Conjuration is actually terrible early game and nobody warns you about it

[WhiterunModder]

been doing a conjurer build on my 3rd playthrough and I'm hitting a wall around level 15-20 where summoning literally anything feels pointless. my atronachs die in like 6 seconds, the conjured weapons do almost no damage, and I'm burning through magicka for something that doesn't tank damage or output real threat.

the perk that lets you summon two things at once doesn't help if both die instantly. and by the time you get the perks that matter (the one that increases conjured creature health, the daedric summoning branches), you're already 30+ levels in and have probably just respecced to something that actually works.

am I doing something wrong or is conjuration just a trap for new players who think "cool I can summon stuff" without realizing the math doesn't work until you're deep into the tree? because right now my bound sword is doing more work than my atronachs and that feels backwards.

 

[DragonbornVet]

You're not doing anything wrong - Conjuration is genuinely front-loaded with garbage. The early game summons are paper thin and the damage scaling is abysmal until you sink a ton of perks into it. Bound Weapon doing more work than your atronachs is actually the correct experience, not a sign you're playing it wrong.

The real issue is that Conjuration needs both the health boost perk AND the damage boost perk before it feels viable, and those are deep in the tree. By the time you have those, you've already committed like 8-10 perks to a school that's been dead weight for 15 levels. Compare that to Destruction where you can just throw fireballs and watch things die immediately, or Restoration where healing yourself actually matters from level 1.

If you want to make it work without respeccing, honestly just lean into the Bound Weapon side of things. The perks that boost those actually pay off faster, and you can supplement with summoning once you hit the better creature perks. Or grab a mod like Ordinator if you're on PC - it completely overhauls Conjuration to be viable early on without breaking it later. Vanilla Conjuration is just a slog.