What are some good weapon enchantments?

[PrinceJonathan ●]

I recently redecorated White Stallion Lodge using the Construction Set and figured why not add a custom sword to it as well.

I've found out when using the CS to make items I am no longer restricted to the paltry 1600 magicka of a Grand Soul Gem. I can literally make Daedric Artifact-quality enchanted items.

I'm positively drooling at the thought of making a copy of Umbra enchanted with 100 pts of Fire, Frost, Shock, Damage Health, Absorb Health, Drain Health, and Weakness to Magic 100% and giving it several hundred uses.

But that's way too broken as hell!

What would be good on say...a Fine Steel Longsword that would suit a Knight of the White Stallion?

Or would it be better to just leave it blank, boost its base stats up to something on par with the Honorblade of Chorrol, and let players enchant it themselves?

...Hmm...an Honorblade of Leyawiin?

[Chicken Slayer ●]

While you are at it, put an apprentice or journeyman set of alchemy apparati in the Arch Mage's room.

IMO, a good sword to put in White Stallion lodge would be an Ancient Akiviri Katana since a lot of people may not start the main quest until later when better swords are available. It is light-weight (18.00) and powerful (15) for early levels, and would be good to enchant. A fine steel longsword is heavy and already available in Chorral sitting next to a silver shortsword, so there is not much point.


I don't know if you could afford to recharge your mega-super-sword.

What do you want to kill, when do you want to kill it, what difficulty level are you playing, and what is your blade skill going to be?

Here are several considerations.

1) An Honorblade-type sword will be too heavy (44.00) to carry around and swing during early levels, and it will be obsolete at level 20 when daedric longswords show up. Honorblade and Umbra kick butt because they are weightless and effective against ghosts. If you can put in a weightless sword that can be enchanted, it would be nice. When playing weak races, I like to cheat by using permanent bound maces.

2) An enchanted blade in the hands of a blade novice drasticaly lowers the base damage and the sneak bonus, so a big sword to enchant might be wasted.

3) A sword with powerful enchantments early in the game will be difficult to recharge with petty/lesser souls without Azura's star. And, you can get into trouble with soul trap on a weapon when you are carrying around black soul gems and rare grand soul gems when everything trying to kill you has a lesser or petty soul.

4) Early on, most of your killing will be skeletons, men, wolves, etc at 20 hp each, so big damage is wasted.

5) At upper levels, you have the problem of leveled monsters that have over a thousand hit points, but only contain grand souls. You have to weigh power lost to power gained for recharge (1600 for a grand soul).

6) What do you consider breaking the game (1 hit, 2 hits, 3 hits, 10 hits?)

Drain Health 100, Fire 9, Shock 9, Frost 4 (20 charges from a greater soul gem) is a maximally cost effective sword to use against big monsters until Will-o-the Whisps show up at lvl 11. Then it starts to have some trouble due to a light blade and low charges. It is too expensive to use against the everyday rif raf at starting levels unless you have Azura's star. It is light-weight with a silver shortsword. Steel longswords are heavy and their extra damage is fairly insignificant when enchanted. The sword kills zombies in one strike and the formulation takes into consideration the fire weakness of zombies, the fire resistance of Flame Atronachs, and the frost resistance of Undead for the best compromise. You could boost the numbers, but cost of damage increases as you add more units.

For upper levels, fire is the best element for the following reasons: Storm Atros are the toughest non-leveled things out there, so what kills them kills all the rest of the non leveled monsters in the same number of hits or less. They are resistant to shock 100%. Undead are common among the leveled monsters and they are highly resistant to frost but weak to fire. Other leveled monsters (Ogres, minotaur lords, goblin warlords etc) are average in regard to elements, so fire does just as well as shock and frost. Once you have enough fire to kill a Storm Atros, you can start adding Shock to the budget for the leveled guys.


I'll assume that you want the most damage for the least amount of recharge, which means killing in the fewest, cheapest strikes.

You already know this but for those who don't...

The most efficient way to kill, especialy at mid levels, is with Drain Health plus Weakness to Magic. The drawback is that there is a time constraint. The Drain Health stacks based on the number of strikes within the time limit of the weakness, so the first hit does 100 damage, the second does 200, the third does 400, etc. The damage is not permanent. If it does not kill, it dissipates immediately.

If you want to kill in a set number of strikes, you have to add other damages, such as weapon base damage and/or elemental damage. For instance, this sword can kill all non-leveled monsters in two strikes. The toughest customer is a Storm Atronach at 350 hp.

With a grand soul gem capping it at 85 magic units, you have 18 charges
Soul trap 1s
Drain Health 100-1s
Fire 14
Weakness to fire 100-1s
Weakness to Magic 99-3s


Two strikes does 200 drain health damage (on the second strike), so you need 150 points of damage from other sources. Fire = 14+ 55 = 69, so the sword base needs to do 81more. That could be 6x12 + 12 from base damage by way of a single sneak strike and followup hit. Without the sneak attack, it takes three strikes (the stacked Drain Health then does all the work). Efficiency w/ sneak = nine Storm Atros per grand soul gem recharge, w/o sneak = six.


Almost eqivalent are the following swords made with a grand soul gem.

Soul trap 1s
Fire 31
Weakness to Fire 100-1s
Weakness to Magic 100-2s


Soul trap 1s
Fire 21
Shock 14
Weakness to Fire 100-1s
Weakness to Shock 100-1s
Weakness to Magic 100-2s


All three (and similar) can kill a storm atronach in 3-4 hits, and a lvl 54 goblin warlord in 7-8 hits when using a daedric longsword. The elemental swords will not do a two hit sneak kill, but their damage is permanent, which is good when you are getting pounded.

Although a minimum of 7-8 strikes are needed to kill a goblin warlord (30 x lvl 54 = 1620 hp), often a dozen or more hits are needed because of blocking, paralyzing knock downs, and armor. That means recharging after every kill, and sometimes during a fight. A fight needing only a dozen hits to kill is not a big deal unless you run out of charges so adding that would be my first consideration. Assuming that you are restricted to the power to cost ratio of the enchanting alters, adding more damage to the sword also uses more power per hit, so you probably can't afford to use a One Hit Wonder late in teh game. With no restrictions on the sword build I might add more elemental damage to the equivalent of 90-95 up from 85 on the enchanting alter scale but it might be a case of diminishing returns in regard to saving hits via more damage dealt.

[PrinceJonathan ●]

[Chicken Slayer ●]

I do like the look of the fine steel longsword better than most others.

Your bow would be even better if you made it act like silver. Shooting ghosts (in Benerus manor or other places) is a good way to increase marksmanship and conserve arrows (they go through the ghost). I use a permanent bound bow for that, but if you are patched you can't.

It might be because I optimize my characters (5-5-5) and rest between fights to recharge, but I prefer rings etc that help me in the short term to survive in a fight. Boosting magicka-Intelligence or Willpower a little bit with enchantments has never done much for my play. Hot-keyed Sorcery potions and Welkynd stones work well enough for emergencies.

Boosting Destruction (ring) would lower the cost of spells all the time and be better than an intelligence boost, but would it give you an extra spell that would actually make a difference in a fight?

Boosting health/endurance via fortify would help, but it is similar to shielding (and you can always hot-key a health potion).

After a zillion games, these are the things that I find useful and get/make as fast as I can, but you can't play a good guy and get Namira's ring, or play a Bad Guy and get the ring of Aegis, or be a non mage and enchant things w/o sigil stones.

Tower Stone spells = Warden key and Master's hand. To save on hammers, you could make a Master's Hand ring to boost Armorer like some of the gauntlets, and put a bunch of Open Hard Lock scrolls someplace. Many of the ruins with Aylied statues have one or two hard locks in them.

-Feather shoes +25 stolen from either the jewelry store? or the magic store? (+50 or +75 would be better).
-Ring of Aegis, +15 shield (From Fighters guild Bravil quest at level 5)
-Ring of Namira, Reflect damage, Reflect spell (level 5 Namira's quest)
-Ring of Kajiti, +35 chameleon (from Maridia's quest lvl 10)
-Amulet of Night Eye (night-eye is hard to find early in the game)
-Hands of the Atronach (20-20-20 resistance + armor) There is no equivalent for a mage.
-Hood +10 shield (made early in game from a black soul gem)
-Hood +25 Chameleon from sigil stone
-Feather rings

-Need more shackles to enchant for mages to wear. As the game is, you just get the one pair from the beginning.

-At level 1, you can go to Dive Rock and fight the Uber Matron and get a +15 frost bow, which is a really good bow if you are not going into the mage's guild. Even better would be a bow version of the weak fireball spell that would kill things and also help knock down Welkynd stones. I don't know where you would put it though.

[PrinceJonathan ●]

[Chicken Slayer ●]

You can go a long time without finding what you want in dungeon chests. It always seems to be too little too late. I spend most of my dungeon time looking for Ayleid statues early in the game. The money is good from selling stones and statues and I can keep my merchantile low by selling 23 Welkynd stones at a time. All that fighting levels me pretty quickly. Mages need to boost endurance too.

With the destruction ring, I meant that it reduces the cost of a spell, which is the same as giving more magic. I just don't know if it would really make a difference (e.g. 10 flares vs 9). Having a sheild ring and popping a potion might be the better way to go.

Too bad there isn't some artwork for bracelets.

Light armor gauntlets could screw me up two ways. 1) reducing spell effectiveness by up to 7-8% when mixing armor (or possibly alone), and 2) getting hit and bumping up my skill level. It could put me over the top and level me before I had my 5-5-5. I made that mistake by enchanting leather boots with feather once. I chose them because at 1 lb they are lighter than shoes so they sneak more quietly.

You're right about the bow, but the 3x5 sec fire would be cheaper than 15 fire.

I hope Mazoga isn't kinky. I spend to much time living with her. I also hope Linda Carter doesn't use that voice at home. Can you picture Wonder Woman with Mazoga's voice?

Black shoes with gold trim seem to look good with more outfits than the cloddy brown types, but they are a bit gaudy. IIRC there is a difference between male and female versions of some of the brown shoes. I can't picture doeskin right now.

50 is a heck of a lot of shielding at low levels. Full steel armor is around 30 w/o a shield. Are you trying to help low level play or break it in favor of upper level play? Do you plan on waiting to finish the mage's tasks until later levels to get for a better Wizard's Fury spell (that thing sucks up the magic at upper levels). Is there a way to level these items you are putting in?

[PrinceJonathan ●]

When I mentioned leather gauntlets, I meant creating clothing using the Light Armor meshes so it wouldn't impact spell effectiveness.

Sadly this is easier said than done. I thought it would be as simple as unchecking a box, but no it isn't.

If I created a copy of a pair of the Leather Gauntlets, they'd still be classified as Armor.

I tried to make a copy of the Wrist Irons, renaming them Leather Gloves, and then giving them the Leather Gauntlet meshes, but I can't find the blasted .NIF files for them anywhere.

It seems like if you want to create an item with a specific look, you're stuck making a copy of an item that already has that look.

Making an item straight from scratch is looking to be impossible as the CS apparently knows exactly which mesh I'm wanting to use and hides it from me.


Also I haven't learned how to make leveled items yet.

I'm a bit concerned that if I make the Robes, Hood, and Ring leveled and a player sneaks into the Arch-Mage's Quarters early the item's level becomes fixed.

Like if they sneak in to check the place out at level 5, and then complete the Mages Guild questline at level 20, they'd be stuck with the level 5 reward.

Maybe I should remove the items for now and just stick to the non-respawning containers and Master Alchemy apparatuses?

I am happy to report the Nirnroot does respawn as intended though.

[PrinceJonathan ●]

Ok my Lodge is up on Nexus.

I don't know when I'll get around to posting the Arch-Mage's Quarters. I'm still tinkering with it.

[DrewpakS ●]

I know that for a single, solitary weapon, you can put a damage enchantment on it. I know that this enchantment effect then has a chance to will proc with a 4 second cooldown..

[PrinceJonathan ●]