Tips for Extremely Weak Mage?

I play a pure mage on master difficulty and it's indeed extremely difficult in the beginning. The important thing is to constantly stay on the move no matter what. Strafe around to avoid arrows (most archers still one-shot me and I'm level 54 now; Archery in this game is broken) and leap on places that nobody else can reach to recharge your Magicka safely.

You need to get the Dual Casting Destruction and the Impact perks ASAP as they will let you stagger any enemy in the game with every attack with all Destruction spells that are Apprentice or higher.

Also, find something that has a Fortify Destruction enchantment and disenchant it. Enchant your hood, necklace, ring and robes with it using Grand or Black Soul Gems and keep re-enchanting new ones every time you can get a higher Enchantment.

Eventually once you hit 100 Enchanting and the proper perks you can get 100% reduction for Destruction and cast Destruction spells forever.

You can also use enchant your gear to increase the amount of Magicka you have while wearing.

You also need to get the Mage Armour perks as they will make all Alteration Flesh spells 3x more powerful when you have all three ranks.

Even low level Conjuration spells are extremely useful as you can use your zombie/Daedric henchmen as meat shields or to distract opponents. I usually summon Familiars if I'm about to charge into an archer who is aware of my presence to force them to waste the arrow they have in their quiver and buy me time to destroy them before they fire again.

Illusion is very useful if you're overwhelmed as you can force your opponents to kill each other, to stop attacking you, or to run off.

Get all three words of Disarm too ASAP (you need to join the Thieves Guild to get one of them but there's a mod that lets you avoid that) as it lets you disarm all opponents that are level 30 and under, that includes ALL Bandits and all Draugr excluding Draugr Death Overlords and top tier Deathlords (the ones that use Ebony weapons and can actually ragdoll you with Unrelenting Force.)

Three words of Slow Time are very useful too as they practically freeze everybody but you for 16 seconds, giving you time to destroy your opponents without them being able to retaliate or to escape.

Visit the College of Winterhold if you haven't yet too as the higher tier spells in the game can only be bought from there. If you're struggling that much though I'd advise you take a Carriage there as the way there is swarming with enemies that can easily one-shot a low level character (Snow/Cave Bears, Dire Wolves, Ice Wraiths, Snowy Sabre-Tooth Cats, etc.)

3 word Fus Roh Dah is a life saver. Against ranged foes you can attempt to disarm them. Remember to use traps against enemies, trickering rock slides etc.

Fusrohdar and invisibility is a good combination. Are you a PC player as well; there are some excellent core magic redesign mods; without huge spell mods adding 3 million essentially useless spells in return for the uber death dealer.

I did a mage character (actually a necromancer) and you will get your ass handed to you for the first 15-20 levels. Mages are pretty useless at first, but then you get more magicka and better spells and it starts to work.

A big pro-tip: Don't try to do too many things at once or you will run out of magicka very quickly. If you raise a zombie then start using powerful destruction spells you will have no magicka when you need it. This sounds like common sense but in the heat of battle it gets easily overlooked.

The reason you're so weak and not brokenly good is because you focus purely on dealing, resisting and healing damage, rather than summoning or controlling stuff to do it for you.


Face it, Destruction is pointless n Skyrim, the only time it's useful is if you focus on it enough at low levels, that it is the only Skill you actually use... This allows you to deal far more damage than any other attack type for the level you should be.
Alteration is better concentrated on for it's utility Spells. Do not use it for Armour unless you can justify it with a large boost to your Health and a reduction to the Alteration Spells' cost via Enchantment... Yeah, you're better off never increasing Magicka for the whole game, especially if you enjoy Combat.
Using Alteration Spells to protect yourself is inefficient, if you can kill something within the Spell's Spell duration, then you generally didn't need it. If you're still fighting something by the time it wears off, then you're going to have to recast the Spell. As for Restoration... I have only one thing I like about this whole Skill and that's the late game Necromage Perk.

So three Magic Skills down, three to go.
Illusion is the bread and butter for the most powerful of the caster builds, it allows you complete and total control of all enemies... Except Dragons, I think, I haven't actually tried a build against them.
Conjuration is also very useful, even for Pure Melee/Archer builds. As something as fragile as a Mage is supposed to be, it's a source of Conjured Daedra, who can wear down anything. Or create Undead, who require a corpse and are nowhere near as powerful.
Enchanting, this becomes brokenly good at top level. Imagine, FREE SPELLCASTING. How does this sound?


So now you'll be interested in useful Spells and how to use them now, won't you?

Fury/Frenzy: Make target hostile to anything that moves, including allies and especially you.
Mayhem: Area version of the above, don't need to be in same room as enemies. Maybe not even on same floor.
Detect Life/Undead: Don't need to be able to see enemies, just flash it and look for the red mist, this is a very expensive Spell in terms of Magicka cost, but totally worth it in small bursts.
Muffle: Silence dem footstep! Whether or not it really works, this is still great for training Illusion.
Invisibility: Okay, now this doesn't allow you to walk right up to enemies outside Sneak mode, but it will greatly augment your existing Sneak Skill.
Conjure Flame Atronach: It's quick, has a ranged attack and can be summoned almost anywhere.
Flaming Familiar: If in doubt, nuke it. Seriously, when this thing dies, and it tends to die very quickly, it explodes causing a load of damage.
Conjure Dremora Lord: HAM! And greatswords! Big flaming greatswords! These guys can drop any enemy in the game in such a short time, it's just terrible.
Transmute: Turn Iron Ore into Silver Ore into Gold Ore. Fantastic way to make oodles of cash, increase your Alteration, Smithing and Speech Skills all at once.
Telekinesis: So you can walk into the entrance of a room, take the lure/loot off the trap trigger on the far side and watch the trap set off as far away from you as you feel safe. You can also throw stuff, I think as a weapon, though I haven't personally tried it.
Water Breathing: Be like an Argonian for a minute. Okay there are a couple of things under water, that require you to either be an Argonian, or have this Spell cast and to be quick. Though most of the time you can just go down and be done before a Slaughterfish knows you're there.
Calm: Sometimes you'll just want to stop an enemy where they stand. This does that. Dual Casting Calm helped me kill a Mammoth on my own, who knows what it could do for you. I kept switching between this and Firebolt btw, just in case you were wondering how I caused damage.

So there you have it, not a single Restoration or Destruction Spell there, unless you count Firebolt. Any Fire Spell is good for setting fire to the many pools of Oil in Skyrim's dungeons. Shock Damage isn't as good for fighting Mages as it looks, it's a trap. However, it does have the benefit of instantly hitting your targets in range, and with a certain Perk your targets Health is reduced by 15%.
Quiet Casting from Illusion, helps you when Sneak Casting, it affects Spells from ALL Magic Skills... Except Enchant, there are no Spells in that one. Yeah, you should Sneak a lot, you don't need the attention, your minions do.

Becoming a Vampire will help improve the power of Illusion Spells if you can get yourself infected.

Oh yeah, as for Perks, Dual Casting Illusion is the only Dual Casting Perk I would personally invest in. And I wouldn't get any Casting Cost reducing Perks, except Novice and any that unlock the useful Perks.



There you have it, if you're abusing everything here and are still struggling, consider lowering the difficulty.



BTW I mentioned a Melee/Archer build when I was also talking about Conjuration, you can summon weapons that cannot be taken away from you when some Draugr uses it's Disarm Thu'um, these weapons are capable of Banishing Atronachs, Soul Trapping enemies and are as powerful as Base Daedric Weapons with all the Perks (in reverse order of unlocking them). The Bow comes with 100 Arrows (also Daedric) when summoned, so as an Archer, you'd be able to sell all those Arrows you'd find on bodies.
Having a weapon that can instantly kill anything is all well and good, but if you're not into that kind of thing, Bound Weapons can be more useful than normal gear.

quote skythelegend

Face it, Destruction is pointless n Skyrim

Single-handedly allowing the player to take out Legendary Dragons and Nightmaster Vampires without being hit once, even on master difficulty is pointless?

Destruction is disgustingly overpowered once you have the proper perks and Enchantments. You can easily freeze people in their tracks by spamming Ice Storm or prevent enemies like Dragons and Dwarven Centurion Masters from using anything but their melee attacks by spamming storm attacks.

quote skythelegend

Alteration is better concentrated on for it's utility Spells. Do not use it for Armour unless you can justify it with a large boost to your Health and a reduction to the Alteration Spells' cost via Enchantment... Yeah, you're better off never increasing Magicka for the whole game, especially if you enjoy Combat.
Using Alteration Spells to protect yourself is inefficient, if you can kill something within the Spell's Spell duration, then you generally didn't need it. If you're still fighting something by the time it wears off, then you're going to have to recast the Spell. As for Restoration... I have only one thing I like about this whole Skill and that's the late game Necromage Perk.

With Dual-Casting and the Stability perk you can have a Flesh spell up for several minutes so that's completely false.

You can reach the armour cap for 99 seconds by dual-casting Dragonhide (yes, that's possible) and getting the Stability perk.

Though that really should not ever be necessary considering mages are supposed to be squishy. If you need a high armour rating and/or massive amounts of health that badly you're doing something wrong.

Not to mention Pure Mages do not use any armour other than Alteration, so you'd either have to run around naked or be out of character.

I think Im going to have to start delving into more mind affecting spells in future. 1, ive not done one yet, and 2, I think 'fury' and 'raise dead' spells used in conjunction would be a nice way of actually completing a dungeon without getting hit.

Fury = Everyone hates each other

Raise Dead = free soldier

Of course, Alduin will prove to be a right little fuker, but hey ho.