Improving Skills: Augmentations

There are a variety of other ways to temporarily boost your skills (or their primary effects):

• Equip enchanted items that increase that skill.
• Drink a potion that boosts the skill.
• Acquire a Shrine Blessing or other temporary bonus to the skill.

For example: Say you have a Speech of 40 but want to get better prices for a collection of loot you’re about to sell. You could look for ways to permanently increase your skill, like completing dialogue challenges, training, or reading Skill Books. You can also equip an Amulet of Dibella (+15 Speech), pray at a Shrine of Dibella (+10% Better Prices), give a beggar a gold piece to receive the Gift of Charity (+10 Speech), or quaff a Potion of Glibness (+20 Speech). Then head over to your merchant of choice and wring out every last gold coin you can.

General Advice on Improving Skills

When improving your skills, heed the following advice:

In general, it’s better to increase your skills and level up naturally, rather than trying to find ways to exploit the game. In fact, it may make your adventure harder, since you’ll lack the gear and tactics needed to survive higher-level combat.

There is no fixed “maximum level” (i.e., Level 50) for you to attain. However, if you were to raise all of your skills to 100, this would take you to around Level 80. As you’re able to choose only one perk each time you level up, and there are well over 200 skill-based perks, don’t fixate on obtaining every single one. Instead, focus on improving the skills you’re most interested in, and ignore perks you won’t take advantage of, even if they’re in a skill you use constantly. For those adept adventurers who reach the higher level echelons, consult the section on Legendary Skills.

Statistically, it’s better to save Skill Books for higher levels, when the amount of effort or the cost of training needed to increase a skill rises dramatically. However, this tends to be difficult to do in practice, since you automatically read a book when picking it up and won’t know in advance that it’s a Skill Book. Unless you’re intent on raising every skill to 100, it’s best not to worry about this.

If you’re most of the way to your next level and just need one or two more skill increases, here are some options:

• If you have the gold, training is always a good option. If you’re short on gold, try training in a skill you haven’t used as much, as it will be less expensive (although it also won’t count as much toward your next level).
• Do you have any Skill Books you haven’t read?
• Are there any ingredients you haven’t sampled? Especially at low skill levels, your Alchemy skill rises quickly just by eating common ingredients and learning their first effect.
• Do you have a lot of ingredients? You may be able to make some potions. Give Alchemy a try!
• Do you have any ingots or smithing supplies? You might be able to forge or improve something. Try your hand at Smithing.