The following is both a guide and a narrative on the learning points that I went through as a mage in Skyrim. Most of it is informative, but I have to admit that some of my realizations are so obvious I wanted to slap myself silly for not seeing them earlier.
Introduction
Playing a mage in Skyrim is a different experience compared to previous TES titles because of two things:
· Custom spell creation is currently not supported.
· There is no spellcasting equivalent for stacking Fortify Smithing.
Both Oblivion and Morrowind supported custom spell creation, allowing players to make their own spells. This led to the discovery of spell combinations that were beyond what the game could handle. It was possible, for example, to craft a single spell that caused Fire damage and Weakness to Fire at the same time. The two effects complemented each other, boosting the damage output so much that most foes died from a single hit. This, along with the discovery of other combinations, made most fights trivial.