Ebony Blade [spoilers]

The Ebony Blade is a rather curious weapon.

It is a two-handed weapon with base damage derived from your one-handed skill. The perks that apply are the one-handed sword perks. The attack speed (and dps) is also the same as a one-handed sword.

It seems to be bugged - my guess is that it either started out as a proper 2-handed weapon and the devs found it to be overpowered, or perhaps it started out as a 1-handed weapon.

The base enchantment is absorb health 10 points, but it increases by 2 additional health points for "every friend you kill (i.e., someone you've completed a favor for, completed a task for, or won over during any type of quest)" up to a maximum of absorb health 30 points.

If you are playing a battle-mage or some sort of hybrid character who enchants his own weapons, of course you can craft something much more powerful; however, I'm playing a sort of pure warrior barbarian character at this point, so i'm not doing any enchanting and having a bit of fun with trying to enhance this artifact.

Although the damage is much lower than Wuthrad, my primary 2-handed weapon, the lightning fast attack speed sort of makes up for it, as well as the fact that with every blow that hits an enemy you are receiving the equivalent of a weak health potion. Also it doesn't seem to ever need to be recharged with soul gems.

Has anyone else been using this weapon? If so, have you killed any "friends" in order to enhance the absorb health power?

Incidentally, are there any quests for Nazeem in Whiterun? "Ever been to the Cloud District? What am I saying, of course you haven't."

Originally Posted by CountChocula
Incidentally, are there any quests for Nazeem in Whiterun? "Ever been to the Cloud District? What am I saying, of course you haven't."

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I've not used it myself, but it is definitely a bit of a weird one. I saw someone questioning whether it was bugged or just intentionally weird as a way of Mephala toying with you. Or possibly it's not bugged and it's set up the way it is for "balance" purposes. At some point I'll probably try powering it up just to see what happens.

I've not encountered anything involving Nazeem yet.

Originally Posted by CountChocula
If you are playing a battle-mage or some sort of hybrid character who enchants his own weapons, of course you can craft something much more powerful

There is nothing more powerful since with its unlimited enchantment charges and its dagger-swinging speed you're essentially immortal provided you can keep hitting something.

For the one-handed skill thing my guess is it was either an oversight or the game has fixed weapon speeds per weapon type(all two handed swords swing with the same speed, all daggers are the same etc) and so in order to give the ebony blade the swinging speed required to make it useful(that of a sword or dagger) they had to classify it as a subtype of one-handed, in previous TES construction sets one/two handed and weapon type were separate checkboxes, you could easily create a twohanded dagger.

It would be nice to have a list of all valid ebony blade targets since you end up killing more than a few during quests anyway.