The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim – Decreasing Value of Enchanted Items

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I've been trying my hand at smithing and producing loads of iron daggers. Those alone are unfortunately not really worth anything, so I decided to enchant them. With a damage stamina enchantment the daggers were suddenly worth more than 600 gold (though the greedy vendors don't give me that much, of course).

I've been doing this for a short while and noticed that the value of my enchanted daggers keeps declining, though my enchantment skill is only increasing. Any idea what is happening here, why are my daggers losing value?

This is the value when I just started enchanting again:

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And now after practising enchanting for a while longer my daggers are worth even less:

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Best Answer

From UESP, under Bugs:

The value of enchanted equipment is inversely proportional to your current level of Enchanting. For example, a leather bracer enchanted while under the effects of a Fortify Enchanting potion will have less value than a leather bracer enchanted without a Fortify Enchanting potion. If creating enchanted items for sale, remove any Fortify Enchanting buffs you may have equipped and don't drink any Fortify Enchanting potions.

Assuming this isn't a glitch (it most likely is), it could just be a hidden mechanic to make creating the same item over and over again less profitable the more times you do it.

You can look at it one of two ways:

  1. From a game design perspective, you wouldn't want players to be able to "farm" one item over and over again. This gets tedious and makes the game feel like a job.

  2. From a role-playing perspective, when your first Turn Undead dagger was made, there were presumably only a few of them in the world of Skyrim. Now that you've made 86 of them, they aren't worth as much. You've turned a rare-ish magic weapon into something commonplace.

And before you shoot down #2 (because the first dagger you made is still worth more than the last one you made), it's obvious that the inhabitants of Skyrim will pay more for one of your early works to proudly display in their shops.

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