As a mage, you should put more enchantments into fortify destruction (or another magic school if you use it all the time) rather than fortify magicka. Magicka regen combined with fortify destruction is much more effective than with fortify magicka. It's possible to get your casting cost to zero for one particular school of magic in this way, but I consider it an exploit (cheat), so the highest I'll go for reducing my magicka cost is around 70%.
Another very useful enchantment is magic resist. It even works against Dragon's breath weapon attacks and is more effective than resist fire, frost and shock, but like all enchantments, you can only put it on certain pieces of your outfit. Once you get your magic resist to 50% or more you'll notice a huge difference when fighting those pesky dragons and master wizards.
This just sparked my interest in a big way. You say you can enchant for 50% magic resistance, now, would that stack onto a breton's race perk? also, i'm curious as to if you'd be interested in talking about gameplay using a full fledged mage
Yes, it stacks with all other magic resistance abilities as far as my knowledge goes. So, if a Breton stars with 25% magic resist and gets two 25% mag. resist enchantments for his gear, his overall resistance would be 75%. The only thing you have to remember is no matter what your resistance, armor rating, or whatever, there is a cap of 80%. So, even if your armor rating is over 567 (which is the damage cap of 80%), or any of your resistances are 100% or more, you still take 20% of the damage from whatever type of attack you receive. So if you already have a resistance rating of 80% or higher in anything, you'll only be wasting enchantments if you try to put any more into them.
yeah, iv'e been told about the cap previously, but i was unaware it affected magic, so i do appreciate that, i think i'm going to try this.
I've already tested this, just to reassure you. I started out with a Nord and she had 50% frost resistance. With the Nightingale armor, my frost resistance was 100%, but I still take visible damage from a dragon's frost breath attack or master necromancers using frost magic, and that's with magic resistance too.
i meant the 80% magic resistance, i wanna be the alpha mage lol
Well, I only got my magic resist to like 60%, because I still want the game to be a challenge. But if you had the cap of 80% magic resist, and also fire resistance of 50%, that means that the first 80% of damage a fire attack would be stopped by the magic resistance, and then the damage left over would be cut in half from the 50% fire resistance. Since there is a cap of 80%, however, even if you had 100% magic resist and 100% fire resist, 20% of the damage would get through the mag. resist, and then 20% of THAT damage would get through your fire resistance.
I once used a crafting loop to get all my resistances up to 96%. Too easy.Well, I only got my magic resist to like 60%, because I still want the game to be a challenge. But if you had the cap of 80% magic resist, and also fire resistance of 50%, that means that the first 80% of damage a fire attack would be stopped by the magic resistance, and then the damage left over would be cut in half from the 50% fire resistance. Since there is a cap of 80%, however, even if you had 100% magic resist and 100% fire resist, 20% of the damage would get through the mag. resist, and then 20% of THAT damage would get through your fire resistance.
As a mage, you should put more enchantments into fortify destruction (or another magic school if you use it all the time) rather than fortify magicka. Magicka regen combined with fortify destruction is much more effective than with fortify magicka. It's possible to get your casting cost to zero for one particular school of magic in this way, but I consider it an exploit (cheat), so the highest I'll go for reducing my magicka cost is around 70%.
Another very useful enchantment is magic resist. It even works against Dragon's breath weapon attacks and is more effective than resist fire, frost and shock, but like all enchantments, you can only put it on certain pieces of your outfit. Once you get your magic resist to 50% or more you'll notice a huge difference when fighting those pesky dragons and master wizards.