Morrowind Mage Strategy Guide

This guide gives some general hints and tips for playing a pure mage in Morrowind. With a pure mage, I mean that the character will almost entirely rely on magic to stay alive and to perform the quests.

Morrowind is a fantastic game that comes really close to being a good role playing game (RPG). One of its strong points is your degree of freedom, the non-linearity of the main quest and choices you have in developing your character. It is this freedom that allows you to develop your character in a satisfying way even when you have made some not-so-good choices when creating your character. 

Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to work well for mages. The main reason for this is that you need a high magicka  reserve to survive as a pure mage in Morrowind, but you can only assure this by choosing the right race and birth sign when starting the game -- there is no opportunity to correct this later in the game. The first section of this guide is therefore completely devoted to choosing the right race, birth sign and major/minor skills when creating a mage character. 

Since the rather low magicka pool is just one of the imbalances of the game, I have appended an entire section about rules and plugins that may help to make the game more challenging, adventurous and balanced.

See my main page for the monk strategy guide and plugins.

Have fun!
   Aragon [mail]

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Contents

Version: 0.6

1. Creating a mage.
2. Artifacts.
3. Enjoyable plugins.
4. Spell effects.
5. Mage friendly factions.
6. Enchanting.
7. A balanced game.

1. Creating a Mage

Race and birth sign

The basic magicka of any character is equal to your intelligence (INT). However, to be successful as a mage, I believe that you need at least twice your intelligence (2*INT) as your magicka reserve. If you choose your race/birth sign wrongly, there is no way to correct this later in the game and you will not enjoy it to the fullest. The magicka rule will limit your options to only a few reasonable choices based on race and birth sign. There are three birth signs that increase your maximal magicka:

• The Mage. Max. magicka +0.5*INT.
  The mage only increases you maximal magicka.
• The Apprentice. Max. magicka +1.5*INT, constant weakness to magicka 50%.
  This sign increases your maximal magicka more than the Mage but it also gives you a weakness to spells that are cast on you.
• The Atronach. Max magicka +2*INT, constant stunted magicka, constant spell absorption 50%.
  This sign has the highest magicka bonus but it completely changes the game play due to the stunted magicka, and is not recommended for starting players. The stunted magicka means that you will not regenerate magicka by resting. That's why you also get the spell absorption -- the only way to restore your magicka is by absorbing spells that are cast on you (or by drinking restore magicka potions, or by visiting shrines). In order to get enough spells cast on you, you need to fight a lot, or conjure ancestral ghosts yourself and attack them (i.e. take conjuration as a major skill when choosing this sign).

Of all the races, only the Breton and the High Elf (Altmer) have a magicka bonus. These two races are most suited for mages and I'll discuss them separately.

• The Breton. Max. magicka +0.5*INT, constant resist magicka 50%, shield 50pts for 60secs once a day.
  This race has an increased magicka and a constant resistance to it as well. Furthermore, they can conjure a powerful force-field once a day that protects against damage. Given that you need at least 2*INT as you magicka, there are three birth sign options:
  • The Mage. Gives you no weaknesses but you only have 2*INT magicka which is just enough, but not much, for a pure mage player. However, in combination with the Cuirass of the Savior's hide, you will have 110% resistance against magicka, and that will make the Boots of blinding speed a pure pleasure to wear.
  • The Apprentice. This neutralizes your magicka resistance but you'll have a very good 3*INT as your magicka reserve. Together with the force field, this makes a powerful and balanced mage character.
  • The Atronach. This gives a great 3.5*INT for magicka together with both resistance and absorption for magicka. But be warned, stunted magicka completely changes the way you play the game.

• The High Elf. Max. magicka +1.5*INT, constant weakness to: magicka 50%, fire 50%, frost 25%,  shock 25%, constant resist common disease 75%.
  A large magicka bonus but weaknesses to magicka, fire, frost and shock!  The common disease resistance doesn't seem to matter much in practice, but it is nice to play a character that is larger than most other NPC's. The weaknesses can countered somewhat with artifacts that increase the magicka resistance. Since the High Elf has already 2.5*INT as magicka by default , you can choose any birth sign you want but a few of them are worth reviewing:
  • The Mage. Gives you a 3*INT magicka just as the Breton/Apprentice combo, but you get a bunch of weaknesses instead of a nice force field! i.e. choose a Breton instead.
  • The Apprentice. A super 4*INT magicka but also a 100% magicka weakness.... this makes you very vulnerable to other mages and magic creatures, and it can only be remedied much later in the game, when you are able to create constant enchantments. On the other hand, with all this magicka, you might be able to counter your deficiencies with protective spells.
  • The Atronach. This gives you a whopping 4.5*INT magicka!  The spell absorption is also a good match for the magicka weakness. Given the change in play style with the Atronach, I think that one should choose the High Elf when choosing to play under this sign. With all the weaknesses of the Altmer with regard to the Breton, it almost seems as if the High Elf is especially added to the game to be played with this birth sign.
  • The Lady. No magicka bonus but +25pts for both endurance and personality. The endurance bonus will affect your health increase at leveling. You will get 1 health point (HP) per 10 endurance points when you level up. This means that when you start with an endurance of 65 instead of 35, you will have at least 60 more HP at level 20! The extra health makes up a little bit for the weaknesses of the High Elf. The personality bonus is nice for the (much undervalued) calm creature/humanoid spells  (and NPC's like you better). This is a challenging combination and it might be better to choose another race with the Apprentice sign.

• Other races.
  Many specials of the other races are also beneficial for the mage, like the adrenaline rush of the red-guard or the magicka resistance of the Orc. But since the other races have no inherent magicka bonuses, you should combine them at least with one of the birth signs that give a magicka bonus. 
  • The Mage. Unfortunately, this gives you only 1.5*INT as your magicka. Believe me, this is too little to play as a pure mage, but it is probably good enough for a mixed rogue-mage or crusader.
  • The Apprentice. This gives you 2.5*INT magicka. Gives your favorite race the magicka bonus of an Altmer without the elemental weaknesses. The weakness to magicka can be countered with artifacts that increase the magicka resistance, and partly by choosing the Orc race (resist magicka 25%). Choosing one of the races with an endurance of 50 (Nord (as male), Imperial, Red guard, or Orc), and making it one of your primary attributes, gives you a lot of extra health points in the long run (see the description of the Altmer/Lady combo), making up somewhat for the lower magicka than the Breton/Apprentice or Altmer/Apprentice combinations.
  • The Atronach. Gives 3*INT magicka but given the stunted magicka it may be better to choose the High Elf or Breton.

Looking at the various options, it seems that only a few combinations lead to strong mages (i.e. Breton/Apprentice). To increase the choices for mages (and diplomats), I have created a new balanced race, the Eltmer (or Elder Elves) that I can't resist to discuss:

• Eltmer. Earth bond: max. magicka +1.0*INT and resist disease 75%, constant weakness to Fire, Frost, and Shock 25%.
  The Eltmer are somewhat less extreme than the High Elves and start at least with 2*INT as magicka. Various interesting birthsigns are:
  • The mage. Gives 2.5*INT as magicka and makes you essentially a High Elf without the magicka weakness. However, the Breton/Apprentice gives you even more magicka and only has a magicka weakness..
  • The Apprentice. A great 3.5*INT as magicka, but also an extra weakness to magicka -- an interesting and challenging combination.
  • The Atronach. A very good 4*INT magicka together with spell absorption. A good alternative to the High Elf/Atronach combination.
  • The Lady. You'll get a super strong personality of 75, together with a high endurance, but only 2*INT as magicka, which is just enough (but not much)  for a pure mage. Together with the Short blade skill, this could be a good character for playing a diplomatic Hlaalu member, or with the Blunt weapon skill as an Imperial cult priest.

Specialization

Magic off course!

Primary attributes

One of your primary attributes should always be luck -- it helps with everything you do in the game and you can never get any multipliers for it. You can choose any other attribute you like for the other bonus but endurance is a good choice since it will give your more health points when leveling.

Major an Minor skills

Before discussing the major and minor skills to choose, we have to keep the following things in mind:

• Major skills start at +30pts and are trained faster.
• Minor skills start at +15pts.
• As soon as you major and minor skills have increased 10 points (with respect to the scores of the previous level), you will gain a level.
• When you gain a level, you can increase the value of 3 chosen attributes (strength, willpower, intelligence, etc.).
• An attribute is increased by at least 1 point and at most 5 points, called the attribute modifier.
• Each skill has an associated governing attribute. The total amount of skill points gained for each governing attribute determine the attribute modifier. You take the total number of skill points gained with the same governing attribute and divide it by 2 (rounding down). This is the attribute modifier (with a minimum of 1). There is one catch, each of your misc. skills can at most contribute 4 points (or at most 2 points to the attribute modifier).
• If you do the math right, you will see that you need a total of 10 points increase with skills that are governed by a certain attribute, in order to get the +5 modifier. If you like to be a calculating adventurer, you need to write down all your scores when you leveled, to be able to get the highest modifiers.
• The above means, that as a rule, you want to keep at least one skill that contributes to a certain attribute in your misc. skills, so you can adjust the skill points gained by at least 4 points when you level up, without having to increase one of your major/minor skills.
• In order to level up naturally, you want to put skills that you use the most (or plan to use the most) in your major and minor skills.
• Never put Athletics and/or Acrobatics in your major or minor skills or otherwise you gain levels too quickly.
• For the same reason, I wouldn't recommend to make Sneak one of your major skills.

Ok, let's discuss skills for mages. It is a good plan to take a (minor) weapon skill -- even when you would like to be a pure mage, sometimes you may need to resort to using a weapon. I like to choose a blunt weapon since I believe that mages should use a (wizard's) staff but any other weapon skill is just as good. You also need one armor skill as a major skill. Unarmored and light armor are the most suitable for mages. The four armor skills are: 

• Unarmored. The guide says that "people that are skilled in unarmored may be better protected than with armor", this has many times been misinterpreted in the sense that it meant that you get a better armor rating (AR) with unarmored than wearing heavy armor. However, it really means that once you are skilled in unarmored, you will have a better AR than wearing armor in which you are not skilled. However, unarmored is not bad at all and seems a good choice for a pure mage, both from a role playing perspective and since it allows you to carry a lot of items, even with a low strength. Furthermore, the dodge mod further balances the unarmored skill against wearing armor.
• Light armor. Another good choice for mages, the armor is light and the best light armor (glass) has a very high armor rating.
• Medium armor. Unless you play a role where medium armor is essential, I wouldn't recommend it since medium armor is less good than the best light armor and there aren't any master trainers for medium armor (but the official Adamantium mod gives you better medium armor, and the single best piece of armor in the game is medium (the ebony mail, available via a tribunal temple quest)).  
• Heavy armor. The best armor with the highest enchantment points. However, heavy armor is really heavy and only useable with a high strength (STR) or you can't carry anything else with you (encumbrance = 4*STR). If you plan on using heavy armor, be also prepared to raise you strength. 

I wouldn't recommend taking more than one armor and weapon skill. Other useful skills for a mage may be Sneak (AG) and Speech craft (PE), but keep in mind that many skills can be substituted by careful use of magic:

All the other slots are now filled with magic related skills. The magic skills, grouped by governing attribute are:

Make sure you leave at least one skill of each group in you misc. skills. This will help you later when you level up to adjust your multipliers without losing points towards the next level. Destruction should probably be a major skill since you need some method of killing monsters, while Restoration is useful for healing yourself.

Finally, you are all set and ready to begin adventuring as a mage, have fun!

2. Artifacts

I only list some artifacts that are especially useful to a mage and that you can get without fighting serious monsters. Don't read this if you don't want to know about any special item locations.

• Mentor's ring. Constant fortify: intelligence +10, willpower +10.
  A ring just made for mages. You can find it real early in the game in the (easy) "Samarys Ancestral Tomb", just north west of Seyda Neen (a little bit further than the body of the tax collector). 
• Denstagmer's ring. Constant resist: fire, frost, and shock 30%.
  Great ring for the High Elves among us. You can find it in the (easy) "Falas Ancestral Tomb", just south-east of Gnisis on the south side of the water. See also the Denstagmer mod.
• Ring of Phynaster. Constant resist: magicka, poison, and shock 20%.
  Another ring for Altmer, located in "Senim Ancestral Tomb", south east of Dagon Fel. I have never been there yet so I don't know how hard the tomb is.
• Boots of blinding speed. Constant fortify speed 200pts, constant blind 100%.
  I mention these boots since they let you travel and levitate (even with a 1pt magnitude) real fast. Unfortunately, you need a magicka resistance in order to see something, and a full 100% before you can wear them comfortably. You can get these boots by escorting Pemenie to Gnaar Mok. You can find her by traveling north-west on the roads from Caldera, she is somewhere in the middle between Gnaar Mok and Ald'ruhn. 
• Cuirass of the Savior's hide. Light armor, 233 AR, constant resist magicka 60%.
  Besides being a really strong armor, it gives you an extreme 60% magicka resistance. This item is located in a closet in the tower of Tel Fyr, on the upper level. This item is a harder to get than the others since you need to cross the water from Sadrith Mora, levitate to the upper level, and open the closet that is locked with 100pts. Since this item is so strong, it may unbalance the development of your character and maybe you should only pick it up later in the game -- however, if you use the pure game rules, this item is quite hard to acquire anyway. The Denstagmer mod can be used balance this item.

3. Enjoyable Plugins 

Plugins (or mods) are a bit dangerous in general since they might make your saved games invalid if you want to continue without the plugin. This is especially true if the mod creates quests or items. The following plugins however are all safe in the sense that they are global scripts and don't influence your saved games. 

Pure mods:

• Morrowind patch. Always install this official patch, it fixes all kinds of nasty bugs.
• Bitter coast sounds. Official mod that enhances the sounds of the Bitter Coast region. 
  "Let the gentle chorus of swamp wildlife draw you further into the mire throughout the entire swampy region of the Bitter Coast. You'll find dragonfly creatures now inhabit the muck ponds along the coast."
• Sound enhancements, by Pancreas. Adds tons of new sounds and better ambient (weather) sounds. This mod is fairly large, a bit difficult to install and even harder to remove, so only use it when you aren't afraid of editing morrowind.ini -- but wow, it sounds good when a guard walks by :-)

Balanced mods that change the gameplay:

• Wakim's game improvements v9, also available locally as a zip file. LDones writes about this mod: "Groundbreaking in its far-reaching effects upon gameplay, Wakim's Game Improvements (WGI) includes some of the most impressive, well-thought-out modifications available.  Includes Flee AI, a magic system overhaul, dialogue and faction-relation enhancements, and numerous Item/Character/Game Settings balances, all making Morrowind a richer and more vibrant world for all kinds of characters to play in.  Highly Recommended."
  There are especially many changes to magic: NPC's become better spell casters and more powerful spells are available. Moreover, every character starts with 1.5*INT as the basis magicka, instead of 1.0*INT. The Dark Elf also becomes a viable choice as pure mage, since this race gets a 0.5*INT magicka bonus. The Ring of Phynaster also becomes somewhat better with 30% resistances. 

Balanced mods that I personally like to use as a mage, but may be considered cheat mods:

• Magicka Regenerate, by Aragon, Fukuro. You regenerate magicka slowly without resting, just as you fatigue slowly restores when you are not running. Although it may be considered a cheat mod, I like this mod since I believe that it is more natural to regenerate magicka slowly than to carry around tens of restore magicka potions that instantly restore my magicka.
• Spell Cast Reduction, by Aragon, Horatio. This mod reduces the casting cost of a spell based on your skill level in the corresponding magic school (destruction, mysticism, etc). It basically allows you to develop your mage more satisfactory at higher levels. 
• Dodge, by Aragon, Horatio. The higher the unarmored skill, the more chance one has to dodge attacks. This mod balances the unarmored skill with the other armor skills and is great of wizards of course. Wearing armor penalizes your ability to dodge.

Small and balanced tweaks, made by the author of this guide:

• Faster, by Aragon. Increases walking and running speed of yourself and NPC's by one quarter. I personally like this mod since the running speed in Morrowind is painfully slow. It is still a balanced mod since all NPC's are also faster. Since the speed increase is fairly low, the plugin still encourages you to work on your speed attribute.
• Denstagmer, by Aragon. Balances "Denstagmer's ring" with the "Cuirass of the Savior's Hide". Replaces 30% shock resistance with 30% magicka resistance on Denstagmer'r ring, while lowering the 60% magicka resistance of the Cuirass to 30% and adding a 30% shock resistance. This makes the game somewhat more balanced since you need to wear two items to get the same magicka resistance. It also increases the options for High Elves or characters that are born under the Apprentice sign. The dedicated unarmored role player may now be able to resist the temptation to wear the cuirass of the Savior's Hide.
• Procyon, by Aragon. The mage guild trainer "Procyon Nigilius" (in Sadrith Mora) now trains security and mercantile instead of destruction and alteration. When using Wakim's game improvements, it is impossible to train security or mercantile unless you join a guild of dubious moral. However, intelligence is only governed by three skills, of which security is one. So, this tweak is for those that want to play an honorable character!

You can enable a plugin by unpacking the mod in your "Morrowind\Data Files" directory. At the startup screen, you select the menu "Data Files" and double click on the plugin that will now be shown in the menu. After installing the Morrowind patch, certain plugins may give a warning at load time that their version doesn't match the version of the Morrowind master file. You can just ignore this warning and continue running Morrowind but you can easily fix this yourself. You need to start up the TES construction editor of Morrowind and go to the "File/Data Files" menu. Select the "Morrowind.esm" and the plugin that gives the warning. Make that plugin also the active file. Press "Ok" and ignore any warnings. After loading, you simply save (press the "disk" button) and from now on, the warning is gone.

4. Spell effects.

I am not going to list all effects here, just some effects that are really useful or effects with surprising uses. When you make your own custom spells or enchantments, make sure that you have 100pts disposition with the spell maker/enchanter, this can save you thousands of gold.

• Restore health. One of the first spells you need. However, it is surprisingly effective to make a spell that restores, say, 4pts for 30 seconds. When you cast such a spell just before a fight, you'll be extremely hard to kill.
• Restore attribute. Not so useful early in the game, but once you start encountering bonewalkers, you need to restore attributes (and cure common diseases) all the time.
• Open. You'll get "Ondushi's open door" pretty early in the game that can open locks of 50pts. Once you have this effect, also make some custom spells that open locks of 80 and 100pts. Once you have an Alteration skill of about 30, you have a fair chance of opening any lock in game! Alternatively, you can enchant a ring of grand opening that opens 100pts locks. However, you need a soul gem with at least 30pts charge, an exquisite ring, and about 24k gold to do that. (Since it is quite unrealistic to be able to open such strong locks so early in the game, Wakim's game improvements make this quite a bit harder).
• Telekinesis. Useful to steal objects but you can also disarm traps this way at a safe distance.
• Levitate. Very useful effect, many interesting places in the game can only be reached when levitating and many shortcuts can be taken with levitation (for example in Vivec city). Unfortunately, levitate is an expensive spell to cast. With a magnitude of 1, you go painfully slow. A magnitude of 10 becomes better but only at high magnitudes it becomes truly comfortable (but if you wear the Boots of blinding speed, even a magnitude of 1 makes you fly through Morrowind). A levitate spell is actually the most effect when enchanted on a belt or something. You can enchant a 6 second levitate with a magnitude of 1, for less than 1000gp. Since the effect is so weak, you need just few charges and they will reload real fast. This means that you can levitate to any interesting place in the game, albeit a bit slowly. As a mage, I like to enchant more powerful levitations later, with a longer duration and magnitude to use during fights -- just levitate out of reach of your foes and cast fireballs or summon helpers.
• Fire/Frost/Shock/Poison damage. The most common offensive spells. The "Target" variants are great for taking out monsters at a distance, but the "Touch" variants do more damage for the same magicka. Be aware that certain monsters/characters are immune or resistant to certain effects, for example, the Dunmer resist Fire and you should probably use Frost damage to bring the murderer of tax collector in Seyda Neen to justice. Few monsters resist Shock but it is more expensive to cast than the other effects.
• Damage health. Be sure to buy a spell with this effect, for example "Spirit Knife" from the Caldera mages guild. Some monsters are immune to many effects but none can withstand a direct health damage -- just hope that they don't cast a "Reflect". A good effect to enchant your weapon with.
• Absorb health. This effect is even better than damage health, since you both get health points when cast successfully, and a  reflect spell has no effect on you! The description of the spells says that the absorb effect is only temporary but this is not true -- an absorb effect is just like a damage health except that you channel the lost health to yourself.
• Absorb attribute. With Wakim's game improvements this spell effect becomes really useful and allows you to add some more strategy to your fights.
• Calm creature/humanoid. A much undervalued spell effect in the game. I found this an extremely useful spell, cheaper and easier than Paralysis, but just as effective. When a Kagouti charges and you can't kill him with the ranged greater fire balls, a "calm creature" stops the attack and you can either run away or use some fire bites to finish him off -- they will not attack you again!
• Paralysis. The more powerful variant of the Calm effect that also works for the undead and deadra's. This is a good effect to put on your weapon, even a short duration is good enough, since you will strike again once they are paralyzed.

5. Mage friendly factions.

I list here a few factions that are "mage friendly", but off course, you can join any faction you like most. For example, although the Redoran house is better suited for fighters, I like to join them just because I like their honorable ways.

• Mages guild. Favored skills: Alchemy, Mysticism, Illusion, Alteration, Destruction, and Enchant.
  An academic guild that offers interesting quests but, unfortunately, meager rewards. The mages guild members don't like Telvanni at all (and the other way around), and the rumor goes that you can't even advance far in both the mages guild and the Telvanni at the same time.
• Telvanni. Favored skills: Mysticism, Conjuration, Illusion, Alteration, Destruction, and Enchant.
  A faction that offers good rewards for the mage, not to mention a seriously cool stronghold (but in a rather bleak region). But be aware that they have a rather twisted world-view, where slavery and murder are taken lightly. Moreover, they strongly hate the mages guild.
• Imperial cult. Favored skills: Speech craft, Unarmored, Restoration, Mysticism, Blunt weapon, Conjuration, and Security.
  The catholic church of Morrowind. Their quests are divided in three different kinds: fund raising (begging for money), finding ingredients for potions, and more adventurous quests to help the cult. The fund raising quests are actually quite hard if you have a low personality or speech craft skill. The rewards are rather good. Even though they don't have Alchemy as a favored skill, this faction does seem to offer the most help for the alchemists among us.
• Tribunal Temple. Favored skills: Unarmored, Alchemy, Restoration, Mysticism, Conjuration, and Blunt weapon.
  The native religion of Morrowind. They offer interesting quests with good rewards. Unfortunately, the mage guild and temple don't get along very well.

6. Enchanting.

Since enchanting is well explained elsewhere, I won't explain enchanting in detail but I'll just give a table of all monsters together with the value of their soul. In order to put an enchantment on an item, you need to have a soul that is captured in a soul gem -- these are colorful stones that come in 5 varieties: petty (light blue), lesser (dark blue), common (pale blue), greater (purple), and grand (yellow). Each creature has a soul rating between 10 and 400 (and there is someone with a higher soul rating :-) and you need to have an empty soul gem of enough power to capture that soul. Here is a table with the soul rating of a monster and the minimal soul gem necessary to capture it:

Gem	Value	Max Soul	Monsters
			Centurion sphere (0), Centurion spider (0), Steam centurion (0)
Petty	10	30	Alit (20),  Cliff racer (20), Guar (20), Kagouti (20), Kwama forager (15), Kwama warrior (20), Kwama worker (8), Kwama queen (30), Mud crab (5), Nix hound (10), Rat (10), Scrib (10), Shalk (30), Slaughterfish (10), Skeleton (30), Skeleton warrior (30), Small slaughterfish (10)
Lesser	20	60	Bull netch (50)
Common	40	120	Ancestral ghost (100), Ash slave (100), Ash zombie (200), Betty netch (75), Bonelord (100), Bonewalker (75), Greater bonewalker (75), Lesser bonewalker (65), Clannfear (100), Corpus stalker (100), Dremora (100), Dreugh (75), Flame atronach (105), Scamp (100)
Greater	60	180	Frost atronach (138), Lame corprus (160), Ogrim (165), Storm Atronach (150)
Grand	200	600?	Ascended sleeper (400, allows constant enchantments), Ash Ghoul (250), Deadroth (195), Dremora lord (200), Dwarven spectre (200), Golden saint (400, allows constant enchantments), Hunger (250), Skeleton champion (200), Winged Twilight (300)
Azura's star		Infinite	All monsters, reusable gem.

 

7. A balanced game.

Morrowind is not a balanced game. If you play a fighter style character, the game soon becomes too easy (this is why the giants mod is so popular). When you play a pure mage however, the game may prove too difficult -- and you will be inclined to use fighter strategies to survive. For mages, we have already addressed the main issue by making sure that our magicka pool is large enough, but there are more opportunities for improvement.  But let us first look why Morrowind becomes unbalanced:

• Economy. It is too easy to earn too much gold. There are too many expensive items in the game and you can make 100% profit through the Creeper and Mudcrab merchants. There are also money making cheats, like buying soul gems, conjuring monsters, trapping them and selling the gem with a lot of profit. With all this gold you can buy too much training and buy enchantments that are way too powerful. 
• Training. When you have too much gold, you can buy too much training. This will either level you up too quickly, or give you too much skill for your level.
• Alchemy. You can get the potion effect in zero-time with the inventory screen. Furthermore, all the potion effects are added together (stacked) that enable you to get insane bonuses, like INT +2000.
• Enchantment. Enchantments are ultimately responsible for unbalancing the game. Just like potions, you can fire an enchantment in almost zero time. Furthermore, each enchantment has its own magicka pool. Compared to the maximal magicka that a mage can reach, the magicka pools of enchantments are extremely large, and even worse, the cost of casting an enchantment is less than the equivalent spell! Enchantments basically allow any fighter to become a super mage with spells that never fail, can be cast in almost zero time (the uzi effect), and have a huge magicka reserve. Oh, and I almost forgot, the higher your enchantment skill, the less it costs to cast the enchantment, while spells keep costing the same amount of magicka, no matter what your skill level is. 

A Pure Game

Unfortunately, not all of these weaknesses can be fixed by plugins. I therefore propose to use both plugins and a set of clear rules that together make it a pure game. Break a rule once, and you no longer play pure game :-)  The plugins that I consider essential for pure games are, in order of importance:

• Wakim's game improvements. Many game balancing tweaks.
• Spell cast reduction. The cost of spells is reduced according to your skill level (just as enchantments).
• Thief experience overhaul, by LDones. A mod that balances stealth, locks and traps. Recommended for thieves.
• Armor effects, by LDones (Tribunal required). A mod that makes stealth more difficult with heavy armor.

Besides these essential plugins, there is a set of rules that you need to adhere to:

Economy:

• Merchants never buy items that cost more than their base amount of gold. This means that the most expensive item that you can ever sell is 10k gold (at the Mudcrab merchant). This rule nicely reduces the amount of gold you can rack and therefore also restricts the use of trainers and enchanters. Actually, since both the Creeper and Mudcrab merchant seem to be added as an after thought by Bethesda, we could maybe replace this rule by: a) Keep the previous rule, but don't allow the Mudcrab. This make the most expensive item you can sell 5k gold. Or b) Don't allow the Mudcrab and Creeper merchants, but allow bartering with normal merchants with the constraint that the most expensive sellable item is 10k gold.
• Only enchanters can buy soul gems (i.e. not the Creeper or the Mudcrab).
• Self made potions can not be sold.

Trainers:

• A single skill can not be raised by more than 4 points per level, unless it happens naturally.
• The skills in the major and minor category can be trained by at most 4 points total per level. That is, you can train one major skill by 4 points, or, say, 2 minor skills by 2 points. This rule prevents power leveling.

Alchemy and Enchantments:

• Player created effects can never stack. That is, you can not wear two self-enchanted gloves that each give 20% chameleon, or drink two self created potions that both increase your intelligence. You are allowed to stack a self created effect with a game artifact, or to stack effects of multiple artifacts.
• You can only drink one potion at a time, and you have to wait till the effect animation stops before drinking another potion (about 2 seconds). This nicely takes care of zero casting time of potions. It also adds some realism, since it becomes much harder to drink a potion during a fight (as the monsters get about 2 seconds of time to hit you while you stand helplessly under the shock effect of the potion).
• In the same vein, you can only cast an enchantment when either the previous enchantment has reached its target, or when more than 2 seconds have passed. This prevents uzi-style enchantment casting.
• Nor the magnitude of an enchantment, nor the total enchantment points can exceed your base score in the relevant skill. That is, if your destruction skill is 25, you can only enchant fire damage with a maximal magnitude of 25, and with at most 25 enchantment points. If you enchant an item yourself, than the magnitude or enchantment points should exceed neither the base score in the relevant skill, nor the base score of the Enchant skill.

Hopefully, the above rules make the game more interesting and challenging, but at least they add some common sense to the game. The rules for enchantments for example make the game artifacts much more interesting since it becomes quite hard to do such enchantments yourself. Furthermore, it is for example much harder to open difficult locks early in the game, since a powerful open-enchantment is way too difficult to get, both in value and in skill level.

I am currently playing by these "pure" rules and I can tell you that the game is both more challenging and more fun. I haven't progressed far yet, but I'll let you know whether the game can be beaten (or not) when playing by the rules!

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Revisions:

• Version 0.6: Updated plugins.
• Version 0.5: Added the section about a balanced game.
• Version 0.4: Added pictures :-).
• Version 0.3: Added discussion of the Eltmer and Wakim's game improvements.
• Version 0.2: Fixed spelling and math.
• Version 0.1: Initial version.

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