Was just about to post that's what it was. haha.

Question: I'm pretty sure it does, .. does this loop or whatever you call it... ruin the game?

And can it be helpful in Master Mode?

How do you guys recommend using enchantment slots for my swords etc.? I was thinking about fire damage for swords but is fortify 1 handed better? Also, I think agent of mara is only +15 magic resist and not actually 15%.

Bladesman crits are 1.5x normal damage, so 3/3 grants you a ~15% damage boost. Not a great return on your perk points; that's one reason I'll be using Maces.


It will give you godlike powers, thereby trivializing much of the game's content. If that would "ruin the game" for you, then yes.


Godlike powers are "helpful" on any difficulty setting, but those powers are most effectively used on Master difficulty, as less of your mitigation and damage output is being wasted.


A list of available weapon enchants can be found http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Enchanting_Effects. Note that "Fortify One Handed" isn't among them. This is a great subject for min/maxing which I don't believe we've addressed yet.

Assuming you haven't perked Destruction for increased Fire/ Frost/ Shock damage (since doing so increases the damage from weapon enchants), Absorb Health and Absorb Stamina seem to be the most effective weapon enchants for maximizing damage output, with Absorb Stamina being the more important of the two. Chain standing power attacks produces maximum DPS for a dual wielding attacker, so ensuring you have the Stamina to keep doing that is most important. Any extra damage you get from an elemental enchant won't come close to making up for the loss of DPS you experience from running out of Stamina.

I'd be interested to hear other thoughts on this.

In the OP it states that all weapons except the dagger can be improved to over 500 damage. I just went through this whole process, and I dont exactly have that.
Daedric Sword = 191
Daedric Mace = 197
Daedric Bow = 155

Did I do something wrong?

Edit: Before you ask, yes, I have 100 One Handed Skill, and 5/5 Armsman.

Edit again: Is it enchants that make it pass that threshold? Fortify One Handed and all that?

It's a couple of things

- First of all you will have to improve the weapons while wearing maxed out* Fortify Smithing gear (4x29%) AND using a maxed out Fortify Smithing Potion (130%)
- Secondly you will have to wear 4xFortify One-Handed gear (4x47%) (which can only be created with maxed out Fortify Enchanting Potions (32%)
- all of the above can only be reached by maxing Smithing, Alchemy and Enchanting plus investing in the respective Perks plus maxing out the weapon skill of your choice.

*technically this gear is not "maxed out" since there is a bug/exploit including Fortify Restoration Potions allowing the player to improve equipment ad infinitum.

1. fortify 1 hand is in the list, and it is in the game. ^ Check again.

2. I've used absorb stamina and it blows. 25 points of absorb stamina only recovers about 20% per hit while a sprinting power attack drains almost 60% of my stamina bar. In fact I do think that elemental enchants are better, provided the player did stack perks from enchant and destruction trees to reach the reported +78 shock + 78 frost damage on one weapon - that's 156 points of additional damage. My 2h deadric greataxe can often send enemies to the edge of death without any enchants on masters (shy of high HP mobs like dragons and giants), thus I find that pushing for more damage is a better choice than going for absorb series of enchants.

The issue I see here is that absorb stamina is a static recharge. I've seen a dual enchant combination (shock + absorb stamina) that gives 37 points of stamina per strike, though I didn't opt for that as I was using a 2h weapon, and I needed soul trap. Now if one of the rebalancing coding done next year is to change absorb stamina into a dynamic % based off your total stamina points, I think it is worth considering.

RIght now the default tactic is to level restoration and invest 2 perk points in Respite. That solves all melees' problems of running out of stamina in combat.

edit: In hindsight I should have gone ahead and enchant my 2h greataxe with elemental attacks. If I need to steal souls I could always use the Mace of Molag Bal.

the the list is WRONG and should be edited.
fortify onehanded can only be put on rings/necks/boots/gloves NOT on weapons.

to one of the above posters : magic resist is ALWAYS a % value. it does not exist otherwise. so mara buff IS 15%. which makes it one of the best and easiest to get buffs out there.

i really hope some modder finds a way to fix the ebony blade before the ck comes :/ that thing would be the best 2hand weapon out there if perks and upgrades worked on it...

how much damage does fire soultrap do with the destruction perks ? anyone tested this?

My bad, weapon enchants. For some reason I thought Whisk3yjack was refering to fortify 1hand as a standard enchantment.

Hello, for XBOX360 players, if you are planning to wear the Worn Shrouded equipment, PLEASE pick it up and keep it during the Cure For Madness quest from the dark brotherhood!

If you do not pick it up, you will not be able to get it again after you've upgraded the Sanctuary!

The worn shrouded gloves, boots and cowl will appear in the Master's bedroom after you've upgraded the sanctuary BUT will simply disappear and not show up in your inventory after you loot it!

I'm pretty sure this is a bug since bethseda would not intend the items to poof after you've looted them.

Worn Shrouded has the added "benefit" that it can't be improved at all through Smithing. It simply doesn't show up in the menu

The enchants make an enormous difference, yes.

I only played DW so here my Feedback. A DW Attack seems to drain (only a "ballpark number) ~50 Stamina, maybe less. As far as I know it deals twice the weapon Damage plus Perks. Let's say ~1500 with dual swords, maces or axes. Thus one 25 absorb would equal roughly 750 Damage. This exceeds any single enchantment by far - especially considering you would have to spend quite a lot of additional perks in maximizing the enchant. Even if the attack would drain 100 or 200 stamina the absorb enchant would be stronger DPS-wise.

Checking the numbers without fortify enchantments, I actually have better numbers than what is listed in the OP. I suspect this is purely because of the Ancient Knowledge Perk increasing smithing effectiveness.

Insightful post.

I'm assuming your numbers are with fortify 1h potions taken into consideration? Cause at base 1h's maxed damage is somewhere around 500? My 2h deadric greataxe is barely breaking 600 at max without fortify 2h potions. As Jerich mentioned way back, we don't really need potions for the majority of the battles. In light of this observation, I will suggest drawing up 2 templates, one set of enchantments at base and one set for potions buffed, set it against the various context that the game throws at us and fine tune it from there?

I have to agree that DW does edge out 2h by virtue of a few things:

i.) base damage is multiplied, but that's not a massive improvement over 2h
ii.) Dual Savagery is where it counts, as both 1h and 2 have access to Critical Charge
iii.) possibly uses less stamina than 2h per single swing, but more combined? Offset by absorb stamina in each weapon
iv.) DW offers 4 enchantment slots over 2h's 2 enchantment slots.

Will definitely test this out against my 2h build.

Revisiting another issue, I've come to accept that most helms in Skyrim are ugly. The only one I truly appreciate is the deadric helm that makes my toon looks like a dark knight from Final Fantasy. My current project is to have maxed AR on a non matching set of fur armour + scaled boots + scaled gloves + a circlet. This creates 2 problems, namely that I cannot take advantage of Matching Set and Custom Fit. Allow me to first stress that I think https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJ9m7owVg_w&feature=related, but I have no qualms about using it nor do I make apologies about it in a current state where magic resistances are broken.

Now I can naturally take 4/5 ranks of Agile Defender, and it should (not tested yet) still hit the cap. But that does not address the magic resistance issue and the earliest we're going to be witnessing a fix is next Monday, assuming no further snafus on Beth's part and I can always roll back a save file where I didn't mess around with the resoration glitch.

If I remember correctly: Yes. But you swing with both weapons plus get Dual Savagery bonus plus whatever bonus a Power Attack in general gives - minus Armor. I did not play a lot of dual wield and when I did it was dual dagger making Absorb Stamina somewhat of a no-brainer due to factor 45 in a Backstab. I remember seeing a weapon damage of ~6500 displayed full buffed with orc racial, marksman and fortify one handed with dual maces though. Anyways: Even if an attack would only deal 500 damage and cost 100 stamina the absorb stamina would equal 125 Damage. I can't think of many scenarios where elemental damage would outshine it damagewise. Unless you're using a bow, where stamina is rather a non-issue.

The cost may be 100, but the requirement is only 1. Eat Vegetable Soup and you can chain power attacks for 12 minutes straight.

Edit: Missed the 125 part, testing out your theory.

I dont think weapon effects get buffed by perks and skills. So no dual power attack buffs or sneak multipliers.
So if you got 20 absorb stamina on 1 weapon then a dual power attack gonna absorb 40 health not 60 (the 50% more dmg perk for dual wield )

My posting might have been misleading. The reason why I consider Absorb Stamina so strong for DW is not that it is multiplied by Perks but the fact that the Damage of the attacks is multiplied by up to 90 (orc racial). Since those attacks cost stamina this translates in more sneak attacks (especially with the Shadow Warrior perk allowing you sneak attacks infight.

I would have to do more testing on stamina costs and exact numbers to give you more than the estimates from above but so far I see strong evidence for Absorb Stamina being the best Melee DPS enchant.

too bad that restoration loop doesn't work with talos amulet

Are we agreed on this? I'd like to hear from Chesyr, Domilasa, wtflag, etc. Testing is strongly encouraged.

It should be noted that a second version of the Absorb Stamina effect can be disenchanted from the http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Drainheart_sword. I suspect that there's a strong case for Two Handed users double-enchanting Absord Stamina in order to maximize single target DPS through constant power attacks; I assume a single Absorb Stamina enchant is enough to keep one's Stamina up against multiple enemies through Sweep (as an aside, has anyone confirmed whether weapon enchants proc against every enemy hit with Sweep?)

Though why anyone chooses to gimp themselves with a Two Hander is beyond me.

Am I the only person who thinks some of you guys spent too much time playing WoW between skyrim and oblivion? This is a single player game people. It also has a difficulty slider. You do not need to max/min your toon. It really doesn't matter what the BiS build, gear or enchant it.

This is a single player RPG not an MMORPG. Role play your toon. If they are a warrior then maxing out enchanting and alchemy for uber gear is just perverse, that would be role playing an MMO player rather than role playing a warrior...

Balance and max/min doesn't matter in RPGs. You decide the role you want to play (hence the name) and then just set the difficulty to a level where your chosen toon works.

You missed the point of the topic.

Some interesting discussion going on in the thread. I'm starting up my game to test some of the theories posted here now.

Zamm, I was unaware that WoW had anything to do with min/maxing. Thanks for the enlightening post.

You know, roleplay as a greataxe wielding Nord? Trying to recreate the game's theme with knowledge of the limits of the game's system to craft a viable demigod worthy of the title "Dragonborn"? Why some people fail to be flexibile in their application of knowledge and confine creativity to numbers crunching is also beyond me.


Well... when your AR is 40 000+, your weapons are hitting for 10 000+ damage per strike and your HP has gone through the roof, do you still need shouts?