Skyrim:Enchantment Effects
| Enchantment Effects | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Skill | Enchanting |
| Weapon Effects | 17 |
| Costliest Apparel | Fortify Sneak |
| Strongest Offensive | Fortify One-Handed |
| Tempering | Needs Arcane Blacksmith |
Enchantment effects are the magical properties that can be attached to weapons and apparel in Skyrim. Weapon effects fire on hit and drain the item's charge; apparel effects apply passively while the item is worn.
Every effect has a base magnitude, which is the value shown in the enchanting menu for a character with a Grand soul, no Enchanting perks and a skill of zero. Your actual numbers scale up from there with skill, perks and the soul used.
Weapon Effects
Elemental damage is the obvious pick, but the absorb effects are the ones that change how a fight plays out, since they refill your own pools while draining the target. Frost damage is the exception among the elements: it hits stamina alongside health and slows the target by half for two seconds.
| Effect | Base magnitude | Base cost |
|---|---|---|
| Absorb Health | 8 | 31 |
| Absorb Magicka | 10 | 21 |
| Absorb Stamina | 10 | 22 |
| Damage Fire | 10 | 11 |
| Damage Frost | 10, plus 50% slow for 2s | 13 |
| Damage Shock | 10 | 14 |
| Damage Magicka | 15 | 15 |
| Damage Stamina | 15 | 29 |
| Chaos Damage | 10 | 19 |
| Paralyze | 26% chance for 2s | 34 |
| Banish | Level 10 | 113 |
| Fear | Level 10 for 30s | 16 |
| Turn Undead | Level 10 for 30s | 29 |
| Soul Trap | 4s | 9 |
| Fiery Soul Trap | 5s, plus 10 fire damage | 11 |
| Silent Moons | +10 damage between 9pm and 5am | 5 |
| Huntsman's Prowess | +3 damage against animals | 3 |
Chaos Damage comes from the Dragonborn add-on and has no base game equivalent.
Apparel Effects
Fortify Archery, Fortify One-Handed and Fortify Two-Handed are the strongest offensive apparel enchantments, each adding thirteen per cent damage at base. Fortify Sneak carries the highest base cost of any apparel effect at 672, which is why sneak gear drains soul gems so fast to produce.
Fortify Smithing deserves a note of its own for anyone working the Smithing tree: it raises tempering strength by eight per cent at base, and four pieces of it stack. Combined with the doubling from a material perk such as Daedric Smithing, it is how players push gear past Legendary.
Mechanics Worth Knowing
- Elemental effects scale with the matching Destruction perks. Put two different elements on one weapon and take both perks, and they apply multiplicatively for up to a 2.25x multiplier.
- Necromage improves every effect used against undead. As a vampire it also improves your own item enchantments by twenty-five per cent, which is widely treated as a bug rather than intent.
- Enchanted items cannot be tempered at all without the Arcane Blacksmith perk.
- Muffle and Waterbreathing have no magnitude, so soul quality only affects their charge, not their strength.
