8 Tips for Super Charging Your Character
A few days after the release of TES V: Skyrim, my friend told me he reached level 60. I was shocked because I had been playing Skyrim quite intensely, only pausing for sleep—but I hadn't even reached level 30! It turned out that Seanbaby leveraged his past Oblivion experience, slightly improved the strategy, and achieved such an impressive result.
1. Block Attacks
Seanbaby: "A hot tip I can give you right away—find a couple of guys with two-handed weapons. Pull out your shield, let them attack you for 5 minutes—and your Block skill will increase by 30 points."
2. Stealing from the Teacher
"Almost certainly the first city you will enter is Whiterun. Go looking for Arcadia, who teaches alchemy. So: learn that skill a bit, and then pickpocket Arcadia to get your money back—and then take lessons from her again."
By the way: in this way, you will also level up your Pickpocket skill. You will earn a point in Alchemy, you will get a point in Pickpocketing... Eventually, you will start earning two points to your Pickpocket skill for each stolen item... Well: that’s enough for now. After all, you went into the store as someone unknown, and you left 6-7 levels higher!
3. High-Class Daggers
Obtain iron ingots and leather, forge lots of Iron Daggers! They will come in handy: once you master the "Banish" enchantment skill, you can enchant them with any soul gem—now they are not just "iron stuff," but weapons worth no less than 3000 coins!
In general, these Banish Daggers allow you to level up Smithing, Enchanting, and Speech at the same time... By the way, the money earned from them can be used for further training.
4. Don't Forget About Clothing!
Enchant 5 pieces of your gear so that they boost your Alchemy and Smithing—and you will be able to, firstly, craft super-weapons, and secondly, brew potions worth about 3000 coins per flask. Each time you craft such a potion, your Alchemy skill increases by 1 point.
5. Heart-to-Heart Talks
In Riften, there's a guy, apparently an elf—I don't remember his name... (Editor’s note: his name is Ungrien, and he works at the meadery!) Head over to him and ask about his boss; the guy will respond with something like, "Oh, she's beautiful!" But you need to convince him to tell the truth, and then he will reveal to you what she is really like [censored!] (Translator's note: oh, how I understand him...)
In general: he will be talking, and you just stand and listen, but don’t move the cursor or anything else. You can switch TV channels, take a smoke, or engage in other important activities—in general, in about 20 minutes your Speech skill will be 100. (Note: it’s better to start a conversation with him in the morning, rather than closer to closing, otherwise Ungrien might call the guards, just so you know!)
6. "Quiet" Skills
Magic really levels up slowly—too slowly!
So go to the College of Winterhold and meet all the guys there... But you can easily level up Illusion without teachers: just constantly cast Muffled Steps or Invisibility on yourself. All the time. Everywhere.
Oh, and also: Restoration. It levels up very quickly if you are injured and healing yourself.
7. About Clothing-2
Here’s another little tip: when you enchant gear for leveling Alchemy and Smithing, give the items appropriate names, for example: "shirt Alchemy", "hat Alchemy"—and so on for each skill. Then you won’t have to rummage through your inventory and check everything whenever you need to change clothes.
8. Assassin of the "Talkative"
Those guys living high up on the mountain who teach you Dragon Shouts love to chat; if you go to them—prepare to listen to their `blah-blah-blah-blah` for 8 minutes (Translator’s note: in our localization, this will take all 15 minutes!). So, what to do with them? Here’s the deal: sneak up behind them and hit them with your weapon! You will level up Sneak and Weapon skills, and they won’t care at all...