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Within the first few hours of your adventure inOblivion Remastered, there’s a high probability that you will have gotten your hands on at least a few Soul Gems. These items are so ubiquitous in The Elder Scrolls that it can sometimes seem like they’re being handed out like candy, and yet, they’re prone to pile up in players' inventories, never used, because their entire mechanic is unexplored.
In this guide, we’ll set things straight a bit for you. You’ll know why Soul Gems are so useful, how to make the most of them with Soul Trap, and where to go from there!
Soul Gems
Overview
First, let’s talkSoul Gems. They come in several sizes, with each rank permitting increasingly impressive feats of soul-trapping. Although we’ll get into the nuts and bolts of the Soul Trap spell in a bit, it’s important to note thatyou’ll need properly sufficient Soul Gems in order to capture the souls of more impressive targets.
When a Soul Gem has not been filled with a soul yet, it will be designated asEmpty. You need Empty Soul Gems in order to trap souls.
150
300
800
1200
1600
Black
Let’s break these down for some clarity. Thefirst five categories of Soul Gem listed in this tableare availablethrough normal means, albeit at rarer intervals per the strength of the Soul Gem.Black Soul Gemscan only be acquired via special means.
For everything thatisn’ta Black Soul Gem,you’re able to only target creatures, rather than NPCs, in your bid to trap those souls. Black Soul Gems are the exclusive domain of those who wish to snag the spirits of “real” people, so to speak.
Capacityrefers to themaximum strength a target creature can possess for a specific category of Soul Gem to work.
For instance,if a creature has a strength of 400, a Lesser Soul Gem will not be successful, whereas anything from a Common Soul Gem or higher will be.
Details
In practice, this isn’t as complicated as it might sound, sinceeach type of creature has a minimum-to-maximum Soul Strength range, and you may broadly rely upon the rule-of-thumb that weaker enemy types will require less powerful types of Soul Gems.
ADeerwill, unsurprisingly, always fill aPetty Gem. No need for Lesser, and certainly nothing beyond that. AMinotaur Lord, on the other hand, requires aGrand Gem- no questions asked.
Meanwhile, there are many more specific enemy types which areleveledin this regard. Let’s use the Minotaur Lord’s Grand Gem example here - a regularMinotauronly ever needsCommonSoul Gems or higher, whereas aSavage Minotaur, leveled, will vary somewhat.
The best approach, then, is toalways have plenty of empty Soul Gems on-hand, of as many categories as possible.
Whenever you Soul Trap an enemy,it will automatically be sent to the lowest-strength-necessary Soul Gem category, so you needn’t worry about wasting Grand Soul Gems on Deer… unless you’ve only got Grand Gems on hand!
Soul Trap
Definition
Now, none of this would mean much without the ability to trap souls.Soul Trap is a spellthat does as advertised;if you manage to kill an enemy within a set period of time upon casting, the minimum appropriately-sized Soul Gem will be filled.
That second part’s important.You’re on a timer when Soul Trap’s been cast, so it’s best to cast itwhen the target is nearing death.
Gaining Soul Trap
There are numerous ways to use Soul Trap In The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. The first, and most obvious, is topurchase the Soul Trap spell. You can do so at anyMages Guildchapterhouse throughout Cyrodiil.
The Soul Trap spell comes inseveral strengths, as denoted by the titles: Soul Trap,Greater Soul Trap, and so forth.A higher Mysticism level is required in order to use progressively more robust iterations, and these stronger variants factor in how much time you have to fell an enemy once the spell’s been cast.
Certainweaponsalso come with the Soul Trap effect built-in, and they’ll specify the amount of time you have to pull this off once you’ve slashed or shot your way into a skirmish with one.
While the number of available weapons with Soul Trap is quite limited,custom-crafted weapons can be imbued with it, and thus, there is a theoretically unlimited number of Soul Trap weapons in Oblivion.
How To Use Trapped Souls
Enchantment
How’s it all shake up, then? Why bother trapping souls in the first place? The big reason is touse souls as ingredients for enchanting. Your enchantment rituals will be slurping up souls like nobody’s business.
Enchantment is mostly unavailable to you until you’vejoined the Mages Guildin Oblivion, at which point you’ll shortly be allowed to conduct the craft at theArcane University, which has anAltar of Enchanting. There’s another Altar of Enchanting atFrostcrag Spire.
There’s one other way to do this, but it’s highly limited by nature: viaSigil Stones, which you obtain one at a time afterclosing Oblivion Gates. They’re good for one enchantment, so use them wisely if you follow this course.
You can enchantweapons,armor,clothing, and jewelry, and when you’re knee-deep in the process, you’re given parameters to set for the enchanments' effect, duration, and so on. The loftier your goals here, the mightier your arsenal of Soul Gems must be.
There’s another big reason to keep a healthy stock of filled Soul Gems:recharging. All those enchantments you’ve got strapped to your gearwork based on charges, and once their effects have been drained,more Soul Gems are necessary in order to refuel them.
Analysis
Thus, Soul Gems both serve to strengthen you, and work to maintain that strengthening process for the long haul. You can think ofempty Soul Gems as tools for mining a resource,and thenfilled Soul Gems as the resource to utilize on a routine basis,both for powering up your Champion of Cyrodiil and sustaining them.
On the other hand, don’t think of the Soul Trap process, or even Enchantment as a mechanic, as mandatory components in Oblivion Remastered.
If you’d prefer a sword-and-board build, or a stealth-oriented setup,you can still gain plenty from enchantments on your gear, and if you’re playing on Expert and especially Master difficulty levels, we strongly recommend giving enchantments a whirl.
But for Adept and lower,you can get by on finding cool gear here and there that happens to have useful enchantments,or even avoid the system altogether if, for whatever reason, you happen to be role-playing as a magic-allergic sort.
The bottom line is, gaining the Soul Trap spell is a valuable endeavor, though you can close shut the jaws of Oblivion without it, should you so desire.
