The problem is there is no reason to use destruction. Why waste (yes, WASTE) magicka throwing a fireball instead of saving it to summon another peon to do your bidding, a peon who will do far more damage than your single fireball. Or you could use it to cast frenzy and make the enemies fight themselves, ALSO doing more damage than the fireball. Even IF you took every single perk in the destruction tree, any spell casted, save for the beginning flame thrower spell, is a ridiculously inefficient use of magic that could be better used else where. The only "good" use for destruction that I can see is laying down runes outside of combat where your magic regen would take care of its insane cost.

Hell, you could make enchanted gear to make your destruction spells cost 0 magic, but then you damn well know you would be better of making your conjuration or illusion spells cost 0 magic instead.

What about crowd control with staggers when dualcasting? Completly worth it.

Becoming an Agent of Mara means that your magic skills increase 20% faster. Good topic too by the way.

No. Riverwood often has a much better robe. When I got there I immediately bought a 15% destruction 75% regen robe from the general store. There were equivalent illusion and conjuration robes for sale as well.


My current playthrough (my 4th) is a sneak mage on master difficulty. I did something the OP advises against but I did not find it to be any problem. I was level 18 by the time I got past the bear in the intro dungeon by getting my sneak to 100. So there I was with low destruction but level 18 on master difficulty. Suicide right? Not at all. It made for a lot of fun.

I just finished the mage guild quest line, at level 22 and things are going great. Sneak mage is very fun.

I just unlocked the Master class spells. They are practically worthless. Master Frost is kinda cute but deals pitiful damage. Master Lightning is the only usable of the bunch, as a dragon killing tool because as far as I could see, it's the biggest range hitscan spell allowing you to more easily kill a dragon that stays far. Then the fire spell is utter crap.

Master spells are unusable in real fight situations because you get staggered by practically any hit before you cast it. Worse, they are forced dual wield spells that seemingly do not benefit from dual wield perks. I get less DPS output out of the master lighting spell than spaming the dual cast expert one.

The tunning on the spells is just plain broken, you can see it easily with the master spells. Exemple : Fire
- Fire Master spell costs 1200 magicka (before perks and the like), takes 5s to cast while you are stuck in place and most hits will interrupt cast, then does a 100 damage centered on you and it uses both hands always
- Fireball Adept spell costs 114 magicka, nearly instant cast, you can move while casting and before releasing it and and it throw two at once.

Let's assume you use the dual cast perk and throw a dual cast Fireball. The two spells merged ends up costing 40% more magicka for a total of 320 and the damage is 10% more than two fireballs for a total of 88.

The Adept fireball spell does 10% less damage than the Master spell and for that it gets those benefits :
- nearly instant cast instead of 5s
- no risk of cast interrupt
- can move while casting and with the spell charged
- does more damage to targets on fire (Firestorm doesn't mention that part)
- can stagger opponent with Impact perk
- is an AoE at a range and not centered on a squishy caster that gets interrupted easily
- costs 75% less magicka per cast


Who at Bethesda did the Destruction magic tunning exactly? Because he must have been high on some illegal substances when he entered the numbers.

So as a tip for mages : don't use the Destruction master spells at all. Well if you got 0% spell cost, have fun using the master lightning spell to snipe people and dragons very far away. At least it works for something

Destruction is fun, but i think mage have to use bow or 1handed weapons sometimes - for example when mobs attack your summoned atronach instead of you - u can stab them to death with swords without being touched and save mana.

Conjuration and Restoration is key to say alive on master difficulty. Kiting and slowing down enemy helps also

On Master level I tried a few different classes, but honestly pure mages have the smoothest transition and I felt the most powerful all the way through.

Just focus conjuration and enchantment to start, with a few alteration perks thrown in. When you get enchantment high enough craft some good -destruction spell armor and switch to destruction, minions keep the enemy busy while you throw out a never ending stream of lighting/fire/ice bolts. This is pretty easy to achieve and the ball really starts rolling around level 24ish.

I tend to go Breton for the magika resist and the high starting conjuration. I invest 2:1 health to magika (improved summons don't cost that much and eventually you will be casting destruction spells for free).

I am not sure about the mechanics behind spell absorb vs magic resistance. I think I read somewhere that magic resistances protects against a wider array of effects than spell absorb so I tend to favor the lord stone over the Atronach stone. (also there is currently a bug that causes spell absorb to absord your conjuration spells, causing them to fail).

Wear light armor. You can enchant it with any spell-casting helper such as +magicka or -destruction cost you want. And you have armor and can ignore the armor spells.

Can someone explain how Wards should be used? I keep getting my a$%$ kicked even though I have the ward up with Alteration spells to boot, but I'm still getting killed to fast.

Also does anyone else think wards are a lil too magika expensive? Every time I use one I might block the incoming damage, but once its done I find I have no mana to do anything else and thats with the perks....

Against one enemy yes. Or you could just summon a dremora to kill him and the guys in the next room. But if you want to waste most of your magicka bar playing with fire, go right ahead.

And uh....illusion is crowd control.

If you have the right spell they stagger the whole crowd, so I'd say its even better with multiple enemies.

You mean they aren't exploiting enchanting or using conjuration. In any other TES game i could play my current resto/alteration/destro mage perfectly fine on hard without having to exploit anything or play a very specific play-style (which apprently i'm "bad" at this game for not using :rolleyes:)

Now I have to cheese exploit enchanting to have any amount of fun on Master , or become a different class via conjures.


Thank you Bethesda for pigeon holing several mage builds?

Very well written.



I see that occasionaly, and i'm assuming Robes fall under "no actual armor" ?

I'm pretty sure it was the mana cost reduction that was the problem not the regeneration correct me if i'm wrong.

Thank you so much! I'm going to try this whole Mage thing again! Can you PLEASE post a guide like this on enchanting? I really would like to do it but I'm clueless! Thank you so much again!

Excellent guide.

*Thumbs up*

You are wrong about the regeneration. I have tested it and as I add equipment with higher regen % in combat, my mana regenerates faster with each piece of equipment stacked. If I take half off, my regen IN COMBAT slows significantly.

This is simply not true.

There's nothing wrong with that. You need to level blacksmithing to be a really effective melee-based character and Alchemy is useful for all builds. Professions are there for a reason.

I'm playing destro/resto/alt and doing fine on level 43 on Expert (not Master though). I haven't upped enchanting, or alchemy, or conjuration. I paralyze people, fire wall key chokepoints, and then selectively dual/stagger and single cast enemies to death. My restro insta-heals me when i'm near death in addition to the other benefits and I also use destruction staffs for great effect. Further, I have magic resistance and Atronach perk that offers fantastic protection against enemy mages. I'm having a blast.

Once again: Alteration/Restoration/Destruction. My top 3 skills. I think I'll raise to Master and see if it is radically different than Expert.

While not a "PURE" mage, it seems using the "weakness to xxx" poisons is the way to go if you really want something dead! Even low level store bought poisons make weakness to fire 40%. One quick arrow/sword strike then unleash! I can only imagine what nasty potions you can make after abusing alchemy/enchants. Better yet stack a weakness to poison/magic followed by the actual weakness to fire.frost/shock poison. Then follow up with a expert level spell.

BTW, all of these warrior rule threads have some serious NON-warrior abuse going on. I personally think people are getting caught up with the notion of a pure mage - while comparing that too a definte hybrid warrior/mage. A non-enchatning/alchemy warrior is no where as powerful as people make it out to be.

I play on master, so im usually out of magicka all the time unless I put on my haxchanting set. Paralyze and the expert Destro spell costs svck the fun out of Master compared to any other build, and yes I downrank and it takes hours and...ugh its just so annoying. On master any rough mob just runs through my firewall and glyph unscratched - maybe I'm bugged?

It's do-able, dont' get me wrong. But compared to other builds it's needlessly/pointlessly harder just for the sake of tedium. DW, Bow, Sword/Board, Illusion, Sneak+Dagger, and Conjuration comparatively BREEZE through similiar annoyances & content, and are simply superior.


And the expert->master difference is pretty noticeable imo.

This is my story of how I decided to become a Mage.

I was running around with no Armour, no Weapons and no Idea of what to be and well, if you could go online you'd see I had worn down the ground in a circular shape trying to figure out what I was going to be.
While all the time the rude brute of a storm cloak was moaning at me to hurry up and open the blasted door. So I decided to do so and low and behold I found my self being Slashed and shot full of holes while still wearing my useless rags the imperials kindly gave me so I wasn't naked.

it was then that we entered the Torture chamber and I was told again by the 'Rude Brute of a storm cloak' to see what was in that cage over there. And when my eyes saw the most epic looking armour I could lay my eyes on I jimmied that lock like a mouse after cheese. Click and I was in! I stripped my fellow Mage who had fallen to the ways of the Imperial dogs. dawned his armour and for the first time I felt powerful and In control of my destiny. (What a load of crap lol) anyway.
We quickly made for the exit of that cave and I was to part ways with my Terrible smelling Rude brute of a friend as I strode my Magic ass to Riverwood in search of a place to sell these [censored] Items looted from foul men and there I found a man, In need of help. He had Robes and Spells for sale and so I took to buying what spells I needed to survive and some hand soul jems as I once did in the thralls of Oblivion. Ready to set out on my travels I asked my good friend where I could learn more about Magic, he told me of a place called winter hold. Interested I was and so I took to the directions he gave me, following the roads and path ways of Skyrim. taking careful precautions to read the sign posts I past as I made for the walls of the College. I arrived and was severely frost bitten as I forgot to pack a bloody Fur Cloak. Oh! I forgot....Game don't have those....silly me.

Anyway, after I settled into my bed in the tavern and struck out in the morning at first light, I came to the attention of the Destruction Mage guarding the entrance. I passed her little test and was escorted into the Walls of the College of Winterhold where I met and took part in a lesson. I was in, I was a Mage of Winterhold. But I was still unsure of how to develop myself and then I asked a friend who pointed me in this direction.
When I read this topic and took in it's great wisdom and teachings, I quickly made like a 'Bat outta hell' scampering back to my xbox 360 and began to learn the ways of Mage.

So I thank you great one for posting such knowledge for your fellow Mages, and I ask of you this one thing.....Will continue to share you knowledge as us lot are stupid and don't know what the ***** we're doing!!!!

This will cause your weapons skills to level forcing your char to level without increasing your charactors magic skills as much. This could cause an imbalance in your game in later levels because NPC's will be specialized therefor do more much more damage to you than you to them because your attack skills will be spread between conjuration, destruction, and weapons. I'm not saying it won't work for you but did not for me on master difficulty.

This will cause your weapons skills to level forcing your char to level without increasing your charactors magic skills as much. This could cause an imbalance in your game in later levels because NPC's will be specialized therefor do more much more damage to you than you to them because your attack skills will be spread between conjuration, destruction, and weapons.

I'm not saying it won't work for you but did not for me on master difficulty.

It sounds like you've turned the imbalance people speak of in your favor and nothing can really touch you, lol. Have to say I'll start a second char as a mage, sounds like fun.