CREATABLE SPELLS FAQ
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The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
This FAQ copyright 2006 by me, Aaron Kirschner
All rights implied by the above statement are reserved.
The most up-to-date version of this FAQ will be on GameFAQs
Table of Contents (use four letter codes to fast search)
1. Introduction (ITDC)
2. Version History (VSHS)
3. Where You Create Spells (WYCS)
4. How You Create Spells (HYCS)
5. Benefits of Creating Spells (BOCS)
6. Tips for Better Spells (TFBS)
7. Advanced Tricks (ADTR)
8. Pre-Made Spells (PRSP)
9. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQS)
10. Contact Me (CNME)
11. Legal Information (LGIF)
10. Thanks (THKS)
Introduction (ITDC)
This is a basic guide to creating spells in the Elder Scrolls IV:
Oblivion. I wrote it because there was no other FAQ for it on the
site, except for brief overviews contained in other guides. My hope is
that this FAQ will become a good reference for anyone new to creating
spells, and that it will become a compilation of spells that many
people have created. In the first version of this guide, the pre-made
spells will only be ones that I have made, but please send me yours and
I will post them with credit. Know that this is my first guide. Also,
I will do my best to update it regularly, but know that I am in college
and have a life.
Version History (VSHS)
V 0.10: August 8, 2006
I wrote the introduction and Where You Create Spells section.
V 0.30: August 9, 2006
I continued through Benefits of Creating spells section.
V 0.50: August 10, 2006
Did tips for better spells and half of Advanced Tricks
V 0.90: August 11, 2006
First submitted version of guide. All parts completed, only my pre-
made spells listed.
V 0.92: August 16, 2006
Added Brian Litofsky's trick and corrected some issues. Still need
pre-made spells from other people.
V 0.93: August 23, 2006
Added one new spell to the guide and corrected an error in one of my
spells. Also added to the legal information.
V 1.00: August 29, 2006
Finally a full version. I have added new spells that have been
submitted, added tips from two readers, and have corrected a few
errors. Also, I added the FAQ section.
V 1.02: September 5, 2006
Added one new spell to the list and reordered the spells so that they
are in some semblance of an order. Also added to the FAQ.
V 1.03: September 7, 2006
Something went very wrong in the formatting of this guide in V. 1.02.
I'll try and correct this so that the guide is readable in this
version. Also added one new spell.
Where You Create Spells (WYCS)
Spells can be created in two places in Oblivion, although the main
version of the game includes only one. The first place, and the one
that most people will use, is at the Arcane University. To gain
entrance to the Arcane University, you must first get recommendations
form all the Mages Guilds. There is a good guide to this on GameFAQs by
imadeaguide. The other place you can create spells is at Frostcrag
Spire. This is only available if you download Bethesda's Frostcrag
Spire add-on. For a guide on how to access spell making there, see
NightmareHunter's guide on GameFAQs. At either location, use one of
the Altars of Spell making and the process begins.
How You Create Spell (HYCS)
Creating spells in really quite easy. All you need to begin is access
to an altar of spell making, some gold, and some version of the
spell(s) you are going to tweak. When you approach the altar of spell
making, you will see two columns. One will have all of the effects
that you can add to the spell. The other, for the time being, will be
blank. The list of effects you can add to the spell are all the
effects of spells you currently know. For this example, lets assume
you know effect of frost damage.
Scroll your cursor over the effect you want and click "A" to select it.
For now lets say you want frost damage. Now a sub-menu will pop-up and
give you four choices. The first one, range, is what the spell
effects. You have choices between touch, target, and self. Note that
you don't need to know a targeted frost spell to make one; just some
spell with frost damage. Touch has the damage occur on touch, target
shoots the spell at distant enemies, and self makes you hurt yourself
(not very useful). You will notice that as the spell gets more
powerful, it also gets more expensive to use target vs. touch.
The next choice is that amount of damage per second that the spell will
do. This can be any whole number between three and 100. I have
noticed that this isn't always perfectly accurate, but it is a very
close estimate to say that this is the damage per second. If anyone
knows otherwise, please drop me an e-mail. As this goes up, obviously
the spell becomes more costly to make and to cast. Also, as the spell
becomes more powerful, you will need a higher skill in its college to
cast it.
The next choice only appears for touch and target, but because this is
a damage spell that's all we care about. The choice is area. This is
that circle in which this spell exffects objects. You can set a range
of zero, or from 10 to 100 ft. If the range is set to zero, the spell
will only effect the enemy that it hits. If higher than zero, the
spell will effect all enemies within an X ft. circle of the spells
point of impact, where X is that number chosen for area. Again, a
higher area means a more powerful and thus more expensive spell.
The final choice is the amount of time that the spell effects the enemy
for. This can be any number between 1 and 100 seconds. So, if you
have your spell set to do 7 damage per second and you set duration to 7
seconds, that means that the spell will do 7 damage a second for 7
seconds on the enemy, for a total of 49 damage after 7 seconds.
Duration can be what really makes your spells jump in cost because it
can substantially increase the effect that they have. Once your
satisfied with the attributes you have selected, press "X"
Most spells behave in the same way when being created, but I will
highlight some differences in other effects now. First, a fortify
attribute spell has an additional choice of, guess what, attribute
effected. Again, you need not know a spell for every attribute to pick
all of them; an effect for just one will give you access to all. For
an Open Lock spell, you simply choose the level of the lock you want to
open. Don't bother with the area, because there are virtually no
places in the game where it would have an impact. Besides that, most
of the spells are self-explanatory. When you have set the attributes
of an effect, you will see them listed in the Added Effects column.
But it's no fun to just make spells that just have one effect, is it?
Never fear, you can put as many effects into a spell as you like.
After you go through the process of setting one effect, simply go to
the Known Effects column again and select another effect and repeat the
process to add that effect. Once you have added all of your effects to
the spell, simply press "X" to create it, and you now have a brand new
spell to cast.
Benefits of Creating Spells (BOCS)
Why, might you ask, should I bother creating spells and not just buy
them from the guilds? Well, first of all, there are many spells that
you have to create, not even including the hybrid kinds. For example,
you can never find an Open Very Hard Lock spell for sale. If you
wanted to use a spell to open very hard locks, you would have to make a
spell for it. Another great benefit to creating spells, even if you
use only one effect, is being able to set your spells to exactly the
level you need them at. For example at certain levels, the only spells
you will be able to buy spells that are too powerful and too expensive,
or spells that are too weak. Being able to set your spells to exactly
the level you need is a great benefit.
The real benefit of creating your own spells, however, comes from being
able to mix and match effects, even between colleges. Now you can make
spells that damage the enemy while healing you, or spells that
disintegrate the your opponents weapons and decimate their stats. Or
you can just mix and match damaging effects for lots of destruction.
Remember that the more powerful you make your spell, the more gold and
magicka it will cost. You pay the gold when you use the spell altar,
and the magicka every time you cast the spell.
Once you start to make your own spells, you will realize how much
better than buying them it is. You will still have to buy spells from
time to time, mostly to learn new effects. It's important to note that
the known effects do not include spell scrolls, only spells that you
have learned. However, except to learn new effects, there is rarely a
reason not to make your own spells.
Tips for Better Spells (TFBS)
The most important thing I can stress about creating your own spells is
that you make them suit your character. Because being able to create
spell requires you to go through the Mages Guild or Frostcrag spire,
you will have already been using spells throughout the game. So I
recommend that the spells you create are extensions of these spells.
For example, if you have been using touch damage spells as your primary
offense, the spells you create should be touch damage spells. The best
thing to do is to tweak the spells to your liking, and to add small
other effects.
One of the best things to add to almost any spell is Restore Health 3
points for 2 seconds on Self. While this effect may seem
insignificant, if this is on a spell that you use continuously, the
three extra point of health will add up. This effect generally adds no
more than one or two points of magicka to the cost of the spell, and
the slight benefit to health offsets the extra points of magicka.
Although this is useful in almost any spell you make, it is most useful
to put this on low cost spells that you can cast almost indefinitely.
On these spells, especially if they are ranged, you will be getting all
the benefits of the normal spell, plus regaining health.
On the more expensive spells, you might want to stay away from the
above tip. The reason is that once the spell gets costly enough, your
not going to be casting it enough to make the health bonus worth it.
Instead, go with either more of the main effect of the spell, or go
with an added effect that compliments the main effect. For example, if
the main effect of the spell is to deplete your opponent's strength, it
might be useful to add on a minor disintegrate weapon effect. That way
the spell not only hits the main attribute of the enemy, but also makes
their weapon less useful.
Wayne Stevenson has this to say about creating spells:
"I've noticed that target spells cost more magicka and can require a
higher skill level than the touch spells do for example if you create a
shock damage spell on target with a magnitude of 26 it requires a skill
level of 50 but the same spell on touch only requires a skill level of
25 this is also good to know if you like to get up close and personal
with your enemies like me!"
Aaron Kent wrote to me discussing tips to keep spells costs down:
"The magicka cost of spells goes up the more effective they are. For
example, the more damage a frost spell does upon impact with a target,
the more magicka it costs. However, this can be exploited. Doing 20
frost damage on impact will cost 10mp, but 10 for 2 seconds will only
cost 8, doing the same damage for a cheaper magicka cost. You can also
add a number of low level spells that do just as much damage as a much
larger more expensive spell."
Kent also submitted a spell that is quite a good example of this.
Advanced Tricks (ADTR)
The real trick to creating spells is to make sure that they fit the
perfect balance for your level. What this means is that you want them
to be powerful enough that they will be useful against your enemies,
but not so powerful that you will decimate your magicka by casting them
once. What I recommend here is to have three offensive spells, one
restoration spell, and one protection spell. For the offensive spells,
you should have two that cost about one sixth to one eighth of your
total magicka, and one that is well less than one tenth of your total
magicka. One of the two more expensive spells should be purely
offensive and be able to do considerable damage, while the other I
recommend having an added effect of healing your character
considerably. The cheep spell should be primarily offensive, but also
have the restore heath effect described in the last section. For the
restoration spell, I recommend having both restore health and restore
fatigue and costing the spell at about the same as the powerful
offensive spells. The protection spell should be at about the same
level as the other powerful spells. I prefer to use effect of shield,
fortify endurance, and resist magicka. This can obviously be tweaked
to better protect your character, but I find this to be what works for
my Breton. Also, these are only the main spells that you will be
binding to your D-pad. You will obviously need others that you select
from your submenu. These spells are generally more for specific
situations, like lock opening spells and water breathing.
Another interesting thing to note about created spells is that while
you can mix and match effects from different colleges, the spell is
only considered to be from one college. The college that it is from is
the college of the first effect of the spell. This is important to
know because if you have a low skill in one area, you can set the first
effect from the skill you a good in and no matter how big the effect
from the other school is, you will not need any skill points in it to
cast the spell. For example, lets say that you want to make a spell
that requires an Alteration skill of 75, but you alteration skill is
only 37. Well, if you have a Restoration skill of 75, you could just
put the Restoration as the first effect and the Alteration as the
second. Because the game sees the spell as a Restoration spell, your
Restoration skill is the only one that is needed to cast it.
Going further on the spell colleges, it is also important to know that
only one skill will gain points from each spell you cast. That skill
is, you guessed it, the one that the first effect is from. This is
important to know, because if you want your destruction to increase,
you need to set destruction as the first effect of the spell. While
people might think that this can be used to quickly train lower skills
by putting them first, this is only the case if both skills are close
in number. For example, lets say that I am a novice in Mysticism
(skill<25). Now, I decide that I'm going to train that skill by making
a Destruction spell that I use all the time by putting a very minor
Mysticism effect at the top of it. Well, because the Mysticism skill
is listed first, the game sees this as a Mysticism spell. Of course,
now the spell requires a Mysticism skill of the same level as the
Destruction skill would be if the spell didn't have Mysticism on it.
So you see that even though you can trick the game to think that the
spell is of a different college, this often isn't a good idea because
you might actually want to cast the spell. This fake training trick
only works when the two skills are about equal. There are other tricks
with this, but most of them are downright cheats, so I won't go into
them here.
Brian Litofsky has another trick that he uses:
"I have another reason to create spells, which is actually why I've
created most of my spells. Spell effects stack if you're casting a
different spell, even if the effect is the same. This is a useful way
to get around skill caps. For example, casting two spells that are
normally skill < 50 spells, may sum up to an effect that's the
equivalent of an expert or master level spell.
I've used this most often for Chameleon, to effectively go fully
invisible but able to do stuff, even before my illusion was maxed. For
example, I bought the spell "Shadow", but then created the spell
"Shadow S'more": (This is an Expert level example, but can work for
lower levels.)
Shadow (purchased spell)
Requirements: Illusion 75
Effects: Chameleon 50% on self for 30 seconds
Shadow S'more (created spell)
Requirements: Illusion 75
Effects: Chameleon 50% on self for 30 seconds
Yes, it's the same spell, but when cast right after each other, you
effectively get 100% chameleon for 30 seconds, which you would need
Illusion 100 to actually cast. These can stack up as well, at lower
levels. I've even found that it's useful at Master level later in the
game, as I created these two spells:
Long Chameleon A:
Requirements: Illusion 100
Effects: Chameleon 55% on self for 60 seconds
Long Chameleon B:
Requirements: Illusion 100
Effects: Chameleon 55% on self for 60 seconds
Once again, these are the same two spells. Why'd I do this? First of
all, I wanted a 100% chameleon spell, because you can't buy one in
game. However, even if I created a 100% chameleon spell, it would still
only be effective at 95% (or less) because of armor. Secondly, I didn't
have the magicka to cast a longer duration 100% chameleon spell.
However, I could cast two 60 second 55% ones. So, by casting two
equivalent spells, I get the effect I want with lower costs and more
manageability."
It's an interesting idea. I haven't had a chance to try it because my
360 is broken at the time of this writing, but it makes sense that this
would work. However, make sure that you make two DIFFERENT spells. If
you cast the same spell twice it will only renew the time bar, not
stack the effects.
Pre-Made Spells (PRSP)
Here is a list of spells that have been created by me or other players
(although at this point I have none submitted). Please see the contact
me section on how to submit your spells. When I list the magicka cost,
it is the cost for that specific player. Your cost may be higher or
lower depending on you level and stats.
Lightning Helix
Submitted by: Clarinet_Hawk
Requirements: Restoration 50
Magicka: 28
Effects: Restore Health 25 pts for 1 sec on self
Shock Damage 10 pts for 1 sec on target
Quicksilver
Submitted by: Clarinet_Hawk
Requirements: Destruction 25
Magicka: 7
Effects: Fire damage 5 pts for 2 sec on target
Frost damage 5 pts for 2 sec on target
Restore health 3 pts for 1 sec on self
Triple Elemental
Submitted by: Clarinet_Hawk
Requirements: Destruction 50
Magicka: 25
Effects: Fire damage 10 pts for 3 sec on touch
Frost damage 10 pts for 3 sec on touch
Shock damage 10 pts for 3 sec on touch
Death Blast
Submitted by: Aaron Kent
Requirements: Destruction 75
Magicka: 60
Effects: Fire damage 20 pts for 2 sec on target
Frost damage 20 pts for 2 sec on target
Shock damage 20 pts for 2 sec on target
Elemental Blast
Submitted by: Z22793
Requirements: Destruction 75
Magicka: 55
Effects: Weakness to Fire 100% for 1 sec on target
Weakness to Frost 100% for 1 sec on target
Weakness to Shock 100% for 1 sec on target
Fire damage 30 pts for 1 sec on target
Frost damage 30 pts for 1 sec on target
Shock damage 30 pts for 1 sec on target
Battle Meditation
Submitted by: Clarinet_Hawk
Requirements: Alteration 25
Magicka: 25
Effects: Shield 15% for 30 sec on self
Fortify Endurance 5 pts for 30 sec on self
Fortify magicka 6 pts for 30 sec on self
Battle Respite
Submitted by: Clarinet_Hawk
Requirements: Restoration 25
Magicka: 24
Effects: Restore health 13 pts for 2 sec on self
Restore fatigue 11 pts for 2 sec on self
Legendary Haggeler
Submitted by: Yoav Azaira
Requirements: Restoration 25
Magicka: 40-60
Effects: Fortify Mercantile 100 pts for one sec on self
Fortify Personality 100 pts for one sec on self
Charm 100 pts on touch
Notes: Use just before talking to a merchant for big savings.
Eyes of the Dragon
Submitted by: Koncord
Requirements: Mysticism 50
Magicka: 98
Effects: Nighteye 25 sec on self
Detect life 100 ft for 25 sec on self
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQS)
Q: Why didn't my spell get added?
A: I only post spells that have multiple effects. Anyone can make a
huge single effect spell. The purpose of the pre-made spells section
(and making spells for that matter) is to combine different effects for
an interesting mix. There is nothing interesting about Shock damage
100 on target.
Q: Where can I buy a fortify attribute spell?
A: For those of you without Frostcrag Spire, you can't. If you have
it, you can find Aurelinwae a buy them from her. Alternatively, you
could pick a race and/or a birthsign with a fortify attribute effect
(i.e. The Thief) to get the effect added to your known effects.
Q: Is there any way to make spells with permanent effects?
A: No. You could enchant some armor or rings, but that is a different
topic than creating spells.
Contact Me (CTME)
Ok, before I give out the e-mail address that you can reach me at, I
will lay down some ground rules about e-mailing me. First of all, do
not send me mass e-mails. I will block you and you will not be able to
ask or send me anything ever. Second, I am creating a new e-mail
account for this guide. Know that this is my third e-mail account. I
plan to check this at least once a week, but I do have other duties,
like practicing clarinet. I will try to respond to your question if I
think the guide doesn't accurately answer it. Also, when you send me
spells, please give me the details that I listed in the above section.
Also, if you have a very high level character, please note that so I
can adjust the magicka costs accordingly. Finally do not send me an
attachment. I will not open it. Ok, here are the three reasons you
should e-mail me.
1. Submitting your own Spells for the Pre-Made spells list
2. Questions about this guide
3. Reporting errors that I have made in the guide
The following are things that you should not e-mail me about
1. How do I beat <INSERT NAME OF SOMETHING HERE>
2. How to I complete the Mages Guild
3. Anything not listed in the three reasons to e-mail me.
Also, please have some kind of subject that lets me know what the e-
mail is about. Ok so here it is; the e-mail address to send me stuff
at.
[email protected]
There you are. Use it wisely.
Legal Information (LGIF)
This guide is the sole property of Clarinet_Hawk and the primary user
of
this alias on GameFAQs.com, Aaron Kirschner. Any reproduction without
express written consent is prohibited. If you want consent to post
part
of this FAQ on your site, please e-mail me with the URL of your site
and
the reason that you want to post this. Also, you may only post PART of
this guide. You must give tell me what part you want to post. Next,
permission to post part of one version of this guide does not extend to
permission to post any other part of that same version nor does it
allow
that part of a subsequent version to be posted. Do not contact me if
your site has inappropriate content, because you will be reused
permission to post on it. Nor will I permit any part of this FAQ to
appear on a site that requires payment. Finally, do not put my e-mail
address or name on your site. The only thing that your site should
reference me as is Clarinet_Hawk. This, of course, must be present any
time you use my work.
If I deem that you may use my work, I will send you an e-mail
explicitly stating so. That list will also include a list of
requirements as to what, where, and how you may post it. If you fail
to follow any of the guidelines, you will lose permission to post any
of my works.
Thanks (THKS)
To anyone who submits spells for this guide
To my girlfriend for giving me this game
To my parents for giving me an XBOX 360
To Bethesda for making this game
To Jesse Buck for pointing out an error
To the other Oblivion FAQ writers for giving me references
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