The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Hints

Skill Practicing Tips

  • 1 of 7: The most important tip is to get as many practice bonuses as you can before doing your skill-practicing activities.
  • 2 of 7: While doing any type of skill practice that can drain your health or magicka, it's a good idea to have plenty of potions on hand that restore them. Make all the ones you can and save up the ones you find in treasure, then use them to help speed up your skill practice. It really slows things down when you have to keep standing and waiting for your health or magicka to slowly regenerate.
  • 3 of 7: Equipment items that increase your health or magicka (or their regeneration rate) are also very helpful, as are ones that reduce the cost of casting spells. Once you practice your crafting skills way up, you can make yourself a set of items that reduces the cost of all spells within a certain spell school to zero. That way you can cast spells constantly no matter what your magicka or magicka regen rate is. See the How to Cast Higher-Level Spells hints for more details.
  • 4 of 7: Each skill has its own methods of practicing. Below are tips for the fastest and/or safest practicing methods that I know about.
  • 5 of 7: While practicing, keep in mind that each skill has five different Skill Books that'll increase it. Also, several quests will give skill increases as rewards.
  • 6 of 7: Unlike in Morrowind and Oblivion, *all* skill increases count toward level-up credit in Skyrim. That can make the process of practicing skills and leveling up very tricky, especially since there are many leveled enemies in Skyrim, just like in its two predecessors.
  • 7 of 7: There are two basic strategies when it comes to leveling up. One is to do lots and lots of skill practice over a long period of time without leveling up at all, and then take all of the pending level-ups at once. The other is to take each level-up as soon as you earn it. Each method has its advantages and disadvantages, which are discussed below.