Battlemage build

This character build is to create a battlemage, a mage who can fight effectively in melee with weapons and with spells from afar, while wearing heavy armor.

Important attributes and skills

The important attributes for this build are:

• Endurance, this should be increases as fast as possible, because every time the player character gains a level, the current number of endurance is divided through 10 (rounded down) and the resulting sum is added as permanet hitpoints. The earlier it's maxed out, the more hitpoints the player character has at later stages.
• Intelligence, this should be increases as fast as possible, because every time the player character gains a level, the current number of intelligence is divided through 10 (rounded down, starting at 40 intelligence) and the resulting sum is added as permanet magicka. The earlier it's maxed out, the more magicka the player character has at later stages. With 40 intelligence for example, the player gets 4 magicka extra at each level.
• Strength improves the amount of damage with melee weapons and hand to hand combat. An attribute raise can be sacrified if the gain in willpower or speed is good enough.
• Wilpower, this skill improves the recovery rate of magicka, thus if the raise at a level gain is decent/good, this attribute should be picked.
• Speed, optional, but handy in general. This skills should be picked if the attributes gain is decent, compared to other attributes.

The important skills for this build are:

• Blade or Blunt, whichever of the two the player prefers.
• Block
• Heavy Armor
• Destruction
• Conjuration
• Restoration
• Alteration

Race and birthsign

The race of the character could be any of the three. Though the Normanne has higher strength and endurance, it has also lower Intelligence. Since level 2 and 3 are gained before being able to explore the world, there is no possibilty yet to quickly increase that to 40, thus some essential magicka points are lost, which are quite handy in the beginning.

Getting the first spells

Before the player arrives at the Arcane Sanctum, it can be quite hard to find some spells which are needed to dramatically increase the combat capabilities of the player character.

Brother Patrick in Giliad sells the spell fire bite, which quite powerful, but it's a touch spell, so it can only be cast in melee range. Along the road to the Sanctum, the player will stumble upon the Aeterna Camp. The merchant Laura sells the spell Frost Arrow, which is a ranged spell with a chance to freeze opponents a small time.

If the player is confident about the combat capabilities of the character, then the first conjuration rune for the nasty kobold can be found inside Baldur Booty Cave, which in between Giliad and Tirin Abbey. The kobold is, due to the unpredictable attacks, probably not a good summonable creature for training, but the cave with 11 goblins, thus one of the easiest summoning runes to acquire at early levels.

Arcane Sanctum spells

Recommended spells

• Life Drain