Mages only, warriors... stay out!

  • Welcome to Skyrim Forums! Register now to participate using the 'Sign Up' button on the right. You may now register with your Facebook or Steam account!

Papoy

DON'T EXPECT SPOILER WARNINGS FROM ME
I hope my title was clear enough, those whose favorite playtypes are warriors wont be interested for anything that is gonna be said.


Now... Oh, allmighty mages of Skyrim, i have gathered you here, to ask you how do you play yer mages... so the info i may gain will help me become even better, or become interested in other mage playstiles (like magi-assassin, battle-mage, etc), how do u go through early lvls, late ones? when do u start enchanting? any other tricks that u have discovered and haven't shared with anyone yet, blah, blah, blah....
Btw, my all-five-mage-skill-tree-maxed-with-most-neccecary-perks-in-conjuration-and-restoration-while-destruction-illussion-aletration-full-perked-and-enchating-with-remaining-ones mage is courently lvl 46, and im looking for ways to improve it.
 

Papoy

DON'T EXPECT SPOILER WARNINGS FROM ME
FAIL xd
 

Harkin

Necromatic Mastermind
 

General Charles Xander

General of the 11th Imperial Legion
But I don't want to stay out! You can't make meh!
 

Daelon DuLac

How do you backstab a Dragon?
Sneaky, distance (usually) assassin. Heavy Destruction, conjuration, alteration, restoration and illusion (okay, all of them). Generally college style robes and NEVER those ugly blue or black full length ones but switch up to Morokei and Vampire Royal when the time comes.

No weapons (including bound). Heavy alchemy (mostly for sale, but also for enhancement potions). Heavy Antronach use (never followers or dremora). Love illusion master level spells to clear a room. Recently tending towards fire, but also enjoy lightning. Rarely use frost.

Almost always go vampire on them, although do have a restoration mage currently working through dawnguard.

Don't know if that's what you're looking for.

My pure mages are almost always Altmer although do have a Nord one (mainly 'cause she looks hot in vampire armor).
 

Amradel

Member
My main character is an Altmer spellsword, she wears the Archmage robes with leather bracers and boots.
Using the sword Dawnbreaker in one hand and lightning magic in the other.
It's definitely the most fun character I have played yet, and the first one to actually reach level 30... (Months of Skyrim and probably around 15 characters and I finally made one that has been fun enough to get to level 30. :p)
I actually haven't bothered to much with enchanting stuff. Having a sword made the early levels much easier though. By now though I am powerful enough with magic that I could get rid of the sword if I wanted to, and be a pure mage.

Aside from destruction magic I have found I don't really need to use any of the other types of magic, but I do find Illusion interesting, I might start using it later on, just because I can...
 

Daelon DuLac

How do you backstab a Dragon?
Don't get me wrong, I love my spellsword Ingin in her armor with her ax, but I really don't consider her a mage. A magic user, yes, but not a mage. To me, combining robes with armor pretty much defeats the purpose of flesh spells since you don't get any bonuses.
 

Papoy

DON'T EXPECT SPOILER WARNINGS FROM ME
Interesting,... we've got heavy role players here :D haha, 1 thing, u made quite a lot difrent characters, so i need to ask u how do you do it,... tough i have several on same comp too. I make new folders in "Save" folder, and replace saves if i want to switch 1 char to another. any safer way than that? Nice infos, btw
 

Daelon DuLac

How do you backstab a Dragon?
Interesting,... we've got heavy role players here :D haha, 1 thing, u made quite a lot difrent characters, so i need to ask u how do you do it,... tough i have several on same comp too. I make new folders in "Save" folder, and replace saves if i want to switch 1 char to another. any safer way than that? Nice infos, btw
For me it's pretty easy (PS3). I just remember that, the top save is always the character I saved last, therefore, if I switch characters (I'm running 4 right now), as soon as I open it, I do a save and save to the original file. This puts it on the top and, as long as I continue to play that character, all autosaves and saves will be on top. That's what works for me. Of course I always keep an extra copy on either my TB aux drive that I keep plugged in or on my PS+ cloud storage as well.
 
Well in the early levels with my mages I do one of three things: I either sneak a lot, keep a tank follower with me, or summon Atronachs. Most mages are at first going to be a little squishy so you have to find ways around that until they're strong enough to be on their own.
While they're at this stage I will usually pump stat points into health so they can take a few hits if need be. Usually I do like, 2 health-1 magicka in the early stages, then when they have a satisfactory amount of health or a decent arsenal of spells, I'll put everything into magicka, and if necessary use fortify magicka items in the meantime, though that rarely is necessary.
I like to start practicing Enchanting pretty early on, and if I'm playing a mage who uses any type of weaponry or armor, I'll work on Smithing too. It's a lot easier to level them both if you practice from level 1 onward. I do the typical making leather bracers for Smithing and I'll practice Enchanting on the cheap rings and necklaces I pick up while questing. Works pretty well.
The only "tricks" I really know of are to get Vampire Royal armor ASAP - that stuff is awesome for any mage. And to level up Alteration. Alteration IMHO is even more underestimated than Restoration in Skyrim and it really shouldn't be. You get access to all kinds of cool stuff, like Paralyze and it's super easy to level, just constantly cast Flesh spells before entering battle, it'll level up like crazy.
And of course Alchemy is a must on any of my characters but especially my mages. You can make all sorts of potions to go with just about any spell and make it stronger, not to mention you can make your own health potions and make a lot of coin, which is pretty necessary for mages. Spell tomes and robes don't come cheap lol.
That's about all I can think of for the moment. :) Hope it helps.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

Amradel

Member
Interesting,... we've got heavy role players here :D haha, 1 thing, u made quite a lot difrent characters, so i need to ask u how do you do it,... tough i have several on same comp too. I make new folders in "Save" folder, and replace saves if i want to switch 1 char to another. any safer way than that? Nice infos, btw

I actually just have 3 saves per character. (I have two characters and my sister has two currently ingame.) I try to keep them all in order, it works quite nicely. I do have many old characters that I don't use anymore stored in a file though. (I must think I'm gonna want to come back to them one day or something. xP)
 
Interesting,... we've got heavy role players here :D haha, 1 thing, u made quite a lot difrent characters, so i need to ask u how do you do it,... tough i have several on same comp too. I make new folders in "Save" folder, and replace saves if i want to switch 1 char to another. any safer way than that? Nice infos, btw

Well I'm on PS3 so I can't really help as far as saving on PC goes, but I'll tell you my system anyway. I have about 7-8 characters at the moment, most of which were made to experiment with different game mechanics and different builds. So saving can be a pain if I'm not careful. Here's what I do:

During gameplay I will make atleast two saves. One to reload to just in case and then one that's the most recent.
If I'm questing or doing something that could cause a glitch or bugs (including questing obviously) I've had up to five saves running at a time. One made before starting the quest, one made just after starting, and then the rest made at various points during the quest, including a save right before facing a boss and during facing them if there is one.
I've learned to do this because my Skyrim has already run into various glitches not fixable due to not having an old save handy. Once I've completed the quest in its entirety I will delete all but the most recent saves.

Anyway as far as backing them up goes, I use two of those little USB flash drives to put my saves and game data on. See I have the European imported PS3 which has a tiny hard drive so I have to keep almost everything on these drives. Then about once a week, maybe more often, I've taken to backing up these saves on my laptops' desktop in a folder, and also backing up the folder on Dropbox in case my laptop goes kaput. lol
This is because I only have those two flash drives to put saves and game data on, and if they run out of room it will force me to overwrite other data. I've lost characters this way.
So I back up all my characters in the aforementioned way now, that way if it overwrites anything it doesn't matter all that much. It's saved me a lot of stress and hassle since I've been doing it this way. :)
So yeah, maybe it's because I've already run into glitches and such due to not saving enough and keeping the saves long enough, but I'm pretty particular about backing up my saves now. :p


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

Papoy

DON'T EXPECT SPOILER WARNINGS FROM ME
Hehe, gj zombie, but i havent glitched or lost any character :p except my sniper queen is lost cuz i dl-ed some updates, and when i restarted system, they were lost so i need to dl them again to play her, and its a pain...
 

Wildroses

Well-Known Member
I tend to get Meeko, admittedly because I am a huge sucker for animals in need rather than because my characters are squishy.

Somehow all my characters end up becoming mages to some degree as I find magic more interesting than weapons. Possibly because I am intellectually very good and physically pathetic in real life. I also kind of prefer slightly squishing characters as I find running and dodging more interesting than standing in one spot and letting the enemy hack and slash at you.

I also really enjoy archery, so I make a lot of characters who are archers and also mages. Spell archers, maybe? I had an Alteration Altmer Archer once, and am currently playing a Sneaky Conjuration Archer.

One thing I used to do a fair bit was make characters who could only put perks in certain trees. Not having perks to lower spell costs from specific trees could do interesting things to your playstyle.

Lately I am always using bound weapons and using that perk which casts soul trap on everything you hit, not because I am enamored with Enchanting but because my goodness is it easy to raise your enchanting levels by enchanting all your worthless loot with petty soul gems.

Recently I played a mage character who was an ex-vampire thrall and was just utterly terrified of people so she wouldn't buy or sell anything or do any quests which started by talking to people. Playing a mage character who depended on random loot for spell tomes was surprisingly entertaining. Staffs became really useful and important.
 

Papoy

DON'T EXPECT SPOILER WARNINGS FROM ME
I tend to get Meeko, admittedly because I am a huge sucker for animals in need rather than because my characters are squishy.

Somehow all my characters end up becoming mages to some degree as I find magic more interesting than weapons. Possibly because I am intellectually very good and physically pathetic in real life. I also kind of prefer slightly squishing characters as I find running and dodging more interesting than standing in one spot and letting the enemy hack and slash at you.

I also really enjoy archery, so I make a lot of characters who are archers and also mages. Spell archers, maybe? I had an Alteration Altmer Archer once, and am currently playing a Sneaky Conjuration Archer.

One thing I used to do a fair bit was make characters who could only put perks in certain trees. Not having perks to lower spell costs from specific trees could do interesting things to your playstyle.

Lately I am always using bound weapons and using that perk which casts soul trap on everything you hit, not because I am enamored with Enchanting but because my goodness is it easy to raise your enchanting levels by enchanting all your worthless loot with petty soul gems.

Recently I played a mage character who was an ex-vampire thrall and was just utterly terrified of people so she wouldn't buy or sell anything or do any quests which started by talking to people. Playing a mage character who depended on random loot for spell tomes was surprisingly entertaining. Staffs became really useful and important.
Well, i never heard any1 to play like that before,... tough yes, some mage skill trees are useful to any play style. About that dodging... u and i think alike :D
 

Lady Redpool the Unlifer

Pyro, Spirits Connoisseur, and Soulless Anarchist
Alright, you're in for a treat on this one:
I tend to play my mages as necromancer/nightblades. HEAVY illusion and sneak use supplemented with conjuration(necromancy) and a combination of Alteration and Conjuration when everything goes to plops(Too easy to dual cast a flesh spell and summon up a pair of bound swords). So calm lone enemies and slit their throats(or leave them if that's your thing) and fury groups to destroy themselves. When you've got a good pile of bodies, raise them up to attack their friends who survived the fury tactics.

I generally disenchant stuff as I go, but just hoard the better soul gems until later on so that my character isn't levelling early without the combat skills to back it up. The smaller soul gems get the honor of refuelling my staff.

That's right, I said staff! I do level destruction slowly throughout the character(along with restoration when I find I can actually use it), but I find that a staff suits my destruction needs just fine, no need to waste the magicka on it.

I just tried to play them as the prodigy of Festus Krex, I feel that he'd approve of these methods.
 

Papoy

DON'T EXPECT SPOILER WARNINGS FROM ME
Alright, you're in for a treat on this one:
I tend to play my mages as necromancer/nightblades. HEAVY illusion and sneak use supplemented with conjuration(necromancy) and a combination of Alteration and Conjuration when everything goes to pl***(Too easy to dual cast a flesh spell and summon up a pair of bound swords). So calm lone enemies and slit their throats(or leave them if that's your thing) and fury groups to destroy themselves. When you've got a good pile of bodies, raise them up to attack their friends who survived the fury tactics.

I generally disenchant stuff as I go, but just hoard the better soul gems until later on so that my character isn't levelling early without the combat skills to back it up. The smaller soul gems get the honor of refuelling my staff.

That's right, I said staff! I do level destruction slowly throughout the character(along with restoration when I find I can actually use it), but I find that a staff suits my destruction needs just fine, no need to waste the magicka on it.

I just tried to play them as the prodigy of Festus Krex, I feel that he'd approve of these methods.
Haha, become a vampire and be Daracula :D Anyway... That style rly got my attention dude, i think i played it before, but never actualy finished it. Might start new 1 just to have it!!!
 

Papoy

DON'T EXPECT SPOILER WARNINGS FROM ME
Can u tell me if you are wearing armour? I wasnt using staffs tough... nvm
 

W'rkncacnter

Mister Freeze
I tend to run some mods to help with my mages:

Unlock spells. How did this get left out of the vanilla game? I couldn't see my all-powerful wizard stooping to pick a rusty lock.

Some mod that either directly modifies the time of flesh spells or creates a perk to accomplish the same task. Flesh spells were the most tedious part of being a pure mage. Having that immediate cost before each battle was annoying, not to mention switching to the spell and then back. I think my favorite was a mod that allowed permanent flesh spells by dropping your magicka cap down a certain amount while it was active. It also allowed permanent candlelight spell for the same type of cost. Then it was more of an issue managing your overall magicka in addition to your instant spells than making everything one type of expense. It felt more 'magey' to me.

And for personal preference, I enjoy Staves of Skyrim. Nothing like exploring a cavern with your staff illuminated. I feel more like Gandalf with this mod.

And since I don't enjoy using followers for the most part (especially with mages due to aoe) I tend to use what some might consider a cheat. . .I turn down the difficulty.
 

Papoy

DON'T EXPECT SPOILER WARNINGS FROM ME
Ah well i dont use any mods :p that gandalf idea is fun xd
 

Recent chat visitors

Latest posts

Top