Oblivion:Useful Enchantments

This page summarizes some useful enchantments that players may wish to create or use as inspiration for their own enchantments.  Other related pages are:
Enchanting: Details on how to use the enchanting altar to create enchanted items
Souls: The souls available to create filled soul gems
Sigil Stones: Information on using Sigil Stones for enchanting.
Enchantments and items named here are only examples. Add new enchantments below if you come up with good ones. 

We also would like to point out that there are countless combinations of effects and most of them are useful. However we cannot have an article that has every useful enchantment combination. Because of this, we have some general guidelines we would like you to follow when adding your useful enchantment.

Please place your enchantment in the correct place. Alphabetical order in the appropriate category.
Please only place enchantments here that show a new gimmick or trick that would not normally be noticed. (Fire Damage 100 Points on Strike is an example of what not to put)
Try to choose a name that is descriptive, rather than one that you think sounds cool. ("Mega-Bomb" or "Powerstriker" does not give you much information about what the enchantment will do.)
Please make sure that this enchantment works as you have labeled it.
Please refrain from adding attributions or anything in first person. This is against the site's policy. 

Thank you for your cooperation. 

Simple Enchantments

You can begin making your own enchanted items once you have access to the arcane university, some mundane items, and some filled soul gems.  However, at low levels, you may be disappointed that you cannot create that longsword that deals 25 points of shock damage per strike just yet. There are quite a few very useful enchantments that you can create, however, that won't need a grand soul or cost a lot to create. 

Please note, some of the following are listed as rings but just as easily could be a pendant, necklace, armor, or clothes. The advantage of rings is that they are light to carry, you can wear two at a time, and you can easily take them on and off. Any enchantment put into armor will generally be something that you will want to have only when you're in combat or a perpetually useful effect such as Fortify Strength.



Constant Water Breathing

Using water breathing on a ring or amulet will provide unlimited water breathing due to the fact that any enchantment used on an armor piece will provide a permanent and constant effect. This requires only a petty soul gem, because the water breathing spell has no magnitude. The only negative aspect of this enchantment is a high gold cost (2,000). Water walking can also be used this way.

Suit of Fortify Magicka 

For additional (and free; see below) magicka, enchant clothing with Fortify Magicka - best with a Sigil Stone (50 points) and when used on a full set of clothing. Extra magicka allows you to cast spells which cost more magicka, and enchanting more than one item (or compounding the effect with potions/spells/scrolls) can allow you to cast spells of virtually any cost.

Fortify Magicka will not leave the player with negative magicka when the effect expires; because of this, un-equipping and re-equipping an item enchanted with this effect will replenish your magicka while empty (setting a hotkey will make this easier). This is also an easy way for Atronachs to save on potions, as their magicka does not replenish with time. Some players may view this as an exploit, so players who like challenge/roleplaying may want to avoid using these enchanted items this way.

A custom Restoration spell that further fortifies magicka can compound the effect of such items to allow high-cost spells to be cast (a 3 second duration is enough). As with other enchanted rings, it can be hard to know which ring will get booted off if you have two others equipped when you switch to this item. Hoods, helms, and amulets allow a simple on/off switch for free magicka, while still letting you walk around more or less fully clothed and armored. As with other enchantments, avoid clothing items with "outfit" or "robe" in their name, as they take up multiple clothing slots, and therefore limit your ability to compound the effect (or to mix multiple effects with different clothing items).

Suit of Feather

Fortify Strength is more useful than Feather, but the spell is not as easy to acquire at low levels, and a Feather enchantment is cheaper to create. Two simple Rings of Feather will be very helpful for carrying loot from dungeons until you do acquire the Fortify Attribute effect. You will also run slightly faster when using Feather if you are carrying a significant amount, as it will lighten your encumbrance. There is an odd quirk with the Feather effect, however: to get the best effect, it is better to pick up as much equipment as possible until you are over encumbered and then put on the rings. See Feather vs. Fortify Strength for more details.

Suit of Chameleon

Enchant 5 pieces of armor, clothes, or jewelry with Grand Soul gems or Sigil Stones (Latent or above) to create the infamous 100% Chameleon suit. Everyone in the game will be oblivious to you and almost all of your actions for essentially permanent invisibility. The advantage of using Ascendant or Transcendent Sigil Stones is that you only have to use 4 pieces of clothing or armor (4*30%=120% chameleon). Many players find 100% too much; therefore, some only create an 80%-95% chameleon suit, which means that you still have to Sneak. Also note that, in combat, the damage multiplier only applies when you're sneaking; 100% Chameleon will do nothing to change that, even though your enemies won't be able to detect you.

Suit of Fire/Frost/Shock Shield (Armor)

By enchanting all of your armor and your shield with Shield or Fire/Frost/Shock Shield, you can almost double its protection, especially at earlier levels when you're only wearing steel or chainmail armor. For example; use three Petty soul gems to enchant three different parts of your armor (for example Cuirass, Helmet and Greaves) with Fire Shield, Frost Shield and Shock Shield. It will not only provide some protection from all three elements, it will also increase your overall armor rating by 18 points (6 points each). This is a significant increase and is the same as if you had enchanted your armor with the Shield effect but without the bonus resist fire, frost and shock for the same cost. 

When you begin to use stronger souls (Lesser to Grand) the Shield enchantment will provide more overall defense by one point, however whether that's any more useful is debatable. This can also be added to plain clothes instead for mages that want to retain 100% spell effectiveness. Note that if your character already has a resistance, like a Dunmer's 75% Fire resistance, then it would be better to get the other protections only. You still get the bonus to your armor even if not having protection from each of Fire, Frost or shock.

Suit of Detect Life

Using Detect Life is useful in the early part of the game. You can stack detect life; for example, a helm with detect life 25 feet + boots with detect life 25 feet = detect life for 50 feet. The max permanent detect life possible is 9 X 180 (with a Transcendent Sigil Stone) for a total of 1,620 feet detect life.  Bear in mind that there is a limit to how far you can see in the game - even while zooming with a bow - and that detecting life beyond that range is unnecessary.

Powerful Enchantments
Some of these enchantments may be seen as cheating. Certainly enchantments such as the Chameleon Suit make the game incredibly easy. You may want to consider the effect that they have on the game experience before making them.

Elemental Armor 2

As above, enchant your armor and shield with Fire Shield, Frost Shield and Shock Shield using powerful soul gems or Sigil stones to increase both your armor rating and resistance to fire/frost/shock. The difference here is that once you have access to Dwarven/Orcish or Elven/Glass armor (and presumably a high skill in light or heavy armor) and anything above common soul gems you will probably reach an armor rating of 85 which is the limit. Therefore it's worth mentioning that it is both a very powerful effect (especially at level 13 or 14) and that you may be actually wasting any enchantment that raises your armor rating over 85.

It is also possible that the armor you originally enchanted to provide an armor rating of 70 or 80 may quickly hit the 85 limit due to an increase in your heavy armor or light armor skills, or due to your armorer skill going to expert and therefore repairing the items to 125%. In that case you may want to consider using a different enchantment on some parts of your armor.

Another important factor is that Sigil Stones always provide a bigger boost to your armor rating from Fire/Frost/Shock Shield than Shield alone, making the Shield effect from Sigil Stones not a good choice in comparison to Fire, Frost or Shock shield. See the table on the Sigil Stones page for more information.

Mage's Clothing of Protection

It is possible to use transcendent Sigil stones to enchant 4 pieces of clothing with fire/frost/shock shield as above to get maximum protection (armor rating of 85) while still retaining 100% spell effectiveness and some resistance to spell damage.  Be careful not to use anything labeled "outfit" or "robes" as this will take the place of two pieces of clothing, use a shirt, pants, boots and a hood instead. There is only one item that can be enchanted and used on the hands that isn't considered armor: the Wrist Irons that you're wearing at the beginning of the game. If you still have them, enchant them as well. If you threw them away, it might be possible to pick up a pair later in the Shivering Isles. In the Addiction sub quest of the main quest you can find a pair on the shelf near the wine racks in the room with the chalice. In some ways the extra protection from the fourth effect is wasted due to the armor rating cap of 85, however the resistance to fire/frost/shock still works. You may want to reduce your overall armor rating to 75 (still the same as Daedric armor) and use the last two enchantments for Fortify Magicka or Resist Magic, particularly powerful if you are a Breton as this will give you 90% resist magic (you can get to 100% by using other items such as the  Mundane Ring found in random loot after level 20, or on Raven Camoran after level 22).

Warrior's Clothing of Protection

As above, one can use Transcendent Sigil Stones to enchant 5 pieces of heavy armor with a Resist Magic effect that will make a warrior invulnerable to magic attacks, which is incredibly useful later on in the game once you are around level 20 when most monsters have powers that cannot be silenced or when enemies commonly carry enchanted weapons, meaning that enemies such as Spider Daedra, Storm Atronachs, and Xivilai become easy prey. Orcs only need 4 pieces of armor enchanted in this way, and Bretons only need 3, freeing another slot for other enchantments. Alternatively, one can make use of the Mundane Ring, cutting the requirement to only 3 pieces of armor.

Cursed Enchantments

Because it is possible to reverse pickpocket zero weight items, you can create objects with harmful enchantments and then place them in the inventory of NPCs. These items may then be equipped when the NPC enters combat, wakes up in the morning, sits down somewhere, or under various other conditions. NPCs will not equip items which are marked as stolen and will generally choose to wear items with higher armor rating and cost before others in their inventory. Since many NPCs do not have any sort of head gear hoods are often chosen for these effects. A good technique for use of these items is to name the object whatever you want, but with a string of the letter 'a' in front e.g. 'aaa Hood of Cursed Lightning', because NPCs will equip the first item in their inventory, which is in alphabetical order.

If you retrieve such an item through pickpocketing it will then be marked as stolen. Items with no gold value, such as permanent bound items or Black Hoods, cannot then be re-used because there is no way to clear the stolen indicator. Items with a gold value, such as Mage's Hoods, Dark Shirts, and Black Wide Pants, can be cleared through a fence.

It is worth mentioning that these effects can NOT be combined with 100% Spell Absorption to create constant magicka regeneration for Atronach characters (or just to give boosts for other characters).  It should also be noted that you cannot apply calm, frenzy, command humanoid, or charm cursed enchantments with the hope of gaining permanent allies or permanently timid foes.  In order to have a cursed enchantment that spell effect must also be available for spell-making for yourself (since you can give yourself fire damage or whatnot, this counts), which these effects cannot do.

Garb of Slumber
Damage Fatigue 5 points
Place this enchantment on items that your target will equip for at least three different inventory slots. There are zero-weight permanent bound items for six inventory slots and non-quest regular clothing items for four inventory slots. The victim will begin losing fatigue faster than they regain it and eventually collapse. If you can only get them to equip two of these items they will be unable to regenerate fatigue and you can still make them collapse by lowering their fatigue in other ways (punching them, provoking them to attack you, damage fatigue effects, etc.). After collapsing, NPCs are still alive but they will be permanently disabled unless treated with Restore Fatigue. This allows you to disable NPCs who are marked essential or those that respawn. Note that since the target is still alive anything taken from them will be marked as stolen, but they will not be able to fight you (but will still report it to the guards).

Cowl of the Silenced Mage
Silence

While this might not be useful for every encounter, it can be useful if you're going up against a powerful mage (like Falcar, Celedaen or Caminalda, etc.). Since their magic is now useless, they have to turn to other forms of attack (such as a sword, fists, mace, etc.). They will likely not be very skilled with anything other than magic, so the fight is now easier. You only need a petty soul gem to make the enchantment but in the long run it will come in handy.

Hood of Torture
Damage Health 5 points
Your victim will slowly suffer and die from wearing the hood, allowing you to take the hood back and any other valuable items from the victim's crippled body. This is a great way to complete assassinations.
It may be a good idea to name this "A Hood of Torture". This is because NPCs put on the first hood/helmet in their inventory, which is listed alphabetically.
Due to a bug, the affected NPC will sometimes stop taking damage when an AI package change occurs. For example, if an NPC is currently sleeping, while taking damage from a cursed item, then gets up, they will stop taking damage, despite still wearing the cursed item. In such a case, try to re-enter the cell to update the NPC. Should it fail to work, you need to wait until the next AI package change (i.e., until the NPC goes to bed again).

Replacing the Damage Health effect with something like Shock Damage gives an attractive visual effect while your victim dies.

Custom Weapons

Rather than list endless different combinations of weapons, here are a few guidelines to creating powerful magic weapons:
Use a combination of effects, rather than a single effect. For example, it's cheaper (both money-wise and charge-wise) to use Fire Damage 10 points for 1 second, Frost Damage 10 points for 1 second, and Shock Damage 10 points for 1 second than Fire Damage 30 points for 1 second.
Lower damage over time is cheaper than high damage for one second; so Fire Damage 5 points for 3 seconds is cheaper than Fire Damage 15 points for 1 second.  However, if you intend to swing the weapon rapidly, the additional duration may be wasted, as you will keep refreshing the existing effect instead of compounding it.
Absorb or Drain Agility is very powerful, especially at higher levels, because it increases your chance of staggering your opponent. Additionally, absorption prevents you from being knocked back yourself by adding that Agility to your own. A high number, such as 70 for one second, or maybe two for slower weapons, will enable you to hit repeatedly, knocking your enemy back constantly and preventing him from retaliating.
You can use Weakness to Magic and Weakness to Fire/Weakness to Frost/Weakness to Shock  to increase damage of the next strike(s). For example, add Weakness to Magic 100 points for 3 seconds and Weakness to Shock 100 points for 3 seconds to a weapon with Shock Damage 10 points for 2 seconds for a devastating weapon. If you use a weapon that strikes fast (dagger, shortsword or even longsword), this will be even more powerful than a heavy two handed weapon with Shock Damage damage 40 points for 1 second. However, to get the most from this effect, you need to be virtually on full offensive, repeatedly attacking and not blocking or dodging. You can combine this with spells that have a similar effect for a result similar to spell stacking.
To get the benefit of increasingly powerful hits, it is vitally important that effects be added in the right order. Elemental damage effects should be placed before their corresponding weakness. Weakness to Magic should be the last effect placed on the weapon. Other kinds of damage (fatigue, health) can be placed anywhere, as long as Weakness to Magic remains last.
Adding Soul Trap for at least 1 second to any weapon will help you recharge the weapon itself, as long as you have a large enough soul gem. This works especially well with Azura's Star.
Do not automatically opt for the highest quality weapons available when making custom magic weapons. Many of the enchantments on this page are so powerful that they more than make up for the weakness of any low-grade weapon they are applied to. As lower-grade weapons are lighter, using them means you will be less encumbered overall and be less fatigued when using them against a target. Lightweight weapons, such as daggers, can also be used as cost-effective tools for applying special-purpose enchantments such as Silence or Turn Undead to an opponent, as only one hit will be needed for the enchantment to take full effect, before switching back to your primary weapons or spells.

Tips for Weakness/Damage Stacking
These general rules apply for effects coming solely from an enchanted weapon (i.e. no spells cast against the target):
Elemental weaknesses do not stack with each consecutive hit.  If you have a weapon with Weakness to Fire 100% for 10 secs on Strike, each strike with the weapon will renew the timer on the effect, but the damage bonus will remain unchanged.
Weakness to Magic does stack with each consecutive hit.  It also causes other Weakness effects to stack. If you have a weapon with Weakness to Magic 100% for 10 secs on Strike, each strike with the weapon will apply an additional damage bonus and reset the timer to 10 seconds for all stacked effects.
Be sure to apply weakness effects appropriately. Weaknesses only apply to subsequent hits, and must come after the damage to which they apply, and Weakness to Magic must come after any other weaknesses.
Do not apply poison to a weapon enchanted with Weakness to Poison. The poison will actually be substantially reduced in effectiveness. Instead, use the weapon with Weakness to Poison and then switch to another weapon to apply the poison.
More damage is dealt per charge used if each damage-dealing effect is allowed to tick.  A damage effect for 1 second actually has to wait for 1 second to trigger.  If you are using a fast weapon such as a dagger, there may be several fatal damage ticks waiting in the queue already, making each superfluous strike a wasted weapon charge.

Example Weapon

Soul Trap for 1 second
Drain Health 100 pts for 1 second
Absorb Health 3 pts for 1 second
Frost Damage 3 pts for 1 second
Weakness to Poison 86% for 1 second
Weakness to Frost 100% for 1 second
Weakness to Magic 100% for 4 seconds

Atronach Blade
Absorb Magicka 35 pts for 1 second
Soul Trap for 4 seconds

This blade was meant for those who don't want to use Alchemy and have the Atronach sign (although anyone can use this). Another option is to use a Transcendent Sigil Stone which can give you Absorb Magicka 50 points on strike, you couldn't add other effects in that case, however, it can be incredibly useful for magic using characters.

For a fractional extra casting cost, adding a Fortify Magicka 100 pts for 1 second enchantment will allow the weapon to be used for full effectiveness against enemies that either have little magicka, or have already been drained of magicka. The obvious drawback to doing this is that you will actually be increasing the enemy's available magicka (if you have the Atronach birthsign, this may be a benefit rather than a drawback, as you can potentially absorb more spells). If you're using a fast enough weapon with a strong enough absorb magicka enchantment, you should be able to absorb all the extra magicka before the one second duration of the fortify spell is over.

Blade of Rejuvenation

Soul Trap for 1 second
Absorb Health 10 points for 1 second
Absorb Magicka 10 points for 1 second
Absorb Fatigue 10 points for 1 second

Best if enchanted on a longsword or an akaviri katana. This sword will make you nearly invincible on normal difficulty when used with a good shield, decent armor, and lots of empty soul gems (Black if necessary, but if not, Azura's Star works well too), even at level 50!

Crowd Control

Absorb Health 15 points in 10 ft

Using Area on a melee weapon (Eg. damage health 10 ft on strike) isn't practical if you have allies.  But when you're surrounded by enemies, there's nothing like hitting them all at once while simultaneously restoring plenty of health.  Tossing in Soul trap is a nice variation, but it's only effective when used with no area (unless you carry lots of empty soul gems around).

This is incredibly useful when using a bow, as when using a bow for stealth, enemies stand near each other. When you kill one, the other catches on. If you use a bow with a large area, it will kill both of them.

Magesbane

Silence for 3 seconds
Absorb Magicka 10 points for 3 seconds
Weakness to Poison 100% for 3 seconds

The Weakness to Poison effect should be combined with Damage Willpower poisons, so that the caster's magic will come back much more slowly (If at all). With enough hits, the foe's Willpower will be reduced to 0, and the absorbed power will only come back very slowly. On top of that, the Silence effect will stop them from curing the poison!

Training Weapons
Fortify Health X points for Y seconds
Shield 85 points for Y seconds

Best if used on low-damage weapons such as the Ruined Akaviri Katana or anything made from rusty iron.

All combat skills increase based on the number of times you hit an opponent. Thus, the more times you can hit an opponent without killing it the more you train. The 'Y' value should generally be between one and four seconds, depending on the speed of the weapon and how often you will hit. The goal is to always have the Y duration be longer than the time between each hit you will make with the weapon - so the Shield and health bonus on the target remain up at all times. Daggers and War Axes swing the fastest and are thus the best choices for this effect and training Blade and Blunt in general. Bows all have the same speed, but if you 'tap' the trigger rather than holding it down you can fire much more quickly at targets in melee range.

Pulverizer
Drain Health X points for 1 second
Drain Agility Y points for 3 seconds
Soul Trap for 1 second

This is an enchantment combination made with the goal of killing anything as fast as possible and going through unscathed: Drain Health to complement the weapon damage, Drain Agility to possibly "stagger-lock" an enemy in the succeeding swings, and Soul Trap to keep your weapon always fully charged (best if used in conjunction with Azura's Star). Drain Health's X value should be around 50-100 points (100 for higher levels) and Drain Agility's Y value should be 70 or more, adjusted to accommodate Drain Health's value (3 seconds is more than enough to let a power attack in with the debuff still in).

Best used for War Hammers (hence the name).

Useful Enchantments for Bows

Fighting with bows is difficult when you engage in combat with enemies that don't use ranged weapons, but instead favor melee or close range attacks. When hit with a "demoralize" or "turn" weapon, enemies will holster their weapons and run in fear. After the effect expires they will come back to battle.

The weapons bearing the Demoralize and Turn Undead enchantments affect all creatures and NPCs when set to affect Level 25 targets, even if those targets' own levels exceed 25. Therefore setting the level to 25 is strongly recommended. The duration of the demoralization effect determines how far enemies will run before coming back into the fight. If you set it to 1 second, they will almost stay in place and holster their weapon when hit by the arrow. Avoid setting the duration of the demoralization effect too high, because affected enemies might leave the battle for good.

Coup de Grace
Drain Health 100 points for 1 second
Use top-quality bows and arrows in conjunction with this simple yet very effective, not to mention cheap, enchantment. It's intended to be used for your last shot, although low-health opponents can often be killed if caught by a stealth attack. You may consider adding 1 second of Soul Trap or any other immediate effect if you wish. As its effectiveness depends upon your opponents' health, the earlier you make this, the better. You can also add a range to the enchantment to affect an entire group of opponents.

Mind Control Bow
Command Humanoid Level 25 for 3 seconds.

A stealthy character can use their Sneak skills to advantage with this bow. If a hostile NPC sights you, one shot from this bow will turn them to your side. Aside from the obvious benefit of halting their attack, if you are Sneaking when the arrow hits your new ally, they may lose sight of you again. When the effect wears off (and if you're still hidden) they will essentially forget that you were there in the first place.

The more obvious effect of this bow is its ability to turn an NPC to your side. When the effect wears off, however, the affected parties will remain hostile to anyone and anything that sought to attack them while they were under your command. This results in an effect like Frenzy, but is more permanent. Sneaking and a long standoff distance ensure your targets and their former friends will focus on each other rather than take notice of you.

Unlike other bows, the purpose of this bow is to convert an enemy rather than to kill them directly. A low-quality bow is the wiser choice to apply this enchantment to.

A similar weapon can be crafted to Command Creatures, or both effects can be combined on one bow.

Stopping Bow
Drain Speed 100 points for Y seconds on strike.
(Y should be around 3-6 seconds, depending on your real-life aiming skill)

One shot from this bow will make most enemies unable to move. By hitting them repeatedly, you can kill targets without ever letting them get close to you.
The main benefit of this weapon though is the exploitation of a bug in the combat engine. If a creature's speed is reduced to 0 it will cease targeting the player and won't even defend itself if attacked, even if it has ranged attacks or spells. In this state it can be repeatedly sneak attacked indefinitely.
Also, this can be used to terminate existing combat completely. If the target only fights back if struck first (defensive/non-aggressor variety), you can shoot them point blank and not be attacked in retaliation - plus it will exit existing combat (just remember to sheathe your weapon immediately afterwards!). Be wary of the characters "reporting" your actions to other characters/guards, though.
If this in an area-effect version, it can halt a mass-brawl without needing a 100pt Charm spell to force NPCs to stop fighting. As an example, Arcane University mages have a tendency to go into a frenzy if provoked; this can counter that.