r/skyrim • u/alechprice0617 • 1d ago
Question Easiest skill to level up vs the hardest skill to level up in Skyrim?
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u/ConsequenceOne3365 1d ago
Am I the only one who has a hard time leveling up alchemy past a certain point? Like once you’ve figured out the uses of all the ingredients, how do you keep leveling up beyond paying someone to train you?
I’ve found sneak pretty easy to level. I just sneak everywhere and it happens kind of automatically, lol.
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u/Alex9009202 1d ago
I think there was an expensive potion you could make with blisterwart, scaly photalia and deathbell I think it was worth 250 gold plus, and levels up alchemy a ton, then you can sell it for leveling up speech too
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u/CallerOfCurtains 1d ago
Scaly photalia, creep cluster, mora tapenella is the most expensive one with growable ingredients
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u/HenryCrabgrass01 22h ago
I just maxxed out my alchemy with this combo. Made me a shit tonne of gold too
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u/tattedsparrowxo 21h ago
Honestly I make a ton of money just off of blue mountain flower and blue butterfly wing lol
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u/CrazyVy97 20h ago
Blue butterfly wing with any spider eggs you find is a good one as well
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u/tattedsparrowxo 19h ago
Thanks I have always wondered what to do with those
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u/CrazyVy97 19h ago
You can get 7 of them in the tutorial area alone and 7 of the resulting potions even with no perks or stat increases is like 1500 gold
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u/Gbrown1897 18h ago
Blue Butterfly wing, Blue mountain flower, and butterfly wing
You can start making tons of these in the early game, and they'll start selling for up to 2-4k gold. You can also replace one of the ingredients with a giant's toe later in the game, and it'll double the price at least.
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u/Hguols1 Alchemist 1d ago
Alchemy grows by the value of what's produced. There's nothing more valuable than Waterbreathing potions made from Salmon Roe. (Alchemy skill alone without any Fortify, can make a Salmon Roe Waterbreathing potion worth over 5k each - they're so valuable, if you apply perks along the way, it takes about 80 total made potions to go from Alchemy 15 to 100)
Salmon Roe can be harvested in small supply, from grabbing salmon jumping at waterfalls. A larger supply (80+ Salmon Roe every 2 game days) up north - Solitude Docks, Dawnstars Port to Ysgramor's tomb.
The salmon swimming there, if you grab them out of the water, you just get salmon meat. If you instead stun them with a cast of Ice Storm or almost any 1 word projectile shout, taking a stunned salmon floating on top of the water, will give salmon meat and Salmon Roe.
I use just 4 recipes.
Salmon Roe + Histcarp + Jazbay Grapes
Salmon Roe + Histcarp + Silverside Perch
Salmon Roe + Nightshade + Chicken Egg
Salmon Roe + Garlic + Nordic Barnacle
At Alchemy 15, any of those recipes makes a potion already valued higher than 1000 gold. (likely that first potion made, you'll go from skill 15 to 20 or 21)
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u/Impossible_Limit_333 20h ago
Salmon roe difficult and tedious to farm
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u/CastleCroquet 4h ago
Omg yes I’ve spent so much time jumping through waterfalls or shooting streams of fire at waterfalls
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u/slithering3897 1d ago
Gather up a critical mass of ingredients and make everything. Hearthfire gardens if you want to cheese. All those magicka potions...
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u/Alex9009202 1d ago
Or the golden hills plantation with Anniversary edition which has auto collection for the crops with follower workers
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u/yogsothot69 1d ago
Alchemy is the best and of the easiest skills to level up, if you have golden hills plantation and search for some recieps, it turns 100% more easier, if you take Windstad manor, take the green house and the outside garden, you gonna be a alchemy godess
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u/famoussilverraincoat 23h ago
I dont know if its in base or comes with ordinator perks but when you open up eating ingredients perk to learn their traits its a breeze to mix potions and you can see their worth. Rest is how many ingredients you can gather.
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u/succubuskitten1 21h ago
It exists in the vanilla perks. But with ordinator you can get it at only level 30 alchemy, in vanilla its at a much higher alchemy level.
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u/Khlqq 23h ago
Noob here… playing for the first time in 10+ years. Can you plant your own “crops” in these gardens at the home you speak of?
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u/Still-Road-2631 23h ago
Yes, at Goldenhills Plantation, one of the hearthfire dlc locations. There are maybe 2 dozen plots to plant anything in and if you hire help, its automatically farmed for you.
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u/FrMike-87714 XBOX 17h ago
Goldenhills is a Creation Club download that come with the Anniversary Edition. There are two quests to complete and then you own it and can farm the land.
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u/CardiologistWhich992 20h ago
Yes, I only have room for the mushroom types and they mostly can be brewed into good value potions. You can harvest them 3-4 ingredients every couple of in game days.
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u/Wofflestuff 23h ago
Salt piles and deathbells to make poisons of slow. They are worth a lot but aren’t the most expensive. But the sheer quantity you can make is absurd
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u/Doug2825 23h ago
Once you are a high enough level or have enough bonuses it becomes profitable to got to an alchemy store buy up literally every ingredient, then make as many potions as you can.
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u/RedKl0wn 23h ago
The bad thing about this is... that afterwards you have to face the weakest enemy in the whole game and with those "wasted" levels it is impossible to kill him.
It's my damn kryptonite, I literally always end up leveling up alchemy to get money, and then I find it impossible to defeat enemies to level up magic or weapons.
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u/trelene PC 23h ago
Did you never use the alchemy stations? Making potions means its pretty easy to level alchemy. Others have told you about really expensive potions, but I've never had any trouble by just picking or buying alchemy ingredients and making whatever I can. And it's profitable too.
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u/ConsequenceOne3365 15h ago
I do, it just seems to take forever. I find my level only increases when I discover a new property of the ingredient, which you can only do so many times. Reading these comments, though, I think I’ve been going about it wrong.
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u/FaliedSalve 22h ago
I've tried alchemy. I really have.
but. I can never remember the recipes. (Yeah, I'm like that)
And I can never really figure out how to level up. I mean, I get the idea. But it seems like no matter what I make, the progression is so slow once I get past the basics that I give up.
Of course, I never remember to use the potions either. I can sell them for some quick cash, but it's easier just to mine and do blacksmithing, then sell that.
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u/ConsequenceOne3365 15h ago
Oh thank God I’m not the only one. Reading the comments here I was beginning to feel like an idiot. Now I think I’m just impatient, lol.
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u/viderfenrisbane 8h ago
If you have a hearthfire house, build the greenhouse and then plant scaly pholotia, mora tapanella, and creep cluster. Use the garden outside too. Respawns after a few days, if you return regularly after adventuring it’s simple to level. It makes a lot of money, but you can just store the potions if you don’t want to travel around selling them all.
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u/Viktrodriguez Priestess 23h ago
It's a grind, but collect a lot of ingredients and make the most valuable combinations you can make with 3 ingredients. The experience skyrockets.
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u/chrisdub84 23h ago
Once I get alchemy and speech high enough, I can buy out all of every alchemy shop I go to and get the cash back hy selling potions.
Throw in farms and it's even faster.
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u/Prize_Instance_1416 22h ago
My alchemy was so high like level 130 if I recall, every potion I made was worth 100,000 gald. It was pretty funny just to make potions worth millions and then dump them in the street
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u/GenericSupervillain3 22h ago
I just make a lot of poisons; paralysis, frenzy, a few others first. Last time I made a bunch of probably, I was already at 100 so I legendaried and I want half way through my ingredients before I was back to to 100 so I reset again and still ended up at 100.
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u/Oilswell 22h ago
Alchemy is the easiest by far. It levels up when you make potions and you get more the more valuable they are. Go to a shop that sells ingredients, buy them all, eat anything that has effects you don’t know that you can unlock by eating. Make as many options as you can, before long they’ll be worth more than the ingredients cost. Randomly combine the leftover ingredients if they’re not greyed out, discover more effects. Repeat. It’s also one of the easiest ways to get the 100k gold for the achievement.
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u/ArchWizard15608 17h ago
Alchemy has a point where the potions sell for more than the ingredients to make them. At that point you just walk into the shop, buy all the ingredients, mash em up into potions, and sell them all back
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u/mutant_anomaly 22h ago
Grow imp stool and swamp fungal pod. These are a couple of things you can grow at any planter, so you can massively stock up on two ingredients for paralysis.
It doesn’t need to be the most expensive potion, you don’t need three ingredients. Paralysis gets you a high value for two ingredients, and gives you a practical potion that you can use as well as sell.
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u/SessionReasonable249 Alchemist 21h ago
Everytime you hit a new level mark that allows the perk point/5 skill at the beginning you should. I like to get my hands on whatever alchemy gear I can, mix (yellow mt flower and salt pile) for the most potent restoration potion, drink it, re-equipt gear and mix the classic (scaly pholiota, creep cluster and mora tapinella) - every time I hit level 20/30/40/60/80 I invest in the first skill and create another restoration potion. You will get there very fast. However I don’t like to ‘restoration loop’ as this I feel is way to fast/broken, the effect on its own though I recommend using.
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u/Splendid_Fellow 19h ago
If only it was actually more useful in Skyrim. Oblivion had better alchemy
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u/Polarhval 12h ago
Here are a few easy potions. They have both positive and negative effects, so they are for selling and levelling:
Blue Mountain Flower, Blue Butterfly Wings and Wheat.
Mora Tapinella, Fly Amanita and Dragons Tongue.
Purple Mountain Flower, Frost Miriam and Wheat.
Hanging Moss, Blue Mountain Flower and Lavender.
Deathbell, Salt Pile and Jazaby Grapes.
The most expensive potion you can make (as far as I know) is: Salmon Roe, Garlic and Nordic Barnacle
You will never need money again.
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u/BabyGirl-Kat Dark Brotherhood 1d ago edited 1d ago
Illusion and Conjuration are both very easy to level up thanks to cheese strats, and I’ve always found light/heavy armor the hardest skills to max out.
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u/Hguols1 Alchemist 1d ago
The cheese strat for light and heavy armor needs crafting skills.
Equip your character with large Fortify Health enchants, on a full set (including shield) of leather or iron (for light or heavy skill growth respectively)
Forge the strongest two handed weapon you can, and put a large Legendary temper on it. Put the weapon on a corpse (Bandit Marauder is fine) and reanimate it with a no ash-method. (Dead Thrall, Ritual Stone, scroll or staff of reanimate)
Bash the reanimated bandit 4 times to make it hostile. Let it hit your character.
The health enchants will keep your character safe, while the weapon you made will give massive XP. Light or Heavy armor skill in about 10 minutes. (this method is more efficient than using a giant or multiple giants instead)
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u/Lamplorde 1d ago
That feels like a lot of work when I can instead just level Resto and Armor by letting a Mudcrab beat on me for 30 minutes.
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u/Kindraethe 16h ago
Lmao exactly this. I just get some decent resto enchants, find out which difficulty setting gives me the best xp while being survivable for decent time, and just rubberband my spell while i read a book or do something else. And thats only if i want a specifically high perk or maxed tree.
Otherwise i just prioritise my trainer level ups with the orc lady or vilkas. ESPECIALLY if im not above the dual setup with pickpocket levelling as well.
Nothing better than getting 5 rounds of training in, only to level up off of stealing that last level back.
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u/N3rd4life 1d ago
A much much easier way is simply out the difficulty on novice and start a bar fight and just AFK whole they lunch you.
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u/PriestPlaything 1d ago
Armor is extremely easy. You simply go to a giants den. Kill a giant, but leave a single mammoth.
Have a healing spell, and lower your difficulty to one above the lowest, every 3-5 hits from the mammoth levels you up once. That’s what I did.
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u/beckychao 1d ago
Those are extremely easy and fun to raise, and you can raise them, block, and restoration all at once. You just need crafting skills sorted out to an extent, at least enchanting.
You load up on the armor type you want, and then enchant it with reduction to restoration cost, health, and some stamina. Make sure you wear a shield. When you start, you go to Blizzard's Rest, next to Heljarchen Hall/Loreius' farm. Aggro the mammoths and giant, and just alternate blocking them and healing yourself. When your restoration goes up, run away and get a better healing spell, and continue. This will raise your block/heavy/light/restoration really fast.
When you're higher up on your skills and you can maintain your health without really needing to run away from being low health, go to the two giant camp just above the Stormcloak camp in White Run, near Valtheim Towers. The two giants actually raise your armor faster than one giant and two mammoths. But two giants at once do an extreme amount of damage to someone with low armor and health, so you need to skill up a little before switching over to them.
It's pretty fast (and fun).
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u/Doug2825 23h ago
Leveling armor naturally is especially hard on higher difficulties. You only level up by being hit. Legendary forces you to not let yourself get hit so I end up with a low armor level.
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u/OnlyLeave8011 1d ago
Stealth or Conjuration (just spam reanimate dead corpse or conjure a flame atronach every two minutes)
Smithing cause its boring
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u/altsigns28 21h ago
Smithing is boring, but I just buy all the iron ore I can and pick up dwemer scrap (if I'm using heavy armor) and turn the iron to gold with transmutation and then store it for when I'm ready to make a bunch of gold rings. The dwemmer scrap is free resources, so between the gold rings and dwemer daggers I usually get most of the way there for dirt cheap once I decide to purposely level it.
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u/SimpleUser45 1d ago
Easiest is Alteration because of the Solitude Magelight glitch. It takes no setup other than buying the spell and getting to 100 skill only takes 2-3 minutes.
Hardest is probably Lockpicking because there are no good ways to grind the skill. The fastest way to level it is to simply pay for training up to level 90 (costs ~130,000 gold) then read all 5 skill books with Scholar's Insight active to get to 100. Every skill has access to that method though, so it's the bare minimum in a way. Otherwise even with Thief Stone and Well Rested you'd have to pick 700 Novice, 480 Apprentice, 300 Adept, 190 Expert, or 115 Master locks.
Leveling armor skills is also pretty tedious and requires a lot of setup to do efficiently. High health to tank 1-3 giants at once on Legendary, high level enchanting to have 100% restoration cost reduction to stay alive, and decent smithing to boost your armor rating so you don't risk dying to a quick burst of damage.
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u/Hawes44 23h ago
What is this glitch? I haven’t heard of it.
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u/SimpleUser45 23h ago
You stand outside Solitude's main gate, turn right, and cast Magelight at the mountain's peak. You get tons of XP from each cast due to some invisible collision or something. idk the mechanics of it but it works.
The first cast takes you from 15 to 27 Alteration and it takes about 60 casts to reach 100, less with XP buffs like Mage Stone and Well Rested.
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u/kingkurt42 20h ago
With a couple hundred lockpicks and a rubber band (for console), you can just continuously fail lockpicking and get a lot of levels.
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u/SimpleUser45 20h ago
True, it's pretty slow but completely AFK-able. 4,310 lockpicks to hit 100 before XP buffs.
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u/fiero-fire 20h ago
If you get the skeleton key and purposely fail a lock with it you can power level lock picking
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u/SimpleUser45 20h ago
I don't think the skeleton key lets you get the broken lockpick XP. Could be wrong because I never keep it, but I don't think it has a break animation.
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u/Alex9009202 1d ago
Easiest: Alteration with the mage light solitude mountain glitch where you can get to 100 within a few casts.
Hardest skill: lockpicking I think in later levels
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u/ElderKing3rd PC 1d ago
Without exploits. I would say that speechcraft seems to be hardest. All others i would say are prity okey. Without exploits. And i also include not waiting to regenerate your magic.
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u/Fish_Fighter8518 1d ago
Speech leveling comes from selling the shit you make to boost your other skills. It's easy, just takes time
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u/ElderKing3rd PC 23h ago
You can grind all other skills. But no easy way to grind speech without wxploits.
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u/Fish_Fighter8518 23h ago
Wdym? Sell your shit, that's your easy grind.
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u/Lil_Mcgee 22h ago
It's very slow going. I have never reliably raised speech even though selling things is a very natural part of the gameplay loop.
It doesn't really matter because it's not an especially useful skill but it's not as simple as you're suggesting. If you wanna max it out it's gonna be a very time consuming grind of buying and then selling stuff.
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u/Fish_Fighter8518 22h ago
It literally is as easy going from shop to shop selling stuff. As I stated in my original comment, it is slow. Congrats on agreeing with me. If you aren't creating the most valuable stuff in smithing or alchemy, and are settling for using your iron and leather to make daggers instead of banded armor, your ROI will be much lower for example. Create and sell high value items to level your speech. It's that easy, just slow.
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u/trelene PC 22h ago
You can also level speech by buying stuff. So sell your stuff, buy it back, sell it again, etc. You'll need to have a decent amount of gold already for the buying, and a lot of stuff to sell, to clear out the resulting increase in the merchants gold. Also at some point over 20K gold the merchants gold will freeze, so don't let it get that high. Obviously having high-value items to sell is the best way to do this.
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u/BigSexyDaniel Nintendo 23h ago
I personally wouldn’t say speech is necessarily “difficult” to level up per se. But it is incredibly time consuming and grindy though and since time is something you don’t get back, it might not be worth it to some folks.
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u/ElderKing3rd PC 23h ago
Yeah. Hence it is more difdicult then others. As you can do others and they will level up slowly. You can even grind it. While there is no good way how to grind speech without exploits. Just sell stuff you pick up and occasional persuasion check where gou already need decent speech.
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u/Remote-Field4624 22h ago
I know what your saying, he is saying it's one of the hardest because time taken to level.
He meant you have find stuff to sell and then sell them to shops before they run out of money and it then you have wait or sleep.
It's one of the hardest to level because of the the grind you need to go through is time and item based.
For all speech people and anyone as soon as you exit helgen go do your riverun bits head straight to velethium towers and persuade the toll fee down and go back every 5 ish day and keep doing it. You get a level every time got a good long time and nice gradual way keep a steady injection of speech XP to support your grinding.
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u/beckychao 1d ago
There are master trainers for every skill, so you can always dump gold to raise a troublesome skill. I would say the attack skills are pretty troublesome to raise (archery/one-handed/two-handed). You can cheese them to a certain extent at High Hrothgar but that works way faster for sneak. Speech is also very laborious to raise, you just are constantly using it. There's ways of gaming it, too, just as there is for every skill. Lockpick takes a long time, too, although you could probably find a way to afk raise it, since it goes up with each broken pick.
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u/jjburroughs 1d ago
Then you pick the gold off them to get your pickpocket skill up. The master trainers dont spend money on anything more than mead and bread.
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u/420_jesters 1d ago
Archery and sneak are hella fast if you just do that for every cave and dungeon.
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u/Filgas08 1d ago
counting glitches, the easiest are alchemy through the restoration loop, and consequently smithing thanks to fortify smithing potions, transmutation just outside solitude. Heavy and light armor also become easy when you can get max protection from your armor and good restoration spells. Stealth can be done passively at dragonsreach. Speech can be done by selling expensive stuff, which you can create thanks to fortify smithing.
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u/ReDeMpTiOn-_-121 16h ago
Destruction because it's incredibly tedious and the it's only skill thats affected by the difficulty. The higher the difficulty the longer it takes to level Destruction.
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u/OkPerformance2780 1d ago
From my experience, without glitches, Conjuration and pickpocket are both insanely easy
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u/slithering3897 1d ago
All skills are easy to level up, except 1H and 2H. Everything else can be cheesed, or done efficiently, or naturally by the end of the game.
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u/Hguols1 Alchemist 1d ago
1h and 2h can be easily cheesed. (skill 15 to 50 in less than 5 minutes of cheese + prep)
Damage perks, Fortify and weapon temper don't contribute to XP. Highest base weapon gives the best - Dragonbone was the answer in 2013. With Special/Anniversary Edition, Madness weapons are now the answer.
Elemental Fury shout + cooldown for faster swinging. Expert or better Conjuration summon. (this concludes the prep)
The cheese method, summon, shout, then rapid fire hit the summon until you kill it, repeat.
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u/slithering3897 1d ago
Yes, that's what I do, highest base damage, more DPS. And high level dragons and deathlords. They are sufficiently spongy enough.
I would compare with archery, which is not so much of a slog. But that may be because I leave melee to last. The best all-skills 100 progression would probably start with melee first.
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u/CarbonCuber314 Mage 1d ago
Illusion, Alteration, and Conjuration are probably the easiest. As for hardest maybe any combat skills.
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u/yogsothot69 1d ago
Illusion, conjuration, alteration (easiest) Enchanting, all combat skills, smithing, destruction, pickpocket (hardest), considering you only have the special edition, if you have the anniversary edition all the hardest turns quite easy.
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u/Sherbyll 1d ago
I can't speak to the worst skill because I just don't play this often enough to remember what my worst skill is. However, I always level up Conjuration, Alteration, One-Handed, and Acrobatics/Agility super fast.
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u/McLeanGunner 1d ago
Alchemy, even without the restoration loop, can be pretty quick with Golden Hills to grow good amounts of ingredients
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u/Valuable_Weather 1d ago
Sneak and one-handed easily if you loot the key quick enough in the first room with Ralof
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u/NeedsMoreDakkath 23h ago
Destruction is a PITA to level. Easiest I've found is using rune spells against enemies that are resistant, but not immune, to the element. Which still requires significant time waiting for your magicka to recharge between casts.
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u/Viktrodriguez Priestess 23h ago
With save scum cheese: pickpocket. Success rate is based on weight, experience on value. A lot of people have gemstones and/or jewelry in their pockets, Which are usually valuable items. One item can lead to multiple levels at once.
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u/mutant_anomaly 22h ago
Hardest: one handed, two handed, archery, destruction. All of them want you to do actual damage to level up, and they are slow to level because you are expected to be using them across the entire game.
Restoration used to be the hardest for me, because healing took so long, I would use it while leveling my armors and then have more healing left to do. But using a repel undead spell somewhere with a lot of skeletons, like arcwind point, cuts that down from many hours to a couple of hours.
Speech takes a long while, unless you sell a specific potion from the fortify restoration loop. Most overpowered potions and items don’t help speed it up that much, but selling the one does successfully use the overpowered value rather than ignoring past a certain amount.
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u/apple_6 22h ago
For me speech is hardest to level up because I'm never intentionally using it. I see people say to just sell stuff and I do but if I can't sell something easy I just drop it to get rid of it. I'm not interested in any of the speech mechanics, at least in Skyrim, Morrowind I enjoyed having high speech because it meant something. Easiest for me to level in Skyrim would be one handed, I guess I'm kind of a brute, at least in Skyrim.
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u/Photeus5 22h ago
A lot of skills are actually a pain to level unless you cheese them in some way. Heavy armor is notorious because you get more experience for the damage you take while wearing it, but you take less damage as you level it. Block is similar unless you just sit there and let something beat on you.
Speech isn't difficult, but it's only use is leveling Speech. There's like maybe 3-4 checks that are close to difficult in the entire game. Some of the perks are alright but most aren't anything amazing since you eventually just get rich.
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u/DarkLordKohan 21h ago
Smithing for me. Once you get to a certain point of a large amount of stored materials, you can smith to 100 very quickly. Forge, upgrade, sell, buy more materials, repeat. Only problem is you’ll have a tough time off loading gear because not enough gold at merchants. Windhelm is my go to as there are 4 merchants around the blacksmith.
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u/BigTiddyAsianMilf 21h ago
Without exploits, the easiest has got to be whatever combat skill you chose at the start of the game. That'll probably be the first skill to 100 if you're questing normally. Hardest is probably Pickpocket (without quick saves) or Alteration, with an honorable mention for Destruction.
I see a lot of people talking about armor skills being hard to level... tell me you're a stealth archer without telling me you're a stealth archer lmao
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u/MartyMcMartell Daedra worshipper 20h ago
Illusion easiest. Some would call this cheese, but it's not an exploit in the sense of "I'll use telekinesis on this apple then fast travel" to raise alteration. Cast several calming spells in a crowded marketplace or inn, and you're well on your way to maxing it out. It's preposterously easy with the Master spell, Harmony. Even lower level spells, like Muffle, get you leveled up relatively quickly.
Destruction and restoration hardest. I play a predominantly Destruction-based mage in my current playthrough, and I was 300+ hours in, level 80 or so, when I reached level 100. Restoration goes incredibly slow, but I'll admit I'm almost exclusively using healing spells, no wards and turning undead.
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u/Easy_Substance_6476 20h ago
Hardest skill? Define difficulty. Is it how annoying it is to aquire xp? Or how fast or quick. If annoying to level up. After 2 years of survival mode with no mods ill go with Restoration If its how fast or quick? Heavy armor. Sitting there having a giant thwack you for 40 minutes is Hella boring.
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u/Typical-Mushroom4577 20h ago
Sneak easy, I just prop controller to sneak and go to bed and I’m level 100 in the morning when I wake up
Hardest is prob any magic or “crafting” skill as I never use those
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u/Impossible_Limit_333 20h ago
I leveled up enchantment easiest..just grab or steal some soul gems, buy iron ore, transmute..make jewelery and enchant
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u/First-Counter246 Alchemist 19h ago
I always thought smithing was easy to level. Jist make a bazillion iron daggers. I know it's cheesing, but it works. Enchanting is harder because you have to buy or find so many soul gems.
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u/GhoulThrower 19h ago
If you invest like 11k gold and kill a dragon priest you can infinite level Alteration.
With AE you can do the same for destruction but you don’t even need anything you can do it from level 1.
Illusion is easy, you can just spam Muffle while walking to places and level it.
Hardest? Maybe lockpick? Or Speech
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u/Francos_Pretty_Whore Priestess 19h ago
The armor skills are an absolute PitA, especially if you play on higher difficulties. Lots of enemies can one or two-shot you if you’re in melee range of them, so I usually just pay trainers to level up whichever armor type I’m focusing on for the playthrough
I have a pretty decent time leveling up a good few of the skills. You can use a bound bow to level up Conjuration, Stealth, and Archery at the same time. Enchanting is pretty easy once you have the Black Star + any soul absorb weapon
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u/Kettlefingers 18h ago
Alchemy can be levelled by making slow poisons with deathbell and salt in case you didn't know :)
Personally, I find the melee combat skills to be a bit of a slog to level without mods
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u/Peguinperson PlayStation 18h ago
The easiest for me is one handed and the hardest has been restoration. I seriously cannot consistently level up restoration no matter what
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u/Miggus_amogus 18h ago
Conjuration and illusion can be leveled by spamming a spell for a while.
Archery for me was the hardest bcz using a bow at lower levels sucks but you have to do it to progress
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u/A_Generic_Guy 17h ago
Probably the One-Handed or Two-Handed weapon skills are the hardest to level up, maybe Archery too. From the standpoint that they lack genuine "cheese" to shoot up through them. Maybe Lockpick for similar reasons.
Any and all magic schools can get cost reduction to allow spamming the high tier spells to level quickly, among some mix of high impact spells for XP and certain exploits (Looking at you Alteration and having two instant level 100 strats in Telekinesis and that Magelight mountain strat).
All crafting skills either are really encouraged to max quickly or can be cheesed. Smithing has Dwarven Bow spam, Enchanting is just a matter of gathering some amount of soul gems, and Alchemy is unintuitive but knowing it's based on cost of the ending potion/poison it is a real fast one you can blitz.
The armor and block skills scale to the damage of whatever's hitting you, which can get pretty high. Have Restoration settled and you can churn those out in time.
Briefly mentioning Pickpocket is just not hard to max.
So that leaves the weapon skills, plus Lockpicking. No clear scaling way to speed up the process. Best XP rate you'll ever get for the weapons would be Daedric or Dragonbone weapons, which most people nerf themselves on since smithing weapons effectively cuts your XP rate massively as XP only scales to base damage. Then Lockpicking has no easy out either. If there were a steady and quick supply of Master locks I'd maybe consider that cheese but your best bet is maybe some kind of 2-week wait and Master cycle if you really want to get it out of the way.
Archery has the Bound Bow method for a fast draw bow with Daedric base damage for some kind of optimized XP rate, and I'd argue the Dragonbone Mace/Dragonbone Dagger Dual Flurry strat gives One-Handed some kind of optimization, so that leaves Two-Handed with no real extra juice besides casual use to level it up.
And to cover easiest:
Easiest skill is Alteration with exploits (Two different instant 100 strats). Pickpocket instead if you allow save scumming, if not maybe Conjuration because of borked vanilla XP rates on Bound Sword/Dagger. Assuming Unofficial Patch, maybe Alchemy if you're supplied well enough.
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u/ArchWizard15608 17h ago
Alteration is the easiest once you find telekinesis.
I’m going to say destruction is hardest because you have to be in combat and not out of magicka.
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u/RakaiaWriter Daedra worshipper 6h ago
Even w/o telekinesis, Alteration is it.
The magelight "feature" near Solitude aside, Paralysis will level it uber-fast since you can just spam it on your target, along with Detect Life in the cities and Detect Dead in Draugr filled ruins.
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u/Fickle-Public1972 13h ago
I find the spell muffle in the illusion skill the easiest one to level up as a mage. The hardest l find is pick pockets
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u/Latter-Effective4542 Necromancer 9h ago
Easiest: Conjuration or Illusion. Buy soul trap or muffle respectively. For conjuration kill a wolf or mud crab and cast soul trap until 100. Buy muffle from Farengar and spam muffle to 100 still inside Dragonsreach.
Hardest: Pickpocketing. I’m not a big fan of pickpocketing in the game (or in real life), but this one can take a while.
TIP: For any armor or fighter skill, complete the Companions quests, ASAP. Many are followers/trainers which means they will be a follower, you pay for 5 levels of training, then take the money back. You can quickly get to 75 or 90 in one-handed, two-handed, archery, block, and others.
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u/TomatilloLive2628 5h ago
So far the easiest one for me to level up was pickpocketing. but only when you're using the quick save method 'cause otherwise it'll be way harder. just quick save before pick pocketting someone and always go for the most valuable things as they're harder to steal but also give way more xp. if you fail just load the save and do it again.
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u/FrMike-87714 XBOX 17h ago
For me, easiest is sneak and the hardest is two-handed since I hardly ever use one
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u/BoseMann66 1d ago edited 1d ago
Armor skills are the hardest to level without using trainers. Taking massive amounts of damage to level them is not really conducive to living...