I put this in the spoiler place because.. well some people may not like hearing about this stuff before they try it themselves!

So, anyone got any fun but still useful tactics/pranks/whatever you can do with the illusion school?
(or alteration...i'm training that too)
I would very much appreciate if you gave me some!

For killing as much as you can, you might get the invisibility spell and do some sneaking perks.

This way you can kill everybody. xD

You can cast fury/frenzy on targets without anyone realizing it. Even without quiet casting. You just hit someone with it in a town and the guards climb over each other to kill him for you.

And you know those bandit forts that warn you before turning hostile? Hit the guy at the door with frenzy, he'll attack you, and you can kill him. The rest of the fort won't go hostile and you can get further in. Repeat with the next guy you meet.

Well, it's fun to use the enraging spells to make people beat the heck out of each other. I'm glad you mentioned Alteration, though. That has to have my favorite spell in it: Paralyze! I don't have Mass Paralysis yet, but it's definitely fun to paralyze one person over and over. And over... and over >.>. It's especially funny if you cast it right when someone's swinging at you. I had a giant do some sort of ninja roll when I paralyzed him when he was in the middle of a swing. It was pretty awesome.

Frenzy your enemies and go invisible is pretty much the standard tactic. You can also do the same with chickens in towns just for the lulz.

I don't really know what you mean.. You can't kill with Illusion..
But yeah, i want invisibility!

That sounds awesome!
I'll definately try that when i get Paralyze!

Pickpocket everyones weapons, give them forks poisoned with frenzy, then cast frenzy on one of them

Really? They don't notice?
Great! Do you level up from that?

Calm and pacify spells work great with destruction and backstab.

When you calm a target, it takes you out of combat so you don't have that crappy combat magicka regen, cast your destruction spells til you are almost out of magicka or your enemy gets close and cast calm again. Your magicka will be full long before calm wears off.

Calmed targets are easily snuck up on with even very little sneak skill, cast calm, go into sneak mode and wait until the eye closes stab then cast calm again, this trains up sneak rapidly. It only requires 4 perks to get assassin's blade for 30x backstab damage with dark brotherhood shrouded gloves and a dagger.

FUS RO DAH a group then immediately start casting mass paralyze while they are getting up. You can usually get it off before they start hitting you. While they are paralyzed for 15 seconds run up to them and cast firestorm.

Awesome

Illusion is a very powerful tree. Experiment with it and you will be pleased.

As said above, illusion + stealth makes for a very effective character- try invisibility and a blade against a group of bandits. As long as you have enough magica to recast invisibility you basically can throatcut everything and teleport like nightcrawler ala x-men.

OH MY. Must do. This now. Thank you.

I just obtained Invisibility. I REALLY wish I'd had it before completing the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood storylines. But I started out as a two handed sword swinger, who then found the merit of running into battle with two swords, and eventually the value of daggers and stealth. So I was really far behind in the magic game. My magicka pool is still pretty small compared to a mage, but my health pool is currently suffering the most.

For leveling Illusion, stick to Muffle. With some generic quested or bought gear with fortify illusion enchantments, you can level it up very fast, and can cast it anywhere anytime. I used that to practice my Illusion casting abilities until I just got to 75. I'll let practical use take over from practice for now. Courage cast on your companion will get you some decent progress too, but not nearly as much.

Alteration really goes well hand in hand with Illusion. The light spells are the way to level it without being in combat or having nearby enemies. Try casting Magelight at your follower or NPCs as well as on surfaces. When you finally gain access to Detect Life, the leveling becomes easy. Go to a heavily populated area, cast, and observe your surroundings. That with it's undead counterpart are very useful for someone who likes sticking to the shadows. Telekinesis has some cool potential. And of course paralyze is fun.

Illusion is so useful in so many situations. Never underestimate the value of a good Calm spell. This one time I was sneaking up to a bandit encampment, and saw a group of Thalmor Justicars walking up the path. I decided to wait it out and watch them kill each other. Sure enough, battle ensued, and one of the Thalmor even got crushed by a rock trap. But, the final Thalmor was glitched. Stuck in a hostile stance yelling threats from behind a rock, at a bandit that was out of earshot. So, after some contemplation as to how I could get them to continue their battle without being detected (the moons were out, cover was scarce), I cast a Calm spell on the Thalmor. This caused him to relax and go about his merry way.. right back toward the bandit. The bandit shot and this time the elf got up there and brought the fight to the bow wielding bandit. After that I just swept away the mess.

Fear can be useful, but nowhere near as useful as frenzy... especially in dungeons. Fear can get you into worse trouble, whereas Frenzy can turn a room full of 5 foes into 1. I haven't found much need for Courage spells in combat though. By the time a foe wants to flee, they're falling face first in the dirt. Calm can also be used in conjunction with other damage abilities to keep yourself out of harms way. Strike a blow, then calm them, rinse and repeat. Clairvoyance is rather pointless without being able to turn off compass markers frankly. It only really comes in handy when you're on a mountain that's hard to navigate due to unclimbable slopes.

I've had lots of fun with combining Frenzy and Animate spells

from the start of game. i use muffle a lot.. it helps your sneaking before its leveled for assinates. more than one enemy i use fury and watch them take their own numbers away.. when one left i use my muffle and sneak in for the kill... if i am detected and in for a fight i can use calm to stop his attack if i like, or fear them.. so many ways to play. but i find sneaking w illusion to be fun.

That's teh beauty of illusion!

First off you want to max out the tree pretty much - without all the level boosts illusion will svck in the end game as you'll be out-levelled.

Use Frenzy from a hidden position to get enemies to fight to the last man for you, then just calm the last survivor and walk right past him while you loot the bodies (maybe pickpocket him or backstab him if you must)

If you get scoped by a guard or lone individual, you may want to just calm him and he'll forget he saw you, instead of causing a big ruckus by attacking him.

Muffle is invariably useful and between muffle and invisibility you don't even NEED stealth really

When caught in a fight in a busy area (Like a dragon), you can rally the townsfolk or guards to buy additional meatshields and toughen them up a little (though this may well still get them killed... but illusion isn't really a school for people with heavy handed morality ;p )




Basiclly, with judicious application of illusion, you don't NEED combat skills, or for that matter to kill anybody. You can get them to do the dirty work for you, and jedi-mind trick whatever survives into forgetting you were even there.

Sadistic but awesome

Lots of good suggestions here. The common factor is illusion and high sneak.

One of my favorite things is sneaking into a hostile compound with a low hp/sta
character, then throwing a conjured miscellaneous atronarch in as an opener.
When everyone alerts and attacks, I throw out a chain lightening, or some
other high level destruction aoe, then invisibility. Anyone that died, gets
zombified. I'll help out here and there with a two hander until the area
is cleared.

I still laugh going into hostile areas, even after going through many
iterations and variations of that kind of assault.

OH, if you want a really risky strategy - fear a guy at the start of a dungeon so he runs deeper and alerts all his buddies. They'll swarm back towards the entrance (and you) - then start frenzying them as they arrive, so it turns into a giant clusterf... um... "brawl"

These are all intriguing. I'm at the point now where Frenzy doesn't work on 75% of the enemies I come across. Where/when can I pick up new spells? Is there an upgrade to Frenzy or do I just need to put more points into Illusion?

My Frenzy issues are always that my 'mark' won't do what I want him to do, which is march right into a group of people and start a ruckus.

i had that issue as well but i read somewhere that you if have all the animage etc perks and dual casting you can frenzy anyone. dual casting was the one i was missing so that might be the key to getting the real high level mobs.

Just dualwield the spell... It'll most likely work! It gets a lot stronger if you dualwield

If they run towards you, can't you just use Fear on them and/or Muffle + Invisibility yourself?