How to ensure that the Ebony Blades I have are powered-up if I used console commands to procure them

the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim

Background info on why I am asking this:

I used console commands to give myself the Ebony Blade, and murdered multiple clones of my spouse (through the player.placeatme console command) to power up (increase the Absorb Health effect of) the Ebony Blade. I wasn't sure that the Ebony Blade was being powered-up so I checked out UESP's article about it which stated that "For every two such NPCs that are killed with the blade, Mephala will speak to you". Mephala never spoke to me while I did the killing, so I finished the Ebony Blade's related quest (The Whispering Door) without using console commands and got the Ebony Blade the normal way.

I then again proceeded to murder multiple clones of my spouse and this time, Mephala spoke to me every two kills. After I fully powered-up the blade (verified through the console command, sqv da08ebonybladetracking as suggested by the UESP article on the Ebony Blade), I realized that I still have my console command-procured Ebony Blade. So now, I have two Ebony Blades.

Since the game doesn't state how much 'Absorb Health' effect the Ebony Blades have, I am unsure if both weapons are powered-up. I also would like to know if further Ebony Blades I add through console commands will be powered up as I would like my follower(s) to use the Ebony Blade too.

Note: I have the Unofficial Skyrim Patch (USKP) installed which fixes bugs related to the Ebony Blade. USKP changelog here (search for 'Ebony Blade' to find its related fixes)

My questions:

  • Are both Ebony Blades powered up?
  • If I add another Ebony Blade through console commands, will that Ebony Blade also be powered up? If not, how do I power it up? Do I have to kill people again per console command-added Ebony Blade?
  • If I give a console command-procured Ebony Blade to a follower, will that Ebony Blade also be powered-up?

Best Answer

In the vanilla game, the Ebony Blade is DA08EbonyBlade (DA08RealEbonyBlade, which doesn't cause victims to become hostile, is not normally available; it's possible the unofficial patch changes this). I assume that DA08EbonyBlade is what you spawned, since it has the absorb health effects.

DA08EbonyBlade is enchanted with DA08EbonyBladeTraditionalEnchantment, which itself has five effects, all instances of "Ebony Blade Absorb Health: Health" at varying magnitudes. Each instance is gated by some conditional. For example, the first level checks that FriendsKilled_var of DA08EbonyBladeTracking is less than or equal to 2. The second level requires that the aforementioned variable is greater than 2 but less than or equal to 4. Et cetera. At maximum level the magnitude of the absorb health effect is 30.

Because the variable being checked is stored in a quest, the variable is effectively global. Thus, all copies of DA08EbonyBlade will share the same power-up state.

So, to your questions:

  • Yes, both are powered-up (assuming both are DA08EbonyBlade).
  • Yes, any new copies of DA08EbonyBlade will be power-up to the same level as all others.
  • I am 90% sure the blade will work for a follower as well as it works for you. The conditions for the effect are run against the "Subject," but for effect items I believe the subject is the target of the attack, so that should not matter (it's not like each character in the world gets it own copy of all quest state anyway; only the player does).

I am not familiar with how the unofficial patch corrects the Blade's behavior; my guess would be that it simply combines the effects from DA08EbonyBlade and DA08RealEbonyBlade, although I'm not sure which one you'd want to use in that case. I doubt they modified the global nature of the power-up tracking though, that would be a lot of extra work for no particular benefit.

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