Hi Alexanderfc,

Welcome to the forums and the game - glad you got that fishystick, it's a tradition!

I'm on Xbox so can't give you any advice about mods, but I've played a pure mage on Master difficulty in vanilla Skyrim and here's what I've learned:

* Pick an Altmer as your race for the extra magicka, the Fury spell, and the daily fast-regeneration power.
* It goes without saying, but spend your intial perk points in the destruction tree right away. Along the same lines, always boost your magicka as you level.
* Pick the Mage standing stone coming out of Helgen, later, switch to the Atronach, Apprentice or Lord stone depending on your play style. I liked the Apprentice stone at low levels as the extra magicka really let you put down the baddies quickly. I later switched to the Lord stone for magic resistance.
* Get the recipe for Elsweyr Fondu - it's you're BFF at the start.
* Find the recipe, or just buy, fortify magicka, fortify health, fortify magicka regeneration and fortify health regeneration potions and brew up a batch.
* Do the Book of Love quest out of Riftin for 15% magic resistance.
* Avoid the main quest and get to the Mage college. Grab the gear there and finish the quest line to become Archmage. His robes and circlet are a big help
* Try to get the Morokei Dragon Priest mask out of Labyrinthian for the 100 extra magicka and 100% faster regeneration.
* Practice enchanting to create cost reduction, fortify magicka, and magic resistance gear.

That should get you where you want to be - but be warned, a destruction mage that just spams fireballs gets old pretty quickly...

None of Bethesda's games like Alt-Tabbing. I used to have a little trick I pulled back in my Morrowind days. I'd open a Notepad document and leave it open while I played. For some reason having a second program running made Morrowind and Oblivion a lot easier to Alt-Tab out of, on my computer. I don't know if this would work on Skyrim (I stopped Alt-Tabbing years ago) but it's worth a try.