This page gives information and tips on how to best enchant items, from loopholes to tons of statistics as well as some tips and hints for successful item making and some items which would make your adventuring life much much more enjoyable.
Item Making
Characters must be 5th rank in the Mages Guild or Temple of Julianos to access the Item Maker.
Find the person with the "Make Magic Items" option and activate him. The process is fairly simple. Choose an item you wish to enchant, add the appropriate effect(s) and pay the fee. You may choose a total of 10 advantages or disadvantages. The cost of the item is 10 GP per Enchantment Point of the effect(s) you choose, plus any additional cost for certain advantages or disadvantages.
Advantages
Advantages provide benefits to the user of the item.
- Cast when Used effects are used much like spell-casting, except they use the item's power instead of the character's magicka. When a spell effect is aborted (Destruction-based effects and targeted effects), the aborted points go into the characters magicka, so these items can also be used to refill depleted magicka.
- Cast when Held advantages are always in effect whenever they are equipped.
- Cast when Strikes is applied to weapons so that when they strike, the enemy has the enchantment cast upon it. "Cast when Strikes" enchantments are useless on armor.
- Repair Items will repair any damaged items in the character's inventory by one condition level after every 8 hours of rest. This includes other enchanted items and artifacts if you add the line "magicrepair 1" to the z.cfg file.
- Strengthens Armor adds +5 to your armor class. This effect does not stack with other items that have the "Strengthens Armor" effect.
- Extra Spell Points adds 75 additional spell points to the player's amount of magicka under certain conditions; during certain seasons of the year, during certain phases of the moon, and near particular kinds of enemies. This enchantment stacks with any other item that has the same effect, thus allowing the player to significantly increase his amount of available spell points.
- Increased Weight Allowance is exactly what it says on the tin. This effect does not stack with other items that have the "Increased Weight Allowance" effect.
- Feather Weight sets the weight of the item enchanted with this power to 0.25 kilograms, regardless of how heavy it was before enchanting.
- Vampiric Effect enchantments allow the item to transfer health from enemies to your character at range (with a chance to save), or when it strikes (with no possible save).
- Potent vs. allows a weapon to do more damage to a specific kind of creature per successful strike. This has been tested to be useless/have no noticeable effect.
- Enhances Skill increases the effectiveness of one skill by fifteen points. Enhanced skills can exceed 100%. This effect stacks over multiple items if they have the same enchantment.
- Enhances Talents improves an already existing character talent (Athleticism, Acute Hearing, Adrenaline Rush) when an item enchanted with the effect is equipped.
- Good Reputation with improves your reputation with a specific group (scholars, commoners, etc.) when equipped.
- Absorbs Spells, again, does exactly what is says on the tin when equipped. It may be more effective than "Cast when Held: Spell Absorption"-enchantments.
A complete list of advantages and their enchantment power can be found here.
Disadvantages
Disadvantages hinder the carrier of the item, but will increase the number of available Enchantment Points for the item.
- Soul Bound will be explained in the next section.
- Item Deteriorates effect causes the item to wear out faster in certain conditions.
- User takes damage effect can be dangerous, but is inconsequential to vampires, as they will take damage in sunlight and holy places anyway.
- Bad Reactions lowers the to-hit chance and armor class of the character while fighting the type of creature indicated.
- Bad Reputation with effects lower the character's reputation with a certain class (or all of them), but be aware that effect continues even if this item is in your pack or in your wagon. Essentially it is the inverse effect of "Good Reputation with".
- Extra Weight increases the weight of an enchanted object by several times.
- Weakens Armor is the inverse to "Strengthens Armor", conferring -5 to Armor Class. Harmless when not equipped.
- Health Leech items can hurt you if you use an item, or if you don't use an item (depending on the enchantment).
- Low Damage vs. is the inverse effect of "Potent vs.", causing an enchanted weapon to be less effective against a specific creature type.
A complete list of disadvantages and their enchantment power can be found here.
Creating Items with Bound Souls
Bound Souls are technical disadvantages caused by having the item be bound to a creature. The more powerful of a creature, the more powerful the item can be. Certain creatures have extra advantages and disadvantages forced upon you for using them to enchant your items. If your item breaks, then the creature is released, and will attack you. To soul trap a monster, you must buy soul gems and have a spell with the effect "Soul Trap". Cast the spell on a monster and kill it before the duration runs out. If you are successful, one of your soul gems should say it has monster in it when you info it. An easier way is to have Azura's Star. Whenever you kill a monster, its soul is trapped inside Azura's Star. Make sure that it is empty before you kill the monster you want to trap (use it to ditch the old monster). A table of monster values is here, along with the gold piece value of soul gems with the monster.
Item Enchantment Points
Ever wanted to know exactly how much you could enchant that Orcish bow you found? The following list gives the enchantment points for most of the items found in Daggerfall, sorted by item type and alphabetically.
Tips
- Items that increase your skills are good, but they should be removed before rest and before seeking training in those skills.
- Weapons that boost the skill to use that weapon are a natural choice. Adding increased skill in "Critical Strike" adds even more leverage.
- Have a set of "dungeon" items and a set of "town/diplomacy" items. Dungeon items may have very expensive "User takes damage in sunlight" disadvantage instead of soul bound (it's always dark there anyway). This is especially important for a weapon as it might be a bit painful to find yourself not only barehanded against the usual monsters but also with an angry daedra lord or ancient lich as their reinforcement.
- A useful item is a "Cast when used" Recall item. This item can get you out of a dangerous situation quickly without using native magicka, assuming an anchor has already been set.
- Any item with "Extra Spell Points near ___" serves as a handy monster detector, but has little practical value otherwise unless combined with a "Spell Absorption" or similar effect (in this case it might be very valuable because "Spell Absorption" doesn't protect from damage if mana is full). If a creature is close enough to trigger the effect, rest will be impossible, meaning those spell points cannot usually be gained.
- Beware that "home made" magic clothes tend to break easily, as they can carry only a small magicka load. Some skill-based enchantments, however, have a low enough cost to make the investment worthwhile. Permanent effects like Enhance skill, Strengthens armor, Good reputation, Increased weight allowance etc. won't damage the item and might be a good choice for enchanting clothes (together with a soul bound "disadvantage"). Advantages that increase spell points always better leave for something more sturdy like armor or diamonds. It would be wise to not mix in the same item the effects like "Cast when used" with these that work when the item is held and save the valuable slots in the equipment (just keep them in the inventory). Effect "Cast when held" seems to be the most harmful for the item and probably should be avoided.
- Another very useful enchantment is the "Repair" ability. If you have such an enchanted item equipped, the health status of a damaged item increases by one level after about 8 hours of rest (example Almost New → New and so on). Sadly, this doesn't work while loitering or during fast travel. Items with the "Repair" ability work additively, meaning that by equipping two items the repair time is halved and so on. This form of repair is very useful to mend magic items (including artifacts), because these can't be repaired in other ways and get worn out after some time of use. The magic repair effect was removed from the game during a later patch, but it was provided again since patch 2.00. However, you must add the line magicrepair 1 to the Z.CFG file in your Daggerfall game directory to make it work, otherwise only non-magical items will be repaired in this way (so for anyone who doesn't use "magicrepair" this enchantment would be nearly useless). The repair modus starts with the items you have already equipped and works then from the top of your inventory stack (wagon included) downwards. So, if you want a specific item repaired, position it at the top of your inventory or wagon stack. Drop all other items to the ground if necessary, until you only have the item you want repaired in your stack.