Skyrim:Staves

Staves are one-handed weapons that are essentially rechargeable scrolls. Anyone can use a staff, regardless of magic skill, and using a staff does not use any of the caster's own Magicka; instead, it depletes the staff's charge. However, the higher the user's skill level in the relevant magic school, the lower the charge cost to use the staff. Using staves does not increase your skills, nor do staves benefit from higher skill levels, with the exception of lowering the cost per use.

Once the staff is completely discharged, it becomes unusable, and must be recharged using the same methods as any enchanted weapon, usually via a filled soul gem.  However, the Soul Siphon perk will not work on it.

Although staves are listed in your inventory under "Weapons", they are treated differently from other weapons. In particular, staves will not be bought or sold by blacksmiths. Staves can only be bought from spell merchants, who will stock a random, level-dependent selection of staves. Both spell and general-goods merchants will buy staves. They can also be found in random loot. Staves cannot be disenchanted.

Staves can also be enchanted using the Staff Enchanter  in Tel Mithryn. Using the table will allow the user to enchant any unenchanted staff that was added with the Dragonborn add-on. The type of unenchanted staff determines what kind of enchantments can be applied to it. For example, an Illusion staff cannot have flames (a Destruction effect) enchanted onto it.  The list of staves below does not contain any staves specific to Dragonborn; see the Craftable Staves  section for those.

Standard Staves
Staves do not simply cast the same spell you would, per the staff's name; they employ enchantments bearing effects which are always similar but not always identical to the spell they are named after.  Differences between the staff and its namesake spell are noted in each staff's entry.

Alteration


Conjuration
Banish


Conjure


Reanimate
All of these do not apply the secondary effect that disintegrates the corpse after the spell wears off, which the simulated spells all have; see the bugs section for more.  Aside from this substantial upgrade, all of them are weaker than their namesake spell.



Soul Trap


Destruction
Fire Damage


Frost Damage


Shock Damage


Illusion
Fear


Frenzy


Pacify


Rally
All of these do not apply the secondary Fortify Health and Fortify Stamina effects that they claim they do and that their namesake spells do; see the bugs section for more.



Restoration
Restore Health


Turn Undead


Special Staves



Staves can be crafted at Neloth's staff enchanter after completing the quest Reluctant Steward. All staves use an appropriate unenchanted staff as base objects and one or more heart stones. Additionally you must know the spell for the staff you want to craft. Unlike weapons and armor, however, staves cannot be renamed during the crafting process.

All of the staves you can create can also be found as random loot or sold by vendors without Dragonborn. 

Unenchanted Staves
Unenchanted staves can be purchased from Neloth and are needed to craft staves. These staves existed in the original Skyrim as internally used templates, but some of the statistics were changed by Dragonborn.



Alteration
These use an unenchanted Alteration staff as base object.



Conjuration
These use an unenchanted Conjuration staff as base object.



Destruction
These use an unenchanted Destruction staff as base object.



Illusion
These use an unenchanted Illusion staff as base object.



Restoration
These use an unenchanted Restoration staff as base object.



Creation Club
Crafting these staves does not require knowledge of any spell. Despite requiring the use of a Staff Enchanter, these items are not added by the Dragonborn DLC and instead come from various Creation Club Creations.


Notes
The charge costs given are the ones found in the Creation Kit. These are the actual cost values at skill level 0, rounded down. The cost decreases with higher levels of the controlling skill, resulting in more uses before recharging is needed. At skill level 100 this results in about 1.7 times the uses shown here.
The Enchanting perk Soul Siphon, which traps 5% of a creature's soul when you kill it with a weapon, does not work with staves.
Followers will not recharge staves. 

Bugs