I'm playing my first oblivion character (I'm an experienced Morrowind player) and I have chosen the class crusader to have a tank-type character with a little magic. But while I love casting firespells and shockspells, they really never akes a difference, since they never cause a lot of damage to any dangerous enemies even when I repeatedly cast my spells.
Since my mainweapon is my silver claymore, then spells doesn't need to kill the enemy if they can otherwise weaken him, so what spells should I think about (I'm lvl13 with 124 magicka and around lvl55 in destruction).


And a bonusquestion: How should I keep my weapons recharged (my mysticism skill is very low), since enchanting in the mages guild is extremely expensive and my dremora claymore quickly runs out of charges.

I started one of my charecters like you, I had a heavy sword sort of charecter with destrution. I found that destruction was useful for fire spells on undead enemys and also for use on ghosts. (however, since you have a enchanted weapon that isn't neccessary) Plus, on target spells make for good ranged attacks.

Bonus Question: Use soul gems. Carry a load of soul gems around and enchant a weapon with a soul trap spell or use umbra.

If you're wearing a lot of armor, it reduces the spell percentage considerably. That's one big difference between Morrowind and Oblivion. One possibility that occurs to me is to use a spell of Weakness to whatever effect your claymore is dishing out, which will make it more effective, and you won't need to recharge as often.

On that second problem, you probably need to be carrying a good supply of filled soul gems for recharging in the field. Also, don't forget that Varla Stones can be found here and there...

For recharging... Azura's Star. Most likely, since it's easier than carrying tons of soul gems.

As for using Destruction, or any other magic, best to learn spell stacking and spell chaining techniques. You probably won't use the latter, though. However, the former would help you understand how to use magic to soften up your foes so that you can eliminate them much, much easier.

In addition, Touch spells are useful underwater and are often more effective than swinging melee weapons.

And as was stated already, be aware of the penalty due to wearing armor when trying to cast.

Oh... also, you may want to use Disintegrate Armor (possibly make your own that is more efficient) and dissolve armor on every corpse you see/make. As you dissolve the armor piece by piece, take it and repair it. This trains Destruction + Armorer, and I'm sure you want the latter to be high.

To increase Mysticism quickly, just cast Detect Life often, especially inside dungeons. Won't take long to get your Mysticism to 25 for Soul Trap. Then go visit Azura in the hills east of Bruma.

On-touch spells will be cheaper to cast than ranged, so you can try Weakness and Damage spells (like Weakness to Magicka and Damage Fatigue or Health), maybe with the elemental spells thrown in for extra damage. If you make your own, you can extend the length of time to get a cheaper spell -- instead of Damage Health 50 points, do 10 points for 5 seconds.

Welcome to Cyrodiil! :wave:

You don't need to use Destruction, if you're playing a warrior-type. Just use it to supplement your slashy-choppy on occasion, or don't bother. You'd be better off focusing your limited magic on other uses, particularly Restoration.

At the moment I'm using an unenchanted silver claymore. I did enchant a silver claymore with my first sigil stone earlier, but it turned out to be a bad idea, since it quickly ran out of charges and I couldn't repair it myself with my low armorer skill (now lvl26).
But I have a dremora claymore in my house with a very nice enchantment (drain endurance 15 + drain strenght 15), but if I can't repair it or keep it recharged it's not much use to me. Even if I learn to recharge, I suppose, I should preserve my charges for dangerous enemies and use a simple weapon against weak enemies.
I think I will look for the detect life spell, so I can reach lvl25 in mysticism. I suppose it can be used by a novice.

I like to use destruction eventhough most of my magicka is used for restoration.

Maybe spells like drain endurance/strenght or damage armor are useful or drain fatigue (I have had a few bad encounters with that).

I have mostly heavy armor, and I read about the penalty, but I hope that it is low enough as my heavy armor skill raises.

The current percentage penalty will be shown in the magic section of your journal.

One none destruction aimed peice of advice, allways keep a silver or daedric non enchanted weapon as back up early on for the reasons you have already found.

The max % while wearing armour at 100 points in that skill is I think in vanilla 95% but I truely forget now.

As for spells weakness to magic with weakness to element, followed by weakness to element plus elemental damage, followed by damage again is one favourite method.
Also do the mage guild asap and create custom spells early, just fiddle around with durations, damage dealt and AoE untill you come up with a winner for your level.
Touch spells are your friend as a warrior mage, buy better ones first imo.

Alchemy can give you a good suply of magica even at a low level of skill [let's say 20's which is quick enough to get to]

just search Blackwood for bog beacon and then the West Weald for flax, which is in endless supply there and voila restore magica potions galore

I'm using this strategy for my alter atronach des specialist for obvious reasons

also the weak fireball given during the Skingrad recomendation quest might be the best magica per damage deal going

My advice would be to custom create spells.

Make weakness to fire 100%, and then fire damage. There's a certain order to that and someone please quote and correct me if I'm mentioning it wrong.

Drain spells can be used effectively by exploiting the obvious. If you're fighting a Troll for example, drain speed...

Absorb Blade or whatever weapon you use is also nice to have early on.


Destruction isn't a power house of a type of magicka, it's just as balanced as the rest, but if you use it correctly it can make a world of a difference in your game.