Oblivion talk:Useful Enchantments/Archive 4

This is an archive of past Oblivion talk:Useful Enchantments discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page, except for maintenance such as updating links.

1 Element Blade/Blunt , 2 Element Blade/Blunt, 3 Element Blade/Blunt

Complaints re: 1,2 & 3 Element Blade/Blunts and explanation of damage. The text explaining the weapons says that the drain health effect will be carried over to consecutive hits i.e. "The Longsword/War Axe version of this enchantment allows for 4 hits (if consecutive hits are uninterrupted) of damage stacking for a maximum negative HP of 590 per hit on the fourth hit and every consecutive hit thereafter; 6 hits = 1860 total". The numbers for the first 4 hits are right however 6 hits = 10+30+50+90+90+590 = 860 negative hp as base damage to hp is the only thing that carries over. 1 second per hit and drain health 100 pts for 1 second means that on the 5th hit the 500 pts drain health from hit 4 will expire and be restored while an additional 500 is added from the 5th hit keeping the total amount drained constant at 500 hp but adding 90 more base damage, rinse and repeat for hit 6 and you still only get 500 pts drain health the first 3 hits 10+30+50 Base damage and the next three 90x3 base damage = 10+30+50+90+90+590 so total 860 negative hp. I respect someone did lots of good work on these but think some things need to be fixed. Ir's basically just a error, otherwise they are okay weapons at least on default difficulty.

1. The numbers for total negative hp on the slower weapons are wrong. The drain health will cap and cancel at the end of each second, not continue to add to itself like real damage. The correct number of negative hp for 6 hits with a longsword is 860 = 10+30+50+500+(90x3) for the 1 element, 860 = 10+30+50+500+(90x3) for the 2 element, 660 = 15+45+300+(75x4) for the 3 element. Also see my post about damage stack capping above.

2. For a weapon other than a shortsword or dagger the drain health effect is probably too expensive to justify, 26 charge if I remember right, specially on hardest difficulty setting where it will cap doing less than 100 negative hp and you will need lots more damage and swings. Better to just add more damage, specially with the multi-element type of these weapons as diverse damage is cheaper, or remove it and either add more uses or longer duration weakness to magic and of course soultrap.

3. Drain fatigue and or or some sort of note about how your victim will need to be paralyzed for you to actually be able to complete the stack against any opponents who can block should be added. 206.53.58.90 03:02, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Note: in my original post I got the numbers wrong also. I originally forgot to add the first three hits base damage for the 1 & 2 element and the first 2 hits base damage for the 3 element. I had to come back and edit it. IMPORTANT: The dagger/shortsword numbers for the 3 element are also wrong, on hit 6 you get negative hp of 1040 = 15+45+75+500+(135x3). 206.53.58.90 03:12, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Response: After reading most of the comments and calculations by "206.53.58.90", I decided to recalculate a chart for the 3 Element enchantment. My results for the chart are as follows, assuming Drain Health continues stacking:

1 Element Enchantment	Pt/Sec	Hit 1	Hit 2	Hit 3	Hit 4	Hit 5	Hit 6	Hit 7
Drain Health	100/1	(100)	(200)	(300)	(400)	(500)	(600)	(700)
Element Damage	10/1	10	10	10	10	10	10	10
Weakness to Element	100/1	x	10	20	30	40	50	60
Weakness to Magic	100/4	x	10	20	30	40	50	60
Base Damage HP		10	30	50	70	90	110	130
Combined Negative HP		(110)	(230)	(350)	(470)	(590)	(710)	(930)
Total Negative HP		x	(240)	(390)	(560)	(750)	(960)	(1290)

While I might agree, after console confirmation by someone else, that weakness enchantments may stack additionally and are not multiples, I disagree with the statement that Drain Health is somehow capped. After attacking Ogres on mulitple reloads with the "1 Element" longsword, my-in game testing shows very different results than these: "10+30+50+90+90+590 so total 860 negative hp." At level 45 a standard Ogre's health is calculated as 26 x (player's level - 3) = 1092 HP. According to the above statement that Drain Health doesn't continue to stack, and that 6 consecutive longsword strikes from this blade results in 860 Total Negative Hit Points isn't consistent. On default difficulty I can't consistently reach a sixth hit before said Ogres are very dead and on the ground, and when I do reach hit six, the sixth hit always seems to be a delayed hit in the queue with no effect beyond the fifth. According to the chart I recalculated, assuming that weaknesses are not multiples, but are additionally stacked on each other, it should take 7 hits to kill an Ogre at my level, however they are often dead after hit 5. At first I saw this and thought all three calculations were wrong, but after taking into consideration the base damage from the blade itself, 6 consecutive hits is doing over 1000 HP damage. If that's the case, I should have to hit said Ogres at least 6 times with a powerful longsword (Daedric) or 7 times with an iron longsword. If that is correct, explain five hits killing Ogres at my level on default setting.

This is the second version of the chart that I redid, assuming Drain Health caps at 500, but the weaknesses continue to stack (this makes no sense to me, as previously stated by "206.53.58.90" weakness to magic does not need to be more than 1 second in duration to achieve stacking, if thats the case why then is Drain Health "capped" after 5 hits on an enchantment of 4 seconds and wouldn't that mean any enchantment with Weakness to Magic 100/1sec would never stack above 200?):

1 Element Enchantment	Pt/Sec	Hit 1	Hit 2	Hit 3	Hit 4	Hit 5	Hit 6	Hit 7
Drain Health	100/1	(100)	(200)	(300)	(400)	(500)	(500)	(500)
Element Damage	10/1	10	10	10	10	10	10	10
Weakness to Element	100/1	x	10	20	30	40	50	60
Weakness to Magic	100/4	x	10	20	30	40	50	60
Base Damage HP		10	30	50	70	90	110	130
Combined Negative HP		(110)	(230)	(350)	(470)	(590)	(610)	(630)
Total Negative HP		x	(240)	(390)	(560)	(750)	(880)	(1030)

If this is in fact correct, At level 45 an Ogre would require at least 7 hits from this enchantment. I strongly encourage EVERYONE who took the time to read this post to test this both in-game as well as through the PC console, then report your findings back here and adjust the main page accordingly. I honestly don't care if I'm wrong, that happens a lot with me, I just want to make sure the main article shows the correct explanation and calculations. As of right now, the article shows that 5 smacks drops an Ogre, which is the result I consistently get, but that is contrary to the discussions in the talk page. As far as Weakness to anything reaching 500% on a 4 second enchantment then being "capped", but also stating elsewhere that only a Weakness to Magic 100/1sec is needed to stack enchantments is contradictory, don't you think? Reznor Ramirez 03:16, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

Edit to 1,2,3 element weapons

1 element blade/blunt

Original text: "...maximum negative HP of 590 per hit on the fourth hit and () consecutive hit thereafter; 6 hits = 1860() total negative HP. The Dagger/Shortsword versions of this Enchantment allows for 6 hits of damage stacking for a maximum negative HP of 2030 per hit on the sixth hit, which equals 2380 total negative HP. ()".

Edit: "...maximum negative HP of 590 on the fourth hit and an additional 90 base HP damage every consecutive hit thereafter; 6 hits = 10+30+50+90+500+90+90 = 860 total negative HP. The Dagger/Shortsword versions of this Enchantment allows for 6 hits of damage stacking for a maximum negative HP of 2030 on the sixth hit, which equals 2380 total negative HP. Note that the drain health effect does not add to itself per hit once done stacking, only the base damage does this.".

2 element blade/blunt

Original text: "...maximum negative HP of 590 per hit on the fourth hit and () consecutive hit thereafter; 6 hits = 1860() total negative HP. The Dagger/Shortsword versions of this Enchantment allows for 6 hits of damage stacking for a maximum negative HP of 2030 per hit on the sixth hit, which equals 2380 total negative HP. ()".

Edit: "...maximum negative HP of 590 on the fourth hit and an additional 90 base HP damage every consecutive hit thereafter; 6 hits = 10+30+50+90+500+90+90 = 860 total negative HP. The Dagger/Shortsword versions of this Enchantment allows for 6 hits of damage stacking for a maximum negative HP of 2030 on the sixth hit, which equals 2380 total negative HP. Note that the drain health effect does not add to itself per hit once done stacking, only the base damage does this."

3 element blade/blunt

Original text: "...maximum negative HP of 375 per hit on the third hit and () every consecutive hit thereafter; 6 hits = 1560() total negative HP. The Dagger/Shortsword versions of this Enchantment allows for 4 hits of damage stacking for a maximum negative HP of 635 per hit on the fourth hit and () every consecutive hit thereafter; 6 hits = 2040() total negative HP.".

Edit: "...maximum negative HP of 375 on the third hit and an additional 75 base HP damage every consecutive hit thereafter; 6 hits = 15+45+75+300+75+75+75 = 660 total negative HP. The Dagger/Shortsword versions of this Enchantment allows for 4 hits of damage stacking for a maximum negative HP of 635 on the fourth hit and an additional 135 base HP damage every consecutive hit thereafter; 6 hits = 15+45+75+135+500+135+135 = 1040 total negative HP.".

Question re: other text in 3 element blade/blunt. Does weakness to poison actually stack with weakness to magic? I remember seeing somewhere that it did not. Also ran the test myself and it did not seem to. Also "The Weakness to Poison effect must be active before the poison for it to have an effect. In other words, you must first cast a spell with a Weakness to Poison effect (or use a scroll or enchanted weapon with that effect), then strike with a poisoned weapon. The effect will last for the entire duration of any poison. Therefore, if you hit someone with a Weakness to Poison 50% for 10 seconds effect, then immediately follow that with a strike from a weapon poisoned with Damage Health 4 points for 15 seconds, 90 points of damage will be done (even though the weakness effect expires before the poison's damage effect)." from the weakness to poison article. I think the suggestion for variation on the enchantment needs editing also. 206.53.58.90 15:09, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Complaint

Several weapons on this page seem to state that the drain health effect is permanent damage once it is capped stacking. I think this is a mathematical error in calculating "max negative HP" because they do not add previous hits drain health, only after it is capped and "max negative HP per hit" is calculated. This should not actually be per hit as once drain health is capped the only per hit addition is base damage. I have already fixed, 1,2,3 element blade/blunt weapons. At least 2 others need to be fixed. 206.53.58.90 00:17, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Removed Blade of Imperatives

I have removed "Blade of Imperatives". It does not work for above lvl 1 because it costs too much charge, over 85. At lvl 25 the max time you can have if using both effects is 1 and 2 seconds either way, enough time for them to turn and look at the others then turn back and hit you. Maybe they will fight for you anyway if you keep hitting them with this because it refreshes with each hit so never adds up to a 3 hit provoke? This is not mentioned in the enchantment and on hard your weapon would run out of charge far before 1 kill.

Original Enchantment is as follows:

Blade of Imperatives

• Command Creature x points for 60 seconds
• Command Humanoid x points for 60 seconds

A very simple enchantment but useful nonetheless, especially if you are swamped by enemies as the first one you strike will help you deal with its friends. You'll probably want to use a relatively low-damage weapon as you don't want your new "friend" to be too badly damaged. Alternatively you could use a spell and avoid any damage at all.

• Note: make "x" your level +5 (maxed out at 25).

I will replace with a "Bow of Frenzy". Never fight more than one NPC again! 206.53.58.90 00:40, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Stacking cap

After experiments with the console and Damage Fatigue stacking I am 100% sure that stacking weakness to magicka IS capped. I am uncertain as to the mechanism or equation for it but it is DEFINITELY limited to a certain maximum which may or may not be influenced by other weaknesses to elements or a weakness from another source, i.e. two separate weakness to magicka spells. This is absolutely relevant to enchanting and spellmaking. I will add a comment to the page mentioning that there is a unknown limit. 206.53.58.90 12:31, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Weakness to Magic Stacking - Experimental Results

Some of the numbers I've seen in the little grids people have posted regarding their weapon enchants seemed a bit off to me, so I decided to run some experiments to determine how weaknesses and magic effects are applied. There is a "Too long, didn't read" summary at the end.

All of these experiments were run on Delmar in the Chironasium because, well, he was convenient. For all of my experiments, I paralyzed him using the standard 10 seconds on touch spell. Where necessary, I re-paralyzed him to extend the duration of my test. The notable exception is during my poison tests, in which I paralyzed him only once, and tried to time my strikes so as to apply the poison as close to the end of the touch spell as possible. These experiments were performed on an XBox with Knights of the Nine, Shivering Isles, and Thieves' Den installed.

Experiment 1 - No Weaknesses

  Dagger A: Absorb Intelligence 3 points for 5 seconds

I picked Absorb Int because it allowed me to see hard numbers, and Delmar was likely to have Int to spare. I struck Delmar repeatedly, as fast as I could. At no point did my own intelligence rise above 103. (My natural int is 100. Yeah, I'm a power-gamer. Sue me.) This was an important control for my next experiment.

Experiment 2 - Weakness to Magic Stacking.

  Dagger A - Absorb Intelligence 3 points for 1 second, Weakness to Magic 100 for 5 seconds

I lowered the duration of the absorb effect so I could check my character sheet in between swings to verify that each previous absorb expired before applying the next. I kept my swings spaced at about 3 seconds. This is important, because conventional wisdom on this site seems to hold that each swing applies a new Weakness to Magic effect, and that it will only stack until the first expires. On the first hit, my Int rose to a predictable 103. My second swing, 106. The third, 109. The trend continued, with each swing adding another 3 points of intelligence, up to the 13th swing giving me 139. Delmar fell unconscious on the 14th swing, ending the experiment.

This experiment shows two very critical points about Weakness to Magic. First, it shows that each swing overwrites the previous weakness effect, but each new effect is boosted by the previous one before it goes. My experiment took almost a full minute for 14 swings of my dagger. If conventional wisdom held true, I should never have gotten above 106. Second, it shows that the bonus effects are not multiplicative. They work, instead, like bonus damage in Dungeons and Dragons. In D&D, and apparently Oblivion, an effect that causes you to deal double damage is not merely multiplying your result by 2. Instead, it is adding your damage to itself. If you have two effects that each double your damage, they each add the base value to the original, resulting in triple damage, not quadruple.

Experiment 3 - Weakness to Magic + Weakness to Poison

  Dagger A: Weakness to Magic 100 for 8 secs
  Dagger B: Weakness to Poison 100 for 8 secs
  Dagger C: Mundane

I didn't come prepared properly for this experiment, and didn't feel like going back to my sunken pirate ship to retrieve my master alchemy gear. Fortunately, the Chironasium had all four novice apparatuses... Apparati... Things. I made a single dose of Paralyze for 2 secs poison from some daedra venom. I paralyzed Delmar with the 10 secs on touch spell, then slashed him 8 times with Dagger A, as quickly as I could. I then hit him once with Dagger B. I then loaded the poison onto Dagger C and waited for Delmar to get back up, signaling the end of the spell paralysis. I hit him, and he stayed down for ~18 seconds, which is consistent with the additive nature of weaknesses. Eight slashes with Dagger A should have given him an 800% weakness to magic. One slash with Dagger B gives him 900% weakness to Poison. The two second poison kept him down for 9 times its' normal duration.

Experiment 4 - Weaknesses on the same weapon

  Dagger A: Weakness to Poison 100 for 6 seconds, Weakness to Magic 100 for 2 seconds
  Dagger B: Mundane

A repeat of the previous experiment, this one simply combines the weaknesses into one weapon. Slashing eight times with Dagger A, then applying the poison with Dagger B resulted in the same 18 second paralysis as before. I then ran the experiment with the weaknesses applied to Dagger A in reverse order. The paralysis was barely noticeable. It seems conventional wisdom got some of it right, at least. The Weakness to Magic effect doesn't apply to any effects that follow it in a single strike. I checked to see how poison factored in by running the experiment with the original, properly ordered Dagger A. This time, I slashed eight times, then applied the poison to Dagger A for the ninth strike. The paralysis was even less noticeable than before: It faded before Delmar even hit the ground. It seems Poisons are applied after all of the inherent weapon enchantments have gone into effect.

Experiment 5 - Weakness Durations vs Damage Durations

  Dagger A: Weakness to Magic 100 for 5 secs
  Dagger B: Fire Damage 5 for 14 secs

I paralyzed Delmar with the 10 seconds on touch spell, as usual. I then hit him once with Dagger B. The fire damage steadily reduced his health ring by approximately 1 pixel per second. I reloaded from save, paralyzed him again, and hit with Dagger A first. This time, upon striking with Dagger B, his health dropped by approx. 2 pixels per second, and did not slow down after the weakness to magic effect ended. Conclusion: The magnitude and duration of spell effects are determined when cast, and are not influenced by the expiration or application of any other effects while they are running.

Experiment 6 - Multiple Weaknesses on the Same Effect

  Dagger A: Weakness to Fire 100 for 5 secs, Weakness to Magic 100 for 5 secs
  Dagger B: Fire Damage 5 for 14 secs

For my first run, I simply attacked Delmar with Dagger B. I allowed the fire damage to run its' full course before striking again. He survived two dagger strikes and their fire effects. The third dagger strike disabled him immediately, without the fire. I then ran the test again, slashing once with Dagger A, then with Dagger B. He was disabled by the fire in approximately 8 seconds. (The 10 second paralysis spell expired just moments before the "unconscious" message popped up.) This is inconclusive, since the additive system would have Delmar expire in around 9 seconds (1/3 of the 28 seconds it took to disable him alone) while the multiplicative system would have him expire in 7 (1/4 of the time). The next result was much clearer. I struck twice with Dagger A, then once with Dagger B. Delmar went down in ~3.5 seconds, which is 1/8 of the time without weaknesses.

It seems that multiple weaknesses applied to the same effect ARE multiplicative. With two dagger strikes, Delmar had 200% weakness to fire, and 200% weakness to Magic. The Fire multiplied his damage by 3 - X + X + X (Base damage plus another X for each 100% weakness). Weakness to Magic was then applied to the full result of the fire equation, meaning the base X delivered to the Magic function was the full (X + X + X) from fire. In total, he took 9 times the damage.

Experiment 7 - Realistic Weapon

  Dagger A: Shock Damage 5 for 1 seconds, Weakness to Shock 100 for 3 second, Weakness to Magic 100 for 3 second

Just to combine all of the previous bits of information into one, I tested this on Delmar. I hit him three times, waiting for the shock damage to run its' course before hitting him again. I hit him three times, which according to the results I've gotten so far suggest he should take 1 + 4 + 9, or 14 seconds of damage, which is exactly how long that basic fire dagger did in the last two experiments. Three dagger hits plus 14 seconds of damage brought him to just about a quarter of his health.

Conclusions (TLDR)

1. Weakness to Magic will stack with itself indefinitely so long as each swing arrives before the expiration of the previous one.
2. Weaknesses apply their bonuses by addition, not multiplication. So striking an enemy with a 100% weakness to Magic weapon when it already has 500% weakness to magic will result in 600% weakness.
3. Weaknesses do not apply to any effects that follow them in the same swing, even if a lesser version was in effect before the swing. Poisons are applied after all enchantments.
4. Magnitudes and durations are fixed when an effect is applied, and is not influenced by the expiration or application of weaknesses after the fact.
5. Multiple weaknesses applied to the same effect ARE multiplicative. Each individual weakness is additive, but the total result is sent on to the next weakness as if it were the base damage.

The most important thing to take from this is that Weakness to Magic will stack with itself for as long as you keep swinging, even if the duration is 1 second. — Unsigned comment by 98.227.9.9 (talk) at 15:08 on 2 April 2010

I just added sub-headings and a little minor formatting to your post to make it a bit easier to read. I'll print out this section and verify your experiments on the PC where I have the benefit of being able to see a lot of these effects numerically in the Console. It sounds like you've done some pretty good work, though. Assuming my observations match yours, the information on this page, and perhaps other applicable pages, should be updated accordingly. ‒ Robin Hood↝Talk 19:31, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. This is the first time I've contributed anything to a wiki, so I have no clue how to go about formatting anything. I also didn't feel like running around the main page, declaring from out of nowhere that everybody else was wrong. Please, if you can verify my results using the console, feel free to make the updates to the main pages. On the plus side, no more "4 second weakness to magic" weapons!

I'm quite satisfied with the practical results I've gotten from the weapons I've enchanted after running these experiments. Soul trap, 10 points of elemental damage, and double weaknesses, all for 2 seconds. Four to five hits will kill anything at level 40, barring absorption or reflection. I made one for each element, since daggers are light enough to carry a dozen without encumbrance problems. You can swing fast enough to work with just one second, but two gives you some room for errors.

It just really sucks about the poisons... Poisons don't seem worth the effort, by comparison. I really liked some of the formulas that I saw in the alchemy calculator. A poison that damages strength by 36 points, on top of a 45 point burden doesn't seem like much. Hit the enemy with Weakness to Poison first, even just 100%, and that poison will cripple anything. 72 points of strength damage, on top of a 90 point burden for three minutes. Or "Magebane" which, with weakness, silences for over 50 seconds, damages magicka by 30 points per second for a minute, and damages Willpower by 72 points. They'll never cast a spell again. I could see some limited use if, for some strange reason, you wanted to take one target alive, but for not for regular combat. The triple-damage poisons sound nice, ~30 damage per second, but you can exceed that in two swings of a normal blade. — Unsigned comment by OmniscientQ (talk • contribs) at 21:10 on 6 April 2010

We've had long-standing errors before, especially when it comes to game mechanics which are hard to verify, so it's not really a surprise that there are still some floating around. I haven't had a chance yet to check your results...I made the mistake of having two projects on the go at once, plus your 7 experiments to verify. They're printed out and nagging at me on my desk, though, so it won't be long. ‒ Robin Hood↝Talk 22:34, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Sorry it took so long, but I've now been able to sit down and verify all of your experiments, and you were bang on for every last one of them. A couple of notes: for Experiment 4, in the final section of the experiment, the Weakness to Poison effect is reset to 100% after applying poison only if the Weakness to Magic had expired. If both were still active, they were additive as expected. As you observed, there's a more serious bug if you add poison to Dagger A instead of Dagger B in that one, though. Specifically, the damage or duration (whichever one is normally multiplied) will be reduced to 1 it would seem. In my experiment, a combined damage/paralysis poison applied to Dagger A were reduced from Paralyze 3 sec, Damage 7 for 30 sec down to Paralyze 1 sec, Damage 1 for 30 sec, despite Delmar being at 700% weakness to both poison and magic at the time I hit! That was a bit of a surprise, to say the least.

Along those lines, in Experiment 5, I confirmed that a weaker version of the same effect will override the stronger version. For example, while the Fire Damage 10 for 14 was still active, I hit him again with no Weakness effects active and the Fire Damage effect immediately got reduced to 5 for 14.

Another thing that these experiments brought to light is that behind the scenes, potion damages and durations may be fractional. I often got multiples that were a little higher than expected. For example, at 9x duration, my Paralyze for 3 secs poison went to 28 seconds and the 7 damage went to 64.

Finally, just to confirm, your numbers were bang on in Experiment 7. A got a power sequence of 3 × x² for my Paralyze potion, where x is the number of times I struck him. In other words, the duration of the paralysis went 3, 12, 27, 48, 75. ‒ Robin Hood↝Talk 00:52, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I've made some of the changes, though not all, which I'll get to in a moment. First, though, I don't understand what the last bullet is saying at all. Does anybody else? If so, it needs to be explained a little better.

Now, as to why I haven't made all of the changes: in testing some of the tips mentioned on the page, I discovered that more testing needs to be done with the effects at less than 100% to make sure the above assumptions still hold. I've done some testing and Weakness to Magic, for instance, isn't as additive as we thought. It actually follows a mathematical series that I'm sure I would've had a name for back in high school. At less than 100% WtM, it provides decreasing returns. This is why there was a bullet point in the original text stating that there was an undetermined maximum effect: whoever added it was testing at less than 100%.

If x is the WtM amount (keeping in mind that 50% = 0.5, not 50) and n is the number of hits, the formula for the total Weakness applied on any given hit looks to be: x + x² + x³ ... + xⁿ, give or take a little rounding error or some such thing (at x = 75%, n = 4, the formula works out to 205.1% but I got 204% displayed). So at 25%, the advantage of even a second hit is almost negligible. At x = 100%, this becomes simple addition, since 1ⁿ = 1 (except maybe in Calculus class), which is why it appeared to be additive at first. ‒ Robin Hood↝Talk 05:42, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

The word you can't remember is "Polynomial"  :)

This is exactly the behavior you'd expect: WtM is itself a magic effect, so you'll get an asymptotic progression on any fractional values.

<- While that's certainly a word, I'm not sure if it's the one I was looking for. As it's been more years than I'd care to remember since I learned this stuff, I'm not gonna try to figure out what I was thinking of. You have a point about WtM being a magic effect and essentially affecting itself. This means that in reality, it's not stacking with itself directly, rather it's making the person more susceptible to itself and then each re-application of the effect is overriding the previous one, but at a higher value due to the previous effect. That also explains the unusually quick (in terms of number of iterations) rounding errors: it's not computing a sequence, it's taking the previous (presumably slightly rounded) result and then calculating based on that. ‒ Robin Hood↝Talk 03:16, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

"Geometric" then?, which is this particular case. — Unsigned comment by 24.180.46.112 (talk) at 22:44 on 18 April 2010

That might have been what I was looking for, yeah. Oh and get an account, Ali! ;) ‒ Robin Hood↝Talk 23:33, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Wheat from Chaff

The article page has really gotten out of control. There are *5* "THIS WEAPON BETTAR!" entries taking up 5 entire pages of space that are ALL nothing but exactly what the section is NOT supposed to be about: utterly generic "Soul Trap, Drain H, Damage ABCD, Weakness ABCD, WtM", KEWL NAEM!!1!

"Bows" is basically just Melee Weapons all over again, but with the durations bumped up to 3s.

The other items aren't generally much better: some are simply wrong, several are useless and appear to have been added solely because the effect was one of the few still missing from the page at the time, others have huge downsides that are conspicuously absent, and the whole thing is just YUCK. A 100% Chameleon suit doesn't qualify as a "powerful enchantment", but a set of Orcish with 25%/Elemental does? The whole page should be Nuked From Orbit.

I was going to suggest splitting it into separate pages by type (say, Weapons and Apparel like most "generic" stuff: the number of actually useful Cursed Items is *1*, and it's already covered in the appropriate place on the wiki) but I worry that people who felt the current version of the page needed the same weapon added 6 times would just see a less crowded version as an invitation to add several more copies of it.

I'd be willing to help out if someone felt like trying to make it "Useful Enchantments" and guidelines again, rather than "look how many effects I can put on a weapon and how many times I can copypaste it!". If Robin can come up with a TLDR version of his TLDR notes :P and we got rid of all the super-samey weapons, that alone would halve the size of the article without losing anything of actual value, and it would make it a lot harder for any other dross to hide with so much less cover.

Semi-protection at some point (okay, fine, I'll look for it right after this!) would stop every "new" discovery that you can put multiple effects on a weapon (or even that the Enchantment X entry that uses a Longsword actually works on Shortswords too) from adding yet another MyUbarKillzAllWeppon that needs to be patrolled and deleted. How many genuinely useful, genuinely new enchantments do we think are still yet to be found?

- Ali

Cleaning up this article is a good idea. If you are seeking guidelines, you may want to check out the Useful Spells article. I cleaned that article some time ago and updated its guidelines. --Timenn-<talk> 13:03, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Weakness to poison-bow

A bow enchanted with weakness to poison sounds like a great idea. And since I've heard that the multiplied effect doesn't stop when the weakness runs out, one should be able to make the enchantment "weakness to poison 100% for 1 sec" with devastating results combined with some sweet poisons, and still have a lot of spare charge. But now I hear that the weakness will never affect a poison added on the same attack? :S Is this true? If so it totally ruins the entire purpose of this kind of a bow >:(

..Thought I'd just put this up here as a question, just to make the thread messy :p Please write here if you know the answer.

---

It's not useless, but yes, it's "clunky" to the point of being of less value than you'd like. You MUST use at least two shots: one to apply the Weakness effect (though that shot can also include other effects, including poison), then a second to apply the poison itself. Since it takes very nearly 2 seconds to reach full draw on a bow, the Weakness needs to last for at least that long, and 3 is considered the bare minimum. The second shot will be at 200% (assuming you used a 100% Weakness, and there's very little point using anything less) for the entire length of the poison, provided it hits before the Weakness runs out, regardless of how much (or little) "extra" time the Weakness lasts.

Essentially: your first shot will always be at 100% effectiveness, but additional shots will be at 200% (or higher, if you use the WtM exploit).

Realistically though, it barely matters. High-level poisons are damaging enough that two doses of them will kill anything susceptible before it reaches you even if the second dose isn't doubled (especially if you're getting Sneak Attack bonuses as well), unless you have to make the shot at close range and have nowhere to run, in which case you probably shouldn't be using a bow anyway. :P

--Aliana 19:57, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

On the page it states: "Do not apply poison to a weapon enchanted with Weakness to Poison. The poison will actually be substantially reduced in effectiveness." Can anyone confirm this, and possibly how/why this happens? Wouldn't this affect the bow discussed above? Heddon42 20:29, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

This was added to the page as a result of the testing in this thread. We were testing with melee weapons, however. It's unlikely, but it could conceivably be different with a ranged weapon. – Robin Hood↝talk 01:45, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

I think it's the same, but the point would be a double tap, with the second Arrow being the toxic one. I think you would need to hotkey it for any sort of efficency though. 184.77.194.254

According to the experiments, though, if you use the same bow for every shot, even if you poison the second shot it wouldn't be multiplied since the Weakness effect would overwrite the previous shot, and only be applicable to subsequent shots. Since the poison effect is applied last, you cannot get a weakness effect unless you use 2 bows- one with the Weakness to Poison, and another to apply the poison. Bad design. Basically makes a Weakness to Poison enchantment on a bow useless. Heddon42 20:36, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Details, how weakness to magic is capped

• If a target is hit repeatedly by a weapon enchanted with 100% weakness to magic, then the resulting overall weakness to magic of the target builds up in steps of 100%, it will be 100%, 200%, 300% and so on, if each hit arrives and re-applies the effect before the previous effect times out. This leads to the assumption, that this spell effect stacks, meaning that the magnitudes of successive hits are added up.

• However, this assumption is probably wrong, and this is obvious, if one examines this effect at lower magnitudes: At 80 % it builds up as 80%, 144%, 195%, … or 80%, 80%+64%, 80%+64%+51%, … which are the terms of a geometric series x+x²+x³+… with x=0.80=80%, and the misleading stack above is just 100%+100%²+100%³+…=1+1²+1³+...

• This is, what Robin Hood found, and verified ingame.

• Instead, the general rule, that governs the interaction of weakness or resistance with another spell effect, applies to the interaction of weakness to magic with itself: Add 100% to the currently active weakness effect and multiply the result with the magnitude of the applied spell (simplified for this case). Therefore with successive hits of a weapon enchanted with x (i.e. 80%=0.8) weakness to magic and a target with no initial weakness to magic the active effect will grow like this:

• 1.Hit: (100%+0%)*x=x, 2.Hit: (100%+x)*x = x+x², 3.Hit: (100%+(x+x²))*x = x+x²+x³, ...

• No doubt, weakness to magic simply interacts with itself, there is no "spell stacking" involved. Rounding down after each iteration will complicate things a bit, but this is essentially the geometric series, Robin Hood found. It can be derived from the general rule. Now mathematics kicks in.

• A result is, there has to be a limit or a cap, if the weapon is enchanted with weakness to magic < 100%, because the geometric series x+x²+x³+... converges, if x < 1. Therefore x=100% is really the only case, where weakness to magic grows unlimited with the number of hits. The limit of the geometric series is in this case x/(1-x), this would be 400% for x= 80% and the limit experienced ingame is expected to be lower, because the game engine rounds down to an integer value in percent after each iteration (verified ingame).

I made a spreadsheet + program with these assumptions, and could reproduce the numbers seen on the active effects debug text screen (console SDT 8) in detail. Then I tried to predict the ingame limit for weakness to magic and the required number of hits for different magnitudes of the spell effect:

Enchanted WtM	Hits required	Max. WtM
76%	18	313%
77%	19	331%
78%	21	351%
79%	21	372%
80%	23	396%
81%	25	422%
82%	26	451%
83%	28	483%
84%	29	519%
85%	32	561%
86%	34	608%
87%	37	662%
88%	40	726%
89%	45	801%
90%	49	891%
91%	55	1001%
92%	61	1138%
93%	71	1315%
94%	83	1551%
95%	100	1881%
96%	126	2376%
97%	170	3201%
98%	256	4851%
99%	515	9801%
100%	infinite	infinite

Now I paralysed a mage, set his health to 10000 hitpoints, and started to hit him with a weapon enchanted with weakness to magic. The highest limit I could reach until now was for 95% WtM 1 second duration (the only effect on weapon) and the limit seen ingame was 1880%. The sum of the geometric series would be 1900%.

If other gamers are able to verify this cap, especially on Xbox too, it should be added to the description of weakness to magic. There are additional interesting consequences, because there is no real "spell stacking" when using a weapon (I could not see any on the SDT displays) and some of the weapons on the "Useful Enchantments" page will not work as expected, i.e. Drain Health magnitude would just increase linear with the WtM magnitude.

Hope the formatting is acceptable. I registered a new account some days ago. --Bendoril 02:25, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

The formatting looks fine. In fact, I find as a really broad general guideline, if you know enough to create a table on your own, I don't need to check the rest of the formatting, so you pass! ;) Just a quick comment on the 1880% vs. 1900%: I noticed when doing my own testing that there was some rounding going on between iterations. It may be cumulative rounding errors that are leading to that difference of 20% between the two. ‒ Robin Hood↝Talk 06:04, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Great stuff. Verifying 99% in game must have been fun... :P This fits with (crucially) Rob's observations, my own theories and rough testing from way back, and, aside from a couple of special cases that were misinterpreted as general ones, the anon's epic testing and conclusions in (12). Rob: I'm not sure I'd call it "20%" - that's a bit confusing. It's really 20pts (19, to be pedantic: it's 1881 vs), which is a 1% difference, and I think we can all agree that's within an expected margin of error for 100 iterations with rounding. Bendoril: if you'd like to try your hand at a "TLDR" version of that and/or the TLDR section of (12), I'm sure it would be appreciated. (Ultimately it belongs elsewhere on the site, since it isn't really enchantment-specific and both this article and its talk page get flooded with updates, but don't worry about that). --Aliana 08:43, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Can someone check out the post on "1 Element Blade/Blunt" on the talk page and address the issues there? Both the first comments and the response by me? Reznor Ramirez 03:29, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

Devil Bow: Too Strong for this Soul Gem.

I tried this Bow in Oblivion as I thought it would be useful, but it will not work, I have a Grand Soul Gem filled with a Grand Soul but it will not create with a message "Enchantment is too strong for this soul gem." You have to lower the Fire Damage to 5 pts for 2 sec everything work fine after that. Just thought I would ost this to let others know about what I found out.

Oh yeah, I tried to do this in the Frostcrag Spire.

Ok, after some playing around, here's mine:

• Soul Trap - 2 sec
• Frost Damage - 5 pts for 2 sec
• Shock Damage - 6 pts for 2 sec
• Fire Damage - 6 pts for 2 sec
• Damage Health - 8 pts for 2 sec
• Weakness to Fire - 25% for 3 sec
• Weakness to Magic - 20% for 3 sec

That's 1600/1600 with 19 uses.

I am a member of Wiki, but I can't sign in to this site. 60.240.6.211 09:32, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

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