In Oblivion, the spell, Fingers of the Mountain was a leveled spell. If you completed the quest, rewarding you with the spell at a high level, then it was virtually impossible to cast it, due to lack of magicka.

I was wondering if there were any such spells, weapons or armor which required a minimum amount of magicka/stamina/health to be able to equip/cast/use.

I am level 1, and getting ready to advance about 19 levels, and I want to make sure not to screw myself. I have no idea what the rest of the game holds. Spoilers welcome.

My plan is to dispense all points evenly at every level up, keeping all health, stamina, and magicka at the same number.

Is there any reason why I shouldn't do this?

Thanks so much in advance.

Don't all spells have a minimum level of magicka required to cast them? I mean, if it costs 500 magicka to use, that's the minimum amount of magicka required to use it?

As for leveled spells, I don't think so.

Yes you are right. I should have worded it correctly, saying a "very high minimum amount."

They all do, except some quest sepcific spells. The perks will reduce the cost by half. I noticed how the percentage of magicka cost reduction in enchanting is actually not applied to the base cost, but the remaining costs after perks & skill level. For example having the expert level perk and 50% fortify "school of magic" will still cost you 25% of base magicka cost to utilise the spell. Weird.

master level spells cost up to 500 magicka to cost, that amount can luckily be reduced greatly by perks (up to 50% for each tier), skill level of that particular school, and items that reduce cost ( up to 100%).

as for leveling up i would put everything into health and only sparingly add points into stamina and magicka as there are very efficient ways to mitigate low stats in either attributes.

Wow, 500 magicka? That is pretty intense.

So, the total balanced method is ill advisable, then?

With my last hybrid character I didn't plug any perks into reduction cost perks unless it got me to other perks I wanted (like Atronach). I put 20 levels into increasing my character's stamina and the rest I put into health.

Then I spent a long time using the Fortify Restoration glitch with Alchemy to try and craft Potions of Fortify Enchanting by 379%. That let's you reduce the cost of any school by 100% with a Greater Soul Gem when you have full Enchanting skill and all 5 strengthening perks. With Twin Enchantments you can get all 5 schools to cost you nothing at all.

That sounds incredibly confusing. Has this glitch been patched? I had never even heard of it until now.

No.

Getting it just right is tricky (I honestly don't know the percentage boost you need for your Alchemy to produce the potions at the right strength).

The glitch hasn't been patched yet as far as I know.

What you do is you create a Potion of Fortify Restoration, drink it, and reequip all your Fortify Alchemy gear (which will be stronger now because of the Fortify Restoration potion you drank). Then you make a new potion of Fortify Restoration, drink it, and repeat the process.

Wow, and this will make you permanently fortified I gather?

I don't know if that is something I would want to do, as it seems like too much of a god-like character attempt. Nothing against that, just not for me.

I want to put the right points into stamina, magicka and health. I'm trying to figure out the best way to go about it, as I do not specialize in any special class. I enjoy casting, melee, and stealth.

I also don't know what the late game holds, so I am a little afraid to level up.

The boost to your fortifications will last as long as you keep the items equipped. The second you take them off they'll be gone.

This is something I don't recommend until you've played through the game with a few characters. It's fun, but it's the kind of thing you want to do after you've played around a bit.

That's just the thing. Even though it's popular, I never play more than one character.

I had the same character in Oblivion for 4 years. I put my heart into that character. Same with Fallout 3.

How would it hurt me in the late game if I had a perfectly balanced magicka, stamina and health level?

Let's see... 80 levels, divided by 3. That's roughly 26-27. Not going to lie that's probably going to mess you up pretty good. Draugr Deathlords with Ebony Bows and Arrows are capable of doing over 300 damage, and they often show up in pairs, so it's very likely they'll take you out quick if you aren't careful.

That sounds ominous.

Could you help me out?

I want to be able to cast master level spells without taking magicka reducing perks unless to get to the next perk in the tree.

The only other "help" I plan to have is through use of stones. No exploits.

I enjoy using everything. Magic, melee and archery/stealth.

So what is recommended for me?

Well what schools are you most looking for using?

You're definitely going to want to max out your enchantment's strength, and get the Extra Effect Perk. With a grand soul gem you'll be able to get 25% reductions with two schools on a ring, necklace, piece of clothing, and headpiece.

Whatever schools you plan on using the most you should put on your armor and helmet. for 2.1 weight you can carry necklaces and rings that can reduce any school by 50%. Two enchanted shirts will reduce it another 25%, costing only 2 more carry weight, and the headpiece can cost as little as .5. That means besides your main equipment you can carry your free spells equipment with only 5.1 carry weight.

It is difficult to say.

All I want to do is make sure that I have enough magicka, health and stamina to not be limited in anything I should ever want to try to do later in the game.

I would not want to risk being one-hit killed, for lack of health, or over encumbered all of the time, even with the steed stone active, or too low in magicka to be able to cast the master level spells, even with a ton of heavy fortification.

I have not progressed more than 25% into the main quest, so I am really ignorant when it comes to how I will need to place magicka, health and stamina.

Before you warned against it, my first choice was to just go with a 10/10/10 ration for perfect balance.

I have been playing Bethesda games for about 8 years, so I will understand detailed instructions. I just want an optimal balanced build, having enough in anything to do just about anything without saying, "damn. I wish I had put more points into "_".

With the Steed Stone and the Extra Pockets Perk, you should be pretty good at avoiding becoming over-encumbered, unless you want to carry one of every type of weapon and three types of heavy armor.

300 Stamina tends to be pretty good for me when it comes to being able to sprint or do a lot of power attacks, but you could go lower if you wanted. I only have 300 because I didn't invest in any magicka upgrades, so that may be excessive.

Magic is going to be the main thing that's difficult to choose a good number, mostly because the regen rate is so low that I find it a hard time to use magic as my main form of combat. You're going to have to use enchanting to lower the costs a lot to make your build good.

Do you have a basic idea of how you want to spend your perks?

For perks, I had a question about that also.

I want to make sure to have every perk which gives a unique animation.

For example, the decapitation perks. I want to make sure to have all those for both one handed and two handed.

There is some confusion, however, because in the sneak tree, there is one called Backstab which says that it increases the damage, but it doesn't say whether or not you do any unique backstabbing exclusive to having that perk.

Same with fighting stance. Do you actually have a unique fighting stance from that point on?

I never really feasted on corpses very much at all in Fallout 3, but I definitely took the perk because I wanted to see my character actually crouch down and eat the corpse.

So if you could tell me all of the perks which show unique animations that would help.

The only unique animations I can think of are the decapitation ones. The Backstab perk lets you slit people's throats, but that can happen anyway, but the 15x bonus really increases the odds of doing this.

I'm not sure if the highest level perks in the Armor skills have animations, I've never bothered getting them.

This is my current build. I'm at level 81, but I haven't decided what perks to finish up my build with.

http://skyrimcalculator.com/#115267

Well, just as in Oblivion and Morrowind, you will encounter nastier critters when you level up a bit. A level 1 character roaming the wilderness will usually run into wolves and skeevers (plus a few higher level critters that are always in certain spots). A level 60 character will instead run into cave bears, spriggan matrons and a whole lot of sabrecats.

In dungeons, it isn't that conclusive. Some dungeons can hold nasty stuff, others will entertain you with pretty lowlevel critters even if you enter them as a level 60 character. So, the dungeons are more like in Morrowind than in Oblivion.

Oh yeah, and lowbie creatures won't level with you and have insane stats at your higher levels (as it was in Oblivion). Which is very good - I always found it highly unlikely that my highlevel Oblivion character would inevitably get her [censored] kicked by a goblin or somesuch.


I don't think that there's any reason not to level up in Skyrim, except if you want to make the game harder for yourself by not increasing your health/magicka/stamina and the perk points. I didn't run into anything as arbitrary as the Fingers of the Mountain stupidity in Skyrim, but into a bunch of leveled quest rewards.

Can someone tell me the level cap for leveled items?

My goal is to wait before attempting ANY quests until I exceed that level cap.

I also do not plan to enter any interior dungeons, caves, forts, etc. Whatsoever until exceeding that cap. I want to make sure to get the highest level rewards on every leveled item, as well as reaping the high level loot.

The only quest I plan to do below the cap, is the Riverwood miscellaneous quest to obtain Faendal as a follower.

Faendal's level cap is 30 (unless I am wrong). I will be emerging from Helgen cave at about level 35 having practiced on Ralof (sneak at 100, one handed and 2 handed at 100, destruction at 50).

Yes. Survivability first. Stamina + Magicka <= Health. As an illustrative example, doubling the health is equivalent to increasing armor and all resistances from 0 to 50%.

I'm not a fan of how the magic perks work in Skyrim. I don't just want a lower magicka cost. I also want all spells to level up with me. A steel sword will do a hell of a lot more damage with smithing and one-handed perks than when you first pick one up. No equivalent increases exist for spells.

The best course of action is to play a few levels through the game before you get attached to any characters so that you can get a feel for how the levelling process and perk system works. That being said, a lot will also depend on the difficulty level you play on. On novice level it won't matter what you do because you'll still be able to beat the game easily. On master level however you definitely need to plan your character carefully and decide what perks you will invest points in and what "class" your character will be and allocate health/magicka/stamina points accordingly.

The ideal mana:health:stamina ratio really depends on whether or not you'll be crafting gear to get castin costs to 0%, and which skills you'll primarily be using.

For a jack of all trades type, I would recommend something like 1:3:1 or 2:2:1 depending on how much you like magic. If you are going to be pushing crafting to the limits, 0:5:0 is best.

Some followers scale all the way to 50, and are locked once you meet them. No items are scaled past level 46, though.