Did you know that... ● You can max Alteration fast by maxing fortification enchantments and fast traveling as you hold an item with Telekinesis? ● You can max Conjuration fast by soul trapping a corpse repeatedly? ● You can max Stealth fast by backstabbing the Greybeards, Ralof, or Shadowmere nonstop? You might be able to guess how many times all three of these have been commented. These are exploits in my mind, and weren't included because of that. Free training from an ally was something far easier to explain away than these. But I pinned this just in case you wanna use them anyway, do with them what you will!
I don't know if you guys considers this a glitch, but even when you can't have a trainer as a follower, you can pickpocket your gold back, AND if you have a paralysis spell, poison or something with this effect, you can use it on the NPC and get all your money back. (I never thought of this as a glitch, since it makes sense, aswell as your friend training you for free).
Something about watching you pickpocket a guard, get caught, bribe them, then immediately just pickpocket all the money back was extremely entertaining to me
As a 70 yrs old grandma I sure do appreciate all these tips on Skyrim. Bought Skyrim for Switch when it first was available but didn't like playing it because the caves and dungeons were too dark for me to see anything. Just got the Anniversary edition and am spending hours on it. But I'm pretty lost on how to properly do things. Thanks.
How nice to see how varied the player community is here. Did you know you can set the brightness of your environment in the settings? That way caves will be easier to see. Of course, your character could wear a torch, use the Candlelight spell or the night eye vision if Khajiit or vampire too.
Thanks. I've found the updated version to be a bit brighter. I'll have a go at the controls on Switch and see if that helps. Next time, perhaps I'll play as a Khajiit. Again, thank you for your advice.@@Leto85
@@sstone6417 You're welcome! I play Skyrim on both pc and Switch, but on the last one I still have to get used to all the controls. Have you encountered any bugs yet? I mean with bugs like glitches in thd game. On the Switch we can't install mods that remove those bugs, hence my question.
I probably wouldn't know what a real "bug" or glitch actually is. Sometimes is doesn't run as smoothly as it should. (not sure if that is a glitch. ) All I know is that being older, I find it harder to see in the dark scenes. I also find the game a bit clunky compared to the new games (huge Zelda fan, so that's what I'm comparing it to.) It's still enjoyable though somewhat frustrating that I can't carry more weight. I did try the enchanted weight trick but it made me so strong that the game wasn't challenging anymore so I went back to the regular game. Don't know it that is what you're looking for. '-)@@Leto85
@@sstone6417 About carry weight, you can always just put pijnts into stamina, use the Steed Stone, get the pickpocket perk for extra pockets enchant you'd gear with fortify carry weight, wear armor thst increases carry weight, of drink potion that boost carry weight for 5 minutes. My favourite remains: Creep Cluster Mora Tapinella Scaly Pholiota.
For those rp heavy players that feel those methods are too exploitative. A companion training you and then giving the money back is basically "you're a friend, so that is for free", and selling things to get your money back is basically making a trade for the training. That's what I think to sleep at night.
This's exactly my thinking on it too, and why I included companion training while excluding backstabbing greybeards/shadowmere and soul trapping corpses. Those are a lot harder to explain in a roleplaying sense!
The alteration one is kinda easy too for you the loading screen is short but every time you fast travel the time of day changes so really you have been holding that bucket with telekinesis for multiple hours in game time
3 tips of my own: - putting the lovers stone on the aethereal crown allows you get its bonus on top of resting bonuses, if you equip it after - the black book in the raven rock mine doubles skill gains from books, allowing you to gain 10 free levels per skill - the speech perk merchant (level 50) allows you to sell any item to any merchant, making training with merchants significantly easier, combine with making and selling expensive potions and you'll be able to use your 5 trains per level easily.
one more tip on top that possibly lot of people know already. you can level sneak easily if you're just close enough to enemies, possibly where they don't even see you, and just auto-walk into a wall. go for a walk, go grab some food, return and find your sneak super high level :D
I love and appreciate this guide. I can’t be the only one that feels that glitching, exploiting, or outright cheating in a game ruins the feelings of authenticity, immersion, challenge, and fun of it. But since leveling skills in Skyrim can sometimes feel like a painful grind, this guide is pretty much essential. Thank you so much.
Yeah if you are using a glitch chest or duplication you might as well just use the console at that point. I'm fine with farming and cheese but not outright cheating
@@Dave-lh6ws amusingly, I'll console in alchemy ingredients because I'm lazy but I won't do the fortify alchemy/enchanting exploit to make obscenely powerful items because that feels more like cheating than just saving myself hours of grinding to gather ingredients. When you can 1-shot stuff just by looking at it, might as well just use 'kill' from the console at that point. Or you know, play on novice and 1-shot almost everything anyways.
So, talking leveling: Alteration: get the “Transmute Mineral Ore” spell from Halted Stream Camp; level until about 40 by turning Iron into Silver/Gold Ore, use to make jewelry, training Smithing as well. ASAP, get Telekinesis and Detect Life, which will power-level you. Illusion: Muffle and Calm Spells are your best bet; once at 100, do the master quest and get your hands on the Harmony spell and cast it about seven times on the stairs of Whiterun during business hours. Congratulations, you now have an EASY way to get to character levels 200+ with the Legendary update. Destruction: DON’T WASTE YOUR TIME; train with Faralda. If Gold is an issue, quick save and use pickpocket on sleeping trainers to level pickpocket as well. Conjuration: get a horse and soul trap it, or just find a dead body and soul trap it. Enchanting: for financial reasons, train with Sergius Turianus up to level 75 before disenchanting anything. It will be free (with pickpocket) to do so; then you can have enough perk points and items to get Enchanting up to 80 and get the perks to level it efficiently. Warrior skills: finish the companion’s quest line, then use the companions to train all relevant skills for free. Lockpicking: buy like 10000 lock picks and just break them all on Master Locks. Otherwise you’ll have to visit multiple dungeons and clear them to level the skill. Speech: train until 50 in the Dark Elf’s general store in Windhelm. You’ll have to do a short quest for him but it’s okay. Then, get the Merchant perk. Now, any trainer that is also a merchant can be bartered with, and ANY item you have to sell, they’ll buy. That means all those fancy enchanted iron Daggers or even those ridiculously valuable potions you’ve been stocking up on are suddenly valuable. Alchemy: Mora Tapinella, Scaly Pholiota and Creep Cluster. Plant a BUNCH at Lakeview Manor, then harvest those ingredients every week or so to make (arguably) the most efficient potion in the game. General Tips: - Train EVERY level. Don’t miss out!! It will save you SO much time. - Pinch your pennies!! It will get you more materials and skill-ups so you can level faster. - don’t sweat save scumming for pickpocket. There is never a way to make pickpocket 100% guaranteed (except through paralysis poisons and careful timing, but that’s a glitch) so I don’t at all feel bad about quick-loading until I’m successful. - if you are looking to make a character that’s level 140+, magic is the ONLY way to go. It is the fastest way to earn levels, by far. - if you don’t mind exploits as much, get yourself a bucket or something, make Alteration Spells free with enchanting, then cast telekinesis on said bucket, hold the spell for a moment and use the menu to fast-travel across the map. Congratulations, you are now level 100 alteration.
“If you have approached a giant at early play throughs, you may have had a quick meeting with the atmosphere.” I died laughing at how true this statement was! lol
Thank you so much for this glitchless guide. I’m still relatively new to the game, & for me, at this stage, glitches take the fun out. You’ve corrected a number of misconceptions I had that I had no idea were slowing me down (like enchanted weapons & one-handed). I really appreciate all the time you put into making this. It must have been a ton of hours. You explain things well & concisely. Thank you!!
I played this game so much when it first came out, and then I did the book exploit and increased all of my skills to 80. I was stupid powerful, and the game became fun for 10 mins and then I just got bored and stopped playing altogether. Just recently picked it back up again, and I will not use exploits because they just kill the fun for me.
This guide is the best guide i've ever seen for levelling up each skill without using exploits or glitches. I am playing skyrim again after a long time and i've been coming back to this video multiple times whenever i need to know how to level something. Love it man. Thanks so much for this
I always go for assassin builds on my playthroughs and I would always power level sneak and one handed in Helgen then smithing and enchanting to instantly become OP
@@gammaplaya2723 you forgot alchemy for the loop then leveling armor just becomes standing there in armor that's enchanted for health and magic regeneration
@@direwolf8703 I got so used to abusing alchemy that I don't make it a seperate part in my builds, it's always there, it becane so natural to me to abuse alchemy that I must instantly buy the falkreath home and abuse the creep cluster, mora tapinella, and scaly phobia garden
A tip for people trying to level smithing: if you want your crafted items to be of use to you, craft arrows later on when your smithing skill is higher. It's not great with iron or steel arrows, so I recommend starting to craft arrows when you have dwarven unlocked. You will need fire wood for arrows, but if you've unlocked hendraheim there's a wood chopping station and I think there's a wood chopping axe there too. Gloombound mine can get you a lot of ebony, which is good for smithing stuff and selling to the blacksmith outside the mine. I don't know if this is true but you might need to be an orc/orc friend to go there. Another tip is mines won't recharge if you are right outside when you wait. You will have to travel somewhere else to wait, then go back. Edit: spelling
@@firesaint4569 yeah bro people up over 100+ end up do a lot of not doing any objectives at all for much of their playthroughs due to time spent leveling up their character, someone in another comment was just saying your still new to Skyrim if you haven't got in 1000 hours or more lol I told him i discovered everything and completed nearly all side stuff in much less than that which is surely not considered a new player. I just like to get laid and do other shit from time to time so i keep myself from being a 1000s of hour olayer Edit: well i might have over 1000+ just for the fact that i have been replaying it every often for the past 10 years now
My all time favorite potion, that I'll NEVER forget, is Luna Moth Wing, and Vampire Dust. It makes you invisible, and heals you! With no negative effects, even at low levels!!
Alchemy potion: Salmon Roe and Histcarp share 3 properties including water breathing, making a powerful and valuable potion with 3 positive effects. This also leaves room for a third ingredient that can match the missing fourth effect from one or both of the original ingredients.
Actually no. Nordic Barnacles just has water breathing which makes it basically the same as just Salmon Roe and Histcarp BUT Salt pile adds Magic Regeneration increase which makes it a 4 effect potion, all positive effects and EXTREMELY valuable.
The absolute most expensive potion you can make requires the hearthfire dlc. It requires salmon roe, garlic, and a nordic barnacle. With the right perks in the alchemy tree you can make it worth 17k+ gold. Without the dlc it’s giant’s toe, wheat, and creep cluster. It will sell for about 8k gold
Each crafting skill tree increases by the worth of what you are making. And with speech it increases in a similar way. If you sell something to a vendor for an outrageous amount of money, they won’t have the gold, but it will increase your speech skill faster than your normal trading.
Find out what your potion is worth, and then buy whatever the merchant has until they have enough gold to pay for your potion. You leave with all their gold, all their crafting materials, all their ingredients, all their soul gems, all their arrows and lockpicks... and anything you can disenchant. All that stuff is useful for levelling.
Good tip for enchanters do the black star quest early by going to the shrine of azura and then you bring the star to Nelacar, Destroy Malyn Varen's soul(go inside the star and fight him), then you get an infinite reuse black soul gem which when killing any humanoid beings, such as Men, Mer, Argonians, Khajiit, and Dremora gets filled. These count as grand souls and there is an abundance of them around the world.
@@dariobarboni9276 it essentially becomes an infinite use white soul gem rather than an infinite black soul gem. Ultimately it’s harder to get white grand souls outside of killing giants and mammoths so you’d be better off going for the other option
@@boney2982 Also you can bury Grand Soul gems at virtually everyone at the college and most other mage types once you're a decent level, whereas Black Soul Gems are only sold by Falion in Morthal if I remember right.
That is true, for levelling it is still good, though sometimes one wants to have potions that are good to sell and good in combat. Slow is good for archers, makes it easier to keep distance and getting away from fights in general. Regenerate Magicka + Weakness to Magic is a liability, personally having only 1 build that can make optimal use of it, that build also being the reason that I knew that Dwarven Oil doesn't have Slow.
Thank you so much for this guide! I started this journey just 5 days ago and still have a ton to learn. And man I don't think you're boring, your speech is fluid and energetic, straight to the points, and without the weird vocal "fry-ness" which make people sound weird, boring and incompetent.
Pro tip: for the slower leveling skills like restoration and armor, save your skill books until you get the skills into the 90s. If you pick up a skill book from a chest you won’t auto-read it so you can hold onto it and use it later. If you find it outside of an inventory you can ask your follower to pick it up and then take it from their inventory.
Not sure if anyone has mentioned this but if your spouse is a follower and is currently following you, any bed/sleeping roll you sleep in will give you the full 15% lover's comfort bonus - not just the bed at your home.
Also, if you put the Lover Stone on the Aetherium Crown you can get Lover's Comfort AND the Lover Stone. Oh and the Guardian Stone of your choice. That's a cool 40% experience boost.
I've got probably thousands of hours in this game, and I literally never noticed that the background on the level up screen indicates which stone boosts each skill until you mentioned it
When it comes to the Transmute spell & smithing, try to keep some of the ore as silver if you want to use up the more common gems. A lot of gems (amethyst, garnet, etc) can only be used in silver jewelry, so storing the silver ore (via chest or asking a companion to hold it) before using the transmute spell again for the next piece is the only way to do that if you have a stack of iron ore to go through. The spell will prioritize turning silver to gold before transmuting the iron in your inventory. I usually go about this in one of two ways: 1. I put on robes that give me more magicka, better magicka regen, etc., and go piece-by-piece in my house while standing in front of a chest, storing each piece after I transmute it. 2. When transmuting a few in a row while walking around, I'll stop on a silver ore every once in a while (when I've got a big stack of ore to get through) and ask my follower to carry the gold ore (so that it's not weighing me down) and the silver ore. You don't get as much silver from this one, but it beats having to talk to your companion each time you transmute one.
That is a great suggestion! It would require more inventory management and world interactions…so, I worry it would just get frustratingly slow. Near the start of the game, I can sell 2 gold rings for ~60-80 gold. What are the initial prices you get on silver/gem jewelry? If it’s like 500 gold, that is a huge deal, and maybe worth the repetitive world interactions…but if it’s like 100-200? I’m too impatient. For me, the goal is XP per hour of game-play, not per in-game-action. It’s really fast to stand next to a bed with 4 transmutation items and just spam 4 transmute and sleep on 100-200 iron ore, all in a go. That can be done under the Mage Stone and you can get free Conjuration levels from the trainer/follower in Tel Mythrin every time you level. Then you only need to make one switch to Warrior Stone to smith the gold. But, if the price you get for the pieces is high enough, that puts you in a whole new economic tier of the game, so it might be worth it.
@@3phemaral I would definitely recommend leveling up speech & enchanting to make more money selling the jewelry. Also, I can’t remember what it’s called, but the quest where you help the talking dog gets you a special mask at the end that gives you a speech boost when you wear it. I find it’s very handy to equip it before selling & buying, then equip my helmet again when I’m done.
I don't know if anyone's mentioned this, but the new Soul Stealer arrows from CC are an infinite supply of filled black soul gems as long as you use them only to last hit human enemies.
Leveling sneak can be done AFK in the beginning by going to "White River Watch" a little SW from Whiterun. when you enter the cave an old man in a chair asks if you are Rodolf, say yes and he wont be hostile but still counts as an enemy. So just crouch and back into the wall with a rubber band on your controller or something pushing down on your keyboard and tadaa free levels. This method is slow but you can set this up and then go to bed, work, or school and when you come back after a several hours and maxed out sneak that doesn't require specific equipment, skills, or complicated setups.
There's a kid at Riverwood that stands on the bridge (until you go to whiterun and speak to the Jarl for the first time) that's incredibly easy to sneak behind. Sometimes his dog is there and ruins it, but it's not very common. As for controller drift, I've done afk tricks like this for over a decade with elder scrolls games, and never had controller drift issues. You're probably just tying down way too tightly.
The best potion for levelling alchemy is by far Garlic + Nordic Barnacle + Salmon Roe Salmon Roe's waterbreathing effect is absolutely busted and gives you something like 20x the value of normal waterbreathing potions. You get salmon roe by catching salmon jumping upstream, my favourite locations are the waterfall between guardian stones and the waterfall near the honningbrew meadery, this area gets me atleast 20 roe. You can also farm it at the morthal hearthfire home but you need to put a salmon roe in the fishery and kill the salmon that spawn, easiest way with unrelenting force. Also by far the best way to overlevel your character past 81 is with the harmony spell. Try and get in the very middle of whiterun, which the best spot is behind the pelagia house near the market and spam harmony, and you can get from 15 to 100 in like 2 or 3 casts. With this method i got myself from 81 to ~270 in around 2 hours.
@@gearygipson6204 That used to be the best potion before Hearthfire was released but the salmon roe ingredient is overpowered beyond belief. Try it yourself in a game and see it yourself.
I've found leveling up sneak after illusion so you have access to the invisibility spell is really easy. And Illusion is arguably the fastest skill to level (spam muffle till lvl 75, get invisibility and spam until 100, quick waiting 1h when you run out of magika)
In special edition, there is the Goldenhills Plantation near Rorikstead that has 38 planting plots (plus six if you get the upgrade) and you can plant alchemy ingredients. They will be collected daily by farmhands along with a daily profit; infinite ingredients/potions and money. You get the home through the Unquiet Dead quest started through either visiting the house or through the Bannered Mare
This guide predates A.E., and was intended to be useful for players still using Oldrim or Switch. Of course, the Switch version has A.E. *NOW,* but that was after this video aired.
This guide is all about non vampire + werewolf leveling Faster levels 0:35 AETHERIAL crown - hold last standing stone + current standing stone = both lovers and 1 of 3 class stones Rest: unowned 5%, owned 10%, spouses bed 15% (8 hours not sure if ingame or realtime) ^Stones - 3 classes + lovers 4:30 Trainers about 3 times expensive post lvl 50 + increasingly difficult. ^Mage skills go to winterhold ^Warrior go to companions ^Theif go to riften If book > 20 gold probably skill book if
A near decade old game, and a guide for leveling in said game. Yet here I am watching every minute of it. Caedo has clearly leveled his Speech skill too high
Awesome video! Some notes: 1. You can unequip the Aetherium Crown with the lover stone ability in it, rest at a bed and then equip it again. That way you gain both the resting effect and the Lover's Comfort. 2. You can get the Telekinesis spell early in the game by going in the Redwater Den. It is on a cell that you can access by either breaking in the door opposed to the place you get the skooma or by getting high with it (you will be trapped in the very cell with the spell that way). 3. You can level sneak and one handed in the first quest of the game. For one handed with Hadvar: don't open the chest with the apparel and weapon in the first room, instead pick one sword on the weapon rack and start attacking him. He will not turn hostile and you can train up to level 100. One handed with Ralof: after killing the first two enemies, be quick and grab the Helgen key from the official corpse. That way he can't open the door and will be waiting for you to open. You can attack him and he won't fight back. 4. Sneaking on the first quest (Unbound): when Ralof or Hadvar asks you to sneak by the bear, they will be crouching. That way you can go behind them on sneak mode and spam the attack button to level sneak. Note that they will be pushed away with every strike, so find a spot when they will be stuck on the wall. If you try this method earlier, when they will be standing still, you have to attack them, back away a little, wait, and then attack again, so its better to wait the bear section. 5. The game will crash with Turn Undead and Rally if you cast with both hands when your magicka are low. To avoid that, cast with both hands normally, and when your magicka close to empty, cast with one hand only. Wait (or sleep), and repeat the process. 6. For those how are vampires and are leveling restoration for the necromancy perk, you can take one of the undead dogs from castle Volikhar and use turn undead on him. He will not turn hostile and you can level up on a controlled environment. Just remember the past tip. 7. The best imgredients combination I found to level alchemy is: salmon roe (use the flame spell in the ones that is jumping the waterfalls in the river that connects Riverwood to Whiterun) + Nordic Barnacles (found in sunken ships. That's one on the lake in front of the 3 standing stones. Some can be found under the bridge leading to the Jarl's palace in Witherun) + Garlic (found everywhere. In the helgen keep there's some, in Gerdur home, if you complete the Carlotta mini-quest, you can take from her standing) and blue mountain flower (found on the road from the cave exit of Helgen leading to Riverwood) + creepcluster (found south of Windhelm, on the marsh. Is the red thing that looks like roots) + giant toe (well, giants lol). 8. You can level conjuration by using soul trap in any dead corpse. If are a conjure pacifist (?), there's a skeleton under the bridge leading to Dragonsreach (same place that you found the nordic Barnacles). 9. You can train a skill with a trainer and then pickpocket him for a very fast leveling up in both the skill you chose and pickpocket.
To max alchemy again after legendary, you need a garden where you can plant things. Plant Creep cluster, Mora Tapinella and Scaly Pholiota. These will produce 3 (MT) or 5 ingredients when harvested and can be harvested every few in game days. The three together produce a highly valuable potion, crafting which will advance your alchemy skill massively, especially if you wear items to boost alchemy. Less than 200 of each will get your alchemy from 15 back to 100 in a few minutes (taking all the alchemy perks as they become available again), raising your overall character level a number of times in the process. AND will give you a large number of valuable potions to sell to get cash.
Damn your project is worth so much to teach others the best ways to play Skyrim. You're the MENTOR OF SKYRIM on god man you did an amazing job on making this guide. So helpful !!!!
I just watched you talk for about 50 minutes without a break and not only was I not bored? I actually want to attemot skills I've ignored since I've been playing skyrim. You really did a great job keeping the info short, to the point but detailed enough that I have no follow up questions. The perfect skill guide.
This video is so amazing and has definitely been the most helpful Skyrim video ever. Also at 25:49 the bandit getting blasted with rag doll effect then immediately fading screens is hilarious for some reason.
Angie's Bow is actually the fastest bow in the game for draw speed and has the same base damage as the hunting bow which is slightly better than zephyr if your trying to get multiple instances per creature. Also the quest that gets you Angie's bow gives you 6 levels of Archery. And there is an archery skillbook there that can give you 7th level of Archery. So if you are at 90+ Archery you can get most of the way to 100 by completing just one quest.
If you're going to level smithing and enchanting its better to actually level alchemy first, since its the easiest to level of the three and it gives you so much money that you can now buy your way through the lvl100 to the others.
Under Smithing you forgot to mention the ancient knowledge perk you get from the lexicon. Depending on the patch your skyrim is in it can give you 15% smithing leveling bonus or 15 raw levels which help defense when upgrading an armor piece
All around it's a good guide, as an experienced player I did pick up a few things from this video,specifically the magic aspect but I would say that for pretty much any build or play style alchemy,enchanting, and blacksmithing will be you're best friend pretty much through the entire playthrough. Thanks again 👍👍
One thing I really enjoy about your guides, walk-throughs & even following the Cowboy playthrough on Fallout New Vegas is the amount of detail & simplicity in such a huge amount of information. And you can feel that sense of enjoyment in still playing the classics like Skyrim & New Vegas. Used & watched the NV guides frequently & after (finally) getting all the DLC for Skyrim last year I found everything extremely overwhelming & difficult to build up my character (Breton or Argonian being my preferred choices) but this guide has brought back that itch to re-restart a new character, combat's armour skills have been the biggest pain to manage but that's been due to humanoids being main targets or jumping too early after Trolls, Mammoths & getting ambushed by Giants or Dragons.
If you go through the quest Unfathomable Depths, you can gain Ancient Knowledge, which allows your smithing to increase 15% faster. Not that much, but it stacks with the Standing Stones so that ends up giving you a grand total of +50% with the warrior stone, Lovers Embrace, and Ancient Knowledge.
you can actually get it even higher if you have the dawnguard DLC, The quest lost to the ages lets you craft one of three different aetherial things, if you craft the crown you can have 2 standing stones active at once(one of them is linked to the crown). this allows you to have the lover's stone and the warrior stone active at once(make sure you have the lover's stone linked to the crown). meaning you can get a 60% smithing boost(lovers comfort, well-rested, ancient knowledge and warrior stone). make sure you unequip the crown(removing the lover's stone) before you sleep because the game won't give you well rested if you have the lover's stone activated.
So I just made an Illusionist sneaky assassin who sneaks in and kills with poisons through pickpocketting... Got to Bleak Falls Barrow and realized both illusions and poison are completely useless against undead. Fr*ck
Hello! Half Eaten Watermelon here aka H.E.W. I would like to give my 2 cents about leveling in Skyrim not to take away from the guide that you made, actually to add to it. You did a great job for those who want to play the game in a fair manner. First off I play on Legendary difficulty and made it to about level 105. If you want to level up faster play on harder difficulties. I have adapted to incorporate all three types of classes in gameplay but, I use the mage stone myself. Usually at the start of a battle I cloak with a flame cloak (Which the spell can be found at Yisra's Beachside Combustion. To the right or East of Dawnstar and if you have pasted the Tower Stone. You have gone too far.) Then I use an Alteration Spell to boost my armor rating temporarily. Then I use a Conjuration spell to summon a creature. Lastly I use bound sword then engage with shield. (I only use one handed weapons. I can't stand two handed but I did level to 100 for the sake of leveling up.) That is my offensive attack but, I have a defensive before things get hairy. All I do is crouch and use a bow and arrow. Take out my enemies silently. Now about leveling. I am going to start with the classes I level up the most with one handed, conjuration and block. Conjugating is versatile which suits my gameplay perfectly. There are different ways to go about it and it's super easy to level up. Personally I don't use reanimate it depends on a dead body rather than summoning something out of thin air. The bounds weapons are a game changer and is really how it makes versatile. Starting with soul stealer is great if your trying to level up Enchanting as well. Also you can skip out on that and use the spell soul trap and that will level Conjuring faster. The problem for me especially in bigger battles I tend to forget to cast soul trap on enemies. Losing opportunities to capture souls. The next skill up from that is Oblivion Binding. You can use a perk that controls other summoned creatures to your side and attack the opponent. Like Command Daedra for example but that's a higher level spell. I don't use it. I mainly use Oblivion Binding to one shot summoned creatures back to their hole and if one my creatures that I summoned is standing in my way. I just hit it and it disappears. Also I need to get rid of them if I just got done with a fight and want to proceed unnoticed. If you have the Dragonborn DLC and acquire the Ash Guardian spell you can actually summon him while you have a vanilla game conjured creature like one of the atronach. Without the Twin Soul perk but be careful if you don't have a heart stone it can attack and kill you. I usually try to summon them away from me so they can focus on the enemy rather than me or my summoned creature but that doesn't always happen. I rarely die from them and I never carry heart stones. Also I always use the aid of my creature to help kill it if he is the last one standing. I only use him when the odds are completely overwhelming. One handed and block all I do is go up to the enemy and shield bash then slash with a sword. (I only use swords) The shield bash will stun the enemy then slash to do extra damage and repeat. So pretty much the enemy stands there while you are just doing damage but they do move so you would want to back them into a corner. With the difficulty I play on that isn't always possible especially when the numbers are against me and the enemies are too overwhelming. That's when I back off I use my bow and arrow. Let my conjugated creature get in the thick of the battle soaking up all the damage. Now the crafting skills I would like to talk about. Smithing, yes it is good to do gold or silver jewelry but also it's great for building armor then lastly improving weapons and that is the order I do it in. If you have the DLC Hearthfire. Get all three houses. Build, Build Build! Make them as big as possible and build inside your house because the materials like iron fittings, locks, nails and hinges. Which really help leveling your Smithing but your going to need a lot Iron and Sawn Logs. Then I take the items I created or collected on my travel. Use all the soul gems on those items. Which would level your Enchantment in no time. Also the items are worth more when you sell them. The thing is when both Smithing and Enchanting are level 100 you can create some awesome stuff! So save those dragon bones and scales to make armor and improve it! (I use heavy armor). Enchanting is even better in my opinion because you can put two enchantments on the same item with the Extra Enchantment perk. You could be one mean dude. Once you get what you want Legendary would be the way to go and you can use those perks on different skill trees. Alchemy is easy too all you do is collect ingredients and they aren't heavy at all. I don't use potions because I purely depend on my skills and perks. I make them to level up and to sell them. You don't want to use all your ingredients up because of the perk Experimenter that has three levels. You got to be level 90 to get the last level of that perk but eat those ingredients! Rather than wasting your ingredients and trying to figure out potions. That will tell you what each ingredient can do but, after you figure out most of the ingredient possibilities, Experimenter becomes useless so making that skill Legendary is also ideal. Like he said get the green thumb perk and stock up so you can level up faster the next time. The last two skills I want to mention is lockpicking and pickpocketing. For lockpicking all I do is go straight to the thieves guild and do all but, the last mission of the guild to acquire the skeleton key. The lockpick that never breaks but it will be slower to level up. I want the goods without the risk of running out of lockpicks. Like he said avoid keys and wax keys because that is XP your missing out on. Go for it once you got to level 100 and have the unbreakable perk. Then finish the Thieves Guild! I don't suggest making this skill legendary because for me this was one of the last skills I reached level 100 and like I said I don't to worry about running out of lockpicks. Pickpocketing is easy especially if you stay on top of your perks in the skill tree as you level up. Just go to the holds and raid people's pockets! Also what I do is in combat I use the calm spells to calm my opponent. Pickpocket and steal their stuff then kill them. I don't do this in big fights. Usually on small bands of bandits or situations I know I can handle. That's about it and what I got if you needed any extra help Thank you Caedo Genesis for making this video. You did great. Have a good day!
For conjuration if you have it maxed out and have done the Mages guild quest line then you can talk to the conjuration mage in on the halls and he’ll have the conjure daedra lord spell very OP👌
I cant believe how long of a video this is, It felt like I was only here at the desk for 20 mins, Amazing video dude! Hats of to you for an informative and entertaining video!
Fantastic video. Recently hopped back on and was rrying to actually finish the main story for once. This guide has helped me get prepared for the journey. Thank you
For enchanting, I would recommend waiting until after level 21 so you can get the banish enchant which is worth a lot when slung on iron daggers. I goto feraldas the Bowyer in solitude, quick save before talking to him, if he doesnt have something with banish I hit him with a sword, quick reload and try again. The weapon can cost around 6k so have around that with you.
speech can also be leveled quite fast by having a small bounty on your head and having the speech skill at 75 or 40 and every speech enhancing effect dibellas amulet shrine of dibella and giving a beggar a coin and you can walk up to any guard in an area once speak with the guard and choose the now coming up speech option to let you go
This was a very detailed and highly helpful video, probably 1 of the best that i have seen. There was a ton of stuff in there I didn't know or think of so thank you for all your time and efforts.
This is a fantastic basic tutorial on the skills and levels. Really dense with a lot of information. Bit overwhelming tbh but I love how concise you are. Definitely going to look for more detailed info on your channel
Hey! This video, from the quality of your narration and writing, to how effectively you laid it in order, prompted me to subscribe and dig through your other Skyrim videos! This is very well done, and you linking the time codes means that I’ll probably come back to here several times through my various playthroughs!
For a good early setup for Enchanters: Go to Ironbind Barrow (NE of Whiterun, just N of the Nightgate Inn) to pick up the Fiery Soultrap enchantment and continue on to the Statue of Azura to start the quest for the Star. And, when you get to that point, choose the Black Star because so you'll always get GRAND (as in black because humanoid) Souls and black Soulgems are the rarest and hardest to get of all, while you'll always find Bandits or Thalmors to farm for black souls. This route can be done at level 1, gives you a guaranteed Soultrap (with added fire Damage) enchantment, a guaranteed, reusable black soulgem aaaand, if you're a fan of Jaysus Swords, gives you the Azurbrand, one of the top coolest swords of the mod.
One of the fastest leveling characters I made uses conjuration for the core. Battling my own atronochs with a bound sword(also levels one handed) and looping transmute, smith jewelry, enchant and sell got me leveled so fast. Buy iron ore and empty soul gems, pickpocket stones. This guide reflects it all.
A little note on the lockpicking; if you're playing the Switch version, TURN ON HD RUMBLE. Skyrim has one of the very best-case uses for it out of all the games on the console, for those with sensitive fingers; when lockpicking, the controller will vibrate with every few inches you move the pick, as if you were actually scraping against the tumblers in the lock. When you find the "sweet spot" that will open the lock, the vibration will become ever so slightly stronger, when the player rotates the pick over it. If you concentrate on this & get good at figuring out which side of the sweet spot you should rotate from, even Master Locks won't use up more than two or three picks per attempt. I've started enjoying Lockpicking a LOT more after I began using rumble. It increases immersion by an insane amount. Also, I recommend skipping the unbreakable picks perk. Pick breaks are exp, you find plenty as-is, & it feels good to get good enough that they don't break because you're skillful, rather than because they can't break at all.
I had rumble on the whole first character and never noticed this. Then, when I started my second character, I noticed it in the first lock you pick in the cell door in torture chamber in Helgen. It takes almost no time to get used to. I have played 4-5 characters to L50+ and broken less than ten picks since then…and I wasn’t avoiding the locks or anything. And the only picks I’ve broken result from a thumb slipping off one of the sticks, I sneezed IRL. There was one Master lock where the sweet spot was, near as I could tell, all the way to the right, but one smidge. I broke a pick on that smidge and it took me a while to mess with to figure it out. That was the only time I “legitimately” broke a pick because I intentionally put it in the wrong place by mistake.
@@3phemaral Similar story for me; I only noticed this on my second character, but my reason was because, with my first [on Switch at least], I didn't use the rumble, to save battery. Now, on my second, I play using a pro controller, so I use rumble since the battery is better. It makes a world of difference; brings me back to my days on the N64 when the rumble pack was still a huge deal.🤣
So with the aetherial crown you can get the lovers comfort buff, one standing stone buff, and the lovers stone buff allowing you to level up a groups of skills 50% faster which if you are a necromage vampire means you can level up 62.5% faster.
@@nicholausstevens1262 Also if you have the ancient knowledge passive that goes up to 65% faster without necromage and 81.25% faster with necromage if your doing smithing.
Thank you so much for this guide. I remember wanting to try do different playstles but never being really effective, so I appreciate this mass breakdown. When I start playing again I want to make a crazy mage-warlord who crafts their own great magic items and I think this guide will definitely help in that regard.
Well: After more than 10 years of playing Skyrim, this video sums up all the positive experiences i had with this incarnation if the Elder Scrolls Series so far - without misusing any "glitches" the programmers had left. Well done!
The most informative video ive seen dude thank you so much ! I can stop being frustrated at dying all the time now lmaooooooo i used to play it like almost 7 years ago now its like learning chinese
There's also a couple of ways to fill soul gems that were added by the Dawnguard DLC. The first one is the soul fissures in the Soul Carin. If you have empty soul gems, you just have to simply walk up to them and activate then and they will fill one soul gem each. The other way, you have to actually obtain by summoning Durnevhir in Tamriel 3 times. Each time you summon him, he'll give you a word of the Soul Tear shout. It's just like the spell or the enchantment, but in a shout.
So what I do to level my armor and block skills is I first level my smithing and enchant to make some armor that gets me to the armor cap and makes restoration magic free then I level restoration to get some potent healing spells and I walk into a giants camp and get beat on by as many giants as possible which lets the armor from 15 to 100 pretty quickly all things considered though it is better to use training whenever you get the chance.
Faster ways to level two skills are available now with Anniversary Edition: Destruction, and Enchanting. Destruction is the easiest and requires the least amount of explaining. Go to Hob's Fall Cave and find the big chest at the end of the dungeon (you will have to fight some mages). It will have every new spell added by Arcane Accessories (free with Anniversary Edition). Twelve of these spells are Destruction tomes, but specifically you want to focus on either Unbounded Frost or Unbounded Storms. Casting either of these increases your Destruction, _even if no one is being damaged._ Do be careful where you do this though because the range is magnificent and doing this in a settlement, or even near your follower, will cause problems. Enchanting is now most effectively leveled by incorporating two homes found in Skyrim: Myrwatch, and Bloodchill Manor. Unfortunately the latter requires you to reach level 14 first and complete a quest. Why incorporate these homes for enchanting? Both of these homes have heart stones and a staff enchanter. This one requires some technical knowledge. In Skyrim, you gain a "buff" once you arrive in Solstheim that multiplies the experience you gain from Neloth's staff enchanter by 0.005, thus reducing the effectiveness of enchanting your own staves. Myrwatch's staff enchanter is already affected by it the instant you finish Unbound, but the staff enchanter at Bloodchill Manor is completely unaffected until you go to Solstheim. Knowing this, you can grab the unenchanted staves and heart stones from Myrwatch and bring them to Bloodchill manor to either gain a lot of skill levels in Enchanting, or finish it off from as early as 90. Fastest way to get to 90 is, of course by training with Hamal in the Temple of Dibella after completing the Heart of Dibella. And if that's too much, or if you feel like keeping your gold (or at least not pickpocketing a Sybil of Dibella), enchanting experience is determined by the value of the item you are disenchanting. Waiting to disenchant items until you get the highest leveled loot (level 48) will benefit you greatly if your goal is to soar from 15-100 as fast as possible. And since you've read this far, here's a tip Caedo missed: followers and merchants that are trainers are indeed a good way to get your gold back after training, but there is one trainer who can get you your gold back exclusively through _marriage._ He is an Argonian named Scouts-Many-Marshes, found in the docks of Windhelm. Do his quest and you now have a Common level Light Armor trainer who will open his own shop once you're married. Better still, he will produce 100 gold daily, lightening the cost a tid bit each time you visit your husband. Every other viable mate that is also a trainer also happens to either be a follower or a merchant already, so there is no advantage gained on this front.
This guide is amazing! Like many here, been playing forever with well over 1k hours in the game. Still play both console and VR. Can't believe how much I got from this. Brilliant.
Leveling up 2 handed and have found the Soul Tear shout to be invaluable since I don't have the free hand. Even if the shout itself doesn't get the kill, you can still trap the soul if you kill the target quick enough. Easier said than done, seems like I have less than a second to land the killing blow to get the soul. Still won't ressurect the target if the shout doesn't get the last shot, but the souls are nice.
What I usually do in most of my runs, sooner or later in the game to level is to buy common or worse soul gems to everyone I cross, use a bow with soul trap (also can be the summoned one is you have the perk), make a lot of iron daggers and that leather armour for the arms and enchant all of it. If you find or you can buy and disenchant a weapon with the exile daedra enchantment it will make extra valuable iron daggers (over 2000 gold value). With that you level enchantment super fast and also smithing and speech. And you gain a lot of gold to upper other habilities with training.
My personal favorite for alchemy is canis root, imp stool and mora tepinella for paralysis and lingering damage health. I always get a hearthfire home with planters to grow these. With anniversary edition, I get the Golden Plants Plantation ASAP to grow these.
not sure if mentioned already but in ravenrock when you go into the house with the two ladies with daggers, you can sit in a corner and level block to 100 in about 9 minutes (i timed). they hit hard and really fast, if armour is good enough you can also level that and restoration so its a great spot to max those
This was a pretty useful guide. For first time players, a lot of pain and suffering is saved from what you've learned from trial and error. For veteran players, they've gone through the trials and errors, but now the knowledge is organized and made self evident.
For smithing I think it’s best to go to dwemer dungeon and get all the scrap metal and stuff that can be made to dwemer ingot.Then make with just 2 dwemer ingot and 1 iron ingot a dwemer bow and you level your smithing fast plus you get a lot of gold.Great video keep up the good content.👍
for Restoration specifically, it's arguably worth giving up the exp. bonus from the mage stone or lover stone to activate The Ritual Stone, which allows you to raise the dead en masse and thus gives you a huge group of valid targets for the Repel Undead spells. Ritual Stone also reanimates dead for 3 times as long as the conjuration spells, so you can cast repel at that large herd for a lot longer and gain a lot more restoration levels.
I thought I would just be watching this to learn how to level up quicker and be bored the entire time and I’d just be skimming through but I actually watched every second of this- very interesting to watch!! As a 3 year skyrim player (never had anything to play it on before then [brOke], just constantly watched videos about it before that) I don’t know how I’ve not watched this yet- the time I could’ve saved!!
There are so many things I missed during my playthroughs of Skyrim. Thank you for shedding light on these things.. it makes me want to go back and play it again =D
Alternatively: Cast telekinesis on an item, pause and fast travel across the map - holding down the spell button the whole time. This counts as travelling that distance with the spell, and because Telekinesis XP is based on distance, you'll hit level 100 instantly if travelling far enough.
20:06 As a side note to enchanting: The soul used to enchant an item does not matter, neither does the value of the enchantment, you will always get 1 XP per enchantment. This means that even with a low level in speech buying a the materials needed to craft an iron dagger and a filled petty soul gem then enchanting the dagger with "Turn Undead" will allow you to generate money while leveling enchanting as fast as possible
I haven’t watched the whole sneak segment and I’m 2 years late but getting a follower, putting it on legendary mode then hitting them with a dagger over and over whilst in sneak mode is a great way of getting it up. If they leave your service just talk to them and get them to join back
my personal way to get a few easy smithing and enchanting levels one time is just to go to dwenmer ruins and make dwarvern stuff, improve it, and enchant it.
Ok. I have done 8 playthrough's of this game unmodded on console, and a few more modded that I never finished. Just started playing a vanilla run again, saw this video and obviously like the content here so of course I clicked. I NEVER knew that the skills in the skill menu were COLOR CODED. LIKE WHAAAAT???? HOW DID I NEVER NOTICE THAT?? Well, thanks Cardeo ;) , lol, learned something new, man. I wish I could like this video 20 times with that information ALONE
For damage leveling I’d recommend getting the horse from the dark brotherhood and hitting that, it’s got a lot of health and regenerates that health back extremely fast so you can just hit, shoot, or cast a spell as much as you want and not have to worry about killing it.
Shadowmere was literally a regular horse with a tiny bit more hp and no hp regen for me. He died to some unscaled bandits near whiterun. Even worse was that I didn't realize he died so I just overwrote my save. Rip 😭😭
@@standingdoor7077 shadowmere can respawn, by either simply waiting 10 in game days, you often time fund him from where you first found him, that being the black pool in front of the dark brotherhood sanctuary
@@Moonlight_Raven Xbox 360 version of Shads was completely broken. It's all good nowadays. The best horse is the summons from the soul cairn. No need to worry about a giant yeeting him across Skyrim. You can just summon him again.
Really great guide overall, I appreciate it being just gameplay and not exploits. I would like to add that for Smithing you should acquire the Ancient Knowledge effect to increase the speed of leveling it up even further. The whole bit for Smithing about it not being 2012 anymore made me chuckle, as I remember all the tips and tricks back then telling you iron daggers and leather bracers were the way to go. I still do them because leather is easy enough to get, but have converted to the jewelry method for the most part, way better.
Did you know that...
● You can max Alteration fast by maxing fortification enchantments and fast traveling as you hold an item with Telekinesis?
● You can max Conjuration fast by soul trapping a corpse repeatedly?
● You can max Stealth fast by backstabbing the Greybeards, Ralof, or Shadowmere nonstop?
You might be able to guess how many times all three of these have been commented. These are exploits in my mind, and weren't included because of that. Free training from an ally was something far easier to explain away than these. But I pinned this just in case you wanna use them anyway, do with them what you will!
A year late my friend
@@williammitchell6254 No such thing with Skyrim.
I don't know if you guys considers this a glitch, but even when you can't have a trainer as a follower, you can pickpocket your gold back, AND if you have a paralysis spell, poison or something with this effect, you can use it on the NPC and get all your money back. (I never thought of this as a glitch, since it makes sense, aswell as your friend training you for free).
Yo caedo check my comment on the master illusion spell harmony. Basically free content for a video in the future if you want it
You can max Conjuration fast by soul trapping a corpse repeatedly?
It is not workable if you use unofficial sse/sle patch
Something about watching you pickpocket a guard, get caught, bribe them, then immediately just pickpocket all the money back was extremely entertaining to me
I knew I I thought everyone knew
Uve really never done it?
Not to mention effective at leveling.
Wow!... Never thought of that, fantastic!
I died laughing when I saw him do that lmao
As a 70 yrs old grandma I sure do appreciate all these tips on Skyrim. Bought Skyrim for Switch when it first was available but didn't like playing it because the caves and dungeons were too dark for me to see anything. Just got the Anniversary edition and am spending hours on it. But I'm pretty lost on how to properly do things. Thanks.
How nice to see how varied the player community is here.
Did you know you can set the brightness of your environment in the settings? That way caves will be easier to see.
Of course, your character could wear a torch, use the Candlelight spell or the night eye vision if Khajiit or vampire too.
Thanks. I've found the updated version to be a bit brighter. I'll have a go at the controls on Switch and see if that helps. Next time, perhaps I'll play as a Khajiit. Again, thank you for your advice.@@Leto85
@@sstone6417 You're welcome! I play Skyrim on both pc and Switch, but on the last one I still have to get used to all the controls.
Have you encountered any bugs yet? I mean with bugs like glitches in thd game.
On the Switch we can't install mods that remove those bugs, hence my question.
I probably wouldn't know what a real "bug" or glitch actually is. Sometimes is doesn't run as smoothly as it should. (not sure if that is a glitch. ) All I know is that being older, I find it harder to see in the dark scenes. I also find the game a bit clunky compared to the new games (huge Zelda fan, so that's what I'm comparing it to.) It's still enjoyable though somewhat frustrating that I can't carry more weight. I did try the enchanted weight trick but it made me so strong that the game wasn't challenging anymore so I went back to the regular game. Don't know it that is what you're looking for. '-)@@Leto85
@@sstone6417 About carry weight, you can always just put pijnts into stamina, use the Steed Stone, get the pickpocket perk for extra pockets enchant you'd gear with fortify carry weight, wear armor thst increases carry weight, of drink potion that boost carry weight for 5 minutes.
My favourite remains:
Creep Cluster
Mora Tapinella
Scaly Pholiota.
For those rp heavy players that feel those methods are too exploitative. A companion training you and then giving the money back is basically "you're a friend, so that is for free", and selling things to get your money back is basically making a trade for the training. That's what I think to sleep at night.
This's exactly my thinking on it too, and why I included companion training while excluding backstabbing greybeards/shadowmere and soul trapping corpses. Those are a lot harder to explain in a roleplaying sense!
The alteration one is kinda easy too for you the loading screen is short but every time you fast travel the time of day changes so really you have been holding that bucket with telekinesis for multiple hours in game time
Yeah, they can follow you for years with no money, why not train you for days with no money
Or you're training each other.
Gotta love lying to get a good elven companion that teaches you Archery to 50.
3 tips of my own:
- putting the lovers stone on the aethereal crown allows you get its bonus on top of resting bonuses, if you equip it after
- the black book in the raven rock mine doubles skill gains from books, allowing you to gain 10 free levels per skill
- the speech perk merchant (level 50) allows you to sell any item to any merchant, making training with merchants significantly easier, combine with making and selling expensive potions and you'll be able to use your 5 trains per level easily.
one more tip on top that possibly lot of people know already. you can level sneak easily if you're just close enough to enemies, possibly where they don't even see you, and just auto-walk into a wall. go for a walk, go grab some food, return and find your sneak super high level :D
I love and appreciate this guide. I can’t be the only one that feels that glitching, exploiting, or outright cheating in a game ruins the feelings of authenticity, immersion, challenge, and fun of it. But since leveling skills in Skyrim can sometimes feel like a painful grind, this guide is pretty much essential. Thank you so much.
Yeah if you are using a glitch chest or duplication you might as well just use the console at that point. I'm fine with farming and cheese but not outright cheating
@@Dave-lh6ws amusingly, I'll console in alchemy ingredients because I'm lazy but I won't do the fortify alchemy/enchanting exploit to make obscenely powerful items because that feels more like cheating than just saving myself hours of grinding to gather ingredients. When you can 1-shot stuff just by looking at it, might as well just use 'kill' from the console at that point. Or you know, play on novice and 1-shot almost everything anyways.
i love doing assassin characters so a here is a alchemy tip. vampire dust, chraus eggs, and nirnroot all have the invisibility effect
What a coincidence guess what build I'm running this time. Granted I also have the Ordinator mods on so it is hopefully more entertaining.
is that invisible poison recipe
Plus Luna moth wings. Thanks my dude.
Me here who spammed illusion and just got invisibility 👍
I love mixing Luna moth with Vampire Dust. invisibility plus health regen. great escape potion. Add Skeever tail and you also get fortify light armor.
So, talking leveling:
Alteration: get the “Transmute Mineral Ore” spell from Halted Stream Camp; level until about 40 by turning Iron into Silver/Gold Ore, use to make jewelry, training Smithing as well. ASAP, get Telekinesis and Detect Life, which will power-level you.
Illusion: Muffle and Calm Spells are your best bet; once at 100, do the master quest and get your hands on the Harmony spell and cast it about seven times on the stairs of Whiterun during business hours. Congratulations, you now have an EASY way to get to character levels 200+ with the Legendary update.
Destruction: DON’T WASTE YOUR TIME; train with Faralda. If Gold is an issue, quick save and use pickpocket on sleeping trainers to level pickpocket as well.
Conjuration: get a horse and soul trap it, or just find a dead body and soul trap it.
Enchanting: for financial reasons, train with Sergius Turianus up to level 75 before disenchanting anything. It will be free (with pickpocket) to do so; then you can have enough perk points and items to get Enchanting up to 80 and get the perks to level it efficiently.
Warrior skills: finish the companion’s quest line, then use the companions to train all relevant skills for free.
Lockpicking: buy like 10000 lock picks and just break them all on Master Locks. Otherwise you’ll have to visit multiple dungeons and clear them to level the skill.
Speech: train until 50 in the Dark Elf’s general store in Windhelm. You’ll have to do a short quest for him but it’s okay. Then, get the Merchant perk. Now, any trainer that is also a merchant can be bartered with, and ANY item you have to sell, they’ll buy. That means all those fancy enchanted iron Daggers or even those ridiculously valuable potions you’ve been stocking up on are suddenly valuable.
Alchemy: Mora Tapinella, Scaly Pholiota and Creep Cluster. Plant a BUNCH at Lakeview Manor, then harvest those ingredients every week or so to make (arguably) the most efficient potion in the game.
General Tips:
- Train EVERY level. Don’t miss out!! It will save you SO much time.
- Pinch your pennies!! It will get you more materials and skill-ups so you can level faster.
- don’t sweat save scumming for pickpocket. There is never a way to make pickpocket 100% guaranteed (except through paralysis poisons and careful timing, but that’s a glitch) so I don’t at all feel bad about quick-loading until I’m successful.
- if you are looking to make a character that’s level 140+, magic is the ONLY way to go. It is the fastest way to earn levels, by far.
- if you don’t mind exploits as much, get yourself a bucket or something, make Alteration Spells free with enchanting, then cast telekinesis on said bucket, hold the spell for a moment and use the menu to fast-travel across the map. Congratulations, you are now level 100 alteration.
Manz wrote a whole ass book about leveling
@@ashtonbarnett1363 🤣🤣 Naww, that’s just the Cliff-notes version. Merry Christmas, everyone!
Dragons tongue,scaly pholiota, and fly amanita levels alchemy way faster.
Just started playing skyrim for the first time, so thank you for the tips
Thanks for summary
“If you have approached a giant at early play throughs, you may have had a quick meeting with the atmosphere.” I died laughing at how true this statement was! lol
The most advanced race in Skyrim.
They have a space program well In development
Yea, I had a hearty chuckled at that
My first encounter with a giant my controller went into space
You could beat one if you trained with faendal
Kiting, oak flesh, and bows, they dont level up your primaries but is always satisfying winning as a level 4 character
Thank you so much for this glitchless guide. I’m still relatively new to the game, & for me, at this stage, glitches take the fun out. You’ve corrected a number of misconceptions I had that I had no idea were slowing me down (like enchanted weapons & one-handed). I really appreciate all the time you put into making this. It must have been a ton of hours. You explain things well & concisely.
Thank you!!
You're very welcome, thank you so much for giving it a look!
I played this game so much when it first came out, and then I did the book exploit and increased all of my skills to 80. I was stupid powerful, and the game became fun for 10 mins and then I just got bored and stopped playing altogether. Just recently picked it back up again, and I will not use exploits because they just kill the fun for me.
@@CaedoGenesis yeah you really saved me with enchanting. I was just selling my rings unenchanted
This guide is the best guide i've ever seen for levelling up each skill without using exploits or glitches. I am playing skyrim again after a long time and i've been coming back to this video multiple times whenever i need to know how to level something. Love it man. Thanks so much for this
I have played this game for hundreds of hours, and never knew the colours of the background on the Skills screen actually mean anything
Same, I thought it was just a cool design
I knew that but i didn't know they were in the shape of the standing stones
"Just wait for them to know the lore status of The Warrior, The Mage and The Wizard, and how they are visible in the night sky/Sovngarde sky"
@@lilmonkey4043 I had NO idea and I'm shocked
I didn't even watch this video before reading your comment. As soon as you mentioned it and OP went to the skill menu, I saw what you meant. Cool.
Restoration is a perfectly valid school of magic worth of study
Definitely, beats popping potions, especially on console
And don't let anyone tell you otherwise!
@Minhaj Shahriar she's an instructor dude
Anyone who needs random strangers to validate their choice in magic deserves to be crushed with a resounding " NO " !
yes, only because of the necromage perk
Level sneak too fast and Skyrim becomes a game of: In This World, it's One Shot or Be One-Shotted!
I've definitely done that before, everything is waaay to easy... until it's not, then it's impossible lmao
I too am privy to the burden of quick saving before firing my next arrow. 😆
I always go for assassin builds on my playthroughs and I would always power level sneak and one handed in Helgen then smithing and enchanting to instantly become OP
@@gammaplaya2723 you forgot alchemy for the loop then leveling armor just becomes standing there in armor that's enchanted for health and magic regeneration
@@direwolf8703 I got so used to abusing alchemy that I don't make it a seperate part in my builds, it's always there, it becane so natural to me to abuse alchemy that I must instantly buy the falkreath home and abuse the creep cluster, mora tapinella, and scaly phobia garden
A tip for people trying to level smithing: if you want your crafted items to be of use to you, craft arrows later on when your smithing skill is higher. It's not great with iron or steel arrows, so I recommend starting to craft arrows when you have dwarven unlocked. You will need fire wood for arrows, but if you've unlocked hendraheim there's a wood chopping station and I think there's a wood chopping axe there too. Gloombound mine can get you a lot of ebony, which is good for smithing stuff and selling to the blacksmith outside the mine. I don't know if this is true but you might need to be an orc/orc friend to go there. Another tip is mines won't recharge if you are right outside when you wait. You will have to travel somewhere else to wait, then go back.
Edit: spelling
Places refresh when you spend 10 days out of the hold they are in.
@@craigboden9455that's a good piece of info to hold onto, thanks.
i recently discovered (might be a bug?) that I dont need an axe on board to chop wood at Lakeview Manor
The timing script of this video is insanely accurate, making it the most accomplished leveling guide video in less than 1 hour!
Bruh I just got back into playing skyrim. Got a lvl 85 character and still finding new things to do. This is exactly what I needed.
Lol...bruh....
I don’t play the game until I’m level 60 or higher. Playing around level 150-250 is my preference
Bro I’m at lvl 60 at trying to find more to do.
@@firesaint4569 see, ya just gotta not do any quests until you’re after level 100 haha
@@firesaint4569 yeah bro people up over 100+ end up do a lot of not doing any objectives at all for much of their playthroughs due to time spent leveling up their character, someone in another comment was just saying your still new to Skyrim if you haven't got in 1000 hours or more lol I told him i discovered everything and completed nearly all side stuff in much less than that which is surely not considered a new player. I just like to get laid and do other shit from time to time so i keep myself from being a 1000s of hour olayer
Edit: well i might have over 1000+ just for the fact that i have been replaying it every often for the past 10 years now
“You may have had a quick meeting with the atmosphere” that line for me good. 😂
Me the first time I saw a giant and thought it was a NPC I could talk to 😂 I came running and went flying hahahaha
Nazeem: *“You mean the ‘Cloud District’ hm?”*
@@ZyliceLiddell *gets sent into the stratosphere*
My all time favorite potion, that I'll NEVER forget, is Luna Moth Wing, and Vampire Dust. It makes you invisible, and heals you! With no negative effects, even at low levels!!
Alchemy potion: Salmon Roe and Histcarp share 3 properties including water breathing, making a powerful and valuable potion with 3 positive effects. This also leaves room for a third ingredient that can match the missing fourth effect from one or both of the original ingredients.
Nordic Barnacle. The ingredient you are looking for is Nordic Barnacle. Congratulations, you just created the single most valuable potion in the game.
Actually no. Nordic Barnacles just has water breathing which makes it basically the same as just Salmon Roe and Histcarp BUT Salt pile adds Magic Regeneration increase which makes it a 4 effect potion, all positive effects and EXTREMELY valuable.
@cloudfair2 sorry, got confused. It was Roe, Barnacle, and Garlic. 5208 value.
That’s good to know 👍
The absolute most expensive potion you can make requires the hearthfire dlc. It requires salmon roe, garlic, and a nordic barnacle. With the right perks in the alchemy tree you can make it worth 17k+ gold. Without the dlc it’s giant’s toe, wheat, and creep cluster. It will sell for about 8k gold
8k ? Damn
Sorry, I don't know much. What is the purpose of selling something for 8K gold if the traders don't even have that much to give?
Each crafting skill tree increases by the worth of what you are making. And with speech it increases in a similar way. If you sell something to a vendor for an outrageous amount of money, they won’t have the gold, but it will increase your speech skill faster than your normal trading.
@@thyroiddubby6226 Ah, thanks
Find out what your potion is worth, and then buy whatever the merchant has until they have enough gold to pay for your potion. You leave with all their gold, all their crafting materials, all their ingredients, all their soul gems, all their arrows and lockpicks... and anything you can disenchant. All that stuff is useful for levelling.
Good tip for enchanters do the black star quest early by going to the shrine of azura and then you bring the star to Nelacar, Destroy Malyn Varen's soul(go inside the star and fight him), then you get an infinite reuse black soul gem which when killing any humanoid beings, such as Men, Mer, Argonians, Khajiit, and Dremora gets filled. These count as grand souls and there is an abundance of them around the world.
If I give the star to azura's priestess what's the effect instead?
@@dariobarboni9276 I'm aware I'm late, but you'll get Azura's Star, an infinite use Grand Soul Gem
@@dariobarboni9276 it essentially becomes an infinite use white soul gem rather than an infinite black soul gem. Ultimately it’s harder to get white grand souls outside of killing giants and mammoths so you’d be better off going for the other option
@@boney2982 Also you can bury Grand Soul gems at virtually everyone at the college and most other mage types once you're a decent level, whereas Black Soul Gems are only sold by Falion in Morthal if I remember right.
@@connorbranscombe6819 one of the people in the college can sell black soul gems as well I can’t remember his name
Dwarven Oil has no slow effect. Dwarven Oil + Salt Pile makes Regenerate Magicka + Weakness to Magic potions.
Whoops, you're right. It still ends up being valuable, but I got the effect wrong.
That is true, for levelling it is still good, though sometimes one wants to have potions that are good to sell and good in combat. Slow is good for archers, makes it easier to keep distance and getting away from fights in general. Regenerate Magicka + Weakness to Magic is a liability, personally having only 1 build that can make optimal use of it, that build also being the reason that I knew that Dwarven Oil doesn't have Slow.
Thank you so much for this guide! I started this journey just 5 days ago and still have a ton to learn.
And man I don't think you're boring, your speech is fluid and energetic, straight to the points, and without the weird vocal "fry-ness" which make people sound weird, boring and incompetent.
Pro tip: for the slower leveling skills like restoration and armor, save your skill books until you get the skills into the 90s. If you pick up a skill book from a chest you won’t auto-read it so you can hold onto it and use it later. If you find it outside of an inventory you can ask your follower to pick it up and then take it from their inventory.
Great video, I’m glad people are still making Skyrim videos after all these years.
8
Not sure if anyone has mentioned this but if your spouse is a follower and is currently following you, any bed/sleeping roll you sleep in will give you the full 15% lover's comfort bonus - not just the bed at your home.
This makes me want to travel the world with my spouse to sleep with them in every dark corner I can find.
Also, if you put the Lover Stone on the Aetherium Crown you can get Lover's Comfort AND the Lover Stone. Oh and the Guardian Stone of your choice. That's a cool 40% experience boost.
I've got probably thousands of hours in this game, and I literally never noticed that the background on the level up screen indicates which stone boosts each skill until you mentioned it
When it comes to the Transmute spell & smithing, try to keep some of the ore as silver if you want to use up the more common gems. A lot of gems (amethyst, garnet, etc) can only be used in silver jewelry, so storing the silver ore (via chest or asking a companion to hold it) before using the transmute spell again for the next piece is the only way to do that if you have a stack of iron ore to go through. The spell will prioritize turning silver to gold before transmuting the iron in your inventory. I usually go about this in one of two ways: 1. I put on robes that give me more magicka, better magicka regen, etc., and go piece-by-piece in my house while standing in front of a chest, storing each piece after I transmute it. 2. When transmuting a few in a row while walking around, I'll stop on a silver ore every once in a while (when I've got a big stack of ore to get through) and ask my follower to carry the gold ore (so that it's not weighing me down) and the silver ore. You don't get as much silver from this one, but it beats having to talk to your companion each time you transmute one.
That is a great suggestion!
It would require more inventory management and world interactions…so, I worry it would just get frustratingly slow.
Near the start of the game, I can sell 2 gold rings for ~60-80 gold. What are the initial prices you get on silver/gem jewelry?
If it’s like 500 gold, that is a huge deal, and maybe worth the repetitive world interactions…but if it’s like 100-200? I’m too impatient. For me, the goal is XP per hour of game-play, not per in-game-action.
It’s really fast to stand next to a bed with 4 transmutation items and just spam 4 transmute and sleep on 100-200 iron ore, all in a go. That can be done under the Mage Stone and you can get free Conjuration levels from the trainer/follower in Tel Mythrin every time you level. Then you only need to make one switch to Warrior Stone to smith the gold.
But, if the price you get for the pieces is high enough, that puts you in a whole new economic tier of the game, so it might be worth it.
@@3phemaral I would definitely recommend leveling up speech & enchanting to make more money selling the jewelry. Also, I can’t remember what it’s called, but the quest where you help the talking dog gets you a special mask at the end that gives you a speech boost when you wear it. I find it’s very handy to equip it before selling & buying, then equip my helmet again when I’m done.
You guys are fucking life savers
I have more gold than those pretty looking gems so this helps a lot rn
In do something similar but just drop the silver ore on the ground.
I don't know if anyone's mentioned this, but the new Soul Stealer arrows from CC are an infinite supply of filled black soul gems as long as you use them only to last hit human enemies.
Leveling sneak can be done AFK in the beginning by going to "White River Watch" a little SW from Whiterun. when you enter the cave an old man in a chair asks if you are Rodolf, say yes and he wont be hostile but still counts as an enemy. So just crouch and back into the wall with a rubber band on your controller or something pushing down on your keyboard and tadaa free levels. This method is slow but you can set this up and then go to bed, work, or school and when you come back after a several hours and maxed out sneak that doesn't require specific equipment, skills, or complicated setups.
And enjoy the stick drift if your on console :)
Sneak attacking your horse is easier
There's a kid at Riverwood that stands on the bridge (until you go to whiterun and speak to the Jarl for the first time) that's incredibly easy to sneak behind. Sometimes his dog is there and ruins it, but it's not very common.
As for controller drift, I've done afk tricks like this for over a decade with elder scrolls games, and never had controller drift issues. You're probably just tying down way too tightly.
@@randalthor2859 The kid in question is Hod and Gerdur's son, I think.
@@ModdingNewbie yeah, starts with an F.
The best potion for levelling alchemy is by far Garlic + Nordic Barnacle + Salmon Roe
Salmon Roe's waterbreathing effect is absolutely busted and gives you something like 20x the value of normal waterbreathing potions.
You get salmon roe by catching salmon jumping upstream, my favourite locations are the waterfall between guardian stones and the waterfall near the honningbrew meadery, this area gets me atleast 20 roe. You can also farm it at the morthal hearthfire home but you need to put a salmon roe in the fishery and kill the salmon that spawn, easiest way with unrelenting force.
Also by far the best way to overlevel your character past 81 is with the harmony spell. Try and get in the very middle of whiterun, which the best spot is behind the pelagia house near the market and spam harmony, and you can get from 15 to 100 in like 2 or 3 casts. With this method i got myself from 81 to ~270 in around 2 hours.
Cool trick! But powerlevel with pickpocketing is my fav though. Its just fun
But what of the giants toe - wheat - creep cluster potion? I haven't yet watched the video so idk if he mentioned this potion
@@gearygipson6204 That used to be the best potion before Hearthfire was released but the salmon roe ingredient is overpowered beyond belief. Try it yourself in a game and see it yourself.
Alchemy is done easier with blue mountain flower hanging moss and lavender due to how easy u can get a load of them all
@Major Gear you can cast flames on the fish midair that works as well
I've found leveling up sneak after illusion so you have access to the invisibility spell is really easy. And Illusion is arguably the fastest skill to level (spam muffle till lvl 75, get invisibility and spam until 100, quick waiting 1h when you run out of magika)
In special edition, there is the Goldenhills Plantation near Rorikstead that has 38 planting plots (plus six if you get the upgrade) and you can plant alchemy ingredients. They will be collected daily by farmhands along with a daily profit; infinite ingredients/potions and money. You get the home through the Unquiet Dead quest started through either visiting the house or through the Bannered Mare
ahahah, so thats how I unlock the farm
This guide predates A.E., and was intended to be useful for players still using Oldrim or Switch. Of course, the Switch version has A.E. *NOW,* but that was after this video aired.
This guide is all about non vampire + werewolf leveling
Faster levels 0:35
AETHERIAL crown - hold last standing stone + current standing stone = both lovers and 1 of 3 class stones
Rest: unowned 5%, owned 10%, spouses bed 15% (8 hours not sure if ingame or realtime)
^Stones - 3 classes + lovers
4:30
Trainers about 3 times expensive post lvl 50 + increasingly difficult.
^Mage skills go to winterhold
^Warrior go to companions
^Theif go to riften
If book > 20 gold probably skill book if
A near decade old game, and a guide for leveling in said game. Yet here I am watching every minute of it. Caedo has clearly leveled his Speech skill too high
and taking notes, ofc
Broooooo! This video is way too good for your amount of subs. Or the amount of subs you have is way too low for how well done this video is! Respect!
I appreciate that!
I totally agree! Great voice and clear easy to follow guide! Looking forward to rewatching a few times and taking notes!!
Best guide on leveling I have seen so far. And the amount of work you put into it is very much appreciated.
Awesome video! Some notes:
1. You can unequip the Aetherium Crown with the lover stone ability in it, rest at a bed and then equip it again. That way you gain both the resting effect and the Lover's Comfort.
2. You can get the Telekinesis spell early in the game by going in the Redwater Den. It is on a cell that you can access by either breaking in the door opposed to the place you get the skooma or by getting high with it (you will be trapped in the very cell with the spell that way).
3. You can level sneak and one handed in the first quest of the game. For one handed with Hadvar: don't open the chest with the apparel and weapon in the first room, instead pick one sword on the weapon rack and start attacking him. He will not turn hostile and you can train up to level 100. One handed with Ralof: after killing the first two enemies, be quick and grab the Helgen key from the official corpse. That way he can't open the door and will be waiting for you to open. You can attack him and he won't fight back.
4. Sneaking on the first quest (Unbound): when Ralof or Hadvar asks you to sneak by the bear, they will be crouching. That way you can go behind them on sneak mode and spam the attack button to level sneak. Note that they will be pushed away with every strike, so find a spot when they will be stuck on the wall. If you try this method earlier, when they will be standing still, you have to attack them, back away a little, wait, and then attack again, so its better to wait the bear section.
5. The game will crash with Turn Undead and Rally if you cast with both hands when your magicka are low. To avoid that, cast with both hands normally, and when your magicka close to empty, cast with one hand only. Wait (or sleep), and repeat the process.
6. For those how are vampires and are leveling restoration for the necromancy perk, you can take one of the undead dogs from castle Volikhar and use turn undead on him. He will not turn hostile and you can level up on a controlled environment. Just remember the past tip.
7. The best imgredients combination I found to level alchemy is: salmon roe (use the flame spell in the ones that is jumping the waterfalls in the river that connects Riverwood to Whiterun) + Nordic Barnacles (found in sunken ships. That's one on the lake in front of the 3 standing stones. Some can be found under the bridge leading to the Jarl's palace in Witherun) + Garlic (found everywhere. In the helgen keep there's some, in Gerdur home, if you complete the Carlotta mini-quest, you can take from her standing) and blue mountain flower (found on the road from the cave exit of Helgen leading to Riverwood) + creepcluster (found south of Windhelm, on the marsh. Is the red thing that looks like roots) + giant toe (well, giants lol).
8. You can level conjuration by using soul trap in any dead corpse. If are a conjure pacifist (?), there's a skeleton under the bridge leading to Dragonsreach (same place that you found the nordic Barnacles).
9. You can train a skill with a trainer and then pickpocket him for a very fast leveling up in both the skill you chose and pickpocket.
To max alchemy again after legendary, you need a garden where you can plant things. Plant Creep cluster, Mora Tapinella and Scaly Pholiota. These will produce 3 (MT) or 5 ingredients when harvested and can be harvested every few in game days. The three together produce a highly valuable potion, crafting which will advance your alchemy skill massively, especially if you wear items to boost alchemy. Less than 200 of each will get your alchemy from 15 back to 100 in a few minutes (taking all the alchemy perks as they become available again), raising your overall character level a number of times in the process. AND will give you a large number of valuable potions to sell to get cash.
This one every time. Three homesteads with gardens and greenhouses every time. So many legendary resets in Alchemy!
Perfect timing, im currently taking a long break from fallout and picked up skyrim again last night lol
Damn your project is worth so much to teach others the best ways to play Skyrim. You're the MENTOR OF SKYRIM on god man you did an amazing job on making this guide. So helpful !!!!
This is an amazing guide! The skills I couldn’t stomach leveling was the armor skills, they are the bane of my existence! Lol
I just watched you talk for about 50 minutes without a break and not only was I not bored? I actually want to attemot skills I've ignored since I've been playing skyrim. You really did a great job keeping the info short, to the point but detailed enough that I have no follow up questions. The perfect skill guide.
Thank you so much, I was pretty proud of this one once it was done!
This video is so amazing and has definitely been the most helpful Skyrim video ever.
Also at 25:49 the bandit getting blasted with rag doll effect then immediately fading screens is hilarious for some reason.
Angie's Bow is actually the fastest bow in the game for draw speed and has the same base damage as the hunting bow which is slightly better than zephyr if your trying to get multiple instances per creature. Also the quest that gets you Angie's bow gives you 6 levels of Archery. And there is an archery skillbook there that can give you 7th level of Archery. So if you are at 90+ Archery you can get most of the way to 100 by completing just one quest.
Zephyr is fast actually
If you're going to level smithing and enchanting its better to actually level alchemy first, since its the easiest to level of the three and it gives you so much money that you can now buy your way through the lvl100 to the others.
Under Smithing you forgot to mention the ancient knowledge perk you get from the lexicon. Depending on the patch your skyrim is in it can give you 15% smithing leveling bonus or 15 raw levels which help defense when upgrading an armor piece
15% smit does not work, you get a bonus for non-dwarven armor
All around it's a good guide, as an experienced player I did pick up a few things from this video,specifically the magic aspect but I would say that for pretty much any build or play style alchemy,enchanting, and blacksmithing will be you're best friend pretty much through the entire playthrough. Thanks again 👍👍
One thing I really enjoy about your guides, walk-throughs & even following the Cowboy playthrough on Fallout New Vegas is the amount of detail & simplicity in such a huge amount of information.
And you can feel that sense of enjoyment in still playing the classics like Skyrim & New Vegas. Used & watched the NV guides frequently & after (finally) getting all the DLC for Skyrim last year I found everything extremely overwhelming & difficult to build up my character (Breton or Argonian being my preferred choices) but this guide has brought back that itch to re-restart a new character, combat's armour skills have been the biggest pain to manage but that's been due to humanoids being main targets or jumping too early after Trolls, Mammoths & getting ambushed by Giants or Dragons.
If you go through the quest Unfathomable Depths, you can gain Ancient Knowledge, which allows your smithing to increase 15% faster. Not that much, but it stacks with the Standing Stones so that ends up giving you a grand total of +50% with the warrior stone, Lovers Embrace, and Ancient Knowledge.
you can actually get it even higher if you have the dawnguard DLC, The quest lost to the ages lets you craft one of three different aetherial things, if you craft the crown you can have 2 standing stones active at once(one of them is linked to the crown). this allows you to have the lover's stone and the warrior stone active at once(make sure you have the lover's stone linked to the crown). meaning you can get a 60% smithing boost(lovers comfort, well-rested, ancient knowledge and warrior stone). make sure you unequip the crown(removing the lover's stone) before you sleep because the game won't give you well rested if you have the lover's stone activated.
Wow thanks! Gotta try that
So I just made an Illusionist sneaky assassin who sneaks in and kills with poisons through pickpocketting... Got to Bleak Falls Barrow and realized both illusions and poison are completely useless against undead. Fr*ck
did you censor frick lmao
@@empirecrumbles615 I believe he censored fruck lmao
The top perk for illusion lets the spells work on undead. Master of the mind or something like that.
Just bust out a bow and you will be fine lol
@@iknowthings3031 are you sure it’s not frack?
Hello! Half Eaten Watermelon here aka H.E.W.
I would like to give my 2 cents about leveling in Skyrim not to take away from the guide that you made, actually to add to it. You did a great job for those who want to play the game in a fair manner. First off I play on Legendary difficulty and made it to about level 105. If you want to level up faster play on harder difficulties. I have adapted to incorporate all three types of classes in gameplay but, I use the mage stone myself.
Usually at the start of a battle I cloak with a flame cloak (Which the spell can be found at Yisra's Beachside Combustion. To the right or East of Dawnstar and if you have pasted the Tower Stone. You have gone too far.) Then I use an Alteration Spell to boost my armor rating temporarily. Then I use a Conjuration spell to summon a creature. Lastly I use bound sword then engage with shield. (I only use one handed weapons. I can't stand two handed but I did level to 100 for the sake of leveling up.) That is my offensive attack but, I have a defensive before things get hairy. All I do is crouch and use a bow and arrow. Take out my enemies silently. Now about leveling.
I am going to start with the classes I level up the most with one handed, conjuration and block.
Conjugating is versatile which suits my gameplay perfectly. There are different ways to go about it and it's super easy to level up. Personally I don't use reanimate it depends on a dead body rather than summoning something out of thin air. The bounds weapons are a game changer and is really how it makes versatile. Starting with soul stealer is great if your trying to level up Enchanting as well. Also you can skip out on that and use the spell soul trap and that will level Conjuring faster. The problem for me especially in bigger battles I tend to forget to cast soul trap on enemies. Losing opportunities to capture souls. The next skill up from that is Oblivion Binding. You can use a perk that controls other summoned creatures to your side and attack the opponent. Like Command Daedra for example but that's a higher level spell. I don't use it. I mainly use Oblivion Binding to one shot summoned creatures back to their hole and if one my creatures that I summoned is standing in my way. I just hit it and it disappears. Also I need to get rid of them if I just got done with a fight and want to proceed unnoticed. If you have the Dragonborn DLC and acquire the Ash Guardian spell you can actually summon him while you have a vanilla game conjured creature like one of the atronach. Without the Twin Soul perk but be careful if you don't have a heart stone it can attack and kill you. I usually try to summon them away from me so they can focus on the enemy rather than me or my summoned creature but that doesn't always happen. I rarely die from them and I never carry heart stones. Also I always use the aid of my creature to help kill it if he is the last one standing. I only use him when the odds are completely overwhelming.
One handed and block all I do is go up to the enemy and shield bash then slash with a sword. (I only use swords) The shield bash will stun the enemy then slash to do extra damage and repeat. So pretty much the enemy stands there while you are just doing damage but they do move so you would want to back them into a corner. With the difficulty I play on that isn't always possible especially when the numbers are against me and the enemies are too overwhelming. That's when I back off I use my bow and arrow. Let my conjugated creature get in the thick of the battle soaking up all the damage. Now the crafting skills I would like to talk about.
Smithing, yes it is good to do gold or silver jewelry but also it's great for building armor then lastly improving weapons and that is the order I do it in. If you have the DLC Hearthfire. Get all three houses. Build, Build Build! Make them as big as possible and build inside your house because the materials like iron fittings, locks, nails and hinges. Which really help leveling your Smithing but your going to need a lot Iron and Sawn Logs.
Then I take the items I created or collected on my travel. Use all the soul gems on those items. Which would level your Enchantment in no time. Also the items are worth more when you sell them. The thing is when both Smithing and Enchanting are level 100 you can create some awesome stuff! So save those dragon bones and scales to make armor and improve it! (I use heavy armor). Enchanting is even better in my opinion because you can put two enchantments on the same item with the Extra Enchantment perk. You could be one mean dude. Once you get what you want Legendary would be the way to go and you can use those perks on different skill trees.
Alchemy is easy too all you do is collect ingredients and they aren't heavy at all. I don't use potions because I purely depend on my skills and perks. I make them to level up and to sell them. You don't want to use all your ingredients up because of the perk Experimenter that has three levels. You got to be level 90 to get the last level of that perk but eat those ingredients! Rather than wasting your ingredients and trying to figure out potions. That will tell you what each ingredient can do but, after you figure out most of the ingredient possibilities, Experimenter becomes useless so making that skill Legendary is also ideal. Like he said get the green thumb perk and stock up so you can level up faster the next time.
The last two skills I want to mention is lockpicking and pickpocketing.
For lockpicking all I do is go straight to the thieves guild and do all but, the last mission of the guild to acquire the skeleton key. The lockpick that never breaks but it will be slower to level up. I want the goods without the risk of running out of lockpicks. Like he said avoid keys and wax keys because that is XP your missing out on. Go for it once you got to level 100 and have the unbreakable perk. Then finish the Thieves Guild! I don't suggest making this skill legendary because for me this was one of the last skills I reached level 100 and like I said I don't to worry about running out of lockpicks.
Pickpocketing is easy especially if you stay on top of your perks in the skill tree as you level up. Just go to the holds and raid people's pockets! Also what I do is in combat I use the calm spells to calm my opponent. Pickpocket and steal their stuff then kill them. I don't do this in big fights. Usually on small bands of bandits or situations I know I can handle.
That's about it and what I got if you needed any extra help
Thank you Caedo Genesis for making this video. You did great.
Have a good day!
For conjuration if you have it maxed out and have done the Mages guild quest line then you can talk to the conjuration mage in on the halls and he’ll have the conjure daedra lord spell very OP👌
I cant believe how long of a video this is, It felt like I was only here at the desk for 20 mins, Amazing video dude! Hats of to you for an informative and entertaining video!
Fantastic video. Recently hopped back on and was rrying to actually finish the main story for once. This guide has helped me get prepared for the journey. Thank you
For enchanting, I would recommend waiting until after level 21 so you can get the banish enchant which is worth a lot when slung on iron daggers. I goto feraldas the Bowyer in solitude, quick save before talking to him, if he doesnt have something with banish I hit him with a sword, quick reload and try again. The weapon can cost around 6k so have around that with you.
Awesome guide, I’ll definitely be using this when I go back to Skyrim.
speech can also be leveled quite fast by having a small bounty on your head and having the speech skill at 75 or 40 and every speech enhancing effect dibellas amulet shrine of dibella and giving a beggar a coin and you can walk up to any guard in an area once speak with the guard and choose the now coming up speech option to let you go
This was a very detailed and highly helpful video, probably 1 of the best that i have seen.
There was a ton of stuff in there I didn't know or think of so thank you for all your time and efforts.
This is a fantastic basic tutorial on the skills and levels. Really dense with a lot of information. Bit overwhelming tbh but I love how concise you are. Definitely going to look for more detailed info on your channel
Hey! This video, from the quality of your narration and writing, to how effectively you laid it in order, prompted me to subscribe and dig through your other Skyrim videos!
This is very well done, and you linking the time codes means that I’ll probably come back to here several times through my various playthroughs!
when i first played i went to falkreath before riverwood. no regrets. still do it every time i make a new character.
On my first ever play through and did the exact same thing.
@seba6430 seba6430 i never said there was a benefit
You helped guide me through Fallout NV, and now on skyrim! Your tutorials are always the best man! Keep up the good work!
For a good early setup for Enchanters: Go to Ironbind Barrow (NE of Whiterun, just N of the Nightgate Inn) to pick up the Fiery Soultrap enchantment and continue on to the Statue of Azura to start the quest for the Star. And, when you get to that point, choose the Black Star because so you'll always get GRAND (as in black because humanoid) Souls and black Soulgems are the rarest and hardest to get of all, while you'll always find Bandits or Thalmors to farm for black souls.
This route can be done at level 1, gives you a guaranteed Soultrap (with added fire Damage) enchantment, a guaranteed, reusable black soulgem aaaand, if you're a fan of Jaysus Swords, gives you the Azurbrand, one of the top coolest swords of the mod.
One of the fastest leveling characters I made uses conjuration for the core. Battling my own atronochs with a bound sword(also levels one handed) and looping transmute, smith jewelry, enchant and sell got me leveled so fast. Buy iron ore and empty soul gems, pickpocket stones. This guide reflects it all.
A little note on the lockpicking; if you're playing the Switch version, TURN ON HD RUMBLE.
Skyrim has one of the very best-case uses for it out of all the games on the console, for those with sensitive fingers; when lockpicking, the controller will vibrate with every few inches you move the pick, as if you were actually scraping against the tumblers in the lock.
When you find the "sweet spot" that will open the lock, the vibration will become ever so slightly stronger, when the player rotates the pick over it.
If you concentrate on this & get good at figuring out which side of the sweet spot you should rotate from, even Master Locks won't use up more than two or three picks per attempt.
I've started enjoying Lockpicking a LOT more after I began using rumble.
It increases immersion by an insane amount.
Also, I recommend skipping the unbreakable picks perk.
Pick breaks are exp, you find plenty as-is, & it feels good to get good enough that they don't break because you're skillful, rather than because they can't break at all.
I had rumble on the whole first character and never noticed this. Then, when I started my second character, I noticed it in the first lock you pick in the cell door in torture chamber in Helgen.
It takes almost no time to get used to. I have played 4-5 characters to L50+ and broken less than ten picks since then…and I wasn’t avoiding the locks or anything. And the only picks I’ve broken result from a thumb slipping off one of the sticks, I sneezed IRL.
There was one Master lock where the sweet spot was, near as I could tell, all the way to the right, but one smidge. I broke a pick on that smidge and it took me a while to mess with to figure it out. That was the only time I “legitimately” broke a pick because I intentionally put it in the wrong place by mistake.
@@3phemaral Similar story for me; I only noticed this on my second character, but my reason was because, with my first [on Switch at least], I didn't use the rumble, to save battery.
Now, on my second, I play using a pro controller, so I use rumble since the battery is better.
It makes a world of difference; brings me back to my days on the N64 when the rumble pack was still a huge deal.🤣
So with the aetherial crown you can get the lovers comfort buff, one standing stone buff, and the lovers stone buff allowing you to level up a groups of skills 50% faster which if you are a necromage vampire means you can level up 62.5% faster.
Lovers stone doesn't stack with rested bonuses, so it's only 45% in one category if you're not a vampire
@@nicholausstevens1262 If you use the aetherial crown it does simply unequip the aetherial crown and thus the lovers stone before you take a nap.
@@nicholausstevens1262 Also if you have the ancient knowledge passive that goes up to 65% faster without necromage and 81.25% faster with necromage if your doing smithing.
@@NobodyDungeons when you have rested bonuses and the lovers stone buff shows up in active effects the rested bonus is removed.
Thank you so much for this guide. I remember wanting to try do different playstles but never being really effective, so I appreciate this mass breakdown. When I start playing again I want to make a crazy mage-warlord who crafts their own great magic items and I think this guide will definitely help in that regard.
I'm glad it helped you out!
Well: After more than 10 years of playing Skyrim, this video sums up all the positive experiences i had with this incarnation if the Elder Scrolls Series so far - without misusing any "glitches" the programmers had left. Well done!
The most informative video ive seen dude thank you so much ! I can stop being frustrated at dying all the time now lmaooooooo i used to play it like almost 7 years ago now its like learning chinese
There's also a couple of ways to fill soul gems that were added by the Dawnguard DLC. The first one is the soul fissures in the Soul Carin. If you have empty soul gems, you just have to simply walk up to them and activate then and they will fill one soul gem each. The other way, you have to actually obtain by summoning Durnevhir in Tamriel 3 times. Each time you summon him, he'll give you a word of the Soul Tear shout. It's just like the spell or the enchantment, but in a shout.
"a spider that's been gumming up his excavation"
I'll interpret that as I will
So what I do to level my armor and block skills is I first level my smithing and enchant to make some armor that gets me to the armor cap and makes restoration magic free then I level restoration to get some potent healing spells and I walk into a giants camp and get beat on by as many giants as possible which lets the armor from 15 to 100 pretty quickly all things considered though it is better to use training whenever you get the chance.
I saw a video where they just smack Jarl balgruf and cast healing while the whole room beats on them then they surrender .
Faster ways to level two skills are available now with Anniversary Edition: Destruction, and Enchanting.
Destruction is the easiest and requires the least amount of explaining. Go to Hob's Fall Cave and find the big chest at the end of the dungeon (you will have to fight some mages). It will have every new spell added by Arcane Accessories (free with Anniversary Edition). Twelve of these spells are Destruction tomes, but specifically you want to focus on either Unbounded Frost or Unbounded Storms. Casting either of these increases your Destruction, _even if no one is being damaged._ Do be careful where you do this though because the range is magnificent and doing this in a settlement, or even near your follower, will cause problems.
Enchanting is now most effectively leveled by incorporating two homes found in Skyrim: Myrwatch, and Bloodchill Manor. Unfortunately the latter requires you to reach level 14 first and complete a quest. Why incorporate these homes for enchanting? Both of these homes have heart stones and a staff enchanter. This one requires some technical knowledge. In Skyrim, you gain a "buff" once you arrive in Solstheim that multiplies the experience you gain from Neloth's staff enchanter by 0.005, thus reducing the effectiveness of enchanting your own staves. Myrwatch's staff enchanter is already affected by it the instant you finish Unbound, but the staff enchanter at Bloodchill Manor is completely unaffected until you go to Solstheim. Knowing this, you can grab the unenchanted staves and heart stones from Myrwatch and bring them to Bloodchill manor to either gain a lot of skill levels in Enchanting, or finish it off from as early as 90. Fastest way to get to 90 is, of course by training with Hamal in the Temple of Dibella after completing the Heart of Dibella.
And if that's too much, or if you feel like keeping your gold (or at least not pickpocketing a Sybil of Dibella), enchanting experience is determined by the value of the item you are disenchanting. Waiting to disenchant items until you get the highest leveled loot (level 48) will benefit you greatly if your goal is to soar from 15-100 as fast as possible.
And since you've read this far, here's a tip Caedo missed: followers and merchants that are trainers are indeed a good way to get your gold back after training, but there is one trainer who can get you your gold back exclusively through _marriage._ He is an Argonian named Scouts-Many-Marshes, found in the docks of Windhelm. Do his quest and you now have a Common level Light Armor trainer who will open his own shop once you're married. Better still, he will produce 100 gold daily, lightening the cost a tid bit each time you visit your husband. Every other viable mate that is also a trainer also happens to either be a follower or a merchant already, so there is no advantage gained on this front.
This guide is amazing! Like many here, been playing forever with well over 1k hours in the game. Still play both console and VR. Can't believe how much I got from this. Brilliant.
Leveling up 2 handed and have found the Soul Tear shout to be invaluable since I don't have the free hand. Even if the shout itself doesn't get the kill, you can still trap the soul if you kill the target quick enough. Easier said than done, seems like I have less than a second to land the killing blow to get the soul. Still won't ressurect the target if the shout doesn't get the last shot, but the souls are nice.
What I usually do in most of my runs, sooner or later in the game to level is to buy common or worse soul gems to everyone I cross, use a bow with soul trap (also can be the summoned one is you have the perk), make a lot of iron daggers and that leather armour for the arms and enchant all of it. If you find or you can buy and disenchant a weapon with the exile daedra enchantment it will make extra valuable iron daggers (over 2000 gold value). With that you level enchantment super fast and also smithing and speech. And you gain a lot of gold to upper other habilities with training.
My personal favorite for alchemy is canis root, imp stool and mora tepinella for paralysis and lingering damage health. I always get a hearthfire home with planters to grow these. With anniversary edition, I get the Golden Plants Plantation ASAP to grow these.
Great for fighting, great for selling. One of, if not the best alchemy recipes in the game.
not sure if mentioned already but in ravenrock when you go into the house with the two ladies with daggers, you can sit in a corner and level block to 100 in about 9 minutes (i timed). they hit hard and really fast, if armour is good enough you can also level that and restoration so its a great spot to max those
This was a pretty useful guide. For first time players, a lot of pain and suffering is saved from what you've learned from trial and error. For veteran players, they've gone through the trials and errors, but now the knowledge is organized and made self evident.
For smithing I think it’s best to go to dwemer dungeon and get all the scrap metal and stuff that can be made to dwemer ingot.Then make with just 2 dwemer ingot and 1 iron ingot a dwemer bow and you level your smithing fast plus you get a lot of gold.Great video keep up the good content.👍
That is slower and not as efficient
for Restoration specifically, it's arguably worth giving up the exp. bonus from the mage stone or lover stone to activate The Ritual Stone, which allows you to raise the dead en masse and thus gives you a huge group of valid targets for the Repel Undead spells. Ritual Stone also reanimates dead for 3 times as long as the conjuration spells, so you can cast repel at that large herd for a lot longer and gain a lot more restoration levels.
Nice haven't seen a leveling guide in a while. Can't wait
Hello 👋
Agreed :), everyone know the simple telekinesis teleport. Where is the new stuff :)
I thought I would just be watching this to learn how to level up quicker and be bored the entire time and I’d just be skimming through but I actually watched every second of this- very interesting to watch!!
As a 3 year skyrim player (never had anything to play it on before then [brOke], just constantly watched videos about it before that) I don’t know how I’ve not watched this yet- the time I could’ve saved!!
There are so many things I missed during my playthroughs of Skyrim. Thank you for shedding light on these things.. it makes me want to go back and play it again =D
Legendary tip: max illusion, get harmony from college, stand in center of white run and cast the spell
What does this do 👀👀
Probably the easiest way to power level your character as long as you have enough magika to cast harmony after you legendary the illusion tree
@@YaBoySheeny it levels your character really fast
@@CthulhuRuby thanks bro for the tip. Haven't tested out legendary as yet. I just touched back on skyrim after bout seven years lol
Alternatively: Cast telekinesis on an item, pause and fast travel across the map - holding down the spell button the whole time. This counts as travelling that distance with the spell, and because Telekinesis XP is based on distance, you'll hit level 100 instantly if travelling far enough.
If you do the quest Unfathomable Depths, you'll be given the Ancient Knowledge effect. That will give you an extra 15% towards blacksmithing.
This really made me wanna pick skyrim back up after about a year
20:06 As a side note to enchanting: The soul used to enchant an item does not matter, neither does the value of the enchantment, you will always get 1 XP per enchantment. This means that even with a low level in speech buying a the materials needed to craft an iron dagger and a filled petty soul gem then enchanting the dagger with "Turn Undead" will allow you to generate money while leveling enchanting as fast as possible
I haven’t watched the whole sneak segment and I’m 2 years late but getting a follower, putting it on legendary mode then hitting them with a dagger over and over whilst in sneak mode is a great way of getting it up. If they leave your service just talk to them and get them to join back
my personal way to get a few easy smithing and enchanting levels one time is just to go to dwenmer ruins and make dwarvern stuff, improve it, and enchant it.
Destuction is easy to reset, when your armor has enchantet to 0 cost for any destruction spels, you can shot hight lvl spels and do enought damage.
Still takes extremely long though
You actually can sleep and then equip the Aetherium Crown with the Lovers Stone to gain both bonuses at the same time
Thank you for these guides. I just got Skyrim on the PS5 and it’s like reliving my childhood again. I forgot how fun this game is.
Ok. I have done 8 playthrough's of this game unmodded on console, and a few more modded that I never finished. Just started playing a vanilla run again, saw this video and obviously like the content here so of course I clicked.
I NEVER knew that the skills in the skill menu were COLOR CODED. LIKE WHAAAAT???? HOW DID I NEVER NOTICE THAT??
Well, thanks Cardeo ;) , lol, learned something new, man.
I wish I could like this video 20 times with that information ALONE
I was so shocked at the end when he said the video is an hour long. I thought it had been like 10 minutes.
Such good work. Entertaining and informative. Thanks for doing the research so that we all can benefit.
For damage leveling I’d recommend getting the horse from the dark brotherhood and hitting that, it’s got a lot of health and regenerates that health back extremely fast so you can just hit, shoot, or cast a spell as much as you want and not have to worry about killing it.
But bro this is kinda mean 😂😂 I just end up beating on the grey beards for hours. Guess that’s kinda sad still too cause they’re old 💀
Shadowmere was literally a regular horse with a tiny bit more hp and no hp regen for me. He died to some unscaled bandits near whiterun. Even worse was that I didn't realize he died so I just overwrote my save. Rip 😭😭
@@standingdoor7077 shadowmere can respawn, by either simply waiting 10 in game days, you often time fund him from where you first found him, that being the black pool in front of the dark brotherhood sanctuary
@@Moonlight_Raven Xbox 360 version of Shads was completely broken. It's all good nowadays.
The best horse is the summons from the soul cairn. No need to worry about a giant yeeting him across Skyrim. You can just summon him again.
Really great guide overall, I appreciate it being just gameplay and not exploits. I would like to add that for Smithing you should acquire the Ancient Knowledge effect to increase the speed of leveling it up even further.
The whole bit for Smithing about it not being 2012 anymore made me chuckle, as I remember all the tips and tricks back then telling you iron daggers and leather bracers were the way to go. I still do them because leather is easy enough to get, but have converted to the jewelry method for the most part, way better.
The funnies part of stealing from the guard was when you finally took his sword as well, priceless! Great stuff and thanks. 🤣