Shattered Kingdoms

A few tips. Maxing art, wisdom and intelligence help with consecrating and enchanting. It helps to not concentrate on other spells while enchanting or consecrating. It is easier to put two runes of one type and three of another then five of just one. You have the best chance to get five runes on something once you hit grandmaster. You also cannot get more than five runes on something without a bard. Having a bard sing songs of magic gives you the chance to put six or seven runes on something. I don't know if you can get to eight or beyond with a bard or more than one bard singing songs of magic. It is easier to do three and three runes of something with a bard, then straight six. Also, when you have a brilliant rune, its two additions and it makes the item glow. If you hit five runes of something added, it starts to hum.

Items that glow let you see in the dark, but also let other things see you in the dark. Also keeps you from hiding and camouflage.

Things that hum make you fail sneak I think.

Finally some people have quirks with enchanting or consecrating. I like to be fully rested for the last rune. Some people like to cast continual light on an item before consecrating. Not sure if any of that helps. I also think some items enchant and consecrate a lot easier then other items. Not sure if its a builder thing or material thing.

It's almost certainly a cryptic combination of item level, material, and possibly other factors like innates or scarcity. We definitely do not have a setting we can use to tweak enchanting/consecrating difficulty; I wager if that existed, it would have been turned up to max on several elite items. I'm positive nobody but D knows the actual secret, but I figured I would clear that much up.

I'm pretty sure all the "be at max mana, continual light it, etc" stuff is nonsense.

The only thing I think is real is magically resizing things can mess up enchanting, which sort of makes sense on account of magically resizing being reset when something fades. So it's stored on the item like an enchant.

There is some really weird factor somewhere in the equation, because there are some examples of things where you can take "the RING OF PWNZORZ" a level 50 energy ring with innate great willpower, and it'll like...take 2 enchants and blow up/fade every time. Then there's "the RING OF RAWRDOM" a level 50 energy ring with innate great fortitude, and it'll take 5 enchants without a problem. And I don't mean that like as a "one time this happened", there are just flat out some items in the game that don't enchant well, and some that routinely take 5-6 enchants without a problem, despite the two items being pretty much the same in terms of item level, material, number of innate enchants, and all the 'visible' traits.

One tip from my days of consecrating as Azoreth. You can consecrate/enchant in an inn, add two runes, then sleep. You can catch the rest tick shortly thereafter. You can wake up and add two more and then sleep again. Waiting for rest ticks adds time to the process. And to be able to time it out correctly speeds up the process.
I’ve found that if you do everything as quick as possible, you could cast three times and get back to sleep, catching the tick with seconds to spare.

It might be hogwash. But I am a firm believer in resting fully for the fifth rune.

All my time consecrating, it made no difference whether you had full mana or not. For me, it landed, or it didn't, no matter where my mana was. If you have enemies, it is better to have more mana anyway, so stay topped off as much as possible in case of ambush.