I've recently discovered the joy of the Destruction school of magic...some daedric weaponry recently financed the biggest bunch of training I've ever indulged in (about 100K's worth!), and I got that 100 in Destruction...which enables me to fire off a wonderful little spell called "Maim"

Maim is a damage health effect spell, and damages 50 points of health for 3 seconds...uses up most of my magic meter, but saves my arse if I get in very deep!

I've recently begun wiping out the Dark Brotherhood, and PACKS of them (five at a time) have fallen to my area-effect counterpart "Maim Area."

How I thought direct-damage magic was weak in this game, I'll never know, though the potion expense sure has ramped quite a bit!

Nobody ever said magic was weak. It's just that it takes more time, magicka and skill level to do the equivalent of decent melee damage. And there's a chance that it could come back to bite your ass!

An item enchanted with a ranged attack is sometimes more devastating than any weapon.

IMHO Battle Mage is the best RPG PC I've ever used.
The main reason being that, once you run out of
mana you still have the enchanted melee weapon's to
fall back on.
One thing to remember is not to totally relay on the
Magic or you'll find yourself reloading more often
than you want.

[ 02-23-2006, 10:41 AM: Message edited by: TheCrimsomBlade ]

I've learned that lesson too many times to count.

Then again, that's why you have an invisibility spell, and potions to bring back your mana, right? Just in case you get the short end of the stick?

I got my own "Nuke" spell. Massive fire damage with area effect plus massive poison damage over time. It's cool watching enemies got a green smoke coming out behind them. Too bad it eats lots of mana.

I created other destructive magics too but I can't remember what they are.

Elemental Burst is my favorite spell...

100 Frost, Fire, and Shock damage in 50 ft.

Can you say, "KABOOM?!"

...So, how does a person go about getting more than 120 mana??? It REALLY stinks that it's not level-up dependent...and only being able to fire off Maim Area once a day sans potions sucks!

You can increase your mana by choosing some Star Sign when you first created your character. For example :

The Apprentice - Fortify Maximum Magicka 1.5x INT. This mean you'll have have an extra 150 mana added to your starting 100 mana. So you now have 250 mana.

The Atronach - Fortify Maximum Magicka 2.0x INT.

The Mage - Fay -- Fortify Maximum Magicka 0.5x INT

But! With the apprentice, you have a weakness to Magicka, and with the Atronach, you don't get it back naturally.

I think hte only exception where the atronauch is quite priceless is when creating a High Elf mage. They just seem to go together.

Weakness to magicka is not a big deal, except for boots of blinding speed or getting paralyzed by dark brotherhood daggers. You hardly get blinded or paralyzed by other means.

Stunted magicka by the Atronach sign can be easily overwite by making mana potions via the alchemy skill.

Many people (including myself) consider this method to be cheesy, but i'm happy to use it in moderation if it means achieving the kind of power that a high level mage SHOULD have.

Get yourself a decent alchemy skill, stock up on Bloat and Ash Yam and make yourself a batch of 5 fortify intelligence potions. Drink 'em and then make 5 more and so on. The magicka gains from The Atronach sign pale by comparison.

Be it stealth, combat or magicka, primary attributes are where the power lies in MW. And alchemy is the unbalanced skill that can harness them all...

isnt there a spell that makes you drain magica and give it to yourself? In that case, you could make an attack-spell that at the same time gives you more mana than you used for the spell?