Umbra and Azura's Star were all you needed to keep your charges going on your enchanted weapons.

It worked well for me.

Yeah, I didn't have any problems with it. I didn't use enchanted anything (well, rings and amulets) until I had my Armorer high enough to repair them myself, and by that time I'd have Azura's Star.

So I'd just make a typical "rainbow" sword (fire/lightning/ice damage + soul trap), and put Azura's Star on quickslot #7 (8 was repair hammers). Sword's got plenty of uses (since the damage is only around 5-10 each), and it's trivial to hit 7 and click on the sword - so recharging isn't even tedious.


:shrug:
No big deal.

I endured it through Oblivion, but I didn't like the enchant mechanic. I think I'll have to mod in Morrowind style recharging over time for Skyrim, since Oblivion style soul gem ammo is confirmed to be returning. I hope 'cast when used' makes a return now enchant is a skill again.

Was kind of essential to keep it up at higher levels anyway, how long do you want to have to keep hacking away at that minotaur exactly?

I hate to admit it, but most of the time I just duplicated Varla stones because it was such an annoying process.

yeah i did

I did use enchanted weapons, but only because I had Azura's Star. Without it, I probably wouldn't have used them as much, or hardly at all. I also had a couple seconds worth of soul trap on my weapons, so I always kept them charged.

No, unless I had to.

Feel like it was so easy to just break the game and it got boring.

I felt having to capture souls for your enchanted weapons added nothing but pointless tedium to the game.

I don't see why people have such an issue with this, Soul Gems wern't that much of an issue. I didn't play spellcasters that often, so I didn't trap a lot of souls, but I usually used an echanted weapon anyway. When it ran out of charges, it acted like a normal weapon. So why would I not use an enchanted weapon? At least some times an enchanted weapon does something cool.

I never had much issue with the enchanting system of Oblivion. At the end-game, I just carried multiple enchanted Daedric daggers that all had the same enchantment. If I ran out of charges on one dagger, I'd switch. Once I ran out of charges on all my daggers (Or just felt like recharging my daggers), I'd just use Conjuration to summon a creature and soul trap it with Azura's Star. Quickly recharge all my daggers, and move on o.o ...

The daggers had plenty of charges, and since I carried multiple daggers with the same enchantment, it was never an issue of it becoming tedious or a chore.

It's not that it didn't work well, it's the fact it was incredibly annoying. Hell, to get technical, you really shouldn't be allowed to recharge weapon in the middle of a fight. The process is so tedious. 10 strikes, weapon out of charge, pull out soul trap, pull out Azura star. Lather, rinse, repeat every 10 seconds.

Where did Bethesda get the idea that it worked well. WE HATED IT BETHESDA. HEAR US. WE HATED IT and want no part of it in Skyrim.

I stuck with unenchanted weapons until I got Dawnfang/Duskfang or the Sword of the Crusader. Recharging was a pain, especially when i ran out of Varla Stones.

I had no problems with such a simple mechanic.

Never used enchanted weapons, because I hated recharging them. Used enchanted armor and items, though, with constant enchant.

Again, stop saying it was simple or easy. Nobody had a problem finding soul gems. We just had a problem with recharging our weapon every 10 seconds.

The only thing I didn't care for much about Oblivion's system was that I ended up taking pretty much all of my characters through the mages guild recommendations, just so that they could get access to the Arcane University and the enchanting altars, and that only because it didn't make sense for some of the more warrior-ish characters. Once they'd done that and gotten Azura's Star though, it was just a matter of attaching a 1 second soul trap to any weapon enchantment and hotkeying Azura's Star, and recharging was totally effortless, so that part of it never bothered me.

The more I read this forum, the more I come to understand why Beth's doing what they're doing. And in that sense, I'm sort of surprised that they kept weapon recharging at all, since that seems to be another thing that was too confusing for people.

I wish they recharged overtime, but I still used them. In Morrowind especially, I had a plethora of blades with various effects, and combat would consist of me drawing a blade, stabbing them, then pulling out another until they were dead.

..I miss good 'ol Ano Ulvan.

You never had a problem soultrapping and recharging every 10 seconds? It's not confusing. It's boring.

I never used enchanted weapons in Oblivion, because...
1) the enchantment visuals looked horrible
2) the recharging system with Soul Gems was extremely tedious and bad

I propose of:
1) get rid of the plastic wrap look for enchanted items
2) enchantments should recharge slowly over time, but also be able to be recharged instantly by specific magical items (something equivalent to Varla Stones in Oblivion), magic merchants, and Soul Gems.
2b) perhaps also a spell that transfers your magicka to your enchanted item to recharge it partly

It struck me as a bolt of lighting when I read in the fan interview that Bethesda were happy with it and thought it worked well. It definitely needs improvement I think, and a combination of both Morrowind's and Oblivion's way as I proposed above would be the best solution in my opinion.

Used it alot, but wasn't happy with it.
Scale the recharge speed with your enchant skill in Skyrim and I'm fine.
Maybe they put in some nice perks...

I agree with what you stated, but the Wizard's Tower DLC took care of that if I recall correctly.

Hmm. I guess part of the difference in attitudes is that I didn't use Really Powerful? enchanted weapons. So I didn't need to recharge every 10 seconds.


Yeah, I suppose if you're using a weapon that only gets, say, 10 strikes on a full charge, that could get annoying. (Of course, under a "time" recharge system, you'd still only get those 10 strikes, and then you'd have to wait awhile to get more. Doesn't seem much better.)




edit: by the way, what the heck weapon were you using?

I imagine that it wasn't cost efficient. In my experience, it was very possible to make extremely powerful enchanted weapons AND have them be cost efficient. Azura's Star, multiple quantities of the enchanted weapon in question, and the recharging is no longer tedious or annoying.

Hahah.. That would have been the smart thing to do..
I usually made several copies of the same enchanted sword, used them up one at a time, then used my varla stone to recharge them all at once to conserve Varla Stones. Seems like varla hunting chewed up way too much of my time.

Yeah, the recharge mechanic seems pretty stupid to anyone that played Morrowind.
The irritating "Weapon out of charges" popup and that annoying magic fizzle sound all the time was hardly a symptom of a system that was "working well".
The oblivion system seems very player-hostile.