Enchanting - Obviously Doing Something Wrong

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OK, there have been innumerable comments made in various threads about how powerful Enchanting is, and I just don't see it. Keep in mind that my current character is a fighter, I haven't spent a single perk in Enchanting, and the only skill ups I have are from basic disenchating, enchanting, and refilling/recharging stuff. So maybe that's problem #1. (I can say the same thing about Alchemy, although I imagine if I figure out what I'm doing wrong with Enchanting, that a lot of that stuff would apply to Alchemy as well.)

Anyway, let's start with my confusion on weapons. Let's say I find a two-handed enchanted weapon that does 20 frost damage. I don't use two-handed weapons, so I want to disenchant it, and place that enchantment on a one-handed weapon. So I disenchant the thing, and then attempt to get that enchantment on my current weapon. Not only do I NOT get 20 frost damage, I can only get 10 - and that's if I'm willing to accept only 30 or so attacks with this enchantment on the weapon, before I need to refill it.

So my question is this - with my high smithing skill, I'm already making one handed weapons with the epic modifier that are doing 70-80 base damage. Adding 10 to that doesn't seem to be a huge improvement, especially when it's such a transient boost. If I actually want to have that enchantment available for a bunch of attacks, I have to lower the damage to like 2 or 3, and then I'll get a couple hundred of attacks before recharging. But again, this seems really silly, as 2 or 3 extra damage is not going to up my killing speed in any appreciable way - maybe one fewer swing to kill a creature every once in a while.

I also don't understand a means of readily increasing your enchanting skill, as it requires soul stones, which are expensive, and are not plentiful. This differs from say, Smithing, in that you can just purchase all the iron ingots from every blacksmith you run across, and level away by making iron daggers. I've maxed my Smithing skill with my current character, and I probably only spent a couple of thousand gold doing it, as iron ingots are ridiculously cheap (18 gold) and most blacksmiths will sell you 10-20 every time you visit them. (And you can then sell the dagger back to them, and get about half of what you spent back!) There's no merchant I've found that has 10-20 soul stones available, and even if there are, purchasing them would be super-expensive.

 

It's simply because enchanting isn't particularly impressive without skill levels and perk investment. Also most of the time when people mention enchanting, a high skill level in blacksmithing is almost always implied.

Btw, the way enchanting and alchemy work, getting the relevant perks significantly improves the bonuses granted by your crafted potions/poisons and enchantments. The higher the bonus, the higher the sell price. A small bonus increase can mean a significantly higher sell price for some potions/poisons and enchantments. And yes, enchanting in general is much more difficult unless you rush the quest that gives you rechargeable soul stone. Alternatively you can buy every petty/lesser/common soulstone from any merchants you come across, fill them up, and use them to enchant the items you crafted from blacksmithing. Regardless, there's an element of chance involved in enchanting - drops and merchant inventory are created at random, so it might take a while for you to find the enchantment you actually want. The easiest to level is indeed blacksmithing, but getting the ingredients for end-game gear is difficult. Alchemy starts out moderately difficult, but becomes easy once you have enough gold to just buy stuff from alchemy NPCs.

The quality of the soul used determines the quality of the enchantment. The values given in the enchanting screen are the ones you get for using a common soul (or a grand one, I forgot which).

 

There is a certain enchantmant you can put on those iron daggers and they will sell for a lot more then what your selling them for so it is very easy to get money that way. Cant remember which encahntment it is and I havent been able to find it either. Was looking on gamefaqs but nothing so looks like I will check else where for it.

 

You know, I never even thought of that. Not that I've invested a lot of time into alchemy. (Although I do pick up all the stuff I find and make what potions I can out of them. I now have a skill of 40-something in it.) Now that I think about it, seeing as how after an alchemy session I usually have more un-needed potions than a typical alchemist has gold to purchase, I may as well purchase more alchemical ingredients so I can sell off more of my loot, and thereby have even more stuff to make. Hmmm... Maybe it's best to these one at a time. I was planning on making my second character a mage-thief, but perhaps focusing on the thief skills and getting that down would be better. Heavy investment in archery, alchemy, and sneak, with a lesser investment in one-handed, light armor, and blacksmithing. (Not that I wouldn't max smithing, but I can get everything on the light armor side for an investment of just 6 perk points.)

But that still requires a soul stone investment, which brings my back to the relatively low availability/high cost of them.

 

What makes enchanting impressive is not the elemental damage weapon enchants (although you can get up towards 100 extra damage from each of two elements with the right destruciton perks), but stuff like fortify marksman. You can put 48% extra damage on each of four different pieces enabling you to do around 900 base damage. Coupled with Alchemy it's even more ridiculous... Or enchant a set of daedric armour so you can cast destruction spells for free and all other schools dirt cheap.

Yeah enchanting is a real hassle to level unless you couple it with something like alchemy, and abuse it to make a fortune, so you can just travel around to the different merchants and buy up all their petty and lesser filled soul gems.

Generally you won't see the real benefit of enchanting until late game unless you powergame.

 

It is the banish enchant that makes an iron dagger enchanted with it by a tiny soulstone worth over 1k gold.

The power of enchantment isn't the elemental damage but as has been pointed out in the % multipliers. My pimped out warrior 2-3 shotted legendary dragons with his daedric axe with sick % multipliers. Also which I never figured when I played my mage and which makes me keen to start another mage is that you can get free spells with destruction. I spent all my enchants on +mana and +mana regen which gave me a respectable output but nothing like free spells.

When all this is said and done though is enchanting a double edged sword. It is blast to plot out your character and optimise it fully but when you have finally done it the game loses a lot of its appeal. Of my three characters it is my newbie mage which was far from optimized and my sneaky thief on which I made a conscious decision to stay away from enchanting and blacksmithing which was the most fun. My warrior on which I did everything "right" didn't last half as long as any of those.