I just started up a Bosmer mage, i'm planning to spread my perks out between Destruction (mostly frost spells) and restoration.

Is it necessary to use alteration or conjuration? will i get 1 shot all the time without mage armor or a helper?

Also, is it viable to JUST use frost spells?

Alteration and Conjuration will help, they'll add depth as well, but by no means essential. Same goes for having a follower, but they'll help drawing the enemies attention. And yes you can use frost, but a lot of enemies are resistant to it, so it's a lot better to use a combination of the three.

Frost spells svck because half the stuff in the game resists it.

Go with either fire or lightning.

Okay, first off....

The magei s not too bad up until about level 20-30. Then you have the best spells and it only get harder. The only way to use destruction at higher levels is to get lots of magicka cost reduction gear, then machine gun spam the expert level destruction spells.

Conjuration is very useful, as a mage you normally dont have alot of health and summons let the enemies have something to fight instead of you.


Frost sorta works...but Undead resist it, and Nords (which SKyrim is full of) have a resistance to it....better to use Shock or Fire....though none are foolproof.

Destruction can still be viable for high level play, if you do it right. Impact locking (or whatever it's called), combined with low magicka costs can be really affective

Depends on what difficulty you're playing on. But I'd suggest a some sort of defence, whether that be as you said, Conjuration or Alteration. Even Illusion will suffice.A big warrior companion works just as well too.

And simply using only frost will work, although fighting ice wraiths may do little to no damage, and majority of Skyrim's creatures have a frost resistance. It'd e a getter decision to go a fire or lightning route.

edit: Slowly typing on an iPad tends to result in late, already answered questions.. huh.

Loving the answers guys thanks. The only problem with going with conjuration or a companion is that it goes against my playstyle, which is lonewolf.

Another question i have, so far im only level 4 and have only put my level up points into magicka, from now on should all my points only go into magicka or will i need some points in health eventually?

Conjuration doesn't really go against a lone wolf IMO. Maybe necromancy or permanent summons do, but I think calling in Atronachs for support is just fine.

The dead will always be happy to help...

If you want to go alone, maybe think about illusion? This gives you some crowd-control at least. If you are wearing cloth only, i Reccomend flesh spells for protection, yes. But in cloth you move very fast, so you can easly dodge pretty much everything.

I was going to go full on mage but destruction was so damned svcky at the midpoint I altered and turned him into a spellsword instead. Stupid thing is I thought it would make him weaker.

Then the 1.3 patch arrived and gave me the ghost of the Emperor from Star Wars.

I have no idea where this conjuration spell came from. Didn't see it before hand but OMFG is he a game changer. Because nothing can affect him he makes a brilliant decoy. Summon him and then hide... Let the enemy turn focus onto him and then appear and either hit the enemies with swords or spells. Works great, even on Ancient Dragons (and omg were they a shock).

I recently started my first mage in Skyrim (expert difficulty) and went with Destruction, Conjuration and Alteration... i have placed certain limits on my self such as i won't use any armour at all and no weapons except for 1 dagger which i only use to apply poisons.

I think Alteration is quite important if you plan to wear robes and avoid armour completely. Conjuration has saved my skin more times than i care to count. Not because they are powerful(only level 17 so still early) but because they make good fodder for when you start to run low on magicka and have multiple enemies attacking you.

I keep hearing about how destruction svcks once you reach high levels, so i'm unsure if i should max that out or change to something else while i still can. Yes, this is actually my first time playing a pure mage. I normally always play multiple Orc warrior characters. So hopefully my chosen path doesn't turn out to be a massive failure.

If you focus on Destruction for damage and don't use followers, you can get away with spending two points in restoration to get half cost Apprentice and Novice healing spells. Your health will probably be low enough that a couple of Fast Healing casts will restore your health completely.

You might want to use wards but I found them to be useless and even dangerous. It's better to dual- or double-cast destruction than it is to use a ward and potentially allow enemies to close with you.

Of course, this all depends on how you intend to play.

Alteration is useful if you decide not to wear armor so you can get the no armor bonus from your flesh spells. Also it has paralysis to consider. Frost is useful even to this that resist it, it slows down your enemies and drains their fatigue. I like to use conjuration to summon my atronachs and dremora lords they are useful too. With soul trap you can get souls for enchanting if you want to use that ad well. You will probably have to get some magic reduction enchantments as the magic cost for higher level spells is very high.

Probably not. This is Skyrim. The Natives are pretty resistant to cold. It's like wading into Oblivion armed only with Fires spells - you'd do damage, but not that much.

Better to have all three elements and rotate where required for different enemies...

Use all schools of magic, put all your points in Magicka, use clothing instead of armor, don't worry about weapons.

My Breton mage has only the first 5 perks in Enchanting, and when an Ancient Dragon attacks the College she stands on top of the tallest tower and nukes it. I accidentally switched from Expert to Master a few weeks ago and didn't even notice. For the first 40 levels it's a very challenging and fun character, then you become fairly godlike around level 45.

A bit off topic here, but does a ward protect you from those fireballs from the hagravens?

Yes, but wards are hard to use IMO. It's easier to use illusion magic, for me at least, or paralyze them, or distract them with a summons.

It's good to rotate between the three elements, but one cannot completely disregard frost magic. It drains enemies stamina and it slows your foes down, its useful if you know when to use it or get out of a sticky situation.

Double post

One thing to remember is you don't have to put perks into something to use it. I use Conjuration as support if I have a few guys after me, but I don't use it so often that I've ever put any points into it.

If you use primarily Destruction, you still need some way to deal with rooms where you have multiple guys who will otherwise swarm and beat you bloody. One way is Conjuraton. Another is Illusion. Another is sneak/archery to take down their numbers before they see you. But you can't just reliably walk into a room and blast everything.

Stat-wise, I go about 80/20/0 Magicka/Health/Stamina.

I'm a level 44 Altmer with high ranks in illusion, conjuration, destruction, and alteration.

No, don't specialize in frost spells. If there is only ONE destruction magic you want to specialize in, let it be lightning since an extremely small portion of enemies show any kind of resistance to it. Most enemies have frost resistance and fewer have fire resistance. Fire is also better to specialize in than frost because of the lower magicka usage and higher damage quotient.

Alteration is crucial if you want to play as a true, pure mage and not wear any armor. I highly recommend this playstyle because a master conjuration/destruction mage with a very high armor rating is ALMOST invincible in battle, but the game becomes extremely boring because you're just not afraid of anything killing you. You only get one-shotted if you have less than 200 hp with no magical resistances and armor by a small portion of enemies in the game. With ebonyflesh, mage armor perk x3, and your built in 25% resistance to magic as a Breton, you'll be a force to be reckoned with in battle.

Conjuration/Illusion are very good complements to Destruction. in fact, I recommend once you reach past level 30, you use Illusion and Conjuration as your main magic source and supplement them with Destruction as your secondary. Destruction starts to feel a little weaker past lets say... 35'ish, even with the perk augmentations. Also, Destruction without cost reductions via enchantments is a magicka gorger.

Hope that helps

You're very rarely placed in situations where you get surrounded--the only ones I can think of force you to use a companion who serves the purpose of attracting aggro.

Otherwise, you can use Destruction to abuse the horrid AI:

* casts fireball on distant spot
* enemies go 'huh, wat' and congregate around the exact area where the explosion occurred
* more explosions "occur"
* remaining enemies take a straight path to the player (unless outside, some flanking occurs which allows an easy divide-and-conquer strategy)