So getting the blade is easy enough - and true to word, its in terrible shape.

After killing off a few followers and folks I did some good deeds for , it seems that the swords base physical damage is unchanged, but seems like the 'life drain' is growing.

Question: Is this gonna grow to epic proportions so its worth all the work? And how many folks have to die before its strong enough to be considered my 'main' weapon?

Was it worth hacking Lydia to pieces in some dark cave over?

So far, I'm not impressed....

You have to kill ten followers to level the Blade to absorb 30 health per hit.

You can do it with as little as one death if you have either the Ritual Stone or the Dead Thrall spell.

I think the maximum power for the Enchantment is draining 30 points on strike, which equals ten friends.
Ninja'd

it is hard to say if it is worth using, I have been testing it a while, look at my thread a little ways down. Don't bother with wiki or uesp because they both have misinfo. Well they do have some things correct. It is a seriously confused weapon.

It's not that great a weapon. I like it and power it up for the sake of my collection, but the daedric vampiric weapons or weapons with health absorption you craft yourself are more effective. I don't think you can match the 30 health drain (especially since it doesn't use charges), but the damage per strike is so low that the aforementioned weapon options will always trump this blade in combat easily.

If you are on PC, just kill Lydia 10 times over. It also works with any quest giver, so you don't have to kill any of your companions.

If you are on PC you can go about anywhere and open the console click on someone and set their relationship rank to 2 and kill them, even bandits if you are quick enough.

i'm with Greywulf, it isn't that great a weapon.