I'm on my second playthrough, I can't remember why but my duel wielding daedric swords and daedric bow, I have to keep charging them very often. I have an 100 smithing, 100 enchanting with both of those perks maxed out. I am at 76 alchemy with the first perk in the tree leveled twice which is 60% stronger. So with all of that I can't figure out why I have to keep charging these items? In my first playthrough I remember I got to a point to where I never had to charge them except for every once in a while. Anybody remember what's the deal with this?

Did you take the Perk in enchanting where souls recharge twice as much? What enchantments are on the weapon? ex: The higher your destruction level, the slower fire, ice and electricity enchanted items drain.

I thought I had my enchanting tree maxed out with nothing left on it, I will have to look again.

The Enchantment on the weapon is a factor. For example, at first I had Absorb Health/Fire Damage on my Glass Daggers, Enchanting tree maxed out except for Soul Squeezer and one that charges your weapons when you kill animals. It gave me I think about 60 charges or so, something REALLY low that I easily tore through. So I get another dagger, go back to the drawing board and just see what charges it gives me out of Fire/Shock Damage, and it was 101 charges. So yeah, Absorb x enchantments do give you less charges.

You can see how many charges the first enchant gives you when you select it and it asks you to set how much damage or whatever it should do.

I have soul trap and fire damage on both swords, I'll have to make sure I have everything maxed out maybe I don't. I thought I did but could be wrong. Next time I'm on, I'll have to see what's happening.

Just to clarify a bit further:

Weapons that can be enchanted has a "charge capacity". For reference a grand soul gems has a charge of 3000.
When you enchant a weapon in-game you get a choice between stronger effect and more charges.

When you add an enchantment in the Creation Kit you get a much better overview of capacity and costs.
Every type of enchantment has a base cost which is modified by the magnitude/duration. Every weapon as I've mentioned has a charge capacity. So charge capacity / cost = number of uses. If you want more uses you either increase the capacity or decrease the cost.

I think Soul Trap is one of them enchants that devours charges but I'm not 100% sure. I just stick to Fire/Frost/Shock damage for the most part.

Of course Soul Trap uses a Charge, it is an Enchanted Spell.

If you want to use less charge per use, then either make a weaker enchantment so it uses less charge per use, or, train up the magic school for the Spell that is Enchanted on to your weapon.

Besides, it's not like Soul Gems are hard to find in this game, almost every merchant sells them, filled or empty.

CCNA is right....high-leveled mages get much more charges from an enchanted weapon.

Nah I knew it used enchants, but like I said before, certain enchants offer less charges than others, regardless of the magnitude of the spell. Like the maximum magnitude for Absorb Magicka is going to give your weapon less charges than say, Shock Damage at max magnitude.

I got mine up through enchanting cheap equipment somwhere round a thousand once and I find that the more damage I get more charges. Probly my end though

I assume that base cost is varied depending upon the enchant, right? I suspect that the BC is reflected in the *value* of the enchant, so that, e.g., the banish enchant probably has the highest base cost? Followed by paralyze and (probably?) the absorb enchants? I guess what I'm getting at is that you can essentially glean the relative BC relationship between the enchants simply by looking at the gold value for each at an enchanting table. (Though, correct me if I'm wrong.)

Absorb is very powerful as it both heal you and deal damage so it should be more expensive, and maxed out double charges eat charge fast.
I prefer an small frost damage for the speed debuff on bow, uses absorb health on sword.