Can I enchant robes if they already have an enchant on them?

Nope. You can find unenchanted robes to add your own enchants to though.

And sadly, there's only about 5 unenchanted robes in the game.

isnt there a perk that allows you to add an extra enchantment to an item?

My mistake, yes. I just checked. I don't know if that lets you add an enchant to pre-enchanted items though.

You cannot enchant pre-enchanted items, even with the ultimate enchanting perk. And unfortunately, unenchanted robes are incredibly rare in my experience. Is there a way to use the console to give unenchanted skins of the robes to the player as items? If so, I think I'll just go collect then enchanted version then console in the unenchanted while getting rid of the enchanted.

You can find unenchanted college robes at the radiant raiment in solitude.

Great! What about Thalmor robes? I like their style, no matter how crazy they may be.

Edit: I do have the PC version

No, unless you have the PC version.

So how the hell does "enchanting" benefit a mage? If it looks like I'm just better off finding already enchanted robes and using them.

The default enchantments on pretty much all robes kinda svck for a mage after a certain point. I've got the best default robe setup available for a mage and it's really underwhelming at level 35. Enchanters can place far more powerful enchantments on items than the default allows. More useful ones, as well.

You can enchant armor to be better than robes, but at the moment your options with robes are somewhat limited it seems to whatever the vendors can sell you.

So what would be better?

Robes (already enchanted from what the game gives)

OR....

Finding (or creating) Light Armor and then enchanting it?


Which one?

Without stacking enchanting and alchemy, can you really get a better combination than the Robes of the Archmage + one of the Dragon Priest masks...?

Pure stats-wise? Light or Heavy armor with enchantments. You can reach the same level of default game enchanted items quickly, and can easily surpass that level of enchantment. Since in Skyrim there is no penalty for spellcasters wearing heavy armor, you could get both high armor rating and excellent mage stats through crafting. I personally prefer the look and style of robes, but if you want the best, craft a set of Daedric armor and slap some reduce magicka cost enchantments all over them.

Edit: I'm not sure Mr.Fong, I haven't done it myself yet, but I know two other mages who have. I believe you can still outmatch Archmage robes + morokei with player enchantments alone though. You'll be able to enchant each item, hands/feet/chest/head, twice with the enchantments of your choice. In the end, the +x% magicka regeneration bonuses aren't as great as they sound, because they don't work well in combat. A better path is to enchant items with -x% cost to cast whatever spells you cast most. Through this, and I believe with no potion/enchanting mixtures, you can even make one school of magic free to cast by having a total of 100% reduced cost for that school.

Well, you can place "fortify skill" at 25% on robes, hoods, amulets, and rings with 100 Enchant and 4 Grand Soul Gems to have 0 cost casting for two schools of magic. (With the Double Enchant perk)

Also, Dragon Priest masks count as armour, which means the Mage Armour perk doesn't work.

That seems like a bad ass route to go. I think I'll do that. However! If do go that route, should I drop "conjure"? I was planning on using destruction and conjuration. Why the conjure? To summon meatshields. That way they can keep the enemies off of me while I attack. Keeping an enemy off of me is pretty good defense. No???

My only concern would be with say....DRAGONS. When they spew their fire onto me, what will I do? My health will pretty much go down to nil in 2 seconds. Correct?

If you're playing a Breton, if you haven't already, switch your Standing Stone to Atronach. The 50% magicka absorption combined with the Breton daily power that also gives 50% magicka absorption will make you immune to magical damage, like a dragon's elemental attack.

Why would they do that? I must have missed something in your post :confused: Dragons never give me much trouble, aside from taking forever to land.
Conjuration is useful no matter what you do. I can say that, as a master conjurer, having two Dremora Lords in full daedric armor wielding flaming daedric greatswords is fantastic. Not to mention that you can also summon some very powerful weapons, without the weight of carrying anything around. If you want to go destruction, I definitely recommend using self-made enchantments, because unless you reduce the cost of destruction spells to 0% or nearly that much, destruction really starts to svck around level 40.

Because if I go with robes (no armor rating) and invest in destruction and/or conjure...where will my "defense" be? I have NOTHING to protect me against the flames of a dragon. Is a summoned pet really going to keep that dragon busy enough for me to unleash my hell onto him? Even my summoned pet does do that, the dragon for sure will hit me AT LEAST once with its fire/frost. And again, with no armor...I'll be dead quick!

I don't think armor rating has any bearing whatsoever on whether or not the dragon's flame/frost will do more damage to you. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure magic/fire/frost resist is the only thing that mitigates dragon breath. You'd be just as toast in daedric armor as in rags.

That said, the minions can do an astounding job of drawing fire, depending on the minion.
A flame atronach, for instance, will take no damage at all from a fire breathing dragon while a frost atronach will behave similarly with a frost dragon, if I'm not mistaken. Aside from those two, my Dremora Lords also are excellent at keeping dragons busy. They're built very tough, they won't likely go down to dragon breath. Not to mention that if the dragon lands, he's suddenly got two flaming daedric greatswords in his face.