Oblivion Remastered- Enchanting, Explained

Once you’ve gotten a good set of armor for your adventure through Cyrodil, it is time to take those pieces of gear to the next level. And there is no better way to do so than Enchanting, which allows you to make your equipment stronger, while customizing it to your specific needs.

READ: Oblivion Remastered- Where To Buy Lockpicks

If you’re ready to learn how this functions and you have either Sigil Stones or filled Soul Gems available in your inventory, here is Oblivion Remastered’s Enchanting, explained.

How To Get Access To Enchanting

There are two main ways to enchant a piece of gear. Depending on the one you’re choosing, the entire system will be different, alongside the requirements for enchanting gear in the first place.

If you’ve completed any Oblivion Gates, you will have Sigil Stones. They’re the stone that you remove from the tallest tower inside the gate, which teleports you out of it, closing the gate in the process.

Each Sigil Stone carries a different property and can be used to enchant both weapons and armor. To do so, simply use the Stone while having any piece of enchantable equipment available and the enchanting UI will open, allowing you to place a specific property into a piece of gear.

READ: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered- Best Difficulty To Play In

This property will change based on if you are enchanting a weapon or a piece of armor/jewelry, but it will make sense (for example, a Sigil Stone that enchants a weapon with Fire Damage will enchant an armor piece with Fire Resists).

And when it comes to Sigil Stone Enchanting, that is all there is to explain. The Stone is consumed on use and there is no variation in the enchantment magnitude or charge. Enchanting items the “regular” way though, is a completely different story.

Altar Enchanting

If you don’t have enough Sigil Stones (or the right ones) on you, your alternate option is through the use of an Altar of Enchanting. You can find these at the Arcane University or at the Frostcrag Spire, which is included in Oblivion Remastered from the get-go.

The biggest advantage of Enchanting through this method is obviously the flexibility and customization it allows. When you interact with an Altar of Enchanting you will be greeted with a menu vastly different to the one you saw when using a Sigil Stone. Here’s what everything means in the menu.

On the left hand side of the screen you have three tabs which, from left to right, are:

• Gear- All enchantable equipment you have on your, including weapons, will appear here. Any item that is already enchanted will not appear, as you cannot enchant the same item twice.
• Soul Gems- Filled Soul Gems you’re carrying will be listed in this tab. The type of Soul is shown, as that is what matters for the enchantment. A Petty Soul inside a Greater Soul gem is still just a Petty Soul.
• Effects- All spells you know and can cast that can be used as enchantment effects will be shown here. Weapons can have multiple effects simultaneously, but all other items can only have one. On the other hand, effects on all items that aren’t weapons are permanent bonuses which do not consume charges.

On the right side of the screen you have three things to keep in mind, which are icons with no description, so they might seem confusing at first. Here’s what they mean, again from left to right:

• Thunder Icon- Strength of the effect. This only matters when it comes to weapons, as it will always say “Constant Effect” when applied on armor and jewelry.
• Candle Icon- Amount of uses. Again, only relevant for weapons, but the number shown to the right of the candle is the amount of hits you can deal with your enchanted weapon before it needs to be recharged.
• Coin Icon- This is the obvious one, as it is the gold cost of creating the enchantment. Stronger enchantments can get exponentially more expensive.

Souls, Explained

The key to Enchanting in Oblivion Remastered comes down to Soul type. Souls come in the following types:

• Petty
• Lesser
• Common
• Greater
• Grand
• Black

Petty Soul Gems can only hold Petty Souls, but Grand Soul Gems can hold all types listed above, with the exception of the Black ones. Black Soul Gems are the only ones in Oblivion Remastered that can hold NPC Souls, and they are equivalent to a Grand Soul from a creature.

To capture a Soul into an empty gem, you need to kill a creature (or NPC if you have a Black Gem) that is affected by the Soul Trap effect. The effect can be applied by a weapon (like the Umbra Sword that you can get early in your playthrough and weighs nothing) or by spells. If you kill a creature under the Soul Trap effect and you have a big enough gem to hold its soul, you will fill that gem.

The Soul type you use in an Enchantment will influence how strong it is and, in the case of weapons, how many charges it will have. Enchanted weapons need to be recharged with the use of filled Soul Gems, and here the Soul type will only influence the amount of charge that is filled.

No matter how strong a Soul is, it will never get you individual Enchantments powerful enough to surpass the ones you can get from Sigil Stones, but using Souls allows you to enchant weapons with multiple effects (which you can’t do using stones), and gives you access to effects that you might not otherwise find in the Sigil Stones you own.

Arguably the biggest downside of Altar Enchanting is that Soul Gems are consumed on use, be that use part of the Enchantment itself or of a weapon recharge. But this can easily be fixed by acquiring the Azura’s Star, a rechargeable gem that can hold up to Grand Souls and isn’t consumed on use. To find the star, simply complete the Daedric Shrine quest located in the area shown above.

READ: Oblivion Remastered- Alchemy, Explained