Enchanting
Note that for really good, detailed info on enchanting, you can try ScottG's Compendium of Enchantment on the Summit forum.
How do I get a constant effect enchantment?
To create an item with a constant effect, you must have trapped the soul of a Golden Saint, Ascended Sleeper, Vivec or Dahrk Mezalf in Bthungthumz, a named Dwemer spirit. Note that there are Dagoths, sixth house bosses, who look like ascended sleepers, but do not give constant effect. Note that enchanting your own constant effects is very difficult, and requires boosting intelligence and luck considerably.
How do I get more power in my constant effect items?
If you have patience, and want to get about twice as much power, set the range of magnitude from 1-xx instead of a set value. e.g. if you want to give a ring +10 strength, give it +1-20 instead. Once you have enchanted the item, equip and reequip it until you get the maximum value on the range. Since the enchantment is constant, the value will not change unless you unequip it, so you can gain double the normal power this way.
How do I enchant bows?
Bows can be enchanted, but not with cast upon strikes powers, because these would have to be added to the arrows instead of the bows. Although the Bonemold longbow is heavily enchantable, you can only add passive or cast when used powers to it. You can enchant throwing stars or darts, but you have to enchant them one at a time.
How do I enchant / soul trap?
- Step one: find an empty soul gem.
- Step two: get a soul trap spell / item / scroll
- Step three: find beastie. Cast soul trap on beastie. You must now kill the monster before the soul trap spell wears off in order for the soul to be captured.
- Step four: Drag gem onto portrait in inventory or go to an enchanter to bring up the enchantment window.
To assign effects, you must know a spell of the type you are trying to add, just like in spellmaker.
How do I actually have a chance of succeeding at enchanting?
To be able to succeed at powerful enchantments, luck and intelligence have as much effect as enchant skill. It is worth raising them using alchemy, and then enchanting a selection of rings and amulets to give you huge boosts to your stats for short periods of time. You can stack these bonuses, so if you use two rings, each giving +100 intelligence, you get +200. You can also use guild enchanters, who always succeed, but they are very expensive.
How do I increase my enchant skill?
The best way to increase enchant skill is to recharge items. Whenever a soul gem is filled, use a magic item and then use the soul gem to recharge it. Without using recharging, petty and lesser gems have no purpose, and the enchant skill becomes impossible to increase substantially without using the master trainer.
How do I afford enchantment?
Although guild enchanters are very expensive, most allow you to trade items as well as pay in cash, so enchanting is a good way to clear out any valuable items you want to sell.
Where can I get soul gems for enchantment purposes?
You can find petty gems in many crates at random. Lesser are in the Mages' Guild supply chests, which respawn only if you empty the chests completely. Common can be found on Bonelords fairly often. Best of all, Fadase Selvayn, in her shop in Tel Branora, has a respawning supply of petty, lesser and common soul gems.
What Enchantments Should I Make?
See the enchantment and spell advice section after the FAQ pages.
Alchemy
How do I increase my alchemy skill?
The quickest way to increase alchemy is to scavenge common ingredients out of crates, or buy them en masse from alchemists. Saltrice and other fatigue restoring ingredients are very cheap, and the potions are very easy to make, allowing you to quickly boost alchemy by mass potion production.
What ingredients should I hang onto?
Anything with: restore fatigue, strength, health or magic, and anything which fortifies intelligence or luck. These are the potions I produce most of the time, and although others, such as levitate, can come in handy, these are the most important.
How do I make extra powerful potions?
The power of your potions depends on your intelligence and luck, as well as your alchemy skill. If you produce a few fortify intelligence and luck potions, and drink them, you can then produce another batch which will have a greater effect. You can continue to stack these potions, which get more and more powerful, until your statistics are almost permanently into tens of thousands of points. This rather unbalances the game, so it is best to avoid doing this.