Mage Character

[DMAN222]

I would like to try a mage since I haven't yet in any of my plays through Skyrim or Oblivion. That, and I need someone to be evil with since I am in love with my Crusader armor and I don't feel like visiting the wayshrines again. I guess what I am looking for is general advice on playing a mage, and how I should build my character to not level extremely fast. I'm looking mostly at conjuration, mysticism, and illusion. I'll also have a staff, do my own enchanting, and likely do some resto, since it is hard to avoid being hit. I'm also not looking for mods. Thanks!

[Rithm Fluffderg]

Each piece of armor you wear reduces your max spell effectiveness by 1%, up to a total of 5%. However, you lose more spell effectiveness the lower your armor skill is (so for example, someone with 5 heavy armor will suffer a MASSIVE loss to spell efficiency when wearing heavy armor. 50 skill, or "Journeyman", is the minimum amount of skill required to have the minimum penalty)

For the record, spell effectiveness represents the percentage of the spell's effects that actually occur when you cast. It's really not that complicated, and as long as you're wearing no armor, it's 100%, even if your fatigue is at 0.

Also, blocking and casting spells doubles your casting speed. Important to note.

You're gonna have to complete the "first" Mage's Guild quest in order to gain access to spell crafting, which is invaluable as a mage. By "first" I mean the quest to get a recommendation from each guild hall around Cyrodiil. I would recommend starting with the quest in Bruma first, as it gains you access to a unique "Open Easy Locks on Touch" spell.

Speaking of which, casting "Open" on any door, chest, or barrel, whether it's locked or not, results in Alteration experience.

Bravil is another good one to go to, as you get a Charm spell. And once you get spell making, you can make a Charm 100 pts for 1 second on Touch spell, which will get you through any encounter that requires diplomacy.

You can't delete spells in this game without a mod (or the console command? I don't know the exact commands though) so be careful of filling your spellbook up too full.

I would suggest becoming a vampire if you plan to play it a little evil. You'll be able to enchant an item that constantly restores your health faster than the sun can damage you (and the mage's guild sells filled Grand Soul Gems) and you'll also learn how to make Black Soul Gems as part of the Mage's Guild questline, which serve the same purpose and let you be more evil.

Vampirism boosts Destruction/Illusion/Mysticism, which lets you cast spells from those schools cheaper.

Dark Brotherhood is another good quest line for evil mages, though you might have some difficulties involving Whodunit due to spell damage giving NPCs a split second chance to "report their crimes" before they burn/freeze/electrocute to death, which can ruin the quest. You might want to train your Blade and Sneak for that section so you can instantly sneak attack them to death and thus spare yourself the problems... that is, if you *want* to get the special reward for that quest.

Use alchemy, but don't make it one of your major skills. You will level too damn fast if you do. Alchemy is amazing, even in Oblivion.

[DMAN222]

Thanks! And if I wanted to use clothes, would I need to use Alteration a lot for shield? Would other options include having clothes/casting spells with reflect damage and spell?

[Col Com Dante]

A breton (50% spell resistance) under the atronach (50% absorbtion) is a solid choice, though takes some getting used to. A nice side effect is being able to ignore the willpower attribute, as it's meaningless if you don't regen magicka. You can always summon a ghost to attack you to refill your magicka. Plus, with a mundane ring (lvl 25+) granting you another 50% resistance to magic, you will want to put yourself in the way of enemy spells, in case they recharge your magicka.

Yes, you will use shield all the time, it is your only line of defence against physical attacks if you intend to wear regular clothing, though summons often distract enemies.

Once you have access to spell creation, i suggest a paralyze for 1 second on target. It will cause the target of the spell to fall over, and waste time getting back up, giving you more time to hit them with poisons (weakness to element) or for your summon to get a few more hits in.

Be prepared to spend a LOT of time in the menu, you'll be changing spells all the time, as the situation demands.

The space wizard is correct, alchemy is incredible, and, if you do go atronach, collect Blackberry, Stinkhorn, Water hyacinth and Bog Beacon caps. They're the most plentiful ingredients with the restore magicka property.

The only seller of the Summon Dremora spell (Varnaro, Bruma Mages guild) is killed pretty early on, buy the spell when you do the recommendation, even if you can't cast it. And Conjuration is the fastest levelling skill in the game, so look out for accidentally levelling up.

[Rithm Fluffderg]

Also, if you don't want to spend a lot of time casting shield spells, there are some alchemical ingredients that have the shield effect. Getting your Alchemy up there and using powerful tools will give you a really powerful shield effect that lasts for a decent amount of time.

[Col Com Dante]

Originally posted by Space Wizard Zach:

Also, if you don't want to spend a lot of time casting shield spells, there are some alchemical ingredients that have the shield effect. Getting your Alchemy up there and using powerful tools will give you a really powerful shield effect that lasts for a decent amount of time.

This.

More specifically, potatoes and beef have shield as their second effect, and both have restore fatigue as their first effect. so for a mere 4 gold (or there about) you have potion that restores fatigue and shields you. Or, better yet, Flax, Venison, Potato and Ham, you restore health, fatigue and get a shield.

[Rithm Fluffderg]

Also worth noting that as a Vampire, you'll be able to get up to 20% resistance towards "Normal Weapons" (which is anything below Silver, I believe)

In practice, this won't mean much, as when you get to higher levels, even common bandits start carrying exceptional gear (which definitely does not qualify as "normal weapons") so that resistance won't mean much.

The Breton magic resistance will help you in dealing with your weakness to fire, though. As will the Atronach sign if you choose to have it.

I will warn you though, until you get a steady stock of magicka potions, that stunted magicka might cause you a few issues. Might want to use a weapon skill just in case (Blade being the ever classic option)

[__-__-__]

Normal weapons are those forged by the hands of mortals, silver being the one exception. Enchanted weapons, however, ignore the "Resist Normal Weapons" effect, no matter what the base item is, which makes them useful in fighting ghosts or any creature that resists normal weapons even if they have no charge or are worse than your main weapon.

The only weapon types not "normal" by default:
Silver
Daedric
Golden Saint
Dark Seducer
and a couple of versions of the Swords of Order

[EolSunder]

You only level up when you use your 7 main skills, so if your playing a mage that you dont' want to level up, you better not make your main skills magic, since your going to be casting a lot. You also don't want to use skills that you will use a lot in general, such as alchemy, mercentile, athletics (running), security if your going to use lockpicks instead of spells. You get the idea.

So weapon skills are good for major skills, armor skills are good, you aren't going to gain heavy armor if your not wearing heavy armor. You aren't going to gain any blade levels if you don't use swords or daggers, etc. So if you ONLY want to level when you choose, pick skills that won't level until you want.

Now another way is to level slowly, like having skills like athletics as a major skill. That way you'll actually level up eventually when your moving around enough, but it won't be super fast. You can have Athletics and Acrobatics as majors so just by playing and doing quests, etc you'll level up slowly as you just move between places.

So there are a variety of choices depending on how your going to level and how fast, and if you want to level fast, slow, or only by your choosing.

Speech and stealth are great major skills for a mage since they train up very easy when you want, and you won't level them accidently. If you aren't going with armor, then of course light armor and heavy armor add to the list. If your going to use a shield and blocking, keep blocking as a minor skill.

So now you have speech, stealth, light and heavy armor. That leaves 3 more. Since you have 4 weapon skills, if your going to use staffs probably have blade, unarmed and marksman as majors that way you won't level up if you really need to use blunt weapons in melee (if your low on magic, on magic resistant foes, what ever).

So there you are, 7 major skills that you can level up only when you want to. So when you want to level up you can just pick one of the 7 to train and after 10 levels presto, leveling time.

[__-__-__]

Conjuration can be difficult to use properly. Early game it's a great skill to focus on and can carry you a good distance, but late game it starts to suffer. This is down to the fact that the creatures you summon have static levels but the enemies don't. Early this means you are bringing an overpowered creature into a low level fight, later this means you are summoning an underpowered creature to a high level fight. It can be very discouraging when that Lich you summon, expecting a combatant that can really mix it up, gets wasted by 1-2 bandits in a few seconds.

There are a few ways around this issue. The first is what I wound up doing, replacing conjuration with illusion. The prime benefit of conjuration is that every enemy will focus on the creature you summon rather than you, giving you, as a mage, time to use other spells and greatly reducing the pressure. Later, as summons start to lose thier effectiveness, invisibility can act as a stand in. At high levels you can regen all the magicka it costs to cast an invisibility spell before the spell wears off. I accompanied my invisibility with destruction spells that did over 300-350 points of damage (I was wearing several +50 magicka enchantments and was a Breton born under the Mage, I made a few master level destruction spells that used all of my magicka to cast). Every enemy would be knocked off thier feet, likely go down to the spell itself, and even if they didn't I was invisible again before they could get up (and my magicka refilled itself completely before the invisibility wore off). This method is effective but renders conjuration obsolete.

The second is about using conjuration intelligently. If a summoned creature only lasts a few seconds, make a spell that summons that creature for only a few seconds. Pick what you summon carefully. Summon a magic using creature to counter ranged enemies, use a creature that reflects damage to counter warriors, summon a wraith if you are fighting mages. This method is all about efficiency but will require you to switch your spells around quite a bit.

The third method is one I'm not sure is actually feasible. Summon a creature, then buff it. You would need health buffs first and formost but I'm not sure what else is necessary. The problem with this is that any buffs of real power take a large amount of magicka to cast, making this perhaps the most costly method of them all (I've never tried it but any time I've tried making anything more than just a basic buff it's cost goes through the roof). This method could also be backed by curses to reduce enemy stats. While I'm pretty sure this method is extremely costly (money and magicka, don't try this method with the Atronach sign) it may be effective, and may be fun to try.

[Bob of Mage]

You can stack weakness to magic effects if they come from different spells. This is really useful since a rather cheap pair of Weakness to Magic 100% for say five seconds spells can be followed up by another cheap spell that does insane damage. Drain Health for 1 second works great for this since it is very cheap to cast.

In my lastest run I have a pair of spells with both Weakness to Magic and Drain Health (plus a super short Soul Trap) and I keep swicthing between them. Pretty much anything that you can hurt with magic dies in short order.

Also you don't have to go without any armour. 5% weaker spells is more then worth not dying to some rat in the sewers. You also get to use some of the very powerful premade armour that greatly outperforms anything you can make yourself.

In terms of race both the Breton and High Elf would be your best choices. They are the only races to start off with a boost to maxium mana (50 for Breton and 100 for High Elf). What sets them apart is that the High Elf is 25% weak to fire, ice and, shock, while the Breton resists all magic by 50%. So do you want that extra boost of mana, or do you want to play things safe? Playing a Breton also makes it very easy to be 100% immune to magic.

In trends of Birthsigns you have the choice of more mana vs drawbacks. If you know how to get around it the Atronach as suggested above is a good choice, and it also helps cover the High Elf's weaknesses. If you want to play things safe and simple just go with the Mage. You get the boost to your mana with no downside. Bretons would be better with the Mage since they take far less damage from magic, and won't have to deal with Stunned Magic.

When you do want to level up your magic remember it has to hit a valid traget. This means you can't just start fireballs off into the void. The best way to level magic is with self trageting spells with the weakest effect you can manage (Drain Health 1 point for one second for example).

[Daddy Kermit]

You could always go with building a custom class.

I don't know how it would work for playing mage, but the way I've built my character (A marksman/theif hybrid) works amazingly well.

Oh and on the topic of building spells, Frostcrag Spire (If you have the DLC) is another way to build your own spells. Having Deepscorn Hollow as a house will also work good since there's plenty of ingredients for making damaging poisions/potions in the lobby(?) of the cave.

[DMAN222]

Thanks again all. I do have the DLC, so that will work great. I'm not sure I want to build a custom class again, I really screwed up the first time. Worth a shot though. I know there used to be a website that would basically walk you all the way through leveling your character perfectly, but it is shut down now.

[Broski]

Play a battle mage, they're easy to play and are a bit op

[Rithm Fluffderg]

Originally posted by Bonk Faggt:

Play a battle mage, they're easy to play and are a bit op

Spellswords are a little easier because they have Restoration and an armor skill, and restoration is one skill that's stupidly aggravating to increase due to having such a low exp-per-cast multiplier compared to other magic skills.

[Bob of Mage]

Originally posted by Space Wizard Zach:

Originally posted by Bonk Faggt:

Play a battle mage, they're easy to play and are a bit op

Spellswords are a little easier because they have Restoration and an armor skill, and restoration is one skill that's stupidly aggravating to increase due to having such a low exp-per-cast multiplier compared to other magic skills.

Or better yet don't use any of the pre-made classes and build your own.