I. Introduction
II. Mods: Do I Need Them?
III. Creating Your Character
IV. Character Growth and Progression
V. Effective Spell Design
VI. Advanced Enchanting Guide
First of all, what is a "pure mage?"
A pure mage is a character who relies almost entirely on their magic-based skills for survival, as opposed to using magic skills alongside combat or stealth skills (a "hybrid mage," if you will.) Many people decide to play pure mage for roleplaying reasons, because they relish the challenge, or simply because they find it more fun than other play styles.
Playing a pure mage in Morrowind can be quite a challenging experience. Morrowind has some strange, sometimes unintuitive game mechanics that are not present in the later Elder Scrolls games. In Skyrim, you can simply pick up a few spells and start blasting away. This is not the case for Morrowind! You have to put a lot of thought into things like battle tactics, spell design, and even level-ups.
Even though pure mage characters are rather difficult to play in Morrowind, they can be incredibly rewarding. Morrowind’s magic system gives the player a lot of freedom, but in order to play an effective magic character, a player has to know what they’re doing. This guide is geared towards teaching players about the more nuanced side of magic so that their characters can live up to their full potential.
This guide assumes that the reader has played Morrowind before (or at least another Elder Scrolls game) and is at least somewhat familiar with the game mechanics. Players who are relatively new to the game should consult the UESP Morrowind wiki for help whenever something seems unclear.
Do you need to mod your game to play a successful pure mage? The short answer is no, you don’t. Everything discussed in this guide is perfectly viable with an unmodded game.
The long answer is that while you don’t technically need mods to play a mage character, there are many mods that will make it a lot more enjoyable – especially if you’re playing a pure mage. To tell the truth, vanilla Morrowind isn’t very friendly towards pure mage playstyles, but this can be easily remedied with mods. I’ll highlight some of my favorite mods below:
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Madd Leveler: This mod should be considered essential for all characters. Vanilla Morrowind’s leveling system is a bit… strange, and can discourage players from leveling up organically as they play. Most people don’t want to spend a whole bunch of time trying (and failing) to optimize their level-ups, which is where this mod comes in. Madd Leveler increases attributes automatically as skills increase (3 skill increases = 1 attribute increase) so the player doesn’t have to micromanage their skill gains. This mod is absolutely worth installing for anyone who doesn’t want to micromanage every aspect of their character.
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Fair Magicka Regen: This mod will (slowly) recharge a character’s magicka pool over time. This isn’t like other regen mods where your magicka bar will refill in a matter of seconds – at 100 willpower, a character regenerates 1% of their max magicka per second. This is not significant enough to give an unfair edge in a fight, but it’s nice to see magicka actually recharging (albeit slowly) while out of combat. If you don’t use this mod, expect to do a lot of resting. To be consistent with the in-game lore, the regen doesn’t work on characters with the Atronach birthsign.
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Talrivian’s State-Based HP: In the base game, a character’s maximum Health increases by 10% of your Endurance every time they level up. It’s not hard to figure out that someone who invests in Endurance early on will end up with a lot more health than someone who only invests in Endurance later. From a role-playing perspective, it doesn’t make sense for a mage to invest in Endurance early on, and it can be irritating that stat gains in the late game have comparatively little effect on a character. Talrivian’s State-Based HP changes the way health is calculated: instead of gaining health at every level-up, a character’s health is based on a combination of Endurance, Strength, and character level. Recommended for everyone.
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Morrowind Code Patch: This “mod” patches morrowind.exe and removes a lot of bugs. Recommended for everyone.
The boring stuff is out of the way now. On to character creation!
Bretons and High Elves (Altmer) are the only two races that get Magicka bonuses. Altmer get a 1.5x bonus magicka multiplier, and a Bretons get a 0.5x multiplier. (This is in addition to the base 1.0x multiplier that everyone gets.) An Imperial (or any other race) with 100 INT will have 100 maximum magicka, while a Breton with the same stats will have 150. An Altmer with 100 INT will have 250 maximum magicka – as much as the other two combined!
Altmer pay a price for their higher magicka though, as they take additional damage from all sources of magic. If you enjoy a glass-cannon playstyle, High Elf is for you. However, if you have a more conservative, cautious playstyle, pick the Breton, as they actually resist non-elemental magic to some extent.
There are three magic-centric brithsigns: The Mage, The Apprentice, and The Atronach.
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The Mage is fairly simple – a 0.5x magicka bonus multiplier (equivalent to +50 magicka at 100 INT) with no drawbacks. This is a safe option, but it is a bit underpowered compared to the other signs.
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The Apprentice gives a more significant bonus (1.5x) with the catch of a 50% Weakness to Magicka. This means that you will be more vulnerable to non-elemental magicka, but the effects can be offset by the Breton resistance. (Breton + The Apprentice is a popular combination for people who don’t like High Elves, but still want a bunch of magicka.)
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The Atronach gives a massive 2.0x bonus to magicka (+200 magicka at 100 INT) with the catch that you cannot restore magicka by resting (or by regeneration, if you are using the Fair Magicka Regen mod.) However, you get 50% Spell Absorption, which essentially means that half the spells thrown your direction will not affect you, but will instead be “absorbed” and restore your magicka. The Atronach is only recommended for experienced players, as it can be difficult to find a source of magical energy. (In case you’re curious, a High Elf with The Atronach birthsign will have 450 magicka at 100 INT.)
Ah yes, we’ve been expecting you. You’ll have to be recorded before you’re officially released. There are a few ways we can do this, and the choice is yours.
Pick the option “Fill out the forms yourself.” This is the only way to get the most out of your character. Please note that for the purpose of this section, this guide assumes that the player has the mods Madd Leveler and Talrivian’s State-Based HP installed, as class-building is much more complicated if you have to worry about optimizing level-ups.
Name your class whatever you want, and select the “Magic” specialization. (This gives +5 to all your Magic skills.) Pick Intelligence and Willpower for your favored attributes.
You will now select five Major Skills and five Minor Skills. All skills not in one of these two categories will be classified as a Miscellaneous Skill. Your major skills start at level 30, your minor skills start at 15, and your misc skills start at 5 (plus any racial or specialization bonuses.) Where you put each skill is up to you and will depend on your play style. This guide will briefly discuss the merits of each skill, and give some thoughts of whether it belongs in the major or minor skills.
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Acrobatics: Not actually a magic skill, but it is essential just the same. As a squishy mage, you will be doing a lot of running away (just ask the wizard Rincewind.) Jumping around lets you move a little faster, and will help you evade your enemies easier. This skill belongs in your minor skills.
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Alchemy: The art of making potions. This is a useful utility skill, but you might not use it all that much once you reach the endgame. Good candidate for a minor skill.
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Alteration: These spells help you explore the world and navigate various obstacles. Levitating, water walking, and opening locks are all examples of Alteration spells. This skill belongs in your major skills, as you will use it all the time.
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Athletics: Same as Acrobatics, but even more important. Put it in your major skills.
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Conjuration: This skill is hugely important in the late game, as many high-level Daedra have lots of elemental resistance, and some have the ability to Reflect spells back at the caster. It’s no fun if a Golden Saint reflects your Cataclysmic Firestorm spell right back into your face – especially not if you’re a High Elf! Conjuration helps work around this problem with summoned minions – an alternate source of damage in the endgame. Conjuration spells are difficult to cast and the skill tends to increase slowly, so put it in major skills to give it a decent initial boost.
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Destruction: Your main source of elemental damage. Put it in your major skills unless you’re trying to be a Conjuration specialist (and even then, I’d still put it in minor skills.)
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Enchant: Ha, okay. Let’s talk about enchanting. This will be covered more in the Enchanting section, but the short version is that the skill isn’t even worth investing in. Completely serious. You need an Enchant skill of 800+ to do any heavy-duty enchanting with a decent chance of success. There are ways to (temporarily) raise your enchant skill into the hundreds, and these methods will be reviewed later. Leave this skill in Miscellaneous.
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Illusion: This is the point where you should ask yourself “am I an aggressive mage or a non-confrontational mage?” If you like the idea of using
Jedi mind tricksillusion spells to turn invisible, paralyze your enemies, and charm shopkeepers, pick Illusion as a major skill. However, if you like the idea of destroying your enemies with zero subtlety at all, put Illusion in your minor skills. -
Mysticism: This is a weird skill. The most notable spells are used for teleportation: Mark, Recall, Almsivi Intervention, and Divine Intervention. Also of note are Absorb Health, Spell Absorption, and Soultrap. This is mostly a utility skill, and belongs in your minor skills.
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Restoration: Earlier, you made a decision about being an aggressive or subtle mage. If you decided to go for an aggressive build, put Restoration in your major skills. If you prefer a more subtle style, put Restoration in your minor skills.
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Armor skills: Armor? What armor? Don’t forget that you’re playing a squishy mage with asthma and no upper body strength. A full set of steel armor has a weight of 118 – if you’re playing as a High Elf, this is nearly 80% of your maximum carrying capacity at level 1. In Morrowind, you actually move more slowly if you are carrying a bunch of stuff. Your most reliable defense is running away from things, and lugging around a bunch of metal will slow you down. Pick Light Armor if you absolutely must, but Unarmored is an overall better choice. Whichever armor skill you choose, put it in minor skills (if there’s room.)
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Other skills: So, you’ve finished picking all the skills that you want, but you still have an empty major or minor skill slot. What do you do here? This is a good opportunity to bump up a minor skill to a major skill, or maybe pick a weapon style to supplement your casting. If you want to use a weapon, pick either Blunt Weapon or Short Blade. Staves are the most enchantable weapon type in the game, making them an essential part of any good mage’s arsenal. Short Blades are also a good choice, as they are light and fast. Weapons that paralyze on strike – such as the Steel Jinkblade – are great defensive weapons that can give you an edge (heh) in an otherwise difficult fight.
Mages are actually pretty easy to play in the earlier levels. Purchase the Fireball, Frostbite, and Hearth Heal spells from Arille’s Tradehouse in Seyda Neen, and you’re pretty much set for a while. Make sure you level up your Conjuration as well, even if it seems unnecessary. You will need it later on in the game, and you’ll suffer if it lags behind.
Your basic tactics in a fight should be “summon something, hit the enemies with damaging spells, and run away to heal / recharge if things start going south.” Supplement your core of Destruction / Conjuration spells with support spells like Calm, Shield, and Paralyze. Remember that you’re a squishy mage, and you can be quickly overwhelmed if you’re not careful.
Explore a lot, be careful not to overextend, and start to build up your repertoire of spells. The most useful ones for getting around are Almsivi intervention, Divine intervention, Mark, Recall, Open, Levitate, and Water Walking.
This is where the difficulty starts to ramp up a little bit. You will encounter more powerful Daedra, some of which will be resistant to many of your spells. At the same time, enemies will have more health, meaning that you won’t be able to 2-shot them with Frost Bite any more. You will want to start creating your own spells now, using the Spellmaking vendors present throughout the game. (Spellmaking will be covered in great detail in the next section.)
Make sure you stay on the lookout for stronger summoning spells (and spells of any kind, really.) If you can, try to find a few useful magical items or minor artifacts. The Mentor’s Ring, Cuirass of the Savior’s Hide, and the Staff of Magnus are all useful items. If you can’t find any useful artifacts, you might want to look into Enchanting as a means of improving your abilities. See the section on Enchanting if you want to take this route.
This is it. You are now the powerful wizard you set out to become. You should have an arsenal of powerful spells, a large pool of magicka, and several magical items and artifacts. However, your enemies will be more powerful as well. Powerful Daedra like Golden Saints and Winged Twilights will lurk around Daedric ruins, and many of them can resist or even reflect your spells.
This is where the Conjuration skill comes into play. If you’ve been using it throughout the game, you should be able to summon powerful allies yourself in order to supplement your own spellcasting abilities. Try to find a spell of Summon Hunger if you can – Hunger are resistant to fire, frost, and shock, so you can throw fireballs all day without worrying about hitting your minions.
Keep on doing what you’ve been doing for 20 levels now: explore, summon, and shoot deadly magical energy at your enemies. If you get stuck, refer to the sections about spell design and enchantment.
Anyone who’s serious about playing a pure mage will quickly learn that the base spells eventually become inadequate. Fire Bite and Frost Bite can deal up to 30 points of damage per cast – which is great when you’re facing enemies with 50 health or so, but it’s less than adequate against enemies with 200+ health and significant magical resistance.
Enter the Spellmaking vendor. They are present in every Mage’s Guild location and a number of other places as well. Their services are inexpensive, and you can customize a spell however you want. The only catch is that you already have to know a spell with the desired effect. (You can’t craft a new Fireball spell if you don’t know any fire magic already.)
Let’s go over some of the rules of spellmaking real quick:
Let’s say that you want to deal 100 Fire damage to an enemy. So, you make a custom spell:
Fire Damage 100 pts for 1 second on Touch.
This spell costs 50 points of magicka to cast! That’s simply not practical, especially if you cast this spell several times per fight.
However, if you reduce the magnitude and increase the duration, you can actually deal the same amount of damage for a lower cost.
This spell:
Fire Damage 50 pts for 2 seconds on Touch
only costs 37 magicka to cast, and it deals the same amount of total damage (100) as our first spell. You can take it even farther if you want – see the table below for more examples.
| Spell | Cost |
|---|---|
| Fire Damage 100 pts for 1 second on Touch | 50 magicka |
| Fire Damage 50 pts for 2 seconds on Touch | 37 magicka |
| Fire Damage 25 pts for 4 seconds on Touch | 31 magicka |
| Fire Damage 10 pts for 10 seconds on Touch | 27 magicka |
| Fire Damage 1 pt for 100 seconds on Touch | 25 magicka |
As you can see, the benefits of increasing the duration diminish after a while. Determine how much magicka you’re willing to spend, and try to hit the “sweet spot” of burst damage vs. cost. If you have several DoT spells, a great strategy is to cast them all on an enemy, then jump around and stay out of reach until they fall over and stop moving.
Let’s look at one of our spells that we made earlier...
Fire Damage 25 pts for 4 secs on Touch 31 magicka
...and increase the Area of effect.
| Spell | Cost |
|---|---|
| Fire Damage 25 pts for 4 secs in 5 ft on Touch | 31 magicka |
| Fire Damage 25 pts for 4 secs in 15 ft on Touch | 33 magicka |
| Fire Damage 25 pts for 4 secs in 50 ft on Touch | 37 magicka |
If you’re facing 4 enemies in a room, would you rather hit just one of them with your spell, or would you rather NUKE THE ENTIRE ROOM and everyone in it? Is it really necessary to even ask this question? Just make sure you don’t accidentally blow up half of Balmora trying to kill a cliff racer – it might be a good idea to have one or two spells that don’t have an AoE in case you have to fight someone in a crowded bar.
25% more expensive, to be precise. If you need to conserve magicka, use Touch spells.
It goes without saying that your Skeletal Minion won’t be too happy if you blast him with a Cataclysmic Fireball while trying to kill a Kwama Forager… but it’s so annoying to aim your shots! However, the Skeletal Minion is actually completely resistant to Frost spells. If you hit him with a max strength Frost spell, he’ll just shrug it off.
It turns out that quite a few summonings are completely immune to various damage types. They are listed below, for your convenience:
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Fire Immunity: Hunger, Flame Atronach
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Frost Immunity: Hunger, Frost Atronach, Skeletal Minion, Ancestral Ghost
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Shock Immunity: Hunger, Storm Atronach
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Poison Immunity: Hunger, Skeletal Minion, Ancestral Ghost
As you can see, the Hunger is quite a versatile summoning for trigger-happy mages.
The base summoning spells all last 60 seconds. This is usually more than enough time to kill whatever it is you need killed. If you make custom summoning spells with a duration of 30 seconds, you can potentially cut your magicka needs in half.
You can put multiple effects on a spell, but this isn’t usually recommended, as the spell costs can get ridiculous pretty quickly. However, fortifying your INT by 800 (Fortify INT 100 pts x8) can be pretty useful if you want to make a large batch of potions. This can also be useful for enchanting, which will be discussed in the next section.
By the time you hit level 20 (and sometimes before that) you’ll be itching to create your own magical items. Unfortunately, you need massive amounts of gold to use an enchanter’s services, and the chances of success on your own are laughably low, even with 100 Enchanting. The game uses different formulas to calculate your probability of enchanting an item. The formulas are listed below:
Cast On Use / Strike: Enchant Skill + (Intelligence / 4) + (Luck / 8) – (2.5 x Enchantment)
Constant Effect: Enchant Skill + (Intelligence / 4) + (Luck / 8) – (5 x Enchantment)
The “Enchantment” is a measure of how complex your enchantment is. This number is listed at the top-right of the enchanting window when you’re making an item. (An Enchantment of 15/40 means that the enchantment you currently have selected takes 15 points, and that the item can hold a maximum of 40 points of enchantment.)
You don’t need to be a mathematician to be a good enchanter. Just remember that your enchanting skill is the single most important factor for determining your success. (Your Intelligence matters too, but only one quarter as much, and Luck only an eighth as much.) Also remember that Constant Effect enchantments are much more expensive than other enchantments.
So, let’s say you’re trying to enchant a new item. Your Intelligence is 100, and your luck is 50. What does your Enchant skill need to be if you want to enchant new items with a 100% success rate? Well, in order to figure that out, we’d need to do some math. (I already did the math. You’re welcome.) Refer to the following table to determine the necessary Enchant skill for each enchantment threshold.
| Enchant cost | Example Item | Req. skill (cast on use) | Req. skill (constant effect) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 15 | Expensive ring | 107 | 144 |
| 60 | Extravagant ring | 219 | 369 |
| 120 | Exquisite ring | 369 | 669 |
| 150 | Ebony twr. shield | 444 | 819 |
| 225 | Daedric twr. shield | 632 | 1194 |
That’s right, if you want to enchant a Daedric tower shield (the most enchantable item in the game) with the strongest enchantment, you need an enchanting skill of nearly 1200 (for a 100% chance of success.)
You might say that’s ridiculous, and you’d be right. Here’s the thing, though. Exquisite rings / amulets are the most enchantable items in the game, aside from Daedric and ebony shields and tower shields. As a pure mage, you won’t be using shields, so it’s safe to say that you’ll won't need to enchant anything over 120 enchant cost.
So what, you say? You still need to have almost 700 Enchant in order to make these items. Well, it turns out that it’s fairly trivial to (temporarily) boost your Enchant by several hundred points. All you need is a Restoration skill of 60 or so, and either the Tribunal or the Bloodmoon expansion. There is a spell vendor in the Mournhold Royal Palace who will sell a Fortify Skill spell, and another in the Skaal Village in Solstheim.
Once you get your hands on a Fortify Skill spell, you can make a custom spell that fortifies your Enchant skill by 800 (remember, you can have eight spell effects on a single spell.) The spell only needs to have a duration of 2 seconds – after you successfully cast it, you can immediately enter your inventory and enchant as many items as you like. (Do not make a Fortify spell with a 1 second duration, for some reason or other it will end immediately.)
If you don’t have access to Tribunal or Bloodmoon, you can perform what is known as an “Intelligence Cascade.” This involves buying a bunch of Ash Yams and Bloat, making Fortify Intelligence potions, drinking said potions, then making more potions, and drinking those potions… and so on, until your Intelligence is ridiculously high. You should be able to enchant whatever you want once your Intelligence hits 5000 or so.
If you find yourself using Cast On Use / Cast On Strike items a lot, you may want to train up your Enchanting skill. Enchanted items use less charge if your Enchant skill is high.
MarkDown mirror of this.