While that's true, I'm not a fan of attacking boss-level necromancers and such at a lower level!  The one in Illinalta's Deep next to the boss chest is a Necromancer Adept at the weakest, and I'd rather not melee with her again on a character lower level than 6.  On my test run, it took me about 45 seconds of dedicated hack-and-slash to take her down.  NPCs and their infinite magicka... :\

Update: Who cares about gaining levels?

I got lucky and Calixto dropped a Ring of Minor Magicka.  I am now a level 2 mage who can cast Flame Cloak. Almost up to 100 petty soul gems, as well.

Okay, so with the Dragonborn update, stahlrim is introduced. Since this class is based on synergy, among other things, I'd like to mention that if you add a frost enchantment onto the weapon/armor first and, say, lightning enchantment to deal with pesky mages; both enchantments would be increased by 200% (maybe 175% for the second enchant, I could've miscalculated) each, this is extremely helpful for taking anyone out extremely quickly. The reason this happens is because any frost enchant on stahlrim is amped by 25%.

I'm sure. Mason knows, but he's limited his time in the. Blog

I was just pointing it out in case someone came across the build and wanted to make it more powerful, for whatever reason, or add a more warrioresque feeling to it. Or if soemone wants to add a smithing aspect to it

The merchant perk is still worth it and is not difficult to get at all, it actual help with the gameplay IMO it boost the experience further , once you have it don't have to worry completely about loots or if some skills are quite under level

Also don't worry getting +200 soul gems right off the bat , get it in groups about 50+  is more than enough earlier, obviously you need it higher as you level up , but you find more gems empty and filled as you play the game, dwemer ruins, mora's realm and the soul cairn are the best places

Especially the soul cairn although some gamers hate that place

I see some people mentioning investing in the Speech perks to dump enchanted items quickly for cash.  While that's certainly cool, if you want to save those 3 perks don't forget the "punch a merchant" technique.  If you save your game, hit a merchant (don't need to kill them, just get them to go aggro) and then reload your saved game that merchant will restock his/her inventory including cash on hand.  It's up to you to decide whether that is more trouble than trotting from merchant to merchant or fast-traveling from town to town to sell your wares.  Also, some people may consider it a "bug" and prefer to avoid it on those grounds.

The merchant biggest feature is any trainer can buy anything

The trainers in the college can't buy potions or enchanted daggers, with the merchant they can , since both enchanting or alchemy require huge bulk of items, you can use all those daggers and potions to gain your money back and keep training, you can even gain 10 levels on a skills instantly without worring about gold and even at highest skill and level

Also with that perk you can buy other items, some of those even rare

So I have a question about the synergy with the enchantments on weapons. If I have augmented flame, shock, and frost, will it improve the chaos damage enchantment? And if I place the chaos enchantment on a weapon with those perks will it still increase the second enchantment that I place on the weapon?

The benefits of all three sets of enchantments will stack multiplicitavely. If you place an enchant like Absorb Health, it will be massively boosted! Some reports have hinted that only the shock damage of the chaos enchant will deal higher damage because of the synergy, though.