Daggerfall:Enchanting Items

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This page gives information and tips on how to best enchant items, from loopholes to tons of statistics.

This page also contains some tips and hints for successful item making and some items which would make your adventuring life much much more enjoyable.

Contents 1 Item Making 1.1 Advantages 1.2 Disadvantages 2 Creating Items with Bound Souls 3 Item Enchantment Points 4 Tips

[edit] Item Making

In Daggerfall, you must be 5th rank in the Mages Guild or Temple of Julianos. Then find the person with the option "Make Magic Items". The process is fairly simple. Choose an item you wish to be enchanted. You will notice that the item has a maximum enchantment point value. Adding advantages will add to the current power of the item, while disadvantages subtract from the current power. You may choose a total of 10 advantages or disadvantages. The cost of the item is 10*Advantages Enchantment Power.

[edit] Advantages

Advantages are beneficial to the carrier of the item. "Cast when Used" advantages are used much like spell-casting, except instead of draining magicka, it instead uses the item's power to cast the spell. "Cast when Held" advantages are always in effect whenever they are equipped. "Cast when Strikes" is applied to weapons so that when they strike, the enemy has the enchantment cast upon it. Presumably, the "Cast when Strikes" enchantments are useless on armor. Magical items with the enchantment "Repair Items" repairs all non-magical items. "Strengthens Armor" adds +5 to your armor class, but does not stack with multiple items with the Strengthens Armor effect. An entire list of all advantages and their enchantment power exists here.

[edit] Disadvantages

Disadvantages hinder the carrier of the item. Bound souls will be explained in the next section. The "Item Deteriorates" effect can be a terrible choice to put on an item, as it can wear out faster. The "User takes damage" effect can be dangerous, but is a welcome addition for the vampires, as they will damage in sunlight and holy places anyway. "Bad Reactions" lowers the to-hit chance and armor class of the character while fighting the type of creature indicated. "Bad Reputation with" effects lower the reputation you have with a certain class (or all of them), but beware that if this item is in your pack or in your wagon, you will suffer from it. An entire list of all disadvantages and their enchantment power exists here.

[edit] Creating Items with Bound Souls

Bound Souls are technical disadvantages caused by having the item be bound to a creature. The more powerful of a creature, the more powerful the item can be. Certain creatures have extra advantages and disadvantages forced upon you for using them to enchant your items. If your item breaks, then the creature is released, and will attack you. To soul trap a monster, you must buy soul gems and have a spell with the effect "Soul Trap". Cast the spell on a monster and kill it before the duration runs out. If you are successful, one of your soul gems should say it has monster in it when you info it. An easier way is to have Azura's Star. Whenever you kill a monster, its soul is trapped inside Azura's Star. Make sure that it is empty before you kill the monster you want to trap (use it to ditch the old monster). A table of monster values is here, along with the gold piece value of soul gems with the monster.

[edit] Item Enchantment Points

Ever wanted to know exactly how much you could enchant that Orcish bow you found? The following list gives the enchantment points for most of the items found in Daggerfall, sorted by item type and alphabetically.

• Weapons - List of all weapons with the different material types.
• Armor - List of armor with material types where applicable.
• Clothes - All non-armor related apparel, shirts, pants etc..
• Misc - Gem stones, bracers, rings and other items.

[edit] Tips

• Items that increase your skills are good, but they should be removed before rest and before seeking training in those skills.
  • Weapons that boost the skill to use that weapon are a natural choice. Adding increased skill in "Critical Strike" adds even more leverage.
• Have a set of "dungeon" items and a set of "town/diplomacy" items.
• A useful item is a "Cast when used" Recall item. This item can get you out of a dangerous situation quickly without using native magicka, assuming an anchor has already been set.
• Any item with "Extra Spell Points near ___" serves as a handy monster detector, but has little practical value otherwise. If a creature is close enough to trigger the effect, rest will be impossible, meaning those spell points cannot usually be gained.
• Beware that "home made" magic clothes tend to break easily, as they can carry only a small magicka load. Some skill-based enchantments, however, have a low enough cost to make the investment worthwhile.
• Another very useful enchantment is the "Repair" ability. If you have such an enchanted item equipped, the health status of a damaged item increases by one level after about 8 hours of rest (example Almost New → New and so on). Sadly, this doesn't work while loitering or during fast travel. Items with the "Repair" ability work additively, meaning that by equipping two items the repair time is halved and so on. This form of repair is very useful to mend magic items (including artifacts), because these can't be repaired in other ways and get worn out after some time of use. The magic repair effect was removed from the game during a later patch, but it was provided again since patch 2.12. However, you must add the line "magicrepair 1" (without quotes) to the Z.CFG file in your Daggerfall game directory to make it work. The repair modus starts at the top of your inventory stack (wagon included) and works downwards, so if you want a specific item repaired, position it at the top of your inventory or wagon stack. Drop all other items to the ground if necessary, until you only have the item you want repaired in your stack.