Morrowind:Useful Enchantments

This page summarizes some useful enchantments for players to create or use as inspiration for their own enchantments.  Other related pages are:

:Enchant: General info and tips on the Enchant skill.
:Souls: The souls available to create filled soul gems.
:Items: All of the items available in Morrowind. Equipment and Paper items are enchantable.
:Spell Effects: A listing of all spell effects that can be added to an item, along with their relative costs.

This list only includes information on enchantments that are not immediately obvious, as well as more obvious enchantments with non-obvious alternate uses. 

To keep this page from getting cluttered, please observe the following guidelines:
Place your enchantment under the correct heading (Cast on Use, Cast on Strike, Constant Effect). Enchantments are listed from lowest to highest Enchanting Point cost.
Only add useful enchantments. If an enchantment is "fun" but not especially useful, it does not belong here.
No multiple effect enchantments unless those effects have a significant and not immediately obvious synergy.
Explain the purpose of the enchantment. If the explanation is little more than what is written on the Spell Effects page, don't add it here.
Only list tested and working enchantments.
Do not add Cast on Use Enchantments unless the effect cannot be duplicated with a spell for some reason.
Avoid adding Constant Effect Enchantments that are only useful in the early game. While Constant Effects can technically be obtained early, they are inefficient without exploiting game mechanics.
Do not write in the first person or attribute an enchantment to any specific person (as per site policy).

If you are unsure whether or not to add an enchantment, instead add it to the talk page, where other users can comment and test them.

Cast on Use
The primary advantages of using a Cast on Use enchantment as opposed to a spell are the following:

Guaranteed success rate: Enchantments bypass the high failure rate of spells that are too expensive for your current Skill.
No cooldown: Cast on Use items do not require the same animations used by normal spells. The same effect (such as healing or damage) can be applied extremely rapidly until the item runs out of Charge.
Uses Charge instead of Magicka: Charge will slowly regenerate over time, and can be recharged with a filled Soulgem. Magicka normally only recharges when resting or drinking potions.
Charge cost decreases with Enchanting skill:  The higher your enchanting skill, the less it costs to use on-use items.  At 110 (accessible with buffs), every item will cost only 1 charge to use.  This allows you to repeatedly cast spells that would normally be prohibitively expensive to use so frequently.

Collectively, these benefits also mean that cast-on-use enchantments can sometimes be used as a substitute for a continuous effect enchantment, constantly re-activating the benefit without having to worry about failures, casting time, or mana consumption; this can be useful either because you're not yet able to make a continuous effect enchantment, or because a continuous effect for that spell wouldn't fit in any item.  With a fifteen-second duration, natural charge regeneration will keep you from ever running out, and even with shorter durations it is unlikely that you'll be able to consume an entire Grand Soul.  Example spells that can be useful to maintain continuously in this manner include Levitate early on, and 100% Reflect or Spell Absorption later on.

5 Enchanting Points
Drain Intelligence 100 pts for 1 Second on Self
This effect exploits an oddity in the Magicka calculation; basically, the game sees that you have "full" mp when your Intelligence is drained to 0 regardless of what it was before, and thus gives you 100% of your Magicka back when the Intelligence is restored.

The end effect is that using an item with this Enchantment on it will instantly restore your Magicka. Since Enchantments don't consume Magicka to work, this allows you to regain all of your Magicka even if you don't have enough Magicka to cast any spells at all.
 This behavior is optionally removed by Morrowind Code Patch.  

50 Enchanting Points
Fortify Enchant 500 Points for 2 Seconds on Self
With this enchantment you can enchant all things possible with 100++ chances of success.
Really useful early in the game - all you need is around 50K gold, an extravagant amulet and a soul gem with a soul of sufficient size.   

100 Enchanting Points
Drain Health 500 Points for 1 second
This effect is strong enough to kill almost anything in the game for 2 reasons: very few creatures have any significant magic resist, which is the only resist applicable to drain health; and very few beings have more than 500 health in the base game (Dagoth Ur's second form, Divayth Fyr, and Vivec). If the creature has reflect (ex: most Daedra), this can be very lethal to the player, though high health and/or magicka resistance can get around this. Alternatively, for 105 points, the same enchantment can be made with an area of 50ft to kill many opponents at once.  

120 Enchanting Points
Fortify Luck 500 Points for 4 secs on Self
If you have MCP, some of the spells can have a higher maximum magnitude, such as Feather. If you need to be extra lucky, you can use an exquisite ring for this. 500 luck will be more than enough for most actions. A constant effect will give you much less bonus, so enchant it as Cast When Used. Also, Luck can be substituted with any other primary attributes, but especially those related to combat-- strength, agility, which would result in enormous boost in physical damage, attack accuracy and chance of evasion of the user.  

Cast on Strike
1 Enchanting Point
Soultrap for 2 Seconds on Touch
While Soultrap on a weapon is a fairly obvious choice for Enchanters to quickly hoard Souls to sell or use, it has some less-obvious uses when combined with Azura's Star.

Firstly, Soultrap can be added as the first effect to another weapon enchantment (such as damage or Paralysis) without adding much cost to the enchantment at all. This allows the player to recharge their weapon's enchantment whenever they defeat a Creature, allowing the weapon to be used for much longer before running out of Charges.

Secondly, the constant recharging of the enchanted weapon will level the player's Enchant skill very quickly.

(Note that 2 seconds is generally long enough to keep the effect active, even if a hit decides not to trigger the enchantment for whatever reason).

Bound Weapon for 19 Seconds on Self
The idea here is to put this effect on a Throwing Weapon, so that the target has the "on Self" effect applied to them. Most NPCs have no proficiency for weapons types other than what they have equipped, so giving them a new weapon type leaves them with an extremely low chance of actually landing a blow on the player.

This strategy can be used in conjunction with a Calm Humanoid effect to attempt to Pickpocket any piece of equipment that the NPC has equipped (other than Shoulder or Leg armor, for which there is no Bound equivalent), but be warned that Pickpocketing equipment is notoriously difficult and the NPC will not be happy that you embedded a throwing star in its back once the Calm effect wears off.

Be careful - not all enemies have attack animations for every weapon, and this can cause issues. The goblins added by the Tribunal expansion, for example, lack spear attack animations, and binding spears to them may cause the game to crash as it tries and fails to find the correct file.

Restore Health 7 pts for 1 Second on Strike
Enables a weapon to heal an enemy for a higher amount, than the damage being inflicted upon strike. Very useful for combat skills training.

A low-end weapons like Chitin or Iron should be preferred for enchanting - a weaker healing effect will be sufficient to compensate their damage. This will result in a cheaper price enchantment, consuming less charges per strike. Also, the player should be aware, that one-hit killed opponent won't be willing to train anymore.

Choosing a weak sparring-partner, like Rat, Mudcrab or Kwama Forager will minimize chances of player's death.  

10 Enchanting Points
Absorb Health 25 pts on Touch
(Note: 25 points is an arbitrary number. You can add more or less depending on what your weapon can hold and how much Charge you are willing to expend per hit)

On the surface, this effect would seem to be unworthy of note. You deal extra damage and heal health with every swing. The reason it deserves a special mention on this list, however, is due to a unique property of Absorb spells: they will not hurt you when Reflected, since you are essentially absorbing health from yourself. This gives it a distinct advantage over other damaging Enchantments.
 This behavior is optionally removed by Morrowind Code Patch.

Fortify Strength 100 pts for 2 Seconds on self
This enchantment is immensely powerful on a fast weapon with decent base damage like daedric wakizashi. It is also notable that since it is a cast-on-self enchantment, and basically boosts physical damage, one does not need to worry about magic reflection, resistance and absorption of one's opponent. One can also change Strength to any primary attributes like agility, speed, luck etc. for other purposes.

Sanctuary x pts for 2 Seconds on self
This enchantment grants the wielder great protection between strikes. With extra enchantment points left, consider adding this enchantment to a weapon, since it is incredibly cheap; a sanctuary 20 pts on self for 2s costs approximately 3 enchantment points.  

30 Enchanting Points
Calm 100 pts for 2 Seconds on Touch, Chameleon 100 pts for 2 Seconds on Self
The Calm effect keeps the target from running away and pulls it out of combat (making it stop looking for you as frequently as it would if it were still in combat), while the Chameleon effect prevents the surrounding enemies from seeing your follow-up attack and increases your chances of dealing Critical Damage. In effect, this Enchantment forces the enemy to stand relatively still and take whatever punishment you give them, while simultaneously allowing for a near-endless stream of Critical Hits.

Warning: As always, be careful when using Calm effects. Performing a hostile action on a Calmed target is considered assault, so avoid abusing this effect in front of (or against) guards.  

Constant Effect
10 Enchanting Points (Bound Items on Self)
This section is being handled separately from the rest of the list due to the unique nature of Bound Items, and to consolidate their common features. Unlike with Spells or Cast on Use Enchantments that provide Bound Equipment, Constant Effect Bound equipment can be used to completely replace armor/weapons, so it requires a different mindset when looking at it.

Probably the most important advantage of Bound Equipment is its weightless nature, allowing you to carry more items on your person without becoming encumbered. The other primary advantage is that it is very easy to completely "repair" Bound Items for free by simple unequipping and reequipping the item providing the effect.

In general, Bound Weapons are not the best weapons available in their respective categories, due to the availability of weapons with strong Cast on Strike enchantments, powerful built-in effects, or especially high damage. Their ability to constantly maintain high Condition without needing frequent repairing can help them maintain near-maximum damage at all times without much hassle.

Bound Armor suffers most from having a fixed Armor Rating. Since the Armor is weightless, the game treats it as if the player always has 30 points in the Armor's Armor Skill, so the Armor Rating will forever be stuck at 80 (75 for the Bound Helm) - this is fairly easy to surpass for any Armor Class. Condition is also less of a concern with armor, though instant-repair is certainly convenient. A major reason to use Bound Armor instead of real armor are the bonus Enchantments that come on them, several of which are too large to actually fit on a comparable item.

There is actually a certain point at which you have enough Skill in Unarmored to actually gain more Armor Rating leaving a slot empty than filling it. While Bound Helm and Cuirass are a little more complicated due to their enchants, for the other three slots (well, four if you count both Gauntlets) the point at which leaving the slot empty to a Bound Item gives more Armor Rating is 111 Unarmored Skill.

For lazy Werewolf players, it deserves a mention that up to 4 Bound Item effects can fit on a single piece of Exquisite jewelry, making re-equipping after a wild night less of a hassle. A full suite of Bound Items (5 pieces of armor + 1 weapon) can fit on two items with 60 Enchanting Points each, as well.

Bound Boots
These provide more Fortify Speed than you could normally enchant a set of boots with, while simultaneously providing more defense than the Boots of Blinding Speed or Paws of the Wolf-Runner will until extremely high Skill in Light Armor. They have a much less obvious effect on your movement speed than either of those two items.

Bound Cuirass
This is probably the weakest of all the Bound Armor pieces due to the presence of Chest pieces in every weight class that have 80 or more Armor Rating with decent Constant Effects. Moreover, the chest slot makes up a full 30% of your overall armor, so it is not a place to skimp. 

That being said, the bonuses to Armor Rating does make the other 70% of your armor more powerful if it is the only Bound Armor effect you have, so it can theoretically be better than a real Cuirass if you are using an extremely mixed set of equipment. Additionally, Chest Armor is generally quite heavy, so Bound Cuirass can save some weight if you are too worried about your encumbrance.

Bound Gauntlets
The Left Gauntlet provides 10 points of Fortify Hand-to-Hand, which is of questionable usefulness since that equates to at most an extra 5 Fatigue or 0.75 Health damage per punch. The Right Gauntlet's 10 points of Fortify Agility is much more useful for the variety of effects that Agility provides, from increased Hit Rate to improved Sneaking.

Remember that you can equip only one of the Gauntlets at a time if you would like by equipping the other Gauntlet after the Bound Gauntlet effect is applied. Since Gauntlets impart only 5% of their Armor Rating to the player anyways, switching a single Gauntlet for a Bound Gauntlet won't lower your overall Armor by all that much.

Bound Helm
This is more useful than Bound Cuirass, since your Head Armor only accounts for 10% of your overall Armor Rating, and Helms with high Armor Rating or amazing effects are few and far between. Often, it is preferable to wear a Bound Helm with its Armor Skill boosts than to wear a Helm with slightly more Armor Rating but no such boost.

On the other hand, there are Helms of every weight class that can be enchanted with more than 5 points of Fortify Armor Skill, so you might be better off using one those unless you are using an extremely mixed armor set.

Bound Longbow
The exception to the rule of Bound Weapons being outshone by Cast on Strike weapons is Bound Longbow. Since Bows themselves cannot use Cast on Strike enchantments and cannot hold very large Constant Effect enchantments (not to mention there are no especially good non-generic bows), Bound Longbow provides a weightless version of the strongest bow in the game, with a decent Enchantment built right in and free repairs. 

Note that if you are using an item with 120 Enchanting Points, you can also add up to 20 additional points of Fortify Marksman to it. This allows any player, no matter how low their Marksman Skill, to have a reasonable chance of landing a hit with their Bound Bow. Indeed, this trick can be used with any Bound Weapon to help the player train a low weapon skill, though it might be more beneficial to simply find the Master Trainer for that skill.

Bound Shield
Shields with enough Enchanting Points to hold a 10-point Fortify Block effect tend to be some combination of heavy, fairly rare, or quite weak. Thus, Bound Shield can provide an improved chance to block without weighing you down, but remember you are sacrificing the Daedric Tower Shield's massive 225 Enchanting Points to do so.

If you primarily use 1-handed weapons and have a reasonable Block, you might find your Shield's Condition drops quite quickly. The ability to freely repair your shield might make Bound Shield a little more appealing to you if that is the case.  

15 Enchanting Points
Slow Fall 1 pt on Self
A single point of Slowfall is enough to prevent all falling damage, but is not enough to have an appreciable effect on falling speed (which is a good thing, since too strong a Slow Fall effect makes falling from a great height take a very long time).

This effect is extremely useful as a Constant Effect, since having it as a spell or Cast on Use Enchantment requires the player to fumble around for that item/spell whenever they fall from a great height. A Constant Effect Slow Fall enchantment, however, allows the player to take flying leaps off of whatever buildings they want without worry.

Water Walking on Self
While the advantages of Water Walking are largely the same regardless of how it is obtained (the chief advantages being avoiding combat and faster aquatic movement),  it deserves mention on this list simply because of how useful it is as a Constant Effect. With a Constant Effect Water Walking, the player can start using rivers as highways without second thought, since sea enemies will ignore the player and land enemies will be unable to catch up (leaving only Cliff Racers to deal with). This item must be unequipped in order to go underwater.

Water Breathing on Self
For those times when you want to explore those underwater grottos, without having to either stay close to the surface or keep on casting Water Breathing spells. Also highly useful when diving for deep shipwrecks or the Sunken Shrine of Boethiah. Not so useful for a certain early Tribunal Temple quest, for which you will have to unequip the item. Very good when paired up with a Night-Eye constant effect (especially on the same item if it has sufficient capacity for enchantment), because of poor underwater visibility otherwise.

Levitate 1 pt on Self
Levitation is a powerful effect, but comes with two significant drawbacks:  Most of the time, it is slower than walking; and while levitating, you cannot rest or wait without using a bed.  A constant-effect levitation item allows you to instantly activate and deactivate your levitation at-will, negating these drawbacks (by putting another item for the same slot in your hotkey bar, you can even activate or deactivate your levitation with a single keypress.)  That alone would not be worth mentioning, but there's an additional synergy that makes a one-point constant levitation item particularly worthwhile:  When combined with the Boots of Blinding Speed, levitation is faster than walking (and, depending on your athletics and encumbrance, likely faster than running).  A constant levitation item allows you to take advantage of this for extended high-speed overland flight, while still letting you cancel the effect instantly either to recover or when you want to take the boots off.  

30 Enchanting Points
Restore Fatigue 6 pts on Self
Constant Effect Restore Fatigue means that you will regain Fatigue every second. This is important for counteracting Fatigue loss when running, jumping, attacking, etc. without having your character's performance suffer.

6 points is usually sufficient to overcome fatigue loss when running (though that depends on how encumbered you are). 30 Enchanting Points also has the advantage of fitting in nicely with Slow Fall or Water Walking on items with 60 maximum Enchanting Points (such as Exquisite Pants).  

50 Enchanting Points
Fortify Enchant 10 pts on Self
The cost of using a Cast on Use or Cast on Strike Enchantment decreases drastically as your Enchant Skill increases. With 110 Enchant, all Enchantments cost only 1 Charge to use, letting you get hundreds of uses from a single enchanted item before it requires recharging.  

100 Enchanting Points
Invisibility on Self
Having an item with Invisibility as a Constant Effect makes it possible to force enemies to disengage pursuit by equipping the item, and lets you walk through enemy-infested areas without the time constraints associated with casting spells. Invisibility wears off whenever an action is performed such as talking, opening doors, or picking locks. Re-equip the item to regain the effect.

Restore Health 4 pts on Self
Constant Effect Restore Health is extremely useful defensively, with two main benefits:
It behaves as pseudo-damage reduction. While you still take full damage with such an effect in place, some of that damage will have been healed already by the time the next attack comes. This means that you will take longer to fall.
It allows the player to start most fights with full health. This helps eliminate the situation where the player's health (and Magicka, if it is used for healing) slowly depletes as an outing continues for a long time.

Four points of Restore Health is a good number to aim for, since it is small enough to fit on a Telvanni Cephalopod Helm or Exquisite Jewelry. Any amount of the effect will make a huge difference, however.

Resist Paralysis 100 pts on Self
Resist Paralysis has a surprisingly cheap base cost and is the only type of custom Constant Effect resistance that can be maximized and still fit on a single item. Note that even with 100 Willpower, stopping Paralysis is not guaranteed, so an immunity to Paralysis is useful at all stages of the game. Keep in mind that it is an option to simply carry Cure Paralyzation potions, though having an immunity to the effect stops the opponent from just inflicting Paralysis again (or your own Paralysis effect from being Reflected) after the potion is used. Note that this effect can be enchanted as a variable magnitude (such as 1-100) and repeatedly re-equipped until a desired value is rolled, so it isn't necessarily required to use a full 100 enchantment points to gain paralysis immunity.  

125 Enchanting Points
Fortify Acrobatics 25 pts on Self
:For use without the Slow Fall effect.
With a natural base of 100 points in Acrobatics, this enchantment will negate any type of fall damage. While it is more expensive than a 1 point Slow Fall, Fortify Acrobatics also provides the advantage of increased jump speed and jump height.  

35 to 190 Enchanting Points
Summon Creature on Self
Any creature will work, from the lowly Ancestral Ghost to the expensive  Storm Atronach. (Note that Golden Saints and Winged Twilights are too expensive for even the Daedric Tower Shield to summon permanently)

A Constant Effect Summon makes the creature in question go from being a temporary distraction to a constant companion. If your little buddy gets itself killed or falls too far behind, you can just unequip and reequip the item in order to have a fresh meat shield.

Possibly even more useful is using the Constant Effect summon to farm Souls. Unlike with spells, you won't have any time limit in which to kill your summon, nor will you need to pay Magicka or an Enchanted item's charge for each soul harvested. 

Of special note is the Dremora summon (140 Enchanting Points). There is a brief window of time in which the player can loot the corpse of a summon they kill before it disappears, so farming summoned Dremoras can lead to a constant supply of Daedric weapons at high enough levels.  

225 Enchanting Points
Feather 45 pts on Self
While you will get more net Encumbrance (not to mention damage) by using Fortify Strength, it deserves mention that adding a Feather effect to a Daedric Tower Shield gives it a net weight of 0 - essentially becoming a Bound Shield that is affected by your Heavy Armor skill. If your equipment set is already weightless, such a shield will help keep your movement speed at maximum levels.  

500 Enchanting Points
1-Cost Spell Effect 100 pts on Self
There is no single item in the game with the 500 Enchanting Points necessary to create an Enchantment with 100 Points of one of the 1-Cost Spell Effects. For most effects, however, you can split it among multiple items for the same effect. One example of a set of items that can reach 500 total Enchanting Points is Exquisite Ring x2, Exquisite Amulet, and Ebony Tower Shield (this set actually has enough Enchanting Points for 102 Points, if you are so inclined).

Note that surprisingly few effects actually have any special effect at 100 Points, even if they are listed as a percentage. 100 Points of Sanctuary, for example, does not guarantee all incoming attacks will miss if they had more than a 100% chance to hit to begin with. If you want fewer (or more) Points of any of these effects, simply take the number of Points you want and multiply by five to get the required number of Enchanting Points needed.

Other Notable Effects
These effects might prove useful to have in large quantities, but are not worth mentioning individually. For more information on them, check their respective Spell Pages:
Chameleon
Sanctuary
Detect Key
Detect Enchantment
Telekinesis
Fortify Attack
Fortify Attribute
Fortify Skill
Restore Attribute