How do I remove a stuck armor enchantment from my character that doesn't go away when the armor is removed?

Question

As the title says. In Skyrim SE, I created a set of enchanted armor, put it on, which of course applied the enchantment (magic effects) to my character. However, when I take the armor off, the enchantment effects don't go away. Putting the armor back on creates NEW enchantment effects, doubling them up and I can't get rid of the first enchantment effect.

For example, an armor with "fortify carry weight", I put it on, it creates one "fortify carry weight" effect on my character. If I take it off, that effect does not go away, and if I put the armor back on, now I have two "fortify carry weight" effects on my character.

I've tried "dispel", "dispelallspells" and "removespells", as outlined in the answers here, but they don't work with magic effects. I can't seem to find any console commands to remove magic effects (MGEF in console). I can only find console commands that remove spells.

I've seen lots of tutorials to remove annoying magic effects (glowing halos and stuff) but nothing that deals with this problem specifically.

Is there any way I can list all the magic effects on my character in console, then remove them manually using console commands? I think this is the solution but so far I have not be able to find any such commands.

Also, "recycleactor" does remove everything, but it also gets rid of all my perks. This includes some which I earned from finishing certain quests and not from the perk tree, so there's no way to add them back. So that's not a solution either.

Answer 1

In general, it is not possible to remove magic effects (MGEF) directly. MGEFs always come from some spell, enchantment, etc., and if you removed the MGEF without removing its "owner," then the game would be in an inconsistent state. Since you have already tried removing the enchantment by unequipping the armor, the most obvious other thing to try is restarting the game (i.e. saving and quitting all the way out, not just to the main menu) and seeing if it fixes the problem. If that works, then you can stop reading now.

The following procedure will help you diagnose where the MGEF most likely came from, assuming that you are not playing with mods (if you are playing with mods, then this is significantly more complicated, but I will try to provide hints about how to diagnose those as well). The procedure is PC only, and requires installing multiple mods. It is therefore not ideal for many players, but it is provided in the hopes that it will be useful to some people. You should always make a full, numbered save before modding the game or running console commands.

0. Install More Informative Console as well as all of its requirements (expand the "Requirements" box). At the time of writing, the only requirements are the address library and SKSE. Download the Anniversary Edition version of all mods, even if you have not purchased Anniversary Edition, because in this context, "Special Edition" means version 1.5.97, which you (most likely) do not have (Steam will have upgraded you to 1.6.x automatically, unless you've been playing in offline mode for a very long time).
   • It's usually best to install mods through a mod manager, such as Vortex or Mod Organizer 2, but SKSE itself should normally be installed directly into the top-level game folder. If you really want to, you can extract mod archives directly into the "Data" subdirectory of the game folder, but beware that this might make things harder to clean up later.
1. Launch the game through SKSE. Do not launch it through Steam.
2. Open the console, and click on your character.
3. If you've selected the right thing, an "extra info" window will appear in the top left of the screen (see screenshots from the Nexusmods link above). It should have your character's name listed after "Name:" (i.e. it shows the name you chose during character creation).
   • If you've selected the wrong thing, type prid player and press enter.
4. Hover the "Effects:" line and press Shift or Control (either works). In general, all parts of this interface are interacted with in this manner (and not by clicking), because clicking is instead used to select a targeted object in the game world.
5. This will pop open a second window showing all effects on your character. This list is often very long. You can scroll up and down by hovering the arrows at the top/bottom of the window and pressing Shift or Control.
6. Find "Fortify Carry Weight" in the list and expand it (by pressing shift). It should have the base form ID 0007A0F4, and the editor ID EnchFortifyCarryConstantSelf. If the form ID does not match, then the effect was not added with a vanilla enchantment.
   • If the editor ID starts with Alch and has form ID 0003EB01, then you got it from a potion ("Alch" = alchemy), and it should go away with dispelallspells.
   • If it starts with Ab and has form ID 0010CED9, then it came from an ability ("Ab" = Ability), which in vanilla means you got it from being an actively-transformed werewolf (there is no other vanilla ability that fortifies carry weight in this manner). It should go away when you change back. This particular effect is flagged "Hide in UI," meaning that it does not show up in Active Effects if you have it (and you can't even view Active Effects while transformed), so I think this is probably not it.
   • If it does not match any of the above, it was probably modded in, and you'll have to use xEdit or a similar tool to look up the form ID and figure out where it came from. Some other MGEFs exist with other prefixes, but in vanilla Skyrim, fortify carry weight is not one of them as far as I've been able to determine.
     • The most likely other option is that it's some kind of "regular" or actively cast spell (rather than a passive ability). These are functionally similar to potions (finite duration and they go away with dispelallspells). No such spell exists in vanilla, so it would have to be a modded spell.
     • If it's a modded ability (and not some other kind of spell), you can use the "Spells:" menu to look through your abilities, and remove individual unwanted abilities with player.removespell followed by the form ID. This does not work on actively-cast spells, because player.removespell is the command to "un-learn" a spell, not the command to "un-cast" a spell (which is not a command that exists, as far as I can tell).
7. If it's an enchantment, you can start looking through the "Equipment:" list to see if you are somehow wearing an invisible (unplayable) item. I would suggest first unequipping all items through the inventory screen, to ensure that the list is otherwise empty. Unwanted items can be removed from inventory with player.removeitem followed by the item's form ID and a count (i.e. the number of items to remove) - make sure it's the right item, as there is no straightforward way to undo removal (without losing tempering and custom enchantments). If unsure, use player.unequipitem followed by the form ID instead.
8. If no invisible items are equipped and you have confirmed it is an enchantment, then unfortunately, it would appear that your save is simply broken, and the game does not provide a facility to fix it. You can work around the problem by running player.modav CarryWeight followed by a negative number, to reduce your carry weight by the appropriate amount, but you probably can't get rid of the unwanted item in active effects.