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I've been trying my hand at smithing and producing loads of iron daggers. Those alone are unfortunately not really worth anything, so I decided to enchant them. With a damage stamina enchantment the daggers were suddenly worth more than 600 gold (though the greedy vendors don't give me that much, of course).

I've been doing this for a short while and noticed that the value of my enchanted daggers keeps declining, though my enchantment skill is only increasing. Any idea what is happening here, why are my daggers losing value?

This is the value when I just started enchanting again:

enter image description here

And now after practising enchanting for a while longer my daggers are worth even less:

enter image description here

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16
  • What type of soul stones are you using? The higher they are the more they're worth, if you use petty ones they are cheaper. Or are you using the same type all the time?
    – Viper_Sb
    Commented Nov 16, 2011 at 20:13
  • Perhaps because there are more of them? Just a guess though
    – juan
    Commented Nov 16, 2011 at 20:13
  • @viper I'm always using petty soul gems.
    – Mad Scientist
    Commented Nov 16, 2011 at 20:14
  • Are you selling them to the same vendor? maybe he's over stocked, not sure really
    – Viper_Sb
    Commented Nov 16, 2011 at 20:18
  • 4
    I can confirm this problem as well. It's particularly noticeable with really high-end enchants; one test I did resulted in a drop in the item value from 1500 to 1050 when a ring went from 40% strength to 45% strength on a dual-enchant of 1H/2H boost.
    – Cypren
    Commented Nov 16, 2011 at 20:40

10 Answers 10

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23

From UESP, under Bugs:

The value of enchanted equipment is inversely proportional to your current level of Enchanting. For example, a leather bracer enchanted while under the effects of a Fortify Enchanting potion will have less value than a leather bracer enchanted without a Fortify Enchanting potion. If creating enchanted items for sale, remove any Fortify Enchanting buffs you may have equipped and don't drink any Fortify Enchanting potions.

Assuming this isn't a glitch (it most likely is), it could just be a hidden mechanic to make creating the same item over and over again less profitable the more times you do it.

You can look at it one of two ways:

  1. From a game design perspective, you wouldn't want players to be able to "farm" one item over and over again. This gets tedious and makes the game feel like a job.

  2. From a role-playing perspective, when your first Turn Undead dagger was made, there were presumably only a few of them in the world of Skyrim. Now that you've made 86 of them, they aren't worth as much. You've turned a rare-ish magic weapon into something commonplace.

And before you shoot down #2 (because the first dagger you made is still worth more than the last one you made), it's obvious that the inhabitants of Skyrim will pay more for one of your early works to proudly display in their shops.

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5
  • The actual link is http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Enchanting#Glitches. The above link is going to an older version of the page for some reason.
    – dpatchery
    Commented Nov 25, 2011 at 21:46
  • This makes the most sense.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Nov 27, 2011 at 8:36
  • If you create two of the same item, and the second one is worth less than the first, does the first item's value go down as well? If so, I would assume this is not a glitch, but rather supply-and-demand at work. However, if it's your first time creating an item, but for whatever reason you have a high enchanting level, and the item is worth less than it would have been if your enchanting skill was lower, I'd assume this is a glitch.
    – BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft
    Commented Dec 1, 2011 at 23:36
  • @BlueRaja-DannyPflughoeft The first item retains its higher sell value. See the last paragraph in my answer for an absolutely snark-less justification for this.
    – dpatchery
    Commented Dec 2, 2011 at 12:36
  • Does drinking Fortify Restoration increase an items value since it increases most enchantments?
    – AnnanFay
    Commented May 27, 2012 at 15:23
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There seems to be a lot of misinformation regarding this, including on the wikis. The price does not drop as your enchanting skill increases. I figured this out by gaining several skill points through disenchanting: none of my enchanted items lost value. They started losing value only after I created more items of the same enchantment. For example, if you enchant something with Turn Undead, all your weapons with that particular enchantment will lose value while all your apparel and weapons with a different enchantment will keep theirs. Additionally, this is done in steps, so you will not see a decrease after every enchantment.

TL; DR: When you flood the world with items of a particular enchantment, the price for all such items drops; all other items keep their value.

Edit: What further complicates things is that (as of 1.2) there's a bug upon loading a saved game. It looks like the prices of your items will not be updated and will remain at whatever they were before you loaded! To make the game recalculate and show the correct price for a class of items, it seems you need to make that particular enchantment again (other enchantments, changing item/character location, autotravel, etc. didn't seem to refresh the price).

And it's not only a display bug: you can exploit it by saving the game after you're done with your enchantments, loading a previous save, enchanting once in order to update prices, and loading your current save again to sell items at higher prices.

Bottom line: prices of enchanted items are completely broken and in certain cases you may wish to restart the whole game before loading.

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  • 1
    This seems like an easy theory to test using the console. First, use a character that has sold a lot of a particular enchantment, and check the price. Then use a brand new character and use the console to set your enchanting skill to the same as the first case. Is the sell price different?
    – bwarner
    Commented Dec 1, 2011 at 21:41
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    I tested this by loading an early game character and setting enchantment skill to 95 via console. The price of newly enchanted gear did indeed drop drastically. However, all other stuff, including items with the same enchantment, performed before upping the skill, kept their value. This is very different from my (non-console) tests above, where performing an enchantment repeatedly caused all other items of the same enchantment to drop in value! This, too, is easily verifiable. Puzzling....
    – Stan
    Commented Dec 2, 2011 at 17:01
  • That makes sense with what dpatchery has said. The value of the item is set based on your enchanting skill at the time of creation. And at some point, increasing your enchanting skill starts to have a negative effect on the value. How many of that enchantment you have sold seems to be irrelevant. And it sounds like there might be other bugs that are also complicating the issue. Good investigation though!
    – bwarner
    Commented Dec 2, 2011 at 18:19
  • No, the value is certainly not (only?) based on skill at the time of performing the enchantment. Test: create an enchanted item, then create some more (identical or different) items of the same enchantment. The value of all items of that enchantment, including the original item, will drop. (1.2 PC)
    – Stan
    Commented Dec 2, 2011 at 19:10
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After taking an arrow in the knee I decided to do some mass enchanting at my house in solitude. I noticed that with every new banishing iron dagger I created, the value decreased, and I began to research a solution to this problem. I had to leave for a few hours, so I saved my game and turned off my PS3. When I returned, to my surprise, I found that my banish enchanted iron daggers value had raised a little over 1k each. I then quickly rushed to inform the internets of the good news. Enchanters everywhere rejoice for no longer will we have to suffer the injustice of Skyrim merchants and faulty arcane enchants. No, now we demand full price for our hoards of banishing iron daggers.

All you need to do is save quit then reload your game and it should fix the prices of enchanted items (Ps3 v1.02)

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1
  • I can confirm it works like this in patch 1.9(PC). After you get done enchanting, save(manual save, quick save, do something that autosaves like going through a door or waiting) and exit your game. Restart, load the save and your enchants will be the correct gold value(that is to say higher, not lower).
    – Jtenorj3
    Commented Mar 17, 2017 at 17:16
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Maybe it has something to do with max charges? I don't know if charge amount is set by the enchantment or by the soul gem used in the enchantment, but I'm fairly sure it's affected by your level- and the lower the charge on the item compared to it's max charges, the less it's worth.

We should test this with armors to rule this out.

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1
  • I've always leveled enchanting by enchanting simple leather braces and I see the exact same problem: the price of items enchanted with a higher skill is cheaper (even if using the exact same item type, enchantment and soul gem size).
    – Joachim Sauer
    Commented Nov 22, 2011 at 7:23
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Different enchantments have different monetary values. Try Banish, Paralyze, soul trap and ravage mana - they're some of the most valuable.

Things that affect the value of an enchanted item:

  • The item type eg. Iron Dagger
  • The item quality eg. Superior
  • The enchantment type eg. paralyze
  • The quality of the enchantment, this is effected by the soul used and your enchanting ability and perks and the number of charges (more powerful/fewer is better than less powerful/more).
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3
  • Banish seems to be the highest value enchantment in my experience.
    – LessPop_MoreFizz
    Commented Nov 22, 2011 at 3:42
  • @LessPop_MoreFizz Banish? I'm 40 hours in and still don't have that... I love this game!
    – Coomie
    Commented Nov 22, 2011 at 5:44
  • The enchantment quality is going up while the price is going down, the rest is all the same.
    – Mad Scientist
    Commented Nov 22, 2011 at 7:59
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There's a bug with items enchanted with a high-level enchanting skill. Once your enchanting level is over a certain threshold, the value of the items you make goes down. As far as I can tell, this is unintentional and there is currently no work around.

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1

Ok I think I figured it out. I was having the same issue. My daggers were going down in value and I was trying to think about what changed.

I had checked all my enchants before to see which was most valuable, for me it was "Absorb Health". A couple days later that enchant was worth half its previous amount. So I checked the prices of the other enchants, it turns out a new enchant I added "Banish" was now by far the most valuable and it exceeded the original value of "Absorb Health".

So my conclusion is that the value of enchants is based on the BEST enchant you currently know. When my new best enchant was learned, the previous best was not worth as much.

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3
  • This doesn't explain why the OP's daggers are getting progressively worse in a slow slide, not just once.
    – SevenSidedDie
    Commented Nov 24, 2011 at 9:47
  • If you notice the OP doesn't link the same item in both pictures. One takes more points of stamina than the other. Which may indicate one was made later when his enchanting skill was higher and he got a new "best" enchant.
    – Pops
    Commented Nov 25, 2011 at 4:24
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    @Pops I have enchanted two plain iron daggers right in a row with the same enchant and the second one was worth less. The only thing that changed between them was that my enchanting skill was slightly higher. This answer isn't correct :/
    – dpatchery
    Commented Nov 25, 2011 at 19:03
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The following statement is pure speculation with no evidence or sources to back it up. it is however an educated guess and opinion. :

I believe this to be a programming error. For something like this to happen a minus sign would have had to be switched around somewhere in the code. I believe the designer originally intended the value of player enchanted items to increase along with the player's enchant skill as that would make the most sense and incur the least amount of whining from the players. while i cant back this up with evidence i can say that i have done code before and in a code as complex and mathematically inclined as skyrim it would be easy and quite commonplace to make such a mistake. I expect there to be a series of patches to cull this and the remaining glitches of the game. i dont think it will be a problem for much longer.

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-1

I'm so surprised that no one has thought of the answer yet. It is just like real life. If there is only one of some specialty item around then it will be worth a lot. If there are many duplications of the same item then they will be worth less. So if there are 100 of an item floating around Skyrim then the value isn't the same as if there are only a few.

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  • 1
    Have you tried testing this theory by using the console to create a ton of a particular item? Or by getting to 100 enchanting and then making a bunch of some new item? This seems like pure speculation.
    – bwarner
    Commented Dec 7, 2011 at 14:18
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The prices of items scale with your overall level and skill levels. Your old gear loses it's value to you and the merchants that buy it.

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2
  • Do you have any source about that? It seems a bit strange to me.
    – Jupotter
    Commented Nov 22, 2011 at 7:13
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    Sorry this just isn't true. I loaded up some old save games and compared items between my level 14 and level 23 characters. The "inventory value" of enchanted and non-enchanted items is the same.
    – Chris Kent
    Commented Nov 22, 2011 at 11:24

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