Trying to Understand Soul Stones : V

» Wed Oct 14, 2015 1:01 pm

Well now that I've gotten to the point to start using soul stones and enchant my own items, I'm finding that regardless of the size of the stone. That it can get filled by even the smallest soul. So i end up with pathetically powered stones.. How do I make sure Im getting a decent soul for my encounters.

» Thu Oct 15, 2015 2:11 am

More powerful critters have bigger souls. If you end up with a petty mud crab in your greater soul gem and are unhappy, you can drop the soul gem on the ground to empty it. Then pick it back up and try again.

» Wed Oct 14, 2015 10:40 pm

REALLY!?! Damn! All this time, I never knew that... I've been selling off grand soul gems that were accidentally filled with petty or lesser souls or turning them into "muffle" or "waterbreathing" items for several years now..... :blush:

» Thu Oct 15, 2015 12:07 am

Or dropping them on the ground in disgust, and leaving them there...

» Wed Oct 14, 2015 11:55 am

Now here's something new I've learned. Thanks Acadian!

» Wed Oct 14, 2015 9:09 pm

On PC one can use Acquisitive Soul Gems mod to limit souls to fill only correct size gems. No more petty souls in grand soul gems, for example.

» Wed Oct 14, 2015 3:40 pm

Acquisitive Soul Gems Multithreaded is an even better option, ASG was great, and I used it for a long time, but it's kinda buggy and e.g. you can usually only trap one soul at once, ASGM lets you harvest as many souls as you've trapped and killed.

» Thu Oct 15, 2015 1:56 am

Do souls still go into the smallest soulstone that will hold them?

I've only been disenchanting items so far, and buying up filled grand soul gems when Riverfront has them in stock. I know at some point I'll have to deal with that part of the game if I want to go the enchanting route though. I've seen bows for sale with the soultrap ability but keep putting it off for now.

» Wed Oct 14, 2015 7:00 pm

This is possibly a spoiler and definitely metagaming, but one of the limited number of reliably-located, disenchantable enchanted 'dual effect' items in the game is:

Spoiler

the Steel Battleaxe of Firey Souls, located in Ironbind Barrow, just off the road from Whiterun/Windhelm to Dawnstar. It has a single effect in terms of 'you can disenchant it and it counts as a single effect, meaning you don't need the extra effect perk but if you have it you can couple it with something else', but does two things - 10pt of fire damage (regardless of what soul you use and what you do with the 'charges' slider) plus soul trap for X seconds (depending on the soul and the slider). Phenomenally useful as soul trap really only needs to last one second on a weapon, as if you don't kill the enemy with any given hit, you'll probably have to hit it again to kill it (maybe go for 2-3 seconds if you're using followers who might also get in the kill while you're preparing for the next hit) and you always get the 10pt of fire damage, so you can make a pretty useful weapon that lasts a decent number of hits before needing to recharge with a low skill and petty soul, or a very useful weapon that lasts aaaaaaaaaaages with a higher skill and grand soul. Of course, at higher levels, 10pt fire damage isn't great, but by then you've probably got good enough weapons that you don't massively need the extra damage, and it still gives you that slight edge over not having it, plus you still get the soul trap effect.

It does occasionally fly around the room, especially if you're using shouts, so if you can't find it (the UESP tells you where it is normally positioned) make sure you look eeeeeeverywhere, I once spent about five minutes looking for it in a modded game where draugr use Shouts much more, and I already had all three words of Unrelenting Force.

Do you mean with Acquisitive Soul Gems Multithreaded? With that mod, they will only go into the correct sized gem (common for common etc). So, you do miss out on the odd soul because it won't go into a bigger gem, but on the other hand you don't waste good gems (or have to mess around dropping them) on rubbish souls.