What to pick?

[Šotak]

Altmer or Breton? I want to play mage with atronach birthsing so i wonder which race is better?I know altmer has 25% weakness to fire,frost and shock but also has 50 more bonus mgicka than breton and i think tahts realy useful when playing on max difficulty...and also,what is the best journeman or lower TANKY summon taht ha a lot of HP?I dont care about dmg just HP...and one last thing,do welkynd stones ever respawn?I know they dont respawn after three days like usual items but do they ever respawn??

[Col Com Dante]

On max difficulty, be a Breton. On any difficulty higher than standard, Altmer are a trap. 50% resistance to magic is powerful right from the start of the game, and a single mundane ring makes you immune to all hostile magic.

Zombies have more hp than skeletons, but if you're using the Atronach, you'll want ghosts as soon as possible so you can recharge your magicka off them. Summon, start combat with them, then just let them cast spells at you. If your helath gets low, resummon to end combat. The Breton resistance helps you not die when recharging as well.

Welkynd and Varla stones do NOT respawn. There are 696 quaranteed ones though. A better way of getting magicka back is the ghost technique above, or using an exploit involving Deepscorn Hollow to get infinite ingretients that have Restore Magicka as the primary effect. As there's no limit on how many ingrediants you can eat, just keep going until you've refilled your juice.

Hope that helps

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Thanks,it was realy helpfull :)

[Riflas]

Breton Trashs

[nonameyet]

though Altmer does have better synergy with atronach sign...Altmer+Atronach yields max possible magicka, and if you get 50 more spell absorption, the weakness drawback is nullified.
With Breton+Atronach, you have the spell resistance which is redundant with the spell absorption, then are torn between completing one but not other, as compared o a Breton mage sign who has 0 drawbacks, still high magicka, and can ignore absorption, instead naturally regenerating magicka and focusing on resistance for magic immunity.

If you're more concerned with the beginning than about build optimization, though, a Breton Atronach would be less fragile in the beginning than an Altmer, and with a greater magicka reserve than a Breton mage.
It might just feel clunky by about level 10 when you can't go through a routine battle without having to sleep in between, and when a Mage sign might be skilled enough to cast the necessary spells within their pool, then keep casting them with magicka regeneration.

[The Flying Rodent]

Another max difficulty person! Sweet, well:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=873311868

The above link is a build/game guide to my experience playing Max difficulty. Plenty of useful tips can be found there even if you don’t choose to play that particular build.

I’m guessing that you’ve already started, but if you haven’t or are planning on starting again at some stage: Breton trumps Altmer for the RANGE of defensive stats that you receive . 50% magic resist (which you can boost to 100% later on with only 1 item) and the Dragon Skin power (50% shield, or basically halved physical damage, for 60 seconds once a day) are both huge lifesavers in a world where you can die in a few well placed hits or spells.

I also don’t recommend The Atronach, but if you’re adamant on taking it then I’d probably till go Breton for their defensive stats. These will have more of an impact on play than an extra 50 Magicka from Altmer will. I’d also recommend keeping Mysticism as a minor and training it highly early on, as you can absorb your own Telekinesis spells to ‘restore’ your own Magicka (and higher Mysticism means they’ll be cheaper to cast).

For summons, I recommend these as your core. I also recommend rushing Conjuration to 50 ASAP:

- Apprentice: Skeletal Minion,
- Journeyman: Headless Zombie,
- Expert: Clannfear,
- Master: Storm Atronach.

Skeletal Minion you should receive for free if you start with Conjuration as a Major skill. All the above are primarily melee summons that hit hard and can tank reasonably well, as well as being comparatively cheap to summon. There are of course others, but I’d recommend having at least these ones.

For extra tanky summons you also have:

- Apprentice: Zombie,
- Expert: Frost Atronach,
- Master: Gloom Wraith.

If you’re worried about Welkynd stones for Magicka regen, may I suggest giving Alchemy a look in as well. This skill is trivially easy to increase: just visit lots of farms and grind lots of food into potions. Once this skill is high , you can quite easily make batches of Restore Magicka potions that effectively perform the same role as welkynd stones, but weigh a lot less.

More info on all of the above can be found in the guide. Best of luck on Max difficulty! :)