Illusion (Skyrim)

''The School of Illusion involves manipulating the mind of the enemy. This skill makes it easier to cast spells like Fear, Charm, and Invisibility.''

 "You are the one who casts those illusions. Impressive." Illusion is a skill in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Illusion is one of the 6 skills that fall under the Mage play-style. Illusion skill is raised by the use of certain kinds of spells that the in-game character can use; these spells will identify themselves as Illusion spells and will generally focus on manipulation of NPCs.

Illusion spells that have appeared in past games include targeted spells such as charm, calm, frenzy, silence, demoralize, command or rally and spells cast on one's self such as invisibility, chameleon, light or night-eye.

Governing Guardian Stone: The Mage

Books and Quests
The following Miscellaneous Quest increases the Illusion Skill:
 * 2920, Sun's Dawn, v2
 * Before the Ages of Man
 * Incident at Necrom
 * Mystery of Talara, Part 4
 * The Black Arts on Trial
 * Defeat the Master Vampire for Sybille Stentor in Solitude


 * Find Pantea's Flute for Pantea Ateia in the Bards College in Solitude (Note: also increases Alteration, Enchanting, Conjuration, Destruction and Restoration)

Illusion Spells
The following are the spells that are governed by the Illusion class of magic

* Special Spells


 * Note: Master Spells can't be bought in Winterhold College or any shops initially. To get Master Illusion spells, you must reach 90 Illusion magic and complete the Illusion Ritual Spell quest starting with Drevis Neloren, at The College of Winterhold.

Illusion Starting Spells
The following are confirmed Illusion spells that the character can start with if the correct race is selected:
 * High Elves began with Fury.

Perks
The following are the perks that become available to select as the skill is leveled up

Trainers

 * Atub (Expert): Largashbur in the Rift.
 * Drevis Neloren (Master): The College of Winterhold.

Leveling Tips & Tricks
Illusion is often overlooked because it is associated with staying out of combat, the opposite of what most players want. Illusion can be compared to the crowd control spells in other games. Here are some tips to bring the illusion skill to its full potential. There are plenty of opportunities to train your Illusion spells from the very beginning of the game (i.e. without relaying on Destruction spells, for stronger immersive effect).

Where to practice

 * After you arrive at Whiterun at the beginning of the game, you can go to Hulda, the owner and barmaid at The Bannered Mare. She will give you several Miscellaneous bounty quests therefore you can practice your spells on bandits and earn some money (used later for buying more spells).


 * Another good place (even right from the beginning) is a troll cave Darkshade which contains several rooms nicely separated. You can either encounter trolls one by one or you can lead them to each other and then watch a troll fight. There is enough space to run away from trolls and they also need few seconds to start attacking after you hit them with the spell.
 * Once you get Animage, you can sit in Whiterun and just cast buffs like Calm and Courage on the Cow that's sitting there beside the tree in the pen.
 * Once you get the Muffle spell, you can just cast it continually to level up your Illusion skill. You can go from 30 to 100 in 30 - 45 minutes.

Combination with other schools

 * Combine Illusion with Conjuration to let others do the fighting for you. A player with decent levels in both skill trees can clear a dungeon without killing a single enemy him/herself. It is especially fun to observe the effect of Fear on the enemy attacked by your conjured NPC.


 * A high level in Illusion can make a high level in Restoration obsolete. The use of powerful charm spells will give you enough time to heal with lower level spells. Turn undead spells are not as effective as Illusion with the right perks (Master of the Mind).

Stealth usage

 * Illusion and Sneak: with the right perks (Hypnotic Gaze, Kindred Mage) in Illusion, you will be able to calm almost any enemy not immune to Illusion magic. When you calm an enemy, it will return to its original location, thus turning its back to you. This allows you to sneak behind and backstab. Charm, backstab, charm, backstab.
 * In addition to using calm to sneak attack enemies, you can use the Expert-level Illusion spell Invisibility combigned with the Sneak perk Shadow Warrior, to escape almost any enemy (for a time). While in combat cast Invisibility, then run off and crouch to activate Shadow Warrior just before leaving your enemy's line of sight. This works best after casting Frenzy spells, or when you have more people on your side.


 * It has also been reported that casting Frenzy automatically breaks stealth (detection goes from Hidden to fully Detected). The Quiet casting perk is apparently not preventing detection like it is for Furyref. (although Frenzy is "more explosive" than Fury).
 * Other source states that any spell that emanates light will increase chance of detection, therefore you can be detected even while sneakingref..
 * Vampirism synergizes extremely well with the Illusion school, as it grants both Stealth and Illusion bonuses. The Illusion bonus provided increases the power of Illusion spells by 25%, the stealth bonus is 25% better sneaking.

General usage tips

 * If you really want to stay out of the combat the good tactic (especially at the beginning) is to find a group of foes (susceptible to Illusions) and then to cast the spell from far away, somewhere where you want to attract them – very interesting effect is that they they will come to investigate what happened there (at the place where the spell just hit), usually turning their back to you. Then you can cast another spell (Fury, Frenzy) and make them fight with each other. You can continue casting Fury from far away to level it up faster.


 * When fighting one or two strong enemies, you can use Calm to stop one fighting, allowing you to focus on one enemy at a time. You can also Calm both and use those 30 seconds to heal or let your magicka recharge.


 * Fear spells can be very dangerous in dungeons. A scared enemy will run away until it hits a closed door. This will trigger/wake all enemies on its path. When the fear effect ends, the enemy will return to you, bringing along all other enemies. This can be a problem for low level players. Players with a high level in Illusion can use that situation with a well placed Frenzy spell -- follow frightened foe until he/she meets the others and then start a war between them.


 * Bear in mind that Fury is a novice level spell designed to work on low level(6) enemies. Kindred Mage adds about 12 levels on the power of the spell. If you need the spell to work on tougher enemies you can double the level cap by dual casting. Unfortunately there is no Apprentice level equivalent spell to Fury the next is Frenzy which is an adept spell. Frenzy is the most powerful of the fury type spells as there is no expert equivalent and the master level equivalent Mayhem can't be dual castedref..


 * An easy way to power level Illusion is to repeatedly cast Courage on someone. Followers work well, as does Heimskr in Whiterun.
 * An alternative leveling method for Illusion is casting Muffle. It can be cast anywhere at anytime.
 * If you prefer, you can cast Calm and Fear or Fury at the same time to level it up (note though, this is rather costly in Magicka)
 * Approaching a Giant camp and glitching on a rock, which in turn will make the giant stand idle, can be a good way of leveling up Illusion using Courage. It works very effectively for low levels (Higher levels just need a bit more effort and a lot of Magicka).
 * One of the fastest ways to powerlevel Illusion is to use the Magicka bonuses you get by doing the minor quest for Drevis Neloren to 'fix' the focal points in the College of Winterhold. Using those, you can infinitely dual-cast Muffle, and as your Magicka regenerates virtually instantly, you can do this until the bonus runs out. This took me about four or five minutes to get from level 85 to 100 using this.

Iluzja

Dark Brotherhood Usage

The Illusion Skill is very useful if you are a Mage class character in the Brotherhood. You can use Fury, and Calm on all the quests to help you complete them without bounties and to make clean escapes. For example, In your first 3 contract quests, you can use Fury to make the target attack you and then the guards will kill them for you with no bounty as long as you aren't seen. If you are, when the guards try to make an arrest resist arrest and use calm on all hostile guards and run out of town until you are safe. You can use Fury in Recipe for Disaster on Anton and the two other cooks will kill him for you making your job easier. All the quests still complete as if you killed the targets. (Xbox 360 tested) If you have a high Desctruction level (adept) then you can use that to kill almost every target with Dual Casting and Impact Perks if the Illusion skills don't work. Or use Fury and then kill the target yourself with no bounty as long as you aren't seen casting Fury. Usually a secluded spot is best, so you don't need a high sneak skill. You can also use Fury in the quest "Mourning Never Comes" on Alain Dufont and with his enchanted hammer he will kill the other two bandits, leaving him verses you which makes the quest a lot easier. So if you are a Mage character in the Dark Brotherhood, make sure you have a decent Destruction level, and you don't need a high Illusion level to make it work.


 * I've completed the Dark Brotherhood as a Novice Illusionist with an Adept Destruction Level*