u/Geta92 — reddlx

This is a very simple trick that allows you to equip multiple shields. You can stack enchantments like this by simply enchanting a couple of light shields to your liking. And the best part is that you can simply unequip the extra shields at any time to undo it. The extra shields remain invisible.

All you need for this is some shields (enchanted or not) and the Bound Shield spell:

Equip your 1st shield of choice
Unequip your weapon
Cast Bound Shield
Equip your 2nd shield
Wait for the spell to wear off (or wait an hour)

Once the spell wears off, you will have both shields equipped. You can repeat this infinitely to equip even more shields. The shields remain equipped as long as you don't manually remove them and even if you do, you can simply reequip them without repeating the setup. The extra shield slots you gain remain usable. You can change which shield to display by simply unequipping and reequipping the shield you want to see.

I haven't been touching the game for a while and went back to it recently. While I'm still not loving the combat or story, I do quite enjoy the act of customizing my weapon and crafting custom spells that go along with it. I've been tweaking my weapons for ages and found a lot of useful cheap effects, even with low magnitudes or durations.

My favorite weapon enchantment so far is this one

+-------------------+-----------+----------+-------+------+
|   Spell Effect    | Magnitude | Duration | Range | Cost |
+-------------------+-----------+----------+-------+------+
| Drain Magicka     | 3 pts     | 27 s     | 0 ft  |    1 |
| Fortify Magicka   | 3 pts     | 27 s     | 0 ft  |    1 |
| Drain Fatigue     | 100 pts   | 1 s      | 0 ft  |    6 |
| Absorb Speed      | 18 pts    | 1 s      | 0 ft  |    3 |
| Drain Speed       | 13 pts    | 1 s      | 0 ft  |    1 |
| Rally             | 12        | 27 s     | 0 ft  |    1 |
| Weakness to Magic | 100 pts   | 3 s      | 0 ft  |   27 |
+-------------------+-----------+----------+-------+------+

This combination yields a minimum requirement of just a Common Soul Gem. It yields enough charge for 20 hits. This increases to 30 with a Greater Soul Gem and 40 with a Grand or Black Soul Gem. A lot of useful effects for a relatively low cost. Grabbing Azura's Star early helps a lot, too.

The combination of Drain and Fortify Magicka with the minimum magnitude and long duration makes it so that each strike ensures the enemy will have at least 3 Magicka. Even when an enemy has negative Magicka (only a thing in the Remaster), the drain effect will reset it to 0 and the fortification buff it to 3. This is useful because it allows you to cast spells that include Fortify Magicka and Absorb Magicka, so you can craft spells that absorb their entire cost back as long as you strike the enemy with the weapon once before. Absorb only fails if an enemy has 0 or less Magicka and this setups prevents this entirely.
Drain Fatigue will permanently paralyze an enemy if their maximum Fatigue is lower than the magnitude. A ton of enemies have less than 100 Fatigue, so just one strike will permanently disable them. And if it doesn't a 2nd or 3rd will eventually do as the effect is buffed by Weakness to Magic.
Reducing en enemies Speed Attribute to 0 will instantly disable their AI. This makes them stop entirely, cancel all their active summons and also stop combat for a second. But if this happened while they are permanently paralyzed, they remain pacified indefinitely, too. So the Absorb and Drain Speed effects work together with Drain Fatigue. The enemies paralyzed by you will not only be disabled, but also stop to aggro you, so you stop combat and regenerate faster. Most weak enemies (Flame Atronach, Wolves, Clannfear, etc.) have 30 or less Speed, so this combination of absorption and draining their Speed stat makes countless enemies hit 0 after just one attack. And you get the benefit of moving slightly faster while you hit enemies. Good for moving back or circle strafing. Combining both effects is cheaper than scaling up either one by itself. Blame math.
Rally ensures fleeing enemies (mostly summoners) will stop doing so after getting it. I'm playing on Master so my attacks almost deal no damage. So even just a magnitude of 12 is enough as this causes enemies to only flee starting from 88% health. I hate running after those suckers.
Finally, Weakness to Magic will amplify the effect of follow-up strikes or spells I use after attacking an enemy. This skyrockets the magnitude of everything. One strike to disable the weak, two and a spell to kill all regular enemies and 3 and a spell usually kills the rest unless they have a lot of magic resistance.

Am I overthinking this? Possibly. Was it fun? Hell yeah.

Would love to know what other effects you guys are using.