Before I begin I must say that overall I have enjoyed what skyrim has to offer. You're opinion may differ from mine but thats ok, sure there are many things I not only disagree with but downright loathe. There are also many things that have brought Skyrim into the new age. I do however feel that by being more flexible and getting rid of character classes, bethesda actually ended up hurting themselves because this took away my replay value. I have no need to start a new character when I can be a jack of all trades. (unless I seriously feel like roleplaying.) but than again this game wasn't catered to the true role playing fans. It was catered to the more casual gamer, to draw in a new demographic and make more money. I can't say that I blame bethesda for they;re actions but its a sad thing it has to happen. Anyways enough about that, I'm here to discuss 5 simple methods to insanely power level your character.

These methods will be considered exploits for several reasons. First is there was no beta testing. I'm sure bethesda didn't purposely try and allow you to increase you're levels so fast. It can ruin you're game. Many of you will argue that "you don't have to do it if you don't want if you ruin you're own game thats you're fault." which is partly true, however due to bad game design in certain areas, it's actually the fault of the company that allow us to ruin the game. Not every person understands how the game mechanics work, and could actually unintentionally ruin their game buy power leveling these skills. If they are not combat related skills they will accumulate higher levels and encounter higher level enemies, with not a lick of combat skills making them insanely over powered.

5 Rediculious exploits to power level


1. Restoration. It's possible to use a mixture of fast healing and equilibrium to create a constant circle of magicka replenishment while devouring health, while at the same time increasing you're restoration skill at a godly speed. one could go from a level 10 to a level 100 in no more than 30-45 min.

2. Conjuration. This is definetly an exploit because the fastest way to increase this skill doesn't even make sense.. sure you could spam the conjure ______ spell while in combat countless times, however it's also possible to cast the soul trap spell on a DEAD person... allowing you to max your conjuration skill in 30 mins or less. ( I tried this last night.)

3. Illusion. This is an even faster level increase than conjuration. and the most simple because you can do it anywhere, even on the go.. just spam Muffle. once again 30 mins or less.

4. Enchanting. I wouldnt techniquely call this an exploit however it was poorly designed and leaves no challenge to leveling up. Collect as many clothing items as possible, and enchant with as many soul gems you can obtain.. you go up a level every 5 to 8 enchants I believe.. I went almost the entire game (i'm a level 60) without touching enchanting. but after all the soul gems I had collected I was able to increase my enchanting skill to 100 in a little over a half hour. This shouldn't of been possible.

5. Smithing. I'm sure that all of you know this one by now.. so I won't even get into it.


there are other exploits when leveling other skill which I won't get into, as these are the top 5 most rediculous in my opinion. Now before you all start flameing lets get one thing straight. I understand that each player has the CHOICE to either do these things or not which could ruin the game if they let it, however it's not 100% of the gamers fault that these things are possible. They are in fact design flaws and could easily be fixed. For example, a simple fix for any of the skill increases could be only allowing x amount of skill increases per 24 hour (in game) period.. this would slow the leveling down and further disrupt the flow. perhaps go the same route as alchemy, the overal total value of whichever items you create with enchanting or smithing is what determines the amount of xp you receive, not how MANY you can create.

I'm curious to hear if anyone else agrees with what I've said and perhaps you're thoughts, as long as they arent rude. Keep in mind I'm a fellow gamer, only stateing his opinion and although I thoroughly enjoined skyrim, It is FAR from perfect.

It would seem to me that you have to put in effort to do these exploits. Not only that but you have to put in effort that is considered "spammy" which means you must continuously do said thing over an over for an hour or more. If you do that then you are intentionally breakin your own game and you must deal with the concequences of your actions, simple really.

Your sense of time seems skewed. I still don't know how to get my restoration up. I try to constantly cast healing spells, but I can't get it to go up very fast at all. And enchanting? Enchanting 100x5-8 items in 30 minutes? Just gathering that many soul gems and items would take longer. I keep enchanting things, but I'm still not maxed out yet.

Oh well. Some day.

I don't know how to answer this. In some ways I think it is going in the right direction, with a more believable world and NPCs who seem to have a purpose in the world, but in other ways I think it is a few steps backwards, such as giving us fewer options in the way of skills, spells, weapons, etc.

Also, the way the guilds are done in this game is a massive step backwards, besides the Thieves guild, which is very well done.

As far as your exploits are concerned, they're fairly tame compared to some of what you could do to make yourself Godlike in previous TES games.

1. Restoration. It's possible to use a mixture of fast healing and equilibrium to create a constant circle of magicka replenishment while devouring health, while at the same time increasing you're restoration skill at a godly speed. one could go from a level 10 to a level 100 in no more than 30-45 min.


I'm not sure this is really a good exploit, if you power level Resto you will be left facing high level mobs with very very low killing power.

It's kind of one of those non productive exploits

Only number 5 would serve any purpose for my current character since she shuns any use of magic including restoration and enchantments.

This.

Sometimes I see these exploits and others like the one for that infinite door's of oblivion book which is free coin basically, then I go to try them and i'm like man this is cool then 15 minutes goes by and I'm like is gay I wanna go kill some Bandits, so I get back to playing the game as intended. People that have fun with these exploits let them it isn't bothering anyone.

The only one I disagree with is 4. You were able to do that after SIXTY levels of solid questing. So it wasn't the time it took from when you started grinding it. You have to count the time it took to get the 500-ish soul gems and clothing.

I don't see a problem with these exploits because they're time consuming and, since it's a single player game, it doesn't hurt anyone but the player. If you feel that the leveling is broken and you want a challenge, then don't use the exploits. It's not like you are being forced to use them.

Also, I think the idea of leveling up through non-combat skills works really well, particularly for gamers new to the genre or franchise. It allows them to get a leg up in the game while more combat-oriented players can still level up in the traditional way.

I found something earlier which I guess could be called an exploit. I don't look for or pay attention to exploits and cheats, so this may be known... but I found a way to climb mountains.. on foot I mean. I found that by strafing and jumping I could, after some practice, climb about anything but a shear cliff.

I use it, as really, the inability to normally climb even a steep slope is ridiculous, and I think someone capable of killing dragons should be able to make her way up a rocky hillside

I only used this a bit for enchanting. Everytime I went to see a court mage I bought his cheap soul gems, once I had enough money and enchanted self smithed rings and bracers I had from gathering materials in the wilderness and the transmutation spell. But only since it didn't make sense for me to enchant my gear with the petty enchantments you can make before hitting 60 enchanting.

Otherwise it's the classic powergamer abuse of the TES system and is in no way Skyrim specific. They even made it harder to spam your magic skills up in retrospect to the former games, so you sir are stating the obvious...

it took me about two days to get my illusion to level 91 I don't use fast travel so when I'm travelling from town to town I just spam muffle when I'm out of magicka I just continue on my way and stop casting until my bar is full again. it's not like I use time and do nothing the whole time and I don't do it when clearing out dungeons and stuff. by doing this he learns to understand the school of illusion better. <--- a somewhat rp way of seeing it. I don't feel like elaborating on the whole training magic thing.

Even if they fix the dead body soul trap bug it's still just as easy to cast it on your horse over and over.

what you fail to realize is im pointing out the fact that it takes LITTLE to NO effort in leveling these schools of magic.. so It's actually quite the opposite of you're statement. Second you're time frame is wrong. it takes a half hour or less. a small price to pay considering it SHOULD take several real time days to increase said levels. and the fact that bethesda has allowed me to unintentionally break the game is the whole purpose of my thread. a game design flaw, that with ultimately ruin replayability.


The fact that I'm able to speed level any of these skills with little or no effort is the biggest red flag of this whole conversation.

Really? :rolleyes:

I wouldn't call any of the things you mentioned exploits...
1-4 are simply leveling too fast for your taste. That is not a game mechanic problem. + You said it yourself - you spent many hours playing -> thus you had the materials (and spells) at hand. It's not like they just fell out of the sky.
5 - the smithing/alchemy - Yes you can make powerfull weapons with it. I tried it on adept (lv 43 fully 1 hand perked now + 80% damage from enchants). Standard falmer takes 4-5 hits to kill with maxed out glass sword with 25 ice damage and 20 health absorb on top of physical damage. Boss falmers take 8-10 hits. And that is on ADEPT. I haven't tried master difficulty yet, but I'm willing to bet that whoever complained about 1 hitting everything was either using backstab (which is the point of being an invisible assassin - the effort is used on sneaking up to your victim, not combat) or was simply fighting weakling enemies.

This isn't new to the series, so I can't see how it'd be taking it in the wrong direction, just the same direction.

I do wish they'd balance things better though. As I've said in other threads, I think the skill gain through use is just a flawed system. It ruins any kind of level scaling they put in(or maybe level scaling is what does the ruining, not sure), and is impossible to balance for different play styles.

Hmm, I'm not sure if idiot it appropriate, but it's something close.

You said...lol... after playing your character to level 60 (which takes a huge time investment) and SAVED ......ALL....OF ....YOUR ...SOUL ....GEMS....FROM PLAYING Probably over 100 hours of playing, SAVING EVERY SINGLE soul gem. Saving them, acquiring them from hundreds of battles, Continuing to SAVE THEM ALL. ALL that work..and time invested...SAVING THOSE SOUL GEMS... making sure you keep every single one....

....and you're surprised you powered leveled your enchanting in less than a half hour?

I don't know, maybe idiot is appropriate?

Take the soul gems that you acquired on your way to level 60 out of the equation....are you still power leveling enchanting to 100 in under a half hour?

/facepalm.

I prefer 5 exploits instead of the 500 that were in Morrowind

Right, wasn't one of the most effective ways of leveling skills in Oblivion jumping around and picking flowers?

Its YOUR choice to exploit the game or not.

In any game where you level up by using skills of a certain type, there will always be "exploits" to level up quickly. It's just impossible to avoid. I got Heavy Armor to level 70 so I could run at normal speed. I leveled up by letting a bandit and some wolves hit me for 45 minutes...is that an exploit as well?

I'm just going to ignore the enchanting level up "exploit;" someone already has explained why you're mistaken on that front...

Just fyi it's spelled ridiculous.

"An exploit, in video games, is the use of a bug or design flaw by a player to their advantage in a manner not intended by the game's designers".

None of the things you listed are exploits and people should really start to act accordingly