What exactly happens to an item when you fail on an enchantment attempt. After a failed enchantment attempt, I got the message "You fell you made the item weaker". I examined the item and, aside from the + level in its title, I saw no difference in the abilities of the item. So, what does "made weaker" really mean?
When an enchantment succeeds, the item gets the beneficial enchantment and it also gets a durability loss. When an enchantment fails, the item only gets a durability loss. The consumable items in the enchantment recipe (ingots and mandrake root) are consumed regardless of whether your enchantment fails or succeeds. The same is true for masterworking. If you hover your mouse-pointer over a crafted item, and then press and hold the control key, you can see the details of the crafting outcomes for that item (which includes the material bonuses, enchant results, masterwork results, and socket results). In the example below, I attempted 5 enchantments. I was successful 4 times (and got both a beneficial stat and a durability loss on each attempt), and failed once (and got only a durability loss for that attempt - see yellow arrow). The "(1)" in front of the "Enchantment Failure" indicates how many times I failed to enchant. When multiple failures occur, they are all listed on one line and the total durability loss from failure is shown. So on this particular item, if I had failed 2 times, then the line would read "(2) Enchantment Failure (-24 Max Durability)", where each failure would reduce durability by 12, for a total loss of 24 durability.
