Are Enchanted Weapons Required for Late Game?

[snugginz]

I'm level 13 and see a lot of enchanted stuff now and though it's generally better I just can't be bothered with the whole soul capture mechanic with the storage gems and whatnot. I guess I'm just more old school and just want to hack and smash stuff with my mace. I don't want to interrupt combat to hit with a soul capture weapon or spell.

I've gotten by so far pretty well but wonder am I going to be forced into this mechanic at some point?

Also I know about the Molag Bal Mace but I'd rather just get an ebony mace at some point and call it good. Because I think it looks cool. But is it viable?

Also how much can I upgrade weapons with smithing and can I pay a smith to do the upgrades for me so I don't have to grind the tech?

[worm_master]

Sorry dude strictly DIY, how-ever you DO NOT need enchanted weapons, regylar 1's will do fine, you'll juts have to accommodate, for the later stage NPC's, that really are made easier, with a hefty enchantment.

To upgrade a weapon u need the appropriate Blacksmith skill for weapon type, I.e ebony smiting to improve Ebony weapons, BUT useing enchanted gear can raise the leve of improving... SO u really want a set of Enhance blacksmith gear, which means enchanting,

[Rez Elwin]

Enchanting apparel does not require recharging, so if you're concerned about refilling weapons, apparel does not run out. You don't need enchanting or smithing, not really. If you're not playing on a higher difficulty that Adept you can get through that game without any of the crafting skills.

There also mods available that can offer ways around having to cast soul trap.
I use Apocalypse spells myself, and it's a combo of two spells. Ocacto's Recital and Soul Cloak.

Soul Clock casts a spell that absorbs all souls in a radius around you for 120 seconds. Ocato's Recital can auto-cast spells when you enter combat. If you Set Soul Cloak up with that, it will activate every time you enter combat which allows easy capture of souls without any casting.

[vee-kay]

As you level up in the game, you'll encounter some dangerous enemies (e.g., Dragon Priests) that have high HP, stronger attacks, and even magical attacks.
How are you going to face them with slow non-enchanted weapons and weak armor?

The game gives you lots of enchanted weapons as loot, because it wants you to use them. Use them and upgrade them (once you get the required perks), or discard/sell them once you get better weapons.

To compensate for being overpowered with enchanted weapons, you need to recharge them with filled soul gems, which you will fill by soul-trapping the souls of enemies (special weapons and some spells allow such soul traps).

Do this, go around the mountain behind Riverwood (enroute to Falkreath) and try to face against the Necromancer and her Death hound. See how you fare.
Or go climb the mountain to High Hrothgar, and see if you can get past the nasty surprise there.

So stop holding yourself back, start using enchanted weapons (you can even disenchant items having nice enchantments you liked, and add those enchantments to weapons, armor and jewelry you like). Try a waterbreathing/waterwalking or muffle enchantment on a boot or a ring. See how fun it is.

This game, especially with mods, begs you to play the way you want it.

Don't like swords & shields or bows/crossbows? Hey, there are mods that add guns & slings to the game!
Find the vanilla spells boring? Hey, mods like Apocalypse and Forgotten Magic add tons of awesome spells and effects!
Think the vanilla homes are so depressing and uninspiring? Oh boy, are you in for a treat then - go, get those awesome mods that adds hovering castles. flying ships, other-dimensional paradise-like islands, portable abodes (how about living inside a Snow Globe that you can carry, or in the enchanted Shalidor's Staff that also acts as a weapon?), DLC-sized adventure horror/thriller/mystery quests.

Go have fun, and unleash your beast mode (hint hint!) in this game!

[Rez Elwin]

Originally posted by vee-kay:

As you level up in the game, you'll encounter some dangerous enemies (e.g., Dragon Priests) that have high HP, stronger attacks, and even magical attacks.
How are you going to face them with slow non-enchanted weapons and weak armor?

The game gives you lots of enchanted weapons as loot, because it wants you to use them. Use them and upgrade them (once you get the required perks), or discard/sell them once you get better weapons.

To compensate for being overpowered with enchanted weapons, you need to recharge them with filled soul gems, which you fill be soul-trapping the souls of enemies (special weapons and some spells allow such soul traps).

Do this, go around the mountain behind Riverwood (enroute to Falkreath) and try to face against the Necromancer and her Death hound. See how you fare.
Or go climb the mountain to High Hrothgar, and see if you can get past the nasty surprise there.

Armor doesn't do anything against magic. So it doesn't matter if you smith or how good it is, against magic it's pointless. You need Magic Resist or Absorb. The second is preferable but harder to max out. With Magic resist, the cap can still be reached without enchanting, but you might need to carry some specific pieces of gear.

[alexander_dougherty]

Magic needs resist magic or resist fire/frost/shock enchantments to counter damage.
resist fire/frost/shock does more to stop spells from that particular element, but does nothing against the other elements, resist magic stops less spell damage, but works against all elements.
Absorb magic absorbs all spells including your own....
Spell breaker shield is also a good idea against spells, but does isn't as good at blocking arrows.

[Zero McDol]

They help, but are not required imo.

If you want more damage, then you can easily enchant a ring with the smithing % stat, and then sharpen or fortify a weapon or armor. Easy damage and armor increase.

[worm_master]

Originally posted by Zero McDohl:

They help, but are not required imo.

If you want more damage, then you can easily enchant a ring with the smithing % stat, and then sharpen or fortify a weapon or armor. Easy damage and armor increase.

Prettty much wot this dude said folks.

[Morão ;*]

nah my warrior go by hacking n slashing while naked, all you need is put everything in life and make sure you don't level up by leveling useless skills like alchemy, stealth, restoration...
that is if you are gonna make a full warrior. if you need enchanted itens you can just buy from npcs or find around, make sure to buy potions.

[Nabinkemper]

Enchanted weapons are not necessary. I don't use enchanted weapons as I don't like using/collecting soul gems for recharging. Just upgrade your weapons via the smithing skill. You can also use the alchemy / enchant loop to increase smithing skill for improved weapons and armor.

I do use armor enchants for stamina / health regeneration, fortify one-handed and bow damage, and magic resistance. Sometimes adding muffle and fortify pickpocket as I love sneak attacks whether by bow or dagger.

I have also never used magic / created a mage character in my 6k hours across all media having done full completion about six times.

[mikk011]

I don't use enchanted weapons for the same reasons I don't use survival mods or Survival Mode--for me it just adds non-fun busywork/bookkeeping. As a benchmark, you can defeat Alduin and the Ebony Warrior with suitably smithed-up base-game weapons on Legendary difficulty without mods or exploits. I do enchant my armor with resistances and damage boosts as armor enchantments need no maintenance.

[hawklaser]

You don't really need to use any of the three crafting skills at all to beat the game, though they do make things a notably easier.

On enchanted gear, as others have said, armor doesn't need to worry about charge at all. For weapons, the charge is there to balance things out a bit vs not having to raise any skill or spend perks to fully take advantage of the enchantment. A so long as weapon that does 40 fire damage on hit has charge, you are going to get that full 40 damage unless dealing with fire resistant enemies. While to get that extra 40 damage normally, you would have needed to raise a skill, use perks, and/or do some tempering. Also of note, the random enchanted items you can find and buy, will often be of higher values than you can make until get a number of enchanting improvement items in place.

On smithing, you have to do it your self. You can temper any non-enchanted gear you find from level 1. Already enchanted gear takes getting a perk in the smithing tree to be able to temper it. You can however enchant tempered gear without any perks. The other various smithing perks, just let you temper equipment of certain materials better and are not needed at all. There really isn't a limit to how high you can temper gear, outside of how strong of fortify smithing potions and enchants you can get, so long as you don't overflow things but those kinda numbers are not needed.

[-={LG}=-]

Originally posted by snugginz:

I've gotten by so far pretty well but wonder am I going to be forced into this mechanic at some point?

You pick up jillions of soul gems. You can enchant your weapon to suck souls. It's not much of an inconvenience. You're not "forced" into it, but it definitely makes life easier in the late game.

I run two enchantments on every piece of gear I have. I wouldn't play it any other way.

You can also use the "Acquisitive Soul Gems"[www.nexusmods.com] mod to make things a bit easier. It's not nearly as cool as "Soul Gem Magic"[www.nexusmods.com] from Oblivion, but it's better than nothing.

[Ilthe]

I've actually didn't use soul capturing stuff for quite a long time, most mages have filled soul gems in stock, pretty sure there is a chance to them as loot.

Of all crafting skills tempering mechanic from smithing skill is the only one that can not be replaced with looting or shopping. And you can pass on it too.

Maybe on masochistic difficulties crafting skills are a must, but since higher difficulties do nothing except turning enemies into damage sponges and player into wet paper napkin, they are pretty much non existent for me - adept has 1 to 1 balance and that is what I play.

For battling mages, since you are a warrior - use atronach stone, it will give you passive incoming spells absorb, buy or loot some magic/ice/fire/lightning resistance jewellery and potions on top of that for extra hairy situations and you are golden.
(And I usually just forget that I have that potions lol so just wearing some enchanted armor and jewellery that you have looted or bought is perfectly workable and doesn't require any recharging)

Or lord stone - passive magic resist and some additional armor, but it is a little harder to get.

After you reach total armor level of somewher around 550 you can chose gear based on aestetics (and enchantments) and that level is reachable with at least half of gear sets.
Unfortunately, as I said before, you are the only person in whole Skyrim that can upgrade weapons and armor, so if you want more flexibility in your gear setup you'll have to invest into smithing.
Maxing heavy armor skill should get you to the armor cap, plus you can have shield with it's skill upgrades.
And there are shield skill perks are really good for magic protection, plus you can get Spellbreaker shield soon.

Never used Molag Bal's mace in late game so I can't say anything about it.

You can treat enchanted weapons loosing their charge like them wearing down. Use untill they are "worn out" and then eithet continue to use at their lower efficiency and wait for a chance to "fix" themeventually , or just discard and replace them with new stuff, the game throws a lot of gear at you.

Don't bother with enchanting and smithing untill you max out armor skill, If you chosen gear gives you enough armor to comfortably play, you don't need to inflate your overall charecter level with useless skills.

[snugginz]

OK well thanks for the replies. That's a lot of options to play with :)
I like the sword and board style with mace. So I picked up the Atronach stone and it really helped with mages who I was having the most trouble with. Now I'm working on my blocking skill to get the magic resist perk.

I'm a big fan of the shield bash and blocking in general. Didn't think I would like it but it's fun and the animations with the shield are pretty great.

I'll wait for later to do the smithing and enchanting. I did buy a house so I'm saving some materials for later.

Thanks again for all the tips. I've got ideas for a few play throughs ;-)

[vee-kay]

Originally posted by snugginz:

OK well thanks for the replies. That's a lot of options to play with :)
I like the sword and board style with mace. So I picked up the Atronach stone and it really helped with mages who I was having the most trouble with. Now I'm working on my blocking skill to get the magic resist perk.

I'm a big fan of the shield bash and blocking in general. Didn't think I would like it but it's fun and the animations with the shield are pretty great.

I'll wait for later to do the smithing and enchanting. I did buy a house so I'm saving some materials for later.

Thanks again for all the tips. I've got ideas for a few play throughs ;-)

As you ramp up the shield skills, you can unlock perks like Power Bash and Shield Charge, which can do a lot of damage. Shield charge (Sprinting forward with a shield raised, knocks down most targets - great fun to topple enemies off high cliffs, LOL!) is fun, and also useful in narrow corridors of dungeons and forts!

See my detailed comments here for some info on mods and ideas on how to make shield gameplay more versatile, powerful and exciting:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/489830/discussions/0/4329727702245985582/#c4339860988904942137