A Mage's Guide

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The mage ,initially, is the weakest of all classes, but if he advances well, by doing the best, he will be more powerfull than any warrior or thief in the late game. This guide aims to make every mage player choose the right options and eventually become very powerfull. This guide though, is nothing similar to my Class Guides as it is very analytic and doesn't realy focus on your character's build but on how to achieve this build.

So, the options you make at the begining of the game have a great effect on the power of your character at the late stages of the game. I suggest you choose the High Elves as your race, a Breton or a Dark Elf would do just fine too, but all other races lack bonuses that affect the power of a mage. After escaping Helgen you will get to choose between three standing stones. It's obvious that you want to choose the mages stone as it will give you a 20% experience bonus for any mages skill. After you have leveled up all your mages skills to 100 you should switch to either the apprentice or the atronach stone.

After having done some quests of the main storyline you should join the college of Winterhold. It's a college that trains mages and from its quests you will get some very good equipment like the Staff of Magnus which is one of the best staves in Skyrim. In the college you will find NPCs that sell spells of every type and you will also find trainers that you will need to level up your skills.

If you need new spells then you should visit the right NPCs,these are:

1)Faralda. She is located at the College of Winterhold and sells destruction spells.

2)Farengar Secret-Fire. He is located at Dragonsreach and is the court wizard of the Jarl of Whiterun.He sells very powerfull spells of any type.

3)Wuunferth the Unliving. He is located at Windhelm and is the court wizard of Ulfric Stormcloack. He sells very powerfull spells of any type like Farengar.

4)Phinis Gestor. He is located at the College of Winterhold and specializes in conjuration, of course he sells some very powerfull conjuration spells.

5)Toldfir. He can be found at the college of Winterhold and he sells Alteration spells. He is an Alteration master trainer too!

6)Drevis Neloren. He is located at the college of Winterhold and sells Illusion spells.

7)Collet Marence. She is located at the college of Winterhold and sells restoration spells.

No mage can level up all of his skills to 100 so you have to choose 2 primary skills and 1 secondary. What i suggest is Destruction and Restoration as primary and Ilussion as secondary. Level up all of these skills to 100 and buy all of their perks(with some exeption that are show later in this text). The primary skills should have a priority at leveling up and perk allocation. In addition to these skills you should also level up Enchanting to 100 and buy all of it's perks, and of course achieving rank 100 in alchemy is a must. In conclusion the skills you will focus on are destruction, restoration, illusion, enchanting and alchemy.

Well, now that you know how to build your own powerfull mage, I will analytically tell you what perks that type of mage should choose (until level 50)....

DESTRUCTION: Novice Destruction, Apprentice Destruction, Adept Destruction, Expert Destruction, Master Destruction, Augmented Flames x2, Intense Flames, Destruction Dual Casting, Impact

RESTORATION: Novice Restoration, Apprentice Restoration, Adept Restoration, Expert Restoration, Master Restoration, Respite, Regeneration, Ward Absorb, Recovery x2, Restoration Dual Casting

ILLUSION: Novice Illusion, Apprentice Illusion, Adept Illusion, Expert Illusion, Master Illusion, Illusion Dual Casting, Hypnotic Gaze, Aspect of Terror, Rage, Animage, Kindred Mind, Quiet Casting, Master of The Mind 

ALCHEMY: Alchemist x5, Physician

ENCHANTING: Enchanter x5, Fire Enchanter, Insightfull Enchanter, Corpus Enchanter, Extra Effect

That's it, the perk points used were 49 so the level of such a mage would be 50. I will soon be uploading a video of my mage (who has exactly the same stats as this mage) in action, on youtube.