So it seems to me like some skills are easier to level up than others.

For me, my toughest skills to level up were Restoration and Alchemy. Before I got better Ward spells and turn undead, I could only level up restoration by healing damage, and as a squishy mage I tended to stay away from damage whenever possible. Even after getting wards and turn undead (both of which I used a lot) it still seemed to take forever to level up Restoration.

Alchemy takes me forever to level up, because potions/poisons with only one effect seem to not count much at all toward skill progression. Sometimes I get lucky and have some ingredients that just happen to make really complex potions that contribute more to level up. But still, it's taking a lot longer to level up alchemy without paying for training than it does to level up, say, Enchanting or Lockpicking. I'm not even a thief, but my lockpicking is at 80 just from opening the various locked doors and chests found inside dungeons. Yet it seems like I have to brew dozens of potions to level up my alchemy skill.

Alchemy and Pickpocket were rough for me.

Lockpickimg too, only in that you have to keep finding new locks. Speech was also z bit tedious, but could have been worse. But Alchemy and Pickpocket drove me mad.

Alchemy levels faster if you make potions that have multiple effects. The Giant's Toe + wheat was one that I read about on this forum and tried it a few days ago. Each potion almost leveled me up.

The easiest way of leveling Alchemy is to make high value potions. So potions with more than one effect are often more expensive and give you more skill increment when you make them. Fortify health potions made with giant toes go for a good price as the effect lasts for 300 secs. So to sum it up, the more expensive the potion = faster skill leveling. For me as a non mage the hardest skills are destruction and alteration. Any good alteration spell to cast to raise the skill?

Restoration was the hardest for me

Alchemy can be easy if you have the money. Problem is waiting on the vendors to restock.

Definately Alchemy. Even with the Thieves Stone up and Well Rested (not married), a Slow potion gave me proper progress but still nowhere near as fast as Iron Daggers for Smithing.
I find Slow a good potion to make if you find yourself running out of Giant's toe.
Iirc it takes a Deathbell and a Salt Pile to make, easy to come by and when you have 90+ in both, you gain quite some experience.

adding jazbay graqes to that potion will speed you up (or + taproot or + dwarven oil, all the same 2 additional effects)

And pickpocketing went extremely fast for me, I leveled almost every time I used it. Although I reloaded every time I got caught... feel guilty about that now.

Most magic skills just require the cost reduction enchants and spamming the most expensive highest duration spell you can (usually in combat) if you are trying to grind them.

I found archery to be a hard one to level. That and speech, although im learning that paying off guards helps level speech.

Lockpicking and Pickpocket.

Lockpicking wasn't bad since I was doing it most of the game but it was annoying anyways. Pickpocket was just a damn pain in the ass. Most everything else was easy enough

Pickpocket was actually the first skill I hit 100 with, I perked 3 times to get the 100 extra carrying capacity and that was enough to steal almost anything. The best part was paying for training and stealing the gold back when I was low level.

add a creep cluster too it even better.

i recommend just paying the fine, they dont confiscate your gold that you pickpocket and once you are done you can just go steal all the stuff they confiscated back from the evidence chest.

For Alteration you can just stand in a lake and cast Waterbreathing. It doesn't seem to count unless you are in water. That seems to work pretty well. Transmuting iron ore is another way but much slower and limited to how much iron ore you fine/mine.

enchanting is more annoying because it's harder to repeatedly spam the enchants fast like you can with alchemy and smithing. But still no big deal. Really none of the skills I wanted took that long at all once I got the game mechanics down. I like randomly wandering around the world to collect alchemy ingredients. It was the best part of the whole process.

Surprisingly large numbers of items can be obtained fairly fast. Using the random giant camp to lure tough mobs into helped as well. Fun to lure the bandits from their camp to the giant camp (not far from whiterun) or lure a couple mammoths to the bandit camp by standing behind them while the bandits attempt to shoot me with arrows and hit the mammoths. Good times.

dual casting soul trap on corpses with zero magic cost levels that up to 100 in under 20 minutes.

Yeah, enchanting is kind of annoying.

I know how to best level alchemy, the problem is that it's not always easy finding the best ingredients and having all the right ingredients for powerful, multiple effects. I can make potions worth more than 2000 gold, but it still takes at least 5 or 6 of those potions to level me up. And then it's time to go searching for ingredients again...

I really wanted to max out Speech for roleplaying purposes, what with wanting my thief to be a bit of a smooth-talker but ended up training it a few times because it is slow going, especially at higher levels - you can barter loads and loads and not get a skill level, and persuasion attempts are few and far between! I got stuck at about level 96, too high to buy training, I was on that skill level for days and days of play, buying and selling as many goods as I could! In the end I used the "Riften Speech Exploit" to get it from 96 to 100 just because it was going to take FOREVER otherwise!

I've also taken training in Light Armor because as a stealth archer at level 50ish, I rarely if ever get hit and my light armor skill was really low so it was proving problematic when I did occasionally get whacked by something! I daresay either armor skill levels up quick enough on characters that prefer to wade in swinging though

How many broken lockpicks does it take to get to a 100? Probably best to use a single master lock. I haven't been able to accumulate more than 50 lockpicks without running out. I imagine you could get quite a few by fast traveling every armorer and general trader across the map.

(xbox user)

just go to Whiterun, at the top of the stairs before you get to Dragonsreach jump off on the rocks in the water and heal yourself over and over.

Just get the skeleton key and go to any locked lock place it where it 'breaks and go AFK with a weight over the the turn key LP done.

Restoration get the health to magicka spell Equilibrium (Alteration) and cast this and healing 1 then the other and wohooo you get 2 for the price of one! just dont over do the health to magicka though).

Personally it Alchemy that hardest for me.

that works good for alteration, also for alteration if you get near and enemy like if they are on top of a tower and not coming down, you can just keepcasting oakflesh, its a good way to level it up a bit, once i get to 50 on my important skills, i don't worry too much but if i want a perk, like for conjuring or whatever, i will level the skill and focus on it to make sure i get the perk when i want, l,ike you need 75 skill to get the perk for expert spells. so i make sure i have the skill for the perk i want, but some are hard like archery, i'm not at 60 yet on archery and i need that to get the second level of slow down time.

I leveled the spell casting in a few days (all of them). Weapon skills take FOREVER and it doesn't seem to make a difference if I'm hitting for 3 with some unenchanted POS or wielding my enchanted/smithed deathdealer, lame.

I actually lured a dragon to a Giant today, friendly Giant helped me kill that dragon, only then he got mad at me for staying too close to him. Leveled archery from 17-22 by killing him though, good fun.

I normally don't start levelling Smithing/Enchanting until I have either Absorb Health, Paralyze or Banish (preferably Banish, more coin to be made).

However, my new char is level 13 now and I still haven't found either 3 of those, starting to get annoyed because I've been seeing orcish stuff since level 2, unless anyone knows a place with a guaranteed Banish/Paralyze enchant..?

Yeah, I saw one Banish enchanted weapon once from Adrianna in Whiterun, though I didn't have enough money so I waited 48 hours to sell more enchanted Iron Daggers, but by then she didn't have the Banish enchanted weapon anymore..

Surely there's an easier way of getting those, or I might have to go to a Dwemer Ruin and gather all the metal I can find for Dwemer Bows :/

there's always this
http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/The_Lover_Stone

then everything levels at same pace