Schools of Magic

Two skills, five schools of spells

Every spell belongs to one of Skyrim’s five schools, and two skills on the Wheel of Skills share them out:

A skill’s tier decides the highest rank of spell it may learn: Novice spells at Novice, Apprentice spells at Apprentice, Adept spells at Adept, Expert spells at Expert and Master spells at Master. Arcane Arts also adds to Destruction damage: +20% at Adept, +35% at Expert and +50% at Master.

Arcane Arts begins at the books: your first sitting at a Study Magic shelf takes it up, which needs a free skill point (see Your first spell, below). Priest is taken up like other skills: work at it (Priest Studies at a temple, prayer at your god’s shrine, or casting its spells) until the work adds up to a level, and accept the offer in your skills menu (K). Reading a Novice Restoration or Alteration tome at a spell study point also takes Priest up, for one point.

Your first spell

Characters start out knowing no spells. Magic begins with Arcane Arts at a Study Magic shelf, such as the Synod’s bookcases in Bruma, and every school’s first spell is chosen, not read from a tome.

Arcane Arts

25choose your school

A school

25pick its first spell, no tome

Priest

25Restoration’s first spell

• At Arcane Arts 25 you choose your school of magic. If you reach 25 at the books, the choice opens right there; otherwise it waits for you at a Study Magic shelf, or when you next log in. Until you have chosen, Destruction, Illusion and Conjuration tomes will not settle in your mind; Alteration tomes can still be learned through Priest.
• At 25 in a school you pick its first spell, once for each school, no tome needed. Your school starts at your Arcane Arts level, so if you choose it at 25 its first spell follows straight away, and you can read its Apprentice tomes too.
• Restoration is the priest’s school. Its first spell comes when your Priest skill reaches 25.

A first spell waiting to be chosen opens at a Study Magic shelf, at a Scholars’ Ledger, in the Magic tab of your journal (F3) anywhere outside a fight, or when you log in. Spells you already know are not offered, and the ones you pass over you can still learn later from a tome or a teacher.

The four schools

A mage follows a school of magic: Destruction, Illusion, Conjuration or Alteration. Restoration is not one of them; it stays with the Priest, and its level is your Priest skill.

• Your first school is chosen at Arcane Arts 25 and starts at your Arcane Arts level. The other three are closed to you.
• A second school. When your Arcane Arts reaches 76 you may take up one more, at a Study Magic shelf or a Scholars’ Ledger. It starts at 33 (never above your first), so its first spell comes as soon as you choose it, and the other two stay closed.
• Every school is a meter from 0 to 100, on the same curve as the Wheel: quick at first, slow near the top. Your progress shows as a percentage to the next level, such as “Apprentice · 40% to 37”, in Study Magic and in the Magic tab of your journal (F3).
• The Arcane Arts page of your skills (K) shows each school as primary, secondary, resting or closed, with its level, and for your primary and secondary school today’s casting against the daily limit, so a resting school or a full day’s casting is plain to see.

Both limits apply: a tome must fit your rank in its school and your Arcane Arts tier. An Adept mage whose Destruction is Expert still reads only up to Adept.

How a school grows

• Casting its spells. Schools grow slowly: taking one from 25 to 50 by casting alone takes about 13 days of casting up to the daily limit. Casting the same spell again within the hour counts for less, and each school takes in only so much casting a day, until midnight UTC.
• Conjuration casting counts double, since a summon is cast far less often than a bolt. The daily limit is the same.
• Classes at a Class Lectern (below). They still count after your casting is done for the day.
• Study Magic, while you are new to magic (below).

A spell of a school that is not one of yours, or one that is resting, trains Arcane Arts only (an Alteration spell trains Priest instead). Casting, study and classes count toward Arcane Arts too, within the Wheel’s usual hourly and daily limits. The Leveling Guide has those numbers.

Changing your school

• At a Scholars’ Ledger or a Study Magic shelf you can swap one of your schools for a closed one, once every 7 days.
• The new school starts at half the level of the one it replaces, or at its own level if it rested higher than that.
• The old school rests at its level, and if you change back later you pick it up where you left it. Its spells stay in your spellbook and can still be prepared, but you cannot read its tomes or raise it by casting.
• A swap never gives you a third school. After you change your first school, the Study Magic shelves teach the new one until you have its first spell.

Study Magic

Study Magic shelves stand in the Synod Conclave in Bruma, among its bookcases, and in Frostcrag Spire, by the alchemy table. Use one and you settle in with a book. The study counts as you sit, as long as you stay where you are; step away and you close the books.

Study

20minutes in any 4 hours

Teaches

25Arcane Arts, up to your first spell

Then

Castand learn in class

Study is how a new mage gets started. Until Arcane Arts reaches 25 the shelves teach Arcane Arts itself; at 25 the books close and your choice of school and first spell opens right there. From then on your school grows by casting and in class. A tome read early does not close the shelves before 25.

A shelf tells you before you sit down when your limits leave nothing to gain: the hour’s or the day’s limit on the Wheel, Arcane Arts marked to fall or set to Hold, or your other skills holding the higher places. Reach a limit while you study and the sitting ends, saying when study pays again.

Priest Studies works the same way for Priest, at the temples’ study points (in Bruma, the Cathedral of St Martin): twenty minutes in any four hours, until Priest reaches 25 and you know a Restoration spell.

Classes at a Class Lectern

Class Lecterns stand in the Synod Conclave and in Frostcrag Spire, where the lectern belongs to the College of Whispers. A teacher holds a class at one, and every student in the room learns from it.

Who may teach

Since 13 October classes are held by the colleges’ leaders and officers: the Chancellor of the Synod and its Magisters, the Master of Whispers and the Keepers of Secrets, and the Arch-Mage and Master Wizards of the College of Winterhold. A teacher also needs Arcane Arts at 75 or Expert in one of their schools. Staff no longer name teachers. A teacher of any college may hold a class at any Class Lectern, and may hold a new class an hour after finishing the last.

How a class runs

• The teacher chooses a spell they know, no higher than their own rank in its school. It sets the class’s school and rank.
• Students sign up at the same lectern in the first 10 minutes, up to 12 of them. The school must be one of yours.
• The class runs 30 minutes. Everyone stays in the classroom: the building, or within 15 metres of the lectern outdoors.
• When the time is up the teacher ends it at the lectern, and every student still in the room gains in that school.
• A teacher gone for 5 minutes (a disconnect counts) cancels the class, and nobody gains. A student gone for 5 minutes drops out.
• A student gains from one class every 12 hours.

Classes for beginners

A student who has not reached their first spell (Arcane Arts below 25, no school yet) may join a Novice or Apprentice class of any school. They learn Arcane Arts while they stay in the classroom, at up to about twice the pace of studying alone, within the Wheel’s usual hourly and daily limits. Joining takes Arcane Arts up if you have not yet, which needs a free skill point.

The class’s spell

When the teacher ends the class, every student who stayed to the end and gained in its school is offered the class’s spell: Learn or Decline, for three minutes. The usual rules hold. You need the skill and the school of magic for it, it must be within the rank you could be taught at your college rank (Apprentice at least), and the restricted arts are for Senior ranks only. The class costs its teacher one tome of the spell, or their tome purchase, once for the whole class.

The Synod and the colleges

Three houses of magic take members: the Synod, whose hall is the Synod Conclave in Bruma; the College of Whispers, whose hall is Frostcrag Spire; and the College of Winterhold. A character belongs to one guild at a time, so to one of them at most; the Holds & Factions Guide has the rules. New members join as Initiates in all three, and your rank decides which tomes you may buy and find, and whether you may teach.

The Great Faiths, the order of the Eight Divines at the Cathedral of St Martin, follow the same table for the priest’s schools (see Temple magic, below). Novice is their joining rank and buys none; Acolytes and Knights buy as members; Priest, Knight-Captain, Prior and High Priest are their Senior ranks.

The robes of the colleges and the Synod, the Archmage’s among them, are given by the colleges and the Synod in roleplay. They no longer turn up in dungeons, on bodies or in camp chests; ordinary mage robes still do, and robes you already have are yours to keep.

Buying spell tomes

Tomes are sold at three Scholars’ Ledgers: use the ledger and choose Buy spell tomes (/tomes, said inside one of these halls, still opens it for now). Each ledger sells to its own:

The rules are the same at every ledger. To buy, you must:

• be a member above the joining rank of a house the ledger sells to (its smiths and robe-makers buy none);
• hold Arcane Arts or Priest at Apprentice or higher;
• be able to learn the tome now, as if you were reading it: the tier for its rank, and enough study of its school.

Shelf

4tomes you can learn now

Changes

Weeklyevery Monday, UTC

Members

1tome a week

Seniors

1tome in any 3 days

• The shelf holds four tomes you can learn right now, and a fifth for the leaders and officers of a college or the Great Faiths. It favours your primary school: three of its four places go to it, and the last to your secondary school or Restoration when the shelf has one you can learn.
• Members below Senior rank buy Novice and Apprentice tomes, one a week. Senior ranks and above buy up to Expert, one in any 3 days, shared with teaching.
• Only the magic of Cyrodiil is sold, at every ledger, and Banish Daedra besides for the colleges’ Senior ranks. Master tomes are never sold.
• Transmute Mineral Ore is gone from the game: turning iron into silver and gold broke the economy. The Open Expert Lock and Open Master Lock tomes are Expert and Master spells, read only at those ranks.
• The gold pays the hold’s tax, a tenth of the price leaves the world to keep gold from piling up, and the rest goes to the Synod’s treasury for a tome bought in the Conclave, to the College of Whispers’ for one bought in Frostcrag Spire, or to the Great Faiths’ for one bought in the Cathedral.

The restricted arts

Raising the dead, calling the Daedra lords, and banishing, expelling or commanding Daedra are restricted arts. Only Senior ranks and above can buy them, be taught them at a college or in class, or find them in books:

• Raising the dead: Raise Zombie, Reanimate Corpse, Revenant, Dread Zombie, Dead Thrall and Cyrodiil’s zombie spells, and Conjure Boneman, Mistman and Wrathman from the Soul Cairn.
• The Daedra lords: Conjure Dremora Lord, the Golden Saints and Dark Seducers, and Staada.
• Mastery over Daedra: Banish Daedra, Expel Daedra and Command Daedra.

Temple magic

The priest’s schools, Restoration and Alteration, have a home in the temples as well as the colleges. The Great Faiths, the order of the Eight Divines that keeps the Cathedral of St Martin in Bruma, count as your one guild, as a college does; the Holds & Factions Guide has the factions.

• Tomes at the Cathedral. Its Scholars’ Ledger sells Restoration and Alteration tomes to members of the Great Faiths, by their rank as in the table above, and they buy nowhere else.
• Teaching at the Cathedral. The order’s Priests, Knight-Captains, Priors and High Priest teach a Restoration or Alteration spell they know, up to Expert, to a member of the Great Faiths at the Cathedral’s Scholars’ Ledger, as a college’s Seniors do (see Teaching a spell).
• Sermons. A follower of the Divines with Priest at Expert may preach at a temple pulpit. A sermon runs as a class does, thirty minutes with up to twelve listeners, and it teaches Priest. When the priest ends it, everyone who stayed to the end and gained from it is offered the sermon’s Restoration spell, Learn or Decline, on the same terms as a class’s spell. It costs the priest one tome of the spell, or their tome purchase, once for the whole sermon. The Religion System guide covers the gods and their temples.
• Prepared spells can be changed in the Cathedral, as in the Synod Conclave.
• The Imperial Cult, the Empire’s own worship of the Divines, has no tome shop yet: its chapel, tomes and teaching come later.

Learning a spell from a tome

A tome is read at a spell study point: beside the Study Magic shelves in the Synod Conclave and Frostcrag Spire, and in Frostcrag Spire’s study upstairs, beside its Scholars’ Ledger and Class Lectern. Reading one there works when:

• you hold the skill that studies its school (a Novice Restoration or Alteration tome takes Priest up for you);
• the tome’s rank fits your tier in that skill;
• for Destruction, Illusion, Conjuration and Alteration learned as a mage, the school is one of yours, not resting, and the tome fits your rank in it.

A tome you learn from is used up. A tome you cannot learn yet stays in your pack (“The words will not settle”), and the game tells you why. Read one too far from a study point and you are told where the study points are, or how far away the nearest one is when it stands in the same place as you.

Tomes from reading

A Scholar reading the books of the world now and then finds a spell tome pressed between the pages.

• A rare chance on every reading you finish, better at a higher Scholar tier, with no daily cap. Each tome you find makes the next one rarer that day.
• Bad luck protection. If 99 readings in a row bring no tome, the 100th brings one (on a day you have not found one yet).
• Your own magic first. Tomes of the schools your magic skills cover turn up three times as often: Destruction, Conjuration and Illusion for Arcane Arts, Restoration and Alteration for Priest.
• Never wasted. Reading never hands you a tome you already know or are carrying.

What you can find follows your college rank (the table above) and your Scholar tier: Novice tomes at Novice and Apprentice, up to Apprentice at Adept and Expert, up to Adept at Master. So Adept tomes come only to a Master Scholar of Senior rank or above. Master tomes never come from reading, and the restricted arts only to Senior ranks.

Teaching a spell

• A Master teaches anyone. A Master in Arcane Arts, or in Priest for its schools, can teach a spell of Adept rank or higher to a player standing within 5 metres (/teach). The student needs the skill at Apprentice or higher, must be able to learn the spell now as if reading its tome, and accepts the lesson within a minute.
• A Senior teaches their own house. A Senior rank or above can teach a spell they know, up to Expert, straight to a member of their own college or order, with no book changing hands. Use your own hall’s Scholars’ Ledger or Class Lectern (the Synod Conclave for the Synod, Frostcrag Spire for the College of Whispers, and the Cathedral of St Martin’s ledger for the Great Faiths, who teach Restoration and Alteration), choose Teach a spell to a student, then pick the student and the spell. The student stands within 15 metres and accepts.
• The College of Winterhold has no hall of its own on the server yet, so its Seniors cannot teach this way. Each such lesson uses up a tome of the spell if you carry one; if not, it uses your tome purchase (one in any 3 days). The student is taught up to the rank they could buy, and Apprentice at least, so an Initiate can be taught a first spell too. They still need the skill and the school of magic for it, and the restricted arts go only to Senior ranks.

Your spellbook and prepared spells

Nothing you learn is forgotten. Every spell you study, choose or are taught stays in your spellbook, with no limit. /spells opens it, and the Magic tab of your journal (F3) shows it too, with your schools and a few tomes to look for next.

Spellbook

∞every spell you learn

Prepared

3at a time, any school

Only your prepared spells are in your hands to cast, three at a time whatever their school. You change them in the Synod Conclave in Bruma, the Cathedral of St Martin or the College of Winterhold, or beside a Scholars’ Ledger, as the mages of Frostcrag Spire do at theirs. A new spell learned while all three are prepared waits in your spellbook until you swap it in. Your race’s powers never take a place.

Spells in play

• Flesh spells protect you. Oakflesh, Stoneflesh, Ironflesh and Ebonyflesh add 40, 60, 80 or 100 armour against weapon and unarmed blows while they last, on top of what you wear. A new one replaces the one before; they don’t stack.
• Summons and raised dead grow with your Conjuration rank (below); a caster who does not study Conjuration counts as a Novice. They hit harder only against creatures and NPCs, and they fight another player only where PvP allows it: while you and that player are fighting, never someone in your party, downed, jailed, held or logged out.
• Conjure Familiar is back. Summon Will-o-the-Wisp stays switched off for now, because the wisp crashes the game.
• Command Daedra can take control of another player’s summoned daedra for the spell’s duration, where the PvP rules above allow it.
• Conjure Ash Guardian, cast as a spell, raises a guardian that everyone can see. It guards its spot until it is destroyed.
• A conjured Boneman draws and shoots its bow, and carries an Ancient Nord Sword that it switches to in close combat.
• Spells on creatures and NPCs. Ash Rune’s paralysis holds creatures and NPCs in place, not only players. Spells that burn, freeze, poison or drain over time deal their full damage to them, and slows and staggers from spells reach them and wear off properly.
• Force Rune throws back the player it catches, instead of only making them stagger.
• Staves and scrolls work, for players and for NPCs such as goblin shamans.
• Open Lock spells (Open Apprentice Lock, Open Expert Lock and Open Master Lock) open a locked chest in your own dungeon claim: face the chest within about 12 metres and cast. Each opens locks of its own level and below. They work on dungeon chests only, not on jail cells or house doors; Dungeons and Expeditions has the rest.
• Fury turns a person or creature on whoever is near them. Inside a dungeon enemies cannot hurt each other, so it does little there.
• Vampires and Restoration. A vampire cannot cast Restoration’s healing spells, nor read, buy or be taught one, and healing magic does nothing for them: it does not raise a fallen vampire either. Restoration’s spells against the undead still burn them. The Supernatural Guide has more.
• Vampire creatures and NPCs take 50% more damage from fire and 25% more from silver. A vampire player’s own weaknesses are in the Supernatural Guide.

Scrolls

A Scholar who reads a book through sometimes finds a scroll tucked between the pages, a little more often at a higher Scholar tier, and never more than six scrolls a day. The higher your Scholar tier, the stronger the scroll can be. Casting a scroll uses it up and its spell takes effect, and anyone can use one, so a new mage can cast before owning a single spell.

The Synod’s enchanting table

The arcane enchanter in the Synod Conclave belongs to the Synod, but for now it is open to everyone.

It works like any arcane enchanter: only an Enchanter may use it, and the first time you set your hand to one you take up Enchanter for a point. How strong an enchantment you can lay follows your Enchanter tier, from half the strength of the strongest enchantment of that effect found anywhere in the world at Novice, up to twice it at Master.

More on enchanting, smithing and the other trades is in Crafting and Trades.

The Priest’s gifts

• Healing that does more. From Apprentice, a Priest’s healing spell lifts the chill of the grave from anyone who woke at the temple. From Expert, it raises a fallen player where they lie.
• Prayer. Praying at your god’s shrine counts as Priest work and raises the odds of a blessing, from 5% at Novice to 30% at Master, and the blessing lasts longer as you rise. The Religion System guide covers the gods.