my main character, who've i've used for over 100 hours is a 1 handed warrior with sneak, heavy armor, and conjuration. he minors in block and smithing.
i was thinking of starting a mage character since i didn't use much magic on my first play through. any general tips you guys wanna give me? i was thinking of going light armor, maybe just robes. but majoring in destruction, conjuration, and alteration, minor in the other spell classes and maybe archery? should i go archery or 1 handed with daggers?

also any help with race pick would be appreciated. i was thinking altmer or dunmer. i never played a mage in oblivion either so i can use any tips really

I'm in the same boat. I'm escared to start a mage.

It seems to me that playing a mage would require much more UI juggling in order to pick out spells for a given situation and that, to me, is kind of a killer. I've played mostly Bow/2H characters and I can have my weapons, pots and poisons hotkeyd with only minor UI juggling to take advantage of something I have in my inventory that I can use for.just.that.situation. As a mage, however, I'm wondering just how much action pauses will I have to endure and what level of difficulty will I be up against at low levels.

Any build / tactical advice would be useful.

I played a Breton 'pure mage'. Never wore armor (robes only). Never used a weapon of any kind, didn't care for staffs either as they filled your hands so you couldn't cast. Basically burned, froze or fried anything that bothered her. So, I basically focused on Destruction and used other spells for just odd things. Light spell was nice (no more torches). Healing as needed (Can't believe there is no Cure Disease spell!).

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/imageshare/images/649591-1326477685.jpg

Could you elaborate? Why Breton? Why did you only wear robes? Why did you choose to not use staffs and only cast? When you say:


Why did you focus solely on Destruction magic?

BTW I chose Argonian to take advantage of Hit Skin - any advice there?

My first Mage in this game with 60 hrs in and 70 Destruction magic. Carry a weapon, cause your gonna need it !!! I was doing Destruction and Conjuration, with sneek and one handed weapons. I have now snagged a legendary Bow, and am milking Alea for free archery ranking, and am currently a LVL 40 there. I tossed my Master Destruction Robes for Nightingale armor, and can now use the sneek attacks with out being caught, dodged, and they actually kill the enemy. With Magic it just makes em mad, gives away your position, and they dodge your bolts like playing dodge ball. This was a very dissipointing char. I'll stick to my tanks.

Conjuration is the most useful school imo, and illusion is quite underrated.

Conjured/animated allies keeps your enemies busy to focus your magic, while frenzy/sneak is very useful for taking out large groups of enemies and calm for emergency situations.

Of course destruction is needed for damage dealing, but it's pretty underpowered on its' own.

I usually do fine without restoration and alteration.

Race is quite arbitrary, any race can make for a good spellcaster, but Bretons have a good panic-button ability for sticky situations. The lord stone is a good standing stone for mage-builds since damage resistance is always nice when you might not have the best armor and health ratings.

Lore-wise, Bretons are known for being powerful magic users. As a race in Skyrim they do get a nice magic resistance bonus and some magic skill bonuses. However, things are not like they were in prior TES games and any race can make a good mage, so just play want you want.

Destruction magic is your weapon. It's your "in your face till you die" spell of choice. http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/imageshare/images/649591-1325687752.jpg

But this depends on the play style you want. Some like to conjure creatures to fight for them. Generally you should pick one or the other as your way of offense. It would be difficult to have the perks to make both work well.

EDIT: Your other questions. Why robes? More for role-play than anything else plus there are some nice basic robes with good mage friendly bonuses on them. Staffs are nice, but generally your own spells are more powerful. Plus your magicka will refresh itself and you need filled soul gems to recharge a staff. They are a nice backup if your magicka runs low, but I don't use them unless needed (just keep one or two good ones on you just in case).

i went dark elf since i wanted to do some sneak/archery this time around and also cuz flame cloak might be nice early on.

Now flame cloak I really like !!

That was my last character. The racial Ancestors Wrath is nice but at once a day only [like all racial perks] it's hardly something you can count on in a pinch. Argonian would make a better Assassin since they get bonuses to Sneak as well as LP and PP and L.Armor.

I chose Argonian for my mage because of those exact bonus plus the Alt and Restoration bonus. I'm not sure I'm interested in going for Destruction. Seems to me if you make a destruction mage, you should pretty much focus solely on a Destruction mage to the determent of the other schools. But of course, I don't know this for a fact - which is why I'm here (:

I'm also playing a robe wearing pure mage, Level 54. I have my magicka at 450 and health at 340 and have Magicka Regeneration Rate of 250% (I refill my bar in under 10 seconds). I'm Level 100 in every school of magic (except Enchanting which is in hi 70s). I toyed with the idea of switching over to a Light Armor Mage but realized that my conjured Fire and Storm Thralls along with my follower allow me to not have to use armor for protection. My role in battle is more of a healer, and the occasional finisher when the enemy's health bar gets below 50%.

Oh God, yes.

After the lack of Spellmaking, this is the biggest drag on being a Mage. Granted. I was on a 360 controller... and so made it worse for myself than it had to be, but I think it made me even more aware of the absence of Spellmaking because the loss of combining spells was an issue I ran into many times.

Bummer.

Another reason for Breton: Their racial power spell stacks with the Atronach stone power so you can have total immnuity to magic once a day. This means Dragon priests cannot hurt you at all. This makes a huge difference, more than you might think.

I recommend spreading the love to all schools of magic. Specializing in destruction a conj. is cool but can get old. Restoration is highly underrated but works well fighting undead. Illusion is really cool for buffing followers. I prefer the altmers racial ability, and I recommend either robes plus light armor accessories or pure clothes with alt. spell armor. Don't be afraid of crafting either. Alchemy smithing and enchanting all are tons of fun if you don't grind or abuse them.

I restarted my mage character last night. Previously, I had a destro/necromage at level 32, but felt underleved in destruction (55 skill at level 32), and had dumped about half of my perk points into enchanting and alchemy. I was starting to have difficulty killing things on adept. I decided to reroll and do a better job of leveling and perking this time.

My mage is a Breton that will specialize in destruction and conjuration (necromancy only), as well as dabbling in illusion. I plan on using mainly the Fear/Frenzy side of things for illusion, for RP reasons.

I had forgotten how scary it is to have only Flames as your means of offense, and nothing for defense. Especially since the novice spells have hardly any range to them. I am wearing Light Armor for now, and plan on using only accessories to reduce casting cost. I keep magic staves as backup, though on my last mage I never used them; I rarely ran out of magic unless I was spamming Fireball (oh so fun!). I'm also playing on PC this time instead of Xbox, so the extra hotkeys help immensely, and I have a mod that increases destro damage with each rank perk taken.

I feel like although it's very tempting to utilize all the magic schools, since they each have their good points/helpful spells, for me it ended up that the more I used different types of magic, the more all of my skills svcked. And the UI navigation became more and more of a pain. So my advice is: plan a fairly tight build and stick to it.

That's exactly one of my concerns. While it's great to get a bunch of schools up to 100, you do so at the detriment of other skills. Sure the argument can easily be "that's the play-style for 'that' type of character' so there's really no arguing the point since it's up to the individuals rationale.

I enjoy smithing and enchant [and I don't spam them] so those skills are definitely going to be leveled as well as sneak and speech. I'm just wondering, knowing that, how much room there really is to make a usable conjuration / alteration / restoration? [in that order of priority] And at what level [ish] could that kind of character achieve a balance between offensive and defensive capabilities.

Im currently playing a 'hardcoe' mage, he has turned out to be the most fun character I have yet played in skyrim. I play this build with the Balanced Magic mod which makes destruction scale properly and magicka regenerate faster while in combat, as well as increasing the usefulness of certain alteration perks (like defense bonus with stoneflesh while wearing no armor). I highly reccomend using this mod for a mage character if you're on pc. It is a hard build, but one that is fun, adrenaline pumping, and difficult (especially on master!)

This is the build and how it plays (warning - I like user made restrictions for role playing) -

apprentice stone (double magicka regen, double weakness to magicka - or something to that effect)
magic resistance gear where possible (to negate the horrible effect of apprentice stone)
only collect plants for magicka potions (this makes alchemy more of a 'find the right plant' as opposed to 'pick everything you see' - basically more realistic and fun)
only wear robes
only use smithing (if atall) to make jewellery
only use enchanting (if atall) to enchant robes/clothes and jewellery

Conjuration/Alteration/Restoration sounds like it could be a lot of fun. Do you plan on using bound weapons or mainly relying on summoned tanks? If you use bound weapons, I believe they're affected by the "real" weapons' skill & perk tree, you might want to consider that. Restoration has a number of attractive spells and perks, especially for fighting undead. Using Turn Undead in conjuction with an Atronach to deal damage could make for some interesting fights!

I've done two very different mage play throughs with the common theme between the two being Alteration. You will absolutely love that school. While its primarily defensive i.e. fleshspells/mage you also have utility spells like detect life, water breathing, late game you get the best spell in the game with paralyze which let's you do whatever you like to paralyzed opponents.

My two Mages were as follows;
Altmer Alteration/Destruction only mage used the following skill sets, Alteration, Alchemy, Destruction, Enchantment, Speech, and Sneak. Once you get free casting masters was a cake walk.


Currently using a Dunmer Vampire that relies on illusion primarily that sneaks and dual wields to finish off the remainder of the mob. I use Alteration and Destruction for dragon battles. I'm RP this class and the only things really tough are Dragon battles because destruction alteration has been lagging behind illusion.

FYI: if you don't use other skills my Altmer was at lvl 46 With the following Illusion at 50 for Silent Cast, Sneak 100, Speech 100, Destruction 100, Alteration 100, Enchantment 100, Alchemy 100. Lvl 46 is very low level for all those maxed skills.

There are many ways to go with this, depending on your tolerance for dying/running away, and patience until your magic pays off.
I recommend balancing skill points at the beginning to your chosen magic school, 2H, and an armor (I always choose heavy.)
Likewise, invest in magicka and health about equally.
As you progress, concentrate more on your magic.
Personally, I do it this way to stay alive, and mix it up a bit early game.
I've only concentrated on the conjuration school, but always get some healing magic.
By a little past mid-game, I was putting almost everything into magicka and conjuration, and wearing only mage gear.
A magic casting follower like Erandur helps a mage immensely.
Some enchantment skill to soul trap and keep Erandur's staves charged was also part of the mix.
Unless you like to tinker with it, Alchemy doesn't get you much. But making health and mana is useful, so I go that far.
Same with Smithing, which I tend to more of early for armor and blades, and equipping my follower.
So many possibilities!
Just settle on a school to make strong and always keep that in mind.
You will probably be disappointed as a Mage if you spread yourself too thin on schools, and think them too weak.

No bound weapon but at the moment I'm leveling with Bow and using Dual Daggers for follow-up melee kills. Maybe unbound Bow at later levels.

I'm not familiar with the playability of any of the spells but Paralyze / Mass Paralysis in Alteration and raise/conjure/summoning capabilities of the Conjurer are all very attractive to me. I'd like to top it off with a mediocre Restoration so I can gain some extra defense. Though I will be smithing, I'm probably not going to go past Elven. Though getting to Glass is always tempting - trying to stick with Light Armor to take full advantage of Sneak.

Didnt read every reply, but to OP, I played a Bosmer archer/1h/sneak char, recent my girlfriend was over for a week and wanted to watch me play Skyrim (I know, lucky right) so she asked me to make a new character.

Thus I made a mage. Went Breton and I only use robes. Majoring Conjuration, destruction and alteration. Will minor restoration and illusion. And honestly so far (and I am sure with help from a mod balancing desruction) post level 20 its still far more fun in my opinion than warriors, and even my usual favourite sneak archer assassin.

Let me put it this way. I dont sneak any more. Before on my archer I had to sneak, with a tough enemy getting into melee range, I would go down quick, but also magic took me down fast too, I was pure offense. For example a particular dragon priest constantly handed my rear to me several times over on my first char, this one, I dropped him taking barely any damage. This char with the Breton resistance to magic and wards doesnt take as much damage, and with alteration, armor spells help, healing, conjuring help or reanimating a corpse to fight for you, slowing the melee enemy down with frost spells, the ammount of variety from your mana pool is exciting and interesting, where as on archer it was, pray for stumble or paralyze, then FUS RO DAH when enemy gets close, which is why I started to sneak attack with daggers on that char to make it more fun.

tl;dr, go for it, from a sneaky style player, I have started a mage, and I blitzkrieg around rooms with my flame atronach/zombie and companion.

I dont think playing warrior with conjuration is great idea unless you like to be immortal (imho). Because warrior with conjuration is totally unkillable vs most stuff in Skyrim. Conjured atronachs/zombies doing alot demage and NPCS almost always attacking them instead of player, so player doesnt take any demage.

Also conjured weapon have too high demage.

Most overpowered abilities in game

1) ench, smith
2) conjuration
3) 1hand+shield