Skyrim talk:Enchanting/Archive 4

This is an archive of past Skyrim talk:Enchanting discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page, except for maintenance such as updating links.

Alchemy's Effect in Optimizing Enchanting

Player made potions (32%) as opposed to the 25% built in potion only increase the enchanting multiplier from 3.52 to 3.65. While it's true that this IS technically required for maximum optimization, it only increases the power of most enchantments by a single point at absurd the cost of 7 perks (for a non-alchemist). It should be noted in the optimizing section, for those without the time or knowledge to do the calculations themselves, that it has such a minimal effect on the total power.--Liudeius 16:25, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

It can actually have a huge effect on total power, when everything is combined. Without using the Fortify Restoration exploit, the highest you can make is +29% Fortify Alchemy gear. Since you can wear a Falmer Helmet over a circlet, you can get five of those worn. Do that and you can get about 37% Fortify Enchanting potions (I forget the exact number; I'm posting while at work so I can't check here). Then combine that to make 29% Fortify Smithing gear and 147% Fortify Smithing potions. You can temper daedric swords up to ~400 damage, assuming you have 100 skill and all the appropriate perks in both smithing and the weapon skill. And yes, it does make things ridiculously easy if you go this route.Quillan^Talk 14:36, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

True, but glitched "two of a kind" enchants aren't taken into account for any of the "optimized stats", and depending on a player's skill point allotment, 7 perks in Alchemy for the Smithing bonus may actually reduce total damage (say if they skipped maxing Armsman for Alchemy). Lastly this is the Enchanting page, with regards to Enchanting it works out to be a percent or two of difference. I think it should be noted exactly what the effects of the seven alchemy perks are, perhaps that is too in-depth for this page, but then maybe optimization needs its own page. After all, optimizing relates to Smithing, Alchemy, and Enchanting (in addition to weighting perks spent on them against others which may be chosen), yet so far as I'm aware the Enchanting-Alchemy loop is only mentioned in detail on the Enchanting page. Liudeius 04:56, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Doesn't seem to work for me with the current patch. Though the effect is described as endlessly stacking, the biggest potion I can make is +65% to alchemy, and when used, it only adds +21%. The effect on improving enchantments by then crafting a fortify enchantment potion is small enough to be considered nil. While my alchemy skill isn't all that great (mid twenties), the effect is described in the article as endlessly stacking, but it doesn't. It is apparently only truly useful if you already have 100 alchemy or close to it. 67.0.81.88

Effects of Enchanting a Shield?

Under which circumstances would a shield enchanted with a resistance (magic, fire, etc) grant its effect? Only while blocking or always while equipped? — Unsigned comment by 23.16.182.68 (talk) at 07:43 on 23 July 2012

While equipped. I'd recommend resistance to magic, or even taking Spellbreaker. Elakyn 08:01, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

Doing Fire/Frost isn't a bad option, either. That covers all traps, all dragons, and roughly 2/3 of spellcasters and runes (assuming an even number you encounter use Fire, Frost, or Shock damage). VycDarkshadow (talk) 23:01, 25 November 2012 (GMT)

Elemental Damage contradiction in the notes section

In the notes section there is this statement:

• "Other destruction perks that activate on elemental damage (such as Intense Flames) do not activate from elemental damage enchants on weapons"

Followed by:

• "Elemental enchantment strength on weapons is enhanced by your Destruction School bonuses. For example, the Augmented Flames perk will increase a fire enchanted weapon's damage, as will a Fortify Destruction potion"

Which one is it? Raven Duskstrider 04:54, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

They mean that enchantments on weapons don't benefit from perks like Intense Flames or Disintegration, and of course are not cheaper based on the perks that cut spell cost in half, but they are actually affected by the Augmented perks that simply increase the damage of elemental destruction spells.--Playerseekingbugs 05:53, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Arcane Enchanter timer! ??

Should this be mentioned in the notes? On the PC, patch 1.6+ the clock is running while enchanting. Once the duration of an enhancing potion runs out the enchanting ability drops back to normal without any warning. Thus you can plug away creating enchantments only to discover only the first one or few were done at the enhanced level. When enchanting a bunch of junk to increase enchanting skill this means you can go through dozens of potions. Sniffles 12:07, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

I think it should be mentioned. I've run afoul of it many times, causing me to reload a save and start over. I believe the timer pauses while you are renaming your item, but I'm not positive about that. I've only ever been able to enhance the enchantment on 2 or 3 items before the current potion's effect wears off, and that's if I don't dally. I know it's not a huge deal, but I think it deserves at least a note. --Xyzzy^Talk 16:03, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. I find it a little irritating myself how the fortify potions for crafting work. I feel like making it good for one session (expiring when you actually stop using a station) would have been a better idea. That's mostly how fortify barter ends up working after all.--Playerseekingbugs 06:57, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

I've always just looked at the enchantments themselves. They drop when the potion expires, giving you time to look your enchanted item over, realize your potion is expired, and get out to pop another one. Barter only works differently because the game literally freezes during sales. While making potions, armor, enchantments, etc., the game is still going. You can even be attacked while making these items, which pops you out of the creation screen entirely.

With that said, it'd be nice if there was an actually "countdown timer" on the corner of the screen or something, to make it easier to tell how much time you actually have left. VycDarkshadow (talk) 23:05, 1 January 2013 (GMT)

Moved detailed walkthrough

Moved from article

Optimizing When getting into end-game situations, or simply wishing to maximize your damage outputs, one can use Enchanting, Alchemy, and Smithing to do incredible things for both melee and ranged users.

Be aware: Pursuing enhanced enchantments using these methods can produce tremendously powerful equipment but at the expense of all other aspects of character development.

In Brief:

1. Gather equipment & ingredients
2. Go to guardian stones and choose (probably) thief stone for bonus exp for alchemy making
3. Disenchant (destroy & learn) the Fortify Alchemy enchantment
4. Begin the rotation
   1. Make sure you have at least 4 best soul stones you can get in inventory
   2. Check Effects for "Fully Rested" bonus - if not present get 8 hours rest in bed
   3. Drink (best in inventory) Enchanting potion
   4. Enchant up to 2 alchemy items of head, neck, arm and hand - within 30 seconds
   5. Drink another Enchanting potion
   6. Enchant up to 2 more alchemy items
   7. Wear most recent alchemy boost items
      1. Go to Alchemy trainer and train 5 levels
      2. Build up Alchemy skill higher by making other potions, more expensive (sell) = more alchemy skill boost
      3. Be careful not to use up the components you will need for Enchant potion making
      4. If you have just character leveled, repeat
      5. Once alchemy skill is raised (__ levels), stop making more potions for this round
         at this point making a new Enchanting potion will be of higher enough level to be worthwhile making more alchemy apparel (worth the soul stones, higher enough boost in enchanting bonus, etc.)
   8. Make Alchemy potions (at least 2)
   9. Sell your older alchemy apparel
   10. Repeat and make a better set of alchemy apparel

In Detail:

1. Get enchanting, alchemy, and smithing to 100. Smithing is the easiest to power-level (before patch 1.5), with enchanting close behind. Use your 5 training sessions on Alchemy, as it takes the longest. If you can, grab any necessary smithing perks for your armor/weapon choices. If you have the perks to spend, grab all levels of the pure power perks (the first one) for alchemy and enchanting, and the insightful enchanter perk.
2. Buy or make a bunch of cheap sets of clothes or armor of any kind for: Hands, Feet, Body, Necklace, Ring, and helm.
3. Stock up on Grand Souls and certain ingredients by any means necessary.
   1. Ingredients for Fortify Enchanting (Choose any two of the four): Blue Butterfly Wing, Hagraven's Claw, Snowberries, and Spriggan Sap.
   2. Ingredients for Fortify Smithing (Choose any two of the four): Blisterwort, Glowing Mushroom, Sabre Cat Tooth and Spriggan Sap.
   3. Ingredients for Fortify Restoration (if you want to use the stackable Restoration 'glitch') (Choose any two of the five): Abecean Longfin, Cyrodilic Spadetail, Salt Pile, Small Antlers and Small Pearl
4. Make sure you know the enchanting effects you want on your final armor, as well as Fortify Alchemy and Fortify Smithing
5. At the Arcane Enchanter enchant one full set of Fortify Alchemy apparel. A set of alchemy apparel will have one item for head, neck, arm and hand. e.g. Circlet, necklace, bracers, and ring. (Alternatively, if you don't mind using the Falmer helmet glitch, you can wear one together with the mask Krosis or an alchemy enchanted circlet, giving you five alchemy buff slots instead of four.)
6. Then, wear the alchemy clothes, and verify using Active Effects that the enchanting effects are active. There seems to be a bug where sometimes enchanted items' effects are not active upon wearing. To correct just remove and then re-equip enchanted items. (At this point, you can also use the Fortify Restoration exploit, see notes below).
7. Now make some Fortify Enchanting potions using combinations of: Blue Butterfly Wings, Hagraven's Claws, Snowberries, and the Spriggan sap. Alternatively, there are two respawning Enchanter's Philters in the Archmage's Quarters at the College of Winterhold; these increase the strength of enchantments by 20% for 60 seconds.
8. At the enchanter, drink the strongest enchanting potion you made or found, and enchant a new set of items with Fortify Alchemy.
9. This enchanting bonus lasts 30 seconds. Depending on how fast you click and whether you rename anything you can perhaps enchant two items while the bonus lasts, but after two iterations the Fortify Enchanting potion will have worn off (xbox tested).
10. Make some final Fortify Enchanting potions, and some Fortify Smithing potions (using Blisterwort, Glowing Mushrooms, Sabre Cat Tooth, and Spriggan Sap) to get your enchanting back up to max, and enchant your chosen weapons and armor as you please.
11. Also, at the enchanter (and while your enchant potion is on) enchant a final set of cheap items with Fortify Smithing. Then, head to a smithy with a grindstone and workbench.
12. Finally, wear your smithing items and equip the Notched Pickaxe, drink your smithing potion, and improve any weapons and armor you have. You will, of course, need materials to do it, but most should be fairly easy to come by. You will probably reach the armor cap with any armor you're wearing, and increase your weapons to massive heights (more than 500), especially with any offensive skill enchants.

Keep in mind that while using the Arcane Enchanter the clock is running. Potion effects will wear off quite quickly while you work your way through the various menus. Effective enchantments using these methods require careful planning. It is easy to not notice your potion effects have worn off.

• If you have 4 fortify alchemy 20% equipment and 100 alchemy with the benefactor perk, after 4 iterations, if you craft a fortify enchanting potion, drink it, and enchant an item with 100 enchanting and all the perks, you can enchant items to have 764% cost reduction in the magic school of your choice, or 1528 increase in health permanently. If you equip the items and never remove them, you will have around 64000% cost reduction and around 120000 health increase. Needless to say, if you choose to use fortify combat skills, you will one hit kill everything, including dragons and bosses on master difficulty on the highest level.

I have removed all of this, because a walkthrough on leveling a skill is unneeded and cluttering. The hints and tips and a walkthrough on how to enchant an item is all that is needed. The Silencer speaks^Talk 18:38, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

I think the optimizing info in this article should be somewhere in the Wiki, even if it's not here. Maybe we should list this on an "Optimizing page", similar to this one for Oblivion, and only provide a link from the Enchanting, Alchemy, and Smithing pages to that one. I personally don't like to use exploits to create an all-powerful character (most of the time ;)), as it takes away some of the enjoyment (for me), but I know other users of the wiki like this kind of thing. --Xyzzy^Talk 00:13, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

How about in the Hints section? A new heading: End Game Optimizing Sniffles 08:15, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Obviously, the issue remains. I agree with Xyzzy above. And Sniffles. But I think there should be a clear and prominent link to the information on each skill page and on the "skills" page. Call it what it is. Give information about what it is before the information itself, equip people with precautions. Some will benefit from them. Many are looking for or talking about this information. They often don't know how to search for it in even mildly sophisticated ways. We need to make it easy to find, but not supply "cheating" as advice (especially without saying so, and especially if some people want to say it's not cheating!!)

I did some tests on this several versions ago (versions of the game and versions of this topic), and everything worked as described, at the time (pretty much as above, I think) though the description was complex. The subsection currently on the page seems to be a "half explanation" of "the procedure," as it no longer specifically describes how to boost the Fortify Alchemy enchantment via "equip/unequip," but still alludes to it explicitly and implicitly. I've just taken a stab at simplifying it. I agree that it should be prominently referenced on each relevant skill page, and placed somewhere else, or maybe in a show-hide table on each relevant skill article. There may be mixed opinions on whether "it" or part of "it" can be described as "optimizing" or "cheating", and that may be for good reason. It's possible to speculate that it works as the developers intended it. (They may have wanted fortify restoration to "act on itself" and combine with inter-related skills such as alchemy, enchanting, alchemy and smithing, etc.) It's likely that they did not intend to provide a way for players to become "infinitely skillful," at least that should be easily discovered, but who can say? I think I can handle testing and reorganizing the information, but I want to focus on other things for a while. I think that "making exploits" a little or a lot harder to find is not smart, because so many people are and have been interested in it, that every time it's pushed under something, frustration ensues, and it ends up being put back into the article into seemingly less and less coherent form. If no one else wants to do it, I'll probably want to take a stab at engineering a better solution from a perspective that needs to be both broad and precise. For now, I think it works well enough to supply most users with something that a significant number obviously want to know about and keep alive, even if not very well.

Offhand, I think it should be all put together, that any elements needing testing or verification get such, and that the information be placed so that it is easy to find, but places more than one "barrier" against people getting information on cheating that's being presented as something different than cheating--or reasonably perceiving things that way.--JR (talk) 14:17, 9 January 2013 (GMT)

I don't think we can call it "cheating", it's not like having some super-boosted equipment makes you invincible. I agree that it takes away some of the fun and makes the game much less challenging but not more than lowering the difficulty or installing a mod that makes you ridiculously overpowered. One could argue that toying around with console commands can be cheating too, but we have a page for it; it's a feature in the game and it can be easily documented -several people have- I don't see why we shouldn't include it.Elakyn (talk) 15:51, 9 January 2013 (GMT)

Thanks Elakyn. None that I know of has said that it shouldn't be on the wiki. The question is about where and how to put it to best serve a variety of users with a variety of needs and preferences. Do you have any input on that?

"Cheating" is not intended to have a moral valence to it here. Replace the concept with "optimizing" or any other, and there is still a reaon why the game doesn't pop up with a tutorial on how to make a fur sword flatten an entire hold. Whatever that is, and whether it is to be scorned or celebrated, it's why we should want to think through where and how to place the content. I'd be happy to put my head together with yours if you are interesting to contributing, just contact me on my talk page, or reply here. --JR (talk) 16:42, 9 January 2013 (GMT)

As a reference, this topic is also discussed at Skyrim_talk:Skills#Enchanting_.22cheat.22_-_better_explanation_please. — Unsigned comment by JR (talk • contribs) at 05:52 on 10 January 2013

A Xyzzy and Sniffles said it; making a page that revolves around optimizing equipment, and linking to it from each crafting skill and from the Hints page. That way it would be easy to find and wouldn't take any room on other pages, so it can be clearer and only revolve around the skill in itself. At least that's what I think. Elakyn (talk) 09:18, 10 January 2013 (GMT)

(←) OK. I agree. We'll make a page somewhat like the OB page, though I don't know the best title for the page. It can be used with all the skills, or most of them. I'll stay in touch with the development of this. And maybe try to drive it at some point, if still needed. --JR (talk) 12:00, 10 January 2013 (GMT)

Enchantments inexplicably stronger in active effects

According to the active effects menu, all of the effects of my enchanted equipment are 20% more powerful than listed in their respective enchantments, i.e. one ring that is enchanted to fortify destruction by 25% and resist magic 25% is in actuality fortifying destruction 31% and resisting magic 31%. It is unclear to me what would cause this; I recently became a vampire, thought I am unsure if that is at all relevant. I would really appreciate understanding why these effects are being boosted. Also, my circlet's enchantments are listed twice as well, which I presume to be a bug of some sort. — Unsigned comment by 24.179.174.169 (talk) at 04:10 on 23 August 2012

Do you have the Necromage perk from the Restoration tree? If so, it will boost all effects (enchanting, skill, potions) by 25% and their duration by 50%. --Skyhirider 10:59, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Also, if the circlet is enchanted with two effects, it (or any such item) will be listed twice. Technically it's once for each effect, but each listing has both effects shown in the tooltip. Quillan^Talk 12:06, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Confusing note

I'm not sure what "Learning new enchantments increases the skill Apparel Effects at a much higher rate than Weapon Effects." means. Perhaps there's supposed to be a semicolon after the word "skill"? Because as it's written, it sounds like it referring to a non-existent pair of skills. Airos (talk) 02:25, 18 November 2012 (GMT)

I just removed the note entirely, it's already under Gaining Skill XP: Disenchanting items gives widely varied skill increases, dependent on the effect learned and the magnitude on the item, with apparel effects generally giving larger increases than weapon effects. Silence is Golden^{Break the Silence} 02:42, 18 November 2012 (GMT)

Soul Siphon buggy?

It seems Soul Siphon does not work with bows, is that right or intended? — Unsigned comment by 87.152.177.238 (talk) at 21:17 on 8 December 2012

I haven't noticed it working on swords either, honestly. Either it applies to specifically "creatures only" (meaning not animals, daedra, etc), or it doesn't work at all. VycDarkshadow (talk) 23:02, 1 January 2013 (GMT)

Finding out max, unboosted values

Is there a place to find what the values are for every enchantment at level 100 with all relevant perks? It seems that that would be a really good page to have. Of course it mentions that fortify magic skill precentages are 25% because it lets you get free spells but I don't see a mention of any other enchantment.--Catmaniac66 (talk) 23:02, 29 December 2012 (GMT)

Considering there are 52 different achievements, and in combinations of two (with the perk) and can be applied to eight different types of items in various combinations, along with figuring out EXACTLY how to maximize enchanting (with potions, which then have to be boosted to maximum effectiveness by fortify alchemy enchantments), putting all that on one page isn't really all that reasonable. Jeancey (talk) 23:13, 29 December 2012 (GMT)

Ok I will give you that I forgot to say unboosted by anything other than the skill, because you can exploit alchemy like crazy. However the enchantments would not change no matter what they were applied to nor in what combinations. So the number would be 52. It would not be unreasonable to have a list for 100, max perks effects because that would be the most common situation for anyone looking to seriously enchant. Then from there they could do their own math. I'll work on one soon.--Catmaniac66 (talk) 08:23, 30 December 2012 (GMT)

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