Senatour(original)
Alpha Wolf
Guide to effectively levelling Smithing, Speech, Enchanting and One-handed/Two-handed
Just thought I would write this guide based on my experience in Skyrim so far. As far as skills go, I certainly found that smithing, speech, enchanting and one handed where quite important as id always want to craft that next best piece of armour and to enchant it to give it that extra boost. So I developed a nice system of levelling them all up at once. For those of you who don't focus on one handed, this guide may be less effective but can still be pulled off using two handed! (magic sort of negates the guide as no smithing or enchanting can occur efficiently)
Requirments
Knowledge of soul trap enchantment, empty soul gems, soul gems, Iron ingots, Leather strips.Make sure you are carrying the bare minimum beforehand.
Step 1 (Smithing Training)
Now I'm sure you have all heard of the old dagger trick, well this guide incorporates the fact that making iron daggers levels your smithing quickly and cheaply! So head on down to your blacksmith and hoard those iron ingots and ore from him. You can attain leather strips from either hunting you have done in your own time (Animal hides can be turned into leather at the hide tanning stand and from there into leather strips) or buy them from the blacksmith. Now that you are making your iron daggers, don't simply sell them back to him as many players do, they serve a much more important job. (We will return to this later)
(If using two-handed just smith an iron great sword (or any other option for two hands))
Step 2 (Enchanting training)
From my own travels in Skyrim, I think we can all agree you amass a large amount of soul gems, primarily the smaller variety and sometimes they are filled with souls. For the huge amount that are not, this is where they serve the key purpose in allowing the cycle of training the four skills (smithing,enchanting, speech,one-handed/two-handed). Now that you have at least a few filled soul gems, head down to your nearest enchanters table and enchant the iron daggers (or great swords) with a soul trap enchantment. You know have the ability to fill your soul gems.
Step 3 (One-handed/Two-handed training)
Now its time to get to the interesting part, heading out into the wilderness to capture your much needed souls. This can be done by either going through a weaker dungeon filled with non-human npc's such as a Draugr burial crypt (as iron weapons can be quite painful in terms of low damage) or by roaming Skyrim and attacking anything you see except large enemies and human npc's. I did this quite easily even at higher levels so it shouldn't be a problem capturing your souls within a reasonable amount of time. You will also hopefully acquire more soul gems in your 'hunting stage' from looting corpses which allows this 4 step process to smoothly run unhindered. As a personal preference I only tend to fill common, petty and lesser soul gems as I don't want to 'waste' the higher 'value' soul gems on the iron weapons.
Step 4 (Speech Skill training)
Now that you have used your iron daggers(or great swords) to capture enough souls to occupy as many soul gems as possible, you have probably run out of charge on these weapons. You should never recharge these as it makes much more sense to sell them to a vendor. Considering the huge price upgrade when you enchant a weapon, this allows you to actually train all four skills and become rich in the process! The traditional iron dagger smithing levelling would just leave you losing cash which can be painful for new characters.
Conclusion and Notes
It will often be necessary to travel to other smiths to buy the iron ingots/ leather strips when repeating these steps because they only refill their stocks every 2 days or so. Dual wielding the iron daggers can also provide a much needed damage boost. Iron daggers/great swords which have been used and you weren't able to sell to the vendor because they had no gold left can simply be discarded or stored in a chest for later sale. Also if you find yourself running low on soul gems and dont want to waste gold buying them, try and find a dwarven ruin as most of the dwemer machines have soul gems as loot!
Rinse and repeat until you reach 100 in all four skills or until you have your desired level in each.
I hope this guide helped and appreciate your feedback. Make sure you check out the other guides here as they are all interesting and informative.
Just thought I would write this guide based on my experience in Skyrim so far. As far as skills go, I certainly found that smithing, speech, enchanting and one handed where quite important as id always want to craft that next best piece of armour and to enchant it to give it that extra boost. So I developed a nice system of levelling them all up at once. For those of you who don't focus on one handed, this guide may be less effective but can still be pulled off using two handed! (magic sort of negates the guide as no smithing or enchanting can occur efficiently)
Requirments
Knowledge of soul trap enchantment, empty soul gems, soul gems, Iron ingots, Leather strips.Make sure you are carrying the bare minimum beforehand.
Step 1 (Smithing Training)
Now I'm sure you have all heard of the old dagger trick, well this guide incorporates the fact that making iron daggers levels your smithing quickly and cheaply! So head on down to your blacksmith and hoard those iron ingots and ore from him. You can attain leather strips from either hunting you have done in your own time (Animal hides can be turned into leather at the hide tanning stand and from there into leather strips) or buy them from the blacksmith. Now that you are making your iron daggers, don't simply sell them back to him as many players do, they serve a much more important job. (We will return to this later)
(If using two-handed just smith an iron great sword (or any other option for two hands))
Step 2 (Enchanting training)
From my own travels in Skyrim, I think we can all agree you amass a large amount of soul gems, primarily the smaller variety and sometimes they are filled with souls. For the huge amount that are not, this is where they serve the key purpose in allowing the cycle of training the four skills (smithing,enchanting, speech,one-handed/two-handed). Now that you have at least a few filled soul gems, head down to your nearest enchanters table and enchant the iron daggers (or great swords) with a soul trap enchantment. You know have the ability to fill your soul gems.
Step 3 (One-handed/Two-handed training)
Now its time to get to the interesting part, heading out into the wilderness to capture your much needed souls. This can be done by either going through a weaker dungeon filled with non-human npc's such as a Draugr burial crypt (as iron weapons can be quite painful in terms of low damage) or by roaming Skyrim and attacking anything you see except large enemies and human npc's. I did this quite easily even at higher levels so it shouldn't be a problem capturing your souls within a reasonable amount of time. You will also hopefully acquire more soul gems in your 'hunting stage' from looting corpses which allows this 4 step process to smoothly run unhindered. As a personal preference I only tend to fill common, petty and lesser soul gems as I don't want to 'waste' the higher 'value' soul gems on the iron weapons.
Step 4 (Speech Skill training)
Now that you have used your iron daggers(or great swords) to capture enough souls to occupy as many soul gems as possible, you have probably run out of charge on these weapons. You should never recharge these as it makes much more sense to sell them to a vendor. Considering the huge price upgrade when you enchant a weapon, this allows you to actually train all four skills and become rich in the process! The traditional iron dagger smithing levelling would just leave you losing cash which can be painful for new characters.
Conclusion and Notes
It will often be necessary to travel to other smiths to buy the iron ingots/ leather strips when repeating these steps because they only refill their stocks every 2 days or so. Dual wielding the iron daggers can also provide a much needed damage boost. Iron daggers/great swords which have been used and you weren't able to sell to the vendor because they had no gold left can simply be discarded or stored in a chest for later sale. Also if you find yourself running low on soul gems and dont want to waste gold buying them, try and find a dwarven ruin as most of the dwemer machines have soul gems as loot!
Rinse and repeat until you reach 100 in all four skills or until you have your desired level in each.
I hope this guide helped and appreciate your feedback. Make sure you check out the other guides here as they are all interesting and informative.