any hints for a pure mage on legendary dificulty?

[sables12]

does anyone have hints on how to do a pure mage with no melee on legendary dificulty?

[Brandybuck]

Pretty much the same way you do any mage. Legendary makes it harder because most of Destruction has been nerfed. Your starting Flames spell will do you little good except as a means to light oil on fire.

So... starting out you need to get some decent spells. Let Hadvar/Ralof do all of the heavy lifting to get you out of Helgen, and get to Riverwood/Whiterun to buy some decent starting spells. Fury and Familiar are your best bets. Don't worry about Oakflesh because it won't help you much on Legendary. Fury will get your enemies fighting each other, and your familiar won't be affected by legendary modifiers.

For a race, Breton is a good choice for the magic tanking ability and free Familiar, or Altmer for the bonus Magicka and free Fury. But anything will do really. Nords and Dunmer are also good for their resistances. Get the Mage Stone to level up your magic skills fast.

Next, learn how to be a mage! You need to kite, stay out of range of any melee, and constantly dodge arrows and spells. Sneak is your friend. You don't have to be a thief, but you don't want to be announcing your presence. Muffle and Invisibility will be your friends. Magic skills really do need to be perked to be of the most benefit, especially Illusion. Basic tactics are situational, but some sort of hitting the enemy with a frenzy, dropping a summons, and then running away to hide is most viable in my opinion.

And your best tactic is to get a tanky follower! The quickest to get is Sven, just give him decent armor. He'll need to be replaced though. Lydia is pretty good, but you have to defeat that first dragon to get here. Uthgerd is awesome but it will be rough winning the fistfight. If you're good at running, grabbing Erik the Slayer works too.

As a glass cannon, you're going to die if anything hits you, so in a strange sort of way, more health really doesn't help much. And Stamina does next to nothing for you. So I would improve Magicka, Health and Stamina at a 5:1:0 ratio until you get enough Magicka that you feel comfortable and then move towards a 3:1:0 ratio.

Finally, if you do want to be a Destruction mage, it is doable, but you will suck through Magicka like it's free skooma. I would steer away from the bolts and stuff, and focus on the runes and walls. If you want bolts, make a beeline towards the Impact perk.

[Rafael Freeman]

A follower is a must during the early part of the game. Some followers are free of charge, but I hired Jenassa in Whiterun.

Enchanted apparel to reduce the cost of magic is really useful later on. Invest in enchanting. Once destruction magic doesn't cost any magicka, the game becomes a lot easier.

Don't put to much points in magicka, once you have the right perks and some enchanted apparel, you'll need less magicka.

Restoration is important, look at the perks to see why.

Alchemy is very useful for all builds. It's a great way to make money (so you can buy soul gems) and potions can more than double the damage done by destruction magic. Sneak and invisibility potions are useful to avoid powerful enemies.

I would say that Nord is the best race for a magic build, simply because the power you get is very useful early on. The ability to make enemies flee has saved me a few times.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Get the Mages Stone to level magic skills faster and obtain a sleeping bonus whenever possible.

Do the quest for the Black Star as soon as possible and buy the soul trap spell.

Go to Solstheim and recruit the follower Teldryn Sero from Raven Rock, he costs 500 gold to hire so make sure you have enough. He starts out at level 10 and has good starting equipment, including Elven weapons. He is a Spellsword that also summons a Fire Atronach in battle. So you will get two helpers instead of just one. I only recommend him because he starts out at level 10, which can be really useful when you are still a low level character, so he will be strong early on when combined with his atronach, but you probably will want a better tank eventually.

Find a good magical staff. You can aquire the Eye of Melka at an early level from Blind Cliff Cave near Markarth with some skill and with the help of Teldryn Sero. Use the staff to compliment your magic spells, but be careful with it as it is strong and has an area of efect spell. Try not to kill your follower with the staff.

Use the Eye of Melka staff as a first attack weapon in combination with soul trap on your enemies. Recharge the Eye of Melka after every few kills or every kill if reasonably possible, using the Black Star. The more you recharge it the faster you can level up Enchanting.

With the Mages Stone and a sleeping bonus, recharging the Eye of Melka often will level up your Enchanting skill quickly without needing to spend time at an Enchanting Altar.

Once your Enchanting skill is high enough, Enchant any gear you have with Destruction and or Conjuration to lower spell costs. Once your spell costs are reduced enough, casting higher level spells and summons will help you do more damage.

Also if you are using the Unofficial Patches or USLEEP, you can steal a version of the Archmages Robes from the table in his quarters after completing the first quest at the College of Winterhold. The robe will help lower spell costs.

[Жора]

Originally posted by sables:

does anyone have hints on how to do a pure mage with no melee on legendary dificulty?

Alchemy is your best friend. You don't need potions on Normal difficulty. But on Legendary you'll need that extra damage.
Here is my advice. First. Purchase a land in some of the holds. And build a house with a garden and Greenhouse wing. Then you need to plant all available slots with these:
Nightshade * 5
Glowing Mushroom *3
=== and you got 15 Fortify Destruction potions.
And the rest with
Creep Cluster
Scaly Pholiota
Mora Tapinella
=== mix em together and you'll get a lot of very expensive potions to level up your Alchemy and make some gold

Also, a shield is much better than a ward spell. Wearing a shield wont level your corresponding Armor skill. Shield does not interfere with mage armor perk, so you can use both.

[provokastoras]

There is a loophole as well to help you get started. once you are able go north of whiterun to halted stream camp. Its an iron mine, that has a unique spell which you can find nowhere else in the game. Its in a book on a table after you kill the last boss there, there are tottaly 4 people in the mine and 4 outside, I had no problem though killing them in level 8 with a follower helping me. though the boss is level 12 and can 1 shot you.
The spell allows you to transmute iron ore to silver and gold, the change is perminent.
I transmute iron to gold or silver depending on the gems I have and sell them to get money for my training, if you can also do minor enchants on them you kill 3 birds with 1 stone and you ll be level 30 before you know it. you level your smithing, enchanting and train a skill of your choice.
with that spell you can even make profit by buying iron ore and selling it as finished items. you also level your persuation this way.

Also loop alchemy, gather ingredients and make potions and sell them to alchemy trainers, the vampire in the dark brotherhood is the best for this. On top you can sell her back the potions you make after training to get back your money and train again. After a certain level of alchemy you can even buy cheap ingredients and sell them back as expensive potions.

[sables12]

thanks for all the help i will definitely be using alchemy and enchanting

to be honest even as a pure mage i'm reluctant to spend points on magicka because later you get the free spell thing so maybe instead i should use a staff with gems

i'm divided between a breton for the max magical resistance with lord stone and mara's gift or a high elf with aprentice stone focusing on fury and raise dead(or conjure familiar) i never used it on novice but i heard its good on legendary

my third choice althought i'm not so compeled into chosing it is a orc with the atronach stone because of their daily power that can come handly in late game when magic starts to lag behind i would use mostly destruction and restoration in this one

i guess i gonna start as the breton simply because i like their apearance better

[Angry Squirl]

I am doing Breton pure cloth mage. I picked Breton for the magic resistance among other things. I did the Book of Love questline to get another 15 percent, so my mage has 40 percent magic resistance naked. With the daily power on, she is pretty much magic proof for 60 seconds. I use that and summoned flame atronachs to win the last part of the Black Star quest.

I agree with other posters who say you need a tank. I prefer Lydia to Uthgerd because Lydia uses a shield. The main thing i need my follower to do is not go down. I give my follower health pots. It used to be that they would only use found or bought potions, but now Lydia is using my brewed ones. Did that get fixed in vanilla, or maybe the unofficial patch? I am going to check out Omg's suggetion of Teldryn Sero. I am lvl 20 right now, so I hope he progresses to the frost atronachs.

Extra help above your follower is sometimes needed. Some people go in for conjuration, but I am planning to use the Sanguine Rose instead to save perk points for other things.

I let my follower do all my soul trapping. I just put a soul trap enchant on her sword and give her the empty gems.

[Midnight]

Two basic rules:
1)Get a follower and get them well equipped since their damage output doesn't get affected by the difficulty settings.

2) Forget about Destruction. Go for utility magic instead, so Conjuration and most importantly Illusion. Illusion requires an investment but once you get those Illusion perks you can cause utter chaos among enemy ranks.

[provokastoras]

I dont go for conjuration but I do the night to remember as soon as I hit 17. Saguine's rose gives you the second best possible summon in the game, spamable from a staf

[Brandybuck]

Originally posted by sables:

to be honest even as a pure mage i'm reluctant to spend points on magicka because later you get the free spell thing so maybe instead i should use a staff with gems

You're going to need the Magicka to get to the point where you can even think about enchanting equipment to give you free spell from a single school of magicka. But when you finally get to that point, you will be untouchable so put all your points into Stamina so you can carry around all your phat l00t.

[Angry Squirl]

My mage is speced into destro, chant, alch, and sneak. At lvl 20, chant is high enough to make four pieces of high percent destro gear, so I have speced to destro dual and impact. I can go one on one with even the highest classes of dragur, and they will definitly die, due to stagger lock. Eventually. I am using sneak enchants on hands and feet, since I cannot put fortify destro there. That, and some common sense, is usually enough to keep the bad guys off of me.

At 20, relying on destro for damage is tedious but viable. I am wondering how destro damage can be scaled up enough to be viable at lvl 40. Some damage can be gained by destro perks that I do not have yet, but not a lot. Melee and archery can boost their damage through smithing, skill enchants, and potions. Level 40 melee can get so much damage through smithing and skill enchants that potions to boost damage are just overkill. My level 40 dual wielder holds a 700 damage dagger in each hand, which makes the 15x multiplier for speced out backstab irrevelent. Destro is never going to keep up with that, but does not need too.

One ray of hope: fortify destro potions boost damage. I know the tricks to max out the enchant-alchemy loop. I am going to find out if it is enough to make destro viable at high level

[Brandybuck]

Originally posted by Angry Squirl:

At 20, relying on destro for damage is tedious but viable. I am wondering how destro damage can be scaled up enough to be viable at lvl 40.

I may sound like a broken record, but to me the point of a mage is not raw damage output. This is not an MMO. There's so much more to do than than just firing an invisible blaster. Summons are awesome, and don't get nerfed by Legendary, and Illusion with perks is OP to the max. IMHO.

[Amazing_lol™]

Use enchants to fortify destruction and healing, then grab arneils shade by doing his quests and he'll distract enemies and drain their magicka. He's the only kind of follower I roll with as a sneaky mage.

[MysticMalevolence]

Depends. Got any magic mods, or are you talking vanilla magic?

[sables12]

Originally posted by Sir Dylan the Wintery:

Depends. Got any magic mods, or are you talking vanilla magic?

yes its vanilla with no mods at all i just feel like mods kind of break the game and feel unatural

so my plan so far is

1 go straight to whiterun stables and travel to markarth than head west to get to blind cliff cave to get the staff of melka

2- head north of whiterun to the haltead stream camp to get transmute ore

3- use the loop to get money

4- buy filled gems to recharge my staff while increasing my enchanting skill

5- get the fortify destruction enchantment form the talmor corpse close to helgen

6- travel to solitude to bay a item at radiant railments with fortify resotration

7- use the smithing skills and remining gold i got from the loop to make heavy armor and a gold neckace and ring

8- enchant them to get 100% reduction on resotration and destruction

9- keep the loop to get money to build a house with a greenhouse

10- plant glowing mushrom and nightshade for destreuction potions

11- use money to level alchemy to 100

12- get ingredients to do the enchant alchemy loop and become stronger than the daedra (not hard concidering most of their relics in this game suck)

i feel like the lack of impact on staves is gonna afect my playstyle early but not having to use points on magicka makes it worthwhile in the end game