So I recently finished the quest to get it. Seems like a very interesting weapon. It does a fair amount of damage, but much more if the enemy is in some kind of dream state? What does this mean and how do you make it as effective as can be?

Also, I'm playing an overall just character, but had to break my role playing to turn on that badass priest of Mara to make sure I got it. Vaermina said he'd turn on me, but I figured she was lying to lure me to safe the Skull. I always collect Daedric artifacts and didn't want to risk the priest actually destroying it, so I turned on him and killed him. Was Vaermina lying? Would he have turned on me and I could have looted the Skull off his corpse, or if I didn't betray him would the Skull have been gone forever?

I would also like to know if letting the priest continue the ritual would have destroyed the skull, or would he have used the artifact to kill you like the Daedric god warned?

Anyone know?

Interesting quest for sure.

The skull will be gone but the priest will become a follower.

I feel really bad now. Thank you for the reply.

I thought it had made sense that he would need to use me to get past the barriers, in order to get the skull. And even though the other priests confirmed that his story basically held up, he had a lot of time living in town with what he had done, that maybe he had devised other reasons why he wanted the skull, reasons that were not as honorable as he was saying.

I hate making decisions that end up killing good people because of my crazy conspiracy theory's and listening to an evil Daedric god!

Never again.

Has anyone figured out how to recharge the dream charges on the weapon, to keep it at maximum damage? I tried shooting it at a sleeping person... it didn't damage them, but it also didn't charge the dreams.

I don't have exact numbers, but the general idea is that you can use the Skull on a sleeping target to gain charges. These charges make the Skull do more damage when used.

EDIT:

According to UESP, these are the staffs effects.

Dreamsteal 10 pts for 43200 secs in 5 ft
Waking Nightmare 40 pts in 15 ft
Psychic Agony 15 pts

Like I said, I tried using it on a sleeping person and it neither increased nor reduced the dream charges. I guess I'll throw this staff in storage to collect dust alongside the Sanguine Rose, which also isn't working for me. Daedric staff artifacts in this game seem to be cursed with bugginess.

It does work. You're doing it wrong. You MUST be SNEAKING and remain undetected during the process of using it on a sleeping npc. You get 5 dream charges and lose a barely noticeable amount of normal enchantment charge. And if it didn't work just walk out the door, wait several seconds, sneak back in and try again. But after you used it on the npc you won't be able to use it again for several minutes on the same npc. I just went into other homes before returning for the same npc lol.

So far I've collected 30 dream charges. That's 30 times I get to cast 50 damage output. I'll get something to cast weakness to magicka on opponents then cast that 50 damage and I'm basically God.

Hey, there's the info I was looking for... thanks. No need to be condescending.

If I'm correct you only get to keep each dream charge for 12 hrs. Gonna wait until construction set is out to mod a change for this staff.

Just found out that Dreamsteal 10 pts for 43200 secs in 5 ft isn't the duration you keep the dream charge for. It's how long before you can cast it again on the same npc. I waited longer than 12 ingame hours and still have my dream charges accumulating to 60. 2 petty soul gems fills around a half of the staff enchantment points.