Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-82.30.53.52-20130707190543/@comment-10056803-20130728042724

Best is a bit subjective in this category if you don't give us a quality, but hey.

Best artifact, however... Well, that depends on your play style. Wabbajack is pretty good as it either makes your enemy something less problematic (and if they suddenly dremora Valkynaz, just wabbajack them back), obliterates them entirely by making them money, sweetrolls, or such, or just casts high-level destruction spells useful for blasting anything with.

The Skeleton Key in-universe is better than in-game, as the unbreakable lockpick can just be replaced in Skyrim with a certain unbreakable perk at the top of the lockpicking tree, and the ingame non-player key is actually capable of opening dragonclaw doors, Nocturnal's ebonmere, and all three of the Nightingale powers.

Azura's Star is wonderful for soul trapping, and for the one who wants to piss off a daedric prince known to forge races, engineer the downfall of gods, and cause other massive and drastic changes, the Black Star is even more wonderful for soul trapping.

Mehrunes Dagon's Razor has INSTANT KILL POWERS. That's rather useful, considering if you're lucky enough you can one-hit-kill even the most fearsome enemy so long as they're not in the Immune To Mehrunes' Razor faction.

Hermaeus Mora's Oghma Infimum is pretty much free knowledge. Free. Knowledge. And in-universe, it can be made even better to the point you can extract the knowledge to forge a plane with the right stuff.

Meridia's Dawnbreaker is just plain awesome for undead-killing, and is second in said purpose only to an obscenely well-fueled Dawnguard Rune Axe in Skyrim after you pretty much obey Meridia's directive and kill all the undead with holy fires and stuff.

Spellbreaker happens to be a ward and shield in one. Not quite Auri-El's re-exploding shield, but still a rather useful artifact, considering you can block spells, shouts (Again, if you don't duel-wield a Dawnguard Rune Axe and Dawnbreaker because you lack one, Spellbreaker and Dawnbreaker/Rune Axe work wonders together for slaying draugr hordes), and even mundane attacks.

The Ebony Mail functions as an automated poison cloak. Great for melee fighters, especially when combined with a cloak spell for maximum proximity damage.

The Ebony Blade requires refueling in Skyrim, but if it works properly I hear you can just kill a summoned familiar repeatedly instead of having to slay several of your friends, possibly more than once if you lack friends and use console commands. Absorbing health, and getting paid in power to be subversive and kill the followers I have all intents of killing anyways by dragging them through the most dangerous situations possible by letting me just stab them to death as they smile and wonder where the pain is coming from? Wonderful for the character whose entire story revolves around psychopathically murdering everyone.

Haven't done much extensive testing of anything but Dawnbreaker and Wabbajack due to my play style, but hey.