I've been busy with Oblivion again, i was surprised how many sidequests i still had left, wow, and such an amazing game too, i just love it. Probably my favorite Xbox 360 game to be honest. Anyway, none of that is of any importance.



I got the Azura's Star, and all kinds of soul gems. My question is...i can only trap souls with my Umbra, but the damage it does isn't exactly big, especially not against very wrong enemies. I also got a Soul Trap spell, but when should i use this? Before i kill a baddie?

I also have spells like Frenzy where it's up to level 5, but i encounter much stronger enemies than that. The enemies level with you, right? So it's normal this spell doesn't work against a bear or troll, right?

you should use soul trap before you kill something. say you have soul trap for 20 seconds, you have 20 seconds to kill the enemy. if you do kill it in that time frame the soul gets trapped in a gem. if you dont then you either have to reapply the spell or you dont get its soul. Umbra's soul trap gives you two minutes to kill an enemy i think. you only have to hit them once with umbra then you can kill them however you want in that two minutes.

Really? So i can hit a very strong enemy with the Umbra, and then i can switch to a much stronger weapon and kill him and get the soul? Now that is cool.

Just be sure you have a big enough soul gem to house the soul. Of course Azura's Star will do the job for any.

Except for NPCs, they need a Black Soul gem.

Besides, Umbra has the highest base attack damage of all the swords. It's not that weak, except for having no damaging enchantments.
And if you do not finish the associated quest, Umbra will stay a quest item and thus weightless.

Yes, I would think that Umbra would have a good enough attack to be useful. Maybe your Blade skill isn't high enough?