I rolled a breton mage and have been playing him for about an hour.

The problem, is after one enemy my magicka is completely gone. Gods forbid I fight more than one bandit.

Do they get better later in the game? I've heard of how mages get roflstomped by nearly everything later in the game, is that true?

Yes....your magic regen can get better with proper enchants but unless you use exploits your mage will eventually be alot weaker then other classes at the same level the higher you get. I use robes in true mage style so I get rocked by most enemies and I'm lvl 30, it's challenging but frustrating that my destruction spells are getting weaker as my enemies grow stronger...I've had to resort to using 1h and archery to compensate for the destruction being broken (it doesn't lvl up with you as does every other skill).

I've noticed how certain enemies I encounter are near impossible with my mage but are a breeze with my 2h warrior nord of the same lvl....fact is the mage is a 2nd class citizen to the warrior in skyrim.

It depends what other skills you develop and the spells you usually employ. Personally having seen what you can get upto when enchanting custom items then i'd say mages stack up just as well, if not better than any other class.

You almost have to exploit smithing and/or enchanting in Skyrim to be a ''good'' mage... Sure you'll get more mana but the spells doesn't level with you
And the master spells svck!

It depends on how you play and how you build your mage.

At early levels, mana will be an issue but as you level up a bit it will become slightly less of a problem as you aquire spell cost reduction gear.
At later levels some enemies will have a huge amount of hp and your Destruction spells will not seem to do much damage against them.

I found that later levels can be quite fun if you have the Conjuration school too because you get more firepower and an extra tank or two.
At later conjuration levels you will be able to Summon Dremora lords which are arguably overpowered, they destroy easy and medium enemies and can deal a lot of damage to more powerful adversaries.

To really get the most of the mage you probably need to find the strengths/weaknesses of each school and choose the ones that suit your playstyle.

BTW. My Mage is level 53 and only wears two pieces of spell reduction equipment (my choice) because 100% would feel like an exploit.
She is also fully decked out in cloth with a circlet on her head, so she is always facing danger from heavy melee or bow attacks but thats what makes this game fun for me.

I have found that mages are annoying to play with the crappy UI - too much swapping around needed to be really good.

Flame Removed

I recommend rolling an Altmer, the +50 magicka comes extremely handy. Why bother with magic resistance, when everyone is dead by the time they see you?

oh and Buck, just hotkey your spells. make all the spells you want to use favorites and then press 'q' then highlight the spells and press 1-9 to set hotkey. easy swapping

Not everyone plays on the PC.


And I do know how to play the game, I was just asking for other peoples experiences.
I'd rather not spend another 50+ hours on a character thats going to be horrible.

Some people view -100% reduction to a single school, or even 2 schools, to be an exploit with enchantment. I dont. Without alchemy/enchant feedback weirdness, just by normal means, you can get -25% on a slot, and there are 4 slots it can go on. The design was clearly deliberate. Its a tradeoff though. By doing that, you have less opportunity for other item enchants.

Anyway, all the magic is kinda stupid in terms of balance. At low levels it is fine but the higher you go the crazier the costs get. Even if you reduce destruction or alteration to zero cost, non-smithed armor and weapons do as well or better with no mana cost, and if you smith or enchant armor and/or weapons, magic falls way behind. You can still get by, its just inefficient compared to non-magic options, even when comparing free cast destruction and dremora lord stuff.

So, play, enjoy, and try some enchanting or lean on summons a bit more to save mana.

I am lvl 55 mage, robes only. Never had trouble. Never felt under powered. The first 5 or 10 levels were tricky but I was still learning. Not under powered in any way shape or form. In fact, at lvl 55 I have become very powerful. Battles are quick and decisive in my favor. The only time I get killed is when I thought all the bad guys were dead but some high level two hander pops out of nowhere after my Dragonhide expires. I love my mage!

Conjuration is easily the most overpowered of the schools in the game. I tried to do a destruction focus school but found conjuration to be much easier to roll with. You combine summon atronoch/daedra with summon bow and have competent archery skills? you are essentially unstoppable.

Some tips that I think might help though not everyone may agree.

Choose more than one school of magic to give your character flexibility. Choosing destruction then outfitting with 100% reduction gear might sound good but it will more or less restrict you to only using that school because other spells will be too expensive, especially if you haven't been putting much into mana due to the free fireballs.

Alchemy will help a lot, being able to constantly manufacture, mana, health and spell boosting potions will keep you well supplied.

Enchanting is also good because you can configure your gear the way you want it, though you can find or buy gear that is just fine which makes this more optional than necessary.

My Breton mage is level 36 and still pwning at this point. I had to bump the difficulty up to Master to keep it interesting. But I don't rely on Destruction exclusively--pair it with conjuration and you're cooking with fire. I love casting Dremora lords at a distance. "A challenger!"

ClarkIR,

Yes, conjuration is the most powerful. Though in my opinion, the atrohachs are fairly weak. At level 50+, bandits 2-shot mine. But the dremora lords have staying power. And bound weapons are great. So yeah, most powerful school. But not overpowered, esp compared to what melee and bow builds can do with the right gear and perk plans.

But thats just based on my experience and preference.

The easiest way to save your magicka pool from constant depletion is to wear multiple pieces of clothing / armor with destruction fortification enchantments. I *believe* that you can legitimately achieve zero magicka cost without pushing your skills past one-hundred. You will, however, need 100 in Enchanting for dual enchantments.

And in case it crosses your mind, Fortify Destro > Fortify Magicka

Level 62 cloth wearing mage here.

I get my ass destroyed if I stumble into a fight like an idiot. Tactics are essential.

Unlike a lot of mages I didn't invest all of my points in magicka, so I don't die instantly unless I get hit by a daedric arrow from an ebony bow... which is frequent at level 62

If I use dragonhide and a fortify health before a battle then not even arrows come close to 1-hitting me, can take 3+, same as a heavy armor warrior without a shield.

Illusion and Alteration just keep getting more overpowered as you level up.

Destruction stays powerful enough. When you just need to kill things extremely fast you can chug a fortify destruction potion, or even higher with both a potion and a poison. I took down Alduin at level 62 in like 5 seconds this way.

Mages are only inferior if you think planning and preparation are too inconvenient for you. Just keep in mind that a lot of the difficulty complaints are coming from melee characters that many mages aren't having problems with.

I am speaking for where I am at with my character, which is mid-30's. but I have stopped using atronachs unless I need ranged attacks. The daedras do most of my dirty work.

Level 50 mage on pc, I use a hot key script that allows me to use up to 18 hotkeys. I am a cloth only no armor mage playing on expert. Using a combination of paralyze/calm/frenzy/dremera lord/bound sword/icy spear/incinerate/chain lightning/detect life/detect undead/invisibility/and all the runes, I rarely find an encounter that worries me.

In my opinion to many mages focus on one or two disciplines, instead of using all the disciplines, also having 18 hot keys (24 would be optimum) is a must.

Basically I am never surprised using detect, set traps easily and always get the first attack. I can choose how and when to attack since I already know the exact nature of the fight using the non combat skills.

Mages are easily OP when played right, my 19 yr old son with his uber warrior hates how easily I tear up encounters compared to his XBOX warrior.

Mages are really for those who go a tad slower and are a little more creative and patient in their game play, when those elements are brought together mages pwn.

Using more than 1 or 2 disciplines AND having the added hot keys makes all the difference. I play Skyrim more like an FPS thanks to the added hot keys and it makes the game a great deal more enjoyable as a mage, without them forget it.

Only people with no skill have trouble with mages. A well played mage with appropriate gear can easily walk through any encounter in the late game. You don't need to go with the easy button and reduce destruction spells to 0 magicka cost either.

Playing on master difficutly, my 56 mage has no problems and has had no problems along the way up to level 56. I have 0 armor rating. I don't cast alteration spells for protection. I don't use any summons. I don't use any followers. I kill using only destruction. I have enough lower destruction cost, enough magicka regen, enough total magicka to kill 2 death lords at once with one dump of my magicka bar. There's no need to lower the cost any more than that.

If you are skilled with movement and aiming and have no trouble dodging incoming damage then you will be fine with this setup. If not, then you can use alteration, or a summons, or followers or wear armor. All of which will make it even easier.

Sadly there's a bunch of no skill people who keep flooding the forums with posts crying about how mages svck. They just can't accept the fact that it's them who svck and they should be lowering the difficulty to better suit their limited abilities.

illusion is powerful but requires lots of perks to make it useful. The master level spells are mostly worthless. You have to dual-cast the lower level spells instead. Get your enemies to fight each other for you... combined with conjuration very powerful, although better with exploiting enchanting and using heavy armor.

The most annoying thing about magic is sitting there waiting for the higher level spells to charge up, and if you're not on the PC, just equipping the spells would be a pain, when a sword and board character heavily enchanted with the spellbreaker can have the same power with a lot more 'ease of use' built in... easy enough on the PC to swap out a shield and quickly cast a dremora lord however using hotkeys, and hotkeying alchemy potions as well.

I may ditch the illusion.. pointless and not needed. Just adds variety, but dremora lords running around is entertaining enough for me. However at level 46, still plenty of perk points left that I won't know where to put, so meh. The 'call to arms' spell is fun to use to knock stuff off of entire buildings without anyone reacting, and it also works on summoned dremoras to make them do more damage... adds to being a God with style, the illusion school does..

Got the lvl 18 with my high Elf mage and gave up. I spent more time going up and down the favourites list, kiting, hiding and waiting until my conjures killed things. I didn't enjoy it. Playing a 1 handed warrior now is more fun for me, less swapping, more blood and gore. It wasn't that my mage was rubbish it was a game style that I didn't like.

Conjuration is superior Kung Fu. The funnest thing I have started doing is using the perk for summoning 2 at a time. I actually use the Dead Thrall spell and use 2 dead master conjurers, and a follower that is a conjurer. Now, when the fighting starts I have a 7 fighters on my team!!!! My follower summons, and each of my Dead Thralls summon. Hehe. Sometimes the fight is over before I get myself fired up!

But, I was lvl 54 before I figured this out. Pretty cool at that point.

I dislike the phrase"exploiting enchanting". This is an in-game mechanic. If you learn to do it yourself, it is a spectacular "find". If you read about it ahead of time and go for it early, it is still valid, although it may feel more like exploiting, but I still think it isn't because it is an intentional in-game mechanic. The typical person isn't going to know it is possible until they have enchanting high enough to see 25% as even possible. By then you are well into the game and will have earned this find, in my opinion. But we all know about opinions...