Last night my character reached 88 in Destruction. Whereas before I've always had to heavily prop up Destruction with alchemy, that's no longer the case. My character can all of a sudden cast Icy Spear with what amounts to zero reduction costs. IOW, the blue bar actually goes all the way back to 100% before the missile reaches the target. I can dual cast the spell and keep a Draugr Deathlord staggered almost to the point where he's dead. I did have to bust out the battleaxe to finish a couple of them off but that was just mop up: I was never in any danger from them. The same goes for Dremora Lords. They're so slowed down by the spell they do well to get one good shot at me. They're still tougher than the Deathlords but not by a lot.

I do have ebony gauntlets that reduce the cost of Destruction casting by 18% but that doesn't seem to explain this sudden turnaround. I kept checking to make sure I wasn't casting Ice Spike and I wasn't. I also checked my game settings to see if for some reason the difficulty level had somehow reset itself to a lesser difficutly; but it's still Master.

Not only that, but my Restoration cast for Close Wounds is zero and I have no enchantments for Restoration.

I'm not complaining. This is great. Up until now I've had to augment Destruction heavily with alchemy. So what suddenly happened?

There is an effect you get from completing a quest for the Mage College that grossly increases your magicka regeneration cost, as well as increasing even while you're casting spells. The effect only lasts for a few hours, though, so enjoy it while you can.

Oh.

Was that the Conjuration Ritual Spell quest? Because that's what I did. And now that I remember, I didn't have unlimited magicka when taking down those dremora... It was just the quest afterward. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted. Back to the alchemy table and my complaints of Destruction being grossly underpowered.

Besides, the Twin Souls perk I picked up during that quest will more than make up for it.

If you want infinite magicka then you could always use the restoration glitch to make a ring that fortifies your magicka or magicka regeneration sky high.

Yeah, but I don't like doing stuff like that. I'd rather "earn" it, if that makes sense. I was feeling good about this one because I'd thought I'd crossed some kind of threshold and that my dedication to using [underpowered] Destruction had finally paid off.

The quest he's refering too is the one where one of the teachers gives you a special glove and asks you to check the mana pools around the school, after you touch then there's a chance some of then will give you really great buffs, like cost reduction more mana and super high mana regen. Take that chance to increase your skill in some magic schools.

Yes! That's the one. I did that yesterday as well. I'll enjoy it as long as it lasts. I wish I would have known about it sooner. I would have headed straight to Skuldafin. I can go right now, I was just waiting to level up a smithing skill beforehand.