Skyrim: Enchanting Skill Guide - Trainers, Fast Leveling, & More (2023)

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim offers an endless amount of replayability thanks to its flexible character customization and near-endless number of quests. Some of that customization comes from Skyrim's crafting skills that allow you to make, refine, and enchant gear.

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Unlike most games, crafting items in Skyrim is absurdly strong and is the pathway to obtaining the strongest gear possible. Enchanting is a big contributor to this, providing magical effects to your gear. As long as you have an Arcane Enchanter and a filled soul gem, you can turn any mundane weapon into a fire-infused tool of death. Here is a complete guide to Skyrim's Enchanting skill, including leveling tips and unique enchantments to look out for.

Updated May 18th, 2023, by Charles Burgar: While Skyrim's Enchanting system hasn't seen any changes, creating the ultimate weapon can be a tedious and somewhat confusing process. To help you create the strongest weapons and armor possible, we've updated this guide with improved leveling and enchanting tips, and we've reorganized a few sections to make them easier to follow.

Why Level Enchanting?

Enchanting is one of Skyrim's crafting skills that allows you to imbue weapons, armor, and jewelry with magical properties such as elemental damage or waterwalking. For the purposes of the Guardian Standing Stones, Enchanting is part of the Mage archetype of skills.

Crafted gear in Skyrim is leagues above any unique items you can find throughout your adventures, partly due to the sheer strength of Enchanting. With Enchanting at rank 100 and all of its perks active, you can make a weapon that deals an extra 100 points of elemental damage or become nigh-immune to elemental damage with a few magic resistance enchantments on your gear. Every build in Skyrim can benefit from enchanting their gear, hence why many consider Enchanting to be one of Skyrim's strongest skills.

Enchanting Overview

There are four ways to level your Enchanting skill:

1. Enchant a non-magical piece of gear at an Arcane Enchanter.
2. Disenchant a magical piece of gear at an Arcane Enchanter, destroying the item in the process.
3. Purchase levels from an Enchanting trainer.
4. Reading certain books increases your Enchanting skill.

Enchanting and disenchanting items are the best sources of Enchanting XP. Since you'll need plenty of unenchanted items to level this skill, it's recommended to level Smithing alongside Enchanting.

Using The Arcane Enchanter

To enchant an item in Skyrim, you'll need three things:

1. An item with no enchantments
2. A filled Soul Gem
3. An Arcane Enchanter

Most equippable items in Skyrim can be enchanted, including weapons, armor, and jewelry. Items that already have an enchantment may not be enchanted, although these items can be disenchanted to unlock additional enchanting properties.

Make your way to an Arcane Enchanter—Skyrim's name for an Enchanting table. In the enchanting menu, you'll be able to select which item you wish to enchant, the enchantment you wish to apply, and which type of Soul Gem you'll use to enchant the item. Once you enchant an item, you'll lose your selected Soul Gem. That item will also be unable to be enchanted again, so think carefully about what you apply to that item.

Disenchanting an item is a similar process. While using the Arcane Enchanter, head to the 'disenchant' tab and select any item you wish to dismantle. Disenchanting an item will permanently destroy it, unlocking the item's enchantment for future use. Once a recipe is unlocked, you may not dismantle items with the same enchantment again. You may not disenchant Daedric Artifacts or similar unique items.

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Enchanting Skill Tree And Perks

Skyrim's Enchanting tree consists of nine unique perks, most of which have multiple ranks. The table below showcases what each perk does with each point of investment.

The Fastest Way To Level Enchanting

We highly recommend that you level the Enchanting skill alongside the Smithing skill, another crafting profession that is necessary to create the strongest items in Skyrim. As you create weapons and armor with your Smithing skill, take those items to an Arcane Enchanter and imbue them with magical properties. Try to use the largest souls you can to maximize your experience gains.

The leveling process will look something like this:

1. Obtain as many increased XP effects as you can.
2. Craft Iron Daggers or Dwarven Bows at a Smithing Station.
3. Run to an Arcane Enchanter and enchant every item you just crafted or bought.
4. Bankrupt a town by selling all of your enchanted gear to the town's vendors.
5. Use your newfound wealth to purchase more crafting supplies.
6. Repeat the process until your skills are level 100 or all nearby towns are out of supplies.

Before you start this process, make sure you have a large sum of charged soul gems at the ready. Soul gems can be found as loot in dungeons or purchased from court wizards in each Hold capital. The College of Winterhold also has NPCs that frequently sell soul gems. Once you have a large number of soul gems, use a weapon with the Soul Trap enchantment to fill them. If you lack a weapon with this enchantment, the Mace of Molag Bal is easy to obtain and can Soul Trap enemies.

Leveling Tips

To speed up the leveling process, enchant items with as large of a soul as you can. Grand souls grant the most experience while Petty souls grant the least; the enchantment you apply to your gear is irrelevant. Disenchanting gear uses this same principle, granting additional experience based on the strength of the enchantment. The stronger the enchantment, the more experience you will receive upon destroying the item.

If you need even more XP, the Mage Standing Stone near Riverwood will increase all Enchanting experience gains by 20%. You can also sleep in an owned bed to gain the Well Rested buff, granting an additional 10% experience bonus for eight in-game hours. If you are married and your spouse lives in the same house as you, the Lover's Comfort buff will be given instead—granting 15% more experience for eight in-game hours.

Those that own the Dawnguard DLC or any Special/Anniversary edition of Skyrim can also obtain the Aetherial Crown and attune to both the Lover and the Mage Standing Stones simultaneously, granting 35% more experience to the Enchanting skill while the circlet is equipped. You can create this item by completing the "Lost to the Ages" quest.

All Enchanting Books

If you are a few levels shy of reaching level 100 for Enchanting, keep an eye out for books that increase your Enchanting level. There are six in total to look out for:

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All Enchanting Trainers

Three NPCs can increase your Enchanting skill for a moderate Gold fee. You can only level Enchanting this way five times per level. Trainers cannot raise your Enchanting level beyond their own proficiency.

How To Maximize Enchanting

Besides Enchanting perks, the best way to improve your Enchanting effect is to drink potions with the Fortify Enchanting effect. These potions can be crafted by using a combination of the following ingredients:

• Ancestor Moth Wings
• Blue Butterfly Wings
• Chaurus Hunter Antennae
• Hagraven Claws
• Snowberries
• Spawn Ash
• Spriggan Sap

There is also a buff named "Seeker of Sorcery" that increases the effect of your enchantments by 10%. You can obtain this buff from the Sallow Regent Black Book, acquired during Solstheim's main quest.

Unique Enchantments To Look Out For

Some of Skyrim's Enchantments can only be obtained by disenchanting one-of-a-kind items. While they're far from the best, these enchantments offer benefits that are difficult to replicate. Here are a few of them:

*Note that this enchantment is bugged and doesn't deal bonus damage as it should. Install the Unofficial Skyrim Patch mod to fix this issue.

For even more powerful enchantments, check out our best Skyrim Enchantments article.

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