Since the beginning of my journey in Skyrim, I've played tank-style, with a trusty greatsword in both hands and the heaviest armor I could find on my body. Now I've decided I want to start playing as a mage, but I'm finding it extremely difficult. The problem is that I leveled up to level 52 using the warrior skills, so high leveled enemies spawn in dungeons, but my magic skills are still really low, so I can't get through them. I decided to do the College of Winterhold questline, but I can't even get past the second draugr encounter in Saarthal because Draugr Deathlords spawn in. Do you guys have any advice for this? Any OP spelltomes that really help out with low magic skill? Any ways to easily raise your magic skills? Thanks in advance.

You're a wizard Harry!

You could always pay for training for the first few levels. Also take the mage stone, it's going to help your magic skills level up faster. Another thing: don't try doing all the magic skills on a warrior character. For example: Alteration isn't particularly good for a level 52 warrior. And remember, Destruction is quite slow.

Have fun.

If you are at least high enough to get the

Hope this helps.

Start a new character. No way you can mold your character to a proper mage considering you need to level many skills, some slow and tedious, to even gain a level to raise your Magicka properly. Or if you want the easy way out, enchant the crap out of everything so Destruction costs zero magic.

But honestly, start a new and focused character. Gives you the best experience, a new one and a challenge. Give it a shot.

If you have dragonborn installed, you should try to find the black book that gives you back your perks and put them in other categories. Also, depending on how much gold you have, you might want to find some trainers to get a head start in your magic skills. I would keep on using your warrior skills until you trained enough with your magic. Since you're a warrior, you've probably put most of your attributes in health and stamina. Now every time you level up, put everything into magicka, and in the meantime wear hoods and amulets that increase your magicka. Oh, and one easy way I leveled up conjuration,destruction, and restoration at the same time was this: Summon a bound sword in one hand, then summon a flame atronach. Hit it with destruction spells or your sword to turn it hostile. Once you defeat it, use healing spells to regain your lost health. Repeat this and your restoration, conjuration, destruction and one-handed will increase quickly.

I don't really want to lose all my progress to this point in terms of the main questline, the side questlines I've completed, and the locations I've discovered...

Yeah, I turned on the mage stone right away I figured training might be a good idea...now off to research destruction trainers...

I've been trying to use The Daedric sword of the Vampire (25 base damage, drains health from enemies; gives it to you) in my right hand, and firebolt in my left...almost getting there

You can spam Muffle and it will boost your Illusion(?) skill quickly. Its cheating, but its a option.

Otherwise, try conjuring weapons.

To everyone telling me to start a new character: I know this sounds n00by, but on xbox, can you have multiple characters?

Yes, just don't delete all of your previous character's saves.

Yes

Don't make the same mistake as many of us though. Make multiple saves of your current character so you don't accidently overwrite it.

It's heartbreaking when it happens trust me.

I got some advice. Don't do it

Seriously though, the best peace of advice I can give you is not to make a big deal about difficulty. If you can play on master, do so. If you feel better on adept, do so. I see most people complaining that destruction is underpowered because it doesn't work as well as melee on some difficulty, but this isn't a first person shooter. The difficulty is there for adjusting your enjoyment, not to provide some kind of bigger challenge, or there'd be achievements for it. Game too easy, up it. Game too hard, down it. Simple. No one will care if you beat the MQ on legendary or something.

No such thing as cheating in a single player game, abusing the system maybe, but definitely not cheating.

@op: As said, your best bet is to start a new character, but if you must, you can try training, but given you level now, that might not have a very large impact. You can also try some lower level enemies. Think mudcrabs and such. Eventually, you'll get those skills up, but it won't be easy.

So the saves of the two characters just get mixed together in the saves screen?

yeah, the saves are not grouped by character and there is no character select, you just have to select the right save and make sure you do not accidentally save over your other characters save files.

It's very easy to save over a well-loved character that you've spent hours on.

So my advice would be to make about 3 or 4 saves of the same character to prevent this from happening.

Yes you can. What I do is take a thumb drive / flash drive / usb stick, whatever one calls them, and copy my character saves over to it. Then after I copy them, and make sure they are on the thumb drive, I delete them off the console, and clear the cache. Then start a new character. I must have at least 24 characters that I do that with. This way you still have your warrior, and you can start a mage with a save at #1 insteasd of #456 or something like that. If you get tired of the mage, just copy those save to the thumb drive, and then delete them from the hard drive, and copy your warrior back onto the hard drive. Clear the cache and your set.

The reason I copy instead of moving is because this way I can double check to make sure they are on the thumb drive, and I do not lose the save. I also play on adept.

Hope that made sense.

Okay, and I could just as easily have two thumb drives in my xbox, and on start, when it asks you to choose the storage device, just choose whichever one has the character that I want's saves on it. You could also just have the more used one on your hard drive, and a less used one on a thumb drive.

By the way. Welcome to the forums.

When on start and it asks where you want to save it choose the hard drive, not the thumb drive. This way you can keep you warrior and your mage saves separate, and it will be easier on the console.

Ok, and thanks for the welcome, you guys are great with how fast you respond and your advice I'll definitely keep coming back here.

You are most welcome.

Playing a mage is not easy, especially at low levels. If you so desire, I will pm you with some perks that I use at low levels to help you out.