Skyrim Alteration Guide

Alteration Spells List, Mage Armors, and Perks

by Leto Kersten

Alteration is one of the magic schools in Skyrim that may be hard to train, but has great potential when mastered. Many enemies in Skyrim will attack the Dragonborn with spells based on the elements of Fire, Frost or Lightning. All three are based on magical damage, the Alteration school can provide passive protection against magic. They can also increase armor rating, reducing the damage of physical attacks. Combined with a good race, enchantments on clothing, and a good Standing Stone choice, Alteration can mean the difference between life and death. No matter what play style you prefer, everyone will get hit by a magical attack sooner or later, thus Alteration is a school every build can benefit from: warriors, mages and thieves alike.

Benefits of Training Alteration Magic
If I would describe this magic school in one word, I would choose 'Protection' as Oakflesh and its upgraded variants are the spells used to protect mages who do not wear armor. Combine this with the Mage Armor perk from this school and one can temporarily rely on a skin as hard as Daedric Armor, while wearing only enchanted cloth apparel and jewelry.

Using the Alteration Magic Resistance perk, the Dragonborn can protect himself against magical attacks for 30% with a small investment of 5 points in the school. Any race can easily reach 70% out of the maximum 85% magic resistance by using the Lord Stone (adds 50 to armor, protects against 25% of magical attacks) and doing the Book of Love quest to get another 15% permanent magical resistance. If you are a Breton, are blessed with 25% magical protection which means you can use a total of 4 perks in Alteration instead of 5 to cap yourself up to the full 85%.

With the right enchantments to protect against the elemental damage of Frost, Fire and Lighting combined with 85% magical protection, the Dragonborn is capable of standing in front of a fire breath from an Ancient Dragon on Master Difficulty without receiving damage at all. If you buy the Atronach perk for Alteration (100 skill) 30% of all spells that hit you will be sucked up to fill your Magicka bar every time someone throws a spell at you.

Skyrim calculates Magicka damage like this: spell absorption removes damage first, second magic resistance, and finally elemental resistance. So if you are a Breton, you have the Atronach perk in Alteration, are capped at the full 85% Magic Resistance and you have 45% Fire Resistance Enchantment on your boots, and an Ancient Dragon is attacking you with a Fire Breath attack that normally does 100 damage per second you will receive only 6 per second. 100-30%=70% x .85 = 10.5 x .45 = 5.775 rounded up to 6.

Aside from all this protection, with training in Alteration the caster can detect living and dead creatures, conjure light to see in dark areas and even paralyze opponents. They are also able to use telekinesis to pull in items from a distance to either throw them at enemies or to remove them silently out of dangerous environments.

Finding Alteration Spells
Alteration spells can be found all over Skyrim as loot, though not all can be bought at vendors. The spell Transmute, for example, can't be bought at all. Transmute is valuable for training and is used to transform Iron Ore into Silver Ore and Silver Ore into Gold Ore. There are only a few places where one can find this spell. Halted Stream Camp is a bandit operation due north of Whiterun. There is a copy of the Transmute spell book on a table inside the cave connected to the camp.

Most other spells can be bought at vendors such as Dravynea at Kynesgrove who is a Dumner mage with Expert knowledge of Alteration. Doing one quest for her will grand you one level up in the skill as well. At the College Of Winterhold, Tolfdir is the Master of Alteration and offers the largest selection of Alteration spells in Skyrim. He can also train you all the way up to level 90. At Alteration 90, he will offer you the quest to learn Master level spells.

Raising the Alteration Skill
Transmute is the skill to go with at first. It isn't the fastest way to level up, but if you have enough money to buy Iron Ores you can get a profit out of it by Transmuting them to Gold, and smithing them into Golden Rings or Necklaces, which you can sell at vendors. It's faster to buy iron than to dig it up yourself, although mining can yield gems that go nicely with the gold to make even more valuable jewelry. By starting with Transmute and following this process, you can train five valuable skills at once by transmuting Iron Ores to Gold (Alteration), smiting jewelry out of them (Smithing ) and enchant them with special effects (Enchantment) after drinking a self-made Fortify Enchantment Potion (Alchemy) and selling what you've made (Speech).

Once you hit level 50 things can go much faster once you've bought yourself the spell Telekinesis. Just stand somewhere and teleport an Iron Shield or something similar to you and away from you to train this skill extremely fast. Just be careful you don't accidentally hit someone, as this will be seen as an attack which can result in a bounty. Using Telekinesis, I've gone all the way up to level 100 Alteration starting from 50 in 30 minutes or so. Just cast the spell until your Magicka bar is low, press T, wait an hour in game and try again.

Skyrim Alteration Spell List

Here is a list of all the Alteration spells in Skyrim by type, from least to most difficult. Please note Magicka cost is base. That is, what the spell would cost if you were casting it at lowest level without any perk for that spell rank (ie Adept or Expert Alteration).

*Since Dragonhide provides 80% physical resistance, which is the cap, your armor is pretty much pointless while it's in effect. With a maximum duration of 45 seconds (unless you get enough magicka to dual cast it) you may still want mage armor active as a backup plan. This spell can only be learned after hitting Alteration 90 and getting a quest from Tolfdir in the Mages' Guild.

Remember, the armor value of all those types of spells can be tripled with 3 points in the Mage Armor perk

The Detect Life spell is great for leveling, so long as there is something living nearby to highlight. Using this in a town, you can drain your mana and wait 1 hour to train Alteration as much as you like.

Equilibrium is found in Labyrinthian Chasm, southeast of Morthal. The amount of HP drained can go up or down depending on your game difficulty setting.

Mass Paralysis should become available for purchase from Tolfdir soon after completing the level 90 Alteration quest he gives.

Skyrim Alteration Skill Perks

To fill up the Alteration tree to the max, the Dragonborn needs to invest 14 points. Of course, depending on your build you may not need or want them all. Just like any other magical school, Alteration has five specific perks that can be used to cast Novice, Apprentice, Adept, Expert and Master spells for half Magicka. The necessity of these perks depends greatly on your playstyle and how often you use Alteration magic. The other factor on Magicka cost is your Alteration skill level, which will lower the cost of spells a little each time you gain. So, you can still see some reduction by training alteration without actually putting points into these perks. Below are the names of the other Perks, the descriptions the game gives them and what they do for your character.

Alteration Dual Casting
(level 20 Alteration Magic required)
Dual casting an Alteration spell overcharges the effect into an even more powerful version, either increasing the level of creature it can impact or the duration of a beneficial spell. What this means is that if your character relies on spells like Paralysis and your enemy is too high level and would resist thes spell, using both hands will grant you a higher chance your enemy will succumb to paralysis as the spell's effectiveness is doubled. Spell durations jump a little more than double, which is helpful for longer fights and to avoid constantly recasting your mage armors.

Mage Armor (3 points)
(level 30/50/70 Alteration Magic required)
Protection spells like Stoneflesh are twice as strong if not wearing armor (using a Shield is fine!). At two points, they are 2.5x as strong Put three points in this to get a maximum of 3 times a mage armor spell's normal protection.

Magic Resistance (3 points)
(level 30/50/70 Alteration Magic required)
Each point adds 10% to magical resistance, up to a maximum of 30%.

Stability
(level 100 Alteration Magic required)
All Alteration spells will have a +50% duration. That means a 10 second paralyze becomes 15, a 60 second Mage Armor-type spell becomes 90 seconds. So, this is helpful to both your character's offense and defense.

Atronach
(level 100 Alteration Magic required)
Absorbs 30% of the Magicka of every spell that hits you. This is amazing in combination with Magic Resistance. Combine this with 85% magic resistance and enchantments on clothing/potions that protect against elemental damage and you are now not only almost invulnerable, but what does hit you got 30% of its power converted to Magicka, leaving the other 70% to be dealt with by your magic and elemental resistances.

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