This unfortunately highlights something I've noticed on my characters and was a worry I had going into Skyrim before release due to history with the FO series. Namely a combination of subpar Perks and very strong Perks via poor game design contributing to one true buildism.

Though somewhat in their defense I think social skills in games are one of the harder things to implement and make valuable without breaking something in video games.

NOT worth it. Wrong merchant type? Fast Travel. Merchant too poor to buy? Fast Travel.

Bribing? Unless you act like a dike and start whacking everyone, you'll never have any problem with the guard. Persuading? The only time I had trouble is with Jon Battle-Born, and the first official Thieves Guild quest. Other than that I'm fine.

Not for power playing but for convenience yes. Being able to sell any type of item to any merchant is much less annoying but you don't need any of the other perks, just enough to get that.

It can be useful to have a high speech skill which levels up naturally as you buy and sell staff. However, the main reason to pick any speech related perks is for role playing.

Money does have value if you're using expert/master level trainers, enchanting a lot of stuff (hence you need septims to buy grand soul gems + smithing materials), and you plan on buying every property available. By investing in the Riverwood Trader, you cut down selling time by 10*, since the highest amount of septims available on any trader are blacksmiths with only 1000+ spetims per 48 hour cycle. Made some 3000+ value potions from leveling alchemy but no single vendor has the septims to buy from you? Investor + Lucan Valerius is your answer.

However if you're not enchanting a lot of things, and you're using Hod and Gerdur's house as your storeroom (not buying a single property), combined with the fact you're leveling normally without using trainers, then yes it is a waste of 4 perk points.

Personally all my characters will level Speech to 70 and spend those 4 points, since I derive satisfaction from enchanting high end gear and watching my characters all write rags to riches stories of their own.

Meh... I put some perks in it only because of RPing and because it used to be a skill I used to like.
Now it looks good on paper, but actually does not have many actual uses.
There is practically no reason for me to persuade/intimidate anyone (yes, it can make life easier sometimes, but not a lot and not that often) and bribing is totally broken (bounty: 40 gold, bribe: ~300 gold), and you can already be load yourself with gold without big problem (those perks will only make it easier, but again, not that much).
This is fail on Bethesda's part for not making that skill have situations to be used, not skill's.
Also, there are lot of people that Speech could be used on.
For example, I find it stupid that everyone is willing to tell you their secrets, give you quests and such out of the blue, and believe that you should persuade people for some things like that.

No, don't spend a single point (unless your rp'ing hard) in pick pocket, speech and lock picking. Damn the thief skill trees are so lacking. :/

Speech levels fine on its own, and you should always remember to give 1 gold to a beggar before going into any stores, as doing so gives you the Gift of Charity blessing which raises your Speech by 10 for one hour. My level 22 archer has a 38 Speech naturally, 48 with the bonus, which is enough to succeed at speech tests in dialogues most of the time. The perks would be nice but as others have said it's not very hard to make money, so perks are best spent elsewhere.

Speech perks are for convenience. More money is helpful in the early game, but endgame you will just about always have money in excess. Investing and being able to sell anything to any merchant would save a lot of time, but the investment necessary for those perks seems a bit much.

I got the 10% perk when I was leveling smithing on my current character, but I now regret it because it's just unnecessary and I basically clean out the cash of any merchant I visit and don't have any use for that money.

Elder Scrolls games are single player. Skyrim does at least have a few things to buy later in the game so money does not become utterly useless quite so early as it did in Oblivion, but you will still reach a point where you don't need money - and once you're there, your investment in the Speech tree become pointless.

Worth it just about for the Investor perk and Riverwood Trader I'd say.

Although you could just sell then wait, takes forever though that way.

I'm going to say yes, because I have a LOT of valuable stuff, and I don't want to spend half an hour real time selling it all. I'd rather crank Speech to 70 using trainers, put 4 perks into it to be able to a) Sell any item to any merchant and invest in them all, and then spend five minutes in one city cranking my cash instead. It's just a convenience thing.

Before 1.2 crashed my game I was saving up for the perk to use any merchant you invest in as a fence. Because I love robbing people but getting rid of the stolen items was starting to be a pain

I typically just spend 1 point for the xtra 10% but after that I leave it alone.

1 perk point isn't gonna cause my char to fail miserably, even if it is a wasted point.

the question is "are speech perks worth it" I would say no from a mechanical perspective.

a) you will sell a lot of crap, and it will raise your speech alot. I have not tried to raise my speech (no trainers, etc) and my speech is really high.
there are amulets like amulet of articulation which give a 30% boost to persuade.

but if you are going to play a bard (which really has no formal quest tree, just some random quests and speech bumps) you might perk it.

I really, really like winning persuade/intimidate. there was only 1 time in whole game I failed at a major persuade, and it was more fun that way.

keep some potions of haggline and glibness.

edit: if you are NOT gonna do thieves guild at all, it might be more worth it for mechants. I have 3 vendors with 4000 because I did TG questinline.

If you pay the fine, you also lose all the stolen merchandise you have, so no - I'd rather not do that. Defeats the purpose of being a thief. If I can get away scot free, that option is better. Speechcraft does this.

Plus, the top 2 perks give merchants more money. It's not cool when you have 3000 gold worth of items to sell and they simply can't cover it. Yeah, you can Fast Travel somewhere else, but you have to wait on the load when you exit the shop you're in, then wait on the load to the Fast Travel site, then wait on the load to get into the next store. If you can do it in one spot, that's more convenient.

I typically invest 1-2 perks in speech. First for the 10% price bonus (which decreases to 5% for every subsequent point) and the second (if you play female character) for the 10% opposite six bonus. Most of the traders I interact with regularly are male, so the extra 20% to me is worth two perks. Beyond those two, I see the value falling off drastically.

You can find all your stuff in the evidence chest, which is easy to steal from.

And what version do you play? On the PC, loading times are almost nonexistent. Most PC players report having extremely short loading times. I can only run the game on medium-high settings and my loading screens still rarely go above two seconds.


I'm wondering if reorganizing the tree and changing the requirements would improve Speech more. I've detailed my planned changes to Speech in http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1299968-planned-improved-perk-trees/. I'd appreciate feedback on if it sounds right.

I'm on a PS3 (and, don't get me wrong, the wait time is maybe 10-15 seconds, but still). Thanks for the tip about the evidence chest. Do they have more in there than just what you've had to give up? Is it worth raiding aside from getting your stuff back?


And now I'm off to read the thread you've linked!

Unless guards took something from you, the evidence chest should be empty.

And wow. I had heard the console versions got longer loading times, but that really svcks. My computer isn't even anything impressive.

It's worth it up to the 50 perk one where you can sell any item to any merchant. Only costs 3 perk points getting there, so unless your strapped I would reccomend doing that at some point.

That perk doesn't even always function right. There are plenty of merchants to which I can still only sell "their type" of goods. Bug, or just how it's gonna be?

If you're referring to the Speech perk "Merchant" w/c allows you to sell any kind of item to any merchant. It's not bugged at all. That's why some of the players want to get Speech up to that perk because it's convenient for them not to search for a particular merchant to sell an item.

Yes, that's what I'm referring to... and if it's not bugged, then how come I can sometimes still only sell Food or Ingredients to a merchant who only sells Food or Ingredients, despite having that perk?

Probably a minor oversight. It still functions right for things like selling potions (alchemist shop only) to blacksmiths and unloading weapons to mage merchant and alchemists.