Hey guys. I decided to post what I know about power leveling various skills to help you guys out. Those looking to start new characters ought to find the information in here very valuable. Also, if I've missed anything as far as power leveling tips be sure to let me know down below.
- Sneak -
- Upon starting a new game follow Hadvar or Ralof through Helgen and grab the dagger on the table in the torture room. When Hadvar/Ralof crouches down and hands you a bow sneak behind them and strike them continuously with your dagger. You should notice Sneak start to level rapidly. This goes faster based on how much you've invested in sneak (more attacks will register as sneak attacks) and how strong your attacks are. Expect Sneak to go from start to 100 within minutes. If you have the Legendary Edition of the game you can continuously reset sneak and keep the levels coming.
- Smithing -
- Craft some cheap iron daggers until you're able to take the Dwarven Smithing perk at level 30. From there amass as many dwarven ingots as you can and craft dwarven bows. Various dwarven scrap can be smelted into ingots, and there's plenty of Dwarven lairs to raid. You can even raid the museum in Markarth for a hefty supply of materials. The reason for this method: Dwarven ingots are very easy to come by and Dwarven bows require the least dwarven material. Smithing experience is dictated by the quality of material used. Basically dwarven bows strike the perfect balance between quality, rarity, and required resources.
- Alchemy -
- Alchemy experience is dictated entirely by the monetary value of what you craft. The more expensive the resulting concoction the more experience you'll gain. The value of a concoction is largely determined by how many effects it bears. Invisibility potions are very easy to make and are pretty valuable in their own right. Nevertheless here are some potions whose ingredients are fairly common but their value is through the roof.
- Invisibility - Luna Moth Wing, Chaurus Egg, Vampire Dust, Nirnroot
- Poison of Ravage Stamina/ Slow - Deathbell, Salt Pile, Thistle
- Potion of Resist Fire/Restore Magicka/Magicka Regen/Fortify Illusion - Fire Salts, Dragon's Tongue, Dwarven Oil
- Resist Frost/Resist Fire/Restore Magicka/Regen Magicka - Fire Salts, Moon Sugar, Snow-berries
- Speech -
- Sell everything you can to raise your speech level until you can take the Bribery perk at Speech level 30. Once you've done that, bribe every guard that catches you committing a crime. You'll gain a full level and then some for every guard you bribe. Just remember that once bribed a guard cannot be bribed again for two in-game days.
- Illusion -
- Join the College of Winterhold and take on the Mystic Tuning Gloves quest from Drevis Neloran. Make sure you have courage as well as muffle. As you proceed through the mystic tuning gloves quest one of the fonts will grant you a buff that drastically improves your magicka regen. Keep in mind the buff will only last 2 real life hours. While you have this effect spam courage on any NPC until you have enough magicka or the illusion adept perk needed to cast multiple rounds of muffle before running out of magicka. Muffle is worth a ton of illusion experience. With muffle and the magicka regen perk you can level illusion from start to 100 in about 30 minutes.
- Conjuration -
- Conjuration levels whenever you cast a conjuration spell in the midst of combat, but there is a faster way through Soul Trap. Simply kill a living creature or humanoid or find a dead body and then repeatedly cast soul trap on it. Conjuration can be maxed out within an hour.
- Restoration -
- Your Restoration experience is based on how much missing health you heal. You'll need the following: Healing, Atronach Stone or perk, and a floor triggered fire trap. Stand on the floor trap, allowing your character to be burned and keep Healing casted. You'll absorb magicka as you're being burned which will enable you to keep healing, and thus gaining experience for healing injuries.
- Alteration -
- Acquire the Detect Life spell. A copy will be given to you by Stalleo upon completing his quest tied to Treva's Watch. Take the spell and head to a densely populated area (Best bet is Riften's town square in the afternoon). Cast Detect life as long as you can repeatedly. The longer you can hold it and the more people who are detected the more experience you gain. Waiting will reset your magicka. Do so as needed.
- If you have the power "Secret of Arcana" use it and then grab something with Telekinesis. Keep the spell cast and attempt to fast travel. However many in-game hours it takes to arrive to your destination is the number of real life hours the game will think you've held down that spell. Naturally this will level up Alteration to 100 instantly.
- Block -
- The more damage that you mitigate through blocking and block enchantments, the more experience you gain. Grab yourself a shield, preferably one with a fortify block enchantment. Outfit yourself with the best armor you can find and grab as many healing potions as you can. Find yourself a giant and single him out from any other giant and mammoths in the area. Allow the giant to strike you as you block his attacks. Heal and/or run away as needed. Start this out with the game on novice and raise the difficulty as your block level increases. You'll gain one whole level per attack blocked up until about level 65 or so. Going from start to 100 takes under an hour.
- One & Two-Handed -
- The principle behind leveling sneak also works for these two skills albeit at a slower pace. Hadvar/Ralof can be struck repeatedly with your weapon of choice to level up their respective skill tree. The same can also be done to Shadowmere, since he is all but immortal. Continuously strike him to level up your weapon skills.
- Archery -
- Straight out of Helgen you should visit Faendal in Riverwood and complete the love letter mini quest he gives you to his advantage. He will be recruit-able as a follower once you do. Have him train you in archery. Since he's your follower you can simply take back the money you spend on his training. He can train you up to level 50. Archery tends to level pretty fast if bows are your main source of damage, but it can drag on a bit as you hit your 90's in that skill. Find Angi in the mountains just South-east of Falkreath. She offers you training in the form of several target practice mini games. Do this and you get a skill level for each game completed.
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Connections being slow so Im posting this as I work on it so I dont lose any work. Feel free to offer additional tips as I go along.
For enchanting use the Dawnstar glitch chest taking everything that is enchanted to disenchant, along with some unenchanted gear and all the filled soul gems.
Sneak -
you can also afk level it by 1) in Helgen Keep, the room where Ralof or Hadvar and their respective faction members wait for you before continuing on, it's the one right after the torture room, you can hang back
1) in Helgen Keep, the room where Ralof or Hadvar and their respective faction members wait for you before continuing on, it's the one right after the torture room, you can hang back by the wall and continue walking into it. I'm not sure if there's an option for consoles, but on the computer, you can press C and it'll auto walk. You can just leave it there and go do something else.
2) in Dragonsreach, go up the stairs to the second floor, make a left and walk straight right before the door, then make another left and you'll be on the overhang area. Walk over to the second to last beam and you can do the same thing as Helgen Keep. Just sneak and press C so your character will move by itself.
Smithing -
In addition to dwarven bows, you can also mine a bunch of iron ore (which is much easier to obtain in my opinion) and then transmute it into gold ores. With those, you can craft gold rings which yield quite a lot of exp as well.
Speech -
go to the Dawnstar Khajiit chest and just take everything. Then sell all your items to the Khajiit merchant. You won't earn any gold but selling your items will still yield speech experience. After you sold all of your items, go back to the chest and repeat until you're satisfied.
Conjuration -
kill an something or find a dead body and then repeatedly cast soul trap on it.
Hey these are pretty good tips. I'll definitely include them in this write up. Thank you.
For sneak you can literally sneak near any sleeping person and get exp if not noticed. You can prop the controller against a book and go away for some time, make a sandwich and come back to top sneaking abilities.
For alchemy, just use salmon roe and noric barnacles. You can get salmon roe easily by yelling at the fish (unrelenting force kills those surface level salmon that hang out in threes).
For restoration, turn undead spells work good but poison rune is the best. You can drop the rune anywhere, blow it up with a novice destruction spell and have it hit your follower. Easy exp whenever you want to do it while walking around doing other things.
For speech, see my post on it! There is a way to get to a very high level very quickly.
Enchanting is easy too. Buy a bunch of low level gems and give them to your follower along with a weapon with soul trap on it, not a crafted weapon but a found weapon. They will fill every gem in one kill.
For conjuration I find it easiest to keep recasting a bound sword spell when enemies are near.
*WALL OF TEXT!!!*
A tip for Alchemy leveling. Nordic Barnacle, Salmon Roe, and Garlic make an INCREDIBLY expensive potion when combined, around 1400 golf worth (sold for about half that). The ingredients aren't difficult to find either. When doing the Helgen escape mission make sure to grab the garlic hanging in the room where you're told to pick up some potions, make friends with Faendal and Lucan Valerious by doing their respective quests, this will alow you to take their garlic without stealing it, you'll have about 5 or 6 garlic, more if you steal from the Riverwood inn. The Nordic Barnacle is easy to get, go to the Guardian Stones and go down to the waters edge, look left toward the Lady Stone just a little ways up the river is a small land mass with a sunken Nordic ruin, collect all the barnacle there you can (watch out for slaughter fish), head to the Lady Stone and dive into the water and pick the shipwreck clean, you should come out with roughly 30 barnacles. The salmon roe is also easy, simply follow the river towards Riverwood and collect the JUMPING salmon on the smaller waterfalls there are 6 there. Continue your path to Whiterun until you've reached the first of the small falls and collect all the salmon until you have hit the bridge at the very bottom, there should be roughly 30 roe in your inventory. When crafted all together it will level you to 40 in Alchemy from 15 (it has every time I've done it.) I always do this if my charachter is going to use Alchemy. I never abuse this method with duping though as duping roe (on ps3 at least) will almost always crash your game if you go over 20+ samples of roe on the ground.
Wall of text indeed but valuable information nonetheless.
Not sure how you'd shorten it though. Maybe just include the ingredients and value?