Essential Skyrim Mods: Mage Combat

Mages in Skyrim get a raw deal as the spell variety in Skyrim is rather less and usual offensive spells are concentrated in the Destruction branch of magic. The defensive branches also do not provide an alternative to physical armor or a way to reduce the armor of the enemy combatants. The mage armor spells lack even the strength to go toe-to-toe with a frostbite spider, let alone bandits. So you will often find yourself running backwards and/or depending on a melee follower to tank the hits. This is a tactic that will grow old very soon and saps the motivation to focus on a mage build. No wonder in that most of the playthroughs, we players gravitate toward the stealth archer build after a while.

But with Skyrim magic mods, you can solo a Draugr barrow while appropriately powered to make it a challenge but not too much of a challenge that you must backtrack every time. Like me in the screenshot above, you can clear the barrow/bandit lair and also watch Farkas fake an injury to get out of fighting! (He was bitten by a spider.)

Note: All these mods work on the Skyrim Anniversary Edition 1.6.1170 version. Please check the compatibility with Special Edition versions before installing.

1. Vokrii - Minimalistic Perks of Skyrim

Vokrii makes for an essential mod in any mage-oriented playthrough because it revamps the various perk trees of each magic branch. Vokrii updates a lot more of the skill perk trees as it is a perk overhaul so it incentivizes more player builds like One Handed or Two Handed Spellsword.

With Vokrii, you can now skip the usual dated Destruction-based mage build and instead focus on being an Alteration spellsword who auto-buffs himself with magic armor before entering battle. You can also be a holy paladin smiting the undead with the sun spells of Restoration or a Master Illusionist striking fear into the enemies. When paired with a magic spells overhaul mod, Vokrii's changes to the base game make Skyrim even more enjoyable and you may find yourself restarting the game to try out various builds.

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2. Mysticism - A Magic Overhaul

Vanilla magic system in Skyrim has some drawbacks such as spells being relatively underpowered at lower levels and then a lot more overpowered at higher levels. The variety of spells at Adept and Expert magic is also rather thin, mostly consisting of projectile spells which do not home into the target. So if you miss a target with a Fireball spell, you will waste Magicka as well. In a game where flying dragons will give you only some moments to deal damage when they land, the spell variety comes up woefully short outside of the usual Destruction magic like Lighting. And spamming Lighting spells does not make Skyrim enjoyable or fun after a while.

So a magic spell overhaul mod is highly necessary to update and get variety in the magic spells. There are other mods such as Odin and Apocalypse but Mysticism is highly balanced and fills out the spell variety in each branch of magic. It adds a lot more spells at Novice, Adept, Expert and Master levels of each magic branch. It brings about some new magic archetypes like the Poison spells and also boosts other archetypes like Paralysis, Mage Armor, Illusion and Undead damaging Sun spells like the one seen in the screen grab.

When paired with a perk overhaul like Vokrii or Ordinator, Mysticism boosts the immersion as you will find that the spells help in leveling their respective branches and will give you perks points. You can invest these perk points and make the magic effects more powerful but they will not feel overpowered or gamebreaking.

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3. Strange Runes

Strange Runes is more of an upgrade to the spell visual effects, making Dr. Strange-esque runes pop up when you cast spells like Wards and most of the other spells like flames and lighting. If you like to upgrade the spell effects to make the game beautiful, Strange Runes is the Skyrim magic mod for you.

It is also compatible with all the major spell overhaul mods as well having additional support for popular ones like Mysticism. It is compatible with the major Skyrim spell animation mods.

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4. Goetia Animations- Spell casting of Skyrim

A revamp to the very dated vanilla animations of spell casting is highly needed. It is significantly jarring to any player who has played the modern RPGs like the The Witcher 3 and will break the immersion when trying to sprint with spells equipped.
Goetia Animations replaces the vanilla animations with updated models that at least look like they were developed in this decade.

It replaces not just the standard spell casting animations but also the movement animations with equipped spells. No longer does strafing or sprinting seem cartoonish while firing off spells or healing.

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5. Honed Metal

The Honed Metal mod can be found in lists for both magic and melee combat modlists and as well because it enhances the one common aspect of both archetypes: gear. After all, what is an adventurer without his gear?. Hours of trudging through Draugr Barrows and clearing Giant and Bandits, you must have acquired enough gold to buy one if not two homes in any Hold. Why not spend it on better gear so that you don't waste precious perk points into Smithing and Enchanting early in the game?

Honed Metal updates the various NPCs and merchants and gives them the dialogue option to provide the Enchanting and Smithing services to the player. It also appropriately scales such NPCs so don't go about thinking any NPC merchant or mage will smith you Daedric level weapons or dual enchant your gear. Higher the level of the NPC, the more costly the service. (For reference purposes, Eorlund Whitemane is the best Smith and Hamal, the Priestess of Dibella at Makarth is the best Enchanter).

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Keep checking this article for more mods suggestions as they will be updated here once I use them in my playthrough.