazing? An alternate route to sneaking is leveling illusion and learning invisibility.

 

[XhoppX]

i havent decided my perk spending, however it just dawned on me to use Lydia! Why have I been travelling alone through a Dwemer ruin at a low level is beyond me, lol. I do think I will level enchanting for boots, bracers/gauntlets, rings etc. I will also do alchemy...which I have also never really gotten into. Perhaps I will go with destruction, alteration, illusion, enchanting, alchemy and possibly the base perks for sneaking depending on what perks will benefit me.

 

[seanjohn2800]

I wish you good luck

 

[XhoppX]

Thanks, I will post updates periodically. I now have a renewed resolve to build this character.

 

[Al'Amar]

I'm not a Mage, but I will give my prospective. True, the college of Winterhold quests are a bit over a beginner, so I would up my others skill/skills. Such as one handed, many mages carry around in their inventory some time of one handed weapon, wither that may be sword, mace, dagger. Hence if they are out of Magicka and need a quick kill.

Long story short, I suggest you follow the main quest-line or do some miscellaneous quests to get leveled up a little bit, before you start college of winterhold. Cheers!

 

[Cheztah]

I have i level 32 mage, i wear mage robes and have only invested perks into the following (no alchemy smithing and only slowly raising enchanting)

Perks are invested in.

Destruction - for pure damage, i use duel cast firebolt with stagger, no one really gets close dragons never even fire a breath.

Restoration - To heal myself. a quick duel lcast of whatever spell i use pretty much fully restores my health.

Conjuration - Can summon atronochs when the battles get really hectic, helps keep anyone away so i can stagger duel cast.

Sneak - I pretty much sneak through all dungeons and use a bow untill i am spotted, someone gets to close, or a boss fight etc then the magic comes out

Archery - archery in sneak mode is fun and you can clear quite a few enemies in sneak mode before having to use magic or not even at all.

I have added points heavily in magic and a little in health. I have 200 health and close to 500 (going for 600+ before anything else) magic and nothing spent on stamina. Not including the bonuses i have from robes etc

Thats how i play Skyrim as a mage.

When i began i never used a follower and never have it was a little tricky and i remember i relied on the unrelenting force shout heavily if someone got to close. I barkey remember to use my shouts at the moment.

 

[SkinnedLikeScum]

First of all Hi, Im new to the forums and have been playing TES since Oblivion. I have 2 other characters and decided to try a straight up Mage. I chose an argonian because they seem to be the most customizable as far as their looks and i dont have an argonian yet either...anyway it has been a very difficult start with the College of Winterhold questline. My magic is weak as Im just starting out. I have never used a Mage in the past and maybe Im just not using everything properly. My question is...are Mages typically difficult to get started, or is it just me?

If your interested i have a full mage guide, in my guide it says be a high elf but race really doesn't matter, in the end your skills are always 100, they just get the starting boost as a full mage.

http://skyrimforum.com/threads/mage-tank-guide.5327/

 

[Skullrattla]

There is a serious flaw with magic, and that is that destruction does not sem to get more powerful as you level up, it only costs less magica to cast...


That puts mages at a serious disadvantage to warriors. I wonder what Bethesda's thinking behind that is... that most novice players will choose warrior, while mages are for the more advanced?

I'm a novice player and have often regretted using a mage. It is very unrewarding to begin with: all spells, conujrations and enchantments apart from the Flame Atronach are weak-ass, and I ended up using physical weapons and armor to save my ass.

I will be using mods to fix the weak magic issue.
So far, the Auto-potion mod has been wonderful for more fun battles, I will be aso installing Balanced Magic and Confident Magic, and most likely the Dragon Souls To Perk Points mod, to make it all a bit more rewading . De-levelled dragons may be good with this also, to stop me from getting perk points too easy and make dragons more of a challenge.

 

[Maz]

http://skyrimcalculator.com/#64537

This is my current build.
I run with robes, and finished Winterhold College yesterday. It was surprisingly easy actually.
I mostly up my mana at every single level up. My health is around 180 I think, with around 380ish mana.
Once you start doing a few of the quests, you get things such as the Saarthal Fragment (+30mana) and a mage circlet (+40mana) as well as good robes (-12% destro cost, +50% mana regen)
Also, my char is altmer, so I start with +50mana, and their racial is absolutely beast. For a full minute it can spam dual cast fireballs without ever going OOM. Well, it does, but the racial brings me back to full mana in a few seconds.

Having alteration armour has been really good. Currently using stoneflesh-I need to go see Tolfdir about Ironflesh. The armour I get is more than enough to mitigate melee damage, and I always have fast healing as a back up.
My destro is around 60, same with alteration. Granted, I boosted destro at the start of the game by continually attacking Hadvar with flames, lol. Got to around 40destro before I reached Riverwood for the first time

Once you get the Arch Mage robes, everything is really nice. -15% on everything,+50mana and +100% regen makes everything die fast due to abundance of mana. The necklace you get (+50magicka) from Savos is also really good. My firebolts cost like 10 mana, fireballs 37. Can cast 10+ before needing to recharge.

Once you get started and have a lot of the perks, it becomes much easier. I haven't bothered at all with alchemy or smithing.
I have levelled enchanting to around 50, but not taken any perks with it yet. I did enchant my gloves +20mana though, and that's without perks. Enchanting+mage style looks like it's going to have such great synergy.

 

[modi]

so heres my personal take on this. I too have recently started my first pure mage character. He is a Breton by the name of Ambroas. It was very difficult in the beginning to use magic because my magicka ran out so fast all the time. However, now that I have dumped a ton of boosts from leveling into magicka, it is actually pretty easy and fun.

First off, I chose to run with light armour rather than robes. I liked the idea of a mage assassin. If you are going to do robes, you will obviously need a ton of focus on Alteration. Obviously, you are also going to need a lot focused on Destruction. For me personally, I find that Restoration is not really worth dumping perk points into. I might get some flak for this, but IMHO it is easier and faster to just use health potions when in a pinch. However, with my Breton character, one thing has helped me more than anything. Conjuration. When going through a dungeon, I can just dual cast a flame atronach and let him do the dirty work and just clean up whatever he leaves behind.

Long story short, if you are going to do light armor, I would focus on Destruction and Conjuration with some Illusion on the side. If you are doing robes, I would focus on Destruction and Alteration with some Conjuration on the side.

 

[SkinnedLikeScum]

There is a serious flaw with magic, and that is that destruction does not sem to get more powerful as you level up, it only costs less magica to cast...


That puts mages at a serious disadvantage to warriors. I wonder what Bethesda's thinking behind that is... that most novice players will choose warrior, while mages are for the more advanced?

I'm a novice player and have often regretted using a mage. It is very unrewarding to begin with: all spells, conujrations and enchantments apart from the Flame Atronach are weak-ass, and I ended up using physical weapons and armor to save my ass.

I will be using mods to fix the weak magic issue.
So far, the Auto-potion mod has been wonderful for more fun battles, I will be aso installing Balanced Magic and Confident Magic, and most likely the Dragon Souls To Perk Points mod, to make it all a bit more rewading . De-levelled dragons may be good with this also, to stop me from getting perk points too easy and make dragons more of a challenge.

destruction does get more powerful... you can level each element twice with perks, let alone higher spells do more damage, plus the very fact that you can make destruction cost you 0 magick even with casting mastery spells. Sit in a corner ever casting lasting lightning storm on your enemys as impact keeps them from touching you. Thats just destruction lol. Add two dremora in there. No one is touching you, weather you be in daedric armor or wear robes and max your alteration, you can have over 300 defense in robes with alteration used right and you can resist 30% of enemy spells, absorb another 30% to magicka. not to mention as a mage with frostbite you can kite giants and kill them by level 4. but all classes are fun and good in there own way, advantages and disadvantages. Do you expect to be flawless? If thats what you want play on novice. Damage out put sneak characters, control characters mages, survival characters warriors. Jus gota figure out the tactics.

 

[SkinnedLikeScum]

I think the #1 mistake most people make with mages is trying to focus on too many skills of magic at once. Take it easy, focus on two skills, of course one being destruction as a full mage, and choose your other, alteration for a defensive out put, conjuration for the mob protection, resturation to heal one hand and attack other. All good way to go. I prefer to grab novice destruction n resturation off the bat and heal and spell cast. Preferably lightning cause other mages are buttholes. Then when i get some decent perks and start to struggle a bit when things get a tiny hard. I power level conjuration. and maybe get a follower. For another good amount of levels things wont really attack you cause they'll be busy with your followers n summons. Alteration in the end to be safe from those bad guys who jus pass your meat shields. Don't over do yourselves and spread to thin.

 

[XhoppX]

sorry for the quality, used my cell phone as im on a console...this is Lyzyrd Skynyrd still a baby and hasnt leveled up at all yet

 

[Deltasapper]

I never used alteration defensive spells with my lvl 40 mage.. ever.. I have leveled up alteration with detect life spell but never had any real use for alteration spells.. the perks in its tree are awesome though. My conjuration is maxed at lvl 100 and I have every perk in conjuration minus any of the necromancy ones and the soul stealer and above perks. My main strategy is using my using my antronachs/companions/deadra lord for distractions or out right killing mine enemies.. they seems to work out pretty well.impact is THE perk you want to have. If your enchanting is high enough you can reduce spell cost with destruction to zero effectivly stun locking most foes with your destruction spells until dead indefinitely.

Atromancy works with the summon dremora lord... I don't know if elemental potency does.

Lately I've been using the *fire/frost/storm thrall.. as I've keep killing my companions with my SMDs.[Right now I've killed about 5 lol].. I have been playing around with the *dead thrall.. but some of the enemies are too powerful at my lvl.. and they don't seem to re use the weapons if I loot their "lesser weapons' [ie take the daggers leave the warhammers] from them. I'm satisfied going all antronach ranch because of the noticable glaring bugs with the undead summons... on a side note you can continually use the undead thrall over and over again on the same corpse as it doesn't destroy it after it dies..again.


*fire/frost/storm thrall.. permanant antronachs until killed... dead thrall permanant undead companion. [only works on humaniods and has a cap on the lvl of the enemy revived not sure of the cap]

 

[Teritus]

I play a mage in robes and I haven't invested too much in the alteration tree, and yet I seem to be doing fine? I have an enormous pool of mana, I conjure atronachs when I need to along with dual casting firebolts, and everything if going along just fine. I don't yet have much of a need for armour as I use restoration when I need to.

 

[Deltasapper]

destruction does get more powerful... you can level each element twice with perks, let alone higher spells do more damage, plus the very fact that you can make destruction cost you 0 magick even with casting mastery spells. Sit in a corner ever casting lasting lightning storm on your enemys as impact keeps them from touching you. Thats just destruction lol. Add two dremora in there. No one is touching you, weather you be in daedric armor or wear robes and max your alteration, you can have over 300 defense in robes with alteration used right and you can resist 30% of enemy spells, absorb another 30% to magicka. not to mention as a mage with frostbite you can kite giants and kill them by level 4. but all classes are fun and good in there own way, advantages and disadvantages. Do you expect to be flawless? If thats what you want play on novice. Damage out put sneak characters, control characters mages, survival characters warriors. Jus gota figure out the tactics.

Yes the twin souls perk is awesome.. I just made another mage focusing on the illusion tree instead of the conjuration one[perk wise].. So far she is stagnant at lvl 8... not having as much fun with her.. I think I just need to re adjust my strategies.. or figure out how to use the frenzy type of spells more effectively. On that note.. my companion rushing in sort of ruins the frenzy spells potential as they both just focus on him.

 

[XhoppX]

When a Mage joins the Dark Brotherhood, do they get the DB Mage robes or the usual Shrouded Armor?