Whenever I come across a very powerful boss, or if my character truly hates an NPC or something, I like to capture their souls and enchanting an item using them, carrying them as trophies. I usually name the item after its souls previous host. I always do it with dragon priests for example, since they're really powerful and since I'm playing on master, killing them is a true triumph. Anyway, I think it's a pretty cool and kind of evil way of getting back at people too. What's a more satisfying climix than to capture your arch-enemy's soul and use it in one of your items?

It can be a pain to organize your captured souls however. As far as I know, you can't choose which soul gem to be used, and there's no way of knowing which soul gem contains which soul unless you keep track of how many and which empty soul gems you have before and after a successful capture.
This is also pretty annoying for another reason - since I'm using a bow enchanted with "soul capture", I sometimes capture souls of lesser creatures by mistake, and thus waste a grand or black soul gem if I don't have any lesser ones.

So I'm proposing an improved interface where you can select which soul gem to be used, perhaps name your soul gems to organize them (especially if you're a diabolic necromancer collecting souls) or even perhaps make soul gems display whose soul they contain in the details section of the inventory - an NPC's or creature's name rather than just "lesser soul" or "grand soul" for example.

Does anybody else want to see this improvement? Is anybody else involved in these dark affairs?

I'd like it too, it was this way in morrowing if I'm not mistaken. Hope a mod will come and fix this

This would be much better, then you wouldn't fill a grand soul gem with a petty soul.

Morrowind had named soul gems.
I cannot imagine any reason to dump such a wonderful feature, but there you go.

Along the same lines. Why not have a way to sort dragon souls with an elder or frost dragon being more powerful than a regular dragon.
You have so many more dragon souls than shouts to use them on. Maybe you could use them to enhances the shouts above the three words.

Note that you can clear a filled soul gem by dropping and picking it up again. It'd be nice to be able to select a 'safe mode' in which souls will not be trapped in gems that are larger than them, though.

I'm tired of filling my expensive Grand and Greater crystals with Petty and Lesser souls. It's incredibly annoying and I support any measure taken to stop this

Really? Never noticed that. Though it would be even better if you just had to equip a soul gem to use it.

Your only chance of getting this is in a mod.

What? Are you sure, I don't think this is correct.

Yep, I've done it about a million times. Just drop the gem, pick it back up, and it'll be empty.

This is one of them most demonic and disturbing things I've ever heard. I LOVE IT!

Hehe yeah!

Though I don't think people's souls actually feel anything once they're dead in TES since it's just energy, it's not more evil than skinning an animal and using it to make clothes. It's not like they're alive and self-aware inside my axe or armor or whatever, trapped for all eternity. And my character probably won't keep them forever, but just make them do their time lol.

Excellent idea, I'm surprised Bethesda never thought of this since filling gems with subpar souls by accident has been an issue since Morrowind.

I'm for the idea in the OP as well, for the RP aspect, only the drop/pickup method should be patched for those who want to display named soul gems.

One time I felt really bad

II dropped one yesterday and it didn't work. I dropped a common gem (didnt need the soul and wanted to decorate my shelf) so I dropped it and picked it up and it still was full. Im on PC version 1.3 so maybe they caught on and fixed it or its a console issue im not sure, but I haved read of this bug prior to patch 1.2.

I was going to say I do the same thing! But then you say this? Nah, I hope their spirit lives on, forever trapped in my item. Also, I generally only have one captured soul at a time, I generally run to an Enchanting Altar with the soul gem I do have before I have need to carry a second.

Also, you using just any enchantment? Or something that they would make sense giving? And, do you just use any item? I for one only use their own possessions.

Hmm. And here I was thinking the opposite..... I've found it quite annoying, from an organizational standpoint, that so many of the soulgems I get are somehow, invisibly, different from each other. Which means that they don't stack neatly.

The chest I've been storing them in, ends up looking like:

...rather than a nice, neat, organized

But, then, I've got dozens upon dozens of filled gems in my chest, due to my sword having 1-second Soul Trap on it. I don't control when/how/who I'm trapping, I just trap everything I can. So I'm not remotely coming at it from the same direction as the OP.

(Needless to say, the idea of having that inventory spread out even further by attaching monster & NPC names to all of them, so that they're even less stacked, doesn't fill me with excitement. )

Haha, well, SOME people might deserve it

Mostly they do make sense - for example, I made a magicka-related enchantment from the Dragon priest in Labyrinthian's soul whose mask fortifies your magicka or magicka regeneration (can't remember which). I use them on any item, at the moment ancient nord armor and ebony war axe for example. It'd be pretty cool if they could make a gem-rack for soul gems, amulets and other small items for the various houses in the game. That way, I could have a library of souls! Imagine that! MWAHAHA!

Actually...they ARE still alive and aware in the gem...take the Azure Stone back to Azure and you will have to fight the mage locked in the gem...fully aware. In fact, you could trap some monsters and throw them into the weapon/armor along with your arch-enemy so they can spend eternity fighting that monster...hang the weapon/armor in your home as a souvenier that you can point to when you entertain...keep your "friends" from getting any ideas.

But IIRC the mage took some special measures to be able to trap himself inside like that... fully aware. I don't think it works the same for common soul trap spell.

That's really weird. I've been doing it on patch 1.3 since its release. Dropping it into chests, etc, doesn't do it, in case that was what you did--only on the ground. Maybe it works differently inside houses, or maybe new games made in 1.3 (as opposed to games started and then patched) don't allow it. It'd be nice to hear some other people's experiences.

if you capture anything less than a grand soul in a grand soul gem.. you can drop it from you're inventory and it will release the soul (glitch actually) but you'll be able to start over with that soul gem.

I think this is a great idea!

Then we could arrange for an arena where you could empty the soul gems to have the spectral forms of the creature you caught battle other creatures!
They could level up as well, and learn better abilities as they win fights.

Oh, and there could be extra hard-to-find enemies that are sparkling (like the Nirnroot effect) and that could have a different color scheme and perhaps a special move!

This will be awesome!


"Skeever, I choose you!"

I can confirm that it kinda works....dropping in Shimmermist Cave FWIW. x360 and day 1 patch (avoided updating to latest after reading about problems)

I can only get it to work with petty soul gems, but not the first time I drop it. In other words, drop it and pick it up and then it "kicks in" and you only have to drop the others once.Common and lesser wll not work for me.

I don't have a gem with a lower soul to try but I'd be curious if it will release any petty soul.