Wizard playthrough?

[Bithon]

I tried it once, failed miserably so I thought someone might know a slight mod that makes it more realistic and plausable to play as a pure wizard/mage in Oblivion?

Any recommendations? Cheers

[Brandybuck]

A pure mage in Oblivion is a snap. Unlike Morrowind, you don't have to take a nap every five minutes :-)

The first trick with wizards is to realize that they are squishy. You can wear armor, but at the lower skill levels you get a significant reduction in spell efficiency. So you need to learn how to dodge and weave and keep your distance from the enemies.

Second trick is to decide on a focus. With six magic skills (plus alchemy) it's very easy to spread yourself too thin and get into an underleveled situation. So pick two magic skills to focus on, and try to keep them significantly higher than the others. Destruction or Conjuration are good choices for your primary offensive skill. Restoration should be a major skill, but due to the slowness of its leveling, it can be hard making it a focus. Vitally important, yes, but terribly slow to level. Alteration makes a good secondary focus, or perhaps Illusion if you're into sneaking.

Next, once you get into the university, which you should try to do as early as possible, make a practice spell for each school. Spells that only cast 1 or 2 magicka to cast. Once you get them, leveling becomes a snap. In fact, you could make your magic skills secondary skills and easily control your leveling because it's so easy to improve them. Destruction is harder because you need to actually use it in combat to level. But practicing on summons, or using a weak practice destruction spell on a weak enemy (ei. mudcrab) is a common tactic.

Next, learn alchemy. Unlike Morrowind, ingredients for restore magicka potions are cheap and plentiful. Flax and Steel Blue Entoloma are easy to find and collect.

The only mods I would recommend would be a fix for the Finger of the Mountain spell, and perhaps something to level Wizard's Fury as you level. A level uncapper is also worth considering, to allow your Intelligence to rise above 100, if you don't mind being ridiculously OP.

[Bithon]

Hey thanks for the awesome and elaborate response. I will definitely keep in mind what you said. I'm mostly likely going to specialize in destruction and conjuration, but will use alteration and mysticism as needed. I want to try to do a proper roleplayed playthrough, so I most likely won't be using any mods that give me significant advatange or any advantage at all. Cheers! :)

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Originally posted by Brandybuck:

Destruction is harder because you need to actually use it in combat to level.

That statement is not entirely accurate. Here is a friendly clarification FYI.

You can make a custom destruction spell that causes minimal damage to yourself or you can use a custom disintegrate spell on yourself.

[Brandybuck]

Originally posted by Omgwtfbbqkitten:

You can make a custom destruction spell that causes minimal damage to yourself or you can use a custom disintegrate spell on yourself.

Sorry, forgot that you could create self target Destruction spells. Was thinking that was Morrowind. I forgot because I tend to shy away from Destruction mages.

[CullinB]

Training Spell making Sample (Low Cost and Quick)
I create this
1)Bound Dagger [1 sec]
2)Dispel (Self) [3 pts]
3)Weakness to Fire (Self) [10:10]
In this video I create a training Destruction Spell
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqWX4loVjf4#t=5m30s

[Rithm Fluffderg]

If you're really unhappy with mage gameplay in vanilla Oblivion, though, I would suggest one of two mods: Supreme Magicka (which I favor) and Less Annoying Magic Experience (aka LAME)

One of the things Supreme Magicka does is laugh in the face of the Levitation Act and adds the spells back into the game.

It's been long enough that I've forgotten everything LAME does... but I do know that these two mods tend to be the most recommended among people who mod magic.

[Mullic Rav]

seconded on supreme magicka, and on conjuration for starting out, considering that conjuration will allow you to summon a body guard, aswell as summon armor and weapons (If you're wanting to do that aswell...), it's pretty much a good spell for self defence, without getting your hands dirty (or AS dirty...), otherwise, illusion is good for avoiding fights, or making them... even for making things easier in the marketing department, apologies, i'm a rather... enthusiastic in magic, even when playing other classes, magic is still included...

[Rithm Fluffderg]

Another thing Supreme Magicka does is increase the experience each spell gives you based on its spell cost.

Meaning a spell whose base cost is 100 will give you more experience than a spell whose base cost is 5.

However, I think one of the best features of Supreme Magicka is how modular it is - you can look into the ini file that gets placed in your folder and you can change some values to match your gaming experience.

Like for me, personally, I think Conjuration summon slots should scale 1-2-3-4-5 instead of 1-1-2-2-3 (Novice-Apprentice-Journeyman-Expert-Master)

You can even set it up so that NPCs follow different rules than you on this (which prevents being literally swarmed by Conjurer summons late-game)

[Bithon]

Alrighty, I'll give Supreme Magicka a go then. Would it break my game if I installed it on an already running save file ?

[CullinB]

Originally posted by Bithon:

Alrighty, I'll give Supreme Magicka a go then. Would it break my game if I installed it on an already running save file ?

No, I added supreme magicka after my mage get level 3 without proble.

If you use MOO, you should rewrite one script that is all.

[BondageSpider]

Just wanted to add that Alchemy is the most overpowered skill in the game, and has many uses for any character. Magic characters who have it as a class skill can quickly use it to dominate most threats in the game.

- Restore Magicka potions from relatively common ingredients once your Alchemy skill is high enough. These let you blaze away with Destruction spells that have high magicka costs, where you'd otherwise only get a few shots. Makes you less dependent on buying/finding Potions of Sorcery.
- Restore Health potions so that you don't waste too much magicka on healing.
- Shield potions to make up for the lack of armor. (Fire Shield, Frost Shield, and Shock Shield also give some protection from those elements.)
- Light, Night-Eye, and Detect Life; so that you see enemies and traps.
- Dispel to cancel out enemy Silence spells that hit you. (Does not remove those inflicted by powers or enchanted weapons/staves, so be careful.)
- Cure Poison to deal with Silence and Drain Magicka poisons.
- Cure Disease to get rid of stuff like Astral Vapors.
- Cure Paralysis so that you don't get stomped when a goblin shaman casts Debilitate on you.
- Damage Health poisons even the odds against tougher fleshy enemies like bears and mountain lions, just keep in mind that you can't poison something that lacks a bloodstream, like a zombie or atronach. Synergizes very well with Marksman, since distant enemies hit by your poisoned arrows will take damage over time as they chase you. Expert alchemists can make triple damage poisons (like Shock Damage / Fire Damage / Damage Health) that deal hundreds of damage from one dose.
- Damage Speed poisons can be used to pin an ogre or other big monster in place, for you to use as target practice for Destruction or Marksman. The effect does not wear off, so you can even chip away at them with Flare or iron arrows until dead.

It's also very easy to raise if you compulsively pick every flower and mushroom you can find, and buy all the cheap ingredients from inns and alchemists. Bang them together, keep the useful potions, sell the other potions to an alchemist, use the gold to buy more ingredients, rinse and repeat. Even my non-magic characters usually get Alchemy to 100 before any other skill. I think they made it very easy to raise, assuming that most people wouldn't bother experimenting with it that much.

[Rithm Fluffderg]

I would suggest, that if you're NOT using a mod along the lines of Oblivion XP or Realistic Leveling, you should probably keep alchemy a minor/non-class skill instead of a major/class skill.

Reason being, alchemy is one of the easiest skills to raise, so having it as a class skill will make you level too fast, while having it as a non-class skill makes it easy to get the maximum intelligence modifiers per level up.

I will say that if you're using Oblivion XP, that you only get XP for the first time you make a "new" potion. So you make one Restore Fatigue potion, you get XP, but if you just keep spamming Create, you won't make any new potions. However, if you change the name of the potion, you get more XP. This isn't worth the trouble, though... as the point of Oblivion XP is to basically do quests and kill monsters.

...Besides.

If you REALLY want to cheese Oblivion XP, the best way to do so is find a secluded location with a stealable item and just keep pressing Z on it to repeatedly grab it, thus "stealing" it and gaining XP for each theft.

(Please do not do this it ruins the experience.)

EDIT: Actually it seems like they fixed this exploit. Wonderful!