So making a monster character (Smash everything beneath my boots) and I got some advice from a lot of you which was really helpful. One of those was to use the Atronach Birthsign... wow.

What am I supposed to do with this? The boost in mana is great for healing, but the no regen is brutal. Even sleeping doesn't bring it up. It seems like the extra boost to Str and End from "The Warrior" would be more helpful.

So am I doing something wrong or is it just that Atronach svcks.

Atronach is the most devisive BS imo, some love it, others hate it the rest take it on a whim some pointers..

Potions, brew as many restore macika potions as you can, look between Bruma and Chorral and the IC for blue mushrooms, and all round Skingrad for flax as they are very common ingredients and make restore magicka potions.

Boost Alchemy asap, and get all apperatus.

Way shrines and Alyied wells will refill your mana for free, so learn where they are.

Boost the Absorbtion effect to at least 80 with magical items asap.

Magical traps are a great way to recharge as long as you have 80+ absorbtion.

The MQ is a good way to get an early boost from the BS, as long as you do it early imo.

I love it but then I love playing characters with significant weaknesses.

If you aren't hunting magic-using opponents I'd suggest keeping a stock of potions on hand for emergencies. Temples are great for regen and the various magic wells can be helpful as well.

The Atronach is a wonderful sign for characters that use a small amount of magic to supplement their stealth/combat skills. This sort of character is more interested in the spell absorption as a defensive bonus - the large magicka reservoir is nice and the lack of regen keeps the character from being too overpowered.

Wait, how so?

Also Hungry Donner, Atronach is good to make the game harder??
I don't need harder, I a guy who still needs to get a character that makes it long enough to reach level 5...

I was probably the guy that suggested that. Anyway in the early game remember that you can get your life back by simply waiting 1hour. You wanted to melee, so you should be Roiding-out on Alchemy anyway. Hang with the Atronach and when your fighting conjurers, liches, and wraiths later in the game you will thank me. The spell absorbtion will be awesome at around level 15ish when the highest level enemies appear.


Atronach does not make the game harder, it makes the game diferent. It seems hard to people who are used to regaining mana, but you wanted a melee character. Just again beef up on Alchemy. ANother cool thing is that the warrior sign is just a bonus to attributes, or a head start if you will, meaning that any character can reach 100 and be the same strength wich makes the sign useless for long term. However the Atronach Absorbtion and mana boost is useful at any level, especially in the later levels.

Even at low levels of alchemy (and it levels incredibly fast anyway) you can make restore magicka potions and rip through them to regain magicka faster than a mage with 100willpower. In the long term the Atronach is an awesome investment, it just takes a little time.


OOO and another thing... You can purchase summon ghost and then attack it 3 times. Let it attack you and absorb the magicka from it, then kill it. Thats another option but Im all about ALchemy.

I had an Atronach for my first character I ever played (just through misunderstanding and incomplete description, I guess), and I found it really difficult. I thought the game was stupid because there was no regen, neither of Life nor Magicka. This character never made it through the Kvatch Gate because he ran into Clanfers which proved kind of invincible. They apparently can be overcome by Shock spell but the dilemma was that not enough Mana was available to get through all the many confrontations of the quest, even with a sack of bottles. You need Magicka not only for combat spells but also, very important, for restoring Life. So your character is kinda always looking for a bed to rest. And there is no bed in Oblivion.

It is difficult, but as people said, also interesting. Probably not good for the beginner!

No. You'll end up with 100 strength and endurance anyways, making the warrior sign a complete waste. If you're not playing a caster, then the Atronach is the most powerful sign bar none because of the 50% spell absorb. You have physical damage mitigation from your armour and the birthsign reduces casters to trivialities. You can't move two feet without tripping over either flax or steel-blue entoloma, so take advantage and brew yourself some restore magicka potions. Ayleid wells and mana wells are also helpful. Playing a character born under the Atronach takes a little getting used to, but it's well worth it.

what should i say, i am a full mage wioth atronach birth sign so...
just make a lote of potions if you are really gonna use magicka and remember where all the wayshrines and ayleid wells are and you should be ok. you could also use, map markers advanced (or something like that) which lets you add map markers with names so you can add the wayshrines and ayleid wells on your map.

you dont have to use restoration to get your life back, you can just wait 1 hour and get it all back. ... I think that gets over looked.

As far as I know you can't "wait" as long as enemies are near. So you also need other types of rescue in midst of dungeons.



.. complete waste? At least you can utilize the benefit during the long and decisive phases before you reach 100 Strength! - How long do people play, usually, and what would be their proportion of playing time before they reached Strength==100? Is there any investigation into that?

I've tried out the antronach sign a couple times (I like to make different characters and stuff) The extra magika can be nice but I guess it really depends on how you play because no mana regeneration can seem brutal at times I didn't really like how positive spells like cure disease gets absorbed. I kind of prefer the apprentice birth sign to it.

If your alchemy is low and you can't find ingredients for a restore magicka potion what I ended up doing was getting a house in that town that has the lucky lady statue that gives a blessing when you activate it. You can activate it as much as you want and there is a chance you can absorb the spell (at least it happens for me using the xbox version) worked well for me because that character didn't use his entire mana pool that often and by the time I wanted to drop inventory off at my house it was convenient to recharge at the statue.

Yes, complete waste. Strength itself is only marginally useful anyhow, even for a warrior-type. A little extra carrying capacity and marginal additional damage, that's it.

As for how long it takes to max, it's really going to depend on race and play style. Since we're talking melee types here (based on the OP's "smash everything under my boot" comment), Nord or Redguard would be reasonable assumptions for race. Both start with 50 strength, meaning you can have it maxed by level 11. Even a Bosmer, the weakest of the weak, can max strength by level 15. The benefit of starting with slightly higher endurance is equally marginal. Certainly neither is anywhere near as useful as 50% spell absorb. Not even close.

It can be a bit of a pain for a pure caster, which is why it's often recommended for non-caster builds (or those who use minimal magic). Why apprentice, though? The extra 50 magicka hardly seems worth 100% weakness to magicka.

the signs that give attribute bonuses are good only in the short to mid term phases of the game (except maybe Thief, coz of the luck thing). the only somewhat material difference is that whatever bonus to endurance u get right away results in more hit points early on.

Luck also has diminishing returns, so the Thief is no exception. Even endurance is immaterial as it works out to something ludicrous like 8 extra health.

i know, but i think luck's benefits last longer, as they'll be applied to all skills that have not yeat reached 100.

hell, i remember my first character with Thief's Sign and Luck as one of the prefered attributes - as i htought the bonus would be *added to attributes* too, even if these passed 100.

oh the first days....

Well I was morbidly afraid of negative resistances until I played around with an altmer character. After that I figured take extra damage from magic for 50% extra mana on non altmers/bretons was a decent trade off, and I got to another thought 50 extra magic for no magicka regeneration was costing me much more than 50 points in the long run.
I don't use magic that often but I do like to use a lot of it at once, antronach worked for that but not as well as regeneration would.
Plus if you roll antronach you're pretty much going to focus on absorbing spells which is inefficient compared to reflecting them back at the caster in my humble opinion.
Also I think without stunted magicka having a larger magicka pool means faster regeneration which is another perk to the apprentice.

I wasn't comparing Apprentice to Atronach, though, as they're clearly for different play styles. Apprentice gets an extra 50 magicka over Mage but at the cost of 100% weakness to magic. Doesn't seem like a good trade off to me. :shrug:

[bWell, I'm bored so I'll copy/paste what I did from a text file and add in some notes from my own experiences, I did this, but you can change it up of course.[/b]

Race: Altmer
Governing Attributes: Willpower, Intelligence
Major Skills: Destruction, Alteration, Restoration, Illusion, Heavy Armor, Alchemy, Blade
Birthsign: Atronach



**** NOTES:

Survive off of Welkynd Stones found in Ayleid Ruins, they recharge your magicka.


ANY of the following can be used to make restore magicka potions at a novice level:
* Blister Pod Cap (Shivering Isles)
* Bog Beacon Asco Cap
* Elytra Ichor (Shivering Isles)
* Flax Seeds
* Lichor
* Purgeblood Salts (plug-in)
* Steel-Blue Entoloma Cap
* Void Salts
* Withering Moon (Shivering Isles)

I personally became a vampire intentionally on this character at an early level (between 6-10), as a means to sort of minus the drawback of the Altmer not being very physically strong. I wanted to go with a battlemage character that was basically well protected with armor and could wield a blade, but who's main focus was magicka. 25 Vamupirism (so you're not even taking Sun Damage) is usually enough. It works out in your favor though for quests in which you're in dungeons. If you're having a hard time, just wait an hour or two so your vampirism can go up to 50. Again, a HUGE amount of this is very, very opinionated, kind of scattered, but it should give you some ideas.

DO NOT close ANY oblivion gates until Level 18. Look for Transcendent Sigil Stones that
can enchant Spell Absorption by 15 points. Acquire 4 of them (to later enchant on Perfect Madness Armor, giving a total Spell Absorption of 110)
The Perfect Madness Armor was a personal preference for me to have the highest defense rating possible for my character in case I decided to change something up on the fly in game (say, take off my boots for the looting boots or something, or exchange a shield for some reason or another).
DO NOT ENCHANT SIGIL STONES ON SHIELD OR A NECKLACE.

Later when you're level 25+ use the Blind Moth Prelate Glitch and get the Necklace of Swords or Amulet of Axes, and then get the Ring of the Iron Fist.
Also wait until level 25+ to do the Sins of the Father quest to get the Escutcheon of Chorrol.
You want to wait until level 25+ for these things so that they will have the maximum amount of reflect damage. If done correctly you should have 101 Reflect Damage afterward with them all equipped.

Waiting until after level 18 will make Transcendent Sigil Stones your reward (maximizing the possibility of Spell Absorption from a Sigil Stone). Sigil Stones generate at random, so save your game before either clicking on them or pressing A. If you don't like the sigil stone you got, re-load your save and try again and it will generate a different Sigil Stone.
If Done correctly, you should have a combination of 50 Spell Absorption (from your initial Atronach) + an additional 60 Spell Absorption giving you a total of 110 Spell Absorption IN CONJUNCTION with the 101 Reflect Damage as mentioned above and they should both be constant effects. The only things to damage you would be traps, falling from high up, and arrows, and of course enchanted effects of those arrows (such as poisons) which should all be pretty minimal damage once you get to level 49/50. You eat any spells cast at you, and you reflect any physical damage done from daedra or humanoid weapons (daedroth bite you and THEY take the damage for it, clannfear (sp?) scratch/headbutt you and THEY take the damage, same goes for humanoids hitting you with weapons that aren't arrows) So there's your walking Atronach-tank.

I also made it a point to wait until after I got my intelligence to 100 before reading the Oghma Infinium for further magicka boosting, but all of that is entirely up to you and if you want to push your intelligence further or not etc.

More toward the level 18+ Sigil Stones and the level 25+ effects for certain things, There's a Transcendent Sigil Stone that gives you 125 Feather, it can come in handy for quite some time. I've got two rings, a necklace, and an alternative pair of boots all with this on it in my inventory. MOST of the general crap that I'm lugging around is enchanted customized rings/necklaces. I carry 3 swords, A custom-enchanted sword (my main weapon), Duskfang/Dawnfang, and Umbra, and the Spellbreaker shield you get from the Peryite quest so I can have the possibility of switching up my equipment to have 100 Spell Reflection OR (with two rings, a necklace, and enchanted wrist irons) the possibility of 100 Chameleon, and my Staff of Paralysis that I chose (HIGHLY useful). But again that's all personal preference, you don't have to lug that crap around at all.

I've done just about everything with this character besides a few quests. I didn't do the Nirnroot quest or the quest for Arnora in Bruma, nor did I do the settlement quest in the Shivering Isles in which you're asked to bring calipers and tongs. I've done everything else with this character as it was supposed to be my one mega-character as a means for me to reach a goal of personal completionism.

Sources:
Information is gathered from various pages at: www.uesp.netAnd based on my own experiences with the X-Box 360 version of The Elder Scrolls: IV Oblivion (the only DLC I don't have is the horse armor, because I didn't have enough Microsoft Points at the time).

Actually Orc because I like blunt weapons far more than blade.

BTW ZakariusSvedlin has answered all my current and possible future questions so... you can stop bickering.

Oh, I'm sorry. Was people having a conversation bothering you?

The bickering doesn't bother, but there was no need for this thread anymore so I didn't see a point in continuing.

To be honest, the most powerful use I ever found for Atronach was a melee based Orc, although if you're smart and figure out ways of replenishing your magicka you could even play a pure mage this way. A hybrid character who can fall back on a sword at least would be strongly recommended though.

Lol I'm a warhammer wielding orc XD

1st rule of forums, choose your words wisely. You were probably being sarcastic, but because you cant inflect your voice through text, it came off as a jerky thing to say.