When i played oblivion i made a mage character so i cold play around with enchanting and spellmaking and i know people said it was too "spreadsheety" (ok Todd said that) but i enjoy spreadsheets that probably makes me a geek etc but who cares but back to the point it bugged me that i couldn't give more than one effect to a piece of apparell even if it was balanced like i could only have a certain amount of energy id est weapons so i could give my detect life helmet some chameleon to help my sneaking. Any thoughts?

No. No thoughts. Thoughts bad.





.... Actually, that's quite interesting, I've never even thought about that before. I suppose they did it for balancing reasons.

Then why didn't they do it like they did weapons certain amount of points for each type of soul and then you just filled up the effects?

So we can't completely break the game?

I think they did that because you only had one weapon so you would have to get all your enchantments in that, but you had multiple pieces of armor so you could put all the enchantments you want on your 6 pieces of armor instead of having 3 enchantments for each piece of armor and becoming a god.

Seems especially glaring when the already existing magic items in the games often DO have more than one effect. Like, what, I'm the big hero of the world but my enchanting rules are more restrictive than the NPC's enchanting rules? Weaksauce.

That's what my point is

Like we couldn't have done that already? IMO this idea wouldn't have hurt Oblivion, but I think applying Skyrim is difficult because they're overhauling enchanting and we have no idea what it's going to be like.

This. It doesn't make sense that there are apparel with more then one enchantment but you can't make one. I think this time around if you have a certain amount of skill in enchanting you should be able to make multipliable effect items.

BGS didnt want your character to become too powerful. The ability to do uber enchanting pretty much removes the need for sigil stones and looting dungeons for items like the mundane ring

Personally I dont mind it. I like actually having a reason to look for good items and armor

sooo you're in favor of giving us easier, more obvious ways to break the game then? doesn't seem like great logic to me...

i think if you wanted to put multiple enchantments into one piece of armor or clothing it would have to penalize you a bit... lets say having one effect gives you 100 percent effectiveness... and having two gives you 45 percent effectiveness each (90% total)... having three gives you 28 percent each (84% total)... four gives you 20 percent each (80% total). that way if you put multiple effects in they are weakened as you put more in... it would balance and give players a bigger sense of customization to the enchantment system.

It's not that you could "never" enchant apparel with more than one effect - it's that you couldn't in Oblivion. That was one of the many features they dropped after Morrowind, in which you could enchant an apparel item with up to eight different effects, limited only by the enchantment capacity of the item.

Beth has a longstanding history of removing features, and they only very rarely put them back (actually, I can't think of a single feature that they removed somewhere along the way and then put back into the games, but I can't be entirely sure). In any event, I don't expect this one is coming back.

They've put back enchanting. I highly doubt someone with high enchanting skill wouldn't be able to make items with more then one effect. What would be the point of an enchanting skill if it's not cooler then enchanting in OB?

I'm probably going to be in the minority on this, but I say: "No."

My mind likes puzzles. Being forced to limit my enchantments to just one forces me to plan out my enchantments and my potions. Getting a number of enchantments to a particular item can create a game-breaking effect.

The one thing I would like to see brought back: clothes under armor. Clipping issues aside, I'd like to have something between my skin and my iron armor.

~ Dani ~

I'm sure it was for play balance reasons. :shrug:


(As for the "how come they can do it, and I can't?"..... well, I could easily see some Master Enchanter, who has practiced his profession for decades, and spends all his time sitting around the laboratory doing enchanting experiments, being much better at it than some random idiot who can bang out some simple stuff at the Enchantment bench.)

True but what about when we become a master surely then maybe there will be a perk for it?

If it comes with a tradeoff that each individual enchantment on the piece, then yes.

thats..thats a long sentence! almost lost my breath just reading that. anyway could you really just put one effect on each item in oblivion? thats not how i remember it being..however, if thats the case then i kind of hope they let us put atleast 2 effects on each item in skyrim make them less powerful when adding more, and voilà its balanced. kinda

If you did this, It would have to balance out by dividing the energy in the soul gem between effects. So instead of detect life 50 points, or chameleon 10%, you could put both of them on but have detect life 25 points and chameleon 5%.

u can have more then one enchantment effect so maybe u shuld have managed better. but its to stop u from being overpowered. it'd be so stupid if i enchanted a cheap shirt and keep re-enchanting it until it gave me 100 percent reflect damage and reflect magic. and it would do 1 fire damage to me so im alwasy on fire...but it would be countereacted by the 100 percent fire resistance i put on it. anyway u see the problem.

Err, they did that because it was simpler to implement this way.

I am quite sure that "balancing" is much of importance to a game designer who allows to maximize skills to 100 on a level 1 character. It cant get more unbalanced than that.

Imagine if in oblivion you could have fortify magicka health fatigue, fortify all stats and attributes and feather on all pieces of armour ... isnta-god mode and would not be fair

It should be too hard to implement multiple effects. For enchanting, it could work something like this:

Lv. 1 thru 24 - Can apply 1 effect, using only Lesser or Greater soulgems. (New system with fewer soulgem types - Lesser, Greater and Grand.)
Lv. 25 thru 49 - Can apply 1 effect, using any soulgem.
Lv. 50 thru 74 - Can apply 2 effects, the second effect using only Lesser or Greater soulgems. Also allows you to disenchant any non-daedric items.
Lv. 75 thru 99 - Can apply 2 effects, using any soulgem.
Lv. 100 - Allows you to disenchant any items except "Legendary".

This system should also be coupled with a Soul Trapping perk, allowing you to trap better mobs such as grand souls and humanoids (instead of the Black soulgems in Oblivion). Furthermore, Bethesda should try to bring back Daggerfall souls to some extent - certain souls giving additional enchantment bonuses on top of the ones you assign yourself (something that could even be used instead of my above idea).

Enchanting in Morrowind allowed multiple effects on each item, as well as the choice between "On Use" and "Constant Effect" (and "On Strike" with weapons).

This was not unbalanced because several factors came into play.
First, every single wearable item was given an "enchanting value" which limited the maximum power of the combined enchantments.
Second, the choice to add an additional enchant to an item increased the base cost of the enchantment which meant that additional enchantments would be much weaker than the primary enchant.
Third, the power of the soul being used determined how many "Uses" an "On Use" enchant had before it needed to be recharged as well as required top end gems for "Constant Effect" enchantments (i.e. You cannot make a constant effect item until later in the game since you can't kill the high level enemies that could fill a Grand soul gem).

Because enchanting was totally dumbed down in Oblivion, compared with past installments.
If that trend continues, enchanting in Skyrim will be done by a halfwit who keeps saying: 'En-chantment? En-chantment!'.

Though since it is now a skill in its own right, maybe this time it will change for the better.
Lets hope so.