Overview
This is a “Read This First” guide for new players (or low to medium experience players) that provides tips on developing your character from the start. It isn’t a detailed walkthrough, because you really don’t need a walkthrough for getting started in this game, and I have omitted outright spoilers like what quests to do to get powerful items. The main goal is to reduce your level of trial-and-error and prevent you from picking worthless skill perks, or the wrong perks, early on while giving you some advice on how to develop the sort of playstyle focus you want.The guide assumes you are playing without any mods except maybe the unofficial patch, and it assumes you have no previous Skyrim experience. But if you have at least some experience I tried to make it easy to skip over sections you don’t need.Allmost all of the guide is also applicable to Oldrim + all DLCs, except for the stuff about mods and achievements.
Introduction
So you just picked up Skyrim Special Edition and you just want some general advice without everyone telling you about all the cool stuff that you’d rather find on your own, or trying to tell you about the ultimate overpowered min-maxing, or trying to tell you about 100 mods…. before you even start the game.
Well this is your guide then.
The first thing to know is that this is Skyrim Special Edition (SSE). Don’t get it confused with “Oldrim” (Skyrim Legendary Edition, etc.) especially if you ever try to manually install mods. SSE is almost the same as the original skyrim with all of the DLCs installed plus some (but not all) fixes. It is also 64 bit and has enhanced graphics so is more GPU/CPU/Memory intensive to match more modern systems while still having relatively low system requirements.
If you have not bought anything yet and want to play Skyrim, then just buy SSE (preferably on sale, though you will get so many hours out of it that it is easily worth full price).
I will NOT be covering the billions of mods out there, but I will briefly mention the modding situation because there is one mod that is kind of important to know about: the unofficial patch. It’s more like 1,000 bugfixes that should have been included in the game, but were not, rather than what you usually think of as a mod.
The Modding Situation
With Skyrim Special Edition there are two sorts of mods in the game now that you should be aware of even if you don’t use them:
- Bethesda’s “Creation Club” mods that are purchased from the Creation Club store. These are more like “micro-DLCs” and are not considered mods for purposes like disabling achievements.
- Regular mods made for free by everyone else. They are considered regular mods (even though some are more like full DLCs), are officially unsupported, and cause achievements to be disabled.
Both of these can be accessed from the main menu in the game.
You do not absolutely need anything from the Creation Club. Don’t worry, it’s not a pay-to-win game. The CC mods are pretty small and nothing approaching the size of a DLC.
Since I’m not going to really cover mods here, the only mod I will mention is the Unofficial Patch.
If you do NOT care about Achievements in the game: just select the Mods option from the main menu and install the unofficial patch. Warning! This will disable achievements even though it’s just bugfixes! If you pick this option then skip down to Game Start and XP Bonuses and ignore the rest of this about patches and achievements.
If you DO want to gain Achievements by playing: do NOT install the unofficial patch from the Mods menu in-game! This will disable your achievements. If you want achievements you have two options:
- Don’t install the patch or any other mods and just play with the bugs, then either reload saves (for non-deterministic bugs that may not happen on a second try) or use specific recommended console commands from the wiki to work around the bugs. This is the option I picked to get 100% achievements. All of the bugs are quest-related bugs and you can find workaround console commands for almost everything on this unofficial wiki [link] which you can consult as you run into something. More often than not, it is preferable to go back to an earlier save first, and ONLY if that does not work, should use the console. Remember that the console is a developer debugging tool and you can totally irrevocably mess up your game save by “experimenting” with it. So stick to the recommended commands if you do this.
- The other much more complicated option is to install SKSE64 [link] (you want the SE build NOT the classic build) to hack the game executable, then install the mod SSE Engine Fixes[www.nexusmods.com] using a mod manager like Vortex[www.nexusmods.com] along with the manual install of Part 2. Then finally install the unofficial patch with Vortex. I’d recommend against this unless you’re experienced with manual game modding.
This bugfix situation sucks but that unfortunately is what you’re dealing with. Again, if you’re not that familiar with modding I’d recommend just picking the first option and working around problems with console commands. It isn’t that difficult when you have the wiki. Info on how to bring up the console is here [link] but you do NOT need to know all the commands. Just look up the bugged quest you’ve run into and the bug section will tell you the workaround commands to type. I’d say there are only about maybe 10 quest breaking bugs out of the hundreds of quests.
You’re not getting paid to get achievements, you get no “steam level” for them, and there’s no in game bonus for them. They’re nothing but Steam profile decoration, and bragging rights. So by far the easiest option here is to just forget the achievements, install the Unofficial Patch from the in-game Mods menu, and not ever have to worry about manual modding or even know the console exists.
You might want to just forget achievements for your first game and get to playing. Later if you really care then do them on another playthrough.
100% Achievements
Skip this section unless you’re planning to shoot for 100% achievements in the game.
Almost all of the achievements in this game are pretty easy, obvious, and don’t require any special mention. You can tell what you need to do just from the description.
You can ignore this until you run into a quest that seems to involve a Daedric Lord. These Daedric quests are spread all over the place seemingly at random so you usually don’t do them all in sequence and they don’t point to each other either.
As soon as you run into a quest that seems to involve a Daedric Lord, read this wiki page:
[link]Look up the specific quest you’re on and check for the proper choice you need to make to get the Daedric Artifact required by the achievement. Usually this involves either killing or sparing someone, and making the wrong choice means you miss the achievement (will never get it without reloading an old save).
If you mess up one quest then don’t realize it until you finish the other half of them then you’re literally going to have to reload an old save game and literally re-do half the daedric quests to get the achievement. This happened to me so that’s why I’m making it a point to warn you about it now!
Other than that, just go at it. Every other achievement is pretty obvious and not “missable”. But if you want a detailed guide, check this out:
[link]Game Start and XP Bonuses
The game start is pretty obvious so I don’t have too much to say about it. It’s the typical Elder Scrolls start situation where you’re a prisoner scheduled for execution and the game is mostly “on rails” for a brief time. Just follow the quest markers and try to do what makes sense.
Race isn’t that critical in the game. You can be very effective even playing a race that doesn’t match your skills or playstyle at all, so I don’t have too much to say about this.
If you think you will go mostly for magic, then being an Altmer is a good idea due to the magicka bonus. Similarly you will notice other races have some bonuses that are related to skills. Bretons are good because they have magic resistance which is quite helpful. Some special abilities are worthless like the Bosmer animal taming. In general, go for the continuous bonuses you want and don’t worry about the “once per day” special abilities as they won’t be that great. “Once per day” is a major usefulness limitation but constant bonuses are great.
As usual you also have to take into account whether it bothers you that you look like a cat or a lizard. But don’t worry too much if you pick the “wrong” race since the higher the level you are the less it matters. I mean you might just want to pick Nord so you can be a native that fits in better, if that sounds appealing. Or you can just pick whatever is appealing for “role playing” purposes.
Also don’t worry too much about your face and appearance features because you can spend 1000gp later at the magical cosmetic surgeon to completely redo your appearance if you want.
After you get out of Helgen, just follow the guy you escape with. Congratulations, you’re now on the loose in an open world, but I recommend that you keep following that guy until he gets to Riverwood.
Do not forget to pick one of them! There is no reason not to pick one at this point, and you can switch the one you want at any time.
The description of the stones is pretty obvious for the most part with some exceptions:
- Archery is considered a “stealth skill” (thief) for XP bonus purposes, if the Unofficial Patch is not installed. With the unofficial patch, this is considered a combat skill (warrior).
- Smithing is considered a “combat skill” (warrior) for XP bonus purposes.
- Light Armor is a Stealth skill (thief), not combat skill.
- Alchemy is a Stealth skill (thief), not a magic skill.
The categorization looks like this (copied from the UESP wiki):
Pick whichever one you want based on the type of play you expect to focus on first. Remember you can change it any time later, and you can fast travel to the Guardian Stones with the map (M) to make this easier.
You will find other Standing Stones around skyrim offering other abilities but don’t forget that activating these will remove your XP bonus from the Guardian Stone you had activated. So most of them aren’t worth it most of the time.
Another way to get an additional XP bonus that stacks with this one is the Rested bonuses from sleeping in a bed. This will only last 8 in-game hours though. There are three bonuses.:
- In a normal bed, you receive the Rested bonus, which confers a 5% bonus to skill increases.
- In a bed that you own, you receive the Well Rested bonus, which gives you a 10% bonus to skill increases. This applies to beds in purchased houses and beds that you are allowed to sleep in in an inn.
- If you are married and you sleep in the building where your spouse is (could be an inn for example if they’re currently following you) you receive the Lover’s Comfort bonus, which is a 15% bonus to skill increases.
(Copied from the wiki.)
So keep these bonuses in mind.
Without giving too much away, there’s also this artifact you can get that stores standing stone bonuses (allows you to have two at once instead of just one) which can be very useful.
By following the NPC you should arrive in a village called Riverwood. This is your typical Noob Village.
Go visit the Blacksmith. He has some work he needs done. This will introduce you to crafting armor/weapons and “tempering” (improving) said armor/weapons. He will give you the crafting materials.
It’s up to you because this is an open world game but I’d recommend following the quest objectives to Whiterun relatively soon because one of the first things you’re going to want to accomplish is to buy a house where you can stash your loot. It’s perfectly OK to hang around Noob Village (Riverwood) for a bit and do any quests that people have for you.
Difficulty Level Setting
In short, just leave it at the default. Skip to next section!
The default in Skyrim is called Adept which in most other games would be called “Normal”. To give you some idea, at this difficulty you don’t have to be perfect to play, or make optimal character decisions, but you’ll still get killed. A very few especially difficult monsters might take 2-3 tries to defeat unless you’re experienced but it’s not going to be like a difficult console game where most of the bosses take you 10-20 attempts to defeat. So this is not an excessively easy game where you need to crank this up or it will be too easy. If you don’t believe me and think you’re awesome or something then at most try Expert. You can change it at any time, even in the middle of fighting.
The hardest difficulty is Legendary which requires perfectly optimal character development decisions as well as good action game skills, maneuvering, and tactics. This is for people who can’t seem to move on to another game once they’ve mastered this one.
Save Save Save Frequently!
There are three ways to save the game:
- Autosaves – There are three of these (the last three to happen are retained, and older ones are deleted) and they happen at customizable times. See the image below for the configuration options, but the defaults are perfectly good for most people. These can be helpful for when you forget to save manually and need to reload from an earlier point, but you should not depend on them completely!
- Quicksaves (F5) which overwrites the previous quicksave. This is the easiest way to frequently save, so just hit F5 every once in a while. (Hit F9 to load your last quicksave if you screw something up like accidentally kill your follower.) You do NOT want to rely entirely on this though because quicksaves always overwrite each other! You only get one. Therefore….
- Hard Saves, your regular manual saves, should be done periodically by hitting ESC and selecting Save then New Save from the System tab.
I’d recommend a new hard save every two levels or so at least, early on, or before/after doing something “big” like entering a location that seems like it might be a big quest (trap a dragon etc) or finishing a major quest of some sort. Later you’ll probably want to hard save every one level or several times a level. The minumum should be one hard save every real-time day that you play the game.
You can save anywhere. This is not one of those games that makes you reach save checkpoints or only lets you save the game in a city.
Get a Follower
At low level, especially when you’re new, a follower is very helpful. They won’t detract much from your ability to level especially since they aren’t very powerful. If anything they might help by preventing you from having to flee as often.
You can only have one follower at a time (without mods) but that limit doesn’t count toward summoned creatures. So you can have a follower and still summon an atronach etc.
Followers aren’t terribly deadly, but they can’t be killed by monsters (if health is reduced to zero they go into “bleedout” and just sit there doing nothing for a bit until they heal over time). Usually you can kill them with your own attacks (unless they’re marked as quest essential in the data) so don’t blast something next to Lydia with a fireball when she’s almost dead.
If you attack them more than a few times though (without killing them) they will turn hostile and start trying to kill you.
When you become a Thane in any hold, you will get a “Housecarl” who will follow you or hang out at your local house when not following you (if you have one in the hold). These are usually better than random peasants like Sven.
There are quite a few potential followers you can eventually get if you earn their favor by doing some quest or mini-quest. But for now just take anyone for their decoy value.
The main use for them is decoys to distract enemies so fewer gang up on you, or so you can run away more easily if needed. (Don’t worry they’ll catch up eventually.) Another thing they’re good for is being pack mules for loot. They can’t carry that much but rather often every bit helps, at least until you get bonuses that raise your carry capacity.
You can tell them to wait in a specific spot (after a few days they’ll go home if you don’t come back) and you can tell them to go home (“part ways”). You can also give them weapons, necklaces, and rings but they usually don’t use other armor you give them. It’s also possible to command them to pull levers, move to a location, attack things, etc but you almost never need to command them manually.
(This next paragraph only applies if you don’t have the unofficial patch installed:) If they have a bow or you give them one, you only need to give them one arrow because they don’t consume ammo. So give them one of the best arrow type you have and they’ll keep shooting that. This can actually produce more arrows of that type that you can collect. (But the unofficial patch considers this a bug and fixes it.)
The main disadvantage of them is that they usually suck at sneaking and they tend to wander around a bit and aggro monsters when you don’t want. So if you’re trying to be stealthy then tell them to wait somewhere safe.
When they cause aggro trouble, just tell them to wait outside the cave/etc. while you go in and sneak around or do whatever they are not helpful with.
This is especially true if you are trying to steal or pickpocket. Do not try to steal or pickpocket in a city with a follower around. This is because if you get caught, NPCs will aggro you then your follower will aggro them and go psycho and try to kill all the NPCs. This is bad because they may have NPCs that have side quests that you want and you may get blamed for the deaths too. So tell your follower to GTFO before you do this. You will likely have to accidentally relearn this the hard way at least once. (Reload an autosave.)
- Get a follower right away to use as a decoy.
- Tell follower to wait somewhere when they are messing up your stealth.
- Ditch the follower before trying to steal or pickpocket.
Traveling at Low Level
To put it briefly, get used to running away from stuff. Run and tap ALT to sprint, which uses up Stamina but it can save your ass. You may not even be able to fend off a bear, much less a large group of hostiles. Spriggans will kill you instantly. Sneaking is a good idea but it doesn’t work well on animals. Steer clear of sites that are not your destination objective, or approach with extreme caution, as they usually have hostiles around them.
If you need to get to a new city far away, the easiest way to do it at first is to use the Wagon taxi which should be outside the stables at every major city. It isn’t really that expensive. Once you’ve “discovered” a new city though you can just fast travel and ignore the wagon, so the wagon taxi is really only useful for getting to a new city you don’t yet have as a fast travel target.
Lastly, Fast Travel (and the wagon taxi) does have a major disadvantage in that you can miss things taking the express route. You can find a lot of interesting stuff by manually walking from one place to another. So sometimes you may want to take the slow method of just walking even when you don’t absolutely have to. The map is packed with interesting locations, many of which you’ll never find if you always fast travel all the time.
Making Money
Just loot everything you can carry, drop less valuable stuff to carry more valuable stuff, sell off the stuff you don’t need, and this by itself is usually enough to generate what gold you really need. Don’t worry about your speech skill being low. Just keep selling loot and it will go up. Hang on to items that increase your carry capacity and wear them as needed. Use a follower as a pack mule. Also, strength potions will be helpful to allow you to fast travel when you’re overloaded. Once you arrive the potion will wear off, so try to travel to somewhere with a merchant a very short distance from the arrival point (like Whiterun where the blacksmith is very close to the entrance).
Doing side quests usually also rewards you with money.
Another minor way to make money is let an NPC do it for you. Find the right place in Riften and you can get married. Your spouse will “start a business” and make 100gp per day. They all do this so you can marry the first person who says yes.
Later you can make weapons, armor pieces, jewelry, enchant junk loot, and make potions then sell it all off to make additional money. (See the section below on how to level crafting skills for some tips.)
Joining the Thieves’ Guild at some point is very helpful because, by doing quests for them, you can get 5+ fences with up to 4,000gp each. Fences will buy anything, stolen or not stolen. So if you do this you will never have to worry about merchants not having enough money or not being willing to buy stuff. It won’t cost any Speech perks, but it requires doing lots of little mostly repetitive quests. Even if you hardly ever steal anything though, having these merchants with lots of gold is helpful.
This is one of those games where money is not really a big issue and at some point you end up with more money than you know what to do with.
Buy a House, or Build One
It is not safe to store this stuff in random chests because most of them respawn their contents periodically which will wipe out their previous contents! You have been warned!
To buy property in a hold, you need to have the “favor” of the Jarl of that hold. Any old peasant can’t just walk in with a chest of gold they found and buy a house or land.
The easiest house to buy first is Breezehome in Whiterun because you’ll be on the Whiterun Jarl’s good side almost immediately just doing the obvious quest objectives.
This will cost 5,000gp (talk to the steward) so don’t blow all your money as soon as you get it. Start saving up and selling off loot and such to fund it. It may seem like a lot at first but eventually it will seem like no big deal.
Unfortunately the house comes with no “decorations”, but even with no furnishings it still has a chest. So even before you pay for furniture you will at least be able to stash your loot in a chest. Buy the other stuff as you feel like spending the money.
Windstad Manor in Morthal. More details below.
Every hold except for Winterhold has the option to buy either a house or a plot of land on which you can build a house. The plots of land also cost 5,000gp and come with enough materials to build the smallest possible house with nothing in it but a chest. The houses in the other cities (besides Whiterun) range from somewhat to much more expensive and I wouldn’t bother with those when starting out. (They’re more like luxury items for later.)
Plots of land are available for purchase in Falkreath Hold (Falkreath), Hjaalmarch (Morthal), and the Pale (Dawnstar). To purchase them you’re going to need to do some quest for the local Jarl of the hold in question and you may be too low level to do those right away, but Morthal is the exception. In Whiterun you’ve probably already got sufficient favor with the Jarl of Whiterun to buy Breezehome in Whiterun, but this favor does not transfer to other holds with their own Jarls.
Generally speaking, the best house option you can get is going to be one of the build-it-yourself houses on the plots of land but this isn’t entirely the case until you can afford all the materials to really max out the construction and furnishings. The build-it-yourself houses are the ones that are most complete in terms of crafting stations and other options, and they have gardens where you can grow alchemy ingredients.
But it will take some doing to get all the amenities built in one of those, so it’s reasonable to start with Breezehome in Whiterun, buy a plot of land, then move your stashes of stuff to your new house at some point.
I personally think that among the three land plots available the best one is Windstad Manor, low level or not. This is because it has the fish hatchery where you can farm alchemy fish. This may not be a big deal though if you don’t really care about the fish alchemy ingredients.
Building a house in Skyrim SE is not like Fallout 4. You have limited options and you don’t get to place things manually. Here is some advice on what options are most useful.
First you build a small house. After that you can build a main hall, where the small house becomes like an entryway. After you build the main hall you will get some options as to what sort of “wings” to add to it. There are three wing locations each with three options unique to that location.
First off, the Alchemy and Enchanting Towers are useless because you can just build alchemy and enchanting stations in the main hall. Only build the towers if you just think towers look cool and don’t mind the consequences. They won’t allow you to do anything you can’t do without them, and the enchanting tower prevents you from building the greenhouse. They don’t even look that impressive anyway (very underwhelming).
The Storage room is also completely useless as you have an insane number of container options in pretty much every location in the house. The Cellar is better.
The Kitchen is almost useless, because food is almost useless in the game (excepting survival mode, mods, etc.) so only build that if you’re into food for some reason. You get a cooking pot in the main hall anyway. The Library is also useless and is only worth building if you like the cosmetics. In my opinion it’s still lacking enough bookshelves. Building either of those prevents you from building the armory which is much cooler in my opinion as you can display lots of souvenirs (everything else is lacking mannequins and weapon plaques). The trophy room isn’t that special but is the only worthwhile thing to build for the north wing unless you just like towers.
The Garden is extremely cheap and should be almost the first thing you build, after the small house, if you do any alchemy at all. It is extremely useful.
Similarly, the Greenhouse is extremely useful as that increases your growing capacity and even has extra ingredient junk in it like butterflies and bees.
The Cellar is almost essential. You can max it out with all the smithing-related stations and separate storage containers you could possibly need. Most of those you can also build outside but it’s nice to have them inside.
Cows, Chickens, and Bards are purely cosmetic and really don’t give you anything useful. The cow needs a kitchen to provide milk and the chickens never seem to lay eggs.
A stable with a horse (must have a steward to buy) might be useful to some but I’ve found it pretty useless.
And as mentioned the Fish Hatchery is great, but this option is only available at Windstad Manor. The other two land plots have their own special unique thing you can build, but I don’t find them useful other than as decoration.
One last tip: If you pay a steward to furnish a room, it will happen incrementally and will take forever because it’s based on the number of times you enter and exit the outside map cell (not the house itself). Just sleeping and waiting will not work. You will also just get everything in a room and have no option not to build certain things. Consult the previously mentioned wiki for tips on speeding this up by finding the cell border and crossing it lots of times manually.
Non-Skills: Shouts and Powers
Most of the rest of this guide is about skill development and spending skill perks, but before I get into that let me say a few things about things that are not skills: shouts and powers.
Aside from any racial special ability you might have, these are pretty much all found by going through dungeons and doing quests. Most of them don’t seem very powerful and their range of usefulness may not seem very obvious, but many of these are like your toolbox of miscellaneous things you can use for creative problem-solving purposes. Some puzzles require that you use one of them, but most often they’re optional yet can be very helpful if you can think of the right idea.
Some are more like an oil filter wrench which is completely useless until you run into an oil filter that needs removing. Others are more generally useful like a screwdriver but can still be used for things other than their intended purpose sort of like using a screwdriver to poke a hole in something.
It can be easy to forget about these, since they don’t level up (aside from finding more magic words for a dragon shout), but try not to because this is your box of miscellaneous problem-solving tools. There are quite a few useful and funny things that can be done with them, like surviving an unsurvivable fall off of an extremely high cliff or causing your enemies to suddenly have major problems with their pets/livestock. So try not to forget you have them and try to imagine which situations they’d be good for.
Perks and Character Skill Focus
The game is classless so you ought to be able to just skill up everything to 100 and do everything equally well right?
So at first you can tinker around with being an amateur mage, amateur warrior, and amateur thief all at the same time. But rather soon you’re going to have to commit to focusing on specific skills with perk choices.
The sooner you do it the better because otherwise you end up spending one perk in Destruction magic, then abandoning that skill for One-Handed weapons as your main damage-dealing method, then that one perk in Destruction is essentially wasted since it would be better spent on something else.
In general you want to focus on one melee damage skill and one ranged damage skill. So pick like One-Handed or Two-Handed weapons and either Archery or Destruction. But don’t try to be an archer/mage/1H/2H warrior mage archer or something. That is spreading things too thin.
Similarly, focus on one defensive skill. Usually this means either Light Armor or Heavy Armor, but if you want to try to play an armorless mage then you’d substitute the Mage Armor Alteration perks for the armor skills. I do not recommend being an armorless mage though because the maximum armor spell value is capped too low even with perks, and there are too many enchanted apparel pieces you will want to wear that count as armor that will negate the Mage Armor perk.
The first perk you should almost always take as soon as it becomes available is whatever gives you a damage bonus and whatever gives you an armor/defensive bonus. Otherwise you will find yourself falling behind your level when it comes to attack and defense. Monsters level scale so the higher your level the harder the monsters will be, and you don’t want to be way behind their attack and defense ability.
Once you are “caught up” with offensive and defensive perks you can spend them on other things that are not direct damage bonuses. Keep in mind though that some perks may not sound like offensive damage or defensive perks, like Smithing perks, but they actually are because like with smithing they allow you to increase your weapon damage or armor value by improving your weapons and armor.
To give you some idea of the situation with perks, if you get every single skill to 100 without resetting any skills to 15 again, you will be level 80. That’s 80 perks you’d get and there are a total of 251 perk options. So you can’t max out all skills with all perks. (Really this is not necessary anyway because quite a few perks are mostly useless.) But this should give you an idea of how number of perks relates to those skill levels. Even 100 in every skill will not give you all perks.
The next sections contain more specific suggestions for skill focus depending on what sort of playstyle you want.
Keep in mind that you do not have to pick just one of these. You can pursue various blends of them to some extent as long as you don’t spread your perks too thin. This is reflected in some of the suggestions, so the three sections kind of overlap a good bit.
Skill Focus: Melee
So you’ve decided that all this stuff is too complicated and you just want to bash skulls in. That is perfectly reasonable and is an easy way to get started.
There are two main ways you can go with this. One is to be an outright in-your-face meathead barbarian and focus on a melee skill, blocking, and heavy armor plus some archery. On top of that you will have some room to tinker with some other things like Restoration magic to heal yourself, and maybe mage armor spells to up your armor rating a little. But don’t forget to save some perks for smithing, enchantment, and alchemy because those help almost everyone. Smithing will be most important, enchantment will be eventually able to increase damage and blocking, and alchemy can give you poisons and temporary damage/blocking bonuses. These last two are a bit longer term though.
Another way to go is to go with various degrees of melee stealth with varying degrees of focus on the melee vs the stealth assassin stuff. Yes you can sneak in heavy armor but you will not be any good at it for a while. Eventually you can negate the noise of armor and weight with perks, but it will take longer to learn to sneak effectively than if you started out with light armor.
Unless you really want to be a meathead barbarian who never sneaks, go with One-Handed. One-Handed is way more flexible because: you can use a shield OR dual-wield, dual wielding is eventually more deadly than two handed weapons, and two handed weapons are limited to a 2x sneak attack bonus whereas one-handed weapons can get either 6x or (for daggers) 15x. So Two-Handed might look good at low level when it does more damage, but there are more long-term disadvantages to it. With one-handed you can also swing a weapon while casting a heal or ward spell.
If you want to play more of an assassin with a focus on the stealth attack bonuses, go with light armor. You could do this with heavy armor but as I said you will not be nearly as effective until higher levels.
If you don’t mind being totally in-your-face at lower levels where you mostly walk up to things and start smashing skulls, or you just don’t care about stealth at all, go with heavy armor. Heavy armor should be the default, in other words. Light armor is really for stealth concerns and focusing on sneak attack bonuses.
Go for Archery, not magic. This is because Archery can get a 3x sneak attack damage bonus, and Destruction magic really requires quite an investment, not just in the Destruction perks but also in Enchanting and Alchemy to lower spell costs and raise spell damage. Increasing Archery damage should be secondary to increasing your melee damage.
It is possible to play a “Spellsword” type character who uses destruction rather than archery, but this gets more tricky to balance out so if you’re first starting out I’d suggest not trying this strategy right away. People tend to try this on a second playthrough for the additional challenge.
Focus primarily on Health. Stamina is like Magicka for warriors, but it isn’t needed nearly as badly as mages need magicka, so I’d spend maybe 1/4 to 1/3rd of your levels on Stamina especially at low level. For the first 10 levels or so just get health. Almost never take Magicka unless you absolutely need it for some specific heal spell or something.
Skill Focus: Stealth
This is my favorite and it’s really one of the more powerful things to focus on. Eventually you will be sneaking around one-shot killing everything with daggers and most common situations will be way too easy until you run into certain enemies who are very observant. This also makes stealing things very easy and you’ll never be short of cash as long as you have Thieve’s Guild fences to sell to.
First of all, your damage focus must be One-Handed and Archery. Two-Handed weapons get only a 2x sneak attack bonus and magic gets NO sneak attack bonus. On the other hand, one handed can get 6x, 15x, or higher with certain items, and archery can get a 3x bonus. Sneak attacks are going to be your main thing so this is really important.
Secondly, if you want to be able to do this as early as you possibly can, you really want to use Light Armor. Heavy Armor will eventually work, but at low level you’re going to have to be more of a conventional warrior or snipe things with a bow for much longer than if you pick Light Armor. Light Armor is also important because you can much more easily get light armor that has stealth bonuses and even gloves that further double your melee sneak attack damage to 12x and 30x. There is more enchanted Light Armor loot/rewards that has bonuses for the thief skills like lockpicking and pickpocketing.
At lower level focus more on increasing Archery damage because your Sneak ability won’t be good enough to sneak up to things and backstab them. Later, but realtively soon, switch the focus to One-Handed. You’re always going to need to keep up with Archery though because that will be your main way of killing dragons for a while.
As always, Smithing is important to increase your weapon damage and improve armor when you can.
Alchemy can be useful for poisons, especially paralysis poisons. But this is mostly for shooting tougher opponents with bows as this damage doesn’t multiply.
Enchanting is not nearly as important especially early on because the vast majority of your damage will come from sneak attacks and the enchanted weapon magic damage doesn’t multiply. Also, while Fortify Sneaking might sound good you will probably get good enough at sneaking that you won’t need this that much. Enchanting will mostly be useful for magic resistance and maybe fortify archery. It can also Fortify One-Handed, but this becomes overkill if you’re already doing 6x or 15x damage.
You will be able to handle almost everything with sneaking including broad daylight if you invest SOME perks in Illusion magic so you can cast Muffle and Invisibility. The main perk you will need is Silent Casting. You will not necessarily need the magicka cost reduction perks because your magicka will tend to fully regen while you’re sneaking around. So even if muffle or invisibility takes all your magicka to cast, it doesn’t matter because you won’t be casting it much and it has time to regen.
When going for the Muffle and Invisibility in the Illusion school, do not be tempted to take perks to increase the level of creatures you can Frenzy or Calm. That will be a big waste because it takes too much of a special focus commitment. Just get Silent Casting and stick to muffle and invisibility. Spend as few Illusion perks as possible. Frenzy and Calm tend to be too level limited without maxing out the perks for those things, and they’re too redundant with sneaking and sneak attacking.
With Muffle, Invisibility, and good sneaking skills you will eventually be a stealth god. You can even “assassinate” a dragon in one shot if you know exactly how to, though in most situations this isn’t worth the trouble since they’re usually leaping into the air quite frequently even when they do land and you usually need to get them alone.
I will cover those more a little later but I don’t mention them because you don’t really need to take perks in these, even as a professional thief, and everyone is probably going to do some Lockpicking anyway. See the section “Skills for Everyone” for tips on these.
Focus primarily on Health. This helps compensate for lack of heavy armor. Only spend what levels on Magicka you need to cast some spells you need like Invisibility. Ignore Stamina until you’re significantly higher level, like level 30+.
Skill Focus: Magic
So you mostly want to focus on magic so you can be really smart, unlike those meathead barbarians and sleazy thieves and assassins. Well as you might expect this means you’re going to be rather crunchy and will mostly rely on magic for both offense and defense.
The first thing to know is that you can’t be a total master in all schools of magic especially at first. You sort of can be later on, but you probably won’t be able to afford the perks to be equally awesome at everything. So you do need a little focus within the realm of magic, at least until much higher level.
Your main damage dealing method is going to be ranged as you will want to attempt to stay out of melee as much as possible.
The obvious offensive damage method is of course direct damage from Destruction. If you want you can primarily focus on this and max out everything, but do NOT forget that Enchanting and Alchemy are important for really perfecting destruction. At first they won’t help much, but eventually you can reduce spell costs to ZERO with Enchanting and use potions to increase spell damage significantly.
However, Destruction is not the only way of damage dealing. Conjuration allows for summoning things to deal damage for you. So another option is to go more minimal on the Destruction perks and focus more on Conjuration. If you do this then Illusion and Sneaking will also help you out as you can sneak, Muffle, and Invisible yourself with Silent Casting to stay out of combat while your minion(s) do the dirty work. A major longer term goal will be getting the Twin Souls perk.
If you want to focus on Conjuration then I would recommend going more for Atronachs than Necromancy because Necromancy isn’t that great. You need a dead body for one, and the zombie you raise won’t last very long. The zombie also disintegrates once it expires so you can’t keep raising the same one. Sometimes you might be able to raise a zombie that is more powerful than what you could summon, but this is too situational and temporary.
The last major way of damage dealing is to take on the expensive commitment of maxing out the effectiveness of Frenzy in Illusion. Unfortunately this is a serious commitment. You’ll want every bonus perk plus dual casting to be able to get it to work on sufficiently high level opponents, and even then it isn’t going to work in situations where there’s only one opponent or the opponent is a Dragon or something. So it really can’t be relied upon as your main method of killing stuff. Don’t even bother with the mind control Illusion perks unless you’re going to go all-out on it. Alchemy is also useful to boost the effectiveness of Frenzy and other target-level-limited illusion spells. The main limitation is the level limit of the creature affected. You’ll need to neglect something else due to this commitment.
Lastly, you may want to spend a few perks on One-Handed weapons. The Bound Weapon spells (Conjuration) are pretty good, as are weapons you can find, but keep in mind you won’t be tanking well any time soon. But you need something to deal damage that doesn’t need magicka.
The first thing you will notice is that at low level especially you’re going to want to wear these robes that increase magicka regen and lower spell costs, yet these flimsy robes have no armor value. Eventually this will become less of a big deal once you get Enchanting to the point where you can enchant armor to achieve the same effects, but at low level you’ll rely more on “stock robes” and magic for both physical and magical defense.
So the most important thing here early on will be Alteration for the Mage Armor type spells (Stoneskin, etc.) You also need to not forget to cast these on yourself since they don’t last forever. Keep an eye on whether your hands are still glowing to know if the spell is still active. The Mage Armor perk will be very helpful at first but eventually you’re going to run into some nice headgear and such that you’ll want to wear that counts as armor.
At first your only effective defense against magic is going to be ward spells, so you also need some Restoration skill and perks. Fortunately, Restoration also lets you heal yourself. Later on, Enchanting will make you nearly invulnerable to magic especially if its of a specific element so you won’t need the wards. Alchemy is also helpful for magic damage resistance but is more limited by available ingredients and limited potion duration.
Lastly, as previously mentioned Sneaking and the associated Muffle and Invisibility are pretty good for staying out of combat. The Silent Casting (Illusion tree) perk is critical for this. Calm spells can also make good defense but I advise against spending perks on Calm unless you’ve already decided to max out the Frenzy/Calm/Courage Illusion spells.
Also note that while, at least at higher sneaking levels, it is possible to stay hidden while blasting things with Destruction spells (if you have Silent Casting), you don’t get a sneak attack damage bonus for this. So it’s primarily a defensive technique that is only effective at higher levels and some perk investment in Sneak.
In short, every self-styled wizard will need some Alteration and Restoration perks. Choose between a major focus on Destruction or Conjuration, but every mage needs a little Destruction. Don’t pursue the Frenzy/Calm/Courage perks without making a major commitment like entirely neglecting Conjuration for example, but the Muffle and Invisibility are trivial and don’t require any serious perk spending to use (though you’ll want Silent Casting).
Also don’t forget the usefulness of Enchanting and Alchemy for their defensive and offensive values in resisting magic, lowering spell costs, and raising spell damage. These will be very important to all mages.
I’d recommend at low level that you spend 50% of your leveling increases on Magicka and 50% on health. Later on maybe you can afford to have magicka exceed health but don’t do that immediately and it may not even be necessary later on as your Enchanting will get to the point where you can reduce spell costs tremendously. Also, Stamina will be totally worthless except for the extra carry capaicty, so totally ignore that until you’re much higher level (like 60+) and have the Health and Magicka situations well under control.
This is a somewhat complicated subject, so if you’re looking for more info and advice on magic see this guide:
[link]Skills for Everyone
There are some skills almost everyone is going to want to use.
Smithing is important for anyone who isn’t planning to use only magic. Even at higher levels a pure mage will probably want to enchant their own custom armor, but they can procrastinate on Smithing big time. Everyone else should try to keep their Smithing perks current with the materials they can obtain and the type of equipment they can use. This is because improving weapons and armor is a big capability factor in the game.
The #1 priority for Smithing perks to get is Arcane Blacksmith so you can improve weapons and armor that are already enchanted. This allows you to massively improve those nice artifacts you find!
Enchanting is important for obvious reasons. Everyone can use it somehow. It can make you immune to magic damage and increase melee and archery damage. In addition it can reduce spell costs to zero. But it’s not that effective at low levels. Try to plan for when to start dumping your perks into this, maybe around level 30 at the latest or much earlier (10 to 15) if you are primarily a mage.
Alchemy is also useful to everyone because it can fortify smithing and enchanting, plus other skills, but like enchanting you can procrastinate a bit on this unless maybe you’re specializing in Destruction magic or something. Still keep in mind that it should be rather secondary to most others in terms of perk priority. If you’re an assassin then keep in mind that damage poisons aren’t that great.
Sneaking is something everyone can use but not everyone needs to invest perks in it.
Similarly, Restoration is useful to everyone because you can heal yourself this way, but not everyone really needs to put more than a very minimal number of perks into it if any at all. Restoration can be entirely neglected in favor of using heal potions, but potions take up weight and you may need to carry a lot of them.
Magic in general is something that you can use a little of even if you are a meathead barbarian who just “want to smash when get angry!!!” For example, the Novice level spells Flames and Firebolt could be useful to light pools of oil on fire even if they are useless in direct combat. Transmute Mineral Ore is useful to everyone even if only to make money. (“Grok make iron to gold!”) One thing that helps here is to hang on to some of those magic robes and put them on only when you need to cast a spell lots of times or need to reduce spell cost so you can cast it. Fortunately they only weigh 1 unit so you can carry more than one around pretty easily.
Lockpicking is also useful to everyone but never invest any perks in Lockpicking (!!!) because Lockpicking is too easy and lockpicks are too cheap and common. The only thing Lockpicking perks will do is save on lockpicks, and those are so cheap they aren’t worth saving. Just hoard up tons of lockpicks.
The trick with Lockpicking is to use the decorations and texture dots around the lock as “tick marks” to remember the exact pixel position of the lockpick used for your last attempt. Using this technique, making precise adjustments every time, you can conceivably pick a Master lock at 15 skill though you will likely break 20+ lockpicks in the attempt.
Speech is also useful of course but again I would recommend never invest any perks in Speech It’s just not worth it. Especially if you join the Thieves’ Guild you will get most of the same advantages these perks offer in one form or the other and you’ll have plenty of money.
Lastly, Pickpocketing is actually NOT that useful for everyone. But I’m going to mention it because it’s another skill that you may want to never invest a perk in. The only one I find useful is the +100 carry capacity perk. That’s it. Poisoning people by planting poison on them isn’t that great. Being able to pickpocket someone’s armor and weapons off of them while they’re wearing them is pretty funny but ultimately not terribly useful since you can usually kill them easily anyway by the time you get to that point.
Almost anything you need Pickpocketing for (like stealing keys) can be done with a sufficient level in the bare skill with no perks. So leveling Pickpocketing is great if you have the Sneak to go with it, but the perks are mostly a waste. Rely on bare skill, and if that isn’t enough then rely on Alchemy and Enchanting to fortify the skill.
For any of these that are not of primary importance to you, just keep them in mind as a lower priority.
Some people may disagree with me regarding some of this advice, but it’s just my personal take based on some of my personal preferences. Maybe some people want some lockpicking perks because they just want to speed up lockpicking or they’re not as good at the lockpicking mini-game. Maybe some people really like pickpocketing peoples’ armor and weapons off of them because they’ve managed to develop that skill at really low level and defeat more powerful enemies that way. None of this advice is really totally absolute so feel free to ignore it as you see fit. The game doesn’t require absolute min-maxing to play, which means that a variety of play strategies are possible even if they’re not theoretically 100% optimal.
How to Level Various Skills
First thing is, as previously mentioned always activate the Guardian Stone for the skill you’re most interested in leveling. Fast travel back there and just hit the stone. Also try to stay Well Rested as much as possible. But honestly you’ll do pretty well even without rest.
For most of the skills the answer to “how do I level X” is “Just play the game and don’t worry about it.” Weapon skills level as you use them in combat. Armor skills level as you get beat on. Blocking levels when you block. Spell casting skills level when you cast spells in a worthwhile situation (like in combat).
Some are a little less obvious though, may seem overwhelming, or have some shortcuts so I will provide some tips on those.
First a warning though: Do not artifically power level a skill from 15 to 100 especially at low level! You do not want your character level to get inflated beyond your combat ability or the monsters will be kicking your ass. Once you’re level 50 or so you don’t need to worry about this but until then don’t get too nuts with it and just level crafting skills and such bit by bit.
Note that with crafting sklls, the skill increase you get depends on the gold value of the item you make. So the idea is to make the most valuable item with the least materials. Using Fortify Skill enchantments and potions will increase the value of potions, enchantments, and weapon improvements (but not weapons crafted from scratch) which means that those Fortify effects will also help you level the skill faster!
- Save all animal pelts you get. Make leather and leather strips, make leather bracers, sell the bracers possibly after using them for enchanting practice. Don’t bother to improve the bracers because it isn’t worth it.
- Save all Iron Ore and do not smelt it into Iron Ingots! Those are cheap to buy. Instead, get the Transmute Mineral Ore spell (Alteration) and turn all the iron ore into gold ore, then smelt gold ingots. Also save all gemstones and make gemstone gold jewelry. If you’re lacking gemstones, make gold rings. Then use it for enchanting practice and sell it.
- Collect Dwemer scrap metal (the ones that only weigh 2, heaver ones aren’t worth it) and smelt into Dwarven Ingots. Make Dwarven Bows, then improve the bows especially if you have any fortify smithing apparel/potions. Use bows for enchanting practice and sell. (Just buy any iron ingots you need from merchants.)
- At higher Smithing levels (maybe 80+), improving higher value material items (ebony or better) can gain you more skill than the previous suggestions IF you have the appropriate perk for the material and especially if you have fortify smithing effects.
You will easily raise your smithing skill in this manner and “get ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ make $$$” so don’t go too nuts too quickly at low level.
This levels pretty easily. Disenchant anything new you find. Steal all soul gems and get soul gems from killing the Dwemer automatons. Use the Soul Trap spell (and eventually a Soul Trap weapon) to fill any empty gems. Draugr are ideal candidates for soul trapping as there are plenty and they don’t count as people. (Draugr are NOT people too.)
Enchant loot weapons with the highest value enchantment you know. Also enchant jewelry and junk bracers and bows with the highest value enchantment you know using petty soul gems or whatever the smallest gem you have is. Save the large soul gems (grand and greater) for skill bonus enchantments for yourself. You are worth it.
Constantly using and recharging a staff or enchanted weapons will also level up enchanting but I think this is less efficient for leveling on a per-soul-gem basis. Unlike the other stuff it can be done while doing quests and engaging in combat though.
This can be leveled way too quickly so don’t go nuts with intentional leveling attempts at too low of a level.
Loot all ingredients, pick all plants, garden key ingredients at your house. Make the highest value potion you can make with the stuff you have even if the effect combos are totally stupid like Damage Health combined with Restore Health. Sell the potions to alchemists then use the money to buy up all of their ingredients. Then repeat.
The previously mentioned wiki has lists of ideal high value potions to make that you can look up if you don’t feel like this is cheating.
This can also easily be leveled too quickly at low level due to your nearly infinite ability to make potions, sell them, and buy more ingredients to repeat the process. This is even more true if making very high value potions with stock ingredients.
Make sure you have a decent amount of gold like at least 1,000gp. Dump your inventory, except your gold, in your house just in case any of it is stolen. Then go out in Whiterun for example and start trying to pickpocket small value items off of people like food. At first try to stick with light cheap things that have a higher chance of success.
When you get caught, don’t worry. Just pay your bounty which should be 25gp (or a bribe of 12gp if you’ve joined the thieves’ guild). Your stolen property will get seized if you pay the bounty, but don’t worry. You can steal it back from the Evidence Chest in the prison later if you want.
Move on to higher value items as your skill increases.
While the bounties cost money when you get caught, it’s still cheaper than paying skill trainers.
Just sneak around hostiles. This levels pretty quickly so you shouldn’t need to worry about it too much. If you really need some artificial sneaking practice, find some place where hostiles are behind a wall and can’t get to you, then sneak around outside of the wall. Otherwise, just play the game.
This one is very difficult to level as it pretty much just requires buying and selling tons of stuff at merchants. For the most part you can ignore it and just let it level normally. If really in a hurry then a skill trainer is your best bet, but I just don’t spend any time thinking about this and let it level on its own.
Cast Muffle on yourself repeatedly. You don’t need to be in combat.
Cast Soul Trap on your follower repeatedly. They will complain but it will not aggro them. You can also substitute a horse you own for the follower. Another thing to do is unnecessarily cast soul trap multiple times on monsters (which is easier if you have a follower or minion fight them).
Cast Magelight at low level, but this is slow and you’re better off using Stoneflesh in actual combat until you get to a skill of 50. Then cast Telekenesis on a random object, or stand in some water and repeatedly cast Waterbreathing on yourself.
There’s no amazing way to level these. They level slowly so just use them in combat. In other words, just play the game.
For the most part this is the same as other weapon skills: just play the game. But if you’re wanting to accelerate it a bit there are a few things you can do. One is shoot all animals… rabbits, foxes, deer, it doesn’t matter. In real life this sort of disregard for wildlife conservation would be an atrocity, but since this is a game it doesn’t matter. Another is shooting at large targets like mammoths and giants from a long distance. Being far away you will easily be able to escape when they come after you and you will get some practice aiming for long distance shots. Lastly you can find some sniper position up on a rock or mountain that hostile NPCs can’t get to and take pot shots at them. They have ranged attacks too though so plan to move behind cover as necessary.
Shooting at the round archery range targets will not raise your skill. You have to be in actual combat. Those are only good for getting used to aiming.
Branching Out and Refocusing
At some point you will find that you have gotten pretty good at your main areas of focus. You probably have those skills at 100, you have lots of perks invested in them, but realize that you don’t actually need to get ALL the perks in a skill. You’ll notice some don’t seem that useful, and some seem unnecessary as you don’t really need to be equally competent with hammers, axes, and swords for example.
At this point you have some ability to branch out into other things and fool around a bit. At the very least you can get a “hobby” in another skill and spend some perks on it.
This is fine to do, but just don’t try to do it too early.
Also don’t neglect the appropriate crafting skills. For warrior types, Smithing and Enchanting are most important. For mage types, Enchanting and Alchemy are most important. And for stealth types Smithing, Enchanting, and Alchemy may be equally important but with more emphasis on Smithing.
You may notice that when you get a skill to 100, this option appears to make the skill “Legendary”. This is not quite as legendary as it sounds as it actually just resets the skill to 15 and returns all the perks. So it’s actually a skill reset. Why that is called “Legendary” I don’t know, but just realize it’s a skill reset.
This gives you an opportunity to not only keep leveling the character but also allows you to switch strategy a bit. It can be used sort of like “switching class” but at the skill level.
Do NOT do this immediately though. It takes a little planning. Here’s an example of what to do.
Lets say you are a meathead barbarian who has gotten your Two-Handed skill to 100 and you’ve invested all the appropriate perks, but you decide that One-Handed might make you seem a little more civilized for polite society while dealing more damage. So you decide you really want to switch to One-Handed.
Don’t reset Two-Handed immediately! Get yourself some decent One-Handed weapons and get that skill up to at least 60 (if not higher) first. Use the One-Handed weapons on easier foes and switch back to Two-Handed weapons as needed.
Once you’re reasonably good with One-Handed, reset Two-Handed and get your perks for that back, then spend them on One-Handed. Now you’ve transferred a bunch of perks to One-Handed and you should be much better at it. Congratulations, you’ve effectively switched your focus to One-Handed and are now ready for sophisticated social events in the civilized world.
Similarly you could decide that you want to switch your ranged attack focus from Archery to Destruction. This is a little more tricky but the same technique applies.
If you can’t use all the perks right away, don’t worry. You can just save them up and spend them once your skill increases to the minimum required for the perk you really want.
Beyond Level 80
As previously mentioned, even if you train all skills to 100 without resetting any you will be level 80 and will not be able to continue. Around level 60-70 though you’ll notice that it’s getting rather difficult to find ways to gain levels, so it will start to seem like the limit is even lower.
With an old version of Oldrim, Level 80 was a hard limit and there was nothing you could do about it. Before Special Edition was even released, they added the “Legendary” skill reset feature so you could go beyond level 80. So now you no longer have this hard limit.
Arguably there’s no real need to go beyond level 80 unless you just want to be really good at everything. You’ll probably find yourself cranking up the difficulty level to Legendary in the settings because things will get too easy.
So if you want to do this, here are some tips on what to do.
One thing you can do is keep doing the “skill refocusing” as described above. You just keep transitioning between different skills, leveling one up and resetting the old one. This can be a little annoying though so there’s another option I will mention, though it is much more grindy.
The much easier but more boring thing to do is what I call Giant Sparring, more commonly known as “block a giant”. There are other ways to do this, like resetting and leveling up Illusion in the artificial manner previously mentioned, but I think re-leveling Blocking is the least time consuming. (There are some less time consuming ways but I consider those to be exploits so I won’t mention them. At least this requires some combat.)
All you need to go is get some decent heavy armor and a shield of at least Ebony level material (or armor improved to give you an armor rating as close to 600 as possible), then go to any giant camp of your choice. (Fortify Blocking stuff might be useful but isn’t strictly needed.) Kill everything there except for one giant who will become your unwitting sparring partner.
Put the shield in your left hand and a good restoration spell like Close Wounds in your right hand, then walk up to the giant so he starts trying to smash you. Just keep blocking his attacks, and heal yourself as needed.
Ideally you should do this after activating the Warrior Stone, being Well Rested, and getting any other XP bonuses you can manage.
You will notice that your Blocking skill will level rather quickly. Reset it when it gets to 100 and keep going as long as you want some more levels/perks to play with. Getting 2 character levels won’t take that long.
I think it is very boring to just do this for hours, so I’d recommend doing it occasionally as you think of a new perk or two that you want to try. I think it only takes maybe 20 minutes to go from 15 to 100 in blocking if you have the XP bonuses, which is about 2 character levels, but I haven’t really timed it.
If you have the crazy goal of getting ALL perks, realize that you’d need to be level 251 and it will take forever to get there. This is boring as hell, not worth it, and it really isn’t necessary. To give you some idea, My current character is level 130 or something and I am not the least bit interested in doing any more Giant Sparring. Even at level 80 you’re going to be massively overpowered unless you somehow got to that level by making really horrible perk choices.
For the most part there’s really no game content that is intended for levels beyond maybe level 60 or something so you’re going to run out of meaningful content appropriate for your super-high level. So the main point of this just becomes experimentation which you could also do by cheating with console commands (which I won’t cover).
Other Resources
These are my favorite other resources on Skyrim SE.
Most of them are actually listed in this forum sticky thread so just go there!
The only thing from the thread I’ll repeat, even though I already mentioned it, because it’s so useful is the UESP Wiki:
[link]And if you start feeling like you want to mod the game with some stuff, this is Mod Central for SSE and a bunch of other games:
[link]Finale
That’s pretty much all I can think of.
Note that you do still have a bit of slack to fool around a bit. You can probably try being an almost pure mage with the Assassin sneak perk who uses Muffle and Invisibility to backstab certain things for 15x damage with two daggers for example.
I mean it’s a classless system and my main point here is that you can’t do everything equally well so don’t spread your perks too thin. The higher level you get the more you will seem like a jack of all trades, but early on you need some focus.
Some things like “never spend perks on lockpicking” should be taken with a grain of salt. What this really means is that I’ve found I can do everything I want to do with just skill and no perks. Others may disagree that it’s a complete waste to spend perks on these things. Obviously you will encounter different opinions on some things, especially with regard to magic and the skills to never spend perks on. I tried to stick to things that seem like safe advice, but more complex strategies people have developed may warrant violating my advice.
Please leave feedback in the comments below in case I got anything wrong or left out anything major.
Also please rate this up if it is helpful. (People often forget to do this it seems.) And thank you to those who have rated it so far!