stupid soul gems? and spoiler

[theifprowess]

alright this has been asked time and time again but how do you work them?
it says cast gem feeder on creature your gonna kill. then you have like 30 seconds to kill creature or whatever time limit.
but when i cast it it always says there is no target. i need to capture the soul of a vamp for a cult quest and i cant figure out how.
and once you got a soul gem with a soul how do you enchant a weapon with it.cause i got some gems that i stole and dont know how to enchant item.and can you add an enchantment to an already enchanted weapon?

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.if you want to get some soul gems with soul in them, mage guild in balmora has plenty. gotta steal them successfully when you do the soul gem switch

[Silverthornne]

Ok, Soul Gems for the masses, first edition:

To successfully steal souls within a gem, you need two things. One, you need an appropiate Soul Gem. Two, you need the spell Soul Trap.

Now, I don't know how many know this but most have probably found out by now (though it may be fixed in a patch to the game), but if a monster leaves a corpse behind, you can trap it after dead, you don't have to cast Soul Trap during the fight. So just kill it normally, and aim your Soul Trap on the corpse. There's a problem though, and that is that you cannot trap a humanoid within a Soul Gem (and I honestly don't know how that quest is so I can't tell you if it should work on that vampire or not).

The no target acquired message is one I only got whenever I tried to cast Soul Trap on a humanoid. I am not sure if you may also get it if you don't have a gem capable of accomodating that soul. In order to be succesful at your trapping, you need a gem of a value appropiate to what you want to trap. They go in the orders of petty, lesser, common, greater, grand, and Azura's Star. You can trap a rat on any of those gems, but you can't put a Golden Saint into anything but a grand soul gem or Azura's Star.

Once you have a gem that is no longer with any vacancies on it, you just drag it to your character portrait and you get the enchant screen pop up. Recharge item to give a boost to items that need it, create item to make a new one. The screen will be similar to the spellmaking screen once you choose to make a new item, you will figure it out easy. Just remember that if you make a weapon, you will most likely want the "cast when used" button to read "cast when strikes". With a gem of charge 400 or over, you can do "Constant Effect". Just train your enchant skill a bit by recharging items and get it to a decent number before making your own equipment as the failure rate can be frustrating. And an all around tip for anything you want to do, not just enchanting is that you have your best chance of success when your fatigue is at max for any skill. Low fatigue lowers chance for about everything.

[slackerboy]

I'll just add what i've learned.
Ever since i enchanted a sword with the soul trap spell
(i know, i know, your tired of hearing about it ) i've learned quite abit about the process. since i have wacked about every possible type of character with it i've figured out the patterns
of how the process works. The only souls that cannot be captured in a soul gem are NPC's, or anyone you that could potentialy have a conversation with you. attempting to cast the spell on an NPC will give the "spell did not find a target" message. You wont get that message if you dont have a soul gem big enough to fit the soul, it will still cast successfully but you will not get the "You trapped a soul" message when they die. I am working on a list of all the creatures i have put into soulgems and there values. i've got some more to add, but you can find it here : http://www.ironworksforum.com/ubb/no...;f=20;t=000164

Btw Silverthornne, i hadnt even heard of the Azura's Star yet, i guess i'm still not that far along yet ,

(bug/exploit/spiler warning dont read if your a purist)
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I have found a bug for you exploiters out there.
how to get a constant effect item without using a golden Saint:
start the enchantment process with a Golden Saint Soul Gem. set up the effects you want, then click on the GS soul gem to remove it from the enchant window. then click on another "cheaper" soul gem and creat the item. It will still creat succesfully. I did this last night so i cant remember if there were any complications. but i'll try it agian tonight and post more info it its important.