OK so I'm a complete gaming and RPG newbie, so please note I am not that sharp at these thing, yet somehow I made it level 47 while inadvertanly playing it master mode! Long story short, I must be missing something.....

I have collected a ton of black soul gems and I have the black Azura star. Yet I do not know how I am supposed to use these? They do not show up in my enchantment options at the enchanting table or when reloading an item and I only see them when I view my inventory.

I thought I read something about capturing a soul, but I really could use some advice here.

Thanks in advance.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Soul_Gem

Filled soul gems are suppose to show when you are enchanting something in the enchanting table. And also you should be able to select them when recharging magical items. Maybe it's a bug?

I've read through this plenty. Nowhere does it address how to "fill" a soul gem, or how to equip/use the black and azura gems. I quote from that link

Soul Gems are http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Miscellaneous_Items which can be used to http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Soul_Trap the http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Souls of dying creatures or NPCs. The resulting filled soul gems can be used as power sources for enchanted items, either when initially creating http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Enchanting or when recharging depleted enchanted weapons. Note only Black Soul Gems can be used to capture the soul of an NPC, and is always stored as a Grand Soul.

I would have expected them to show up when I load a weapon or enchant an item (i see petty, common, grand, etc..), yet they do not show up anywhere except my "misc inventory"

I must be missing something about filling the gems to use them which is my guess, or I have some glitch that is inexplicable. Is there a trick to filling black soul gems? Do I need to cast a spell on something and then kill them?

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Soul_Trap

Yup!

You have to enchant a weapon with "Soul Trap" and have an empty gem in your inventory.

Soul Trap:

To fill a soul gem, you have to kill an enemy under the effect of the Soul Trap spell. You can cast Soul trap on them, and kill them within 60 seconds, or much easier: enchant a weapon with soul trap, and use it to kill them. If you don't typically use weapons yourself, you can give your soul trap enchanted weapon and empty soul gems to your follower, and they will take care of it. Then you just take the filled soul gems, and replace them with new empty ones from time to time.

Note that a soul will go into the smallest gem available, but if no smaller one is available, it will go into a larger gem. In other words, if all you have is grand soul gems, and you soul trap and kill a wolf, you will end up with a grand soul gem filled with a petty soul. It is easy to fix this however, just drop improperly filled soul gems on the ground. When you pick them back up, they will be empty again.

Also note that Black soul gems are different. Humanoids (men, mer, Khajit and Argonians -any race that the player can be) have black souls. Their souls can only be captured in black soul gems, and only those souls can be stored there. Black souls are equivalent in power to grand souls. So, in order to get the most powerful soul gems you either have to use black soul gems and kill humanoids or use grand soul gems and kill things like giants and mammoths. Note that dragon souls are never captured by soul gems- they are always absorbed by the Dovahkiin directly.

Caribou, thanks but let me see if I understand this. My weapon of choice is a ebony bow (equisite) enchanted with fire. I would have to enchant a bow with soul trap? but that has me loose the fire damage? What is gained by solely having a binding enchantment to fill the gem? If I use one weapon to fill a gem, can I then socket that in another?

I guess I am trying to figure out what I gained by the Azura star and black soul gems if I can't use them for my favorite fire damage enchanted weapon.

Tallen, thanks. Looks like we cross posted while I was responding to caribou. Looks like I can find a way to put my dark brotherhood quests and the black azura star to good use.

This game has really turned me into a thieving murder, I guess assassins creed just won't leave my blood as I can't seem to walk a righteous path in Skyrim.

you can use a soul gem to recharge any enchanted weapon. You can also train Enchanting up to get a perk to stick Soul Trap on top of your Fire Damage bow so you don't need to keep switching between the two.

You would have to use a weapon enchanted with soul trap ONLY when you needed to fill soul gems. Once you had all you needed, or was fighting anything else (i.e. since you are talking about black soul gems, you would only need the soul trap weapon when fighting humanoids), you could use your other bow.

Alternatively, you can use the soul trap spell. Or, you can give a weapon with soul trap to your follower, along with the empty gems.

This is what I do to fill soul gems. I either find or enchant a bow/weapon with Soul Trap for 3 seconds. Sometimes 2 seconds, sometimes 4 seconds depending on skill level. I make or find one for myself and one for my companion. I give the companion empty soul gems (& arrows if needed) while I keep Azura's Star. I take other weapons away from companion and we go shooting mudcrabs to start with and then on from there. The mudcrabs will fill a Petty soul gem and the stronger soul gems are for more major souls. With my companion helping, I have a bunch of filled soul gems now for Enchanting items or recharging staves/swords, etc. Good luck!

The soul gems are simply vessels or containers. The souls inside can be used to recharge already enchanted weapons (Iike your bow) or enchant weapons and armor. The "stronger" or "bigger" the soul, the stronger the enchant or the greater number of recharges it provides. Trapping the soul of a skeever would get you a "weak" soul, while trapping the soul of a giant would get you a much "stronger" soul.

Soul gems are used up when the soul is used, but Azura's Star is unique in that it is reusable.

If you have the Black Star you can virtually never run out of charge on your weapons. Most quests involve humanoids, or they are very easy to find. Just running through a camp of bandits, and recharging your weapons after each kill will ensure that you can keep many weapons easily fully charged.

Thanks for all the help everyone. I think I might have this figured out and only which I knew this about 45 levels ago!