(noob question) how does damage from enchantments work?

[ice_wallow_come]

im just wondering if i have a weapon with a lot of damage gained from enchantments(frost damage, shock damage, etc.), if it actually adds that much damage to your weapon. Like if i had a sword w/ 20 regular damage and an enchantment for 30 fire damage if it would total to 50 damage, 60% of that being fire damage.(sorry if this doesn't make any sense)

[Rabbit CoCo]

In theory. Yes.
In addition :
1. Fire damages last for a few seconds, not a one time damage.
2. When you can enchant a weapon with 20+ fire damage, your crafting skill should be quite high as well, you won't be holding a sword with only 20 damage.
My sword can do 500+damage, an extra 20+ fire damage doesn't really help much.
Especially when we're fighting with an enemy with 2000 hit points.

[Perplex]

Yes. The enchantment is added to the normal damage when it procs. Some enemies are immune or take reduced damage from fire/frost/lightning but other than that the damage is added to the weapon damage so 20base and 30 fire do 50dmg when it hits.

So when you find weapons with enchantments it is usualy better to use those than normal non-enchanted weapons untill your smithing skill is high enough(if you ever plan on leveling it at all) that the weapons you make outclass the ones you can find.

So if you dont go the smithing route then weapon enchantments are really good.

[gnewna]

Originally posted by Rabbit CoCo:

2. When you can enchant a weapon with 20+ fire damage, your crafting skill should be quite high as well, you won't be holding a sword with only 20 damage.

YMMV on that "should", personally, I don't like becoming OP, so I limit to one crafting skill, if that. I play on Adept/Expert with mods to make the combat tougher in an interesting way, rather than the vanilla slider which just nerfs you at the higher difficulty (it does nothing to enemies, just makes your hits weaker, and you take more damage), so I don't need to grind all the crafting skills to make OP gear to compensate for nerfing myself in the first place.