Nope. My pure mage never touched enchanting. Destruction was all I used for dealing damage, and with high mans regent through the right gear, I could fire off spells infinitely, with just a short (2 or 3 second) pause to let it refill once in a while. I’m not saying your way isn’t effective, its just not at all necessary like you claim.
I feel like I should have gone archery instead of destruction for my conjuration/light armor/one handed with a little bit of restoration, stealth, and enchanting guy. And then used the bound bow. Oh well, I’m doing well enough I guess.
JeffL
2723
What’s the advantage of a bound weapon vs. a normal one?
A bound weapon does damage as a daedric weapon of the same type, so for much of the game it will simply be better. It is also weightless, can be upgraded to do more damage in your skill tree, it will still get the benefits of the perks of that weapon class, it can be set to automatically cast Soul Trap to fill up a gem with no loss of magic, and can be further upgraded to cast Banish without a loss in magic.
All-in-all, not too shabby. While they won’t be the absolute best weapons in the game, it’s an excellent staple and its powers won’t need recharging (well, aside from casting the spell again after a little while).
Tony_M
2726
I thought my style of gaming was obsessive, but Brian Seiler makes me look like a carefree improviser by comparison.
Keep posting Brian. Loving this insight.
DeepT
2727
So you can take on groups of high-level baddies and not go OOM? Sure you can suck down mana pots, which I did too, but then I ran out and finding enough ingredients to keep making more became a serious issue.
Mana potions? I just sold any of those I found (and my wizard never touched alchemy, I saved that for my assassin character’s poisons). Didn’t need em. I’d “run out” of magic every so often, but that just meant waiting a few seconds, not long at all, till it all came back. I never even used the High Elf special ability that makes it regen even faster after the early levels.
With good robes and Morokei, and the regen perk, I was fine.
Did you have the Restoration perk that makes it grow big faster?
I’ve found that stacking up even crappy, low-end armor enchants to buff my regen made a big difference, so I imagine that that thing is like night and day.
You mean the perk that makes it regenerate faster (Recovery)? Yeah, that’s what I was talking about. Of course you’d take that as a pure mage. You only need to get Restoration to 30 to take the first level, 60 for the second. With the regen buff of mage robes you find/buy, and especially Morokei, you’re golden. No enchanting necessary.
That’s not to say it’s easy. You have to be careful those few seconds aren’t at a very bad time, but it’s not particularly difficult, either. With such a big mana pool (80-90% of my levels went to magic, the rest health), those seconds are far apart, anyway.
DeepT
2731
And you never have problems with Higher level mobs? Do you run some kind of mod that seriously buffs destruction magic? I was fine with destruction at first, but by the time I was level 20 or so things like bears or your basic dragons would consume my entire mana pool and still have 3/4 of its health left. Nevermind when you got 3 or 4 mobs on you.
I focused on cost reduction with my mage, and with a full suit of 100-level enchanted clothes, it only costs me 4 mana for a fireball, 9 for an incinerate. I occasionally go OOM if I’m firing nonstop for an extended time since you don’t regen during the casting animation, but it’s not usually a problem.
Earlier on I did depend rather heavily on Lydia and atronachs to finish the fights or at least soften them up, though.
I’ll second this - while wandering to another city I came across an epic battle: a group of imperal soldiers, a dragon, and a giant. I figured I’d just stand back and watch the spectacle, finish off the injured winner, and pick up the goodies. The dragon focused its attacks on the giant, and while I could see the giant swinging away, it fell faster than I expected. The dragon then did a one-chomp kill on an Imperial, and at that point I decided to join in and finish it off. Thankfully, the battle had already done some serious damage to it and the thing fell shortly thereafter. I was going to suggest making s’mores over the burning area, but the last surviving soldier just mentioned something about an arrow to his knee and trodded off to likely get mauled by a wolf pack.
Good info here, just to add for clarity:
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Only the Bound Bow spell summons a Daedric-quality weapon without any perks involved. The damage of unimproved Bound Sword and Bound Battleaxe are the equivalent to Steel weapons, not Daedric. (Bound Sword will inflict damage on par with a Daedric equivalent when you invest in the Mystic Bindings perk. Bound Battleaxe still does less damage than a Daedric battleaxe even with Mystic Bindings, but only by a couple points.)
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Nice summary of the other advantages (no carry weight, able to soul steal with perks, no need for ammo for bound bows, etc.) The disadvantages are that they only last a limited time and can expire during combat, they make noise when summoning (which can break stealth), they take longer to ‘draw,’ they can’t do elemental damage, and they use mana to summon.
For my stealthy archer assassin, the Bound Bow is nice when I need to refill souls quickly - it saves me from having to carry a second bow with a Soul Steal enchant - but overall I find it more effective to use my own enchanted bows, which have higher overall damage, don’t make noise, don’t disappear, and don’t eat up half my mana pool. :) For dedicated mages, the bound weapons are great, especially with some points in the associated Conjuration perks.
I play on 360 (my pc is busted atm), so no mods.
I wouldn’t say I “never” have problems. The game was still occasionally challenging, so there might be times when I didn’t plan correctly, or was overwhelmed, etc. No more than my other non-mage characters, though.
I found the teens to be the hardest levels, before I knew what I was doing and had better robes and such. Then I’d run out a lot, and it would take longer to recharge. By the mid 20s or so I was as I described, and more so the more I levelled (it felt like, at least). So long as I bought the new spells as soon as they became available, and used all my other tools (other magic types, I mean) when appropriate, I’d be good. No one enemy, except the very toughest, would normally drain my whole pool.
Getting the Master Destruction spells is a must once you reach the higher levels. That lightning one just wrecks most enemies, but it’s balanced by the long casting time.
So why the Hell does Clairvoyance point completely in the wrong direction when I was trying to find Ivargard?
Glad I finally stumbled on a path with road-signs…
I wonder how many people are doing multiple characters? The world is so large it seems like a perfect place to try different characters.
My first character was a High Elf mage I got him to level 12 found that I was having a tough time, read all about how mages were nerfed.
So I started a Orc dual wield. Got him to level 29 with enchanted orc armor and found combat just to easy. (I know I could increase the difficulty level). But I finished the companions quest and that was pretty cool. Still combat with melee is just boring.
Now I am back to Mage and enjoying the Mage school quests. Mages are definitely harder to play and no where near the killing machines of melee but I find them more fun.
The thief guild quests look interesting and I guess I could do them as Mage, but I’m wondering if I should start another character.
I still having finished Act 1 in the main quest. I guess I should do this one of these days.
I am of the opinion that people who try to do everything with just one character are missing out, if not quite “playing wrong”. For one thing, you really shouldn’t take a character too far past fifty. That’s around where the devs planned on a character to finish. Most enemies stop scaling around there, so the game will just be no challenge.
You’re missing out on the various playstyles. Me, I always play a mage first in TES games, then a thief, and that’s it. This time, I played a warrior for my third, and I’m glad I did, I wouldn’t have known what I was missing.
There’s far and away enough content to play several characters without repeating anything but the very beginning. Plus, the game rewards specialization, so each character ought to be more satisfying than one jack of all trades.
And, I know you can do it, but becoming, say, the archmage as a battleaxe wielding barbarian who only ever cast the piddly entrance exam spell is just too silly for my tastes. Much better to actually be an artful dodger when taking command of the Thieve’s Guild.
Just my opinion, ofc.
I think you’re probably right. But it’s strange that you have to ‘meta-game’ to realise this when the in-game systems specifically lead to one head-of-all-guilds character.
By giving you the pointer quests for each guild, you mean? I can see where someone might misinterpret those as “I have to talk to the leader of the Bard’s College” or “I must speak to the Companions in Whiterun” but I’m guessing most players realize those are optional. I myself have spent significant time on two different characters (Nord warrior and a Dunmer assassin) and I agree with J_A that it’d be silly to try and do everything on one character. But you’re right, those plans - Thieves’ Guild and DB with my Dunmer, Companions and Stormcloaks with my warrior, Mage College and Imperials for my eventual spellsword, etc - are definitely kind of meta-gamey.
I love that the world is so huge that it easily supports multiple playthroughs, but that does come at the cost of some immersion.
