I'm going to try a pure Mage playthrough, but I'm unsure of what skill lines to take perks in. I will focus on Enchanting, Destruction, and Alchemy for sure. Any suggestions or advice would be much appreciated! I'm brand spanking new to Mages. The big question is how many skill trees can I max out on perks? Thanks guys!!

There are a lot of perks for magic characters so you should make some choices and try to stay focused.

You already chose destruction so here are some ideas: you can make a pure destruction character especially since you are already using alchemy and enchanting.

You could add Conjuration and focus on using atronachs. Use a frost atronach when attacking with frost or flame atronach with fire damage etc. so the atronach matches the destruction element you are using. That way your atronachs will resist your destruction spells and won't get caught in friendly fire.

Mages don't necessarily need alteration, but the paralyze spell can be fun. Set a wall of shock and when an enemy walks over it, just paralyze them on top of it. It's hilarious. If you don't want to put perks in alteration, there is a staff of paralysis you can get at any time.

Illusion is always fun. Especially make enemies run away then set them on fire.

Restoration is good if you have followers and want to heal them or if you want extra power against undead. If you are using enchanting, reduce the cost of restoration spells, then wards can be your main defense against magic.

Those are just a few basic ideas to get you started. My advice would be to think of the relationships between the magic skills and how they would compliment each other.

Good advice from JRK.

My main tip would be simply to beware of leveling up those crafting skills too fast. It can be easy to grind out a bunch of expensive poisons and enchantments, but if you haven't been working on your Destruction perks you'll fall behind thanks to the leveling system.

If you do choose to focus on Destruction, focus on it like it's your job. You need those Augmented perks, you need those cost-reduction perks, you need Dualcasting. My Destruction mages always max out the tree, and make Destruction their sole focus for the first 15-20 levels.

If you want to mix schools, just be sure you are working on your main offensive abilities first, whether those are your Destruction spells or summons or Illusions. Things like Alteration and Restoration can often wait. Restoration's Ward spells are fantastic, but if you're doing Alchemy you can make Fortify Resto potions that beef up that free lesser ward spell anyway.

I am not NEW to pure mage, but I am also not a veteran. However, I will give you some advice based on my travels thus far:

- It depends on what you mean by "pure mage." In the beginning I started off with light armor. The alteration school helped boost my armor rating with oakflesgh and later stoneflesh. I never spent a single perk point in light armor and my character's skill in light armor is still rather low. I think it is below 25 because I started off as a Breaton. Also, I hired a mercenary (Jenassa) early on as well, which kept some of the attention off my mage. Once the alteration skill was high enough, I took the MAGE ARMOR perk and replaced my set of light armor with robes. I have never looked back, but in the beginning my character needed that extra protection to get started.

- Additionally, I also carry one-handed melee weapons. In Skyrim, I would say maybe 75% of encounters are with melee combatants who are up in your face, and spending most of the game queuing up the Benny Hill music and running away from everything is not appealing to me in the slightest. Also, there are a lot of cool enchanted weapons in this game that I like to take advantage of. Finally, those melee kill cams are so satisfying. I am currently level 25 with exactly 60 skill in both one-handed and destruction. Even the enemy mages in the game have melee back up weapons.

- Destruction part 1: The novice level destruction spells are garbage after level 4 or so. I have been using the apprentice fire bolt spell though for the last 20 levels or so. One reason though is because the fireball spell at adapt level needs to be used with some caution. It is a strong spell, but an explosive spell and will damage "friendly" NPCs who are in combat and they will turn hostile to you. Also, in one fight (no spoilers) I charged up an d threw a fireball spell at a boss and my follower Jenassa ran in and got one-hit killed by the boss and my fireball spell connected right after and did the final lethal damage to kill her. As a follower, mercenaries are marked in the game as "essential" and cannot die, except if you deliver the final blow, which I did. As a role play, I refused to reload my save. This boss also raised her as a zombie that I had to fight off and made for a compelling personal story line moment for my role play. Another time I was fighting a dragon and a fireball connected from a distance right as a hold guard decided to jump into the battle out of no where and I started a second rebellion right then and there apparently. Just be aware of your destruction spells.

- Destruction part 2: As I have gotten to level 25 with my 60 destruction skill, I cannot cast expert level destruction spells for half magicka yet (nor can I find any books for sale yet anyway) and my adapt level spells are no longer getting the job done against these high level enemies. I play on "Adapt" level difficulty settings and while others claim that anything below "expert" is too easy, I can tell you from experience that anyone who says that treats Skyrim like a video game first and a role play second. they exploit the already stupid AI any way they can and guzzle potions at instant unrealistic speed. If that is how they have fun, great, but if forced to have actual combat and save their potions for after combat or that rare moment in a break in combat, then I would have to ask if adapt is too easy for them. But I digress... I play on adapt difficulty and there is a pendulum swing back and forth between a new spell or perk that makes my destruction spells one-hit-kills and then I level up to a point where I need new spells because my now old ones can't get the job done anymore.

- The restoration tree doesn't look too appealing to me, but it does have a branch where you can earn a 25% and later 50% permanent magicka regeneration bonus. So that is worth putting a few perk points into for sure.

- I personally have no interest in conjuration. There isn't a deep pool of creatures to summon to choose from. Just a wolf, a wolf on fire, and deadra. The school of conjuration is pretty much "the dark arts" so unless you want to be a necromancer who also summons creatures from the plane of Oblivion, stay away from this school. I do. I might mess around with it another time as a necromancer role play but not for my main mage character.

- Illusion is a school I have almost never used. I try the fury spell in a group of bad guys and that is always fun and funny to watch them turn on each other, but finding such groups to cast this on isn't that common. often enough it is only between one and three bad guys, and when it is 3, often times two of them are lackeys you can one or two hit kill, so a fury spell is a waste of time.

- Alchemy is interesting, but I already gave my opinion on potions in combat. outside of combat they can be interesting too. I just haven't messed with it yet. maybe in the future when i get bored. the same with enchanting. I like finding enchanted gear. my friend showed me with his character how enchanting pretty much breaks the game once your character is good at it. Once you are good at enchanting, you can be "good" at everything else by creating enchanted gear that fortifies your other skills. Are you a novice at picking locks? that's okay, just wear some enchanted gear and now you have 100 lock picking!

- So, if you want to be a "pure mage" I have to again ask what you really want out of it. in my time so far, i liek beign a blend of mage adn combat simply because i like using the weapons and items in find as loot, and I personally agree with my friend, that you "should" limit yourself to what enchanted/magical gear you find on your own, because enchanting your own stuff cheapens the game play experience (at least in our opinions).

I only ever really use one crafting skill for any character, for a mage that would be enchanting. All magic schools should be used and the conjuration/illusion combo is very powerful and great fun to play.

The only school I haven't found as useful as the others from a pure mage standpoint is Alteration, I'd definitely focus on Destruction perks and then Illusion because Illusion spells can bail you out of trouble if you find yourself overwhelmed. Alteration is always great when I go for a spellsword type and all that, but really Destruction and Illusion really always come in handy for me. Also add Conjuration to the mix once you establish a solid Destruction magic skill level/perks

In my experience conjuration help out a lot, at least if you play on a higher difficulty level.

I would invest in perks in say destruction, until you can enchant stuff enough to make it super cheap, then level the skil to 100 and re-set it ant only take the perks that you need to boost the damage, and use the other 3 perk points or so, on something else.

As mentioned you got to be careful on your craft skills. What I do is generally just make some paralyze potions which are easy to find and some cure disease and save up ingredients until I get some fortify alchemy gear. As for enchanting, I also save up all kinds of stuff besides what might be useful for my character right then. Same with smithing, if used stop at about 33 and with a little help and steel perk you can do Exquisite tempering of steel if applicable.

Once I get to about level 20 and my combat and/or destruction skill up at a good spot, which it should be at that point as I have not used a lot of crafting skills to level, then I start my crafting. I break down all the enchanted stuff and make some basic enchanted daggers with petty and lesser gems I have acquired and you can get your Enchanting skill to 50 in a flash. Then I take all my hides and smith out some leather bracers and daggers to get to 60 smithing (if you are going to do any sword fighting at all). Up until level 20 you should be all right just using some robes of destruction and a hood or circlet for magicka and whatever ring you might find.

After you get your Enchant to 50, you can make a whole set of Fort Destruction stuff so you can chain cast an apprentice or your adept spells for little to no cost. At that point you should have dual cast and impact so you can stun stuff.

As for Alteration, it is great but I would be careful with it as well at first as it can level you very quickly, Same with Illusion. I find it a little hard to well perk Dest/Ill/Al/Conj/Enchant, not counting Restoration, all at once. Also, you will likely have most of your gear Fortify Destruction so other schools will be costly. If you are going to avoid melee a good thing to do is probably limit Alteration use at first except for maybe getting apprentice so you can get resist magic, same strategy if you are going to use light armor throughout without perks. Paralyze isn't needed but as stated above it is fun. I find it plenty effective to just keep casting Ice Storm, just watch out for followers or get ranged ones that stay out of the way like Illia or Anneke Crag Jumper. That said if you can afford the perk, then take mage armor.

I don't know that you will be able to use Illusion effectively either with perk scarcity being an issue, but if you do, you can keep it pretty low level and use dual cast to raise you spell's effective level and I take Hypnotic effect and use dual cast calm on bosses or dual cast fury on their henchmen. When it no longer works take animage and kindred mage.

As for Conjuration, again with perk issues, and I find having too many spells/attack types to hot key frustrating so I don't use more than two or three combat skills, depends on whether you use a weapon or not. Anyway, I would just take novice/apprentice/adapt as they become available so you can get the appropriate atronach spells, and just avoid all those fancy perks which are only really good for Necromancer specialists or bound weapon users. You can get a lot of use and mileage with two perks and the Flame Atronach spell.