Enchanting Beginner's Guide - Elder Scrolls: Morrowind
Enchanting is one of the two tradeskill professions in Morrowind and much like Alchemy, if you know what you're doing you can make yourself very powerful with Enchanting. Those of you who like to min/max your characters will most likely want to pick up Enchanting since the best set of armor will be one you make yourself.
There are two methods of enchanting an item, you can visit an NPC who will apply the Enchant for you for a steep price or you can Enchant items yourself. In order to Enchant items yourself with a 100% success rate you'll need to use the Morrowind Alchemy Exploit to raise your Intelligence into the thousands. Otherwise you'll have a very low chance of successfully enchanting every item that you try to in the game. With the amount of Intelligence you see me with in the screenshot above (it's over 9000!) you'll never fail to enchant an item.
Aside from needing a high Intelligence to successfully enchant an item you'll also need a powerful soul bound to a soul gem. In order to bind a soul to a soul gem you will need a soul gem powerful enough to hold your targets soul and to cast Soul Trap on them before killing them. Soul Trap is a Mysticism spell which is sold by many different merchants in the game.
What type of soul you use when enchanting an item matters depending on what enchantment you want to use. If you'd like to make Constant Effect items, which are some of the best items in the game, you must use a soul with a value of 400 or more. Golden Saints, Ascended Sleepers and a few other niche enemies have souls with a value of 400 that can be used to make Constant Effect items.
The value a soul has affects how much charge is restored when recharging an item as well as what sort of soul gem you can put the soul into. Golden Saints and Ascended Sleepers, for example, can only have their souls held in a Grand Soul Gem or inside of Azura's Star.
If you are looking to create very powerful items with Enchanting you will likely want to farm Golden Saints as they are the easiest enemy to reliably farm. You will need to purchase the Summon Golden Saint spell which is only sold by a single NPC in the game, Felen Maryon. Once you've acquired this spell you will want to create your own unique spell, shown below.
This spell takes advantage of the soultrap glitch and is easy to cast even without high Conjuration. How the soultrap glitch works is pretty simple, if you combine a spell with Soultrap and cast it directly at the ground it'll become a permanent Constant Effect. This works with any buff in the game but more importantly it works with pets that you can summon!
With the spell above, so long as you cast it while looking directly at the ground it will conjure a Golden Saint that you can then cast Soultrap on and kill to bind its soul to a Grand Soul Gem. For more information about farming Golden Saints follow the link provided. I go into much more detail in that guide about where to find soul stones, the Summon Golden Saint spell and more.
Now that we've got all of that out of the way - let's take a deeper dive into Enchanting and explain some more things. The most important thing that I have yet to address is the Enchant Value on gear/jewelry/weapons/clothing. In Morrowind you can't put whatever enchant you want on whatever item you want and certain items can only hold so much of an enchant.
Most armor in Morrowind has absurdly low Enchant Values, a Glass Cuirass for example only has an Enchant Value of 12. Glass Pauldrons only have Enchant Values of 3 which is pretty much too small for any useful enchants. The only items in Morrowind (without mods) that reliably have high Enchant Values are Exquisite Clothing and Exquisite Jewelry.
Exquisite Amulets and Rings both have an Enchant Value of 120 which allows you to put quite powerful enchants onto them. You can put Restore Health 4pts/sec on a Ring/Amulet which will negate a lot of incoming damage. If you put that enchant on both rings and on an amulet you'd heal yourself for 12pts/sec which would make your character invulnerable against most enemies in the game.
As for Exquisite Clothing, these are great choices for enchants too since you can wear all of them (except boots and gloves) under your armor. Some clothing like Skirts and Robes can even be worn overtop of other clothing. For example, you can have both an Exquisite Skirt & and Exquisite Pants equipped at the same time. You can even have an Exquisite Robe at the same time as an Exquisite Shirt!
Below I have created a list of many great enchantments in Morrowind for you to go through. I've separated them based on whether or not they're Constant Effect, On Use or Cast on Strike to make it easier for you to figure out which enchants you may want.
Best Constant Effect Enchants
Restore Fatigue: With only a minor amount of Restore Fatigue on your clothing/gear you can make it so running out of Fatigue is never a problem for you again.
Restore Health: If you put enough Restore Health on your gear even with max difficulty most enemies will never be able to kill you. Arguably one of the best enchants to put on Rings/Amulets/Clothes.
Sanctuary: This increases your chances of avoiding damage - so basically it buffs your dodge. 100 Sanctuary will allow you to avoid almost all attacks in the game, with (I think) 120 - 140 Sanctuary you'll be able to avoid all physical attacks.
Night Eye: Depends on the player for this one. If the darkness of this game bothers you a lot and you can't (or don't know how) to drastically increase your computer's brightness this will help a lot. I personally have 100 Night-Eye on at all times for when I take screenshots.
Water Breathing: Pretty self explanatory, it'll allow you to go anywhere underwater without having to worry about your Breath meter.
Best On Use Enchantments
Water Walking: Not a spell caster? Creating an item that you can use to walk across water will help a lot!
Levitate: This is a great on use enchantment if you don't have the Boots of Apostle for your character.
Chameleon: While under the effects of Chameleon you will still be able to perform actions/cast spells/attack without it fading. Definitely one of the more important on-use Enchantments to have since there are many times during quests where you need to steal an item or open a lock without being seen. Amulet of Shadows will give you an amulet with a useful Chameleon clicky if you lack Enchanting.
Invisibility: Invisibility is a lot like Chameleon except that it makes you completely invisible to everyone with the downside of any action you perform, spell you cast or attack you make immediately cancels the effect.
Restore Health: A really good Enchantment to put on an item for quick heals. You can put an On Use Restore Health 100pts Enchant on many different items.
Restore Fatigue: Pop your On Use Restore Fatigue before going into battle if you are out of Fatigue. Good early in the game but starts to fall off in usefulness once you get a Constant Effect Restore Fatigue.
Best Cast on Strike Enchantments
Absorb Health: Arguably the best weapon enchantment you can put on a weapon is Absorb Health. The reason for this is many high level enemies have Spell Reflect and if you use anything but Absorb Health you'll reflect tons of damage onto yourself and kill yourself. If you reflect Absorb Health onto yourself.... You basically just heal yourself for the damage done by Absorb Health instead.
Frost Damage (Nord): This is a good weapon enchant to put on your weapon if you're a Nord since they are immune to frost damage. Any spells reflected back to you will be negated - this is the reason I recommend this for Nords only.
Fire Damage (Dunmer): This is a moderately good weapon enchant for Dunmer characters since they have an innate 75% Fire Resistance. Any spells reflected back to you will be (almost) entirely negated.
Soultrap: For those of you who want to farm lots of soul gems this is a great Cast on Strike enchant to have. I don't recommend you use this on your primary weapon though or you'll get more soul gems than you'll ever use.
Fortify Strength: Instead of a hostile enchant on your weapon, why not a beneficial one? Every time you strike an enemy you can increase your own strength essentially making you more and more powerful with each swing!
Return to my Elder Scrolls: Morrowind Beginner's Guide
Return to Elder Scrolls: Morrowind Walkthroughs Index