hey everyone

so usually when i play RPG's i'm the purely magic character, my first run through oblivion (which i'm just winding down) i was sort of like a custom Spell blade type, but now i've started a Dunmer mage. and suddenly i'm abit daunted by the fact that i'll be using magic as my MAIN means of combat the whole time, and to do everything else pretty much....and i like the whole armor/sword thing. what are your experiences with mages and/or overcoming difficulties with them? thanks

My only problem with mages is of course, running out of magic and the lack of armour. My best mage char was a Breton who wore armour which I enchanted with 'fortify magicka'.

In oblivion a pure spell damage character requires a tad more thought, some would suggest the atronach birthsign for a mage as it is very handy.
Myself due to lack of strength and your relative new coming to the system, would stick to the mage or lady sign, where you never truely run out of magicka and can learn the ins and outs first.
That said if you are confident and are willing to exploit shrines, and boost alchemy up very early go for it.

Ok combat wise damage spells beat weapons on most but strongly sheilded foes such as liches.
You will need a decent ranged spell with some AoE on it for groups and fast closing melee npc's, but a touch spell is going to do more damage cheaper, with greater accuracy.
Learn buffs and summons first, and illusion next, destruction also adds effects that can hurt melee npc's disintergrate and drain stat.
These make strong tanks less threatening by some degree, mysticism will show foes before they see you and is the best school for countering magic users.

Weaknesses on npc's are your friends, those that have them or are immune to certain damage need to be learned early and exploited.
High elves use elemental damage asap after silence, dark elves avoid fire... so on.

I think thats an over view that would have helped me when I started but as for tactics, the best way is to crawl this forum and just try things in game untill you find what gets you there in game.

Alchemy is the life's blood of a Mage. My current Mages have never worn armor or carried a shield. Angel has over 200 hours of gameplay and has never been killed (i play dead-is-dead.) It was her shield potions, restore potions, and poisons that saved her life over and over in the early going. That and her summons. In her first fight, she had only an iron dagger and the potions and poisons that she made by selling everything to buy her apparatus and ingredients.

To create shield potions from day one, you will need to have Alchemy as a major skill. This means that you will probably level up fairly quickly until Alchemy is maxed out (typically around level 15-20.) After that, it will no longer effect level. The good news is that boosting Alchemy boosts intelligence which in turn boost your total Magicka. Just try and work in some non-magic skills such as sneaking to improve agility and speechcraft to improve personality. The other good news is that the real wealth in the game starts to kick in at around level 15. After that, you will get very rich very fast.

Being a somewhat gentle character, nowadays Angel uses Illusion magic to take control of her opponents mind. She would prefer not to have to kill humans, mer, and forest creatures. That courtesy does not extend to the undead, or Daedra. Her stats show that she has emerged the winner in over 800 fights.

By all means be a Mage but be a mage, not a pathetic substitute.

Pure mages are all about magicka so dunmer is not your best race choice. Still, what with potions, especially homemade Restore magica, and welkynd stones, a mage should never run out of magicka. Targetting is my biggest problem as a mage. It's really hard to hit a moving enemy at a distance. Adding a little aoe to your homebrew spells can help with that.

Mages do take more knowledge to play, which is as it should be. For one thing mages get no automatic upgrades. Melee'ers and archers can expect to find gear upgrades in drops and chests. Mages aren't going to come across spell upgrades so if you need better spells you have to buy or make them.

Mara

Mages are probably the most powerful type of character you can possibly play, though they need some time to really develop their potential. I would advise you to pick one or two magic disciplines to really specialize in for the first 15-20 levels though. Choose between Conjuration, Destruction, Illusion, and maybe even Alchemy. However, Alchemy as a primary skill isn't for everyone. I for one can't be bothered to run around trying to find just the right ingredient to make a specific type of potion. So for me Alchemy is alwas just a minor skill that I train up because it's so easy to do and boosts my Intelligence, but I never make it into a central skill of my character.

The thing about Conjuration is that the creatures you summon have a fixed level. This makes it's power depend greatly on your own level. At low levels it is very powerful, especially if you power train it. For example my last character could summon Clannfears already at level 5. At that point his summoned Clannfear was so powerful it would kill pretty much any enemy I ran into in one or two hits. However, as your level starts aproaching 20 Conjuration will lose it's edge and once you rise above 20 your summoned critters will slowly become mere distractions for the strongest of your enemies.

Illusion is probably the most powerful skill in the game, but only at Expert rank and beyond. This is because the really good spell effects only become available at Journeyman rank and it takes an Expert before you can really cast them as much as you want. And you really need to make your own custom spells for this school of magic to reach it's full potential. Like 100 point Charm for 2 seconds (never need to use persuasion again) or a spell that combines Frenzy and Invisibility (make groups of enemies kill each other while you watch from safety). Or a powerful area of effect Command spell that can safely be fired at enemies who are busy fighting you allies (several situations from the main quest come to mind). You can also combine it effectively with Conjuration. For example my mage had a spell that made her invisible and at the same time summoned a Dremora, which saved her life many times.

Finally we have Destruction. Unlike Illusion which is a very versatile skill (it helps with social situation, stealth, exploring dark places, and combat vs multiple opponents) Destruction can only do one thing. But it does that one thing extremely well. A Master of Destruction who has figured out how to properly stack spells can easily dish out damage in the tens of thosuands with just a few spells. At lower levels of proficiency it is of course notably less powerful. One tip though is to make your damage spell a combination of all three elements. So for example instead of making a custom spell that does 30 Fire Damage, make one that does 10 Fire Damage, 10 Frost Damage, and 10 Shock Damage. Both do 30 damage, but the second one use notably less Magicka. You wil lalso be less suject to the various magical resistance of your enemies, because even if one of your effects got blocked you're stil ldoing damage with the other two. Of course this also means that you won't be able to take full advantage of your enemies' weakness, but with only 8 hotkeys, that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

Among the other brilliant help offered here is raising the issue of hotkeys.
On pc I do not know about consoles, but they come in handy on a load of situations, even if you rarely change them.

I favour staff, ranged, touch, control, shield, summon, detect, light, heal.
This changes some time dependent on upgrades and enemies, but generally stays the same. Scrolling through the menu gives you a full acess to spells but at the price of combat delay.
If you spread out your hotkey picks you can tap the key enter menu and find close acess to the spell you wish as well.

I've started using a brilliant mod called http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=30673. It simply adds the ability to set the keys to switch between a set of options and to switch between "wheels" of keys. So I now have my hotkeys set up much the same way I always have (that is, for a pure mage, ranged destruction on 1, touch destruction on 2, controls-- dmoralize, calm turn undead, etc. on 3, summons on 4 and so on) but each key is now a set of choices rather than a single one-- all three elementals on target on 1, all three elementals on touch on 2 and so on. Then I've got a second wheel set up for in town, with charm, fort. mercantile, training spells and the like.

There's another one called http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=22326 that offers even more options, but it's a more complex system-- much of it is menu driven and you have to hold down a key in order to switch to a different wheel instead of just a single click. It has one feature I really like (a key can be set up as a "gear key"-- a single click switches an entire set of gear all at once, from armor to city clothes, for instance) but since the rest of it is more complicated and I don't really need the rest of the features, I've stayed with STHotkeys.

Back on topic-- I really don't find pure mages all that much tougher to play than any other class, though the strategy, at least in the early game, is much different, and race and birthsign are much more important. I've played fighters, both stealthy and tanky, of virtually any type one might imagine-- from Bosmer pure tanks to Orc light armor archers. There are quirks with each combination, but no real handicaps, since skill and attribute levels tend to smooth out. A character might be a bit handicapped early in the game, but early in the game, the opponents are so weak that it doesn't reallyl matter. And with just a bit of careful planning, the character can be set up so that his skills and attributes are where they need to be by the time they become important, pretty much no matter where they started out. But with a mage, it's different, since so much depends on magicka, and there's a considerable, and fixed, difference between the races and the birthsigns.

To me, the crucial strategy to successfully playing a pure mage is to play it as a pure mage from the very beginning. That's not to say that battlemages, spellswords and the like aren't viable characters-- they certainly are. They're just different-- you can fall back on melee skills and you can take some hits and still survive. If you want to play a pure mage, the most important thing to do is to do so without exception from the very beginning of the game. The reason for that is that it can be done, but it requires a specific set of strategies, and if you don't play the character as a pure mage from the very beginning, you won't learn and practice those strategies and you won't have skill in them when you need it.

For instance-- don't wear armor, ever. Late in the game, you don't want to wear armor anyway, since spell effectiveness becomes an issue with higher level opponents. But that means that early in the game, you don't want to wear it anyway, just so that you force yourself to learn the techniques for surviving while not wearing it.

One of the things I have to retrain myself in every time I switch to a pure mage is constantly moving in fights. Since you're not wearing any armor, you don't want to get hit at all. And fairly regularly, when I switch back to a pure mage, I have to relearn that, and it often happens in the same way-- I'll go after a mudcrab or a rat or something like that, and just stand there like I would with a fighter, and it'll beat the hell out of me. "Oh yeah-- that's right," I'll realize, "I have to dodge." Dodge in-- get off a touch destruction spell-- dodge back out so I don't get hit. Wait for an opening, then dodge in and hit him with another destruction spell, and so on.

You can avoid a lot of that by using on-target spells, but on-target has a much higher magicka cost, so you get less "bang for the buck" and, unless it's area of effect, they can often miss, so you've just wasted all that magicka. On-touch is much cheaper, so you can do much more damage for the same cost, and they're much more dependable. But then you run the risk of getting hit.

Potions are vital. Alchemy's nice, but not necessary-- you can make do with premade potions. They have the advantage of being instantaneous, rather than working over time (as even the best self-made potions do), but they also tend to be heavier and, since you won't find enough of them just lying around, they'll be an expense. Alchemy is cheaper and more effective (if you have the time to let the potions work) and the potions are generally lighter, so you can carry more of them. But they're also limited-- a potion that gives you 8 magicka a second for 15 seconds isn't going to be terribly useful to you when you're out of magicka and face-to-face with a mountain lion.

Anything that serves as a diversion is great-- conjuration and illusion are the biggies. Conjuring a creature, even if it's not powerful enough to take down the opponent on its own, can often give you the breathing room you need to heal and replenish your magicka. It can also give you a good opportunity to get in a hit or two if you come around behind your opponent while he's fighting the summon. And illusion can give you even more breathing room, by getting your opponents to fight with each other and/or turning yourself invisible.

As Dragatus pointed out though, you really have to stick with illusion for it to pay off, since the best effects aren't even available until you reach journeyman level, and the cast cost is so high that you won't be able to make really good use of most of them even then. There are a few custom spells you can make at a relatively low skill level (very short durations of command, for instance) but the skill doesn't really hit its stride until you're at expert level or so. Conjuration, on the other hand, is useful right from the beginning, and is enormously powerful, if used well, early in the game. Again as Dragatus noted.

Regarding race/sign combinations-- the easiest is Breton/Mage. You get an instant 50% resistance to magic and an extra 100 points of magicka (50 for Breton and 50 for Mage) with no penalties whatsoever. The most powerful is Altmer/Atronach-- that's 250 extra points of magicka (100 for Altmer and 150 for Atronach) but with innate weakness to elemental magic and stunted magicka. Personally, I dislike playing Atronach-- I don't use nuke spells, so the extra magicka isn't that important to me, and the gimmicks I have to use to get around stunted magicka are too irritating to make it worth it to me. That's entirely a personal preference though-- there are many players who won't play anything else, so it all comes down to how you feel about it.

Regarding builds-- the only absolute, as far as I'm concerned, is Magic specialization. I've played everything from the default mage class to a custom build with Destruction as the only magic major (and that one mostly unused) and with a bunch of filler majors for the rest. The only real difference is in how you play the character. With a full set of magic majors, you can pretty much just play the game and skill increases will take care of themselves, though it can make the mid-levels tough, since you'll probably reach those levels before you have the necessary skills to handle things like bear and will o'the wisps easily. With most of the magic skills as minors, leveling isn't an issue at all, but you'll probably have to go out of your way to train the skills, since they'll increase more slowly as minors. Luckily though, training magic skills is just as easy as getting the cheapest possible effect (or, better yet, making a custom spell with the cheapest effect for the shortest duration) and finding a quiet corner and casting it over and over, so, while it might be a bit tedious (particularly at higher skill levels) it's easy enough to do.

It's absolutely imperative that you do the MG recommendations ASAP and get into the Arcane U, so that you can make custom spells. Whatever the school is in which you're specializing, you can almost always get more practical spells by making them yourself. This is especially true of destruction and illusion-- by combining weakness effects and/or other effects and/or using longer durations on destruction, you can make devastating spells that aren't available otherwise, and by shortening the duration of illusion spells, you can get things that are ultimately just as effective as the premade spells and for much lower cast costs.

Really though, the central strategy to playing a pure mage effectively is simply to hold to playing a pure mage. If you successfully fight the urge to give him armor or weapons, you'll have no choice but to learn the ways to work around not having them. The strategies exist-- you just have to stick with it to force yourself to learn them.

Also, something else you should consider, get a staff soon. Staves can be invaluable if you use them correctly. they can temporarily block attacks, letting you back up and cast a spell, they save magicka, which is an invaluable trait, especially for a pure mage. Also, scrolls can be good too, if you can find good ones that is.

I usually play a stealth archer with a shortblade as a backup, but I recently started a new character going for more of a pure mage build all-be-it still with some stealth still. Originally I had Alteration, Restoration, Mysticism, Illusion, Destruction, Hand-to-Hand, Sneak as my majors. Trying to play just using those (no summons and no alchemy) certainly is a challenge. I find myself backpedaling like the conjurers and necromancers in the game, to keep my distance. Or jumping up onto places out of melee reach. Of course, since then I've restarted again and replaced H2H with Blunt.

Of course, the earlier levels are going to be a challenge, but once my character gets a few levels higher, I imagine magic is going start feeling like it's overpowered. All I plan on doing is sticking to and forcing myself to play with that set of rules and see what kind of solutions I can find. Part of my rule set for this play through is no armor,primarily using magic and to see if I can find a way doing it without using summons or alchemy.

a pure mage is almost overpowered, and has so many ways to deal with a situation its kinda overkill. they could boost melee skills with restoration, then conjure full armor and a claymore and be a tank. Or they could just destroy you with destrucion, or you could just hit them with sme illusion spells and make them fight for you or runaway. for that reason i only have one pure mage character even though I love pure mages. What i do is make alot of specialty classes like Necromancer or Illusionist.

Illusion first, plus Restoration and/or Destruction. You are virtually immortal once you get to 50 skill level (Journeyman). I play on max difficulty, too, so lower difficulty would be even easier.

This is assuming you learn how to spell chain so that you are a walking dynamo even with very little magicka reserves. Then again, Illusion doesn't even need to spell chain against human foes, even at higher levels. One Frenzy spell in a group, they fight each other and kill each other... oh wait, some are still alive and they stopped fighting because the spell wore off? Sigh... cast one more, then... it's a lot cheaper than spamming Flare spells.

The only real fear you'll have is reflect spell abilities. Nothing else can stop you. Oh, ranged attackers like archers might give you pause until you get Invisibility and every other powerful effect at 50 skill (Journeyman) but even ranged attackers like that can be handled with Frenzy if played carefully (and once you have 50 skill, no need to even be careful, really).

Conjuration is weak compared to the other three schools I mentioned, at least until you can protect your summons and turn invisible so the AI doesn't ignore them and come after you anyway. And assuming you don't simply power level it to 75-100 right off the bat so that you summon the most powerful daedra against lvl 3 bandits, of course. But why bother when you can take them out yourself, anyway? And as I said, the AI tends to ignore them and come for you, anyway, no matter how strong the daedra summons are, so having a Storm Atronach isn't going to help you survive if the AI simply runs around it and rips you apart.

Destruction gives weakness, and Restoration gives absorb... coupled with Illusion, it's game over.

No armor, no staff... no weapon, either. Nothing is needed, unless you simply want to add the weight/encumbrance or change off training skills.

Max the difficulty

Then it'll be the melee that's daunting, lots of magic will be the only way to do it

There is an element of player skill in using summons

Most of the time you should be able to manuever your enemy in to your summons way, at least if you have been investing in your speed

Chameloen helps a lot too, makes your pet so much more conspicuous

And if you are melee capable as well catching your target in a cross fire generally makes for a quick take down

In most cases, you cannot force AI to deal with a summons. The exception would be very closed environments such as a tunnel, but even then it depends on the summons (and to some extent the enemies).

As far as melee... well, mages are not melee characters. Hybrids are another matter, but the OP was talking about a mage, not a hybrid. However, my advice also applies to hybrids as far as increasing survival chances. For roleplaying certain ways such as summoners, of course my advice would not apply. I'm only advising based on how the game actually works, not according to roleplay concepts for specific character types.

My characters have custom boost to speed, and the enemies increase speed along with you in some way that no one has yet figured out, not even on UESP wiki (speed is still not clearly understood). Of course, height also impacts speed, so shorter characters suffer against many enemies, especially characters such as mine, but also small characters such as Bretons or Elves. The AI is not stupid, and simply knows to ignore the summoned creatures whenever possible and attack you instead. They do this quite well, too, especially since most summons are very slow compared to most enemies. Groups of enemies will actually coordinate attacks, too, including melee + ranged attacks when possible or circling/surrounding you (e.g., packs of wolves or other wild animals).

As I said, until you can protect your summons and/or turn invisible to force AI to focus on it, Conjuration is extremely weak compared to simply draining the enemy health yourself. Much less chance involved with the latter than the former. Roleplaying is another matter since some people exclude using certain techniques for certain character types.

My two septims:

It's really important to join the Mages Guild ASAP and do the recommendation quests. You can do the rest of the quest line whenever you want (although getting your staff soon can be a big help), the main thing is to get access to the spellmaking altars. If you have the Frostcrag Spire plugin, that can be used as well, but you'll need a lot of gold before you can get it -- joining the Mages Guild is free, and also gets you some free spells.

As Dragatus mentioned, a spell that combines fire, frost, and shock damage will be a really good multipurpose attack spell, because that way you don't have to worry about switching spells every time you attack something. Make one as soon as you can.

Generally it's a good idea to make Restoration a major skill if you plan to use it, and especially for any kind of caster character. If you ever need to cast a fast healing spell on yourself or a companion (or summon), you'll want a level of Restoration that's comparable to your own level, so the healing will actually do some good. As slow as Resto levels, it needs that extra boost from being a Major just to be effective.

Finally, do everything you can to increase Conjuration, Alchemy, and/or Mysticism often, so you can get bigger bonuses to Intelligence when you level up. That'll help a lot in building a big magicka pool.

Pure mage has been my favourite character so far. By 20 or so, I don't even notice that I'm just running around in a bathrobe, because I'm blasting everything out of my way before it can get to me.

In most cases I can

Don't know what's up with your game

Usaully getting whacked by the summons will cause the AI piece to realign its priorities

My conjuration style of combat was just an extension of my melee style

In melee I use two handed weapons with out block, i dodge and strike running around the enemy in circles and that same circling style applies to the use of summons

In which case it's about keeping the summons between you and the enemy

If you keep playing "all around the mulberry bush" with a summoned daedroth it will hit your enemy and that's when the enemy loses interest in you

The ingredients are easy to come by though. I got my alchemy to 100 on my NIghtblade by 25 without even trying.

I wrote: "I for one can't be bothered to run around trying to find just the right ingredient to make a specific type of potion."

The keyword in my statement is specific. Yes, getting ingredients is easy. I always collect all sorts of ingredients and keep piling them up and then I use them to make whatever potions I can (which more often than not is Restore Fatigue). So I will make Shield potions if I happen to have the proper ingredients on me. But you'll never find me thinking "I need to make some Shield potions for protection!" and hunting around for specific ingredients required to make those Shield potions.

Nope. Not in my game. When I play, I have had most encounters (without invisibility, mind you) where the enemy ignores a summons and simply comes straight for me. Even if the summons is hitting them, they still go for me, not the summons.

However, you are ignoring the fact that I was stating that Conjuration is weak COMPARED TO Illusion + Destruction + Restoration. It's relatively weak, in other words.

Also, you keep talking about summoning stuff like Deadroth or Clannfears, but those are very high level summons and irrelevant since I stated that I was not talking about leveling Conjuration to 75-100. However, I will also observe that even at that level, even summoning a Storm Atronach, is weaker than simply draining the enemy health directly, particularly since it can be done in a wide group even at lower levels of skill (50).

Obviously, everyone has their own play choices, but I am stating the relative strengths and weaknesses. Having one summons cannot match wide AoE where you are invulnerable to enemy attacks in almost every instance, that's all.

Also, it seems that many people only use Restoration for healing and are not using it for destruction/damage. Why? It levels quickly if you use it offensively. In additon, there's no need to try to fit casting strength into a multielement spell when draining health directly ignores any elemental resistances enemies might have. Elemental spells are flashy but not the most powerful approach. It just turns out that way.

I should note that I have tested these various approaches (including various archer/marksman strategies as well as switching between major/minor skill use) on max difficulty many times. I have not tested changing race/class, but at mid to high level, all characters are pretty much equal (assuming decent builds and development, of course). There may be some slight variation at low levels (perhaps 1-5 or maybe up to 10 at a stretch) but nothing huge.

Can't say for other people, but for me it's simply because I much prefer to use ranged spells rather than touch spells, at least with my "pure" mages who have no intention to get anywhere near their foe's melee reach. And you can't stack Absorb Health nearly as effectively as you can stack elemental damage spells. With a combiantion of Weakness to Magic and Weakness to whatever element I'm using the damage output will increase exponentially, but Absorb spells will only increase linearly.

As for conjuration, it's power depends greatly on your own level. At level 5 it can be the most powerful of all schools of magic, at level 50 it will probably be the weakest. Also, Clannfears don't need to be high level summons. As I mentioned, my last character could summon them at level 5. He just focused strongly on Conjuration at the expense of all his other major skills. After the tutorial I just ran him through the Arena and did some power training on the side and that was it. Flame Atronachs at level 3 and Clannfears at level 5, not to shabby.

I am under the impression that the AI asigns priority of targets based on how much damage the targets inflicted and it has a reasonably long memory. So if you want the enemies to go after your summons you should avoid attacking until the summon has managed to divert attention away from you.

Restoration at Master level is great because you can create chain spells to increase intelligence and fortify magicka. Firing off a cascade of these spells can elevate your magika temporarily into the thousands. THEN, you can unleash some humoungus great destruction spell for instant kills of anything - not to mention using all that magika to fire further cascades of say speed or acrobatics, resulting in speeds of like 500 and the acrobatic ability to jump as high as the city walls. Without Restoration you can't generate that sort of magika. I currently use two cascading fortify int and magika spells, giving my char about 950 magicka before adding any extra boosts from enchanted items

I play a mystic archer, so the bow is her main damage dealer. Her only real interest in destruction is weakness to poison and drain speed. She only uses elemental damage effects for cooking dinner or heating bathwater. On those rare occasions when she needs a direct damage spell (best example is underwater combat) she does indeed use an on-touch absorb health spell (restoration). For RP purposes, she is very skilled with illusion and restoration.

Speaking of conjuration, she uses it mostly for fun. One of her fave spells is a combo invis + clannfear. She can cast it and safely run her clannfear right up to the baddie's face. Other times she might cast a summon that is too far away to pick up on the enemy, so she will line herself up just right and demoralize or turn undead her summon so it runs straight into the enemy.

Restoration is arguably the best skill in the game, you can make it virtually impossible to get killed or run out of mana. You can boost any skill or attribute to 100 or higher and chained spells like discussed above are beyond overkill.

Mages in Oblivion are extremely overpowered. Once you get 100 Illusion skill, you can cast 30 second invisibility spells, or even chameleon with 100% so that you can do whatever you want and no one sees you. It's really just ridiculous at those points.