If you chose to only use destruction you are going to want to develop alchemy to help with your magicka needs. You can also use alchemy to fortify your magicka and restore it. You can boost your magicka and regen rate with gear.
If you chose not to mods to make destruction magic scale with your destruction skill you are going to need to pump up your magicka every way you can.įor a pure mage I usually go with one point of health for every three points I put in Magicka. In my opinion reducing spell cost to zero results in boring gameplay. If you chose not to use other magic schools however you must wear armor instead of robes. Yes, you can be a pure mage specializing in Destruction. Combine the Atronach Stone and the perk from the Alteration tree that gives you 30% magick absorption and you end up with an 80% chance to just shrug off a fireball and get all the magicka the spell costs back.
It lets you have both the Atronach Stone and the Apprentice Stone effects at once. You can stagger entire groups using either Ice Storm or you can use regular dual-casted projectiles (Firebolt) to alternate staggering enemies.Įdit: I also recommend completing Lost to the Ages to get the Aetherial Crown. By the time they get unstaggered, you stagger them again. If you alternate dual-casts and double casts (use both hands but not at the exact same time), you'll stagger the enemy then hit them with two blasts. Circling around and dodging multiple enemies is a skill you will need. All you do is spam dual-casted Firebolts/Ice Spikes/Lightning Bolts until the enemy's dead. All you need is a lot of magicka, a ton of regen (Archmage Robes, Ring of the Erudite (Dawnguard Expansion Vampires only)) and the Impact perk. Older ES games handled magic so wonderfully, letting us learn and experiment with different combinations and making super creative spells.Īm I alone with this frustration? I've been playing a Mage since Daggerfall :( The way Skyrim handles magic just seems completely broken on every level. Encounters that I couldn't beat on Novice I'm able to beat with ease on Adept. I'm suddenly actually enjoying the game somehow. I gave up and tried conjuration weapons, and I'm dealing more damage with virtually no magicka cost. This just seems fundamentally broken to me. And then the guides go on to say that Destruction magic doesn't really work well past a certain level because it doesn't get any damage scaling with your skill level. How is that even possible? By the time I do that, I'll be such a high level that every wild animal or bandit that so much as looks at me will melt me.
I've been reading online on how to make a proper Destruction magic user, and all the guides tell me "Just get Heavy Armor and Enchanting to 100 so you can make Destruction spells cost 100% less to cast". It feels like by the time I've leveled my Destruction to a point where it can hurt things, the enemies have already surpassed me in the level-scaling "arms race". I spent my first 20 hours in Skyrim having a miserable time because I simply could not figure out how to make Destruction work as a viable damage source.
I either put too many points into Magicka and have bandits performing finishing animations on me at full health, or I spread my points out more evenly and can't kill anything before my magicka is gone. Seems like every approach I take to try and make a pure mage fail miserably.