Skyrim- On Enchanting Effectively (Part Three)

Speaking of soul gems, it’s time to mention the most difficult part of enchanting to muster: soul gems filled with souls.  The first part is hard enough.  Soul gems are rare items- while you may find them occasionally as loot, you will often find that you have to purchase them from other mages and enchanters as well as general goods vendors- and they are very expensive.  Even an empty petty soul gem costs a solid thirty gold septims, and a full one more than twice that.  You can easily find yourself spending several thousand gold on a single empty grand soul gem, and three to five on a filled one.  On the upside, you -can- buy them, and while they are expensive, using your Smithing, Alchemy, and Enchanting skills to generate salable items will often let you perform an effective trade, selling things to a merchant, buying their soul gems, and then selling items back to them to recoup your gold.  Take advantage of this as much as you can, so that you can obtain the gems you need.

While you can buy and occasionally loot soul gems with souls already inside them, it is far more common (though only relatively speaking) to find soul gems that are empty on your meeting with them.  These gems can only be filled by means of a weapon enchantment known as Soul Trap.  You will find that Soul Trap is a rare enchantment, but thankfully it is not one that suffers too much from being placed on a weapon via the use of a lower-grade soul.  The Soul Trap enchantment causes every hit landed with the enchanted weapon to afflict the target with a Soul Trap effect.  The number of uses of Soul Trap the weapon holds when fully charged or freshly created scales in opposition to the length of time the Soul Trap effect lasts- the more charges, the shorter the duration of Soul Trap.  When a creature that has been Soul Trapped is slain before the Soul Trap wears out, its soul will be stolen by the Soul Trap effect, and the soul will be siphoned to a soul gem in the possession of the character that used the Soul Trap weapon, regardless of who actually struck the finishing blow.  This means that you can use Soul Trap weapons and have your allies also striking the target (such as your Follower or your dog) without any concern for losing the soul.

There are a few quirks of soul gems and Soul Trap, though.  Soul gems come in a variety of ratings: Petty, Lesser, Common, Greater, Grand, Black, and the unique Azura’s Star or Black Star.  Each soul gem can only hold a soul whose rating is up to that of the gem; while a petty soul gem can only contain a petty soul, a greater soul gem can contain any soul that is not Grand or Black.  Azura’s Star can contain any soul but a Black soul, and the Black Star can contain any soul, just as a black soul gem can.  When a creature’s soul is successfully trapped by a Soul Trap effect, it will be placed in the gem available with the lowest quality that can still hold its soul.  While this is nice in that it does not waste the soul if it is avoidable, it can be very detrimental if you aren’t careful about when you use your Soul Trap weapon- it is very wasteful to trap a petty soul in a greater soul gem, both in terms of time and effort.