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There's a much older topic on this, but I'm raising a new topic at this time because the wiki page on custom enchantments is slated for possible deletion. It's gone through a series of heavy edits as of late because people feel it's not up to par with the Oblivion page, and the listed enchantments weren't particularly unique or creative. I don't want to see the page get deleted though, because it was very helpful when I was new to the game, and I think there's still room for creativity in this area.

So to avoid cluttering the wiki page, this thread is for posting the best custom enchantments you've come up with, as well as debating their merits and drawbacks.


Here are a few of my own, but I don't know how useful they are to other players:

Cast When Strikes - Sanctuary X% for 2 seconds on Self
Makes you nearly invulnerable to weapon damage in melee battles. The magnitude of Sanctuary should be as high as possible, preferably over 100%, since certain enemies can still hit you if you have 100% Sanctuary. It's preferable to a spell, since it's hard to cast a 100% Sanctuary for a long enough duration at low Illusion skill levels, and its advantage over a Cast When Used enchantment is that you don't have to switch back and forth to your weapon.

Cast When Strikes - Fortify Weapon Skill on Self
If it's at least 100% for 2 seconds, it's usually enough to guarantee landing a subsequent blow. I would use this when I felt that using Alchemy to fortify strength and agility to high levels, to achieve the same results, was tantamount to cheating. It's useful if you're training up a certain weapon skill from a low level, and it's much easier than trying to stack Constant Effect enchantments of a similar nature. Given that the enchantment doesn't take up that much room, you can usually fit something else on the same weapon if you want.

Cast When Strikes - Bound Longbow
This is a special case, as bound weapons can only be set to target Self. However, if this enchantment is put on a thrown weapon like an ebony dart (certain mods allow you to enchant bolts and arrows as well) it will temporarily displace an opponent's weapon. The enemy AI is too stupid to realize this has happened, and will try to fire the longbow at you without any ammunition, rendering them harmless for the duration. Obviously this isn't useful against enemies already using bows against you, but it's effective against most other humanoids and certain daedra.
(Be warned that I ran into a weird glitch when testing this, where the game kept warning me the spent projectile was a missing object. I don't know if anyone else will have the same results.)

Constant Effect - Bound Weapon + Fortify Weapon Skill
If put on an exquisite ring or amulet, you can fit 20 pts of the weapon skill in addition to the bound weapon itself. This creates a weightless weapon that can be used at low skill levels and repaired in the heat of battle. Bound Longbow is a good choice, because you can't fit that many CE enchantment points for Fortify Skill even on a bonemold bow. Another option I tend to use is Bound Gauntlets + Fortify Hand-to-Hand, making HTH combat a viable strategy like it was in Ultima Underworld. After all, your fists never break, can hit enemies immune to normal weapons, and punching someone unconscious makes it nigh impossible for them to retaliate. This can be a good strategy against leveled opponents and bosses.
(I had put this on the wiki, but most of it got deleted.)

That bound longbow idea is quite clever...

I'm not big on Fortify Weapon on Strike, since you need to get that first blow in to get it to work at all. While it certainly helps with subsequent hits, you might still end up taking 5 minutes to get that first hit in. The to-hit formula in Morrowind makes the difference between 25% chance to hit and 125% smaller than it really should be. That's why I didn't carry it over to the new version of the page.

Note that Cast on Use Fortify Weapon can be quite useful, though, since you don't need to depend on your existing hit rate. But that gets into "you're just using a glorified spell" territory.

I'm very interested in the Cast on Strike Bound Longbow idea. I'll try it out, and if it works well, I'll add it. Sounds like it might make the game a little unstable, though.
Edit: Tested it, and it seems like it must have been fixed somewhere along the line (though admittedly it might be something from MCP causing them to be less stupid). A character won't keep a Longbow equipped if they have no arrows. This is still useful for giving an enemy a weapon they have no proficiency in, though. I tried to add a Calm effect for Pickpocketing exploits, but Pickpocketing equipment is frustratingly impossible in both Vanilla and MCP.

Bound Weapons (besides Bound Longbow) really start to lose their usefulness as the player reaches the endgame, since they can't exploit Cast on Strike enchantments. A Bound Weapon + Weapon Skill item would be useful for grinding a Weapon Skill you've neglected, but I'm not sure if that's enough of a reason to add it to the page. Since you really aren't "supposed" to get Constant Effect enchantments until endgame, so I'm a little hesitant to add a early-game focused Constant Effect.

I also tried to add multi-effect enchantments only if they really have amazing synergy, such as the Chameleon + Calm enchantment. I'll add a note to the Bound Longbow entry saving you can add some Fortify Marksman for greater hit chance, though.

Sanctuary on Strike... I'm not sure about. It's a decent enough effect, obviously, but it seems like it might be a little too obvious to be considered noteworthy. The page getting cluttered with things like "On Strike: Weakness + Damage = Moar Damage!!!!1!" is what eventually led to the page getting a prod tag in the first place.

Hmm, I didn't really have a problem landing that first hit; or rather, the spell always seemed to work for me. Come to think of it, I've noticed that a lot of Cast on Strike enchantments seem to work even if the weapon itself doesn't make contact, because whenever I use a weapon like this, the spell sometimes hits even if I don't hear the weapon connect. Regardless, I had hoped it would be universally useful, so if it's not, then it can go.


When I tested it, I was fighting a golden saint. It worked as long as I could keep hitting the saint, as it forced her to keep switching back to the longbow, then back to her default weapon. Switching weapons takes time, after all. However, I ran into major stability issues, because the error messages kept popping up. I knew about the Calm effect strategy, but didn't mention it because it was included elsewhere on the wiki.


All right, in that case, perhaps Bound Longbow and Bound Gauntlets (fortifies Agility and Hand-to-Hand) could be the exceptions, since punching doesn't use Cast on Strike enchantments either. Those are really the only two I end up using anyway.


Yeah, I noticed that. Ironically, I've been experimenting with ways of causing LESS damage per hit, because it helps level up weapon skills without killing your enemies. This is why I tend to avoid Fortify Strength effects in Alchemy, because they die too quickly. I also try to avoid using Cast on Strike enchantments that I don't want reflected onto me, because a massive amount of Absorb Health is not something I want to hit me.

I'm wondering how many players would find a Cast on Strike - Stop opponent from moving + Heal opponent enchantment useful though. I don't often use trainers myself, so such a weapon would be good for practicing your skills manually (like how in Ultima 8 you can beat the crap out of Devon to raise your stats quickly). Perhaps Calm + Restore Health?

Edit: Was looking over the Oblivion: Useful Spells page and found out that Dispel on Self in that game can mitigate the effects of any spells that might be reflected onto you. Just tested this and it doesn't quite work. Dispel has a fixed instantaneous duration, so it's NOT going to get rid of reflected spell effects that last longer than 1 second. While Cast when Used enchantments can be spammed very quickly, allowing the next Dispel to work on any lingering effects, this is going to waste the next charge, you're still going to take some damage, and it's not going to work if you have the MCP's "4 second cooldown time" option installed.

I also tested Cast on Strikes with Calm for 2 seconds + Restore Health on opponent, and it works. The Calm effect will keep them stun-locked so they can't retaliate, and Restore Health means you can keep beating on an opponent for a while to raise your weapon skill. Does anyone else think this would be useful?

I haven't really played with it, so it might work better than I thought. Logic would dictate you need to land a strike to get a Cast on Strike enchantment to go off, but Morrowind isn't exactly known for having the most sound logic.


Ok, yeah, they do equip it for a second, but they don't keep it equipped. If they only unequip their regular weapon for a second, it's really not especially good compared to short-term paralysis or whatnot. Especially since you need to enchant Throwing Weapons individually and they don't stack in Vanilla.


Personally, I find Hand-to-Hand to be a gimmicky strategy 99.9% of the time (even with the MCP rebalance, it's quite underwhelming). The Agility bonus is alright, I suppose. I'll add a mention somewhere.


Unless you have the "fix" from MCP enabled, Absorb Health does nothing when reflected - you essentially are draining your own health. Personally, I think that behavior makes complete sense, so I'm not sure why the MCP people categorized it as a bug fix rather than a gameplay change.


I'm hesitant to add effects that exist solely for the sake of training, since not using trainers is a player-imposed restriction in Morrowind. I wouldn't add information only pertinent to a no-gold run or a no-armor run, so I'm not sure if adding information really only relevant to a no-trainer run is appropriate.

Of course, I'm not going to pretend that I can take ownership of the article, so if you think something deserves to be added, feel free to add it.

It's a matter of preference, as I've found just about every single weapon choice to be viable in some way. I tend to use Hand-to-Hand for a few reasons (excluding the fact that I have a werewolf mod installed that makes your skills and attributes contingent on your existing abilities). One, it's an old favorite strategy of mine from Ultima Underworld, since your fists are weightless, can hit anything, and never break. Two, it can be a good strategy against bosses and leveled opponents; they might have massive HP but their fatigue is comparatively low. I've used it to great effect against Gaenor, Gedna Relvel, Grurn, Almalexia, and Dagoth Ur. Some of them are resistant or immune to disabling spells, so the best way to get them to hold still and stop attacking you is to punch their lights out. Plus it's fun to watch them curl up on the ground, completely helpless.


Yeah, I'm using the MCP, so most of my experimentation is built around the new limitations of the Absorb spells. I suppose it does mean I get more use out of the Destruction equivalents, that damage instead of absorb, because it means I'm not benefiting my enemies.


The Hints page gives advice on how to manually train each of the skills, hence I thought enchantments geared towards training might be useful. But yes, I agree that it's a conscious choice of playing style. At this point, I'm still not sure how to determine whether my custom enchantments will be useful to others, since "useful" is a relative term.

An update. I ended up confirming this, inadvertently, when an enemy wielding a Cast on Strike enchanted weapon managed to zap me with the enchantment without actually landing the physical blow. I took damage from the spell, but not the weapon, because had the weapon actually struck me, I'd have been killed (my character was low level).

I also remember that during one of my earlier games, without any mods or third party patches, I was just starting out and using the Iron Sparksword looted from the falling wizard. My Long Blade skill sucked, so the sword rarely connected, but the spell still hit quite often. The probability that any Cast on Strike spell will go off isn't quite 100% though. All I can tell is that it's higher than the chance to hit with the weapon itself. Unfortunately, I can't find any information on the wiki about how the Cast on Strike chance is calculated.

Whether or not this is a glitch, it does mean that a Cast on Strike enchantment that fortifies your strength, agility, attack, or weapon skill might have its uses in the early game.

I did some testing of my own, and I think I figured out what you were seeing. Basically, if you (or an opponent) starts an attack close enough to land a hit but is out of range when it would connect, the enchantment still goes off. But testing with all relevant stats set to 0 (or very low) shows that the enchantment never fired unless a hit would have landed.

If it worked the way you thought, it would probably be worth an entry. Really, as far as I'm concerned, the only major prerequisite for putting something on the list is whether or not something interesting can be written that the reader probably would not have considered on their own.

So while Water Walking is a pretty obvious choice for an enchantment (to the point where even I'm not convinced it deserves to be on the list), the description of using it to use rivers as highways makes the entry more worthwhile than if it were just "Waterwalking is cool, permanent Waterwalking is better".

I think that the primary goal of the article should be more about getting the player in the right mindset to make their own enchantments than actually spoonfeeding them good ones. Just listing potent enchantments makes the page less interesting and more likely to get cluttered as everybody tries to add their own personal favorites without any real justification.

But I'll say it again, it's not my article, so that's just my opinion of what it "should" be.

I just confirmed your results. I raised my agility to ridiculously high levels to ensure a 100% chance to hit, and then I swung a Cast on Strikes weapon at a summoned creature. I found that if I begin the attack within striking distance but then back away quickly before the weapon connects, the enchantment still gets cast. So you were right. I guess that idea gets tossed out.

On a slightly different note, I do think that Constant Effect enchantments could be viable suggestions for the early game, although it depends on having the right skills on character creation, and knowing which quests to complete. As everyone knows, the only common souls large enough to create CE enchantments are golden saints and ascended sleepers. Here's what I did:

1) Pick Restoration as a major skill.
2) Complete enough Mages Guild quests to become a Conjurer. This lets you buy scrolls of Summon Golden Saint in Caldera. (Yes you can buy the spell in Tel Branora, but will likely be unable to cast it yet.)
3) Rest until you trigger the assassin and can travel to Mournhold.
4) Purchase any Fortify Skill spell at the Imperial Chapel. Create a custom spell that fortifies Mercantile to 400-500, 1 sec. You should have a decent chance of casting it if you majored in Restoration.
5) Go around Mournhold and rook the merchants for all their gold. While you're at it, stock up on grand soul gems.

Now you just need a means of killing golden saints (so good luck with that). Once you've trapped their souls, you can create as many CE enchantments as you want. Of course, since this is Morrowind, you can use the Alchemy trick to accomplish many of the same things, though I was trying to find a method that doesn't abuse that.

It depends on how you fight them, really. I killed Staada for Azura's Quest with a Level 1 character earlier today, and the hard part was the Daedroth that was hanging around, not Staada herself - Bound Longbow makes short work of pretty much anything, even at an early level if you can land a blow on them (that ring from BM that Fortifies Marks by 20 helps). You might need to invest in a ranged Soul Trap, though.

The issue is less that they are impossible to get so much as they aren't really farmable until you are out of what I'd call the "early game". Sure, you could get that permanent enchantment, but the time you spent could have gone towards frenzying some Ordinators and pawning off their stuff to Creeper (or whatever). Even if you don't want to murder people for fun and profit, the Sword of White Woe, that Short Sword from the Thrisk Tree Stump, and an Ebony Spear I picked up on the way to getting Skull Crusher early gave the aforementioned level 1 character enough cash that I probably could have gotten her Blunt Weapon skill to 100 if I had wanted, even with her low Mercantile skill.

Getting a Golden Saint soul is easy, even at first level. Get enough money to buy the Summon spell by using alchemy and buy Grand Soul Gems in Mournhold. Then have an item enchanted to "Summon a GS for 12 seconds". Go to a pool of lava (one is inside the Vacant Tower outside of Dagon Fel). Levitate over the pool and summon the GS (the shrine in Vivec grants a long-lasting levitate spell). She appears standing in the lava and starts taking damage. Aim the cross-hairs at her nose and cast soul trap for 10 seconds. You aren't attacking her so she will not become aggressive. Ten ticks later you get her soul and you can take her gear too if you are quick enough. Just don't dispose of the body or the game crashes. My own personal trick.

Good idea. I was about to suggest the lava strategy myself, but I hadn't tested it, so I wasn't sure if summons were stupid enough to stand still and take damage. I already tried drowning them, but golden saints can't drown, since I think all creatures have Water Breathing by default. If I'm already using Alchemy to raise money though, there's no reason not to use it to fortify agility so that I can beat the GS to death myself.

So I think this means that to get CE enchantments, all you really need is access to Mournhold, and a source of income. Does that sound like a reasonable enough statement?

There were some CE enchantment ideas from the older versions of the wiki page that I thought were worth keeping. The 100% Chameleon suit and the Sanctuary suit were useful without breaking the game, because they still had limitations. The same goes for a piece of jewelry with all the Bound Armor spells on it; while not as strong as an actual armor suit (if you have a high skill level) it's weightless, fortifies your stats, and is decent protection early on. A set of equipment that fortifies Enchant over 110 can make you quite powerful. My personal preference was a set of clothing and jewelry that fortifies Unarmored, since it offers decent protection for very little weight.

Possibly, but this statement doesn't really address original reason we were talking about Early Game CE enchantments: training weapon skills. If you have a source of income (which I personally consider a sign that you are out of the early game anyways), you could have just put that money into buying some training, giving you a permanent boost to the stat instead of one that requires a particular item to be equipped. Buying CE enchantments is extremely expensive, and if you are exploiting 1-second Fortify Enchant effects instead of using wads of cash, you might as well be exploiting 1-second Drain effects to make training essentially free.


My issue with those is that the description of a Chameleon/Sanctuary set really boils down to "look at the spell effect page, imagine it permanently". Those kinds of entries are what got the page proded to begin with. I just don't see a way of writing anything about the effect as a permanent enchantment that doesn't sound like a rehash of the spell page. If you can think of a way of writing an entry for it that keeps it from sounding inane, feel free to add it.

Actually, I think I might just add a section about creating an equipment set with 100 point of whatever 1-cost spell effect you'd like. I think that might cover enough of the effects that are really not worth mentioning individually by lumping them together with a quick list of items you can combine to reach the necessary 500 Enchanting Points.

There is very little reason to make a special entry for the "full" Bound set on a single item. If you really feel like all the Bound items need to be talked about, I'd suggest adding them to the Bound Longbow entry (just make sure you write enough that justifies their use as opposed to Fortify Unarmored, one of the other Armor Skills, or even Fortify Strength to carry heavier armor). Multi-effect entries should be avoided unless they have some sort of synergy that isn't immediately obvious, since it is more efficient to add the effects to 4 different items (as the primary effect with some other effect filling the rest) than to have them all on one.

Oh, and I already have a 10-point Fortify Enchant entry that comments on the merits of having 110 Enchant. I'd hope that most people reading the wiki page will be bright enough to know that you can just add more of the effect if you need more than 10 points to reach 110.

True, I forgot that trick worked in the vanilla game, since I think the MPP did away with the Drain Skill exploit. Trainers now look at your baseline skill and determine cost and eligibility from that. It also prevents you from using Master Trainers to go 'over' 100 by fortifying your attributes, since they'll stop when your base skill reaches 100.

I had also neglected to mention that the Fortify Mercantile spell allows you to create enchanted items for free, since you can buy back all your money in exchange for 1 gp. All you need is to make the down payment, which can be reduced even further by raising the enchanter's disposition. Another way to create CE enchantments is to use Alchemy to fortify intelligence and luck and do it yourself, though the wiki already includes this.


This might be a good idea. The reason those particular spells stood out is because they have a lower base cost than other custom enchantments, making it feasible to create them. Spells like Shield, Reflect, or Spell Absorption would be undeniably useful as permanent effects, but are simply way too large for custom CE enchantments.

Another thing worth noting about Chameleon and Sanctuary are that they're far from perfect. Chameleon will prevent friendly NPCs from noticing you, and will lower their disposition if they can't see who's talking to them. It also won't protect you from werewolves, who can see right through the effect once you've made your presence known. Sanctuary, meanwhile, does not make you invincible, even at 100 pts. Enemies like berserking orcs, certain bosses, and werewolves, can still hit you quite easily. So it's often necessary to go over 100, but unlike a fortify armor skill effect, it won't actually reduce damage taken.


Yes, I suppose this is more a matter of personal preference, as there were several reasons I would use this. One, I almost always play as a werewolf, and a single amulet is much faster to reequip than the individual pieces of armor. Two, the Bound armor pieces have rather useful CE enchantments of their own, that are typically too large to fit on base armor pieces. Three, it's better to consolidate Bound armor effects on a single article of apparel than to spread it across several, given that they replace whatever you might already be wearing. A piece of exquisite jewelry can fit the multi-effect enchantment without interfering with the items created.

When it comes to Cast when Used enchantments, what should be the criteria for determining whether they're advantageous over custom spells? Obviously enchantments never fail, can't be interrupted, and can be spammed (at least in the vanilla game, I'm using the Enchanted Item Rebalancing feature from the MCP). In the early game, Cast when Used effects have a clear advantage over spells because, barring the use of Alchemy, your magicka pool and chance of casting success for spells are rather low. However, there's a limit to the magnitude of a spell on an item, and you can't use soul gems to recharge items during battle.


On a tangential note, I noticed the wiki doesn't specifically mention how to optimize damage in the "weakness + damage" spells. I'm wondering if this should be added somewhere. To create the highest possible damage, it should be weakness 100% x 4 + damage 100pts x 4. After all, 4 x 400 is greater than 3 x 500 or 2 x 600, assuming the target has no existing vulnerability.

I've been working on adding commentary for each Bound Armor piece since shortly after I made my last post. While they are generally inferior to real armor late game, they do have enough worth commenting on to expand the Bound Gauntlets entry to include them all.

You can't actually get a full Bound Set on a single item, since it is 5 Pieces. The only items with the requisite 150 or more Enchanting Points are items that would be replaced when the Bound Armor effect activates. Not to mention the convenience of having all the effects on one item does not really justify adding them as a single item on the Wiki page.

The drawbacks of Chameleon and Sanctuary are (or at least should be) mentioned on their respective spell pages; mentioning them again would be redundant.

I honestly can't think of any other CoU enchantments that are especially noteworthy other than the one that I added (and that's only because that one happens to provide an effect you cannot possibly obtain from spells - healing your Magicka from 0). Basically, unless it is something that cannot possibly be done with a spell, it probably doesn't belong on the page. Maybe if there is something that really, really benefits from spam-casting other than damage, healing, or so forth, but nothing springs to mind. Perhaps a section on the general advantages of CoU over spells would be appropriate.

Actually, I can think of one example that would be borderline mentionable (but not enough so that I'm going to bother writing an entry for it) - an on-use item to lower the cost of Training. Since Training will regain the Charge lost by using the item (whereas Magicka doesn't recharge during Training), it allows you to train for lower prices without ever stopping to restore Magicka, assuming your Enchant is high enough.

By the way, I'd like to say that many of MCP's "bug fixes" are really only exploit fixes, so I tend to leave those options off. While the behavior of Drain Intelligence and Drain Skill are definitely strange, I can entirely see why they work that way. In my opinion, that makes exploiting them a creative exploit of game mechanics more than a bug exploit. That's kinda why I created my own mod that returns the Jury-Rigged Wraithguard to being a left-handed Gauntlet when I started using MPP - while the developers probably didn't intend on it being left-handed (given the broken graphics and whatnot), it kinda makes sense for it to be one since you can get both it and the regular Wraithguard in the same game.

I realized that I forgot to mention one detail. I don't include Bound Shield as it would prevent me from using a daedric tower shield, given that it's the quintessential item for enchanting. The other four items only take up 100 points, allowing you to fit them on an exquisite ring or amulet, which is what I'd been doing all along.


The Drain spells would likely benefit from spam-casting, given that they have the lowest casting cost, but are only temporary. When used as spells, you have to deal with the delay of 2 seconds in between casting, so unless a spell like Drain Health is enough to kill the target in one hit, it's going to need a duration longer than 2 seconds. With a CoU enchantment, the duration can be kept low and still give you enough time to stack the effects, in theory.

I recently came up with a CoU enchantment that has proven quite useful. Summon Ancestral Ghost for 2 sec, Soul Trap for 2 sec in 10 ft on Target, Fire Damage 40 pts in 10 ft on target. This takes up less than 20 enchantment points. Since CoU enchantments can be spam-cast, it lets you fill common soul gems very quickly. (Also tested using Summon Flame Atronach, but it's not as reliable because they can reflect spells.)


That sounds like a good idea. Perhaps something multi-effect that also includes the trick of creating your own Master Trainers would make it worthwhile?

I've been playing around with the Weakness to Magicka + Drain Health combo and have discovered some rather unusual things. Normally I use a spell like this, 1 sec duration, to deliver the finishing blow to an enemy I've weakened. However, the cost can become very expensive and the casting probability is low, even with Destruction maxed out / fortified. I tried putting this on an exquisite ring as a CoU enchantment, and came up with some interesting results.

At first, I thought that the numbers should be even. Weakness 300% + Drain 300 pts on Touch, which is the most you can get for 120 enchantment points. This resulted in a total drain of 4 x 300 = 1200. However, the maximum possible drain occurs the closer you get to a square number. So I adjusted it to Weakness 250% + Drain 350 pts, which gave me 3.5 x 350 = 1225. Slightly better. But then I remembered that the numbers can be tweaked before exceeding that last enchantment point. I finally settled on Weakness 259 to 260% + Drain 350 pts, for a drain of 3.6 x 350 = 1260. I think this is the maximum you can fit on a piece of exquisite jewelry.

I also found that enchantment cost is calculated differently from spell casting cost. I tried creating the same effect with a spell. With both numbers at 300, the cost is 180 MP. But when I adjusted it to match the magnitudes on the ring, the cost jumped to 190 MP. This probably has to do with the fact that additional effects on a spell have no cost, unlike additional effects on an enchantment, so the game compensates by lowering the base cost of the enchantment version effects. It's also worth noting that in Morrowind, unlike in subsequent games (I think) duration does not affect the cost as long as the total damage is the same. So 100 pts for 1 sec costs the same as 50 pts for 2 sec.

I still have to experiment with other types of damage, like Fire Damage, or Absorb Health, since they have a higher base cost than Drain Health.

My personal favorite is getting a high end weapon (e.g. Daedric, Ebony, or Glass) and enchanting it to heal you on strike. I am sure this has been done many times before but Its by far my favorite enchantment. In the end its all about how well your enchant skill or how much money you have, because the prices can rise very fast and enchanting I find to be the most difficult skill to raise.

Even better - enchant it with Absorb Health. Then you deal extra damage while you're getting healed.

Yes, the Absorb Health trick has been mentioned plenty of times before. I do have something to clarify from a previous post regarding that though. It's the Morrowind Code Patch (not the Morrowind Patch Project) that's responsible for changing the behavior of Absorb Health so that it harms you and heals enemies if it gets reflected. This is listed under their "bug fixes" and is entirely optional on installation. I've found I actually prefer to leave it on, since it makes the game more challenging, and a 100% Resist Magicka effect makes me immune to it regardless.

Having a weapon simply heal you when it strikes would be a safer method if you have this feature installed. However, this requires the weapon to hit something, and is less reliable than a Cast when Used enchantment or a stack of potions. So I'm not sure why one would bother.

If you're trying to raise your Enchant skill without using trainers, keep in mind that using soul gems to recharge or create items levels up the skill 50x faster than just spamming a Cast when Used enchantment. I usually buy up a bunch of common soul gems, fill them with ancestor ghosts, put them in a quick item slot, and then use them to recharge a high-capacity item like the Staff of Magnus.

As for enchanting items on your own, there are a number of easy ways to do this. One is the custom Fortify Mercantile spell I mentioned earlier. Another is to create a spell of Fortify Enchant 800 pts for 1 sec, which is usually enough to let you enchant a daedric tower shield with a 100% success rate. Finally, you can always use Alchemy to fortify your intelligence and luck to insanely high levels before creating the item, but some consider this cheating.

Here is a very useful and as far as I know unique and creative item. Enchant (or have enchanted) for 15 points an expensive ring with CoU "Summon an Ancestral Ghost for 2 seconds/Soul Trap on target for 2 seconds/Fire Damage for 29 points on target". This fills a common soul gem with one cast. I call it the "Soul Farmer".

Wait, you're saying the soul trap/fire damage effects actually recognize the summoned creature as the target? Looks like I've got some playtesting to do.

EDIT: UESP says the ancestral ghost has 23 health, not 29...

Yes it works perfectly. I play at max difficulty so I did 29 just to be sure. It's great. At 100 enchant skill it only costs one charge, so you can fill 100 gems before taking a break. Everyone has to recharge their enchanted items, so why not store up on gems and have some fun?

Oh yeah, good idea...

I constant effect enchanted an exquisite shirt with bound helm cuirass and gloves, exquisite pants with fortify unarmored about 12 pts I think, exquisite belt fortify unarmored too. I don't wear them (except for the belt), but they're really good for unarmored characters.

Necromancer's amulet- One of the best CE amulets, the resist normal weapons is kinda useless, but spell absprbtion and restore health are great, plus the nice magicka bonus too.

Seems like we were thinking the same thing. I had just posted that above, though it probably got buried in the middle of the post.
viewtopic.php?p=1000253#p1000253

However, I found I had to tweak it so that Soul Trap was 10 ft on Target, and the Fire Damage was 40 pts in 10 ft on Target. Otherwise I ran into problems, where the ancestor ghost wouldn't die on the first try. Then if I tried to cast it again immediately, the game would crash. It's necessary to do this in an enclosed area and cast it on level ground, otherwise the other spells will miss. Total enchanting points is 23. (As a spell, it has a cost of 40.)


Update: For those using the MCP and have the "Enchanted Item Rebalance" feature installed, be warned that it's heavily glitched. Rather than give single items a 4 second cooldown time, it gives ALL Cast when Used items a 4 second delay. This means that even if you switch to a different item, you won't be able to cast from it until the 4 seconds expire. This also means that if an enemy uses a Cast when Used enchantment, it will lock out all of yours for 4 seconds. Since this topic was meant to apply to the vanilla game, I'm going to assume people aren't using this feature.