I'm yet to try a mage character in Skyrim; I used them a lot in Oblivion, however.

And one of the issues with Oblivion was never really having enough magicka to cast the spells you wanted. I remember having to enchant 6 different bits of clothing, and I even had a mod to lower magicka costs, and you still couldn't do a lot. As in, I wanted to wear no armour, and sustain myself without potions; just kill, heal, influence and generally do a character as a pure-magicka user.

So I was curious as to whether this has been resolved in Skyrim. With magicka no longer linked to an ability, I'm curious whether it's effectively worth it to take the 10 extra points at every level up - giving you a pool of 800-900 or so - or whether you can do pretty much everything with a more reasonable amount of magicka, and put some into health and stamina. Very interested in any thoughts on this from those with experience of doing similar.

When I played my pure mage in Skyrim I picked the Altmer race and put all my points in Magicka. I didn't do any Enchanting. And I didn't have much of a problem with running out of Magicka.

It has gotten better in Skyrim. Enchantments still help though.

You'll want enchanting for your spellcaster, but its very viable with Archmage Robes, and even in-game cost reduction gear.

I've done it both ways. Fortifying spell cost reduction through enchant is more effective, but if you like to manage a magicka pool, you can find in game items that fortify regen quite a bit. Add in just a little spell cost reduction, like the archmage robes, and you can do just fine, provided you are not relying exclusivley on destruction. If you want to be a pure destruction mage, you probably want to to more spell cost reduction. You can get spell cost all the way to zero if you want to, but I found that to be not all that much fun once the initial thrill wore off.

If you reduce cost enough through enchant you don't need more than the initial 100, but I would go for at least 500 if I were doing a mage character. You can put it all into maicka, but then you will be a glass cannon with heavy emphasis on the glass part. There is a lot of stuff in Skyrim that can dish out over 300 damage in one hit even to an armored opponent. My mages usually perk 2 to 1 magicka to health, and once health hits about 250, I start putting all into magicka. There are still a few things that can one shot my mage, especially if he does not have his mage armor up, but at least he is not getting one shotted by common bandit thugs.