cant you train to 100? and not craft anything.

Never heard of it before first doing smithing but I did the same thing (minus dragon part)...

The difference is that I didn't actually think I was the first to think of it It's not exactly hidden.

That's....the very definition of diminishing returns. =x


Tried this before, but it doesn't seem to provide as much fiscal benefits as banish + absorb health. Then again my Speech on the first character was pretty low, while on the 2nd character that constantly makes 1700+ weapons with banish + absorb health has high Speech. Still I agree that maxed out Enchanting with Extra Effect, banish and one other high value enchantment unlocked is the best way to get money legit in Skyrim.


No offense, but that's pretty slow and pointless once you've leveled Smithing/Alchemy/Enchantment. None of the leveled loot I've seen so far is fully optimized or customized to your build. I've completed DB quest, currently doing Thieves Guild and on my way to becoming a thane in a few cities. 2nd character is currently level 54 2h/destruction specialist. TC's method is pretty slow actually, there are other ways to get starting cash fast:

- do the repeatable quests for Thieves' Guild, each simple heist or forgery nabs you 500 gold. You only need starter cash of 3000+ to buy one enchanted weapon to learn its effect.
- the starter dungeon for "The Golden Claw" should nab you around 2000+ worth of septims by the time you're done
- craft iron daggers, but enchant them with absorb health or fear first. The gains are marginal, and you only start making money with banish enchantments. Banish weapons only shows up in shops after Enchantment has hit 75.

I havent read the replies so maybe someone said it, but the fastest way to level everything is to mine as much iron as you can as you run around kill any animals that come near you with as many soul gems as you can carry with a weapon that soul traps. Go to town and make iron ingots and leather straps make a ton of daggers then go to a free enchant table and churn out enchanted daggers until you run ot of soul stones or daggers, buy all the petty, lesser, and common ones you can, full or empty off the wizards, junk dealers and your spouse if your married. That way your leveling smithing, enchanting and even speech and you will have more than enough daggers lying around waiting for merchants to respawn cash. Just keep a constant supply of daggers on hand if you go on a dungeon trip and fill a ton of gems off skeletons. But eventually you will actually have more filled soul gems than weapons if you do it 'right'. But basically get the black azura star and make a weapon with a grand soul trap. Then you can fill it with commons or greaters or the star again, but it has a lot of charges with a grand soul gem so it takes awhile to empty it. But if youre killing undead and animals you will fill plenty of soul gems.

I did it with just basically going on a 'normal' way. Go do a dungeon come back to Whiterun and break all the merchants. If you want to and have enough to sell you can fast travel to every city you can and sell them all off. So if you want to farm money and gems and just compress time it would be pretty fast.I just dont like to compress time.

But you don't have the Transmutation Spell? Works well. It turns iron ore into silver and silver into gold ore. Easy

I went from 60 to 100 in just about 30 mins. Just travelled from town to town buying leather from the vendors, making leather braces and selling them back to the vendor. I would consider this a flaw in the game. Shouldn't be this easy to skill up, but I'm glad for the flaw since I really craved a deadric bow a couple of days ago...

seriously guys if you want to make money there is an even faster way. smithing leveles super fast so why bother. you dont even need money at all to level when you use the daggers and entchant them you GAIN money instead of losing and you level two skills at once.

also trainers are CAPPED at 90. yes even masters. last 10 points must be made by yourself or trough reading books. so better dont read any skillbook until 90 + and to give an advise : use your trainer points EVERY level to save time leveling slowly leveling skills or the combat skills you arent using if you want to reach 81 legally.

skills i would use trainers for mostly :

alchemy. this one is super slow even with expensive potions it will take forever.
speech. dont argue me with this glitch in rifton. i know it and this is a bug. could aswell use the console if you use such things.

restoration. another one that i find leveles rather slowly.

e.g. marksman one handed or two handed.

and another hint : without wasting perks into pickpocket you cant steal your money back anymore from trainers after your skills goes past 51.

BUT:
if you train ONE time and then exit the area the trainer is located in (when inside a house simply exit that house and come back in) THEN the trainer will have ALWAYS 800 gold from your training session which CAN be stolen back.

this saves you atleast HALF of your trainer spend money even after 51. tough after 76 it gets so expensive that it barly matters. but you can always steal 800 back without perks even after 76 (except for alchemy :/ since the master trainer is a child body and cannot be stolen from. damn you beth why the alchemy master?)

fastest way to make money :

before you speak to the jarl of whiterun there are NO dragons. that means the word walls on the map are only guarded by a bunch of weaklings e.g. skeletons or some showbears which you can easily run by without getting hit that much the ancient dragons there only spawn after the first dragon attack on the whiterun watchtower.

simply loot the chest without reading the wordwall. on every dragon point on the map is such a epic chest which has the highest chances of holding good items out of all chests. and they can be reached by fast travel.

simply make your run trough 4-5 of these word walls (avoid the one with krosis) after you have gotten anything out of these chests. after lvl 30 you start finding ebony weapons often which give alot money. after 40 you can find deadric. if the chest is holding crap simply make a qucksave BEFORE fast traveling to the dragon point on the map. if the chests holds crap hit quickload and travel again the chest will be random every time you do this. do this only when the chest is holding crap sometimes. now for seeling these items : vendors wont have enough gold mostly. but : after two days of wating thier money returns.

and here is the clue : these chests take TEN ingame days to respawn. it will take you mostly 6-8 days of wating for the money of the vendors to respawn if you dont want to waste perks into speech which become worthless later. just wait two more days and POP every dragonchest is full of loot to sell again. repeat : profit. i did make over 50k gold in 4 runs. took roughly two to three hours. depending on the reload amount of each chest.

I have yet to experience smithing, but I don't see how making Iron Daggers helps you learn how to make Daedric Armour. I think Bethesda should have made it so when you reach a certain level, you can only gain levels by smithing higher level armour/weapons. Like the one you unlocked the ability to smith and the one below that. So Iron helps you to learn steel/dwarven. Steel/dwarven helps you learn Orcish. Dwarven/Orcish helps you learn Ebony and so on.

That would be a much better thing, but as always, you could do this yourself if you feel leveling up to Daedric via Iron is a cheap method.

1. Banish and paralyze are the highest and second highest weapon enchantments. This is confirmed in game.

2. Fortified sneak and carry capacity are the highest and second highest amulet/ring enchantments. They are useful when clearing out the teachers at winterhold of their spells, soul gems and training money.

3. Paralyze can always be used to rob a trainer blind, where other methods fail. It doesn't count as an assault.

Delete double post.

yeah but theyre hard to find I only just found paralyze on a weapon (thatdropped) yesterday after 180 hours or so on 3 guys. I just use absorb health, it isnt much cheaper than the two really rare ones. Generally with no perks daggers with petty gems are going to get 260-275Gper. So since most vendors only carry 500, 750, or 1100 then it doesnt take long to break them. if your perking speech and/or wearing barter gear then it makes them run out of money faster. But if youre compressing time then getting the most is probably better. If youre doing it 'naturally' then it doesnt matter as they have to get their money reset.

I think it took me 550 enchants to reach 100. I can check my scoreboard. As can anyone to see what they have done and how much/many things they have killed made.

Iron daggers are the cheapest, but I think as the number rises the amount of smiths stays the same regardless of how complicated or high level it is. I think it take 13 or 14 to gain a level once you hit 90/95. Regardless of whether or not it is daedric or iron. Doesnt make sense and hope they change that but with all the stuff you can get you dont specifically have to make iron daggers. I have a ton of stuff to make any number of items, iron daggers are just easier and cheaper. Cheaper still is making the dagers then improving them. Same exp but no leather needed. just the one iron bar.

But it isnt nearly as complicated as people make it out to be. The only real 'problem' is if you level all those crafting skills your going to get probably 28-30 levels just off that. Which is why I say guys min/maxing stuff are going to be level 40 or so and not have done any 'real' content. I am level 41 currently on my toon with 100 enchant, 100 smith, 85 alchemy (only need 80) and I have probably done 35-40% of the quest content on that guys as I did on my level 37 who basically I leveled speechcraft with. Skill leveling gives way too much EXP towards rank leveling IMO. Because at level 41 I have barely done anything out in the world in regards to quests chains, basically the Cmpanions chain, I have taken over Windrun and the first fort for the stormclaoks, barely scratched the brother hood stuff. I havent done anything in the major cities I did on the first go around other than enough to get the house in Solitude.

Dont want to get too much off topic but residual leveling is a real problem in the game. Making money isnt. Like I said check the scoreboard. Just 'regular' playing and semi powerleveling the ones people want I have 85 days in the game. I have made almost 300K gold and have horded more than I will ever ned or spend. So once you unlock the 100K feat for Steam then 50K sis all youll really need to get to, which takes maybe a week of in game days to get.