UESP Forums

Greetings to you

As always, I'll make myself short, but in an eloquent and linguistically interesting way. As much as we all enjoyed Oblivion, one can in retrospect point out its flaws. For me, those flaws were magic and the mages' guild.

I hope that ze guild of mages will be a lot different this time around. Firstly, thou shoult have to actually have to use spells in order to advance. I mean, you are actually in the MAGE guild.

Secondly, and more importantly, the quests should somehow relate to...I don't know...Magic? Mysteries? Lore and history? Y'know, mage-stuff. What we shouldn't be forced to do is running around in caves slaying ghosts, making it the Fighters' Guild 2.0.

Maybe I'm whining a bit too hard, but what do you guys think? Is there anything you'd like to add etc? Now discuss!

This was kind of covered in the the Dark Brotherhood thread, but I'll reiterate my ideas:

Basically I'd like to see gaining rank in the guild and the guild's storyline being separated from one another. So you can choose to follow the guild's storyline regardless of your chosen speciality, however each quest would have a "right" way to do it that follows the guild's focus, in this case magic. So you can progress the storyline quests however you like, but using magic to do it will gain you ranks in the guild, and finishing the storyline in this way will leave you with a fairly high rank.

In case you don't manage to get every quest "right", or you want to push for arch-mage once you're done with the storyline, there would be some guild-specific challenge type quests where you perform magical trials, or try to further the pursuit of magical studies and so-on, demonstrating your abilities as a mage to gain rank, and eventually be elected the next Arch Mage. The Arch Mage challenge would likely be unavailable until the storyline quests are resolved.


I think that way it gives a good balance to those that want to do quests for the story, and those that want to become Arch Mage. So using Oblivion as an example you'd be able to put a stop to Mannimarco as a warrior, but wouldn't be able to rule the Arcane University without proving yourself as a mage as well.

The reason I favour this approach is that it means that you don't have to play X amount of different characters to experience each guild's storyline, so if you're playing casually and just want to play all the quests you can then it means you don't have to worry too much about specialising away from a quest you'd like to do.

I suppose some requirements in proficiency of some schools of magic would be appropriate for advancement in the Mages' Guild. I don't know why they dropped requirements like this; there were skill requirements for advancements in Morrowind. It made sense.

But just as it can be emphasized that they're the MAGES Guild, it can be emphasized that they're a Mages GUILD. Like any other organization, they have duties, enemies, and other problems only tangentially related to magic that must be dealt with by ambitious lackeys- ie, you. Even so, I thought Oblivion's Mages Guild questline had much of what you're describing anyways. They involved fetching magical books and artifacts, some mystery and here, finding lost mages, and, in the end, that stuff with Mannimarco involved quite a bit of lore and history. So perhaps you could explain in more detail what exactly you thought was missing.

I like the idea of separating rank and story, to some extent, though I imagine there has to be some sort of logical connection. The Arch-Mage shouldn't be doing mundane chores, and Associates shouldn't be saving the Guild from disaster.

There is no more mage's guild...

zzfallens wrote:There is no more mage's guild...

Quite so, "After the Oblivion Crisis, the Mages Guild was dissolved for unknown reasons. The two splinter organizations were known as the Synod and the College of Whispers."

ChaosDawns wrote:

zzfallens wrote:There is no more mage's guild...

Quite so, "After the Oblivion Crisis, the Mages Guild was dissolved for unknown reasons. The two splinter organizations were known as the Synod and the College of Whispers."

Yeah, although the College of Whisperers and the Synod should follow the same rules as the people above have been saying.

For a while now I've been meaning to make a thread discussing how the mage guild would be done in Skyrim after there falling apart.

I personaly think they should go back to the morrowind guild system but i think it mite be too complicated for the mainstream players.

Something I always thought would great for the mages guild (or Synod / College of whispers) would be quests for high level magic. Similar to "Fingers of the Mountain" from Oblivion. I'm sure many will probably disagree, but I want it to be difficult to get Master level spells. I want the 'Master Enchanter' for the guild to have a reason to teach me a low-cost high-damage spell (e.g. Wizard's Fury). So, for instance to use Oblivion's model, (which I know they won't, just bear with me), I couldn't realisticly make a 100 damgage 50 ft area fire spell as the magicka cost was too prohibitive. What I'd like is to be able to be trained to do this spell by the Master Wizard after doing something for him or her. Similar to the master trainer for each skill. Most of the time, you had to do something for them before they would share their wisdom. I want high level spell procurement to be the same.

And I also want stat restrictions back for guild advancement. I might be a casual gamer, but to me that just makes more sense

Stat restrictions will not be back as stats will be dropped from the game. I personally think that sucks as one of the stats that I almost always rose no matter my character was Strength just for the ability to carry more junk out of a dungeon and make less trips. Now how are we going to calculate carrying capacity? And Agility helped with not being knocked down as often, how are they going to deal with that issue? Ok, great, people figured out that to increase their Magicka they had to increase their Intelligence, HP was affected by Endurance, and Fatigue was affected by a few attributes. But what about the affects that were less visible but just as important (if not more so, just overlooked because there was no visible stat for it on the character sheet).

College of Whispers 4 life

Minor Edits wrote:The Arch-Mage shouldn't be doing mundane chores, and Associates shouldn't be saving the Guild from disaster.

I'd imagine that rank gaining quests would be more of the "menial" tasks as you train and prove your skills, while the story quests would be story-related from the very start.

For example; rank gaining/training quests could start with you learning how to mix up potions, using basic spell knowledge to get the ingredients you need. Working towards duels with mages of higher rank (if you can beat them then you join their rank), conducting research to develop more powerful spells and so-on.

Story quest meanwhile could be that the guild believes there is a traitor in its midst, and so they recruit you as an outside party to investigate, which leads to various other quests as some plot is uncovered. Even if you already have a rank in the guild then you would qualify as you would still have joined after whatever shady events occurred to spark the quest line, so you're not under suspicion.

You'd only make arch-mage once the plot has been dealt with, and if have managed to prove your worth as a mage.

I agree.

Long story short, guilds that require different strategies and playing styles that are both relevant and needed to get ahead.

Mages should be about research and mystery solving, just as much time in a library than in a ruin.

Coupaholic wrote:Mages should be about research and mystery solving, just as much time in a library than in a ruin.

Thats boring, if half the quests are in a @#$%ing library I won't do any Synod/College of Whisper quests......EVER

JoeyDestructo wrote:

Coupaholic wrote:Mages should be about research and mystery solving, just as much time in a library than in a ruin.

Thats boring, if half the quests are in a @#$%ing library I won't do any Synod/College of Whisper quests......EVER

I think by that he means that you need to find out what to do in a ruin in the library and research the place you're going to, like planning out a trip to some remote mountain on Google. Find out what the place is like in the library, how to get inside, and then rumors associated with the place.
When I think of a mage, I think of a smart bookworm. When I think of a wizard, I think of a warrior who uses magic over weapons.

Can i say that the mages guild sucked in both tes 3 and 4
not even speaking form a player point but lore

So I'm glad there is a defrince

Qwackie wrote:

JoeyDestructo wrote:

Coupaholic wrote:Mages should be about research and mystery solving, just as much time in a library than in a ruin.

Thats boring, if half the quests are in a @#$%ing library I won't do any Synod/College of Whisper quests......EVER

I think by that he means that you need to find out what to do in a ruin in the library and research the place you're going to, like planning out a trip to some remote mountain on Google. Find out what the place is like in the library, how to get inside, and then rumors associated with the place.
When I think of a mage, I think of a smart bookworm. When I think of a wizard, I think of a warrior who uses magic over weapons.

I think it would be cool if at lower ranks, you were assigned as a sort of assistant for a mage, where you gather ingredients and make potions etc., then as you rank up you gain more freedom and gain status by killing necromancers and acquiring artifacts.

JoeyDestructo wrote:Thats boring, if half the quests are in a @#$%ing library I won't do any Synod/College of Whisper quests......EVER

Then as a guild entry exam that'd be perfect, as it sounds like you're not cut out to be a mage

Haravikk wrote:

JoeyDestructo wrote:Thats boring, if half the quests are in a @#$%ing library I won't do any Synod/College of Whisper quests......EVER

Then as a guild entry exam that'd be perfect, as it sounds like you're not cut out to be a mage

The most time I ever spent in the library in Oblivion was reading "Report: Disaster at Ionith", lol

Perhaps it would be appropriate to have a time lapse when you "read" a book to sate the hardcore roleplaying crowd. But ultimately, it seems relatively few people want to spend a substantial amount of time doing nothing more than reading in the game.

Minor Edits wrote:Perhaps it would be appropriate to have a time lapse when you "read" a book to sate the hardcore roleplaying crowd. But ultimately, it seems relatively few people want to spend a substantial amount of time doing nothing more than reading in the game.

Hardcore gamers can wait for a few hours if they read a book. That's what I do at least.

Me too!


I also do it when making a significant amount of potions.

Minor Edits wrote:Perhaps it would be appropriate to have a time lapse when you "read" a book to sate the hardcore roleplaying crowd. But ultimately, it seems relatively few people want to spend a substantial amount of time doing nothing more than reading in the game.

Well on the few occasions where a book is needed in Oblivion simply opening the book is enough to progress the quest and gain a pointer for your next location, so they could stick to that idea. Hardcore players meanwhile could be given the option to disable map-markers, at which point they'd need to actually read the book to find the clue(s), talk to people to find out where someone is and so-on.

I'm still hoping for a roleplay, and a hardcore mode. The first introduces the need to eat, sleep etc., while hardcore would take away some of the luxuries that help you out, either that or simply one hardcore mode with the option to disable compass etc.

ChaosDawns wrote:

zzfallens wrote:There is no more mage's guild...

Quite so, "After the Oblivion Crisis, the Mages Guild was dissolved for unknown reasons. The two splinter organizations were known as the Synod and the College of Whispers."

So i guess our character just lead the mages guild to the dump after he took over as Arch mage??

Climactic final boss and more benefits of being the arch mage, that's all I want