Stealth Skills: The Path of Shadow – Speech

Speech allows you to haggle, bribe, persuade, and intimidate others to do as you ask. The higher your Speech skill, the better the prices you get when buying or selling items, and the greater your odds of success at dialogue challenges. Your Speech skill doesn’t require any special effort to raise: It increases naturally when you sell items to a merchant (based on the item’s value) or when you succeed at a Persuade or Intimidate challenge (based on its difficulty).

• Constellation: Path of Shadow
• Available Perks: 13

Available Speech Perks

1–5. Haggling (5 ranks) ★

• Rank 1: Buying and selling prices are 10% better.
• Requires: None
• Rank 2: Buying and selling prices are 15% better.
• Requires: Speech 20, Haggling 1
• Rank 3: Buying and selling prices are 20% better.
• Requires: Speech 40, Haggling 2
• Rank 4: Buying and selling prices are 25% better.
• Requires: Speech 60, Haggling 3
• Rank 5: Buying and selling prices are 30% better.
• Requires: Speech 80, Haggling 4

Haggling significantly improves the prices you get in shops, though with diminishing returns after the first rank. Even if you don’t plan to focus on Speech, it’s worth picking up the first rank of this perk.

6. Allure

• You have 10% better prices with the opposite sex.
• Requires: Speech 30, Haggling 1

Allure allows you to get slightly better prices from some merchants. While this can add up over time, make sure to take advantage of it by finding merchants of the correct gender. Stacks with Haggling.

7. Bribery

• Can bribe guards to ignore crimes.
• Requires: Speech 30, Haggling 1

This perk allows you to bribe guards to overlook nonviolent crimes. The crime doesn’t go away; guards just don’t arrest you right now. If you’re already a member of the Thieves Guild, you can do this for free, so there’s no need to spend a perk on it. This is also unimportant if you’re a law-abiding citizen of Skyrim.

8. Merchant ★

• Can sell any type of item to any kind of merchant.
• Requires: Speech 50, Allure

The Merchant perk makes the process of selling your loot significantly faster, since you no longer need to visit multiple vendors to sell everything.

9. Persuasion

• Persuasion attempts are 30% easier.
• Requires: Speech 50, Bribery

This perk increases your effective Speech score for the purpose of Persuade challenges. This is rarely necessary, although it can help if you find yourself struggling with them.

10. Intimidation

• Intimidation is twice as successful.
• Requires: Speech 70, Persuasion

Like Persuasion, this perk increases your effective Speech score for the purpose of Intimidate challenges. Also like Persuasion, it’s rarely necessary, and there’s no real reason to take both this and Persuasion, unless you have a strong role-playing preference.

11. Investor

• Can invest 500 gold with a shopkeeper to increase his available gold permanently.
• Requires: Speech 70, Merchant

Permanently increases the amount of gold that merchants have to trade with you. Coupled with the Merchant perk, this makes it even easier to sell your loot to just one convenient merchant, reducing your downtime between quests.

12. Fence

• Can barter stolen goods with any merchant in whom you have invested.
• Requires: Speech 90, Investor

If you’re already a member of the Thieves Guild, you may not need another Fence, although this will make it more convenient to sell stolen items, as it increases the number of Fences to which you have access.

13. Master Trader

• Every merchant in the world gains 1,000 gold for bartering.
• Requires: Speech 100, Fence

Racial Benefits

• +5 Speech
• Breton
• Nord

Trainers

• Journeyman: Dro’marash, of Ahkari’s Khajiit Caravans, outside Dawnstar or Riften.
• Journeyman: Revyn Sadri, of Sadri’s Used Wares, in Windhelm.
• Journeyman: Ronthil, the vampire merchant in Castle Volkihar (Sea of Ghosts).
• Expert: Ogmund, bard of the Silver-Blood Inn, in Markarth.
• Master: Giraud Gemane, of the Bard’s College in Solitude.

Other Resources

• The following quests can also increase this skill:
• Other Factions Quest: Finn’s Lute.
• Daedric Quest: Discerning the Transmundane.
• Dungeon Quest: Bard’s Leap Summit: Leap Before You Look*.
• Favor: A Little Light Thievery*.
• Favor: Rare Item Hunt.