The cost of education in Skyrim for a mage seems as bad as in current real life. Endless spell books to buy and memorize. Thousands of septums to buy enchanted gear to disenchant and learn their enchantments. More thousands of rare ingredients to buy for your alchemy studies (granted some of that you can get back by selling the resulting potions but most of your experiments fail).

What are the best places to find spell books and enchanted items? All my house money keeps going for my magic studies.

You could try the university?

I know it costs a lot to get any decent transferrable skills these days, but perhaps you could take a part-time job? I hear the shop in Riverwood is hiring.

Once you get your enchanting up you can make real cash by enchanting simple iron daggers, it costs a lot in the beginning but the returns are basically endless.

Maybe you can get a job at the Library in the College

What kind of dungeons/opponents are likely to have magical loot? Any fairly close to Whiterun where I'm mainly based at present?

I'll agree with the suggestion to enchant low level and mundane items to sell and fund your exploits. Enchanting levels quickly, and the sale value of what you create starts to really increase after only a short time. Plundering lower level caves and forts for enchanted items to disenchant (or sell) would probably be a better solution than just buying them outright. Vendor markups in Skyrim are crazy high, so it's best to stay on the sell side of that equation.

Studying some Skyrim economics might be helpful

Buy empty petty soul gems. Go kill and soul trap some low level foes like mudcrabs and deer. Enchant the daggers you pick up from bandits and such. If you can buy a cheap weapon with damage stamina, then destroy it and learn the enchantment. That enchanting effect gives some decent returns on investment. Even if you have to buy filled petty soul gems.


Then once you're making some decent septims, buy an enchanted weapon with Banish Daedra effect. Great returns on that one.

Edit: Best place to find the spell books you want are enchanting shops unfortunately. You'll get more choice as you level a particular school of magic and progress through the College of Winterhold. Same goes for enchanted gear. Best to buy them if you have the coin and then learn the enchantments and make enchanted gear yourself. Otherwise if you have the Dawnguard DLC and have made your way to the Soul Cairn, [spoiler]there is a merchant in there that sells you random spell books for soul husks].

There is also a Transume spell book in a dungeon near Whiterun. Then turn all the iron ore into gold ore

To get the best bang for the buck...

Dwemer ruins... they have a lot of soul gems, much in the way off leveled loot, including enchanted stuff. Hire a Follower, Tank if your a squishy mage! Not only to you get more loot out, but you also have a someone to help.. conjure also and you have two.

If you are a Battlemage or Spellsword, get the Arcane perk and all the way up to Dwemer... those same ruin's give you all the scrap metal and such you could want to make Dwemer bows, then enchant and sell... collect some Blue Butterfly wings + Blue mountain flowers... nice profit, for early game and easy to find.

Wow this might be the first time I've heard someone say that they are having trouble becoming filthy rich in Skyrim...

Easy way to make coin as a mage is to mine iron ore and transmute it to gold.

My experience is that I find more spell books then I buy. And I usually find a duplicate of any I do buy.

Enchanting is also raised by recharging, so use all the petty gems for that, and boost your skill. Make sure you can soul trap, so you fill your own, instead of buying them.

Buy iron ore and some leather, iron ore is dirt cheap (not sure what the base price is, for me with maxed out speech it's 3 septims, but it should still be cheap) and every leather will give you 4 strips, you only need one of each for iron dagger, then you get a stack of petty soul gems and give them to a follower with soul trap weapon, they will fill entire stack with one soul, simple, cheap and easy, i actually found that stuff sells better when on lower levels of enchanting.

I'm using a mod to slow skill increases so my levels still pretty low. With another character after my level was high and I already had my houses, already bought or found most of the spell books and learned most of the enchantments and enchanted my gear with grand souls money accumulated pretty fast. Starting out where you need everything it's hard and money is tight.

I don't think I've ever bought any enchanted item from a merchant. They're a plenty all over Skyrim to find.


To be quite honest with you, if how you're playing was my character, I'd go crazy trying to look for this and look for that. Just play the game and you will come across more enchanted items than you know what to do with.


Take the advise and stockpile petty soul gems and soul trap low level creatures.


In addition, most if not all the spell books (with the exception of master level spells) in the game can be found without having to buy a single one.

It is costly and I have found that "found spellbooks" are few levels behind my character's abilities. It is a rare find when I find a book in a dungeon or some-such that is not a novice level I do not already have, as an Adept or better caster.

Ingredients. Many of them lie along the roadside. "Easy Pickins", as they say. Some of them, I wonder at the price. Wisp Wrappings, one of the most rare ones for me, are a measly few septims, at most. Then fish one can catch in any pond price out at double digit septims.

Enchanting is another one that one can find a-plenty if one does the quests that the College hands out for homework. No need to buy, though I usually do for specific ones like Waterbreathing.

The nice thing is, like someone else mentioned, selling some of the "homework" back to vendors. Once you get good, though, you may get hard-pressed to find vendors with enough cash on hand. My later game potions usually sit in my chest at home

All of these are great suggestions. You can make a ton of money enchanting, transmuting, or making potions with alchemy. Also, traditional dungeon delving will get you there as well.


If you haven't completed the College yet, definitely check it out. You get all kinds of neat spells over the course of it.

I don't play mages.... but damn, I've found and sold more spellbooks than any mage could ever need. Not to mention disenchanting gear - good lord, every girl I run gets three or four levels in the first ten just DEing gear....

Maybe you're not doing the right dungeon crawls or something....

There are a few spellbooks that can only be gotten by following quests; Equillibrium, for example. And there are a few enchanting effects that only can be gotten in one place, like the "Fortify Unarmed" of the Gloves of the Pugilist.

But, yes, I find that I can learn most of the useful enchantments, and find most useful spell effects, just by exploring and dungeon diving.