Something I've noticed about spell creation

[JoeReese]

So, I just hit level 20, with a destruction skill of about 83. I went to make up some new spells, and I discovered something.

I made a chaos plus spell, which is fire, frost, and shock, at 40 points each. If I went up to 45 each, I would need 100 destruction, but keeping at 40 left me in the 75 bracket. I was able to add 45 pts of drain health, though, without leaving my 75 destruction bracket, ending up with a 165 pt everything spell, which costs me 115 magicka to cast.

Just to experiment with which spell animation, I made a few similar ones, and I found that by putting drain health first, I was able to get 100 pts out of it, only dropping my fire and frost to 37 each, and my shock to 38. Just by changing the order, I get 212 pts of damage, and it costs me 114 magicka, a point less than the other way around.

When experimenting with spells, I highly recommend saving first and juggling the orders/damage until you have the most potent punch for the price.

 

[Daelon DuLac]

So, I just hit level 20, with a destruction skill of about 83. I went to make up some new spells, and I discovered something.

I made a chaos plus spell, which is fire, frost, and shock, at 40 points each. If I went up to 45 each, I would need 100 destruction, but keeping at 40 left me in the 75 bracket. I was able to add 45 pts of drain health, though, without leaving my 75 destruction bracket, ending up with a 165 pt everything spell, which costs me 115 magicka to cast.

Just to experiment with which spell animation, I made a few similar ones, and I found that by putting drain health first, I was able to get 100 pts out of it, only dropping my fire and frost to 37 each, and my shock to 38. Just by changing the order, I get 212 pts of damage, and it costs me 114 magicka, a point less than the other way around.

When experimenting with spells, I highly recommend saving first and juggling the orders/damage until you have the most potent punch for the price.

Uhm... Why would you need that much damage? So far I haven't run in to anything that takes more than 100 points to kill (there were some Liches in one of the ruins and it took me three lightning bolts at 30 each to take down). Wow! If I'm gonna need that much damage, then I have something to look forward to.

 

[JoeReese]

I honestly have no idea how much damage one needs, but I operate on the principle of having the most possible damage at my disposal, and just using less if I'm sure I can get away with it. I'd rather give the ogre or minotaur more juice than he needs than have him knock me senseless because I didn't. My 100 pt health drain (which costs me less than 20 magicka now) kills most things, but the gate keeper laughed at it. He did not find 212 points of chaos damage amusing, however. It still took several sword swipes to bring him down after that.