Hi, boys and girls

I have started playing as a mage again, I don't know why but they are the only characters I like playing in TES games. I guess what it is is the adaptiveness of playing as a caster, is like being a swiss army knife rather than the bowie knife.

My question today concerns, using enchanting and alchemy I am under the impression that with these skills you can forego using the casting reduction cost perks? obliviously this wont come into play till mid/late game but I want to try and make a master wizard on this play though and anywhere I can save a perk the more I will have to play with for fun things.

If you have any pointers on how to make my mage more deadly I would like to hear from you.

The issue with that strategy is you can't make decent cast cost reduction gear until your enchanting is at 50 and you get alchemy at least to 30. Even then, the ability to reduce two schools requires enchant at 100. You essentially end up playing as a warrior for 30 levels, then suddenly craft a suit and become an uber mage.

I've taken a more balanced approach. I use mostly alteration, conjuration and destrcution on my breton mage. I took the reduction alteration up to expert so I can cast the armor spells when needed, which is usually only once a fight. For destruction I took no reduction perks and enchant my gear. With an adept robe and 4 -17% enchants I can get 2/3 reduction on spells by level 20, and 50 enchant. For conjuration, I only took the first reduction perk, so far re-animate corpse and flame atronach get the job done. I will probably enchant conjuration as my 2nd reduction school. If you use illusion, I would enchant reductions for illusion and destruction first.

To support this build you need some magicka stores. I use the Atronach stone for +50, and threw 10 level ups worth of points in magicka for 250 total, and the rest in health. By level 50, I'm aiming for 300 magicka naked and 400 health.

As long as ur not on master u should be fine. I play mages on adept until I can craft gear. I would go up the middle part of the enchanting tree, and get benefactor in alchemy

That is pretty much how it has gone so far bound sword and flames is the only spells I have used, I prefer having a challenging start to the game anyway. scraping through dungeons with only a slither of health is a lot of fun. I play on adept, I could probably play on master too as Bethesda's games are not that difficult on hard just tedious.

I like to enchant at least head/neck/ring gear using the "be prepared" approach (resist fire, resist frost, resist shock), so the paths for cost reduction perks were essential to me until I could double-enchant. I invested in magica and health, and went for the steed stone right away, and used stamina regen boots early on.