I like conjuration and destruction. Should I wear robes or armor (heavy or light)? What kind of follower should I get? And also, how do I go about making no cost destruction spells? I'm a total noob at alchemy and enchanting.

I made a conjuration/destruction mage that used heavy armor, it was fun.

bump

Try this.

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1310006-complete-character-design-freedom-damage-resist-caps-and-ridiculous-damage-thread-6/

Wear robes, conjuration, and destruction. Oh and restoration

Cheers

Well, I leveled up mainly buy killing people with Destruction, reanimating them with conjuration, then killing them again, as for Alteration, use Magelight or Candlelight a lot until you get Telekenisis, then play with that for a bit, until you get a paralyze, and use it on your companions and enemies, but not normal NPC's, they'll attack you. For a companion, when you complete The College of Winterhold, go in the place where the apprentaces live and a girl in there asks you for assistance in spells, let her do it to you, and afterwards she can follow you.

If you're going more of a sneaky illusion mage I'd recommend using robes, as armor increases the likelyhood that enemies will detect you. If you are run and gun, probably want heavy armor mage. Ranged followers make the best because you'll end up killing your companions that run into the middle of battle with your destruction spells.

I have a guide to lowering spell costs in my signature. I don't recommend no-cost spells as it trivializes the game and makes mana useless.

Playing a mage is like surfing the greatest wave and trying to defuse a bomb at the same time. Especially at the beginning of the game you will get facerolled, pawnzored, [censored] in many ways.

Try to avoid playing a mage, imo.

>this all relative to master difficulty, lvl 54 pure cloth destruction-alteration-restoration + enchanting<

a little more info is needed really but...
it comes down to how you deal better personally,
-if you prefer to avoid dmg all together, disregard armor stick to clothes, and use either illusion or alteration for defence and control, not using armor means you dont need to waste perks in an armor skill and smithing to get the best out of it and can perk and level your core magic skills faster.
if you do want to be able to take some punishment stick to heavy armor, there is no real advantage for caster gameplay with light armor.

-conjuration is also a defencive/offencive skill, I personally dont use it and I find it counter intuitive with destruction because it gets in the way of your spells and takes your aoe aswell, also having minions kiling your targets makes you level slower, aswell as having them tank them, makes it harder to kite and train targets into your prefered position to attack.
but if you do want to stick with it, you should consider not using alteration or illusion, as you can just have minions take the "frontline"

-use 1 mana 1 health or even better 1 mana 2 health ratios in the early 20 levels, health will be important to avoid getting one/two shotted, mana will be a pain in this stage and you will have to invest in potions and stavves/one handed weapons for when you are out of mana.

-enchanting, level it by disenchanting items you get or buy, to learn its effects first, should get you to 30+ easily, and keep leveling it whenever you get soul gems, by recharging enchanted weapons or doing some cheap low lvl enchants on random clothes and armor before selling them.
by skill 50 or so you can get about 70% reduction to one school (destruction) and at lvl 100 you can get 100% to two schools (if you like exploiting, I prefer to have 70-90% in multiple schools and other usefull enchants)

-companions you should get uthgerd early on (win her brawl challenge in bannered mare whiterun tavern) and give her a shield and one hander, later on lydia is good too, if you have the armor for her, one you get to 50 destruction tho, at that time you should get high cost reduction aswell, dont use companions at all (unless you decided to stick with conjuring and then you wont be using destruction that much)



thats true for any buildup really, the one buildup that can escape this fact is using a sword and board heavy armor warrior, and even so will encounter spikes of difficulty fairly often.

mage only problem is his dependancy on enchanted gear with -mana cost items, but those can be bough from vendors and gotten from loot early on, until you level enchanting past 50 that you can make your own equivilant or better enchants.
use a companion in this period consumables, staves and even one handed weapons to deminish the problem.

Was just discussing this on a thread I made earlier, about an illusion sneak mage.

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1311680-new-character-sneak-mage/page__gopid__19725665#entry19725665

Waiting until patch 1.3 to come out before I make it though.

I just finshed the game with my assassin, i'm going to mage now, but from what i read, you have two options here:

Go robes (or enchanted clothes) And invest in alteration perk OR go Heavy Armor and invest in heavy armor perk. I'm with the same question, cos i don't know if i'm going to use robes or Heavy Armor, but more for an apperance question i pretend to make a female character now, cos i hope for a better view of Skyrim

You can't do that. Armor doesn't have stats that benefit a mage (+magicka regen, +magicka) unless your enchanting is sky-high and you add these to the armor, and you won't have high enchanting for a very long time. And no, you can't powerlevel enchanting because, unlike smithing, it requires filled soul gems which are quite expensive early game

I'd avoid alteration honestly. Yes, on paper it sounds neat. Being able to throw up an armor spell and make any armor you find feasable to wear..

Downside is the timer on it tends to be a minute, unless you invest yet more in perks to prolong the effects. Worse yet, if you ever enter combat unexpectedly it'd be like dropping soap in a prison shower. Opposed to simply investing about the same amount of perk points and getting heavy or light armor to protect you 24/7

its true that armor wise, alteration is simply underwhelming early on, the buff is equivilant to "unmaxxed" light armor without shield or so.
if you get 3 perksi n mage armor, them ax armor you get is 300, wich is pretty far from what all armors can get, the cap of 550ish(80%), however, some points need to be made, and the quoted poster corrected.
1- it takes ALOT more skill points, and perks invested, in an armor skill aswell as smithing, to get the advantage or using armor, mage only requires to waste 3 (mage armor).
2- even if you dont invest 3 perks in mage armor, the master rank armor buff, (dragon) is a short but armor cap buff (80%), so you can use heavy armor if you want while you level, and once you reach a confortable level, get rid of it.
3- alteration gives you the single best control spell, paralysis/mass aswell as usefull and fun other spells, like telekenisis.

having that said, a mage that uses alteration is not a tank character, if you do go for alteration it will be to support low armor values, or to use cloth and avoid direct damage whenever you can and use the powerfull temp. buffs when you cannot avoid it.

R u serious? I really dunno, but i have in my enchant list on my assassin the possibility to add perk mana reduction, like destruction mana reduction for example, that way i can go for 100% mana reduction, and invest all my level ups in health. With heavy armor maybe i can generate a good char, but will be a try.

The 30% spell damage reduction in Alteration is most handy in that tree, I find.