I've tried several times to make and like a paladin type character in this game, and have always failed simply because, early on at least, restoration is just atrocious. The starter heal doesn't heal for jack, and the next heal you can buy really doesn't affect my health bar that much either, but it gets the added "benefit" of draining 95% of my mana bar. I checked the spell lists on UESP and it seems the later "over time" spells might heal me decently, but still completely diminish my magicka. And all this ends up being moot when you count in the abundance and ease of finding/making your own healing potions, or the fact that you can just wait for an hour after a fight and completely refill all your reserves.

I'm seriously tempted to just scrap this character and forever forsake restoration. It almost seems like the main boon of restoration is it's fortify effects more than it's actual health restoring abilities, which is deceiving since the main reason pretty much anyone would want to take restoration, at least anyone without an intimate understanding of it, would want it so they could simply heal themselves.

But maybe I'm wrong and restoration actually does get very good later, but to me it seems like the heals are centered around more mage oriented classes that have lower health and higher magicka reserves, which frankly kinda ticks me off. I'm almost tempted to go into the construction set and adjust a few of the restoration spells like I did to all of the 2handers in the game so they aren't completely worthless either.

And sorry if I seem frustrated in this post, but I am. It's just...disheartening that the type of character I want to play is limited due to (IMO) poorly designed/balanced healing spells.

Have faith, good man! Restoration actually becomes extremly effective at higher skill levels while draining a less 'noticeable' amount of magicka. Restoration is also one of the most magicka efficient ways of dealing damage through drain health spells.

If you spend just a couple +5's on intelligence, and focus on increasing restoration (to about 50+ ( journeyman ) ), you'll find it far less frustrating and actually overpowering. Remember, early on your guy is a simple prison escapee, thus, meant to be rather weak at most skills. Give it a little time and patience.

The key to lowering spell cost is to increase the skill in the school that controls the spell in question.

My character has a restoration skill of 90 and uses two heal spells:

One spell for healing herself (restore health on self 10 x 1 second). It costs her 8 magicka. She doesn't really require a powerful on-self healing spell because she doesn't often get hit and she has very few hitpoints.

Another spell for healing her horse and friends (restore health on touch 25 x 4 seconds). It heals 100 hitpoints and costs her 79 magicka to cast.

I think Restoration is very powerful. At all levels, but particularly at around Journeyman level.

Keep in mind Restoration is not just Healing.

Cure Disease and Restore Attributes are very convenient spells.

The Skill Fortifications can make your character good at anything.

Absorbing Magicka is great too, particularly for an Atronach. And of course there is restore health.

Absorbing skill can be powerful, particularly if you are using the same time of skill. For example, suppose a warlord comes at you with a claymore and you use a sword. By absorbing Blade you can make your hits much more powerful and the warlords much weaker.

For healing, it is extremely powerful to make a spell to regenerate small amounts of health over a long period of time. Like a spell to restore 10 points over 10 seconds. And the magicka cost is lots cheaper than restore 100 points over 1 second. You can make multiple 10 points/10 second spells with different names, and they will stack. That will make a character very difficult to kill.

When does restoration become useful? After you get hurt

Naw. Get some points into it and you'll see the cost dropping a good bit. And make your own spells. Don't buy the vanilla ones

I'm using KCAS so my attributes go up on their own over time.

I don't see how Journeyman is going to make things any better. The heal you can get then heals for a total of 40, costing 93 base magicka. I probably won't even be able to cast it. My guy is like 80% combat oriented I have no fortify magicka effects and I wish I could get by without any, but it seems if you want to use magic AT ALL in this game you have to fortify your magic in some way, which is just lame. I don't want to play a "mage-warrior". I want to play a warrior that uses just a teeny weeny itsy bitsy bit of defensive magic. I don't want to focus on my magic, I just want it to be there to use when I need it, but to use one spell that only heals me for barely 15% of my health while using up my entire magicka is just crap. There's no other way to put it.

Expert/Master levels might be when it starts to get better, but restoration levels so slowly I'm going to have to endure a very long time before one of my core skills starts to not svck. It just does not seem worth it, especially when like I already said you can just rest for 1 measly hour and be blessed with full health again.

Don't you have to be a member of the mages guild to make your own spells? I role-play more than I power game, and the type of character I'm playing wouldn't join the mages guild. He's a warrior, not a mage. He just uses a bit of defensive magic.

I'd like to know this too cause I'm the same. Same for making magic weapons, you have to be in the mages guild I think, so magic weapons for me =/

Without mods you need to either (1) join the Mage's Guild and get recommendations to access the Arcane University, or (2) get the Wizard's Tower DLC (Frostcrag Spire).

With respect to roleplaying, if your paladin wants to use Restoration effectively wouldn't it make sense for him to get access to the Arcane University. You don't need to go higher than Apprentice in the Mage's Guild for that. Seems a Paladin might want to know at least a little bit about magic. Or not, I don't really know your character.

Assuming you start a character with Restoration as a major, you're given a small-scale version of one of the most powerful spells in the game. Absorb Health takes away your enemy's health and gives it to you. Cast it during melee, and you'll be healing yourself while increasing the damage you're dealing out.

Knowing how high your restoration skill is would be nice, but being an holy paladin, I suppose you took restoration as a major? If not, look no further, that's the problem. But if you did, just buy a few sessions of training in restoration and you'll see the spell mana cost melt like snow in summer.

Journeyman is all you need for restoration because thats when you learn Cure Discease and Restore Fatigue Spells are more effective

Yes, I took Restoration as a major skill. It's around the mid-30's so far. My character's not really a "paladin" per se. I just used that term because that's closest to what his skills reflect. His actual class name is "Blademaster", and he's more of a hulking juggernaut that uses defensive magic rather than a true Paladin.

I guess I was just spoiled by Morrowind. You take Restoration as a major skill in that game and they give you a heal that I think is TOO good actually. It's like a 20-80 hp heal for like 13 magicka, and even if you get unlucky and get the low end of the healing range it's still going to heal you for like 50% of your health even on a combat character because you only start with 50-60 hp at best, whereas in Oblivion you start can start with over 100.

Just seems to me like Bethesda did a complete 180 in this regard. In Morrowind they gave you too good of a heal at the start, so in Oblivion they give you one that's borderline useless once you get out of the tutorial. I also don't understand why the Apprentice ranked heal only heals you for like 2x more but costs like 5x the mana.

Of course, the more you cast restoration spells, the more effective you become at it.

I find myself advancing very quickly in Restoration even at the earliest levels because I use the spells so frequently during combat.

I know what you mean. In Morrowind, the spell cost was static, so the mana efficiency of spells had to be good from start to finish. But in Oblivion, since the cost is dependant on your skill, it gives crappy mana efficiency in the lower skill range. Rewarding for magic specialists, but limiting for hybrid builds.

Anyway, I still maintain that buying training is the way to go, to reduce the spell cost to more reasonable amounts.

I made a Paladin type character. What I did was get restoration up to 75. Oh, if you do Knights of the Nine, spoilers aside let's just say your restoration is fortified through the roof. Anyway, in the end 30 heals only cost about 11 Magicka. I have a fortify magicka ring and amulet. Even that 30 heal spell I can cast repeatedly and heal myself up. For a more draining spell I have a 10 heal for every 10 seconds. This heals for pretty good too and then I have another heal spell that has a magnitude of 100. Costs a chunk but it's really not so bad. Throw a few Magicka restoration potions and I can easily fully heal myself in the midst of combat. When you get your restoration skill up the cost around journeyman and higher begins to shoot down dramatically. In the end it costs almost nothing.

I guess I'll stick with it. Since I'm using KCAS I could set it to only count skills from my chosen specialization (combat) towards leveling. That way I could be free to level up Restoration as much as I want without it leveling me up too fast.

I'll join the mages guild too I suppose. Being able to create your own spells and enchants seems too good a thing to pass up. Sorry if I sounded a bit brash and snarky in some of my posts. I was just venting my frustrations. We'll see how it pans out I guess.

Also, I already knew KotN equipment fortified Restoration. I'm wondering now though, can it fortify past 100 and is there any benefit in doing so (i.e. further magicka cost reduction?)

It would seem that a Paladin would not might at least being a Mage Apprentice in the hopes of being better prepared to thwart evil doers and server the nine.

Alternatively if it makes more sense to you, since you're on a PC you can open the console and enter the command showspellmaking to make your own spells. Maybe view that as a gift from the nine for your Paladin good deeds. Or there are other mods that add spell making capabilities.


Without mods you Restoration has no benefits above 100.

Find restoration useful from level 1 to level 40, main use is the heal up after battle without using up potions. later fortify become useful, mostly short bursts, fortify armorer, strength, acrobatic, mercantile 100 for some seconds.

I'm surprised that some people seem to feel that Restoration is a weak or "less than useful" skill.

I maintain that "Absorb Health" is among the most powerful spells in the game. It can be cast for less magicka than casting separate damage and healing spells. Also, if you put an area of effect onto it, it will take down multiple enemies at once, while giving you the health from all of them.

I'd say that, except for the lack of any ranged effect, one could play this game using only restoration magic, and no other weapon at all. Add in a bow, and alchemy for poisons, and you've got a complete package.

Restoration is easily my favorite magic skill.
Once it is really high the absorb spells are ridiculous and enable you to fight swarms of enemies at once.
Like others said, the cost will go down as your skill goes up as with other magics
What is very useful for a hybrid warrior type (my only character with 100 restoration is this) is a long lasting restore fatigue, like over 15 seconds, because you will essentially stop your fatigue from going down due to swinging your weapon
Same applies for all spells, over time spells, even if its only a few seconds, are way better than instant ones.
If you are a paladin you can make some "divine intervention" type spells where you get a tremendous boost to blade, or strength, or agility or whatever for like 3 seconds

Something no one has mentioned (or at least I didn't notice it mentioned)...

...Do you have GOTY edition, or at least KotN? The Holy Armor (relics) and other benefits of being Divine Crusader were created with restoration in mind. Healing is much more efficient while wearing the regalia of Crusader. Plus, in your case the title and look of the gear fit your conception of your avatar as a Holy Paladin.

-Decrepit-

Restoration doesn't really have a noticeable benefit until later levels. It is worth getting though. I much prefer using it than only relying on potions. It's a convenience for me, same with conjuration, mysticism, etc.

May be called the bane of role-players, but if u r in PC here are some console commands for Spellmaking and Item Enchant without being member of Mages Guild:

showspellmaking = This will pull up the Spell Making window
showenchantment = This will pull up the Enchanting window.

Since this thread is still on the first page I'll just ask an unrelated question instead of making a new thread.

Is Block worth taking as a major skill if I plan on almost exclusively using 2handed weapons? I know you can still block (parry) with a 2hander equipped, but I don't think you can benefit from the expert/master level perks (the shield bash counterattack thingy) if you don't have a shield equipped. At least that's how it sounds from the description. I guess I'm mainly asking because the concept of taking block as a major skill when I don't really plan to use shields that often seems...illogical. Like ordering a cheeseburger and telling them to hold the cheese I guess. xD

And before anyone comments about 2handers being worthless I downloaded the construction set and increased their damage by 50% across the board.