Also, I haven't tested it, but I think dual casting a ward *must* increase the damage absorbed, because there's nothing else it could do. If that's right then a dual cast lesser ward should be more effective than a greater ward. Of course the problem (other than the horrendous magicka cost) is that if you're using both hands for warding, you can't also use an offensive spell.

The only things that will ever bother you with no armor are archers and high level mages. Both will be able to one shot you easily if you aren't prepared. Nothing else is a big deal and it's much better to put all your points into magicka which is much more valuable to a pure caster. The higher level spells take a boatload of magicka to cast. There is gear to reduce that which helps but it's still bad without a large magicka pool to pull from. Personally I feel having low health makes the game much more challenging and fun. No way I would wear amour on my mage. It would just make the game too easy.

Sh00byD00, my Mage started out using armor. It helped in the beginning to keep her alive until she became strong enough and completed the College of Winterhold quests and became Arch-Mage...receiving the amazing Arch-Mage robes. Using plain boots (with Muffle on them), and the Stoneflesh/Ebonyflesh spells and Mage Armor perk, it's just like she's wearing armor...and I don't use Smithing either. So at first she was more Battlemage and now she's Mage.

You really can't go wrong using Alteration. I think some of our best spells are in that school of magic. Conjuration is great and helped me a lot. I use mostly fire because I found that the Shock spells jumped to my companions a bit...they started complaining. Good luck with your build!

Getting pelted by arrows in the wide open areas of the forsworn reach aint a good idea.
Wear armor. The mana regen in combat is pathetic, wearing robes doesnt do much good.

If you wear armor instead of clothes thats that much less carrying capacity you will have for loot.

I don't WANT to mage tank. Sometimes, I must, though. It takes time to set up a stoneflesh and a flame atronach. I'm not typically tanking melee damage, but rather caster damage. I tank melee damage from undead quite often if my atronach doesn't pull agro and if they are the very powerful undead. Some of those draugr's are fast and powerful, being so much so that they can 2 shot me or kill my atronach in seconds; in that case, running, healing and relying on my conjuration abilities keeps me alive. My ward has kept me alive from some pedestals with gems that shoot fireballs from them; they were 1 shotting me until I ran past them with a dual cast ward up.

My "mage tanking" isn't part of the gameplan, but a necessary evil for going Alteration/Conjuration/Destruction.

My spells from alteration and wards/heals from restoration are there for survivability, and the conjuration spells are there for relief so that I can go balls to the walls Destro on my enemies. That's the gameplan. The enchanting should help me later so I can have mana efficiency later, because I have no idea how much magicka spells will cost when I get the best of the best of them in my spellbook.

Also, do note I am playing on the 4th out of 5 difficulties, which is harder than normal.

A full set of Elven armor weighs in at 7 pounds (not including the sheild). If that is too much "loot space" taken up for you well... have fun being really squishy for your extra 7 lbs of loot I suppose.

First off, a huge thank you to all that have taken some time out to give me advice. Even though I've been playing this game for nearly a decade, i've never touched magic other than using invisibility in Oblivion, so it's all new to me. That's where it began and ended.

Does muffle work the same as the sneak perk muffled movement (noise from armour is reduced 50%) or is it the mage equivalent of Silence (sneak perk 70)? I suspect, it's more on par with muffled movement due to its description, but thought I'd double check. Also, does it work when walking or only when sneaking?

I personally don't understand the design decision behind the dual casting perk. It's almost as if they accidentally reversed the magicka usage and effectiveness. Like maybe it was actually supposed to be 2.8x effectiveness for 2.2x magicka usage instead of 2.2x effectiveness for 2.8x magicka.

For some schools (like restoration), you permanently gimp yourself by picking up the skill. It doesn't even double the effective level of turn undead like the illusion version does for illusion spells.

Illusion is the only school where it's a "must have" perk. Destruction gets seriously penalized in the damage output per magicka department. You basically have to abuse impact to make 2.8x magicka cost worth it.

Example, I'm using destruction magic without the dual casting perk. I equip firebolt in each hand. I cast two firebolts using both my hands and that sets the enemy on fire "twice". My next doublt firebolt volley will now exponentially increase in damage because there are two counters of "on fire" on the enemy due to my previous attack. 2x magicka for each cast with at least double damage in result.

You want me to spend a point of perk in order to make my spells LESS effective per magicka? I would have thought forcing both of my hands to be occupied casting a spell would result in MORE effectiveness per magicka.

Addressing the motion sickness thing..... Have you tried combat in third person? I find that if I'm in first person for awhile it starts to bother me, too. But if I switch to third, I'm ok.

Yea, this is my first character, and I sort of want my dual casting back in the restoration tree. It has its uses, as I've had times where my healing throughput BARELY kept me alive, but it's only a 10% increase in healing to dual cast. That doesn't sound very overcharged to me, especially considering the magicka cost is significant. Also, I can't figure out if wards are affected by this dual casting or note; I'd like the option to just maintain a dual-cast superpowered ward while my conjured atronachs defend me. If the dual-cast doesn't buff the ward, then I'd just have to take my weaker ward in 1 hand and set runes with my other hand.

I would still use two different healing spells in each hand since you picked up that perk. Maybe fast healing in one hand with regular healing in the other? Way more magicka efficient.

I guess I find the Master Robes of Destruction much better. 150% regen and additional 25% off on destruction spells... I have a 100 Enchant, 100 Destruction pure mage, no armor, just robes, staves and maybe daggers, and she has items equipped that I dual enchanted with Magicka increase and Magicka regen increase. She only runs out using high level spells but regens fast enough to be able to keep pressure on her targets. Probably fast enough to hit them every time humanoids recover from a knockback.

I play on Master difficulty and find that starting out at a low level svcks majorly, yet even as a level 45 with 100 in destruction, she still svcks majorly... at least the damage does. Pretty crappy that damage doesn't scale with the amount of points in Destruction OR the amount of magicka a mage has.

I also find that Midas' Magic mod on SkyrimNexus really kicks butt!

Hmm, well, I'm playing on master difficulty, with 100 health and no armor. Powerful draugr will one-shot me, so healing is irrelevant. Pretty much everything one-shots me, including traps: it's kinda bracing. I'm using a companion and an atronach, and I try to keep both of them in front of me (I resummon the atronach if it gets out of position). Occasionally I run like crazy. Some people don't like that play style: they say it's getting the game to play itself, but I'm finding it enjoyable. Whatever floats your boat really.

On another note, I sort of want the perk point back for conjuration dual-casting. Extra duration on my summons just isn't as useful as I thought it would be.

I couldn't say on this because I've never taken the perks for Sneak. I disenchanted the Muffle enchantment from some heavy boots and added them to my unarmored boots so the Alteration Mage Armor perk would work. The wiki is saying you get 50% on the Muffled Movement perk and 100% on the Silence perk. You can't beat 100%. I've never taken the Sneak perks because I was working on other skills but I get by ok and by sneaking a lot, it's reached skill level 92. I am able to sneak right in front of someone but I am found sometimes and I think it's because of light. My next character will be taking Sneak perks so I'm interested in seeing what the differences are when you get the perks.


I've never played on Master, only on Adept so I can only imagine how tough that is at the early levels. It's difficult enough on Adept for me and I think I'm ok with that because I want it to stay fun. Maybe someday I'll try that to challenge myself with it. My next character is planned as a pacifist so I think that'll be pretty challenging. No Destruction at all, mostly Illusion and Alteration...I won't be able to do every part of the game though...wish there was always a pacifist route but we'll see how that goes. I have those robes you have but always forget to switch over because things are going ok, so far enough Magicka and Magicka Regen. I use Conjuration a lot so I'm not doing the major fighting as I was early on. I can let the Dremora Lord and Argis handle things and I'm just fine with that. I haven't hit 100 skill in anything yet either but Sneak will probably get there first for my little sneaky Breton mage.

I just started up a character like this. I call her my "cheap" character, but I'm actually having fun. I'm LVL 20 or so, with 100 enchanting and 78 smithing. I decked Lydia out in improved/enchanted orcish gear and I'm wearing some improved/enchanted orcish gear myself. I'm able to cast atronachs as needed, and I kinda just sit there and alternate spamming heal on myself or Lydia. My next goal is to get Lydia to fill soul gems for me so I don't even have to bother with bound sword for the kill shot.

My only concern is I don't know where to go from this point.

-What's better permenant atranoch or permanant thrall? I'm guessing that atranoch is more reliable?
-I don't know what to do with all the extra perks. Speech? Speech seems the reasonable choice for extra perks, but with my other characters the point where gold becomes a useless, abundant commodity comes pretty quick even without the perks in speech. I'm kinda thinking archery and using bound bow, but I like the idea of Lydia filling soul gems for me.
-Alchemy? So I can maximize my conjuration/restoration enchants to get 29%, but really what would be the point? Any other reason I should level/perk alchemy? Do the weapon enchants cap at all?
-Would illusion be useful at all with a character concept like this? Alteration for any reason? I have a warrior/mage that uses alteration and an assassin that uses illusion; both schools have been useful for those concepts, but both seem a huge investment for little payout with my conjuring/healing, lazy biatch.

Go for pure mage, it's fun IMO.

Alteration, destruction, conjuration and illusion. Can throw in restoration/alchemy and some enchanting, possibly sneak (become a vamp, bonus to sneak and illusion).

If you perk illusion ASAP, get to the illusion fear perk, it will add 10 damage to all fire destro spells. So flames will do +10 damage per second, this helps at low levels.

a little update on how things are going on my first ever mage playthrough after havfing played the TES series for around 10 years.

Well for starters, some of the advice in here was invaluable, so much so, i decided to restart my mage character. Not least becasue old habits die hard, like sneaking and wanting to wear armour. So after some trial and error from the previous character, i decided to be somewhat disiplined and do away with conjoured bows and wanting to sneak when inside ruins etc. It also allowed me to know which magic schools best suited my gameplay, so have now settled on destruction, alteration, enchanting and a little bit of conjuration. any other perk points i accumulate later on, will go in speech as i feel using alchemy and the likes is too much for 1 mage to take on.

Thankyou again for all the advice you have given me and thank you for showing me it's good to mix things up. Truely a mage convert now!