SKYRIM ULTIMATE Leveling Guide (No Glitch) - TESV: Skyrim Special Edition

hey there fellow dragonborn i am ketogenesis and this is the ultimate skyrim special edition leveling guide and what a gigantic project this turned out to be skyrim's not a new game and this is not the only leveling guide by any means on the internet if you're looking for ways to level up in skyrim without glitching or extreme exploiting your way there then this ultimate guide might be for you i try to make the navigation easy by using the chapter select in the timeline and timestamps in the description if you're looking for particular skills and how to level them now please forgive me for being boring but we gotta start with the foundational stuff many players know where the guardian stones are already but i still gotta cover them as long as you're following the road this trio of standing stones are right in between helgen the place you escape at the beginning of the game and riverwood the place you're supposed to go after escaping helgen these three guardian stones depict the thief warrior and mage star signs once chosen one of these stones will give a 20 experience boost to the skills under its influence to keep it fair and balanced you're only allowed to have one of these active at a time unless you have a particular artifact which we'll get to in a bit when leveling up looking at skills applying perks and such you'll see this beautiful backdrop behind the skill trees that also indicates what category each of these skills are in in essence telling you what these guardian stones boost you'll notice that the clouds are not only colored but also shaped like their representative signs the mage skills have a blue background the warrior skills a red or orange background and the thief skills are green archery is the only one that seems to be in that weird spot where it's actually the thief stone that raises it instead of the warrior style even though archery is supposed to be under warrior so if you plan you maximize three or more of the skills in one category it's good to take that standing stone from the start the next thing i want to talk about that boosts skill experience is the rested bonuses there are three different ones first is the standard rested bonus this is if you're sleeping in somebody's own bed where they allow you to sleep or you just find a bed that's not owned by anyone standard rested bonus is five percent second is the well-rested bonus a temporary boost of 10 which you can gain from sleeping in an owned bed that you the player owns or are renting from an innkeeper finally there is the lovers comfort rested bonus which is the highest at 15 if you have found yourself a spouse in skyrim and decided to move yourselves into a particular home resting in a bed in that home will give the lovers comfort bonus each of these rested bonuses since they are temporary last eight hours of in-game time after which you'll need to gain them again if you want to keep receiving that bonus if you can that is if you're a werewolf you can't get rested bonuses anyway the most important takeaway of rested bonuses is that they affect all skills instead of just one category like the guardian stones do speaking of lovers comfort there is another standing stone that gives the exact same bonus without having to marry anybody in skyrim and there's no timer on this one this standing stone is known as the lover's stone it is found in the mountains of the reach northeast of markharth and plain and simple the loverstone upon activation gives a 15 experience bonus to all skills instead of just one category if your character is built with multiple skills from multiple categories a lover stone might be the better bet if you're playing a breton spell sword for example you may benefit better from the lover stone because you won't be hogging all that bonus experience with the warrior or the mage stone you'll get 15 for both on the unfortunate side through my own discovery and reading up on it a little bit the loverstone overlaps arrested bonuses so you cannot have both at the same time but you can have rested bonus with a guardian stone at the same time there is one more thing that accelerates experience gain and that just multiplies some of the effects we've already gone over and i've been using it in the past several playthroughs thanks to the dawnguard dlc if you have it and find a book in any of the areas in most of the dlc even some non-dlc spots called the ethereum wars you can begin a side quest called lost to the ages at the end of which you get to choose to make one of three ethereum artifacts the most useful of them being the ethereal crown which lets you have two standing stones active at one time because it makes a copy of the previous one while it's worn so if you get the ethereal crown as soon as possible grab the lover stone and then grab the standing stone at the guardian stones that you want you can get a 35 experience bonus to your main skill category and 15 to everything else you can do this with two of the guardian stones if you want to but you'd be missing out on a universal bonus for the rest of the skills that would be neglected otherwise we've gone over all the ways to accelerate general experience gain but what about particular skills or particular skill trainers all of the skills have trainers in skyrim from adept to master and each of your character's levels will allow five instances of training in any skill but each time you train has an increasing cost of gold which dramatically increases by about three times after 51 skill is reached each of the main factions you can join do have skill trainers related to that archetype so it's a good idea to join those factions as early as possible so you can benefit as much as you can for the character you're playing if you're running mostly warrior skills join the companions mage go to the mages college in winterhold and the thieves build a riften if you're going with thief despite this though there are some npcs who are trainers as well as followers or merchants something that you can definitely use to your advantage i will use feigned all the wood elf as an example in riverwood because he is the earliest possible follower in the game feigndoll also happens to be an archery trainer so if you help him with his side quest which is extremely short by the way he can give you archery training up to 50 archery skill but because he can become a companion too you can access his pockets and take your gold back essentially giving you free training as long as the total gold amount meets what he requires for the training some merchants can create a similar loop if they're training in the skill they're selling materials for arcadia and arcadia's cauldron in whiterun for example you can buy training buy the ingredients make potions sell the potions level up your character repeat so keep your eyes peeled for these multi-use skill trainers that pertain to your main skills main skills at the start anyway because there is such a thing as over leveling too early making the entire experience pretty miserable and forcing you to play catch-up with the ones that matter in that moment this is why you should specialize your character for at least the first 10-15 levels so you're not stuck playing catch-up and getting frustrated skill books exist in skyrim as well these offer a one-time one-point boost to your character in whatever skill they boost skill books are often placed in a way where the player will notice them and that would be by themselves but if you find yourself looking at a bookshelf wondering if any of the books could provide skill knowledge you don't have to open up every book to find out all you need to do is look at the gold value of those books if their value is 20 gold or more it is likely a skill book anything below lore related i might as well mention the augma infinium here too which is the daedric artifact of hermaeus mora because it's technically also a one-time use skill book if you're looking for it you can use my guide for it and all the other data artifacts right here but this is only a mention simply because it is a one-time use item and it disappears once it's used those collecting or wanting achievements may want to hang on to it for now i think that's plenty on accelerating skill gain but there will be a section towards the end with advice when it comes to the skill tree's legendary system but we need to talk about those skills first so let's do that we start with the light and heavy armor skills these are in the same spot because they are leveled the same way and experience is gained from getting hit by things before we get into recommendations on what to get hit by and because maxing out armor skills legitimately takes so gosh dang long i would like to point you to some npcs that can not only train you in armor skills but also have ways to get your gold back i won't go over skill trainers for all the skills mind you but for this one i'm making an exception because of how long it takes so if you join the companions in whiterun farkas is their master heavy armor trainer and like i talked about towards the beginning you can get free training with farkas if you get to the end of the companions quest line once he's available as a permanent follower the master trainer for light armor in skyrim is nazir the red guard that gives you most of your contracts while you take part in the dark brotherhood questline because nazir is neither a companion nor a merchant i would like to point out grelka as well the cheery general goods merchant in the town square of rifton she is the expert light armor skill trainer that can train you up to 75 and you can sell anything to her to get your money back now onto leveling methods and what to get hit by the most ideal is wearing a full set of the armor you're trying to level up the skill for that's the first step second step is to get hit by physical attacks after all magic attacks don't level armor skills for the longest time i thought it was the amount of hits that you were taking no it is actually in relation to how much damage is in that hit before resistance is applied in other words the harder an enemy hits the faster you'll level your armor so now it comes down to what to allow to hit you for such a long period of time and most importantly not dying in the process in preparation you're going to need some means to heal yourself be it potions food or restoration spells a note on that too if you are using restoration spells i suggest that you stop using the basic healing spell as soon as possible because you can't regenerate magicka while you're charging or casting if you have max fortified restoration though disregard this now onto the enemies you'll want to beat you up find something that doesn't one-shot you and that you can manage the damage you're taking in even better if you can get away from them easily first you can start with smaller creatures like skeevers wolves horkers and mud crabs after you feel like you're taking very little damage you can graduate to something like saber cats bears and trolls then when you feel up to tanking massive hits you could move on to mammoths and giants the only thing you need to remember aside from trying to stay alive is the more damage the enemy deals the more experience that armor skill is going to get so naturally a giant is going to give you way more experience than a skeever would but if you have ever approached a giant at early levels you may have had a quick meeting with the atmosphere so starting small is important for leveling your armor skills there's a big reason i'm not suggesting to level up your armor skills against the humanoid races yes i know you're going to fight bandits everywhere all i'm saying is you shouldn't be training your armor skills with them the one reason for this is that the creatures that i mentioned do not have finishers whereas the humanoid races and dragons for that matter can and will perform kill moves on the player character with them it won't matter how much you think you can manage your health if they can one shot you with a power attack when you're not blocking they might just one shot you anyway because they can perform a finisher when your health's at a certain percentage based on their damage sometimes even if you have a shield up this is just me speaking from experience venting a little bit and trying to save you the frustration despite it taking a long time in comparison to other skills armor skills are among the most important if you plan on being in the thick of a melee fight at any point i figure it's best to move on to block and get all the defensive skills out of the way and it's fair to mention that blocking levels similarly to light and heavy armor first thing would be to find the best shield you can at your level upgrading it at a workbench if you're able to as well enchantments even better find something that hits decently hard for your level that could be wolves bears giants whatever and block experience once again like armor skills is based on damage taken i'm not entirely sure if this is damage you're absorbing or the entire damage the enemy is dealing but it's basically the same premise the harder the enemy hits or the more damage you're blocking the faster block will level up but because you're actually blocking damage instead of taking a lot of it like you would with the armor skills blocking is actually one of the faster skills to level so it's not too much of a stretch to advise you to level up your blocking alongside your armor skills and if the enemy hits are a little too hard just raise the shield and start blocking instead blocking can be increased if you're using say a one-hander with the offhand open or a two-hander but not as much damage as being blocked you're going to take more and have to heal up more often on the topic of healing having healing methods ready is still advisable you're going to be getting hit but also one thing that shields can do that other armor cannot are the bash and power bash moves doing so can also level your block skill and is dependent on enemy level against yours bear in mind that archers deal physical damage as well so successfully blocking arrows will level your blocking skill too fortunately humanoid enemies can't use finishers with bows so if you go to a spot they can't reach and they attempt to pelt you with arrows you will be relatively safe behind your shield of course speaking of damage we move on to the one-handed and two-handed weapon skills according to several sources namely the elder scrolls wiki it is a weapon's base damage and frequency of hitting the enemy which levels that weapons skill and not the modified damage done so the absolute most efficient way to level up your one-handed skill is with a daedric dagger and two-handed skill would be with a daedric sword or the long hammer so what you would normally consider beneficial to leveling up your damaging skills like the fortifying potions and enchantments these bonuses actually hinder leveling the skill thanks to killing your opposition faster so if your plan is to level your one-handed or two-handed muting your damage is a more effective way because you're getting more hits on your enemy get the highest base damage weapon you can and opt not to boost your damage with fortify effects oh archery best paired with stealth and unstoppable in later levels but we're getting ahead of ourselves we're talking about leveling up the archery skill the skill experience you gain using a bow can be catered to per shot or per target if you're going all in with damage using your best arrows and your strongest bow you're much more likely to gain levels per target because you'll be wiping them out pretty quickly but if you want to get multiple instances of experience off of a single enemy you'll want to reduce your damage down to iron arrows and the weakest bow you have or fastest i highly recommend the unique bow called zephyr for this too thanks to its 30 draw speed increase which can be found during the side quest lost to the ages in the dawnguard dlc so the ideal target for leveling up your archery is pretty much anything especially something that you can paralyze the ice form shout can be used for this the paralysis spell and even paralysis poison which will let you close in on the target to the point to where you don't have to worry about arcing or them moving around if archery is going to be your primary combat skill from the start though the training method with feindal that i mention in the multiplying experience gain section will help speed up the process at least up to 50 skill sneaking is among one of the fastest leveling skills in skyrim as long as you're doing it if you're going all in with this you will need to think about the ideal sneaking conditions too which have to do with lighting line of sight from the target or targets the weapon type you're using and the armor your character is wearing one of the faster ways early on since you won't be able to pull off sneak attacks as easily unless you're exploiting with an npc that can't die would be to get close to being detected by an enemy and then go back into the shadows and wait and that will level your sneak skill pretty quickly early on what will yield the most experience though is successful melee sneak attacks daggers are highly recommended for this because they don't make nearly as much noise as mace's axes or swords and nearby enemies won't be alerted as quickly if at all sleeping draugr in drauga crips are a great starting source for this if you learn about and join the dark brotherhood after helping juventus eretino in windhelm you will get your slick dark brotherhood uniform which comes with the shrouded gloves if these gloves are combined with the assassin's blade perk in the sneak tree you will do 30 times damage with a dagger sneak attack so once you have a decent dagger in hand and sneak attacks one shot most things you will have no problem whatsoever leveling up your sneak skill quickly before you max out your sneak skill it might be good to hang on to any invisibility potions you find just in case you end up in a situation where you're detected and you can't quite get away from your enemies so you can come back and assassinate them for that extreme experience bonus yes you can level up your sneak skill at the same time with archery if you're executing sneak attacks with your bow but dagger sneak attacks will net you far more experience smithing is our first crafting skill to go over and final of the warrior skills in this guide but it's probably going to take the longest to explain back in 2012 people might have been telling you hey just make iron daggers it's super fast but it's not 2012 anymore is it first we go over is the two ways to gain smithing experience number one crafting items at the forge pretty basic and second is improving weapons or armor at the workbench or the grindstone so improving gear and crafting will raise your experience with smithing like some of the other crafting skills the more valuable the item you craft the more experience you'll gain what we're after is the most experienced game in the most efficient way and that would be gold and silver jewelry there are multiple benefits to crafting jewelry rather than anything else at the forge the first benefit of crafting jewelry is you only need a minimum of one material that would be silver or gold ingots even iron daggers take two materials the second benefit to jewelry is that it's light especially rings which weigh 0.3 the third benefit to crafting jewelry is they're valuable on their own and can be made even more so with simple enchantments like fortify sneak destruction or carry weight the fourth and final benefit is that jewelry can be sold to magic and general goods merchants meaning that you can immediately turn around your earnings and get more filled soul gems with that jewelry to create a bit of a vendor loop leveling up three skills in the process that's smithing enchanting and speech craft but i'm not gonna say just go craft jewelry and leave it at that i'm gonna show you the method that i like to use myself the first thing i advise though not required will speed up the process by quite a bit allowing you to transmute iron to silver and silver to gold ore as long as it's still in or form and that's the alteration spell book known as transmute mineral ore this is in a bandit camp called halted stream camp just north of whiterun it will reliably show up on the table next to where the bandit leader likes to hang out it's good to get transmute before you start gathering orb because you can transmute as you're moving between and mining ore veins now transmute is an adept level spell so its magicka costs will be high if you've not invested at all into it or are not using a spellcaster for that matter so once you have transmute the camp where you give the transmute spell to is a good source of iron ore which of course you can transmute into gold over time there are three other locations i like to rotate in between transmuting of course as i go first would be the coal skeger mine directly east of markharth this one has four sworn inside but is a actual gold mine with a smelter right outside just the east of that is blind cliff cave which has several iron ore deposits within and more force warrant and northeast of that is the mining village of carthuston sonaric mine that the larger of the two mines here contains numerous silver ore veins the cart outside the mine contains a couple silver ore and two of the houses in carthuston the hall and edmonds house both spawn silver ingots in stacks of five after you've extracted ore from each of these locations it should take about 10 in-game days for it to replenish for you to go and mine it again there is a glitch that happens sometimes with the ore veins where they appear as though they can be mined again but you can't interact with them at all a way i've found to fix this is by simply walking out of the mine and walking back in and they should be interactable again i have no idea why this is a thing to begin with but this is much preferred than the ore veins breaking entirely on top of all of the gold you'll ultimately get from this process you will also get precious gems to make some of your jewelry even more valuable after smelting the gold ore and heading back to the forge with that and your precious stones you can then watch your smithing skill rack up extremely fast if you're boosting experience gain with the warrior stone rested bonuses etc this crafting rotation should take up to four or five times to max out your smithing and if you have a huge stack of gold rings and are not getting into enchanting yet stash them away for later these can turn into a great source of money when you do get into enchanting enchanting gear via the enchanting table benefits any play style there are three things that level enchanting disenchanting items enchanting items and recharging magical weapons with filled soul gems the fastest of these of course being enchanting items the level of soul gem used or soul in the soul gem determining the experience that's gained petty souls granting the least and grand souls granting the most gathering what's needed for enchanting though requires a little bit more adventuring than you would for the smithing method because if you want to enchant things you have to disenchant things to learn them and if you want to actually perform the enchantments you need first an item to enchant and filled soul gems if you find yourself going into dwemer ruins you can find filled soul gems fairly often as well as anywhere where there's mages the same applies for empty soul gems but if you want them in bulk and don't mind going there blackreach has a bunch of geode vanes which you can mine specifically for soul gems and if you have not been to black reach yet just follow the main story you will end up there if you'd rather skip that part and have gold despair you can buy filled or empty soul gems from magic vendors but since we're talking about the manual way for now let's assume you have empty soul gems having those you will also need a means to trap souls in them through the conjuration spell itself simply called soul trap which can be purchased from pretty much any magic vendor or by using a weapon with a soul trap enchantment perform soul trap on a foe before they die and provided you have a soul gem that fits their soul it will be captured in that soul jam finding magical gear to disenchant is probably the most time consuming part of this process because there's both a random factor in dungeon chests and merchants that you might want to purchase enchanted items from but once you do have enchantments that add a little bit of gold value to the items that you've brought by placing them on a weapon armor or jewelry you can then create a nice loop in which you can sell your now enchanted items and purchase filled soul gems so you don't have to go back out into the field to fill more yourself this is part of the reason why i went over smithing before i went over enchanting because all of that jewelry crafted through smithing could be enchanted with fortified carry weight sneak or destruction and be sold for a decent amount of gold if you went the route of crafting daggers instead or just have weapons to enchant the banish paralyze and absorb health enchantments will result in a high gold value too again a lack of materials is all that keeps enchanting from leveling up super fast there is also a reason i'm mentioning enchanting before any of the other mage skills and that is simply because of fortify a maxed out enchanting skill can set you up with the best mage gear in the game allowing you to fortify your armor with alteration illusion destruction conjuration or restoration up to a natural 25 four times making magicka costs for spells from that school zero this makes leveling any magic school much much easier leveling armor and block skills also greatly benefit from the armor and shield fortify enchantments improving the damage absorption so leveling is much easier so if you're starting leveling any of the crafting skills i recommend enchanting taking priority disenchant that gear that you don't need so you can enchant the gear that you do later on destruction the offensive magic school and if you hadn't started your character with destruction in mind it's probably going to take a little time to level up because leveling your destruction spells has to do with the damage you're dealing to a foe the more damage an enemy can take the more experience you'll gain unlike the one-handed or two-handed skills destruction mages have a bit more to manage memorizing spells via spell books and having the magicka to cast them spellbooks must be found or purchased in order to learn specific spells the college of winterhold being a centralized place to get all these as your mastery increases the spell i found the fastest in leveling destruction was the fire rune because it deals a lot of damage over time when an enemy comes in contact with it after its initial burst the lovely thing about rune spells though too is that they are apprentice level spells so even if magicka is an issue you'll have cost reduction relatively early when you're leveling destruction if you get the apprentice destruction perk that is next is a mere suggestion for quality of life you'll probably be using firebolt or lightning bolt or ice spike a lot and if you are playing a mage you should be lined to 40 skill as soon as possible before focusing on any other skills because the impact perk is a game changer this is the perk following duel cast which lets dual casted spells stagger enemies there's so many benefits to this including not having to run away all the time and your target pretty much staying in place after all in order to gain experience with destruction you have to actually hit your target i would like to note if you don't get impact soon enough you might hit a pretty massive wall of difficulty because you won't be able to put space very easily between yourself and your enemy impact will mitigate that and then some if you've been playing a melee character with one-handers two-handers or dual-wielding you can still benefit from the destruction magic school and after hitting 50 skill with destruction it does take some investment obviously you can get access to cloak spells particularly flame cloak you're going to be in melee range of enemies anyway so casting this before you equip your primary weapons increases your overall damage output simply by having it active if dual casting is used with a cloak spell the range of it is actually doubled which creates other fun situations particularly when sneaking and quiet casting i did end up preferring lightning cloak myself because it ended up being the least distracting effect on screen now once magic costs are not an issue at all reason being you've enchanted your gear with maximum fortify enchantments or you just have a gigantic magicka pool you can finish off late levels with spells like incinerate fireball and chain lightning these spells of course dealing massive damage by themselves or hitting multiple targets at a time next is the alteration school of magic and the fastest way is mass paralysis on as many targets as possible it's a bit of an unfair suggestion though because this is a master spell which requires you to be nearly at max alteration to obtain anyway so if we backpedal to the first time you're leveling alteration oak flesh the novice spell is something you can cast repeatedly to protect your character before or during a fight or just to cast passively to level up your alteration if you have magicka to spare the rate of increase for flesh spells is still fairly slow though transmute the location of which was mentioned during the smithing section halted stream camp north of whiterun is what i consider to be the most practical in gaining the first 20 or 30 levels of alteration because you're not just getting experience you're also taking the first steps to be a gold factory the last two and arguably the best for leveling due to availability and safety are telekinesis and detect life these are both adept level alteration spells these both use magicka per second however so you will need a means to fortify your alteration have the adept alteration perk and or a decent amount of magicka detect life while cast will level up your alteration per target it detects so if you go into a populated area like marcarth for example and stand in the middle and just cast detect life you will level your alteration quite quickly there is a way to get the detect life spell book before even being adept in alteration also and that is from the infiltration side quest at treva's watch in the rift which will begin as soon as you talk to the npcs outside telekinesis is another easy leveling method and just a fun spell in general especially if you like taking things off of shelves that you don't own telekinesis when cast pulls the item you're facing to your character at which point you can release the spell to throw it or activate to put it into your inventory the distance the item is traveling is actually what helps govern the experience you're gaining so you can grab an item with telekinesis and just walk around to quickly generate alteration experience tolfdir in the college of winterhold will have the spell book for telekinesis once you reach 40 alteration but if you have the dawnguard dlc redwater den in the rift is another place that you can locate the telekinesis spellbook just show up at redwater den go inside ask to partake in the redwater skooma and the cell you wake up in will have a telekinesis book on the ground illusion is another magic school that can be leveled pretty safely and the novice level spell called courage can carry you through illusion almost completely on its own because it is a novice spell you can buy it from any of the court wizards as soon as you start playing and upon being cast on an npc they won't flee for 60 seconds and they get extra health and stamina courage can be used on followers to strengthen them if you prefer to take more of a supportive role bear in mind that if it does wear off while they're down though they will die or courage can be simply cast on anybody in towns and cities repeatedly i will warn you though if you do get a little spammy with casting courage with both hands it can straight up crash your game so save often once you've reached 25 skill in illusion have the apprentice perk have been fortifying your armor with illusion or both you can purchase the spell book for muffle and start using that muffle is a high magikacost self-cast spell which muffles your footsteps and armor while you're sneaking that is not only good for sneaking around but good for experience too in adept there is rally which is a more improved version of courage and will stack with it but it also has an area of effect blast on impact letting you affect multiple targets at a time increasing the experience gain it takes a little patience but courage muffle and rally are the best ways that i found to level up illusion quickly i wanted to add a few tips in here about illusion too if you're sneaking in any capacity illusion can improve it greatly if muffle was any hint at that once you get to 50 illusion skill you can get quiet casting which affects all schools of magic that is all spells and shouts and the act of casting them becomes completely silent so even if you're not planning on maxing out illusion at all getting it to 50 for quiet casting is totally worth it the conjuration school of magic is all about the summoning something that is definitely involved in leveling it swiftly too for a long while i thought conjuration was one of the longest to level because i thought the only way you could gain experience was having something summoned and it just generating over time which does help but you want to accelerate that well i give you bound sword a novice level spell that you can get as soon as you get to dragon's reach in whiterun farngar will have it for sale something important to know about boundsword is yes as any other spell it makes noise unless you have the quiet casting perk which i was just talking about in illusion but continuing to be sneaky while you're casting bound weapons actually hinders you rather than helps because in order to get the burst of experience that a lot of other spells get when they are cast or when they hit a target con duration's high experience bursts come from being in combat and then casting your bound weapons not before if you've gotten the novice perk and have your 100 default magicka you can cast two bound swords at the beginning of a fight and gain a whole bunch of experience doing so if you have high fortified conjuration or a lot of magic to work with you can actually run away summon your bound swords immediately select your spells again as they're appearing and repeat with conjuration you can also summon what would be at this point punching brags in the form of atronox and control the entire situation from the safety of say the college of winterhold hit them a few times until they're hostile and you are officially in combat conjuration is also a good stepping stone for leveling other skills too because it is something you can control and conjure weapons do level up those weapon skills if you're leveling armor or block 2 summon yourself a frost atronach and suddenly you're leveling multiple skills at once still in a controlled situation back to conjuration itself though bound swords will level you to max quickly though i'd like to recommend a quality of life perk that comes along with conjuration if you're investing it all into it and this also helps with enchanting if you're filling the soul gems manually what i'm referring to is the soul stealer perk it costs three perk points to get to in the con duration perk tree but i consider that to be a small sacrifice to have a weightless weapon you can summon on command and soul trap with so you're not forced to carry around heavy enchanted weapons with soul trap or fumbling through your spells to cast it manually we've reached restoration one of the less creative and more annoying schools of magic to level because restoration's whole deal is healing magical wards and spooking undead that's it that's that's the whole shtick well except maybe necromage that perk affects a whole list of things if you take it as soon as possible after you become a vampire but i'm getting way off track already we're supposed to be talking about how to level up restoration effectively the thing about leveling restoration you should remember is that just healing yourself without having taken damage doesn't do anything to level the skill you have to be actually taking and healing the hp damage to increase experience for restoration if you are exceptionally patient the easy and slow method is finding an easy to control source of damage like pressure plate flame traps for example and simply heal yourself while you're standing on it or if you have found yourself the alteration spell called equilibrium you can cast and hold that which exchanges your health for magicka and use that magicka to heal yourself creating a healing loop where you have all you need right there the thing is though it's really slow and boring real slow but fortunately i did find a noticeably faster method and that's the other trick that restoration does i'm sure you saw that coming the spells i'm speaking of are turn and repel undead there are lesser variants too for earlier on that cost less magicka but are still effective as long as you find low level draugr and skeletons i shouldn't need to tell you where to find draugr at least after you do find restless draugr or draugr drugger repeatedly casting turn lesser undead on them will level up your restoration pretty fast faster than healing yourself that is skeletons are a bit more rare but it's the same idea you can cast these spells with both hands just like you would with courage but also just like you would with courage it can crash your game if you get too spammy with it luckily there are some other restoration spells that make this a lot easier with hitting groups of skeletons and draugr and that is the repel undead spells get repel lesser undead and when you cast it it throws out a horizontal beam that will hit multiple targets increasing experience for each target hit what i found to be the best experience wise for restoration so when you're running through a draugr crypt i advise gathering up as many of them as you possibly can get them to follow you into a corridor turn around and repel the heck out of them before they all flee and get themselves killed by traps i think my favorite part about learning this method was how useful the repel undead and turn undead spells actually are because regardless of being the lesser or standard variants of these spells they will stagger undead regardless you can force draugr death lords and death overlords to take a knee whenever you feel like as long as you have turn repel undead and stun lock them this way it works on dragon priests too so along with a much quicker method to level restoration i also learned that repel undead is pretty useful and will strongly consider using it in subsequent playthroughs beyond mentioning it at the start of the restoration section i know i didn't talk about necromage much because there would be a lot of experimenting involved and i want to finish this guide while we're young so those of you playing necromage vampires please share in the comments how absolutely busted it is how does one level up lock picking there's two ways first is a small amount by breaking lock picks the second is succeeding in lock picking something and you'll get the most experience when this is done on master locks the lowest amount being from apprentice locks if you find yourself running out of lock picks general goods vendors weapon and armor merchants and fences through the thieves guild all can sell lockpicks from the miscellaneous category if you need them they can also be found on bandits there's no shortage of things to lockpick and break into in skyrim however if an item locks again after you've lockpicked it before you will not get experience for lockpick the second time so you can assume that all locks provide one instance of experience with that in mind i still do have suggestions on leveling lockpick faster and we'll start with the thieves guild in riften once you are officially accepted into the thieves guild you will be able to access the cistern which contains a training room with training dummies and multiple training chests with each rank of lock knowing that succeeding lock picking on these chests can only give you experience one time turns the practice chests into just that practice this will be a spot where you can continuously break lock picks if you need to but unfortunately when it comes to successfully lock picking something coming back to the practice chests is not the way to do it so moving on to other things you can lockpick shops and houses in every city are usually locked up at night each of these locked doors are an opportunity for experience what you do after lock picking everything is up to you i like to imagine role playing a phantom unlocker who doesn't take anything just leaves homes less secure another suggestion for more sizable amounts of experience are strong boxes that are found in shops so breaking into the shop would give a little experience and getting into the strong box would be a bit more experience the strong boxes are usually in rooms out of sight next to the business ledgers of these shops unlike doors strong boxes are generally expert and master locked and speaking of mostly expert locks display cases display cases are great sources of experience because often if there is one there's going to be another in whiterun there are display cases in the yarl's living quarters within dragon's reach and a few more in your basker next to kodlak's room where you will likely find the most display cases in one place is cal selmo's dwemer museum and this is an understood keep in hearth when you enter the keep you can take a left to talk to cal selmo and in his introduction he'll ask you to take care of a spider that's been gumming up his excavation do that and he'll give you the key to his museum generally i would tell you not to get the key for anything but guards are patrolling the museum and if you enter uninvited and get noticed while you're lock picking those display cases you'll get arrested from the entrance of understand keep the dwemer museum is off to the right and once you enter you'll find more than 10 display cases that you can unlock prison cell doors are also a great source of experience a lot of the forts in skyrim do have prisons as well as the main cities of course and usually they're labeled as such so they're not that hard to find some of them are within the guards barracks sometimes so as you're exploring and wanting to level up your lock picking i recommend making a conscious effort to not pick up keys and not to take the wax key perk you should however make a mental note of them just in case the lock requires a key and can't be lock picked but most times it's just a high level lock and that's experience you could be gaining after you're reaching 70 80 90 skill and you'd rather not keep breaking lock picks to gain experience the daedric artifact known as the skeleton key is a viable option this will end up in your possession if you continue with the thieves guild questline what i recommend before you give it back if you choose to finish the questline is maxing out your lock picking skill because having an unbreakable lock pick will save you a ton of time alchemy is the third and final crafting skill in this guide and probably the one that will make you the most gold with the least amount of effort as long as you're picking up ingredients everywhere you go but let's backtrack a tiny bit alchemy levels up by crafting potions and poisons that's its whole deal there is something that determines the amount of experience that you're getting and that is the value of the potions that you're making the higher value the potion the more experience you'll gain simple and straightforward i won't be going over all the potion recipes i recommend but they will be down in the description if you are interested in some quick easy and or practical recipes but let's go with the main pointers first gather ingredients like i said and eat them if the first effect is unknown so on top of tasting ingredients for that first effect experimenting can result in no potion to show for it but it can also start revealing other effects of your ingredients once you're learning the combinations of ingredients ingredients you purchase at an alchemy vendor can be turned into potions then and there and sold back to them making a wonderful skill loop and towards the very beginning of this guide i did mention arcadius cauldron because she's an alchemy trainer as well so you can get training from her and sell potions back to her to get your money back knowing that the value of a potion directly affects the experience you'll gain i'll be going with the vanilla game but there are a few ingredients that increase the value of potions dramatically boar tusks from dragonborn salmon row from hearthfire and the easiest go-to giant's toes as long as you're mixing it with something else that grants fortify health the gold value can start to reach the thousands pretty quickly of course giant's toes don't grow on trees they grow on giants so that's one way to raise the value of potions another is simply checking on the effects that you're putting into these potions the more the better and some in particular that raise value by a lot are the slow poison effect paralysis invisibility and the damage magicka effect in the guide itself i'll only be going over potion recipes i recommend for leveling faster but i have left practical recipes for healing and resistances and such down below in the description so first is the simple poison of slow that i like to make that requires one death bell and one salt death bell can be found in the marshes south of solitude and salt piles are found everywhere there's people just check in barrels and food sacks an alternative to this recipe is dwarven oil and salt if you've been going to dwemer ruins more so than the marshes now for the higher value ones when you need a bit more experience something that helps me remember this recipe forever is combine the blue things blue mountain flowers and blue butterfly wings that's for a damaged magica regen poison and if you happen to have a giant's toe throw that on top and that'll more than double the value of the potion giving you a ton of experience these recipes are likely on screen but they'll be down below with everything else as well and these aren't the only recipes in existence either please leave comments with the ones you'll never forget and potentially could help out other players lastly when it comes to perks green thumb is amazing because you just pick up double ingredients that doesn't just apply to plants this will apply to charis eggs charred skiver hides and other ingredients that have a gathering point provided you're picking up ingredients wherever you see them and are making sure that the value of the potions you're making are in the hundreds your alchemy will be maxed before you know it now we get to the skill that's easy enough to avoid but pretty fun if you start taking its perks and that is pickpocket the idea of leveling pickpocket is simple the higher value item you're taking the more experience you'll gain but something that's pretty great about pickpocketing is the rate of success is measured by the weight of the item not necessarily the value so small items like rings and precious stones and even just simple gold are going to be both the easiest to take and level up pickpocket the fastest speaking of low risk i tried my best to get around the idea of save scumming just to level up the pickpocket skill because this is a skill where that is the most likely case i am guilty of pickpocket saves coming myself but if you're going for a bit of a feeling of legitimacy i did learn that the thieves guild members don't act aggressively at all if you fail at pickpocketing them even mercer frey will forgive you for picking his pockets even if you are caught by thieves guild members you can come back later and make another attempt this is a later recording after some discoveries thankfully it's not mixing up the information just adding to it and making things easier the risk is not nearly as high as it seems with pickpocketing getting caught by most city folk and having to deal with the guards doesn't appear to stop you from making more attempts up until now i thought getting caught pickpocketing would lock you out of their inventory for the rest of the game but getting caught doesn't stop you from being able to pickpocket them again in thieves guild it seems to be time or loading screen based when you get caught but with city folk and getting caught by guards it appears as though you can instantly go back and try to pickpocket them again and take the rest of what you want i don't know if this is a special edition thing or if it's been that way the whole time but that makes pickpocket failure extremely forgiving and even easier to level than i first thought i did mention this at the very beginning but over leveling your character is a very real thing and pickpocketing can level you extremely fast so pickpocket is towards the end of the list because i don't think it should be a first priority if that makes sense probably one of my favorite things about the pickpocketing skill is the extra pockets perk generally to gain more carry weight you have to either have gear enchanted with it drink a potion that provides it for a short time or raise your stamina when you level up extra pockets is the alternative for a more permanent boost of 100 extra carrying capacity three perks minimum to get to but that is a lot of extra carry weight and part of the game is collecting a lot of stuff so that's what kind of made pickpocketing for me anyway yeah pickpocket is the most straightforward go for low weight high value items speech also known as speechcraft is the get what you want from npc's skill speech checks with npcs are few and far between but come in the variety of persuasion intimidation and bribery but speech checks aren't a reliable way to level anyway so let's move on to the thing that is the base value of items purchased and sold with skyrim merchants are the main thing that grants speech experience thanks to going over all of the crafting skills first you dragonborn hopefully have enough enchanted items and potions to sell in bulk this is time consuming if you want gold the entire time because you'll be tooling around looking for more people to sell to if you are still selling items when the merchant has zero gold you'll still gain speech experience if you're fortifying your speech and your barter skill it only mainly benefits skill gain when it comes to purchasing things because you can purchase more because it costs less this is perhaps the most important part to remember about bartering and raising your speech skill and that has to do with selling items in bulk if you sell an entire stack of one item you'll only get rewarded experience for one of those so selling items from a stack one at a time will grant more experience i apologize to those who use controllers separating items for this might be kind of rough so to summarize going through those crafting marathons with alchemy enchanting and smithing taking all of the items crafted and selling them one at a time even if the merchant is at zero gold is what levels up speech the most efficiently oh man we got through all the skills huh but there's more the legendary system came with the legendary update special edition comes with this by default this removed the level cap from skyrim and lets you reset skills after they hit max giving you back all those points spent and lets you continue leveling before you do this with any of the skill trees you want to make sure you ask yourself do i want to level this skill all the way up again saying it out loud helps me too i went over in the very beginning there is such a thing as over leveling your character so doing legendary resets on skills really early in the game can severely imbalance things but i don't think i need to hammer that point any harder here's what i do strongly suggest though don't reset your main combat skills any any combat skills for that matter one-handed two-handed destruction and archery all take a while to level up and your damage will be completely inhibited whereas the enemies will be quite spongy in comparison unless that's what you're going for what i will suggest is certain skill trees that are way easier to level than others these skills i'm going to recommend you'll have leftovers from and or are just easy once you have gear that fortifies magic skills first i recommend is alchemy if you've already gotten into the practice of collecting ingredients all the time and have green thumb you will have a massive residual amount of ingredients to mix more potions and knowing the ingredient's effects doesn't reset so a lot of the work with leveling up alchemy the first time isn't there and you can fully take advantage of that if you do legendary reset on your alchemy skill the rest i recommend performing legendary on are all mage skill trees because with maxdown enchanting you can fortify these magic schools and they are alteration illusion and conjuration these are by far some of the fastest leveling skills if you have fortified those magic schools on your gear assuming you have you can just continually reset these magic schools and level infinitely if that's what you really want to do the legendary system is actually one of the things i'm least familiar with in skyrim because i simply don't play past level 81 most times so i'd love to see some comments down below on which skills work best for you when it comes to using the legendary system i did have plans on like a werewolf and vampire lord leveling thing too but it's this guide is almost an hour long and i don't think my brain can handle any more skyrim research for now so if you made it to the end without skipping around thank you so much if you want to add to the leveling methods i was talking about or have your very own that you'd like to share please do so down below the community aspect is my favorite part about these guides because discussing things that we love and helping other players is nice if you did find this guide useful entertaining or both please do what you see fit to show that among the things you can do and what i would greatly appreciate is checking out patreon.com catogenesis becoming a supporter for as little as a buck will not only give you access to the monthly updates in which i show my face but also embarrassing stories while we're on the subject a special thank you to all my patrons those on screen now as well as wasteland legends sven and thank you for watching i'm catogenesis and may you wander tamriel like you own it you

Channel: Caedo Genesis

Views: 369,340

Rating: 4.9552908 out of 5

Keywords: how to level fast in skyrim, skyrim no glitch, skyrim level up fast, how to level up fast in skyrim ps4, how to grind levels in skyrim, skyrim leveling, skyrim leveling guide, skyrim leveling destruction fast, skyrim leveling enchanting fast, skyrim leveling smithing fast, skyrim leveling conjuration fast, skyrim leveling conjuration, skyrim leveling pickpocket fast, skyrim leveling restoration fast, skyrim leveling restoration, skyrim restoration 100, skyrim level up glitch

Id: GtC7AAAZ3nw

Length: 49min 48sec (2988 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 28 2020