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I've mastered conjuration and am thinking of making custom spells for conjuring creatures. Basically, the ready-made spells available from merchants are not very efficient as the master level creatures last for a very short duration.

I got down to calculating the cost for a custom summon lich spell of a 40 second duration. According to the spell making page on the uesp, the total cost of a custom spell is calculated by the equation below

B = Base Cost / 10
M = Magnitude ^ 1.28
D = Duration
A = Area × 0.15
Total cost = B × M × D × A

From the spell effects page here, a summon lich has a base cost of 350. So if i wanted a summon lich for 40s duration the total base cost as calculated by the equation above would be about 210 magicka(M and A being 1). I see this is a lot lower than the summon lich spell available from merchants which has a base cost of 700 magicka This is further adjusted by your conjuration skill so the effective cost of casting this particular spell for a master in conjuration would be about 42 magicka.
So its definitely better to create your own spells isn't it? Or am I missing something?

I found that custom spells are all around better as they can be tailors to your needs. As to spell costs.... I never really paid attention as my main thing was using short duration effects at their max and never bothered making anything like the spells you can find.

Summon Lich for 40 seconds on Self shouldn't cost 42 magicka with a Mastered Conjuration Skill. That just sounds silly because I know the 20 second spell you buy costs well over 100 magicka at that level.

210 magicka sounds about right for a 40 second custom Lich spell.


I don't know. I never really payed much attention to spell costs either, but I do know a custom spell will cost exactly the same as it's store-bought counterpart.

Like Flash Bolt: Fire Damage 20pts on Target, its base cost is 52. If you made a custom spell with the exact same effect, it would also cost 52 magicka.

However if you broke it down to Fire Damage 10pts for 2 seconds, it would cost significantly less than the straight up 20pt spell.

The thing I don't like about this, and something no one ever seems to realize, it takes 2 seconds for the damage to take full effect. In that 2 seconds a lot can happen.

In that 2 seconds you just got detected and possibly slapped with an assault charge. And while you gain no bounty if they're evil, it's still marked on your record.

In that 2 seconds the enemy most likely get in a hit or two.

This is why I hate custom destruction spells. They all have at least a 1 second duration. Which you'll notice spells like Flash Bolt lack. That nice big fat 20 points of fire damage is dealt the instant Flash Bolt touches the enemy.

When you make a custom spell with several damage effects stacked on top of each other, each one of those effects has to wait a tick before taking effect. I hate it.

Custom spells are better for effects you want to last for long durations like Summons, Healing, and Buffs. They're not so good for killing things quickly.

Well i did a bit more research and can only conclude that while creating conjuration spells, the area of the spell or A is negated from the calculation. The magnitude or M of conjuration spells is always taken 1, so for them, the equation is reduced to:

B = Base Cost / 10
D = Duration

Total cost = B × D

So, the only thing that is dependent is the duration of the spell. Now, this equation conforms with the cost of a standard summon lich spell available at merchants, which is 35x20=700. I suppose that conjuration type spells are strictly defensive, i.e, you can only cast them on self which is why the spell area is not even considered. This should have been mentioned on the spell making page.