Hey there.

I'm up to lvl 15 now and the game is getting increasingly harder so I find myself having a lot of trouble doing some of the quests nowadays. I have been doing the dark brotherhood questline and haven't followed the main quest since I've been knighted in Windhelm or w/e it was. I am playing as a destruction spec'ed dark elf, leveling magicka every time. I bought as many spells as I could find but I noticed that most of the time, spells like runes cost too much mana for me to use because I basically run out of mana with them almost immediately. I try to kite things as much as possible but it gets difficult w many mobs or when I'm in a dungeon. I'm hoping you guys can point me to a guide or give me some big tips as to what I should be doing?

Lately I've put skill points into light armor because I couldn't do anything else in destruction. I think I might've burned one on speech or lockpicking too..

Here are a couple of links to help you out

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1482616-mage-surviving-against-multiple-enemies/

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1481463-never-actually-made-a-mage/

My own preference when "caught" by enemies is

Hope this helps

Welcome to the forums

Try Conjuration if you want to make the things easy for you.

I would also play on adept, where the damage you give is 50% and the damage you receive is 50%. If you are having a lot of problems, try lowering the difficulity down to apprentice until you get the knack of playing a mage.

Playing a mage is not easy in low levels, as it is not just hack and slash. One can also use

Not much to say since miss above covered most of it. You could also resort to enchanting without grinding the skill, but just enchanting some jewelry to add magicka and potions are good but unreliable source of increasing the damage you do with destruction spells. Also you can drink a potion or two to restore your magicka (or chug them like crazy if it's not bothering you).

Another option is to have a backup skill like one-handed. To stay as much a mage as possible you can only resort to daggers, especially those enchanted with magicka absorbtion.

Using staves would be awesome if Bethesda people weren't so smart to stop magicka regeneration whille one casts spells with staves.

Another thing is,

[censored], I wish I knew that! My usual go-to combo is frostbite + flames and make frozen crisps out of them but I would just hold the mouse buttons down. I'll do that now. Also, Thank you for all the helpful tips! I've been doing alchemy and disenchanting as much as possible. I am playing the game on standard difficulty and it isn't impossible to play, so I don't think I will be knocking down the difficulty level. However, I am having trouble finishing quests now because I am wanted to go to jail in 2 cities now, and I don't want to go to jail to lose all my items. Is there any bank that I can store my goods in before I go to jail? Also, I read that conjuration is good so I've been trying to do raise zombies, but I think I will use my next skill point there because the mana cost is too damn high to use mid fight. I like to do sneak attacks so I guess I should grind some more with daggers so I can do more stealthy kills. The game is a ton of fun so far and the tips you guys gave me have helped a ton already

Next up on my list of questions is shouts and when I should continue on the main story line. A friend of mine said to avoid the main story line bc dragons will start appearing everywhere atl ike lvl 5. Well, the dragons are starting to appear now and I doubt I can solo one today either. Should I just go down the main quest line now? Last question.. when I can't skill anything good in destruction and now conjuration, what other 'secondary' skills should I focus my skill points in? Shielding? Light armor? Lockpicking? One-handed weapons?

Edit: Is there a way to +rep on this forum or is that disabled/non-existent?

The flames spell has an additional time based burn damage effect that gets applied to each hit and lasts for a few seconds. When you just hold the buttond down continuously the effect is only applied once but when you rapidly shoot several second long bursts of flames the effect is applied each time and stacks making the spell much more effective so you should definately do that. Also as Ashley mentioned Magicka does not regen when you are continuously casting spells so often times it is good to cast a spell then wait a second or two then cast again. This is especially useful when applied witht the impact perk because a stagggered opponent can not be staggered again while they are staggered. WIth this in mind it is most efficient to stagger an opponent with a dual cast spell and then pause momentarily until they recompose themselves and then stagger them again as opposed to just continuously blasting them. Alternatively you can do something like dual cast to stagger then single cast while they are staggered then dual cast again when they become unstaggered. Not sure if that makes any sense but in practice it works.

Don't waste perks on lockpicking. You can easily earn how to pick a master level lock without perks. I'ts just a question of slowly and carefully moving the lockpicks - start at the far left, then move it clockwise. Make sure to loot all lockpicks you can find and you'll probably never run out of them. You can also ask most followers to open a lock for you.

As for running out of magicka - make sure you have the apprentice/adept/expert perks that matches the spell you want to cast, just like Ashley said. Also, make sure to wear gear that fortify destruction and conjuration (or any other magic schools you use). This will also decrease the mana cost. Fortify Magicka and Magicka Regeneration are also good for a mage (potions or equipment). And finally: grab all Ale, Moon Sugar and Eidar Cheese Wheels you can find. Use them to cook Elsweyr Fondue, and you have a magicka boost that will make the game a lot easier.

And don't forget about staves - they are a good back-up when the mana runs dry.

Another thing that is good to know: If you choose to wear any kind of armor, DON'T take mage armor perks in Alteration. They will only work when NOT wearing armor. Basically, it's a matter of preference - either, use armor, or use Alteration. If you choose armor, you'll probably want to spend a few of perks on Smithing, especially later on.

I always perk the left branch of the Speech tree, first to get better prices,and then to get the Merchant perk (that allows you to sell anything to all kinds of merchants) and the Investor perk (invest in businesses so they get more gold - later in the game you will notice that the things you find and craft are hard to sell since they are so valuable).

If you want to be able to enchant your own stuff, invest some perk in Enchanting, otherwise your own enchantments always will be weaker than the things you can find/buy.

Okay. Give me a moment

Forgot. The shouts I use are

Ashley, I am curious why you don't take the illussion dual casting perk. Of all of the dual casting perks it is probably the most useful as it doubles the level of the enemy that you can effect with your illusion spells. It is a tremendous return for a 1 perk investment in my opinion.

True. But illusion levels so quickly that to me it is not necessary. I could just cast muffle over and over and within an hour, have 100 in illusion, put it in legendary, and do it all over again. Plus all the other perks in the tree do that already.

Dual casting is cumulative with the other perks and allows your illussion spells to effect the highest level enemies in the game which would not be possible without the perk. All of that for a single perk makes it a tremendous investment in my opinion.

Keep your distance. You see an enemy getting too close, turn around get away from him and fry him from a safe distance. As a mage, you should be getting hit as little as possible. Enemy patterns are easy to figure out. Instead of charging in, first learn their movements, then attack. At level 15 enemies start changing to their higher level, fancier 2 named cousins. If you see a single named enemy ( "bandit" ), you will take them down easily and tank some of their hits. If you start noticing their identical looking cousins with fancier names ("Bandit thug-outlaw-chief") be more careful when around them. They have the exact same set moves as the lower level ones but they hit harder. So don't be overconfident. Distance is your friend.

Again, very true. I mostly use illusion for the

^^^This. Very true. Also, do not run everywhere. Take it slow and 9 times out of 10 you will see your enemy before they see you. Except for the wildlife which can be very annoying especially cats. Almost every enemy give a warning that they are near.

That makes sense if you are using illusion for stealth as opposed to mind control. Often times I will use the lower level fury spell instead of frenzy because I want to cast it only on the strongest member of an enemy group so that the group is all focused on attacking him as opposed to everybody attacking everybody which happens alot with frenzy since it is area of effect. With this in mind I want all of the perks so that it will work on as high level enemy as possible.

A lot of people do, which is why I suggest to take all of them except the dual casting. But then again, I tend to forget that when using the mind control side of illusion, the dual casting is needed.

So I stand corrected, and thank you for pointing that out to me.

I can see you've got great advice from Ashley and everyone else xD still, I'll throw in my 2 cents.

-As a pure Mage, I don't like wasting perks on anything not in the magic side of the perk trees. That includes weapon and armour choices, supporting skills (like speechcraft, lockpicking). If you like Illusion, then Sneak is a good choice because of the Quiet Casting Perk.

-As my own choice, I don't like having more then one crafting skill (Alchemy, Smithing and Enchanting) because the game gets too easy, so as a Mage, I would say, go with Enchanting (so you can create gear that reduces the cost of Magicka of your favourite school of magic). Now, if you don't have any restrictions about that, get Enchanting and Alchemy, both are great for mages.

-Don't go all over the place. What I mean with this is, plan your character. Let's say, you like using Destruction, Conjuration and Alteration. Why perk Restorarion all the way up to Master if you don't plan or rely using it to Turn Undead? Close Wounds is an awesome healing spell in the Adept Level, so don't go past that if you don't need Guardian Circle to turn powerful undead. Also, notice you have 1 offensive school and 2 support ones in the exemple I gave? So, you don't need Illusion. At least this is how I play, I always get Destruction and 2 support schools. Of course you can pick more skills, but you will need more levels to perk them up.

-Do NOT have any gear that has Absorb Magic effect if you use Conjuration. This effect WILL absorb you own summons, which means, if you have 100% absorb magic, your summons will never be summoned (100% of the time they will be absorbed). This also counts for The Atronach Stone.

-Standing Stones to use: I start with The Mage to get to a point i feel comfortable with my skills (usually 100 on Destruction or Conjuration) then I change around. Sometimes I use the Steed for carrying more stuff without the need to invest in Stamina, but The Lord is the best imo, because it gives you more Physical and Magical deffense, which is always welcome.

-Shout: I love all the shouts in the Dragonborn DLC, and on the vanilla game, I'd say Become Ethereal is my favourite, since you can literally jump down from mountains for quick traveling on foot, and you are imune to the sun if you are a Vampire and use it.

-If you pick Alteration and use Flesh spells, DO NOT use any kind of armour, including Dagon Priest masks, for they are stronger that way.

-If you pick Destruction, I would say get two spell branches (I usually go with Lightning because nothing apart from Storm Atronachs are resistant to it, and Fire OR Ice, but not both). I do this to conserve perks, but again, if you want to get them all, there is no problem at all. Do what suits you better.

-Have fun! You are playing with a really powerful class once you get used to it. At high levels, you can kill an Ancient Dragon without being hit at all, just stun locking it with the Impact Perk.

This is all I can remember from the top of my head. Hope it wasn't too confusing and it helped =P

Wasn't that patched in the last official patch? If not, it must be the USKP that fixes it on PC. My illusionist has the Atronach stone active, and it's pretty nice the way he absorbs magicka from spells - both hostile and when Serana or Marcurio miss their enemies Never had problems with him absorbing his owns summons (like I had when I last played a mage on PS3 back on patch 1.5 or something).

It may have been, but it still works the old way on the xbox.

Its not patched on consoles. I have 1.9 on Xbox and absorption still screws up summons. svcks imo, I guess console players get the unpatched Aspect of Terror bug in return for this.

I should have also mentioned that magic and frost resistance also sill reduce the damage of the blizzard spell accordingly on xbox post 1.9.

Except the aspect of terror perk is not a bug. Destruction has the perk intense flames, which causes fear in an enemy and causes them to run away. Aspect of terror picks up on this so-called "fear" and there fore increases the damage of fire spells by 10% or 15% of augumented flames 2 is unlocked.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Aspect_of_Terror#Aspect_of_Terror