This page details an overview of the Enchanting skill in Skyrim, including recommended perks, leveling tips, and where to find Enchanting trainers.

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Enchanting, Skyrim.

Enchanting Overview¶

Your Enchanting skill determines the potency of your enchantments. The majority of the perks in this tree improve various types of enchanting statistics, such as the efficacy of skill enchantments, attribute enchantments and elemental enchantments. The most powerful of enchanters can put two enchantments on a single item.

As one of the three crafting skills, Enchanting is absolutely essential to a power build. Smithing increases the defense and damage of armor and weapons (respectively) and Alchemy can be used to bolster both Smithing and Enchanting, but Enchanting covers two areas that the other two skills cannot. First and most importantly, enchanting gear will allow you to create the fine-tuned uber gear your character deserves. All that highly upgraded armor still can’t protect you from magic, and this is a chink in our armor that enchanting fixes.

Yes, you can buy arms, armor and accessories that bear enchantments - some of which are beyond what Enchanting can provide. But Enchanting can do something that you’ll never be able to find or buy; obtain items with two enchantments on it. Only unique items like Daedric artifacts can boast similar enchantments, and they’re not nearly as specific as the gear you can make for yourself. Want to make some uber thief armor? Or some gear that improves your Blocking, Archery, One-Handed, and resistances while making two spell schools cost nothing? Enchanting is your answer. Of course, without Smithing, your gear won’t really be worth enchanting, and without Alchemy, you won’t get quite as high attributes from your enchantments. This is why it’s important to combine all three crafting skills if you want to make the most of them.

Recommended Perks¶

The bare minimum you need to make uber gear is the five ranks of Enchanter, and a rank in each of Insightful Enchanter, Corpus Enchanter and Extra Effect. This, combined with basic magic resistance and absorb magicka from various sources (the Alteration tree, Atronach Stone, Agent of Mara, Breton Blood, Spellbreaker, the Elemental Protection perk etc.) should be enough. If you’re more ambitious, however, and want to throw up that third defensive barrier against magic (and you have the perks to burn), indulge in the Fire Enchanter, Frost Enchanter and Storm Enchanter perks so you can make potent defensive gear. In either case, you can simply ignore Soul Squeezer and Soul Siphon.

Leveling TIps¶

Leveling Enchanting ideally takes place after Smithing… if for no other reasons than by then you’ll have had time to scour plenty of dungeons and break down enchanted gear, and you’ll have plenty of things to enchant thanks to grinding Smithing. Disenchanting items to learn their enchantments is a necessary step, and if you’re lucky and break down every enchanted item you find (or steal) you should end up with an Enchanting Skill Level in the 40s.

After that, take whatever weapons you created via Smithing (sans the arrows, of course - Iron Daggers work fine) and imbue them with the Banish enchantment. This should level your Enchanting skill up quickly and leave you with mounds of valuable items to sell.

There’s one catch, though; you’ll need a filled Soul Gem for each enchanted item you make. The quality doesn’t really matter so much, so focus on quantity. There are two ways you can boost your inventory; explore Skyrim and kill weak creatures (not humanoids) after casting Soul Trap on them while you have empty soul gems in your inventory. Mud Crabs, Wolves, Draugr, Horkers - all work fine. It’s a fine opportunity to collect alchemical ingredients while you’re at it.

On the other hand, if you’ve already leveled Alchemy, or you otherwise have disposable income (after the Thieve’s Guild radiants you should have a nice little war chest saved up) you can just go to the College of Winterhold and buy Soul Gems from the various merchants there, either filled or not, as suits your needs. If you can at least buy a few Soul Gems from the Winterhold mages you can enchant a few daggers with the Banish enchantment, sell them, and turn in a tidy profit. Any weapon you enchant with Banish will sell for more than any of the lower quality (Common, Lesser, Petty, etc.) you could use to create them.

Enchanting Trainer Locations¶