The way enchantments and soul gems work changes between each game inThe Elder Scrollsseries. InThe Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, weapons (but not apparel)spend their charge to use their enchanted abilities, and players must manually refill this charge to keep using these abilities.
The way to recharge weapons inSkyriminvolves collecting, filling, and then spending soul gems. This guide will explain every step of this process so that players won’t get stuck with a fire sword that never inflicts any fire damage.
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Step 1: Collect Soul Gems
Soul gems are not a craftable resource. Players must find them while exploring or buy them from merchants, and the most common sellers are mages. For the same reason, the best place to find soul gems while exploring is in rogue mage strongholds. Dwarven automatons also drop soul gems with some frequency.
Soul gems come in six basic varieties. From smallest to biggest, they arePetty, Lesser, Common, Greater, Grand, and Black. Black soul gems are the only kind that can trap the souls of humanoid NPCs, and NPC souls are always considered Grand in size.
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Step 2: Fill Soul Gems
Most soul gems are empty when players come across them, but a few are pre-filled. Players can tell when a soul gem is full because the captured soul’s size will be in the name of the item in parentheses. For instance, a full common soul gem will appear in the inventory as, “Common Soul Gem (Common)” or “Common Soul Gem (Lesser).”
To fill a soul gem, players must use a spell or ability on an enemy called “Soul Trap.” The basic spell is called Soul Trap, and it’s an Apprentice level (25 skill required) Conjuration spell. It’s a popular spell, somany spell merchants acrossSkyrimoffer it. After casting the spell on an enemy, if that enemy dies within 60 seconds, their soul will get trapped in a soul gem the player is carrying.
Players can also come across weapons, staffs, and scrolls that apply the Soul Trap effect, and they can create their own soul-trapping weapons by disenchanting one. The advantage of a soul-trapping weapon is that players can deal damage while applying the effect, but the disadvantage is that they could be using a more damaging or debilitating weapon instead.Players with 30 Conjurationcan also get the Soul Stealer perk, which gives the Soul Trap ability to all Bound weapons.
However, much like soul gems, souls come in a variety of sizes. To successfully capture a soul, players must have a soul gem big enough to capture it in their inventory.Peaceful animals and basic draugrare Petty, dangerous animals and special draugr are Lesser, and so on. A larger soul gem can capture a smaller soul, but not the other way around. If players attempt to trap a mammoth’s soul but don’t have an empty grand soul gem, the trapping attempt will fail.
There are some enemies that react differently to soul trapping:
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Step 3: Recharge Weapons
Players can check how charged their magic weapons are from the inventory screen, and they can also recharge their weapons from this menu. After selecting a weapon, press the “Recharge” button to open a new menu. On PC, this is the Wait button, which defaults to T. On PlayStation systems, the button is R1, on Xbox controllers, it’s RB, and on the Switch, it’s R.
Players can now choose which filled soul gem they want to use to refill the weapon’s charge. The game only displays 4 soul gems at a time, but players can go through the full list by using the arrow buttons. Larger souls refill more charge at once, but they also sell for more gold. Players also need soul gems to enchant items, and bigger soul gems providemore powerful effects and more charge power for enchanted weapons. With this in mind, players should use their smallest soul gems to recharge their weapons and save their big gems for other uses.
The biggest downside is that using soul gems to recharge weapons destroys them. This makes it important to fill soul gems with the biggest souls possible because a greater soul gem filled with a petty soul is a massive waste of resources. The main exception is Azura’s Star, a quest reward that can contain a soul of any size and will never break, no matter how often it’s used. Players can even use Azura’s Star toenchant any number of magic items.
Recharging weapons can be annoying, but it’s necessary if players want to keep dealing as much damage as possible. Just be sure to keep a Soul Trap weapon or spell on hand and always carry plenty of soul gems of every size to avoid wasting expensive items on petty souls.
The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrimis available now on PC, PS3, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
