The pure mage guide

Pure Mage facts

• Only need to use mage perks for an effective character from start to finish
  
• can have great offensive power at all levels
  
• can have great defensive powers at all levels
  
• flip out and kill people

So you are probably wondering how a cloth wearing mage can become a walking monster of doom. The path is not has hard as some think, but not as easy as some may want it to be.

Here are some important things to know:

• double casting destruction with the impact perk is a key power to get ASAP for its ability to stun lock most critters
  
• enchanting is the backbone of your power, and it makes everything better
  
• in combat magic regen is only 1%, out of combat mana regen is 3%
  
• destruction spells damage per mana is very low, so low that only an absurdly large magic pool and mana regen will allow you to sustain most fights
  
• fortify magic school enchants lower the cost of spells cast in that magic school and can stack to drop the cost of that school to 0
  
• mana regen stops when you are charging or casting a spell
  
• magical/elemental resistance is just as or more important than armor
  
• magic resistance reduces all non physical damage, and then elemental resistance is then used to reduce it even more!
  
• damage/magic/elemental resistance caps at 80%
  
• damage resistance = armor rating * .12 (567 AR to max at 80%)
  
• spell books cost alot of money and what is available to buy is based on your level in each school of magic, the higher the level the more books they will sell you
  
• The wikia is your friend use it : http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Magic_Overview

So with the above info and the magic perks we can come up with a generic chart for pure mages to follow for minimal frustration.
For referance here is the perks I found are most important:
http://www.ign.com/builds/the-elder-scrolls-5-skyrim?d=00000000000000000000000000000001111100000000001212121000001110100000020010131111035000111
That will take 41 levels to get there, so lets break it down to smaller chunks.

Low levels 1 - 10 try not to die much, low level bandits phear ME
Get the novice destruction, double casting and impact right away.
Use the summon familier or raise dead spells to get your conjuration up and use this as a tank.
Get the mage armor perk (just 1st level) asap so your cloth is now as good as low level heavy armor
Raise alteration as much as possible
On level ups switch between health and magicka never stamina
every magic item you find will be disenchanted if it can be or sold if it cant be on the lookout for these things

• absorb health - easy to find and good sell price on a weapon
  
• paralyze - second best sell price on a weapon
  
• banish - insane sell prices when placed on a weapon
  
• fortify destruction (25% stackable reduce cost of all destruction spells when used with a with grand soul and all perks)
  
• fortify alteration
  
• fortify restoration
  
• resist shock (37% stackable resistance with grand soul and all perks)
  
• resist fire (37% stackable resistance with grand soul and all perks)
  
• resist frost (37% stackable resistance with grand soul and all perks)
  
• resist magic (17% stackable magic resistance, reduces all non physical damage with grand soul and all perks)

Level 11-20 time to make some cash
wipe out the http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Halted_Stream_Camp and find the spell transmutation.
mine iron ore and convert it all to gold.
buy all the petty filled soul gems and iron ore you can find
make and enchant jewelry with the gold ore, or sell off the gold ore and make LOTS of iron daggers that you will be enchanting
the goal is to get enchanting up to 100 ASAP with all the perks we care about in that tree.
once you hit that final perk lets start making some nice equipment

Magic regen is a complete waste, because in combat mana regen is so low, and mana regen stops while casting, but what does work is to drop the cost of your destruction spells to 0.
find some cloth and jewelry that has no enchants on it
buy 6 filled grand or black soul gems

circlet or hat or hood - fortify destruction (25%)
robes - fortify destruction (25%)
boots - resist fire (40%), resist shock (40%)
gloves - fortify magicka (50) fortify carry weight (?)
ring - fortify destruction (25%)
amulet - fority destruction (25%) (is nice ->resist magic (20%) )

Notice you have a bunch of slots I left blank. You can use those slots to drop the casting cost of another school down to 0 also.

Level 21+ With this hand I RULE
Now that you have near unlimited gold, and 0 cost destruction you can ice spike everybody into Oblivion. But remember our spells don’t scale damage with skill level, so we now need to get back to basics and focus on defense.

Conjuration
This spell school gives the best defensive bang for the buck. The frost atronach is a great tank because it only has melee abilities. This won’t show up until you have your conjuration around 40, so level up via soul trap on easy critters/dead bodies or just use the zombie or familier. The flame atronach is great for extra damage and you can combat cast it into melee if you need a quick tank.
At higher levels you can have 2 perma Atronach summons, or perma zombie, or even a dremora lord. This school runs defense and offense for ya!

Alteration
Our goal is defense and alteration is a good way to get semi passive damage resistance to that nasty sword that is coming at your head. Your summons will fail to hold agro and some times you are going to get surrounded so its good to have some passive defense to not get one shotted.
This is where the mage armor perk comes into play. That cool artifact mask that counts as light armor you got with 100% magic regen on it... junk for 2 reasons. One it’s light and it shuts off your mage armor perk, and 2 mana regen svcks versus 0 cost spells.
Ebonyskin = 100 AR *3 = 300 AR = 36% damage resistance for 60+ seconds or at master level dragonskin gives 80% damage resistance. That’s some pretty nice DR for not having to lug around plate armor.
*NOTE* - There is NO downside to wearing plate armor that is in game noticeable other than its heavy. All the above enchants work on heavy armor also, so cloth only is purely a role play thing in my line of thinking.

Restoration
The big one here is the regeneration perk that gives us 50% more heals for the mana. You will need to heal up in combat so this is a nice active defense skill tree. You can drop your casting cost of restoration down to 0 and use the wards like free shields, but you don’t get to dual cast destruction spells anymore. It’s a nice trade off I think, and one that is easy to switch as needed.
Greater ward gives you 80 more AR (45% resist with 300 ebonyskin), and blocks 80 points of spell damage, at 0 cost that’s a pretty nice shield to always have in use during combat.

Illusion
Illusion is a very well designed school of magic. It scales if you get the perks, and it does what you want it to do if you invest in it. Illusion is a good active defense school and you could probably pick it instead of alteration. With all the perks and spells you will have the ability to control the battle, pick your targets and get groups of critters to kill each other for you. If you sneak (easy with cloth, muffle, and invisibility), you are in little danger. Illusion also matches well with conjuration to let your summons take all the pain (or kill all the calmed mobs).

Using illusion should mean you level sneak because it’s so darn easy, and not getting hit is near perfect defense.


Here is some excellent info on how to level up enchanting (and smithing)

Spells that are important

Destruction spells
frost spells are good versus any weapon wielding attacker, because without stamina they cant use thier power attacks to one shot you.
fire spells are good versus most things that are easy for you to handle, it is able to kill them faster.
electricity spells are good versus mages because they drain mana. They are also great at long distance attacks because they have very fast travel speeds.

Flames, Frostbite, sparks - low level cones that will be ok to use until you start using a companion to tank for you. These only do 8 damage per second. But you need to use these to level up to beter spells
damage single = 8 dps
damage double cast perk = 8 * 2.2 = 17.6 dps
damage double cast + damage bonus perked 50% = 8*2.2*1.5= 26.4dps


Ice spike, Firebolt, lightning bolt - single target spells that will be your bread and butter double casting, stunning power houses that will work until level 30. If you are quick enough you can stunlock 2 enemies at once by alternating hitting them with these spells. These spells also dont have the problem of killing your companion.
damage single = 25 per cast,
damage double = 55 per cast +stagger
damage double+perks = 82.5 + stagger

runes - A trap you can stick on the ground that when an enemy walks on it it blows up. Good impact effect, but without the perk for range, not all that usefull, because you cant stack them. The perk to enhance the range is a bit weak since it only effects runes, and runes do not scale up with level or skill.
damage single = 50
damage double = 110
damage max = 165

cloaks - small constant aoe damage for 60 seconds. These do the same amount of damage as your novice cones. Be careful, I dont know if its bug or not, but everytime I cast fire cloak my frost atronach desummons. These should not hurt your companion or summons, but if you hit them with another spell they may agro you and this will continue to make them mad.
damage = 8dps
damage 50% perk = 12dps

Ice storm, fireball, chain lightning - double casted impact fireballs are great at taking out bandit camps. These AOEs are not good if you have a melee companion though. They will kill them so be careful.
damage = 40
damage double = 88 + stagger
damage max = 132 + stagger

Ice wall, fire wall, shock wall - awesome replacements for your old novice flames, frostbite, sparks cones. You can spray the ground and the wall will stick to it for about 15 seconds. These are great if you have alot of defense, but are hard to use if you are getting surrounded because impact does not carry over with the ground effect.
damage = 50dps
damage double = 110dps
damage max = 160dps
I am not 100% sure if double casting the walls has any effect. Also walls do not stack, so using this like a flamethrower does not seem to be effective. What I have done is sprayed the floor of an area as I see a criter coming twords me. They will take the wall of fire damage, get set on fire and then I launch incinerates at them to stagger and kill them.
For some fun put wall of frost in one hand and wall of fire in the other, paint the floor for a flaming ice wall. I am finding that with more armor and resistance I like these spells more and more. They are fun to paint the room with.

Ice spear, incinerate, thunderbolt - triple the damage of the old single targets. No reason not to use these now and unfavorite the old ones.
damage = 60
damage double = 132 + stagger
damage max = 198 + stagger

Conjuration

Soul trap - this spell is your primary method of leveling this school. Use it all the time. The problem is its very short range, and hard to tell when you have a target taged. This spell is the biggest reason I miss my custom spells. It svcks but its all we got..... for now.

Summon fire atronach - a good ranged firebolt thrower, and emergancy tank if cast in melee. If they die before they desummon they explode into a firestorm.

Summon frost atronach - a great tank. They can take a good amount of hits before they die (they will die with more than 1 thing bangin on them), but they should give you enough time to use impacted ice storm to stun all the mobs around frosty.

Summon storm atronach - a ranged lightning attacker. The spell is sold at the same time dremora lord is sold and is totally overshadowed by the lord. The storm casts lightning bolts at range.

Summon dremora lord - WOW. This summons a 7 foot tall deadric armor clad dremora that wields a 2 handed deadric greatsword that is enchanted for fire damage. This dude seems to be very sturdy, and hits very hard. I love watching his death animations on humans. Dont expect this spell to show up until you have around 70 in conjuration skill. Once you see it this will probably be the best summons you got, unless you need a ranged attacker.

Alteration
The mage armors are going to be your only source of physical damage resistance. You want to shoot for ~532 Armor to cap at 85%. The problem is thats not possible with even the 3 mage armor perks and the best mage armor spell (ebonyskin gives 100 AR).
There is no reason not to wear heavy plate in this game, but since this is a pure mage guide you should be ok most of the time with your summons, companion, and impact spells. You should only get hit very rarely.

Paralyze - this awesome spel is a good reason to have alteration cost reduction. You can get 15 seconds per cast of you lay there and do nothing. Thats pretty crazy awesome power. You can lock down a whole room and then use fire wall in your second hand to burn them all to a crisp without ever getting touched. Its expensive so you will need to have 75% alteration cost reduction to use it like that though.

Transmute - convert iron ore to silver ore to gold ore. Ore is not sold in shops as much as ingots, but its still a good way to make money. Make gold ingots and then smith gold rings. So ~20 coins spent in 4 pieces of iron ore turn into 2 gold rings that sell for 35 a piece, and you get to train your smithing in the process. Finding an iron mine nets you alot more.

mass paralyze - a master spell that requires 2 hands and about a 5 second uninterupted casting animation. The effect is a ~20' AOE close to you that will paralyze everything except you. I knocked out my companion with this, but I don’t think it effected my summons. Friendly fire in the game is a bit wonky so be careful. If at any point you hit your friends with a damage spell they are able to be hit by anything that normally does not effect them. Long story short --- it’s not really worth it. Since its close range its great if you are getting surrounded, BUT the problem with that is you cant get interrupted or you stop casting. May be useful if your tank summons is getting spanked by 3 dudes and you want to knock them all out.

dragonskin - 30 or 45 seconds of 80% DR is nice, but the problem is the spell is not combat friendly because of the long cast time and needing 2 hands to cast.

Illusion
Calm spells – If it works will make a mob not attack you for the duration. This is near game breaking when combined with sneak and backstab. A well timed calm after doing damage allows you to take no return fire.

Fear spells – Not as useful, because the flee effect could allow the running mob to get other mobs aggroed onto you. Best to use calm instead.

Frenzy spells – A nice alternative to calm if you trying to reduce the number of mobs in a group. They will attack each other and possibly kill each other in the process. They will also attack you if they see you.

Muffle – the easiest way to level up Illusion because it levels up your illusion skill outside of combat. This removes all noise from walking, and makes sneaking easier to level also.

Invisibility – 30 seconds of you can’t see me. But they can still hear you, and still know you are around. Silent casting perk, muffle, sneak, backstab, invis, backstab invis …. Can you say hide in plain sight?

Clairvoyance – a huge time saver. Need to find the way up to that mountain cave? This spell will show the way. Its trains you high enough to grab muffle and then you can muffle, invis your way to 100.

Standing stones

You only get one active effect so here is a list of the ones that help you out the most as a pure mage:

Lord stone: +50 armor, +25% magic resistance - very nice if you find you are taking more damage than you would like to. With ebonyskin and this you can get up to 350 AR (56% damage reduction). The magic resistance is crazy good and you can with alteration (30%) + amulet enchant +20% + this +25% = 75% magic resistance that reduces ALL non physical damage prior to checking your frost/fire/shock resistance.

Atronach stone - +50 mana, +50% absorb spells, -50% mana regen. As i keep saying mana regen is the SUXOR, so the downside is not really bad at all. This is a good stone to get to make you very strong versus mages, and give you a bit larger mana pool to work with. If you out of combat magic regen is too slow, pick up the 2 perks in resto for +50% mana regen to negate this stones drawback.

Mage stone - 20% learn mage skills faster. A simple one that is good to speed up all your level advances. Ok not great.

Lover stone - 15% learn all skills faster. A better choice than the mage stone I think.

Steed stone - +100 carry weight, armor has no movement penalty. This is like getting 20 levels of stamina picks(+5 carry per pick), and that is pretty good.

AVOID AT ALL COSTS - Apprentice stone - +100% mana regen, +100% weakness to magic. Ok so the benefit is total garbage (mana regen svcks in combat!), and the weakness is over the top insane bad. Mages are one of the most deadly foes you are going to find in the game, and you want to take double damage from them?


Perks that are useful

Enchanting
Enchanter - all 5 to give you 100% bonus to enchating effects. Enchating skill level does not effect the strength of enchants so we need to perk to make 25% cost reduction fortify destruction
Insigtful enchanter - 25% more to effects when put on armor
(At this point with 4 grand gems you can now get 100% cost reduction on 4 pieces of eq, need 80 enchating to get all 6 perks)
Corpus enchanter - nice to boost health/magicka/stamina, but also needed for the final perk
Extra effect - very nice to have 2 schools for free, or to beef up your defense with some resist magic, fire, frost, and shock.

Destruction
dual casting - does 2.2 (20% bonus) damage to all spells for 2.8 times the cost when dual casted. Ok but needed for impact perk.
Impact - the list of spells above shows which spells stagger and these are important to use if you don’t want a sword in your face. Best perk in destruction tree.
Augmented fire/frost/shock - 25% more damage per perk to each damage type. This not only affects destruction spells but any thing that you produce fire/frost/shock damage with including weapon enchants. One of the few ways to increase spell damage.
Intense flames/deep freeze/disintegrate - Effects that go off when the mob is low in health. My thoughts are these are all not worth the perk. You don’t want runners, freeze/disintegrate is nice but the effect happening means they are also dead anyway.

Alteration
Dual casting – 2.2 times the duration for 2.8 times the cost. Crank up the duration on those mage armors! (does not work with dragonskin)
Mage armor x3 - if you are not going to wear armor this is very important.
dual casting - double the length of any spell with a length like your mage armors, very nice
stability- 50% more duration for any spell with a duration, effects your armors and paralyze.
magic resistance x3 - awesome perks for 30% total magic resistance, very nice
atronarch - absorb 30%. I think you have a 30% chance to negate the spell that just hit you and gain all the cost of that spell as magicka. Very nice perk, but it seems to trigger on summons that you cast so your summons don’t show up 30% of the time (but they are free because you get all the magicka back)

Conjuration
twin souls - this perk allows you to have 2 summons at once. Game breaking when used with dremora lords or dread thrall.

Restoration
regeneration - 50% more from your heals, which seems to be the only useful thing restoration can do.

Illusion
After level 50 you need to branch out and level up other skills to get any more perks because your core destruction/alteration/enchanting/conjuration are probably 100. If you are looking to branch out try doing a thief/mage for some fun. Illusion is the key school for being a thief mage. The nice thing is Illusion looks to be a VERY powerful school that lets you control the battlefield.

Silent casting – this is a required perk if you want to use any spell in combat and be able to sneak. Invisibility without this perk will cause mobs to attack you because they can hear you and just start swinging. With silent casting and a high level of sneak you can drop combat at any time just by not bumping into mobs. If you are invisible and have 100 sneak you will still alert mobs if you bump into them, don’t bump them!

Animage, kindred, hypnotic gaze, aspect of terror, rage and master of the mind, dual casting illusion – if you want to be able to use any of the calm, frenzy, fear spells at higher levels you need all of these perks. Its pretty much an all or nothing.

And people complain about weak mages....I like the time you put in thanks a lot

Better off with the resist magic enchantment, it does count towards all magic types including fire etc. Using alchemy +enchanting pots you can add +23% to all in one ench slot, not sure what % it gives without them.

Excellent guide; puts things into perspective.

One thing confuses me though, could you clarify? It's the 0 cost spells. You show fortify destruction as the path. What about the cost reduction effect on robes? How much Destruction skill do you need? 200?

Finally a good solid post on how to make the most out of playing a mage. Good stuff

I'd need a guide for svcking as a mage, actually.

the downside of wearing armor is that you lvl up with the armor skill
+ no archmage robes, and these are really nice

and if think robes from vendors may overall be better, because 20% destruction reduce + manareg is better then just the 25%
atleast for all the non destruction casts

Another skill levelling up is a good thing, the more skills levelling up the higher you will cap your characters level out at meaning more perk points.

Archmage robes are useless when doing what is mentioned in the guild, no need for magicka regen when all your main spells cost 0.

Just got 100 Conjuration.. Definately my favorite school, the Atronachs are so badass

Ahh good question. Fortify destruction actually means to lower the cost of all destruction spells by x% With maxxed out enchanting and 4 spots to put this 4 * 25% = 100% cost reduction and thus free destruction spells. Fortify restoration works the same way.

If you combine alchemy with enchanting the mana cost reduction goes up to 29%, so 3 x 29 for 87% if you still want them to cost something or free up an enchantment slot. Doesn't really seem to be a whole lot of useful ones for mages though so just as well getting it down to 0 cost.

well i just hate to lvl too fast, especially with skills i don't really need/use/perk
remember, the world lvls with you
that's even more of a problem as a mage, because you max your dmg with 75 destruction skill

even with archmage robes, my main spell cost 2 magicka (Thunderbolt), could lvl alchemy to 100 and it would be 0, but i don't want to .P (i have 0 perks in mana cost reduce in destruction except the first one)

just enchanting 100, buyed 25% more enchanting pots + archmage robes, and you are fine with the main skills + even fine with the non-mainskills
i can heal more
i can save points in alteration or conjuration, because i can cast all spells without the 50% bonus
the saved perks I put in speech, pickpocket

and archmage robes just look so much better then everything else

Some more info from other posters in the Armor thread:





So if you want your mage armor to last 180 seconds double cast it (with the perk) and get the stability perk. Less of a chance to have your passive defense drop during the fight.

A little off topic but I have a question. Possible spoiler









If you get perma summons at 100 conjuration is it then pointless takin perks such as necromancer?

The duration stuff is worthless once you get the thralls, but not while you are leveling. But the key power is the twin souls. 2 zombies are always more fun than 1.

well you want 2 summons, so you have to go atronach or necro way up
atronach way is completly useless for master summons
necro way gives atleast +100 health and you only need 2 perk points instead of 3

The perma pets at 100 you get from the quest are pretty good, the Frost Thrall and the Storm Thrall out together are beastly when you first get them. They do tend to block passageways though and become weak as you keep levelling but then all of the pets do.

Mana regen works in combat... it's just that the overall mana regen in combat is reduced by about 50%, so you don't notice the buff as much.

feels more like 10% in combat for me

Mana regen does work in combat, but either the in combat nerf is so large or its ignoring the equipment enchants that its near WORTHLESS in combat. Unless gamesas calls this a bug and fixes it only a fool would use their VERY limited enchant slots for mana regen instead of fortify destruction. Without signifigant cost reduction the high end destruction spells are gonna burn 100 - 200 mana per double cast. How much mana you got before you tank is empty and that mana bar is o so slowly creaping back up, your summons is dead and the boss is about to level you with an ebony battle axe power attack.

A fool I tell ya!

Good guide but it's still not as easy as u make it appear.

This just means you can keep putting out damage, which isn't much compared to melée.

What I want to know is where to get all the spells. I have already gotten all the spells from that merchant in Riverwood, the enchanter in Whiterun, and all the merchants in the college. And still, the only summon spells I have are familiar, flame atronach, and zombie. If you have written this guide, then you must have a buttload more spells, maybe even all the spells in the game. Can you tell us where to get the really good ones? Is invisibility even in the game? What about cure disease? Or is that just a potion now? And if so, can you make your own cure disease potions? They cost a small fortune...

You mention Restoration, Alteration, Destruction and Conjuration (and Enchantment). What about Illusion? Alchemy?

Being able to one shot any monster in the game is more along the lines of a cheat and not something I would consider much fun in the long run.

True this guide shows you how to drop the cost of spells to 0, which some may see as a cheat also, but you still need to consider battle tactics even with unlimited mana to survive most boss mobs because of the lack of destruction damage scaling.

The main reason I wrote this guide is to show others how to work around what I consider the combat mana regen bug. You dont need to worry about mana regen in combat if all your expensive spaming spells are 0 cost.

If I were to make a magic balance mod I would want to change these things:
Cap %magic cost reduction to 75%
Combat mana regen = out of combat mana regen (it should be valid to focus on this instead of cost reduction)
Each of the perks for increasing fire, frost, or shock damage go up to 20 perks each for a total of 1000% damage bonus (+50%) each perk spent.

Great guide, will be helpful.

I'm glad I read this early because now I plan on getting my destruction spells down to 0 mana cost, which also saves me valuable perk points that I would have otherwise used to Master Destruction and Conjuration (to get the half mana cost)