The Staff of Magnus (Skyrim)

The College of Winterhold
Upon arriving back from Mzulft, you find Ancano in the room with the Eye of Magnus. He is keeping everyone out with a shield and doing something with the Eye. Upon trying to stop him, Savos Aren is killed, and you are tasked to find the Staff of Magnus from the Labyrinthian to put an end to whatever Ancano is doing.

Labyrinthian
It is strongly recommended to first get some shock resistant armor before arriving as the boss uses very powerful shock magic and can summon a Storm Atronach. Note in Savos Aren's room there is a pair of 40% shock resistant boots next to his bed. Upon arriving at the Labyrinthian, the staircase to the right leads to a large stone door. Opening this door requires the Torq of Labyrinthian obtained from Savos Aren's death.

Here you see what appears to be a remnant memory of the place. You can see the mages of the college all discussing entering the Labyrinthian. One of the mages is a young Savos Aren. While inside, you will discover the skeletons of the mages, meaning only Savos Aren got out alive. Note, on the right side of the room inside the Labryrinthian, there is a randomly generated spell tome. Known Spell Tomes: Detect Life, Ironflesh, Telekinesis, Waterbreathing. After watching them talk, go into the next room, where you will see a lever and iron bars. On the other side are several skeletons and a Skeletal Dragon (note, this dragon does not have a soul to absorb).
 * For an easy way to defeat the skeletons and the dragon is to pick them off through the gate while kneeling with a destruction spell. When you have defeated enough skeletons to pass through with out much of a fight, use the unrelenting force shout to attract the dragon. It will approach the gate and try to breathe on you, but it will not pass through the gate. You can pick it off with a destruction spell or arrows.
 * If you are having trouble with this section, pull the lever, but do not go through to doorway. The fence will eventually close, but you can cast a few spells before it does. This makes for an extremely easy fight where you will likely take no damage.
 * For Conjurers, you can get close to the gate and cast your preferred conjuration spell on the other side freely. This is much easier and you will take no damage and when your conjured follower dies/expires, you can just re-cast another. Even at point blank range, the Skeletal Dragon's Breath does nothing. (However, if there are other attacking creatures, your follower will not kill it when it yields, so you must perform the final blow or it will regain full health.)
 * For Sneak/Archers, you can sneak to the rocks on the left side of the room and hide between stairs and a rock. If you have high skill/perks, you can 1 hit skeletons one by one and takes about 5 hits for the dragon without being detected.
 * Speak to J'zargo (a fellow apprentice mage) at Winterhold. He will give you 10 Flame-Cloak Scrolls (J'zargo's Experiment Quest) that can kill every skeleton and the Skeletal Dragon very easily.

After this room is another vision, describing their encounter with the dragon the first time around. Standing in the hall is an Etched Tablet which reads:

"Hail All - Brave City Bromjunaar Forever These Walls Shall Stand May Enemies See Her Whispering - Eye May all Quake to Behold Her" {C

{C The next room holds a frozen door and two guardians. A voice speaks to you before entering the room, which drains you of all your magicka, out of the frozen door comes a frost spirit that will attack you. To pass, you must melt the door with Flames. Despite all races starting with this spell, there is a book to teach you it in the same room.

Down the path a little ways is a room guarded by two Draugr Wights or a troll depending on your level. A Door sealed with a Lightning Rune lies behind them. This rune does approximately 100 points of lightning damage, and wards do not protect against any of it. However, an enemy can open the door from the other side and not set off the rune—shoot an arrow against the door and a Draugr will investigate causing the rune to activate, so stand back. In this room is a spell book for Equilibrium which turns 25 points of life into magicka per second. {C {C At the bottom lies a river. Follow it through several doors, defeating Draugr as you go. (along the way you should find 4 malachite ores in a pool/side area of one of the halls). Several trolls may be found as well along the way.

A large metal bar gate stands on the other side of a room, pull the lever to continue. On the other side, three wisps float around a fire and stones. They are non-hostile until you run past them. After defeating the Wispmother, continue to a door which is on fire. Use frost magic on the door to put it out.

Some more ways down you will find a spell of Steadfast Ward. The next hallway contains runes and fireball traps. The fireball traps can be deactivated with a Fireball spell (to remove the soul gems powering them), or one can simply take the gem before it fires. Destruction magic can also be used to set off the runes. A strong mage character can use a ward.

Further in, the Word of Power for Slow Time can be found after defeating a Draugr Deathlord. The Deathlord is dormant until you wake him, so a sneak attack can be very effective in ending the fight quickly.

At the end stands Morokei, the dragon priest, wielding The Staff of Magnus. To defeat him, you must first kill the enthralled Mages holding him in his bubble. Which, as you'll find out, are two colleagues of Savos Aren sacrificed to hold Morokei here. Then the fight against Morokei begins.

Fighting Morokei
He uses wards, shouts, and shock spells, but also has a spell which may convert summons or zombies against you, although he doesn't use it if player character is on lower levels or summoned creatures stay away from him or the creature was summoned using a scroll. If he has a line of sight on you he will not move, so as long as he can not hit you because of cover you can easily shoot him with arrows. As he has very strong magicka, he will be a tough fight up close, and ranged attacks are effective. It is suggested that the player use shock resistant armor as it can be higly effective, especially if your shock resistance is over 80%, as it makes the player nearly invulnerable to his lightning attacks. Most of the Draugr in the cavers leading up to the fight carry draining weapons, including drainspell weapons. If you can loot a drainspell bow off of one of the Draugr before the fight, it will help to reduce Morokei's effectiveness.

It is actually possible to sneak up on Morokei before he equips the staff. There is a glass mace in a chest at the back of the room behind the ruins that the mages are standing on. Take the mace because it does a lot of damage. Once you reach Morokei without being spotted, hit him with the mace, if possible push him back into the pool of water using unrelented force, he can't get out. Keep hitting him until you defeat him (confirmed/rare/difficult).

If you sneak attack the two mages keeping Morokei prisoner, but do not kill them, remaining hidden, they will stop imprisoning Morokei. This may seem like more competition, or danger, but it actually allows the player to attack Morokei without being attacked themselves. Morokei will face the player, but not attack. You can then use any ranged equipment (bows, magic, etc.) to attack Morokei until his death.

When entering the room, with a high enough sneak skill it is entirely possible to kill the two wizard thralls with one hit stealth attacks or bow, allowing you to remain hidden. If you do so, Morokei will not be aware of you. If you time it right, it is possible to not only kill him in 1, 2, or 3 hits (depending on weapon and skill), but it is also easy to go through the entire section without getting hit once. To do this, all you have to do is equip the Drainspell Bow, sneak under the bridge, and keep shooting him. This is time consuming, but this method will allow you to completely deplete his life while remaining hidden. (Confirmed) Stealth attacks can easily be performed from the staircase near the entrance to the room. Also, if you do not have any arrows you can go to the area on top and use the Ice Spike spell to kill him. They do a decent amount of damage each time if you use it on both hands at the same time. It is advised to save before attempting, as with all boss fights.

If you are a Breton, and/or have the Atronach perk from Alteration, this fight is much easier; Morokei relies entirely on spellcasting, and the magicka gained from his attacks is more than enough to keep your magicka bar full for self healing, as well as any follower you may be using.

Upon leaving, you will see a memory of Savos Aren, despairing about sacrificing his friends to contain Morokei, and says he will seal the place away. Estormo, a Thalmor mage, attempts to kill you to retrieve the Staff of Magnus from you for Ancano.

Bugs

 * It's possible that when you begin The Staff of Magnus quest, the entire faculty of Winterhold will be stuck talking about The Eye of Magnus and it's adverse effects on the college (Urag: "Do you think Arcano new the entire time about the sphere" or something to that effect) and you will not be able to complete any other quests until you complete The Staff of Magnus. (a few exceptions are: Thief's Guild missions)
 * When entering the Labyrinthian Thoroughfare, the game will crash upon hearing the ominous voice talk to you, after walking past the Novice-locked gate. Dropping all staff (except the Staff of Magnus) from your inventory seems to fix that bug.
 * The staff may not work on the Eye of Magnus to lower Ancano's shield. No known fix.(I put the staff on first, then talked to tolfdir, I only asked about mirabelle then I said lets go, I waited till the quest was turned in and the new one accepted then I used the staff and it finally worked for me. Not sure if I should be editing this that's why it's in parentheses.)
 * May not be able to enter the Labyrinthian at all. Despite having the Torc of Labyrinthian. No known fix on PS and Xbox. (Sometimes reloading a previous save before entering the college works). A fix on PC: open console, select the door and type 'disable'.
 * Cutscenes including Savos, may not include other characters: "savos: we should continue" (another character's line is missing) "savos: agreed we'll all stick together".
 * The ominous voice will sometimes not occur, the visuals will occur, the voice won't. No known fix.
 * Sometimes the scenes involving Savos and his companions will cease working all together for the rest of the dungeon.
 * When fighting the skeletal dragon the subtitles show that the dragon uses the powerword "Yol" for fire, but the actual attack is an ice attack.
 * When crouching at the entrance of with Morokei, there may be a bug where he does not see you if you are hidden and then runs up to you.
 * When you approach the college after defeating Morokei, the mages may be on the bridge, battling another Anomaly, which may fall down the hill, where it won't move and their attacks can't reach it. The quest tells you to speak to one of the mages, however, he cannot be spoken to while in combat. This can be easily fixed by defeating the anomaly yourself.
 * It is possible that you receive two Staff of Magnus when you loot Morokei though this is probably extremely rare
 * It is also possible that you won't even be able to loot the Staff of Magnus at all. Sometimes only the Morokei mask is on Morokei but no Staff of Magnus.
 * After exiting the room with The Eye Of Magnus a dragon may appear, and while fighting, kill Savos (knocking him off grid through the floor).


 * It is entirely possible to skip the battle between Estormo, a Thalmor mage. The game continues as normal and you just saved some time.
 * The Word of Power may not be available when approaching you can hear the chant and the ominous wind but no glowing words.
 * Sometimes if you kill the lower mage containing Morokei, he will glitch out of his bubble and float around the room while the upper mage still is casting the bubble.

Facing the Draugr Deathlord, He may disarm you, and are unable to locate your weapon. (<= personal problem, not a bug)