I'm starting my first mage.
I will be focusing on conjuration(for reanimating),destruction,alteration,restoration and enchanting.
I will be perking heavily in those skills and don't have very many perks left for anything else.
Any tips?
Do I need alchemy or not,cause like I said I won't have very many perks left for it.
I'm planning on mostly being a Necromancer,useing destruction to kill my first enemy then reanimating them to kill the rest.
Also I like to roleplay if that makes any differance,like no exploits or anything that doesn't fit a character.

I really don't have any tips because I had trouble starting out as a mage..sorry.. but I would like to know what race you are?

I chose Breton,it seems like a good choice for a Necromancer type character.

The altmer special ability I used more than the Breton special. You run out of magicka often as a mage, in the early states, and Altermer's regen skill will fill up your magicka bar quickly in combat.

I've actually never found alchemy to be very useful. Others may disagree. I've never leveled it on any of my toons.

Enchanting has never been useful for my mages. Really, Enchanting seemed like a warrior thing. Of course, I've never played a mage without Illusion. On master level. Don't know how that'll work. 100 health and 100 stamina, wearing robes and no armor...WITHOUT illusion. But it's something to try. Could be fun.

No armor I will be relying on the mage armor perks.
Also I thought enchanting would be good to enchant magicka regen items and mostly just for a roleplay hobby.
I thought about illusion in place of destruction but I just can't see how it would work.

I have just started my own robe wearing mage. I am concentrating on Destruction, alteration, conjuration and restoration. My one bit of advice to you would be to play through the college of winterhold quest line first as this will gain you good gear at the end!

I've had several attempts at playing a pure mage and I continue to have trouble. My latest was focusing on similar to what you have, but include illusion. It is a perk heavy character to play as I don't grind out enchanting to get dual -cost reduction for free spells. Right now at level 21 I have only one perk in destruction and the rest in Illusion, Alteration, Conjuration (atronach branch though I really liked necro branch on another character), and enchanting. So for the most part my summons do most of the work, but it can be slow going.

Good luck and let us know how it is working.

I found alchemy to be invaluable, but maybe that's just me.

I did my only playthrough as a Breton, concentrating on conjuration.
Added some heavy armor until I realized I'd nearly always be wearing mage robes for mana regen.
Also pumped 2-handed,
Some alchemy, but was really only useful for health and mana.
The 2-handed and heavy armor were useful early game, but it seems armor was generally weak, and you might forego that.

I always had Erandur with me except a few quests where he's not available.
When you can conjure 2 dremora lords at once and have Erandur you really don't have to do any fighting yourself anymore.
With mana regen robe and other mana regen jewelry you can keep 2 dremora lords active without hardly ever popping a mana potion.
Keep that in mind if you really like to swing a sword or use destruction magic.

In the end, doing the above made the game pretty unbalanced for me.
My conjuration was just too powerful, and there was little challenge.
Don't get me wrong. I like *not* getting killed. And I like using what's offered by the game to my advantage.
But the game lost most of its "tension" for me. Not my fault. I just used what's offered.

Thanks for that Vic99.
I was planning on going up the necromancy side of conjuration,so no dremora lords,but it's good to know that I won't be needing alchemy that much.

Be careful with that and scope it out before you get too deep into that side of conjuration.
I don't recall doing necromancy, but I gave Erandur a couple reanimation staffs and kept them charged for him,
What he brought alive never seemed to be much help.
Might be a difficult way to go.

Yeah so far they haven't done much good.
Basically I kill enemy with destruction,reanimate there corpse and watch my corpse get owned while I heal.
I might decide to go the other way with conjuration.

My Advice? Ignore as many of the spell cost reduction perks as you can and put 8 points into Enchanting to get free casting in two schools of magic. While you are working your way up to maximizing enchant, use potions to supplement you magicka to off set for not having taken the spell cost reduction perks. There are 25 spell cost reduction perks in the game, so if you can forego most of them, then you have a lot of perks to put elsewhere. Obviously, you will need some to get up the tree, but be very careful about not taking too many. Once you reach 100 enchant and can make free casting gear, those spell cost reduction perks are somewhat meaningless.

If you like playing a necromancer, keep a lookout for a good necromancy staff. I have read that when raising a corpse with a staff, it will

I felt this way too, until my mage fairly high level and I saw that the higher level destruction spells cost an insane amount of magicka. Most of the master spells in this game you cannot even cast without enchanted spell cost reduction gear, no matter how many points you put into magicka and spell cost reduction perks. So, I have now come to believe that enchanting is essential for a mage and you can trade the 8 points of enchant for 8 points of spell cost reduction in two schools and be even points wise.

Of course, the mana inneficiency at high level problem is worse for destuction, where you need to repeatedly cast spells during combat, than it is for other schools, like conjuration, where you cast a master level spell once outside of combat and then have your thralls follow you into combat. So, if you had a mage that focused more on conjuration or illusion, you might not need enchanting as much. But for a destruction mage it is pretty much essential, unless you want to impact stagger with a low level spell all day. But that gets boring fast.

It's great to know that you've decided to join us Mages! Welcome!

I'll leave you with just a few bits of advice that I've personally found useful when playing my own Mage in the hopes that maybe one day it'll help you. (It's pretty basic.)

1. Make sure you're aware of your surroundings while in combat. Nothing will spoil your day more than getting stuck between a rock and a hard place when you've got a Bandit Chieftain or a Troll breathing down your neck. Mage Armor is nice, but it won't hold up long in sustained combat!
2. Try to save a little bit of Magicka for the later stages of combat. You don't want to rush in headstrong and drain your magicka with those lovely destruction spells, only to find out you've run dry and you need a quick summon to distract and preoccupy the enemy!
3. Be careful with your summons. I understand that you're going for a Necromancer type character, but if you ever decide to use Atronachs for any reason, be warned that they might block your path if you summon them within the confines of a tightly cramped cave system. Many a time I have faced my doom after my back-up plan backfired, leaving me smeared across the front of my Frost Atronach like a bug on windshield.

Good luck with the Mage!

Here is a following build idea -

Breton
Atronach or Lord Stone

http://www.ign.com/builds/the-elder-scrolls-5-skyrim?d=00000000000000000010000000001111000111100000001202020000001111100000000111131011035000111000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000510001

Use Alchemy and Enchanting to make almost 4 schools free to cast. 2 schools can easily be free to cast. One WILL be Destruction. You WILL want Alchemy to boost Destruction damage.

I found necromancy fun. You just have to be selective with what you reanimate. Just don't go raising the first Draugr you kill. Raise the Restless Draugr early on. Later on, having a Draugr Wight is worthwhile in those dungeons. Reanimate a mage bandit or higher tiered bandit to help out.

If you just reanimate the first thing you kill you might not be too happy. At least raise them to help take out the higher level enemies and then raise those higher level guys.


Also, if you plan on taking the Atronach stone or the Alteration perks that give absorbtion you will have trouble with summons but not necromancy.

I think you should get alterations perks that give armor and magic resistance quickly, mainly if you're playing in master difficulty. In my actual mage, I spent points in mana/health; 3/1, so i put 3 in mana, then 1 in health. Its working fine until now, i'm lvl 20, i can handle some enemy's hits. Im just saying this cause my last mage didnt have either alteration neither some points in health, i died too much.
About destruction, the gameplay gets much more fun if you drop dual-cast and combine spells, like, against a melle (frost+fire), against a mage (shock+shock until end of mana, then shock+frost so it cant reach you). That impact perk is boring, i dont use it anymore.

Good luck!

Or, you could just wear armor. I don't like they way they did the mage armor/armor thing in Skyrim, since the maximum protection you can get with the mage armor spells and 3 points in the mage armor perk is no where near what you can get with real armor. The armor cap is 567, but that includes a hidden 100, so the real cap is 667. Mage armor only gives you 300 max which is less than half the cap and does not really provide all that much protection. Mage armor is great for roleplaying, but real armor seems better from a game mechanical perspective. If you go with light armor, you can put those same 3 perks into making it weightless. Unlike prior games, there is no magic penalty for wearing armor in SKyrim (other than that the reletively weak mage armor perks don't work).

Thanks for the great advice everybody,I will definately have to look into that enchanting a bit more.
What do you all mean when you say that I can cast free spells with enchanting?

You can create four pieces of spell cost reduction gear at 25% cost reduction (or greater if you use alchemy to boost enchant) for each piece and wearing these, spells do not cost any magicka to cast. With the dual enchant perk, you can do this with two schools of magick. You can also tweak the numbers in a variety of ways to get a variety of low cost mana options, like spells cost 5% mana, if you think free casting is too cheap.

Awesome,free destruction and conjuration sounds great.
Maybe a little over kill though so I might do the 5 or 10% idea.

Best way to do that I have heard is to wear a set of magicka reducing robes. and combine that with three pieces of other magicka reducing gear.

Alchemy was useful initially for my mage but I now find more potions than needed so it has been left behind. Breton, plus Lord stone makes for a nice mage base build.