My goal is to play through all the main quests as a mage on hard mode (Morrowind, Tribunal, and then BloodMoon *shivers*). What is the most effective form of mage? I play mage only very rarely so I am stumped. I think a conjuration, destruction, and alchemy based build would be effective. I see a lot of people with more defensive builds (Illusion, Alteration, Restoration etc). When I get enough opinions I'll try it! (mage on hard mode takes work, and I don't want to discover I have a crappy build).

I guess it's not a pure mage build (not doing damage directly via spell), but my current character uses conjuration / alchemy / alteration on 100 difficulty. I'd call him... an athletic mage. Conjures all his weapons and armor, summons minions as appropriate, heals/buffs/restores via home-brewed potions, levitates over mountains when convenient, opens locks with magic, etc. No need to carry picks, probes, weapons, hammers, or scrolls. That said... he's still stabbity-stabbing the baddies with a dagger. A bound dagger, but a blade nonetheless. I'm sure destruction is super powerful, but would require some uber homebrew potions to keep almost-instant-restore magicka going (which is quite easy to do if you brew your restore magicka potions after brewing and drinking lots of fortify intelligence).

spells can be quite powerful, but many high-level foes are packing a decent amount of spell reflect, which can easily kill you if you blast them with god's fire or something, especially as an altmer. I like to do a dunmer, despite the reduced magicka so I can just use fire spells on enemies with spell reflect and be mostly unharmed. Mods help a lot too, there are some that give you magicka regen similar to oblivion. and lastly magicka potions, you're going to need them, and they arent cheap to make so stock up on frost salts whenever you can.

Magicka resistance and reflect are major issues that make being a mage hard (at high levels ofc). I've noticed though, that you only need to weaken enemies magicka resistance ability a bit to make spells effective. I usually have 80% magicka resistance ('cause I'm to lazy to do tribunal mq), and some higher level casters still pack quite a punch. AoE spells are soooo underrated, you can pack a bunch of enemies together and then cast a few spells and *poof*.

I'd make a mage with conjuration, destruction and alchemy. If someone reflects spells, conjure a golden saint. Of course, if you want a really strong mage, you can always abuse of alchemy... But assuming you don't want to be god-like, alchemy will help a lot making restore magicka and health potions.

If you're going to rely on alchemy, I suggest downloading an alchemy mod like sri's so that it's a bit easier to find ingredients for restore magicka potions. It's not a cheat but merely a convenience. Also, I suggest downloading the mod Fair Magicka Regen, which gives you 1% magicka regen per second at 100 willpower, which is not overpowered and feels just like oblivion in terms of fairness, it's fast enough to restore some magicka between battles, but it won't save you in the midst of one.

Thanks for all the advice! Here's my stats:

Race: High Elf
Birth Sign: The Apprentice

The reason I chose those two, is because that's the highest magicka output (atronoch aside), and I need all the magicka I can get (fyi, I'm level 1 with 300 magicka )

Major Skills:
Conjuration
Destruction
Alchemy
Restoration
Illusion

Minor Skills:
Enchant
Mysticism
Alteration
Short Blade
Light Armor

So far it's been working terrific! The skills that I'm not using right now are Alteration and Short Blade. I forgot though how powerful magic is, you start out with a fire spell that's 15-30 on touch (really crappy area though, and fire < dark elves). It's a bit late to change it now I guess, but I don't want too. On the matter of difficulty, it's very unforgiving. Most enemies can take you out in about 3 hits. Undead enemies easily 1 hit KO. Obviously, I'm still level one, but using GCD, I'm going to keep taking a pounding for a while.

If you get tired of that reflect problem, you can always cast Absorb Health. Even if they reflect it, it is just you absorbing your own health which works out to nothing.

Also you might consider making a few spells to buff your summoned minions, like Fortify Speed and Restore Health on touch, that way your Dremora is better than the Dremora he is fighting.

Ha, Short Blade. And here I thought "mage on hard mode" meant a pure, spells-only mage. Now that would be hard, although still doable.

High Elf and Apprentice :confused: Have fun versus mage enemies and enchanted weapons!

Heh. I've only landed 2 hits with the shortblade and I'm level 10. Rats can still kill me in 5 hits with decent armor. Using GCD I still only have 40 health. Try using a shortblade as a highelf apprentice mage on hardmode, I'd like to see how that works out for you. Personally, I wish I didn't chose shortblade, but something like mercantile or acrobatics. Please, don't be "I'm all that* so superior" if you don't know what you're talking about. Either way. Shortblade is near useless with how much more powerful my spells are and how much magicka I have.

I've done this sort of thing before. I got tired of it by the time I got to Tribunal and fought Gaenor. Well, tried to. Kind of glad I stopped there, because Bloodmoon HATES magic.


Anyway, you can still pick up a bow. GCD counts Misc skills toward your level, correct? That would help give you some extra Health in the process too. Although you'll probably need to train the skill quite a bit... or get a Fortify Skill spell if you ( or one of your mods ) dislike trainers.
How does GCD calculate Health, anyway? Or does your character have eighteen or so endurance?

GCD works like this. Misc skills give you attribute boots, but only very slowly, so you can't count those. If light armor is your only endurance boosting thing, you're almost never going to get your endurance up (due to the fact that melee is suicidal as a hard mode mage). Obviously, you get random bonuses from other skills and when you level up, but that's painstakingly slow. As a mage, your only endurance skill is your armor skill, but that's if you're not using unarmored, making your health uber low. Bloodmoon does hate magic, but with Helseth's ring and Boots of Blinding Speed, you can only be hit in small areas. Almost all the animals in Bloodmoon have a magicka weakness (fire works very well), save the reikling on a boar and a few other animals. Even so, you have to learn allll the weaknesses and what kills what. Compared to Tribunal and Morrowind.... Yeah, Bloodmoon hates magic. Still, Helseth's ring + Cuirass of the savior's hide will finally make my mage a viable option, because it will totally negate all his weaknesses. With GCD, by the time I get to bloodmoon and a little training (without using soulgems and getting all the glass in morrowind), I will have a crap ton of magicka and magicka resistance, meaning I will be able to afford to cast spells 100 times until they finally work on enemies.

More on GCD (good character development):

My GCD assassin had 130 shortblade, 110 light armor, and 140 agility at level 50. Sadly, he also had 150 health. That, however, balances GCD characters. Uber warriors will struggle getting 100 agility, due to their skill choices to be a warrior. In fact, if they have no agility based skills, they will have no effective method of raising agility (other then training misc skills, which takes FOREVER, and levelups, which might not even increase agility depending on what your train)

As already noted; Altmer and 'the apprentice' is not recommended, your weakness towards magicka will be extreme..

Regards

TM

Heh, Have fun with that mage, my lvl 36 skirmisher still has trouble with certain opponents at max difficulty. He's a light/unarmored specialist..so pretty much anyone who wields a daedric anything is a dangerous foe, 3-6 hits is all they need to make before he takes a dirt nap. Using Morrowind Comes Alive (at least I think that's the mod that adds them) there are random vampires and sixth house soldiers, with the latter almost always using some kind of enchanted daedric weapon. Needless to say, my raids into Red Mountain have cost the lives of no less than 3 hired mercs, 2 of them "named" so not your run-of-the-mill merc. I find it almost a must to have some kind of merc running interference for me otherwise all their attention is focused on me and that's bad news bears for my char.

early on, stockpile enchants that summon, as many as you can find; even if it summons something like a mudcrab (don't believe there are any enchants that do, but even so; the summons will be used for cannon fodder). This includes summon scrolls (lightwieght) as well as found items. Longer time limit the better as there is at least one - the bone guard belt- that has a 10 second time limit. 10 seconds is long enough to summon a skeleton, but not long enough for that skeleton to figure out who to attack before they uselessly disappear in a *poof*!

When dealing with higher level creatures/characters the cannon fodder is nice becuz offensive spells can get reflected back on you, (You cannot reflect a summons back on its caster) and like the others said this is a very REAL danger. I had an item that had enchant 5000 points of damage on hit and when I snuck up on a certain enemy in bloodmoon MQ and hit 'em that got reflected and killed me with no damage to my target... In fact I don't think he even knew I was there but I dropped dead on the spot.

ST

Stock any resistances you can and spell reflect.
Increase wide range debuffs, and then throw a wide range destruction spell. (like, cast -50 fire resist, then a huge fireball).

Good stuff if you want to be out of range frome enemies is to slow them down while you cast spells to speed you up. Running and acrobatics can be really useful for mages, so you can reach high spots that your enemies can't, stuck on the ground and trying to get to you.
Remember that you don't have to kill to progress, so you can go silly on them.
One of my best combo was a wide range water walk on enemies, and cast fast swimming and water breathing on me. You can flee by swimming deeply under water while your enemies are stuck on the surface.