Having beaten the game as an argonian ranger, I am considering starting a new one as a spellcaster of some sort. (A stealth character is another possibility.) I seem to recall that, when I wasn't playing a sorcerer (and blasting away with fireballs at point blank range), I spent a lot of time either doing the push/whack fighting technique (where I hit the enemy with a staff, then follow up by pushing them away with a low cost area around caster spell), or SLEEPING in the dungeons (to restore magic). Do you guys have any advice on playing a mage, how you make the most of you magic?

There was a thread about this just a month ago with plenty of hints. I would recommend the usual. Have at least a blade skill and pickup the daedric tanto from chargen. Create your own spells as soon as you can. Make them inexpensive and weak and cast them repeatedly with the C (cast again) key. Don't use only the basic and more practical spells and try to find a good use for all spells available.

learn the potion maker, and learn the ingredients to make restore magicka potions.

I never use magic for offensive purposes; it just never works out. Maybe at higher levels when your casting is more efficient. Always seems like it takes too many spell to kill something, or they resist them too often. Sometimes I'll amuse myself with an entire-magicka-pool-blowing disintegration spell, but fireballs are just out.

Maybe that changes at higher level, I don't know. I've never managed to actually use destruction and whatnot to get it that high, because it's so difficult to get there.

As a defensive and utilitarian device, however, magic is top notch. Especially if you are going to play a stealthy character, you just can't beat some good ol' illusion magic. Shadowform is just as good as chameleon in dark places (dungeons), and much cheaper.


My real advice? Wait around for James to post something. He knows all the pointy hat stuff.

"My real advice? Wait around for James to post something. He knows all the pointy hat stuff."
Thanks for the endorsemant, Jorm. I will try to justify your confidence.

For starting help using the spell-maker, look http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:Spell_Maker I wrote/edited most of what is currently there. Mark has a pretty complete work up at http://www.izhtex.com/tes2/ Both sites also have some pretty good advice about character creation, which is as important as spell-creation.

I also agree that utility and defensive spells are more important than combat spells to a character, especially at lower levels. I myself usually play a hybrid character with a wide variety of high skills. My preferred mix is:
Primary: Longblade, Stealth, Mysticism
Major: Thaumaturgy, Critical Strike, Dodge
Minor: Archery, Climbing, and the rest of the magic skills.

As for Destruction, you can leave it off the list if you feel like it. Replace it with Streetwise. I know that it will end up as a miscellaneous skill, but no worries; it is the cheapest and easiest skill in the game to self-train.

And don't forget to take 3x in spell points! :icecream:

It appears that the answer to my question is that playing as a "pure mage" isn't really possible. I've been trying for years to figure out how to make relying primarily upon magic skills (rather than merely supplementing combat or stealth skills with magic) both practical and FUN... and it always seems to result in a character that spends all his time asleep on the dungeon floor... unless, of course, I'm playing the self-absorbing sorcerer.

So I guess the trick is to adapt by relying mostly on a decent short bladed or blunt weapon (assuming I'm going with the default "mage" class, which I am, since I already know how to make the most of battlemages, spellswords, and nightblades), mostly training magic in town, but remembering to use magic to get out of situations other characters would either have to run from or reload out of.

The problem with the default http://www.izhtex.com/tes2/classes/magestat.htm class is that the skill list doesn't help you survive. Having two language skills, even in minor slots is a waste of good skill slots. At least create a custom character replacing Dragonish and Daedric with Streetwise and Etiquette. And swap Dodge and Destruction while you are at it. And 3x in spell-points!

Any pure mage character suffers from being too hard at start and too easy later. You can't choose your initial inventory and equipment and the spells you start with are useless. This is one of the few flaws in Daggerfall character system, of not being able to customize your character starting gear and spell list.

There are easy quests at the mages guild and other quest sources where you can deliver a book or smuggle things that don't require combat and thus are quite easy for a [censored] mage. These quests will afford the money for a useful spell list. Then you won't be a [censored] mage anymore. You have 6 different schools of magic with a good spell variety to do what you wish of your enemies.
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:Magic_and_Spells

OK, now I must know what the auto-censor has removed from your post.. *heh heh* It didn't read like you would be modifying "mage" with anything offensive, but what do I know?

Strangely the auto-sensor removed an innocent word that means a juvenile and inexperienced domestic cat.

Another thing about playing a mage, i would not recommend creating spells like sleep or silence with a chance to success less than 50%. Some monsters have magic resistances which i believe will subtract from the chance to succeed. I can't imagine what the magic resistance of an ancient vampire or a an ancient lich would be.

Heh, the Daggerfall playing community has descended a long way from the days when guys, looking for a challenge, would attempt to play deliberately gimped characters. I remember some people playing what we called the "linguist" class. Take a guess what that class was composed of.

All languages and Streetwise and Etiquette as class skills.

The reason this never caught on as a playable concept is that is no fun.

I had a feeling, but I wasn't sure.. Thanks for the clarification..

Am I the only one who finds it riotously funny when someone posts his/her DXDIAG log on the Fallout forums, and we find out the manufacturer of the removable media player/recorder is, "Mat-(sh!te)-a," sending the censor into fits for a hardware designation? (Watch.. Here we go: MAT[censored]A) *bwwwwwwwaaaaahahahahahahahahahahahah!* And on a forum for a game where you can blow the entrails of a human to kingdom come in gloriously graphic slo-mo (though admittedly, bo0bs are not allowed to show outside of chainmail)

Heh, now I'm feeling nostalgic for the nudity/violence debates when Morrowind was in development: that grand battle between hedonistic Europe and barbaric America. It was quite the flamewar, composed of many flame-battles.

i always thought it was funny that there was so much passion for arguements of nudity and gore. when it comes down to it, those two aspects are merely novelty in the grand scope of gameplay and lore. in my opinion, games that go over-the-top with nudity and gore tend to come off as cheesy and comical, and more frustrating when the gameplay is lacking as result.

No argument from me, BUT, I just find it strange that here in the good ole U.S. of A., EXTREEEEEEEEME and brutally intense gore is less offensive than a naked body (to people who are influential enough to control media directly or indirectly anyway)..

You gotta admit that the way most all temples had a bunch of naked women sitting around for no apparent reason in Daggerfall was a little tacky, though.

I actually find that endearing in a post-teen computer geek sort of way. And it's not too much of a stretch as some belief structures ARE more in line with that sort of thing, in both reality AND in other fiction..

Well anyway.

I recall the minimum energy cost of a spell being 5. This is actually a good fact to use. It is good to scale spells down to match this cost, so that you can squeeze in more casts, and thus more training, with your mana. 5-energy offensive spells are nice. They knock opponents back and are a low risk if resisted (you don't want to dump your whole bar's worth of mana just for it to get resisted). The way to make a 5-energy spell out of a more expensive, or multiple, effects is to change spells' effect and duration scalers from "x-y per 1 level(s)" to "x-y per 2 level(s)"

When I was playing the game, as a kid, I always saved my games in Dibella Temples, in front of those naked disciples just to make my brother angry when he had to go through the save slots.

When I was playing the game, as a kid, I always saved my games in Dibella Temples, in front of those naked disciples just to make my brother angry when he had to go through the save slots.

This angered him? I'm trying to imagine that mindset, and I'm-a having trouble, yo.

Actually, more like bothered him. He was much older than me back then and didn't like seeing nvde pixelated ladies, while I, as a pre-pre-teen player would laugh at this.

But even internet pr0n was pixellated back then!@