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I'm currently playing an Archer who uses a longsword (specifically, a Daedric Dai-Katana) rather than a bow and arrows. In anticipation of the obvious question-- why wouldn't an Archer want to use a bow and arrows-- let me say that everything about my character was generated randomly using a spinning-wheel random picker, so Archer was chosen for me, not by me. Everything after the initial character creation has been by my choice, so I've been using a Dai-Katana because it's the best longsword-- and I prefer to use a longsword-- and I've been using a Daedric Dai-Katana (once I found one) because it's the best Dai-Katana.

As an Archer, I'm unable to use a shield, and the best armor I can wear is Chain. Also, I have a whopping 24 Spell Points. All that might sound awful, but it turns out that I've been able to perform extremely well by creating my own low-cost spells; my two go-to spells for the most deadly enemies are Free Action and Spell Reflection, each of which costs me only 5 Spell Points to cast.

Early in the game I started to use enchanted gear that I'd found, but then I discovered that enchanted gear cannot be repaired (unlike in Arena) and therefore will eventually break. What?!? Bump that! I decided to stick to using unenchanted gear, so that I can get it repaired whenever it starts to show any wear and tear.

The other night I finally achieved the highest status in the Mages Guild, which took a long time because I've been leveling my skills up on my own rather than paying trainers to level up faster. Upon reaching Master Wizard-hood, one of the first things I did was go check out the Mages Guild enchanter to see how that whole process works. In my excitement, I got him to enchant a few pieces of my armor, as well as my Daedric Dai-Katana. Now I can carry more weight (187 instead of 150), have a better Armor Rating (11 instead of 6), and my Daedric Dai-Katana gives me a higher Longblade skill (115 instead of 100). Absolutely awesome!

Except, now I can't keep my Daedric Dai-Katana in good shape, since I can't get it repaired, so eventually it will break during a fight. I'm not so worried about the Chain pieces I got enchanted, because I can easily find more of those pieces and get them enchanted for when they eventually break-- which might be a long, long time in the future, since armor seems to degrade very, very slowly in this game. But now I'm going to have to find myself a spare Daedric Dai-Katana. I used to find them semi-regularly, although I sold them all because I didn't need any spares at the time. But it's been a while since I've found any. I'm sure I'll find more eventually, so I'm not unduly concerned about it, but I am definitely asking myself why I felt it necessary to get my best weapon enchanted-- especially when I was killing stuff just fine before.

Yep that is the downside to magical gear. The upside is that the armor you enchanted should not degrade because armor in DF doesn't actually wear out (I think that is fixed in DFU) and the enchantments you listed do not actually cast a spell so they won't be "used" ever.

Time to farm the Odd Blades until you find a replacement DDK!

Yep, it seemed like a cool idea at the time, but definitely overkill since my Longblade skill was already maxed out at 100. I'll probably find another Daedric Dai-Katana before this one breaks, so I'm not really worried, just smacking my forehead with my palm at my shortsightedness.

On the other hand, the armor enchantments seem pretty useful.

My only real question is why the limitation on enchantments depending on the type of gear? For instance, I'd have thought that a cuirass could hold a bigger enchantment than a helm, but it's actually the other way around.

By the way, I have had a couple of pieces of armor degrade before, but it was so little that one piece cost 0 gold to repair so no one would actually repair it and I just picked up a spare instead, the other piece cost 1 gold to repair so I was able to get it repaired.

As I undertand it, enchantments were one of the last things to be implemented, and being rushed it is unbalanced and inconsistent.