Mages... Um... Kinda Suck So Far

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OK, I only just got to Whiterun, I have to say that I'm totally unimpressed with mage play thus far. Now I'll be the first to admit that I'm working from a very basic spell book. The battle plan is blast away using some destruction spell, unless there's more than one enemy, in which case I cast fury from a distance first, and then enter the fray blasting destruction spells. On the rare occasions that I have run out of magicka, I switch over to a battle hammer to finish them off. (I don't do this often - there's maybe been 5 enemies I've killed with the battle hammer.)

All I can say is that it appears that mage skills level much more slowly than other skills, even though I have the mage stone activated. Like I said, upon my arrival at Whiterun, I had, at that point, killed just about everything that I had encountered using destruction spells. This included the escape from Helgen, a couple of bandit bounties prior to getting to Whiterun, and of course retrieving the golden claw and the dragonstone. So I had hoped that going into my first dragon battle, I could purchase a couple of more spell books (I did), and start to see some progression.

But the thing is, even with killing nearly everything with spells, I don't have a mage skill at level 30 yet, which is very disappointing. Now, if I was half-assing it as a mage, that would be one thing, but this guy is supposed to be a battle mage! And I'm playing an Altmer, so my conjuration and destruction level started at 20, and my illusion started at 25. So the level gains are pathetic. I can only hope that now that I have learned Ice Spike, I can see some quicker advancement in at least the destruction tree.

Cripes, I'm only in the low teens in level, and I'm already SAVING PERKS when I level up, because there's nothing to spend them on! I've saved perks before, but that's usually when I'm level 20ish, and I have a skill that's just short of a threshold I need for a new perk. Since I figure I'll get the skill to the required level before I level up my character again, I'll hold onto it and spend it then.

And I HAVE spent a few perks in the sneak tree for stealth, muffled movement and backstab, and I also plopped two perks in Enchanter, along with steel smithing. (I figure I'm going to want all of those anyway, so may as well get them when I have extra perks lying around.) So I have perks to spare even though I haven't spent all of them on mage skills. Thus far, I've spent perks on novice conjuration, illusion, and destruction, dual casting for all three trees, and apprentice illusion and destruction. (I would have spent a perk point on apprentice conjuration, but I'm not level 25 yet, as I didn't have a conjuration spell to cast prior to getting to Whiterun.)

I'm obviously going to have to get to the college of Winterhold after whacking the dragon, but it's hard going up to this point.

 

Mages are very challenging in the beginning, just as in many other games. Destruction will continue to level quite slowly although it will pick up a bit when you start casting higher level spells. All other magic skills (except restoration) can be "cheese" levelled though and really quickly. Alteration, illusion, conjuration can all be spam levelled and the only block is your magicka regen. Spamming soul trap on corpses will level conjuration real fast, spamming muffle in cities will boost illusion in a jiffy and holding things with telekinetics while detecting life in a market place will skyrocket your alteration skill.

 

True, but only if you want to succumb to not actually playing the game to level up your skills..

Sure it's understandable that buffs give at least some exp.. but the way it is now, it's WAAAAAY too much.

Aldeth, Destruction is the odd one out of magic skills as your skill improvements are based on the amount of damage you do with specifically those spells. If your enemies are wasting each other under Fury, most of your skill-ups will end up in Illusion instead.

 

Now I'll be the first to admit that I power game, and I have no compunction against training any skill I may use at some point, just because I feel that by not spending extra money lying around on improving something is an opportunity lost, as you can only participate in training 5 times per level. As a power gamer, I feel like I'm leaving something behind every time I hit level up if I haven't engaged in 5 training sessions. (The first few levels are painful for me.)

Some of those cheese tactics are a bit much though, even for me. Especially spamming soul trap on something that's already dead. I could justify casting muffle in dungeons, as I always sneak when I'm in dungeons anyway. Casting muffle would just be an extra benefit to something I'm doing anyway, so it is justifiable. I don't really care about alteration, but I imagine that it will be at a decent level just from casting transmute. My next stop is the Halted Stream Camp, and there's a whole bunch of iron ore there - probably a dozen or more - and they'll all be transmuted into gold. (And it shouldn't be that bad doing it with the highborn ability. I imagine with 10X magicka regeneration for a minute, I should be able to transmute just about all of them in that time.)

That's kind of the way I feel. I mean, if I want to quick level something, I can just pick up a follower and cast courage on him for an hour straight. Or hell, I can probably just cast courage on a random NPC in the city, as I do not think casting courage would be considered a hostile action. No need for a follower even. It would be effective at leveling the illusion skill, but it's not very fun.

That would be understandable if my illusion skill was higher than 28. The thing, it isn't. First of all, I only cast fury when there is more than one enemy. A lot of times, if you're smart, you can limit the number of enemies to one at a time. Next, there is always, by definition, one enemy left standing at the end of it, who gets destruction dropped on him. Finally, one of the areas I cleared was retrieving the dragonstone, and since that area is filled with undead and illusion doesn't work on them, all of them were killed using destruction skills.

One final point: Upping the difficulty makes that first dragon battle way harder. It was a frost dragon, and thus is more susceptible to fire damage. So after I had his health low enough for him to land, I figured I'd just go up and roast him using flames. You could imagine my surprise that even though I was at full health (which isn't much at this point - I think my health is 140) he immediately chomped me, shock me around like I was a dog's chew toy, and insta-killed me. So I got one-shot at full health. Mental note to self: stay away from the business end of dragons when playing on the hardest difficulty. It was late, so I didn't want to fight him again, but I will be bringing a bow with me the next time I fight him.

 

Starting with Destro/Illu is tricky. You'll be fighting a lot more undeads yet especially if you follow the mage questline, I suggest you stock up on anti-undead scrolls from merchants if you can. Destro starts out slow, though I believe this is because the developers took pains to make this so. As long as you pay attention to various tactically located oil spills and traps in low level dungeons you should be able to ignite/slow your enemies down and kill them off easily. Runes can be used to replace these when you get them, they offer massive burst damage but cost quite a bit of magicka.

Illlusion won't pick up until around mid-game.

 

Yeah - I'm noticing that myself. My battle mage is much more battle and not much mage at this point. I'm now in the 20s in level, and I have more perks lying around than I know what to do with.

In the height of irony, my highest leveled skill mage skill (with the exception of enchanting) is actually alteration - one of two mage skills I wasn't even planning on focusing on. I stopped by the Companions, and the first quest to prove yourself is taking out the mercenaries at Halted Stream Camp. Between the amount of ore I had collected there, and the not inconsiderable amount I had acquired prior to that point, I left the HSC with 67 iron ore. Hellllloooooo Transmute! Throw on the highborn ability to spam it, and you cast Transmute 134 times in a couple of minutes. That's a quick way of leveling your Alteration skill. Of course I've held onto all the rings - those will be base ingredients for future enchants.

As an additional bonus, it appears that crafting jewelry gives you much more in the way of smithing experience than some iron daggers. (Not that I won't craft iron daggers, it's just that this method seems so much more productive.) In fact, transmuting iron into gold is going to be standard practice going forward. For a base cost of two unrefined iron ore (cost 6gp each) you can make one gold ignot, which can be crafted into two gold rings. So you're basically buying a gold ring for 6gp each. Even if just turned around and sold the rings you'd be making a killing. (Base sell price of a gold ring with my speech level is 30gp.) Enchanting with ideally a petty soul gem would provide a good return. Enchanting with a lesser soul gem is about a break-even situation. It's still a losing proposition if you go common or anything bigger. Base cost of a filled common soul gem is ~400 gp, and you're unlikely to get that much back when it's time to sell.

I really need to get to the College of Winterhold, If nothing else, it will give me access to training. However, Winterhold is a sub-optimal choice for a base of operations. There are few stores to sell loot, and while I believe the college itself has an alchemy and enchanting station, there is no blacksmith anywhere that I can recall, and given my playstyle, I'll likely need access to all three.

 

Nope, no blacksmiths in Winterhold. From a strictly money-making/crafting point of view it has limited appeal. Besides access to spellbooks (even spells beyond your level of skill, if you know how to operate the shrine below the college) one of the nice things about it is that the school of magic professors sometimes sell decent trinkets, and I've seen the illegal goods merchant within the college itself sell daedra hearts.

 

I didn't even know there was a shrine below the college. Keep in mind, this is the first time I'm doing to College quest. I do attempt to somewhat role play my character, and given that I haven't made a mage prior to now, I never really saw the appeal of doing the quest before.

That said, role playing is going straight out the window in favor of utility. I power leveled to 30 last night, although I hardly did anything to get there. I simply went for the train, pickpocket, train again method. My pickpocket skill is maxed out now, and while I don't have any points to spare for perks on pickpocketing, even without them, you have a 90% chance of stealing gold back from training all the way up level 50. After that, the cost triples, and without some perks your chance of success drop dramatically. (I'm a power gamer, but not to the point that I will repeatedly re-load my game until the 20% chance of successfully stealing my gold back works out to my favor.) I DO reload when I fail, but I don't even bother trying to pickpocket if my chance of success is not at or near 90%.

So the current plan is to get destruction, illusion, and conjuration up to level 50 through training. That should at least get me started. I won't stop at that point of course - but my thinking is that once all of those skills are at level 50 they will be more usable, and more importantly, I'll have the money to spend to get them even higher. There's just so many more skills I'm working on with this character, that I feel I'm no where close to maxing out his development potential, especially considering I've yet to scratch the surface of the full potential of my crafting skills (enchanting is 42, and that's the highest one).

Enthir does sell deadra hearts on occasion, although honestly I never had a problem acquiring as many as I needed in prior games. While they are by no means common ingredients, you do find them from time to time with alchemists. Usually you can accumulate 5 or 6 just by purchasing them whenever they are available, and frankly, you should never really need many more than that, even if you want to fully gear up with daedric armor.

 

Sorry for that, I assumed you already knew because you were familiar with the Archmage's Armor.

My nuker character was around level 37 when he maxed destruction, I'm not sure how well destruction level 50 would fare at character levels 30-40. Though I imagine if you can craft yourself some good heavy armors and enchant them with magicka reduction you should be fine, regardless.

 

As it is presently working out, illusion is my highest level skill (other than pickpocketing). That's partly because whenever I'm in a dungeon or where ever, I'm sneaking, and if I'm sneaking, I'm going to be using muffle. So every few minutes I cast it. It will almost certainly be the first mage skill I max, unless I find a whole bunch of soul gems somewhere along the way. (Although I tend to do crafting in sessions, and since I haven't done so in a while, it's possible that when I go for the next round my new level will exceed illusion.

I finally reached the point where I spent all my perks, thanks mostly to boosting illusion through muffle and destruction through training. (I really don't feel bad about training/pickpocketing my gold back at all. The game actually encourages it. Granted, unless you're willing to invest heavily into pickpocketing perks, it only gets to you level 50. My thief character went all-out with perks pickpocking, and even he started seeing some major issues once he got past level 70 or so when it comes to training. Although by the time you've trained all that you can train up to level 50, you're usually rolling in money.) I'm still trying to figure a way to work alteration in there, but I doubt I'll be able to until very late in the character's development. That said, this character is going to have many more maxed skills than any other character I've ever played. In addition to all three crafting skills, I hope to max destruction, illusion, and conjuration from the mage tree. Pickpocket is already maxed, for the thief, sneak probably will be very high (I've only ever been able to max it when I've used the thief stone), and speech and lockpicking tend to take care of themselves over time. So the only thief skill where I won't see a big investment beyond what I get from books and quests is light armor. On the fighter side, I'll see substantial investments in all of those skills, except block.

I am still undecided if I want to gear up for destruction/illusion or destruction/conjuration. And I'm certainly not above training if that's what it takes. I got destruction to 50 last night, and then moved on to conjuration.