Hey all

Let me tell you about my problems

I play a mage cloth only and right now i am level 13. I've done most of the quests in whiterun and the black star quest for enchanting. My problem is right now im at a level where i cant kill a thing.
My highest skill is Conjuration and alteration cause i always summon and cast mage armor on me. I have the Perk Mage armor that dubbles the effect of your oakflesh or whatever the name is. I have 120 armor with that buff and a flame guy around me plus Sven.

I have destruction but here comes the problem, after i've summoned and buffed my self i have zip mana left to cast destruction so that leaves my skill abit short its only around 30ish and my other two are around 45ish. My conjour and Sven dies in like 2-3 hits and that leaves me saving all my mana to conjour another helper, that leads to less mana for destruction.

In the diffrent tree's i have put perks in Destruction,alteration,conjuration,restoration and enchantment. Mostly the mana reduce perks and regeneration, mage armor and Dual destruction. Gear wise i have a head piece for 12% destruction and a robe that gives 12% Destruction and 75% mana. I also have some enchanted shoes and gloves and jewelry with diffrent resistens gear.

So to my questions.

1. Any tips to help me still play on this difficulty would be nice.

2. I think its hard because of my low destruction skill compare to my level but should i use my other skills less and try to survive with just destruction?

3. Do i really need to level my enchantment to 100 before i can play mage this way on this difficulty?

4. What is the strongest type of character to play on master difficulty?

5. Should i try to find a new companion and let him do more of the fighting?

6. Have i spread my self to thin in the diffrent trees making me weak this way?

7. Right now i cant enchant more destruction on more gear since it only fits on a few pieces.

Thanks all and btw i dont wish to lower the difficulty and im sorry for the bad spelling.

alright, will do my best to answer your questions out of order, here goes.
2. if you feel destruction isn't working out for you, feel free to save your perks for something else. alteration and conjuration is a valid combination to see you through most fights.
4. there are some glitches involving fortify potions and whatnot that can make chars pretty darn powerful, through buffed smithing upgrades, there's another thread for that, but anyway warriors seem to benefit the most from that, with thieves a close second. Mages are generally not reccomended for master difficulty.
3. enchanting is a useful skill, but you don't need it if you don't want. Your best bet at the moment is alchemy, whip up a few restore magicka potions and all your troubles are gone.
6. quite possibly, you'l want to focus perks on only 1 or 2 trees to start with, branching out more as you level up.
5. companions are levelled to when you first meet them (I have heard that this was changed in the last patch so they level with you, though nothing I've seen has proven this), so you can go find a new one if you'd like, however in my experience none of them are that good at fighting, their main purpose is to distract a few enemies away from you.
7. if you're not focusing on destruction, don't bother enchanting for it, you may benefit more from some enchants to reduce the cost of conjuration spells.
1. Conjuration can be extremely powerful once you level and perk it a bit, and buy some decent spells, if you stick with this as your main combat skill you should be able to handle most things, as long as you're not squeamish about raising a corpse or two. Alterationwise, personally I don't use it much, i prefer not to let enemies hit me at all, but it does have a very useful paralysis spell you may want to look into.

personally, were I playing a mage at expert or master difficulty (which I am not), I would go for a stealth-mage hybrid. Basically while fighting my char would remain in stealth (though I probably wouldn't perk sneak right away), startign the fight with frenzy spells from the illusion tree (the silent casting perk on this tree is an absolute must for this build). Once frenzy spells have whittled down their numbers, conjure up some minions and send them into the fray, conjuring more when necessary (if frenzy has done its job your minions probably won't meet much resistance). Dragons would be rather challenging with this build, but a few dragon shouts, some minions, and perhaps an invisibility spell or two should see you through. Key skills in this build are illusion>conjuration>sneak, with alteration/destruction as options if you're feeling annoyed at being a spectator to every fight.

Well I now use a few mods that give you some nice spells like spectral sabertooth

However, I used to play without them. And the only thing I can say is....
Play it slow, see your field, have a companion and a summon.
Always quick save when you are safe.
Use your racial power whenever it is necessary
Have at least 10 Minor healing potions and just use them is situation when you are not going to be 1-hit killed
And a lot of mana potion, and food (there is one called blue mountain flower candy, very cheap to make and useful, but I think it came with a mod)
Always send your Summon first.
Stay away from trouble.
Jump and run a lot.

And
Flame is your best friend for leveling destruction. I personally think it is more useful than Fire Ball

"dubbles"

lol



On topic: Try saving some Magicka by skipping the Alteration spells for some situations. That's what I'd do.

First of all thank you for all the answers!

I really like your ide with sneak mage but the Illusion tree seems nice but i keep faceing undead after undead and that can be a problem for frenzy spell untill you perk for it. Its very late in the tree i think.
Alchemy is a difficult skill to master but you say warrior with alchemy is a strong way to go? I will have to think about this for a while.

Ty again!

From my own experience :
Pure Mage with no armor
Expert difficulty
No companions
No instant magicka potions (only regeneration)
No enchanting ( only Soul Squeezer for more efficient recharging )
No alchemy

Protective spells like oakflesh are useless. When using those I can withstand one or two additional blows at most so it is a waste of magicka usually. Only good spell is Dragonhide but that's master level so I normally don't count it. It is quite easy to just avoid melee enemies and watch out for archers.
Destruction + Conjuration are the best way for a pure mage in my opinion. Illusion is very good also. Mid level restoration (healing + wards) is good enough.

I make full usage of the staves however so when I run out of magicka I can still deal damage/summon creatures from staves. When fighting mages I use staves + wards so I never have problems with magicka in those fights. Remember that staves (at least for destruction) will level with you( if you have damage boosting perks they will also boost your destruction staves). Chain lightning staff will also stagger all enemies it hits (similar to Impact perk).

Alchemy can be good addition because of magicka restore + regeneration + destruction boosting potions and also poisons : slow + paralyze + lingering damage.
Even if you don't invest in this skill you can still make some nice poisons, which can help you in harder fights (use some of those ingredients : Deathbell, Canis root, Imp Stool, River Betty, Salt ).

Another good thing is Sneak skill if you are willing to max it. Getting Silent Casting from illusion will be great addition to such mage.
Shadow warrior perk will give you access to near invisibility-on-demand but it is more about personal preferences so you may not like it as it is more thievish approach.

Ah, another poor fool has fallen victim of the crap scaling of magic and Enchanting being mandatory for playing a mage.

Dude, play something else. Do yourself a favor.

I read alot about this on the forums about mages svcks and stuff like that. Is it true or do we need to learn how to play?
If its true it will be the first game i've played in a long time that mages acually are not Overpowerd

If by Learn to Play you mean having tons of patience, powerleveling Enchanting and Alchemy, switching through a ton of stuff in your Favorites bar every 10 seconds AND doing all this while a warrior would still do a better and faster job than you...yep, you need to learn to play.

If you are on the PC get a nice Magic Overhaul Mod from Skyrim Nexus otherwise Conjuration should be you main offense, Destruction just doesnt scale enough for higher Level and Difficulty.

Im just curius since i havent played mage much but people seem to complain about the class. It might be 100% right to complain that its weak but its a funny statement compare to other videogames, where mages always is the strongest class

People complain about the class because it is broken, and you have to "work" around with enchanting to make it viable, just make a pure mage and go play it normally on master, by lvl 10 you will have a fully depleted magicka bar and a mob at half hp. In other words dmg/magicka cost isnt efficient, compared to melee system. And magicka regen in combat is super slow.

Play on easy if you want an easy game...

I think that playing as a mage is very amazing, I liked it even without mods. Now I use a few mods with a few things I consider unbalanced (Destruction perks and Alteration spells duration) ... still .... I could survive with a mage in Master without much difficult, just being smart and doing a good work

crafting is key for all playtypes.

I would suggest re-rolling your character and get out of the alteration tree...

I have a almost pure (I use bound bow) mage who never uses alteration, just simply Conj Destro and every once in a while I'll use a illusion spell if I get myself caught in a tricky situation...

You are going to want to level up conjuration alot and focus on it with perks mostly, for later gameplay... If you want solely a pure mage, aka no weapons not even bound, you'll have some extra perks, but I use bound bow in tough spots and for when I need souls...

Destruction will seem like the best option up front, as it kills everything in a couple seconds, but it doesn't nearly do as much as you think it would do past I'd say level 35... so you are going to want to get enchanting pretty high early on as well so you can get destruction to a 0% cost...

Once you have destruction's cost at 0%, fights will be a cinch... you can pop up your strongest conjure, still have a lot of mana left over and use your strongest destro spell and you'll still have plenty of mana for when your conjure will die... and if you really want to you can use oakflesh and the sort as you will have enough mana for it...

My level 38 mage conjures 2 Storm Thralls which distract the enemy while I use rediculously strong destruction attacks without any mana cost whatsoever... when I get in a tough situation I'll conjure 2 Dremora Lords, fear them and whip out my Bound Bow and own them

If you haven't already. Go to the College of Winterhold and finish that quest.

Get a better companion for Christ's sake. Honestly Sven is prob one of the worst companions available in the game (imo). Others may feel differently but when it comes to playing a mage you need companions that won't get in your way and get blasted to death in accident. Pick up Brelyna Maron from the college of winterhold. She usually summons her own Flame Atronach whenever she gets into confrontations. Or get Aela the Huntress because shes a monster with a good bow. If you are on PC remember to use console commands to properly level your companions so they don't remain lvl 10 while you are lvl 30.

Learn to use good staves. They don't require mana to use and you get to blast away with fire balls and other assortment of deadly spells. At the same time pick up The Black Star so you don't have to spend a fortune continuously recharging them.

Continue to level your conjuration as fast as you can (aim for lvl 100) and remember to continue putting points into Magicka until you hit around 300-400 depending on your personal preference.
Easy way to level up conjuration is to go around casting Soul Trap and killing critters. When you reach lvl 90 conjuration you can start a quest that will allow you to have permanent summons and you will almost never have to worry about using magicka on summons ever again.

You do not need to have lvl 100 enchanting to play mage in this game. That is complete BS. Just remember to keep searching merchants for better gear and/or dungeon chest search.

mages are a bit underpowered as far as destructive magic goes, it does work, but it prob should scale, since the biggest magic attack is about 200 and the biggest melee attack is like 800 something like that, but i play a mage and i pretty much still jam, and using fortify potions to enchant things is not a glitch, geez..you can buy enchanted items that reduce your magic cost to very low even without using enchanting, a master or expert robe of destruction, an eminent ring of destruction, a glass helmet of destruction, that will lower your magic a ton and thats without enchanting, so its not a glitch to get low magic costs, its a game mechanic, why do people think lowering magic cost to almost zero is a glitch cause its not, magic is underpowered, magic regeneration is slow, spells cost a lot and even with infinite magic it takes 10 shots to kill a lot of enemies with magic, so it needs to be buffed actually, maybe make spells a bit more powerful, especially as you level up. but for the op, being a mage is still fun.