So i just got oblivion never played any of titles before, and i took quite a bit skilling all of my magic types to 50(journyman) and made some journyman spells, i'm an argonian using basic mage template and didnt want armor or like i like the idea of a pure casterish type with out need for armor. While i have no issues with survivability real problem is my mana. Now i realize my spells do alot of damage but consumeing 60% or more with a jouneyman spell seems a bit much...i'm not sure what i'm missing here exactally.

Argonian
Level: 14
Mage Birth sign
Mage Class
Every level up has been: int/willpower/personality(occasional endurance maybe once or twice)
Spells used: Shock Spell: does 35 damage over 2 seconds, Shock Touch: 10 damage over 8 and 50% weakness over 8 basic heal, basic life detect ect.

Any time i use ANY of my two combat spells it consumes 50-70% of my mana pool am i missing something? i thought as a mage i'd gain more magic then anyone else...is being an argonian so detrimental to my mana makes using any high level spell pointless? I'm just lost here i can't do any combat zones now because i can't cast more one spell before i'm oom OR have to resort to spells that take 20 billion shots to kill 1 enemy... i've tried alot of differant combinations of spells and always ends up the same...feels like my spells are costing more mana then they should.

P.S. no i don't wear armor nor do i have enchants is this the problem? do i need to get cloth and enchant it with fort magicka?

any tips would be appeciated.

I've played a Breton Apprentice Wizard. What happens is that for powerful spells to cost less you have to be in the higher ranks of a specific school - I mean, 75 and above! Until then, you have to make spells, taking into account mainly how much u can afford mana-wise, rather than how much damage will do / how long will last.

I was kinda lazy (and read a lot this site http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Magic ), so I had these spells in my 8 slots the best I could:

- Drain Health 100 / Weakness to Magic 100% 4 sec / Invisibility 5 sec
- Paralysis 4 sec / Weakness to Magic 100% 4 sec / Invisibility 5 sec
(I kept spamming these two )

- Heal 40 pts / Invisibility 5 sec
- Invisibility 30 sec
- Feather Maximum

Some spells to improve BOOOORING skills:
5 - Increase Skill Security 100 for 1 sec (to open any lock)
6 - Increase Skill Repair 100 for 1 sec
7 - Increase Skill Merchant 100 for 1 sec / Increase Attribute Person 50 for 1 sec
8 - Increase Skill Speech 100 for 1 sec / Increase Attribute Person 50 for 1 sec

I found that later on, with better proficiency, I could include the first two spells as area of effect - 10 feet, rather than on target. so u can cast on the floor near the victim and still works wonders.

There are far deadlier magic strategies, just check out, or wait till someone replies with better options (though mine work very well).

EDIT: I think I now see why ur spells cost so much: the '2 second' component. This means the target will take 30 shock damage, and another 30 after 2. Could be cheaper, less than half, if you had this by 1 sec only, and cast 2x?

Also, if u want, check some mods: Improved (or Enhanced) Magic System and another one whose name i forgot, allows u to cast Lightning Storm on ur foes and summon a Balrog!

Some thoughts:

Get your Intelligence as high as possible. Use alchemy to both fortify and restore your magicka. Make custom spells, with both elemental damage and a weakness to that element, and repeat-cast them. Use "Command on target" spells (short time interval to save magicka) to deal with groups of enemies. Use Restoration magic (Absorb Health, especially) for close up defense.

Wear at least one item with a fortify Intelligence (or Fortify Magicka) enchantment. And keep working on your skills; the casting cost goes down as your level rises.

My mages usually use one hotkey for either Restore Magicka potions, or for eating flax seed, which is readily available. Another hotkey is devoted to Restore Health potions, so I can avoid having to use magicka for healing, except as noted above.

Played this way, even an Atronach-sign mage can maintain sufficient magicka.

Changing the spell from 2 seconds only saves about 20 or so magicka (( 88 for 1 second vs 114 for 2 seconds)) i only have 204 magicka seems a bit odd that i am required to have 75 in a magic type before i can cast anything over a level 1 spell...as it stands i cant kill any of the deadra because either takes 2000000000 spells to kill them or i oom in 2 shots... i guess i am use to being a wizard in games and ya know being able to actually cast spells of equal level more then once. Feels like mana costs are far far far to high for any spell i cast right now. I thought was just custum spells but no...a shock spell from a vender does equal damage is still costing about same amount of mana. Second level shock spell costs same amount as my Shock 2 spell( 20 damage over 1 second costing 43 mana) and still not enough to dent mobs on normal diffculty. I'm just confused as to why some one that devoutes all there effort into spells suddenly cant cast anything...do i seriously have to stand in the academy and cast spells non-stop till i reach master level? X,x that seems overly tedious just to be viable ...

Problem is my spells deal to little damage to kill anything or consume so much mana its useless ONLY spell i have can viably deal damage with is doing 20 shock damage, i can shoot maybe 5 of those before i oom...that doesn't even kill 1 deadra i know i need some better summons and control spell seems a good suggestion but just feels strange that i cant cast a spell of my own level(journyman) with out ooming in 2 casts... do we have to guzzle mana pots untill we hit 75 skill? 0_o i dunno feels like mage class is punished for being so verstile by svcking untill your pretty much maxed out.

I play a very fragile mystic archer. When she runs out of arrows in a dungeon, she has learned how to continue with nothing but magic (she own't touch a melee weapon or staff - ever). She uses stealth and is quite efficient in using magic.

Crowds: A cheap one second command spell will start a fight. She lets them kill each other off. May have to repeat a couple times. Might have to go invisible and run some if noticed. Eventually there will be only one foe for her clannfear to eat.

Individuals: Clannfear + invisibility on self.

Her spells can be a tad pricey to cast, but she never has to spam anything because she lets her foes or summons do the killing. She basically regenerates magicka faster than she has to cast it.

Much easier of course when she just uses the magic to support her bow, but she can certainly get by as a 'pure mage' if necessary.

Please read above posters correctly. They had some good points.

If your a pure mage, the apprentice is probably a better sign. Enchanted your gear with fort magicka, or fort int, and to offset the weaknesses, make sure you use the correct shields. Put as many points into int as you can.

Hope this helps

I'm no expert by any means but I will give you my two cents. First off I play on PS3 and so therefor I cannot use mods. I have noticed that if you do timed spells, for example, Fire damage 30 points for 2 seconds is cheap than fire damage 60 points for one second, they require less mana. Two, touch spells are always less mana consuming than target spells. I never use AoE spells unless fighting groups. AoE = area of effect in case you didn't know, just making sure.AoE spells waste mana especially if your fighting 1v1 and you can time his strikes and fade in with a touch attack or stay away with target attack. One tip for fading in and out with touch attacks and avoid getting hit that I learned some time ago is to start your touch attack before you get in range. So right as you start moving use your spell. By the time your there it hits and it gives you more time to withdraw and avoid his followup swing or whatever. Magicka potions are a must if you have a low pool. What I do, I don't recommend you do this since you took alchemy as a major, I go to alchemist, buy out stock of ingrediants, find the ingrediants that restore magicka, combine those then combine the rest into whatever and sell what potions I don't want. You could do this but you have a high chance of over leveling yourself so I don't recommend.you could enchant gear ( I'm assuming since your a mage and lvl 14 that you have access to the arcane university) find a piece of clothing for each body part, shirt pants shoes, hat and for your hands a great 0 weight item are a pair of prison shackles. Anyway captur the biggest soul you can, I think daedra unless daedra go with black gems which are hard to find. Anyway captur the biggest souls you can and enchant each piece of clothing with the + ___ magicka amount. That will greatly greatly boost your magicka count. Also try not casxting spells that are exactly your lvl. For example. If your destruct is 75, cast spells that are closer to the 55. Lvl of destruction. There is no exact way to tell what lvl they are but you can get a feel for it. Conjurations are a great way to give yourself time to regain magicka naturally or with potions and to relax a bit and figure out your strategy. You can even carry around a sword , just don't use it, that's boosted with a magicka enchantment. Oh and also, enchant two rings with the boost magicka enchant if you want. Even at lower lvls if you enchant everything with a bonus amount of magicka using the biggest soul you can find, you will have a larger than needed pool. Hope some of that info helps. Good luck.

And by the way, the mage class does not svck at any level. You just will soon learn how to be efficient with it. You have to learn to get the greatest bang for the littlest mana cost. Learn tactics that can help you. For example. I can't remember which spell it is in Illusions school, I think its frenzy? Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but cast frenzy on an enemy for a short time and bingo you have a new ally for that time. Invisibility + a 'ummon works wonders to as Acadian uses it, to restore magicka and and as I use it to restore magicka, get out the fray of combat if overwhelmed. Invisibility is good by itself as well. Don't worry, you will learn the tricks of the trade soon. It takes time for it to dawn upon you how things work and using good tactics. I consider myself to be a good player (not being self absorbed here) and I didn't know anything when I first started playing. It took me months (no forum help or outside communication with others who had the game) to learn how to efficiently play a mage. Since you have people here you'll get it in no time. Then you will be rolling through dungeons, oblivion gates, like there nothing. You may even need to turn the difficulty slider up some once you learn these skills. For now, take your time and think about what is useful and what doesn't work. Believe me, none of us on these forums bought the game then immediately worked the system. Unless they have extremely cheap mods, then they might have worked the system haha. Keep persisting, you will see the reward if you do.

As a Mage you should be making and using potions.

Angel is a Breton, pure Mage, born under the sign of the Atronach. From day #1, it is her potions and poisons that has been her power base. I play dead is dead. Angel has survived everything thrown at her for over 250 hours.

At level 40 her Magicka pool is 400 points. She is at expert, or master level in all her Mage skills. She might have two 'Restore Magicka' potions going at once in a 'hot' fight and still run low occasionally. Of course, I'm talking about four or five Boss types at once. She can do some serious spellcasting thanks to her potions.

It's a good idea to make multi-purpose potions. Here are some examples;

Mage's Melee Mixer
--- Restore Magicka
--- Fortify Endurance
--- Restore Fatigue
--- Shield

Angel's Guardian
--- Shield
--- Restore Magicka

With her master Alchemy skill, just one Mage'sMeleeMixer and one Angel'sGuardian will max her armor for about 2 minutes and restore 46 points of Magicka per second for about a minute. With her summon, illusion, and poisons, her fights are over very quickly and most of that goes to waste.

So i managed to get gate in kvatch closed...and now i'm pretty much stuck...

i think is...3-4 of dino deadra's and 1 mage and a fire elemental chick(hell i don't know name of these things) the gaurds ethier get completely slaughtered or i do... basically 1-3 hits drops me by dinos which can bum rush me.

Command Spells: i'm going to assume command creature only works on summons? and humanoids only on the npcs...is there one effects dinos because they apparently are immune to it...and if i pump level any high it pretty much going to oom in one casting of it.

Invisibility: not an option only way to get inviso is from the girl in bravil however, she won't sell it untill you defeat kvatch(i couldn't figure why she was selling nothing but research revealed that she doesnt untill you start closing the gates). So i can't vanish or use paralyze because she won't sell those yet.

Initial problem: because in this section enemies swarm all over you and i have 0 aoe's and no way to disable or avoid combat with these mobs. Because the dinos can bum rush me and it takes 1 full mana bar to kill them i can not see it happening between trying to avoid them and the mage it seems completely stacked against me.

Gear: enchanted helm and robe are done, and while helpful not sure if enchanting rest will do it could i suppose but would require me to find and fill alot more soul gems and grind even more gold i guess its an option but right now just feels stacked against me.

Summon: using ghost right now which seems useful however not stopping me from getting swarmed at all... i can turn diffculty slider down but i refuse to do that i am not cheating to win a game i just don't do it...

Basic Problem: basic problem is that takes far to much mana to kill something so i either get forced into using low level spells to kill something and getting killed while spamming spell a billion times or using high damage spells but dieing because i oom before i kill something. I always saw mage as a glass cannon or a controller as a big D&D fan and mage since i can remember this is only game comes to mind where i picked a mage up and felt completely at a loss as to why... why is mana such a problem? why can't i use spells of equal level? feels like game is pigeon holeing me into using spells are way way below what i should be using ...or having to carry a bazillion mana potions.

Conclusion: Is that birth sign so powerful that 50 magicka is going to solve the problem? i can't imagine 50 magicka being worth 100% extra damage from magic(which as i've read can= a one shot later on) so i have to ask what hell am i doing wrong? why is it everyone seems to have no problems but i am getting trashed by enemies left and right... i don't recall having this issue with the 360 version when i played my templar... i love the mage but i can't quite wrap my head around what i'm doing wrong that is causing my mage to get completely ass [censored] by everything that moves and inability to do any kind of real damage back. I thought not wearing armor=more damage but apparently only means your more squishie! I dunno gonna keep trying but at this rate gonna pack it in and call it a day because this game is confusing crap out of me... why in gods name they decided mages should work butt off to reach new spells them taunt them with new spells because HEY you don't have mana to use that... its very confusing.

This may help you out.

Get a fortify skill spell so you can create your own. I do this with every spell I cast.

Fortify Skill [The spells school] for maybe 10 or so seconds. I set it at 30 points, noticed this can cut spell costs by over %50. Since these are restoration spells you can make a shorter fortify restoration so that you can cast a stronger/longer fortify destruction, alteration, etc.

As far as being squishy, do a fortify skill alteration 30p for 6 seconds. Make several shield spells, named appropriately for easy menu use:

Shield Self (R1) 20p for 120s
Shield Self (R2) 20p for 120s
Shield Self (R3) 20p for 120s

Hot key just one of the shield spells. After you fortify your alteration you can simply open your menu and click down the list come out and cast each. You don't have to use 20, may want to tone it down a tad. When I cast all three of these I have 60 armor. I could easily make more to cap out at 85.

Note for down the line: Get a grand soul and the ability to do weakness to magicka and weakness to an element of your choice as well as soul trap. Enchant your weapon of choice with:

%100 weakness to magicka for 6 seconds
%100 weakness to [element of choice] for 6 seconds
soul trap 6 seconds

Hit the target once and cast your most powerful touch spell corresponding to the element you picked and you will now do 3x the normal damage. I summon creatures to feed the weapon with soul gems to keep it charged.

I also love to do damage fatigue. Currently I use a damage fatigue 25p for 5 seconds. When an enemy runs out of fatigue this way it goes negative and they pass out.... for a very long time. If you are getting over run just try to hit them with this while maneuvering around the environment to avoid hits. Remember to use fortify destruction so you can cast stronger spells.

All the above advice is great the spell chain pf weakness to magicka, weakness to element, touch spell attack will however normally work with the weakest 15pt damage spell as well I have found.
Self made command spells are by large margin the most powerfull and cheapest effects to use providing their duration lasts no longer than 6 secs.
Shields cost alot of magic for such low duration effects, its best to enchant or use potions to gain their effects imo.
Drain health at max for 1 sec is a powerful kill spell, drain fatigue and strength will stop a bit of damage dealt to you, and drain skill blunt, h2h, blade, marksman will also effect incoming damage.

All these effects are possible to learn and self enchant in an unmodded oblivion, but the drain skill requires being a orc or having the Orrery dlc.

Your character/class is a lot more difficult to play than it has to be.

1) Argonians aren't really suited for magery. Bretons and altmer get a big head start in the way of skills, attributes and most of all, a big bonus to their magicka pool. You can make a decent mage from any race, but it takes more know how than a first timer has.

2) Levelling by raising every skill to Journeyman is a bad idea. You're much better off with 2 or 3 really good skills.

3) Your Will and INT are lower than they have to be because of your class and race. It's impossible to get "good" (+5) or even decent (+3) attribute raises because all the skills governing these attributes are major skills. Having a few of your mage skillls as minor skills (usually alchemy, conjuration and alchemy) makes life a lot easier.

4) Easiest way to fix your guy is by going through Oblvion gates, saving before you grab the sigil stone and reloading until you get one that Fortifies magic +40. A few of these will make a biiiiig difference. Use invisibility to run through these gates. That'll raise your Illusion skill but that's not a bad thing! Illusion + Conjuration is a very powerful combination. At lvl 17 you can get +50 stones. For emergencies you can carry some Welkynd stones to restore your magicka.

Mara

IMO the best way to lvl up a pure mage is to advance 5 pts in INT-based skills and the other 5 in WIL-based, so u get a +3 to both. my other attribute of choice was always speed, as it affects casting speed (btw, holding down block allows u to cast even faster).

Concentrating in a few schools has always been better to me (eg., destruction ,restoration and conj for the attribute stuff). unfortunately, the most helpful school of all - Illusion - will give points to Personality.... And u can buy in visibility spells from other vendors im sure (OR visit a birth shrine of Jone i guess, you will have the power and the effect to make ur own spell).

Re:Kvatch This is very, very difficult at your level with anything less than a super-character. It's best done early. However, if you can kill ONE critter and make it back out through the gate alive you can whittle them down eventually. The guards are going to die, don't worry about it. Once inside, grab Martin and leave for the priory. Don't worry about the next part of that quest (Battle of Kvatch) - it is NOT part of the main quest. This whole sequence is unbalanced once you're past lvl 8 or so since your guard helpers become seriously underpowered.

Re magicka (aka mana): You picked the wrong race (no innate magicka bonus) and no, Apprentice wouldn't fix it, it'd just make your problems worse. Magicka is quite tight in this game, but there are a LOT of ways to regen it: Welkynd stones, homemade restore magicka potions, the insta-restore potions you find. Not wearing armor does make your spells a bit more powerful but wearing it doesn't offer enough protection for your low health "glass (definitely) cannon (not so much)."

Command spells: No, these are NOT for summonses only. If powerful enough they'll affect any creature. But they do have to be cast at the creature's level, which is usually your level. They can be short term - once things start fighting each other they'll build enough aggro to keep it up after the spell wears off, especially if you add a short invisibility spell to the command.

Invisibilllity: The girl (Ita Rienus) WILL sell you invisibility but you have to catch her during business hours. She usually hangs out in the basemant in the morning and will sell there. But an easier way to acquire the spell effect is a visit to the Jone stone - check the wiki uesp to see where it is. Spell vendors could care less about the main quest and whether you ever start it. You read some bad info about that.

See my earlier post re other newbie mistakes you've made.

Mara

Let's back up a little bit here.

First of all, at your present level, you should have completed all the Mages Guild Recommendations, and have access to custom spellmaking at the University. Right? Hopefully this is correct.

You have to make your own spells, if you expect them to work for your level. A good example is Command; the spell should be made to work at the highest level available, but for an extremely short time. One second is usually enough to trigger a fight between two NPCs who are standing next to each other, but you could make it two or three seconds (at the cost of considerably more magicka per cast.)

Secondly, you need to combine spell effects into one spell, and then chain-cast them. An example would be combining "Fire Damage X points" with "Weakness to Fire 25% for three seconds"; on the first cast, there's only X amount of fire damage, but the second blast, if it hits within three seconds, has increased effect, and further weakens the enemy. Since X doesn't have to be a lethal amount, and the weakness time is low, the casting cost is a lot lower than casting a single spell that would do the same damage.

Thirdly, since you are playing what I would consider a "gimped" character (Argonians are not natural mages like Bretons and Altmers) you need to consider turning the difficulty slider way down. If your character is male, you started with extremely low willpower, which means that your magicka naturally regenerates very slowly. Your willpower is probably not much above 60 at your current level; I have a level 2 Breton with Willpower at 60. If you're still running on "normal difficulty," and you turned it down to 25% instead, your spells would cause three times as much damage to enemies as they do now. Some character combinations are very difficult to play on the middle (50%) setting, and are virtually impossible at higher settings.

So race has that much of an impact does it? thats kind of sad... i like argo's but i'm finding every quest a trial to do i dunno i chose a mage because i expected a glass cannon and i just am not seeing that at all. I managed to complete Kvatch last night mostly by bum rushing past that one section and into the gaurd house... then using doors to widdle enemies down. I just cant grasp why developers make certain races svck at certain classes.... if thats the case just make them not playable for that class. I was really hoping to just play what i thought was fun on top of that are tons of argo mages in the game... I find it strange that they don't do well as the class.

As for combining spells yea i do that, though i wasn't aware that stacking weakness continued to apply with each hit have to try that. I do combine effects on my spells i like the idea i just was under the impression that mage was suppose to deal high grades of damage which doesn't appear to be the case at all...

I guess just restart as an elf or human but god i hate elves and humans >,< thanks for info though guys i suppose thats the issue just playing a gimped race/class.

No, just play whatever race you want. Really, don't worry about it. Slide the difficulty slider down a few notches and play that way if you need to, but if you want to be an Argonian mage, it is quite possible and as a person who ignores race and only picks the ones he wants, I say go for it. Oblivion can be a difficult game. There is no shame in using the difficulty slider. Try a gradual approach, if you want to make it seem more natural. For each level you grow/have grown, just slide the slider down a notch or something along those lines. Perhaps a notch per every two levels would work for you, as well.

Well just getting frustraiting haha, now i am forced to fight 2x faded wraiths at once... i can barely kill 1 with my mana pool i've learned fine art of " run like a crazy man" but its just getting frustraiting as i am one of those people that dislike touching diffculty slider unless its up... at normal i expect a game to be just that set for the new players. I like the game i just feel like my character has nothing... no damage no durability and no way to deal with multible enemies...my summons don't last beyond a couple hits, my spells take 10+ to kill something it just feels annoying i suppose i can move slider down but again i really don't like being forced to do that. Just seems to me that if i was a fighter or archer or something else i'd have no problems dealing with these enemies but because i'm a mage and tied to my mana bar which is absurdly low i'm boned unless i spend HOURS farming potions before i do 1 quest, i dunno i just feel like everything is stacked against my argo =\

Archers would definitely have the same trouble and warriors may sometimes. Mages, however, have to deal with the most weakness at lower levels. At higher levels, they can be very powerful. Still, if this is really bothering you, the difficulty slider is there for this purpose. I know what you mean about keeping something on default, but Oblivion's power progression system seems broken at times. Decreasing the difficulty with a pattern to it merely simulates some power progression. It is not cheating, and if the game is as overwhelmingly difficult as you describe it to be, the difficulty slider is just what you are looking for. It's not cheating to utilize it. With increases in intelligence, your mana pool will grow deeper. With enchantments, it may grow even deeper, or you may grow more powerful in other ways. With increases in willpower, you will regenerate magicka much more quickly. With increases in your spell casting skills, spells of the related skill decrease in casting cost. With the difficulty slider, Oblivion's imbalances can be remedied.

well i dont think its argo thats problem did a test a moment ago using console commands... while the high elf with apprintice DOES have more mana(about 100) i'm mana regen remains about same, and only gives maybe 1-2 extra attacks. Stats are roughly the same in all areas with out gear(high elf has a bit more more stats but not enough to i think matter 1-5 compared to my argo) and generally speaking its that 100 mana get for being a high elf i'll assume breman are about the same.

So its not the stats seems to just be diffculty in general i'll move bar down a bit(i just grabbed idol and ran from the wraiths) i guess sounds like the game is geared to be way to diffcult on even medium setting.

The game is difficult because your character is leveling faster than your attributes are. Because all the skills you use are Major skills, you are only getting a +2 or +3 improvement to Int and Wil at each level-up, while at the same time you're getting no improvement to endurance at all. Since you face more difficult opponents as your level increases, your opponents are getting stronger than you are, and you fall further and further behind. If you don't improve your endurance, your health is not increasing sufficiently as you level. Thus you die too easily.

The "glass cannon" idea is very difficult to implement using a standard default build. A pure mage absolutely must master the custom creation of spells. You must know your enemies' strengths and weaknesses, and use the right magic for the situation. You must be prepared.

My level 10 atronach-sign mage, for example, spends a lot of time walking around in the grass west of Skingrad, picking flax seeds. She carries at least 100 flax seed at all times, and they are hotkeyed so she can pop them even while in combat. When particularly difficult battles are anticipated, she carries several Welkynd Stones.

She wears clothing enchanted with Absorb Magic, Shield, and Reflect. She uses a bound dagger for close-range combat, and has advanced her Blade and H2H skills, along with Sneak and Block.

She uses Restoration and Illusion far more than Destruction to kill her enemies. Absorb Health is one of the most powerful on-touch spells in the game; you are healing yourself while wounding your opponent. Use it wisely, and you rarely need a healing potion.

She also trains Armorer, in order to improve her endurance. She picks up the weapons and armor of those she defeats, even if only to repair them and return them to the corpse.

One suggestion I could make, since you appear to be on PC, is to consider installing one of the leveling mods. I use one with some of my characters, and find that it really helps to eliminate some of the weakness as you go up.

The other suggestion would be to do the Kvatch stuff at level 2; it's much easier then.

OK. Lets take these one at a time. First off, wearing robes instead of armor doesn't mean running around unprotected. Angel's primary source of protection early on was from shield potions and she can still (level 40) make do with nothing but plain cloths and her shield potions. She always carries a dagger to block with (very important) as well as delivering her poisons.

Next, she always casts a summon at the beginning of a fight. If the little summon-avatar blinks out, she will cast summon again.




Next. Command spells work just fine on Daedroths (dinos.) I can say that for sure because Angel just did the second half of the Kvatch quest. At level 40 they come in massive numbers and every guard went down in the first wave. With Savlian unconscious most of the time she cleared the whole place single handed. She commanded Spider Daedras, and Daedroths repeatedly. Her shield potions protected her from the hoards of Chivilai (big gray guys) and their Clannfear summons while her poisons sent them back to Oblivion. At one point she had so many bodies piled around that the Daedroths couldn't reach her. She had to jump over the pile to get back in the fight.


Next, Daedroths are most vulnerable to shock damage. Using a weakness spell first amplifies the damage by a huge amount without costing much magicka but you have to be in a situation where you can cast the weakness spell and then rapidly cast the destruction spell. Storm Atronachs are vulnerable to fire. Flame Atronacks are vulnerable to frost and being slapped around (by your summon). Chivilai absorb magic. Don't cast spells at them. Instead, poison them. As for their summons (always a Clannfear) just defend yourself with blocking and wait for them to evaporate. Often, they will go after your summon anyway.



With an Alchemy skill of 50 you can make potions that will give you about 30 seconds of invisibility.



Get to know and love your Command spells. Someday they may save your life. The bigger the crowd the more potential champions you have for your side.



This seems like a good time to point out that it sounds like you have already done a lot of grinding. Slow down. Spend some time enjoying this alternate world. The quests will always be there. If you are not well prepared, don't rush into another disaster. During her Kvatch battle Angel used about 20 potions and poisons and killed about that many monsters. She made those potions herself by gathering ingredients as she traveled around. She visits every Alchemy shop when she arrives in a town and if she stays there a few days, she goes back to buy more.

I'm going to skip quoting the rest of your post but add this. The Apprentice birthsign is a death sentence. The Atronach sign can actually provide more protection because of the Absorb-Magic than it does through extra magicka but it take a much more careful approach and Alchemy is not optional, it is a requirement. The Mage birthsign is the easiest to deal with but a wise Mage will still be ready to use potions to restore magicka.

EDIT: I just realized you said enchanted helmet. That qualifies as armor and that will prevent you command spell from working. As others have pointed out, your mind control spells need to be at or above your current level to work. Wearing Armor reduces or prevents them from working.

1: Either find a way to deal with it like many of the great ideas people have put up, or move the damn slider <--- that way. If you cannot deal with the game at its current difficulty than that means your playing wrong, nvm it just means you don't quite get the hang of it. This is expected for new players. Don't try to come in with your first couple of characters and. Know everything and destroy enemies in your path. While I think it was a dumb choice to pick agility over endurance as a 3rd lvl up attribute you can still make this character work. Do not use robes unless for RP purposes. Robes = two clothing slots for only one enchantment. Two: hours to maek potions? I think not. Just run by the local alch store, buy out stock and mix mix and mix. I seriously think you need to reroll your character and start from level one. If you make and archer you will have the same problem. You may not be tied to a mana bar as an archer but what happens when you go do an oblivion gate, can't sneak and 1 shot a daedra, then his buddies come and charge you, and all you have is a bow? Means your dead. I don't know how I can tell you this and not get through. Your first character is usually a flop. It may be successful when go back and you play through it again when your excperienced. Unless you play a warrior, its hard to learn to play. Just do what we say. Here's a really good idea actually. Slider goes all the way down. Yes all the way just to make things speedy. Do all recommendation quests for mages guild. Go enchant all possible clothing items with what you need. Enchant a dagger with whatever enchantment. If I were you I would do a few pieces of clothing 3 maybe, with plus magicka. Then do with rest with something like shield. And its not just you, normal difficulty oblivion gates at that level are harder than ones at lower lvls.