The way i managed it was just to use a weapon with a 1 sec soul trap, fill azura's star, and reuse it over and over again. An inconvenience, yes, but it made the enchanted weapons more balanced and put more focus on the value of enchantments. So long as you can add a small soul trap to your custom enchanted weapon, it will most likely be similar in Skyrim, and you wont have to use a hand for casting soul trap or level up mysticism. In addition, if Varla Stones do make a reappearance, they allow you to effectively manage an arsenal of enchanted weapons, allowing you more options in using them. In short, so long as Beth gives us the right tools, I think the system will be quite manageable. And doesn't it seem odd that a weapon fueled by the captured souls of creatures can "recharge" on its own?

I found recharging weapons in Oblivion a real annoyance and eventually just stopped bothering. The thing which irks me however is that enchantments on armour were permanent, so in terms of a coherent magical ecology, weapons should have been capable of being permanently enchanted too. I don't have anything against trapping a soul to create the enchantment in the first place, but it doesn't make any logical sense to make weapons and armour work differently from each other.

Like an earlier poster, I thought this was going to be one of the things they fixed, in hand with their revision of the magic system in general.

The difference between armor and weapons was that you don't hit anything with your armor. The magic of it isn't expelled onto something. A weapon enchantment, however is expelled on something. So naturally the magic of it degrades over time.

The real problem is that they not only removed most of the enchanting options (wheres my On Cast for armor and Constant Effect for Weapons?) but also natural recharge, which makes a hell of a lot of sense in TES considering magic literally falls out of holes in the night sky.

Natural recharge in Morrowind felt really cheap to me.

There were a lot of weapons that were by themselves really weak, but the enchantments on them made them really powerful. So at first I didn't used them much as I was worrying I would run out of charges. Little did I know I could just take a nap and it would get back into full strength, just like Magicka...

I wouldn't mind some sort of alternative though, like a spell that recharges items from your magicka or just make recharging cheaper...

Make it take longer. Really, imbalance is not a just reason for removal. Its a reason for balance.

I don't like it. Balance is not obtained through enforced tedium.

I hated the system in oblivion since i used pretty much only enchanted weaponry because it was more powerful. However it made me so mad to have to run into these ayleid ruins and hope i still had varla stones left over. and having to soul traqp just to get charge back. the morrowind systme was way better. wayyy better. now this aobut skyrim upsets me. i means i have to take too much time out of the game just to soul trap creatures which means enchant skill now has to be important to me.

Agreed it is a pretty darn lame way of balancing enchanting, reminds me about the increased hp of enemies by adjusting the difficulty slider... There has to be a better way of balancing things out.
Personally I would prefer a small flat bonus so I dont have to worry about recharging at all.
Using the charges system also makes it extremely easy to exploit by simply carrying several weapons and swapping between them after their charges has been used.

You don't have to use an enchanted weapon all the time. Save it for harder encounters.

I think that's somewhat disingenuous. Something like a Water Breathing or Fortify enchantment is constantly expelling its energy into your body. Its a blatant double standard, and whilst it may have been originally incorporated for game balance, there was no real need for it when you consider the rather modest magical effects most magical weapons had in the game.


Very true.

Why do they have to continually gut features in the name of streamlining, and yet leave in awful game mechanics such as this?

I think Daedric Artifacts and other items (rewards for particularly difficult quests) shouldn't have to be recharged, as they are very powerful by nature, and thus should not need mortal souls to power them. Also, once you get to 100 in Enchanting, you should have access to a perk that lets you permanently enchant items without a need for recharge. Other than that, I think it's perfectly fine for common enchanted items to have a limited supply. For those complaining that it forced you to put points into mysticism: maintaining a magical weapon should require some magical understanding (a skill of apprentice was all that was needed to get access to a Soul Trap effect for weapon enchantments). I find it very strange that a Nord barbarian would have the knowledge to maintain magical weapons.

I don't really mind it. even when they had no charge left, I could still hit ghosts with them. Was really my only reason to enchant one.

But yeah, making the enchantments last longer would definitely make it better. Especially for pre-made weapons

I actually go the other way on the premade vs self made items. If premade is always better don't bother putting in the enchanting skill. If you are going to give me a skill to level up to 100 it better make superior gear than the gear I find.

What makes you think Varla Stones are even going to be around this time?


Well...they should. Although, you couldn't ever take NPCs' souls, just creatures. Only way to trap NPC souls was if you made Black Soul gems, in which case, your intent is quite clear.

Natural recharge was nice, but easily exploitable. And human beings are lazy so of course they would exploit it.

I am glad the oblivion system of recharging is in the game, it is not exactly hard to soul trap a creature while taking it down. Either by having a soultrap enchant or casting the spell once every X amount of kills to get a soul.

Just my opinion of course =]

[censored]. It was a pain with any enchantment... The default Sigil Stone enchantments died too fast, and Dawn/Duskfang ran out of charges every 5 kills. And even my weaksauce (5 pt Frost damage) Grand Soulgem-weapons kept dying on me.

As every game in the genre that isn't The Elder Scroll IV: Oblivion proved, limited item charges aren't necessary

Yeah, I modded in enchantment regeneration in Oblivion for a reason. I guess I'll be looking for one for Skyrim, too.

I think it was fine the way they handled it in Oblivion. You could pay the mages guild to do it for you or trap souls yourself. Personally I just disliked enchanted melee weapons so much so that I made a mod to remove the enchantements from my favorite weapons (Goldbrand and Mehrunes Razor).

Although I did enchant my bow because they were just so weak in Oblivion but that won't be a problem in Skyrim.

I don't mind the concept of getting soul gems to recharge, however most enchantments depleted unrealistically quick. IMO.

No reason an enchanted weapon shouldn't be like enchanted armor. That would be best. However, at least keeping the natural recharge would have mitigated it somewhat. So, my weapons get modded and I don't use any of the crappy "hit 17 times" and recharge it BS. It's completely unnecessary "make-work". Seriously, why should armor be a constant enchantment and weapons not? It was an old game mechanic that should have been gone a long time ago.

I'm pretty sure that it will all be covered under the Enchanting skill tree and have perks that will effect it to.

But that was harder to do with heavy weapons like swords and maces, so it helped give an edge to guys who used shortblades, which normally have lower damage rates (but are the go-to weapon for assassins, who should be able to dish out a lot of damage quick.

The slow recharge of Morrowind was good. The soul gem thing would have worked if there were more filled soul gems as loot, otherwise you're forcing people to use Soul Trap. The system would be better if magic effects degraded at the same rate as weapons condition, so that you aren't CONSTANTLY having to "refuel" them.

Worse than that, the weapons are made of glass and wear down or break really damn rapidly. To use an enchanted weapon at all effectively, you've got to be a high level smith and enchanter to keep the pos in working order. I want Daggerfall's system where you don't recharge enchanted items.

Not to mention some of the weapons are actually freaking glass, which is hilarious. Ha. Ha... Ha.

This man has it right. And even worse! There's damn pop-ups to tell you that you're out of charges!

You know, I've never once had to repair an item in Daggerfall or Arena, for that matter. What was going on there? Do they not make weapons like the used to, in Tamriel?