» Thu Feb 07, 2013 6:59 am So I know this is not a new issue by far, but this article is for players like myself who have not been playing ever since release, or people who never bothered with mage before. After playing and beating this game (level 81+ story-line) with a stealth archer, a sword and board conjurer, and a 2-hander wielding Orc demolisher (fun times), I decided to check out the very cool looking magic aspect of this game. After many hours of reading different strategies and arguments on various web-sites, I experimented with 2 test mages before deciding how to build my real mage for play through. This is what I came up with; I am going to tell you how I have worked my way up to level 50 now on Master difficulty, as a mage with NO ARMOR. I am going to explain why I made the choices I made, and you can take it or leave it. I am writing this really because I never did see a guide anywhere that really detailed all of this in one place.
First of all, the armor thing. I will tell you that armor is theoretically more effective at providing physical defense, but your goal as a true mage is to not let anything near you. Also, many people don't realize there is an armor cap; at some point the armor caps at an 80% damage reduction. Ebonyflesh with full perks gives you 80% for 30 seconds, which is plenty of time to wipe out a room if you have been distributing your perks right and maintaining your party members. Armor only makes a noticeable difference against elder+ dragons, which are ridiculously overpowered either way on master difficulty. I will say this; you will NOT get the full experience of being a mage -or the maximum satisfaction allowed by this game- if you decide to use armor and rely on the double-enchantments in endgame. You will end up ridiculously overpowered and bored; I could have stuck with my Archer or my Warrior if I wanted that.
If you are used to hack and slash or silent kills, it will be challenging at first to not just rush in thinking your flames are going to kill everything in 1.5 seconds (never-mind the d.p.s. delay makes it impossible). Magic is very strong in Skyrim, but unarmored characters are very brittle, and magicka regeneration all around is crap. As a mage, you will need to level both conjuration and destruction, but you will want to focus on one as far as perk distribution goes, for the first 20 levels or so, If you go conjuration, go with Breton who starts with the familiar spell and conjure bonus (also, their magic resistance is arguably the only racial that makes any difference in endgame). If you want to focus on destruction first, some would argue that the High Elf's extra magicka is necessary, and I concur that it would make the early game go a little quicker. I really prefer Breton to High Elf no matter what, but if you are nostalgic, or just refuse to accept that any race can best high elf as a battle mage, then go on and pick the Altmer. For that matter, if you are going to use armor, then just go on and be a High Elf, since you WILL need the extra magicka early on until you get enchanting and smithing maxed out, (and will not need to worry about being such a fragile little elf). Otherwise, you need to level alteration alongside destruction or conjuration, whichever your primary choice was. Take mage armor asap, and take the magic resistance perk early if you are Altmer (Bretons should take it, but much later).
First thing to do once you figure out your basic build and focus, GET LYDIA. No she isn't the best follower, but she is a tank, she can't die, and she will equip armor you give her. Later you can swap her out for Mjoll if you are set on "having a tank", but I went for Marcurio, who helps me kill pretty much anything before it gets close. I stuck with this smart-ass mage until I got Serana in Dawnguard, who is about the same but marked essential (can't die). Also note that your followers are glitched (stuck) at whatever level you first encountered them at; i.e.- if you were at level 15 when you met Lydia, she will be stuck at level 15 even when you are level 50. To fix this, save the game, equip Wabbajack, dismiss follower, Wabbajack follower until they turn into a sheep or a goat (if they go hostile or turn into a coin or something, reload and try again). Once they are an animal, punch them with your bare hands and they should turn back into them-self. Rehire them and their level will have been adjusted. F.Y.I., Jzhargo and the Dark Brotherhood followers are not glitched, and also make for some of the better followers in the game. The choice is yours, but I recommend picking a follower with high destruction, conjuration, light armor, and/or archery. Heavy armored and melee followers will usually just get you noticed by groups of enemies from miles away, and do not serve any better as tanks or damage dealers respective to the preceding follower types.
Now on to battle mechanics. Even if you are focusing on destruction, you should always open with conjure familiar/atronach (Necromancy is useless compared to the atronachs, unless you just want the RP experience). Cast your strongest flesh spell that wont exhaust your mana, and then start with the destruction. It can be tempting to skip the first two steps and go right to casting spells, but your conjuration greatly assists your follower in keeping enemies off of you while dealing damage. This also helps level all your magic more evenly, and later down the road you can start putting perks into other schools immediately without having to go back and level them. If you can bear spending the perks, you will find the bound weapon perks in the conjuration tree are very useful at high levels (at least, when you are playing a legit character). Some people like to put all of their points into magicka, but if you level enchanting all the way you can take advantage of dual enchantments on boots/gloves/headgear and make 2 schools of magic very cheap to cast. I found it very effective to level magicka and health evenly, throwing in a random stamina point here and there only up to about 150 stamina. Some people prefer to not put any points into stamina as a mage, but I find this highly impractical and doubt that I will ever miss the 5 points taken from health and magicka.
Once you have hit around level 20 or 30, you will want to go right for the Dawnguard quest chain, with the goal of becoming a vampire lord. You can either side with the Dawnguard and play until you kill Harkon, or just join Harkon and he will turn you into the vampire lord himself. This is a 25% illusion boost, and some very cool powers. You don't really ever have to use illusion, but if you learn to use it (and take some related perks) you will find yourself doing less re-loading and more having fun killing things while they run around killing each other. There have been times I saw both my follower and pet were down/distracted and 2 or 3 enemies rushing me- popped vampire lord and put them down like garden snakes.
The biggest thing aside from this is patience. Playing a pure mage in skyrim is very hard, and I have read many forums where people say they start a character with every intention of playing a traditional mage, but always end up becoming a spell-sword or heavy armored conjurer, relying on enchanting/smithing "exploits" and tactics which are quite uncharacteristic of the traditional mage. If you ever find yourself stuck in the same re-load/fight/die cycle, or facing any other number of rage-quit inciting encounters, just svck up your pride and turn the difficulty down a notch or two. Once you have beaten the encounter, up the difficulty again, and think about what you need to do with your next few perks. On the flip side, I have also heard people suggest playing through common side-quests and riff-raff on adept to save time, and upping the difficulty to Master on story-line objectives or other epic battles. I prefer to always leave it on Master, but I can't pretend there haven't been a couple of times I have used the slider with my mage. Anyways, there really isn't a whole lot else mage specific; I have gone completely without perks in alchemy or smithing, and chose instead to take the merchant and pick-pocketing trees. There have been times when I snuck up behind an enemy and stole all of their equipped gear, making for an almost effortless battle. Also, if you like to pickpocket your gold back from trainers, taking the perks for it will help you level faster and be more effective as a "sneak-thief". This is probably the only element of thievery that a mage should bother dabbling in.
Last notes: skip things like the companions and dark brotherhood. You are not a fighter or a thief- you are a mage. Do mage stuff, like Winterhold and Dawnguard. Take the Mage stone in the beginning, but around level 50 you will want to switch to the Lord stone or the Atronach stone based on your needs. I prefer the Lord stone, but it all depends on how you distributed your perks and stat points. Get the sanguine rose as early as possible- that dremora really saves your ass in a bind (unless an elder dragon eats it whole, then you may have to re-summon). Speaking of dragons, get used to conjuring from a distance and carrying lots of resist element x potions. That is all I have for now. Let me know what you all think!
