When I make my next mage I will probably do this too. I did it that way because I had just played two warriors in a row. And with both characters I'd put all my points into Health. So I wanted to experience something totally different this time. And I thought it was very fun. But I'm going to put a few points into Health next time. Because I have to admit, having 100 health at level 47 could get a little nerve-wracking at times.

Still underpowered without Alchemy or relying on gimmics like Impact or infinite Magic Regen. Destruction can be viable but it will always be underpowered in comparasion to One Handed, Two Handed, Stealth and Archery. It's just a fact, Destruction is much worse in Skyrim then it was in Oblivion and it was great in Oblivion. Losing Spell Creation really hurt Destruction, heck it hurt all magic skills in Skyrim.

I can play Destruction but it's not as fun as Oblivion and I have more fun playing as an Assassin or specialize in One Handed or Two Handed, then destruction in Skyrim.

Wouldn't it be more fun to dump the points to, you know, Stamina?

Magicka cost will be reduced to nothing anyway, might as well improve Stamina so you can run all the way from Riften to High Hrothgar, I hate walking, it's a tad too slow

Magicka regen isn't what makes magic strong what so ever. The "gimmick" is spell cost reduction. There are three reasons. One is it doesn't matter how fast you regenerate magicka, if you can't afford to cast it anyways, you still have to get magicka. Two is you don't even charge magicka while "preping" spells, you can still run out of magicka by the simple fact that you don't even constantly regenerate magicka. Three is the spell cost reduction affects weapon enchantments as well. It is actually beneficial and can completely remove their charge costs.

Two handed honestly svcks, just like Master spells. Compared to Oblivion, Two Handed wasn't completely outclassed by One Handed.

Basically this and health. No point getting magicka, but for the sake of having balance in my stats I have magicka. (1000/1000/1000, level 300).

Also stamina boosts your carry capacity which is nice to have too.

I don't understand build advice like this - unless I'm playing to microoptimize, I wouldn't expect to get magicka cost down to 0 until I'm, what, 50th level?

Do people really sit around grinding alchemy and enchanting up to 100 to make their kit before starting to "play the game"? Or is there some other approach I'm missing?

Right now I have a 22nd level destruction mage, am taking a 2:1:0 M:H:S ratio at level-ups, and really appreciate the 17% destruction cost reduction I'm getting from my robes. I still haven't stumbled across any other magicka cost reduction gear, or with enchanting at 44 I hadn't wanted to spend major souls to make more.

So glad the OP has finally opened his eyes and widened his imagination about the effectiveness of destruction after all his obtuse past threads about how sh!t it is.

I play on master with no impact perk and find destructo extremely valuable. Glad you're finally enjoying destruction Inferno221, have a look thru your old destructo threads and i bet you're eating your words now

Now go find the Ignite spell and notch up the difficulty. Enjoy

It takes a ridiculously long time to train up destruction and restoration. I'm level 83 and still have yet to master restoration. Only recently mastered destruction. You need magicka because even if you enchant 4 pieces of clothing that makes casting cost nothing, those enchantments take up slots. Instead of Destruction spells cost 25% less, you could have 25% resist magicka or +50 stamina, or +50 health, etc. That's why I never use cost reducing enchantments on my equipment unless I'm training that skill. You have so many level increases, there's no need to put it all into health, and I'm playing on legendary by the way with mods that increase enemy difficulty.

Magicka is the only kind of resource where you have this problem. Early level, you need to dump points to magicka due to the imbalanced magicka cost, then you can reduce magicka cost to nothing and all that investment is no longer useful

So, best not to go all the way like OP where he has 960 magicka and 130 health at level 64, better put about 300 or more of those to stamina

I agree.

But a heavy investment in health is also not useful if you don't intend to become really difficult to kill.

Is a heavy investment in stamina as a Mage useful, if you don't intend to sprint from one city to another without pause?

My problem with this logic is, do you really want to get health or stamina to high levels because of the effect this has, or do you just put points in there because you have to choose something on level up.

I second the question from Naburimannu - Does this work if you don't grind alchemy and enchanting up as fast as possible?

At what point in the game (level / progression) to you manage to achieve cost reduction?

Additional question: If you use more than destruction, do you carry around 0-cost-gear for all schools of magic and switch them for every different cast?

To the additional question:

You can have up to 2 enchantments with the enchantment perk. This means you can have 2 school of magic reduced to 0 magicka cost. Not every school of magic is used nor used often.

For example Alterations spells are actually pretty useless. The main reason to have alteration is for the perks... 30% magic resist and 30% spell absorption. The paralyze spells are really the only remotely useful spells which can be effectively ignored by just using apprentice, adept, or expert tier destruction spells with the impact perk.

The main schools of magic are restoration and destruction, the other two schools of magic you just cast once then you're done, with the obvious exception of invisibility in illusion since that has to be recast somewhat often.

If it was really necessary though, yes, then you could have a second set and that's all you would need. 2 sets with 2 enchantments each for every school except Alteration which is pointless anyways for reasons stated.

If you really have to, sure get some magicka as well, but you wouldn't want outrageous amounts of it before getting some health/stamina.

Either way: "Magic OP".

The extra effect perk fits into my other question about grinding the skills up as fast as possible.

I'm using Alteration quite often, therefore I didn't expect they would be left out completely. Regardless, you want the perks, and for the perks you have to level up Alteration.

Which someway strengthens my impression that this kind of playstyle utilizes powerleveling and grinding anyway.

You left out Conjuration, and the general question that even if you don't cast non-Destruction spells often, you probably can't cast the higher spells at all without cost reduction and base magicka.

It's not that hard. First of all, Alchemy is just a bonus; it's not completely necessary. Second, you only need 80 Enchant (plus a store bought potion) to get 100% cost reduction. If I'm making a pure mage, my goal is to get 80 Enchant and 60 Destruction before doing anything else. This is easily achievable before level 20 with very little grinding (just the last bit on Enchanting).

By level 14, you should have 60 Enchant and 50 Destruction which makes you quite powerful with 80% cost reduction and usable fireballs.

Considering that the OP's goal is to keep things interesting, I choose not to advise people to dump everything in Health. Dumping points into Magicka end-game is like dumping jewelries into Thieves Guild Vault: it's not going to accomplish anything and frankly it's a waste of time. Dumping a bunch of points in Stamina allows extra sprint time and more carry weight, which is infinitely more convenient than dumping a bit of points into am already infinite magicka pool anyway.

Unless you try to not reduce your magicka cost. Good luck with that, and have fun thinking what enchantment you're going to put on your clothes

Just spam the Novice spells even with just base magicka. Slowly, but surely you'll level up alteration and be able to get the perks. You can also just hire trainers.

I did mention conjuration actually because I said "the other two schools of magic besides destruction and restoration". Conjuration spells at higher tiers cannot be casted without points using enchantments or investing into magicka, this is correct. So just invest in some magicka, not a huge deal because you don't invest very much and just focus on the other two stats. When you have the perks and 100 conjuration you don't need nearly as much magicka. They're single cast spells that last for a long amount of time, so it's not impairing what so ever.

Pretty much.

Basically. The only enchantments worth getting besides the magicka cost reduction for the respective schools of magic are magic resist and elemental resists. Otherwise you don't have many options.

Man, I play as a mage so often that I have totally forgotten that you can put points into Stamina lol. I have the Respite perk which refills my Stamina if I ever need to run so it has never been a problem. I have a follower, Serana in this case, as my pack mule to carry all my junk so I don't need Stamina for that either. As a side effect of this I do have a ridiculous amount of magicka but this has been advantagous in certain ways.

1. I don't need to worry about spell cost thereby limiting the number of spell cost reduction enchantments I have.
2. As a side effect of 1 I have more slots for other enchantments, such as Carry Weight.
3. I will no longer have to worry about my magicka being zapped away by Serana's shock spells when I'm in the middle of a fight.<---This is the big one right here.

If I was less focused on magicka I don't think having to spend 211 magicka to cast Fire Storm like I do now would be enjoyable lol. I would have to give up important enchanting slots to make casting the spell viable.

1. You can use different enchantments, certainly, but then what might that be? Magic resist? You can get 30% from alteration and 15% from mara. Another 25% if you decide to use the Lord Stone. That's 75% and that's almost the cap already. Elemental resists? They're identical to magic resist, only difference is they are limited to their specific element. They do stack with magic resist if you get both, but not additively, only multiplicatively.

2. Carry weight can only be enchanted on a few items (gauntlets and ring) and even then, with maximum enchanting and perks, you only get 37 extra carry weight per item. Just getting only 200 bonus stamina via leveling up gives you 100 carry weight.

3. It doesn't matter if you even have 0 magicka if you don't even magicka costs. I would know, because I've even played through the Mage guild quest when I already had 100% cost reduction. When you go to Labyrinthian, there is a scripted effect that completely damages your magicka to 0, no matter how much magicka you have. This happens several times. I still casted my spells no problem even with zero magicka.

I used to hate Destruction, just like you. then I took an arrow to the knee. Sorry, had to, court order.

Anyway, I've always liked Destruction, especially using slow time 3. You can actually outrun your own firebolts.

I actually started playing this way somewhat recently. All points in Magicka, just the default 100 Health. I'd wear all light armor, and use a shield for bashing* things that got close. Defensive enchantments. It used to be really rough, even on Adept. I'd just kite and summon and keep flesh spells up, lob a fireball when I could. Something changed when I got Ignite. It's completely trivializing things for me right now. ._. With relevant perks, it's doing 21 damage** per second for 15 seconds, and you can just keep stacking the effect. Unless my maths are horribly off, that's well over 1500 damage with just 5 stacks? I don't often have to summon, or ward, or anything. I even just wear fashionable Telvanni robes. As long as I can keep tagging everything with Ignite, and run, I'm plowing everything down.

*I don't use the dual-cast perk, so no Impact

**Again, no dual-cast, so it *could* go higher.

I still hate destruction, and won't use it, but hypothetically if I did make a destruction mage I would only ever level up magicka.

I don't play with impact, I find its a poor gameplay mechanic.

Its more challenging to me to play without it, and its more than doable with the description in my op

THIS

Hey, I've never taken more than 50 damage doing anything with a Sniper build...

What's wrong with Impact?

Stunlocking enemies to the point where no one in the field can move/attack you isn't fun to me.

Impact can be very cheap, stunlocking lone dragons into obilivion isnt fun.

BUT, impact is next to useless when taking on a deathlord/dragonpriest and his swarm of draugr. In a crowd impact is not very effective at all.

I still think impact makes the game easier but it does have its place