The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Hints

How can I practice my skills here?

• 1 of 12: You can't practice all of them, but you can practice One-Handed, Sneak, and Destruction.
• 2 of 12: Equip one of the swords, crouch down, and start attacking Hadvar with it.
• 3 of 12: He won't turn hostile, and his health will respawn very quickly, so you can keep whacking him to get increases to your One-Handed and Sneak skills without fear of killing him or wrecking the quest.
• 4 of 12: Sneak-running around near him may or may not increase your Sneak skill. The game seems to be very finicky about that sort of thing. However, your Sneak skill will go up rapidly as you get sneak-attack criticals.
• 5 of 12: To ensure that you keep getting those criticals, wait about five seconds between each blow. You should find that your Sneak skill goes up with every critical hit at first, and with every two or three later on.
• 6 of 12: To practice your Destruction skill, bring up the magic menu and equip the Flames spell in one of your hands, then continuously cast it on Hadvar until you run out of magicka. Wait a bit (or attack him with a sword) until your magicka regenerates, then roast him some more.
• 7 of 12: If you're a Breton, you can also practice your Conjuration skill by casting your Summon Familiar spell, and then attacking the familiar until it turns hostile. The skill practice will be slow, but you'll be able to get in some One-Handed skill practice, too. (You could also get Block and/or Restoration skill practice if you wanted.) However, this is best done later on after you've gained access to the Guardian Stones and other things that will increase the effectiveness of skill practicing.
• 8 of 12: Keep that up for awhile to get several level-ups, which you can take right away (by bringing up the Skills menu) or save until later (by remembering to not bring up the Skills menu for any reason). Note that whenever you bring up the Skills menu, you have to take all pending level-ups at once.
• 9 of 12: Leveling up requires you to immediately choose which of your three primary attributes (health, magicka, stamina) to increase. If you want your character to specialize in magic, or to at least use it a lot, put some of your level-up increases into magicka. Otherwise, put most of them into health and the rest into stamina.
• 10 of 12: You can put off using your skill-boosting perk points as long as you want, and you can spend them on any skills -- not necessarily the ones you've been practicing. Only spend perk points now if you're very sure of which skills you'll most often be using throughout the game.
• 11 of 12: One bad thing about earning lots of level-ups now is that many enemies in the game are leveled, which makes them more powerful if you're high-level than if you're still low-level. When you start encountering leveled enemies, you'll probably have to spend all your saved-up perk points (if you haven't already) in order to cope with the increased combat difficulty.
• 12 of 12: You'll only want to earn bunches of level-ups here if you already know where you want to spend all your perk points, and are willing to do so right away. Or if you're sure you can exercise the self-control necessary to avoid bringing up the Skills menu (and thereby leveling up) for a very long time. If you wait until you've practiced a lot of skills way high and have gotten some really good equipment, taking a bunch of level-ups at once shouldn't make things too hard.

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