Serrimo

I'm playing my thief right now but have been thinking about rolling a battle mage. I would choose something like this: - Heavy magic damage: conjuration, destruction, heavy armor, weapon (1h or 2h), alchemy, enchanting, health + magic - Heavy melee damage: conjuration, alteration, illusion, heavy armor, 1h(dual yield dagger), sneak (enough to get x15 dagger), enchanting, smith Heavy melee damage with the aid of magic is a beast. I never tried dealing damage with destruction so I have no idea how that'd turn out.

You disenchant to learn a specific enchantment (+magic regen, -destruction cost in your case). The actual strength applied to an item is based on your enchantment level and the size of the soul used.

Zombie is the novice level spell... It's the undead equivalence to raise familiar (which totally sucks).

How did you practice your smithing skill? Leather armor all the way to 100? I'm having trouble stocking up on refined moonstones for my Elven equipment. The ore stock is quite limited.

Just be careful that enchantments run out pretty quickly. You'll need filled soulstones to recharge it.

For info, the game plays (fantastically) fine at 2560x1600.

I played at master difficulty from the start myself. Actually I would advice AGAINST sword and shield for higher difficulty level. Enemies hit way too hard for you to stand there and take damage unless you devote a huge chunk of skills into armor and block. IMHO, the easier way would be to avoid getting hit at all. Sneak attack with bow is good to soften things up at the beginning; but once you get to a high enough level, a dagger sneak attack is incredibly powerful. Summons are much better at master difficulty as well; since your summons scale up with the enemy. I'm playing an illusionist/conjurer with a one handed sword/dagger wearing all light armor and I very rarely die on master difficulty.