Two petty gems with petty souls can have a different monetary value. You can do this in combat and the item does not need to be completely drained to recharge it. Select the weapon in your inventory and choose 'recharge' to recharge an item.

Enchanted weapons and staves are recharged by consuming soul gems.

You can reduce the magnitude of the effect on a weapon to increase max charges.

Higher Enchanting and a bigger soul means a bigger effect and more charges.

The maximum magnitude and charges (for weapons) for the effect are determined by your enchanting skill and the size of the soul gem.

The Smithing improvement level is appended to whatever you name it.

When you enchant an item, you are given a one-time chance to change that item's name.

Enchanting an item requires the item you want to enchant, a soul gem to power the enchantment, and an unlocked enchantment effect (from disenchanting) that goes on the item you want to enchant.

Each piece of apparel has a different set of possible enchantments. Apparel enchantments grant passive bonuses. Weapons are all enchanted with on-hit effects (like Fire Damage, for example).

Enchantments can be added to blank (un-enchanted) apparel and weapons.

Non-unique magical items can be brought to the Enchanting Altar (found near mages, usually) and destroyed to add their enchantment effect to your library of enchantments.

Enchantment effects are gained by disenchanting items at an Enchanting Altar.

Beware: if you soul trap a Skeever and only have an empty Grand soul gem, you'll trap that petty soul in the valuable Grand soul gem! If a creature dies while Soul Trap is affecting them, and you have a large enough gem, you will capture their soul. You can get it three ways: first, an enchanted weapon with soul trap on it second, the Soul Trap spell in the Conjuration school third, the perk in Conjuration that makes Bound Weapons cast Soul Trap.

Soul Trap is the spell that captures souls.

They're granted to you by completing the Daedric Prince Azura's quest, and you can choose to either gain Azura's Star, a reusable Grand soul gem, or the Black Star, a reusable Black soul gem. For example, a Grand gem containing a Greater soul shows up as 'Grand Soul Gem (Greater).'

Souls display in your inventory with the size following the gem name.

Black soul gems can capture NPC souls but cannot capture creature souls.

Human (and elf and argonian and khajit) souls cannot be trapped save by the sixth type of soul gem, the Black Soul Gem.

Creatures with Common souls can be captured in Common, Greater, and Grand gems, but not Petty or Lesser. For example, Skeevers have Petty souls and can be captured in any soul gem (except Black, see below). Each soul gem can capture the soul of any creature with a soul of it's size or smaller.

Soul gems come in five standard sizes (here in ascending order): petty, lesser, common, greater, and grand.

I'm not trying to karmawhore I just realized that more people than I thought might appreciate this information. This is mostly a reorganized version of that comment, for a broader audience. With the thought that this is the first Elder Scrolls game many have played, I figured it might be worth getting a clearinghouse on one of the more confusing crafting elements going. I posted a little explanation of Soul gems and Enchanting in another thread, and it proved to be surprisingly popular.

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