Improving Weapons and Armour

Easily_Lost

I am about to start crafting CP160 Weapons and Armour. My question is:
Should I add enchantments before I improve the item ( i.e. do the enchantments improve when you improve the item ), or should I improve the item to gold then add the enchantments?

AcadianPaladin

I don't think it makes any difference but I'll anxiously join you in watching this thread to see if I'm right.

davey1107

Good question.

On craft sets - anything players make, enchantments are static. If a piece's enchant gives 200 max stamina, then this stays the same as you upgrade it through the color scale. Upgrades do not affect enchantment values.

On any set, craft or drop, you can place any color enchant on any color armor. You can make and put a gold enchantment on a blue piece of armor. When you upgrade the armor to purple, the gold enchant is retained. You only have to match the item level and enchantment level, not its color.

On most drop sets, you get a freebie - the enchantments DO upgrade as you upgrade an item's color rating. For example, I pick up a blue Briar Heart chest that comes with a max stam enchantment - let's call it 700 additional stamina for that enchantment because I forget the exact value for blue c160 enchants. If I improve the item to purple, I will see in the upgrade window that it also increases that enchant value up to 800. Then if I improve to gold, the enchant auto upgrades to 868 stamina. I do not need to make new enchantments for most drop sets.

Note: this might make one think they can earn a green drop item, change the enchantment out for a different green enchantment then upgrade the items color for a "free" enchantment upgrade. For example, "I got a green briar chest with a stamina enchant, but I want magic for some unknown reason." Can you put a green health enchant on, then upgrade the item and get the same free gold enchant upgrade? No. The enchantment will still get more powerful as you upgrade color, but the increases are less than with the item's natural enchantment. No idea why.

Final tip - gold mats are quite expensive, obviously. Kutas currently cost about 9,000 gold. Purples cost 1,000, and blues 400. On enchantments, the buff differences aren't THAT big. So any time I'm testing a crafted set that I'm not 100% sure I'll like, I am perfectly fine starting it with rekuta purple enchantments. If I love the armor, I'll first upgrade the pieces to gold then test some more. If that works well and it's a keeper, then I upgrade the enchantments to gold.

Easily_Lost

Thanks for the answer.

code65536

To further clarify, the color quality of an item is independent of the color quality of its enchantment. Changing one does not affect the other. With one very notable exception: the default enchantment of a dropped item will scale up as the item's quality is improved.

If you get a medium Grothdarr piece and upgrade it to gold, the default enchantment--which would be stamina since it's a medium piece--will upgrade too. But if you decide to re-enchant it with magicka, you're replacing the default enchantment, and the new enchantment will be fully independent and not change with color quality. So if you enchant it with a purple magicka glyph and then upgrade the armor to gold, the enchantment will still be purple because it is no longer the default enchantment.

You also cannot remove enchantments, so you could never get back the default enchantment once the item has been enchanted. So if for some reason you ever want to return to a stamina enchant on that piece, you'll need to re-enchant it with a stamina glyph, and the quality of that glyph will not scale if you later upgrade the armor quality.

Also, there used to be some dropped pieces (notably the armor pieces from the WGT/ICP vaults prior to Update 12) that dropped with an attached enchantment overriding the default enchantment. The enchantments on those pieces would not upgrade in quality as a result. This issue, which existed for over a year, was finally fixed in Update 12 so is now just a historical footnote.