The Codex
Magic
You cannot learn a spell from a menu. It comes from a tome you have found or a Teacher who already knows it, and either way it sits in your grimoire for days before it is yours. Below is how that works, and then every spell a player can learn, with its tier, so you can see what a Novice, an Adept and a Master actually have access to.
- Learnable spells
- 356
- Schools
- 5
- Magic skills
- 8
- Starting spell points
- 50
There are two ways to learn a spell, and neither of them is instant. Read a tome, found in the world, bought from a shop or handed to you, or be taught by a whitelisted Teacher. Either way the spell goes into your grimoire as a timer and you wait it out.
What a Teacher adds is speed and judgement. Only a Teacher can shorten a study already running, and outside the College only a Teacher decides you are ready for the next rank.
| Spell tier | Spell points | Days in the grimoire |
|---|---|---|
| Novice | 1 point | 5 days |
| Apprentice | 2 points | 10 days |
| Adept | 3 points | 15 days |
| Expert | 5 points | 25 days |
| Master | 8 points | 35 days |
One spell at a time
You can only study one spell at once. Reading a second tome while the first is still running does not queue it, it fails. Finish what is in the book before you open another.
A Teacher shortens the wait. Each lesson takes one day off a study already running, so a Master spell is 35 days alone and rather less with somebody turning up to teach you, which is what makes a teacher worth finding rather than optional. What the role demands of them.
Day one, before anything else, set your skills. Spellcasting sets your maximum magicka, and a rank in a school is what lets you learn that school's spells at all, with perks that cut their cost and raise their effect as it climbs. Neither is optional and neither can be bought later without a memory point.
Then take the Mystic kit. /kit offers it at the start: robes, a Candlelight tome and
the rest of the starting essentials. You need at least one point in Alteration to read
the tome it gives you, so spend that point before you spawn or the kit's spell is a book you
cannot open. Once you are in, F8 opens your grimoire: everything you know, everything
you are still learning with the time left on it, and the place a finished spell can be
unlearned.
Everybody starts with 50 spell points. They cap what your grimoire can hold rather than what you can cast, and a spell costs exactly what the matching skill rank costs in memory points: 1 for a Novice, 8 for a Master. Fifty points is five Master spells, or fifty Novice ones, or any mix in between. Becoming a whitelisted Teacher is the only route anybody has published for raising that total, though holding the court mage rank in a holdstone grants another 50 for as long as you hold it.
Training a school is not casting the same spell in a tavern
Magic skills climb by casting, which makes them the easiest thing on the server to grind by accident. Train where it makes sense, a yard or a training dummy rather than an inn floor. Train with somebody, or make the fumbling the scene: the mage who gets a Clairvoyance wrong and leads four people into a bog is playing correctly. Repetition with nobody watching and nothing said is powergaming and is treated as such.
A Teacher is a whitelisted role, not simply anybody who knows a spell. One holds at most three apprentices and may teach them as far as Adept; past Adept means the College of Winterhold, or approval from staff. Outside those three, a Teacher may teach one other person a week. The requirements, the audits and the etiquette are on the teaching page.
The College of Winterhold teaches three semesters of formal instruction at rising prices: Novice, Apprentice, Adept. Past Adept you stay on as a researcher or a professor's assistant rather than as an ordinary student.
It is also somewhere you can now walk into. The College was rebuilt in 0.71.0 as a working building with its own holdstone, standing where the Shalidor statue used to be, so joining it is a pledge at a stone rather than only an arrangement in Discord.
Other organisations can teach but hold no spellbook access by default. The head may be a Master Wizard and may take apprentices, and every book still has to be found: East Empire purchases, dungeon expeditions, trades.
| Where books come from | How reliable |
|---|---|
| The College library | Effectively unlimited, for students |
| A Court Wizard | A limited starting selection |
| The East Empire Company | For purchase |
| Dungeons | Placed at random, on a bi-monthly cycle |
Magic is not legal everywhere
Every Hold sets its own magical law. What is fine in Winterhold may not be in Markarth, Windhelm or Solitude. Check which spells are legal where you are, whether teaching requires a licence, and any local restriction on Conjuration, Destruction or Illusion. Ignorance is not a defence in any Jarl's court.
Priests are the doctors. Temple priests hold Master Restoration, are authorised to teach disciples, and are who you look for when someone is hurt. Factions like the Vigilants of Stendarr serve the same role on the road.
Expect utility rather than firepower. Magelight, Candlelight, Detect Life, Detect Dead and their kin. Every school is being redone around roleplay-friendly spells, so read the catalogue as tools first and weapons second.
▸the 4 release notes behind this
- Updated when learning a new spell you can now cast it, but its only as effective as the percentage done learned, also other people casting the spell near you helps learn it faster (masters casting near by credit even more)0.75.9 · 2026-09-25
- Updated when learning a new spell you can now cast it, but its only as effective as the percentage done learned, also other people casting the spell near you helps learn it faster (masters casting near by credit even more)0.75.8 · 2026-09-25
- Updated when learning a new spell you can now cast it, but its only as effective as the percentage done learned, also other people casting the spell near you helps learn it faster (masters casting near by credit even more)0.74.12 · 2026-09-22
- Added character logs to track skill gains, learned spells and more0.72.35 · 2026-09-14
