Honestly not sure what you mean.. Gloves, boots, and jewelry are very useful when enchanted for mage purposes. Examples would be Fortify Magicka and Magicka Regen. Also carry weight enchantments are just plain helpful.

That will in the end make you squishy and an easy kill for most NPC's. Wear enchanted armor and use magic. Pure Mage has serious downsides in my opinion so you should have a staff and some sort of sword or dagger.

Daedric wrote That will in the end make you squishy and an easy kill for most NPC's. Wear enchanted armor and use magic. Pure Mage has serious downsides in my opinion so you should have a staff and some sort of sword or dagger.

i did the whole enchanted armor thing on my last save. its fun, but this go around i want a harder challenge

you will certainly have a harder challenge. I've tried going through games using mostly or only magic, and most spells just aren't strong enough to deal with multiple opponents, you have to get very creative with using them in combination with shouts (hunt the walls early). putting aside damage though, daedric is right that armor is important. I love the iron armor, but even that isn't much at later levels and I really can't just burst into a room full of guys unprepared. the other problem, and the reason you certainly should be wearing gloves and everything you can find, is that you will start to run out of magic really quickly in some fights. enchantments are important, especially if you want to use the more powerful wards. they suck magic like crazy.

it will certainly be hard though, I mean with little or no armor archers especially will kill you quick.

Wear a Adept Destruction Robe, then your a TANK.

If your going to be a PURE mage then you need to go down the Alteration perk tree because there are 3 perks you can invest to make yourself less vulnerable. It makes magic armor spells 3 times as powerful if your not wearing any armor at all. Ebonyflesh is one of the best and if you have all 3 perks into that particular Alteration perk then it's 3 times stronger than normal. It adds 100 to your armor rating, so in the end since you'll only be wearing clothes with no armor it turns your armor rating to 300.

i understand as a pure mage you can wear robes and hoods, dragon priest masks, circlets, etc. but is it okay for a pure mage to wear gloves?

It is not ok for you to wear dragon priest masks because they are armor and as long as the gloves your wearing aren't armor then your fine.

K1ngJ3d1 wrote It is not ok for you to wear dragon priest masks because they are armor and as long as the gloves your wearing aren't armor then your fine.

Is there an alternative to masks? im running arch mages robes