I've been playing Morrowind for about 2 years now, and I have yet to get a character past level 5 due to severe Character ADD. My solution is to go for a no death (hardcoe) playthrough of the Main Quest in order to get as many types of characters in as possible until I find what works. I'm also limiting my encumbrance to what I can carry on person (with slight changes, basket=backpack and whatnot) and eating.

Using stock characters, I have gone through a Dunmer Rouge (level 3, one-shotted by Dwemer spider thing in Arkngthand), Dunmer Agent, (Level 4, killed by trapped door in my most careless death) a Dunmer Scout (level 2, killed by Snowy Granius' spear), a Bosmer Acrobat (Level 1, died in Addamasartus), and finally I have started with a Breton Mage under the sign of the Mage. Level 1, Day 6, Evoker in Mage's Guild, Blades Apprentice.

I've hit some pitfalls:
My characters rarely survive their first week out of prison, but still level up fairly quickly and I spend a few days pounding on mudcrabs before I set off for Balmora. My Mage has been IMPOSSIBLE to train. I have raised my Destruction and my Alteration skills once respectively. Going on fetch quests for Ajira has raised my Athletics considerably and that's about it.
I am so low level that I am finding it difficult to make any money, I am currently trapped in Wolverine Hall with no real way of getting home.

Could I get some tips and tricks for playing magic users? Better builds, spells to buy, and ways to raise my skills on my own, etc. The UESP hasn't been the most incredible help for some reason.

To cover all your concerns and problems would take a 10 page dissertation which I'm not going to write. So I'll start at the beginning and give you one persons thoughts/opinion on character generation.

1) Don't use stock characters. They are always going to have skills that will, for one reason or another, be absolutely useless.

2) Pick a skill set first. (Note that I did not say..."choose a role to play"...yet).
Using your foreknowledge (2 yrs experience) decide what YOU want to be able to do in the game. Since I don't know what you want I will, as an example, make a list of what I want. I want to be able to:
a) Win a melee fight.
B) Be protected in a melee fight
c) open locks and disarm traps
d) Teleport
e) Cure/heal myself
f) Levitate, walk on water, etc.

There's any number of skills you can use to accomplish these things. For arguments sake I'll use these:
a) melee weapon skill.. B) armor skill..c) security..d) mysticism..e) restoration..f) alteration

That, for me, is basic and gives me 6 out of 10 skills. NOW I will think about role play and find 4 mage/thief/warrior skills to complete the major/minor list. In conjunction with this I can also pick a race, sign, and favored attributes to best compliment my skills and role.

(And start over half a dozen times, tweaking the character, until I find one I really like).

Like I said, just one persons opinion.



Where did those things come from???

From what you wanted to do with your character? Thank you for the direction. You have been very helpful.

To be successful you have to be able to survive. Go to Nalcarya the alchemist in Balmora. Buy potions of Mark and Recall. Go somewhere safe, like the temple or right next to the Guild Guide and drink the Mark potion. This is your escape point. Whenever you are in trouble, i.e., in combat over your head, about to fall to your death, etc., right click to call up your menu, which freezes action and take the Recall potion. Boom! You’re out of trouble instantly.
If you join the Fighters and Mages Guilds, they have a chest with free items in their guild halls at Balmora, Sadrith Mora, Vivec and Ald’ruhn. You can sell most of the stuff to the Creeper for about 5k drakes and the chests refill every month. Also, alchemy or soul trapping are solid ways to make lots of money.
As you probably know, many skills can be trained by grinding out simple tasks, like casting 1 point spells, running or jumping in place, or just bribing people over and over. If you use alchemy, speech craft and mercantile as minors, then you can level up about 25 times this way in the first couple of game days.

My first successful mage survived the early levels by using enchanted items to cast spells on tough enemies and training destruction on the easier ones.

I also suggest doing something similar to this.

My biggest problem playing as a pure mage was that it was very difficult in the early going to kill things via spells alone. You typically just don't have access to high level spells, and even if you can find and afford them, you'll be lucky to cast them once successfully before your magicka is drained.

So what I always did was practice on rats and scribs with the weakest spells I could find/create. An on touch fire spell of 1 point can burn away critters while you still gain points towards increasing your skill. It's tedious and makes the already tough "starting out" process of the game even tougher, but later on, when your frying werewolves with your own version of an "apocalypse" or "hand of god" kind of spell, it's totally worth it.

Also, don't be a afraid to just bash things with your staff (or dagger if you want to go that way) if in a tough spot.

I end up giving all my mages alchemy and mercantile. Mages, as wise and shrewd as they're apt to be, have no qualms about brewing a few potions for profit when required. And, c'mon - what says 'mage' more than the image of a witch/wizard hovering over a bubbling cauldr...er....mortar and pestle. Also - with alchemy at your fingertips, you'll never lack for various restore/cure/fortify brews. Just walk outside the fort and see what's growing.

First of all, Fire Bite is an extremely useful spell. You should be able to kill anything at your level in one or two casts. For comparison, it does an average of ~22.5 damage while Fireball does an average of ~11.
If you have a lot of magic schools as major/minor skills, find every excuse possible to cast everything you can think off. Majoring in six schools of magic is like majoring in six weapon skills. Obviously, watch your magicka when in dangerous areas.
If you are focusing on Unarmored, your armor rating will be extremely low for most of the game. If you don't have the code patch, you may also want to read about the unarmored bug.
If spamming every known spell on every Mudcrab isn't raising your skills fast enough, you can also do some "cheating" and simply cast a cheap spell over and over in the safety of your own home to raise your skills.

Agreeing and adding that fireball is still useful for enemies that are far away from you to get an early hit on them or two before they reach you. Also essential versus many ranged enemies.



This is also good for getting the requirements for certain guilds without having to wait until you've blown up half of Vvardenfell's wildlife first.



Also, I recommend making your own custom spells later on. Even some of the best spells already in the game do hardly any damage to certain enemies. Be careful of Daedra too, a lot of the tougher ones have Reflect which will wreck you. Reflect is nasty to face if you're a pure mage, especially since it also reflects elemental damage from weapons (or at least I think so, might be one of my mods that added that in without me noticing). My solution was to only use a plain ebony staff. Maybe later I'll find a decent cast on use spell for it later or something, but that's for another thread.

Custom spells are a must. You can get exactly what you want when you want it. It also allows you to balance duration versus damage to your exact preference. This can be very helpful, especially for offensive spells. Might I also suggest some strong damage attribute spells? Killing the strength of those pesky Orc warriors until they cannot move and killing them from a range is a lot safer than trying to go hand-to-hand with no appreciable defenses (it also is relatively magicka-efficient at 10 pts. for 5 secs.).

And yes, reflect will work for spells cast by any means, including from enchanted weapons, from vanilla on. Reflect is actually the reason I like elemental damage for duration spells. Always carry some healing potions on you so that, if it gets reflected, you have a chance to drink a potion that can keep you from dying. The reason duration is preferable is because most potions made with the Alchemy skill will have longer durations rather than potent immediate effects.

As far as reflecting from weapons goes... if you are going to have an enchanted weapon, I suggest something that does not have an offensive enchantment, and is cast on use (for example, Magebane has a resist magicka effect that is cast on use). That can pretty much be whatever you want. I suggest, however, having a backup for when you can discount spell reflection. A weapon with a paralyzation-on-strike enchantment can serve you very, very well.

My first really successful character was actually a mage. I think my logic was always attack from a distance where possible, do a lot of training where it is safe, and make sure your equipment is up-to-date. I found that being able to conjure weapons was extremely useful when you do need to go into physical combat, since the conjuration spells for weapons are cheap and relatively easy to cast. For training, you can have spells made with 0-point effects that will still raise your skill, but cost only 1 magicka to cast (though if you are doing a more RP-style thing, that might not be to your taste).