Skyrim Perks Ancillary: Enchanting Tree

A note- Contrary to what is stated in the core article, Enchanting is massively useful to -all- characters, as anything that can be worn can be enchanted.  This includes robes, clothes, boots, hats, rings, necklaces and gloves.  While staff-wielders will find that enchanting is useless for their staves, increasing Magicka regeneration or skill in a school is a hugely beneficial effect that should not be overlooked ever.

Enchanter-

If you plan on putting together your own gear in any way, shape, or form, you want these perks at maximum.  The strength of enchantment you put on a weapon or piece of armor can make nearly as much difference as what material it’s made of to begin with (provided it’s a useful enchantment for you).  At the full five ranks, the strength of the enchantment is doubled- this is especially important to your resources for weapons, where you can use the slider on enchantment to adjust between double the effect per hit and double the charges in the weapon.  Since you have to use the souls in your soul gems to recharge these enchantments if you want them to keep working, it can have a huge impact on how well your weapons continue to work.

Soul Squeezer-

While this Perk does have a number provided- it makes Soul Gems grant 250 extra energy to recharge items- that number is not in the most obvious format.  Saying ‘250 energy’ makes it sound as though the gem will provide 250 extra charges, which is not the case.  Actually, in most cases, each charge is going to be somewhere from 5-25 energy in value, depending on whether the enchantment on the weapon (or staff) is set to higher charges or higher effect.

Fire/Frost/Storm Enchanter-

These perks affect the power of enchantments relating to Fire, Frost, and Shock.  In the case of armor, this is fairly straightforwards, increasing the resistance provided by the relevant enchantments by a number.  It’s a little fuzzier with weapons though, as when you enchant them you can set the enchantment along a sliding scale that balances between most charges and most effect.  While it might seem as though these perks can affect the amount of charges the item will have, they actually only alter the amount of damage.  This can result in enchantments that lean towards ‘more damage’ having effectively the same damage added as enchantments with the perk will one step over towards the ‘more charges’ end of the scale, effectively netting more charges, but at the extreme ends of the scale the minimum and maximum number of charges are the same and it’s the damage that’s actually different.

Soul Siphon-

This perk is one you need to have if you plan on using enchanted weapons at all.  It’s a royal pain gathering and carrying around single-shot soul gems to recharge your weapons all the time, and anything that reduces how often you need to recharge them is a major boon in terms of both the time spent refilling the enchantment energy and the effort and money spent procuring replacement gems and using your soul trapping weapon to kill things.  While the effect nets only the equivalent of 5% of the soul in energy recharge for the weapon used in the death blow, you can pretty easily set your weapon to use less than that much energy per hit when you enchant it to begin with (generally this means making sure your weapons have upwards of 20 uses in them).