@ Bethesda:

As I'm playing Oblivion, things keep returning to my mind. In the case of this thread, I am talking about the ability to disenchant your weapons and armor. So, why would anyone ever want to destroy the enchantments on an item? Here are some important uses:

1) - Disenchanting your poorly or otherwise wrongly enchanted items to re-enchant them with more powerful/relevant effects.
2) - Disenchanting unique weapons (like Umbra, for instance), so that you can use your own enchantments on your favorite weapon.
3) - Quest plot potential - objective is to acquire an item and disenchant its curse or whatever (an offshoot of the Ring of Power plot from LoTR).

Clearly, you can see the benefits of having such a simple core feature, can you not? Why did you not listen to us when making Oblivion or, most importantly, will you do us the favor of adding this solid feature to Skyrim, at least? Or explain why you won't? I can't imagine it'd be that difficult or time-consuming to implement, and we'd gain so much from it. In your focus on getting a grand game out with lots of spectacular features, you still need to remember the small things too - because it's the small things that has the most reliable positive effects on a game's "solidity".

Who are with me on this? Please elaborate if you aren't. Discuss!


Update:

It seems like most people want artifacts to stay unique and indestructible, so let's assume that pt.2 is limited to non-artifact uniques or artifact design replicas. I can live with that as long as "most" weapons can be disenchanted.

I agree with all except the second point. Unique weapons should be just that, not templates to build a custom weapon on.

The ability to disenchant a weapon could be dependant on your Enchanting level compared up against the item's enchantment level. I.e. legendary weapons would require Expert or even Master level (Dis)enchanting, while the 1pt Damage Health Iron Longsword could require only Novice or Apprentice.

Some unique weapons could even have indestructible enchantments (can't be disenchanted).

i dont know about this, i mean in theory its a great idea, but the process of enchanting is to bind the soul of a creature to the weapon/apparel in order to imbue it with a magical quality. I'm not a lore buff, but i just gotta assume that binding souls would be considered permanent in the lore in an enchanting sense. it would also have to be difficult to do, because you have to essentially unbind a soul. weapon exorcism? hah.

i also dont like the idea of being able to disenchant unique items. umbra is umbra. goldbrand is goldbrand. i think if disenchanting did make its way into the game, there should be restrictions to unique weapons, having it say something along the lines of the magic is too powerful to remove from the weapon, or doing so would destroy the weapon itself.

Perhaps a perk for enchant, that you get at the end of a perk tree after you have really high enchant.

that, my friend, is not a bad idea :icecream:

....as long as you cannot disenchant unique weapons and artifacts.

Well, I remember Mehrunes Dagon's quest in Morrowind, retrieving his Razor (Oblivion's Mehrunes Razor much better), and it "disenchanted" itself after enough time. Might be against lore somewhere, but they did it before.

Edit: Wait, for the love of the Adoring Fan? Ban, ban I say!

That's something I would agree to.

Then we have a deal! :celebration: too bad neither of us could actually do anything about it hahahaha :cryvaultboy:

Something kind of like this would be nice. However, this thread is pointless since as far as I know, we know nothing about enchanting other than that it's part of the game for the magical class. For all we know they could have done this exact thing...

Nobody's forcing you to disenchant them. Why should the gameplay options have to suffer just because some people want the game to cater to their assumptions of what enchanting is "supposed to be like"? Where in the lore does it say that those unique weapons cannot be disenchanted? For unique weapons, it could simply be that the enchanments are suppressed for X number of years.

This is a singleplayer game. Why should I have restrictions that have nothing to do whatsoever with my idea of the world. Disenchanting makes perfect sense. With restrictions, only one player group can do what they want. With my idea, BOTH groups can do their thing, because again nobody is forcing you to disenchant the items. For arguments sake for the most hardcoe TES roleplaying fans, Bethesda could easily provide a lore explanation as to why those unique weapons can be disenchanted. And remember what I said about Master Enchanting being a minimum requirement. Maybe an additional requirement could be a Volcano on top of Mount Doom? (well, not really, but an equivalent to that - imagination is our friend). A Daedric Forge deep underground, for instance.

It's a simple gameplay feature that has some major practical applications and it's simple to design. Do we want a world to be limited to it's inhabitant lore, or do we want the lore to be defined by the world?

Why, exactly, should the restrictions be there? I'd hate to see restrictions in a game just because people want to impose limitations on other people. Singleplayer is singleplayer, after all.

Can't we forge our own weapons anyways? If so, we could just forge a blade that looks just like Umbra or whatever other weapon, and enchant it.

okay, its a single player game. i get that. but just because its a single player game doesnt mean you should be able to do everything you want. thats why BGS takes things out, because its not balanced. and please dont tell me balance isnt important in a single player game because you would be very very wrong, and i have much more faith in your intelligence than that. daedric artifacts are timeless.. goldbrand, azura's star (not a weapon, i know) wabbajack, they all were the tools of gods... and i dont think gods would be very appreciative of you spitting on their creations... and i dont get what you mean by one player group can do what they want with disenchanting if restrictions are put in place.

i get you wanna take umbra and put fire damage or whatever... but thats not umbra. umbra has been a part of the last two TES games, and possibly more, why should there be the option do destroy it now? freedom? okay, well i wanna transform into a dragon and spit fire upon cities.

players need to be giving certain limitations to what they can do. thats why levitation will not be put in, and why the soultrap glitch wont be put in. its for balance... now i'm not saying disenchanting unique weapons would break the game, it would make it decidedly less of a 'real' and believeable place because you can just take concrete things and figuratively turn them to dust.

would you be happy taking a sword that looked like umbra and enchanting that?

THIS

this

Sounds good.
But, we don't know how extensive the customization is when forging our own weapons.
Hopefully, we can actually decide what our weapons look like, but as of now, we don't know.
We could just be allowed to gather some steel bars and make a standard steel longsword, without the chance to edit its appearance....

I really hope there's a weapon editor.

Not needed IMO.

As a few others have said, I agree with everything except the disenchanting unique weapons. Things like Umbra and Dawnfang/Duskfang, for example, should remain just as they are. Other than that, excellent ideas! :goodjob:

Lore wise, the process seems quite straightforward. Cast soultrap on the weapon and break it. It's exactly how it works on creatures, you destroy them and when their souls are separated the spell send them to a sould gem. Anyway, if todd thinks that spellmaking takes magic out of magic, he has more reasons to not include this feature.

Personally, I'd love to see this... including being able to enchant unique items with my own enchantments. I like the look of some unique items, but hate their enchantments, Why should I not be able to have a sword that looks good and does what I want? It's not an exploit that breaks any balance in the game, it only results in a purely aesthetic different from a non-unique weapon of equal might being enchanted with the same enchantment. I hate exploits and want to see them removed, but such a thing would not be an exploit.

Yeah sorry. I'm more of a fan of the enchantment process being an Uber event that no simpleton can carry out, and to disenchant something would destroy the item. Although, there is something poetic about an event occurring that through your choices and actions the soul is separated from your item (note the story of my avatar).

I'd love it if most enchantments just wear out over time. The strong ones where you bind an oversoul to the weapon can permanently hold on, and I'd say they shouldn't need to be recharged. This recharging enchantments idea hasn't been very good, I'd prefer the system where you didn't do that.

Well, there's a difference between spellmaking and enchanting. Enchanting uses a trapped soul and binds it to the item you are enchanting. Though I do like making my own spells, I can see where Todd is coming from--spellmaking does sort of cheat the system. I think it would be cool if you were able to make spells once you reach a high enough rank or level as a mage, though. But not just anyone should have the ability to make their own spells. It's something only a well-trained and very powerful mage should be able to do... But that's just my opinion...

So tell me, how exactly is it unbalanced for a unique weapon to be disechanted? How exactly will that make your character overpowered or underpowered? You still need to play by the rules of the game mechanics that lie backstage.



If you're familiar with the lore of the items, the artifacts only stay with one hero for a limited period of time (not in-game, though). There's nothing in the way of having the Gods re-enchant the items or simple de-suppressing them. Also, what exactly makes a weapon unique except its abilities is it's physical looks - are you saying that only Gods can make a weapon look the way they look?

Besides, in Oblivion I chose to keep the Umbra sword, much to Clavicus Vile's aggravation. Maybe he's unique, but I can't say that daedric princes are very true to their words of repercussions. Also, if the item is disenchanted by another God, then where does that leave your logic?



One group believes that lore must prevail over gameplay (and limit it). The other group believes that gameplay must prevail over lore. The first respects only itself, the latter group respects everyone (because additional lore can be added to explain the gameplay and soft restrictions can be added to make something "barely possible"). Then again, I've always thought the enchanting in TES games were kinda weak.



FYI, the Umbra of Morrowind is not the same weapon as the Umbra of Oblivion. Furthermore, how exactly does a moderate change in a weapon's secondary powers (the primary being it's physical damage etc) ever compare to flying a dragon and spitting fire? This isn't black and white - just because a freedom of variety is added to a game, doesn't mean that you'll suddenly be able to 1-hit kill all enemies with a spoon.



Less real? How exactly does it feel less real to be able to destroy an item that has been made? If those deadric items require some unique form of disenchanting, like Divine Intervention or a special place, then how exactly is that unrealistic? You're dealing in absolutes here, remember what Yoda said


Yes and not only that, but Umbra is the perfect example of a weapon I'd like to disenchant. The soul trap ability was always something that kept me from using Umbra, but I really liked the design of the weapon itself so I've always wanted to re-enchant Umbra.

okay.. well you make some very valid points. maybe its just my perception that unique weapons should be concrete in the game, if not for some kind of consistency.

but if youre okay with using a weapon that looks like umbra, why not just give the option to forge a lookalike, and enchant that. then unique weapons can stay with their enchantments, and you can have your lookalike and make it do whatever you'd like.