Walkthrough - Skyrim Thief Leveling Tips
Welcome to Walkthrough. Today, I am going to give you tips on your way to increase your character's skills as a thief whether you are playing a thief character or trying to reach 100 skill level in all eighteen skills. Here is what you need to know.
The Thief's skills are: Alchemy, Light Armor, Lockpicking, Pickpocketing, Sneak, and Speech.
Alchemy - The skill of combining ingredients to make a potion. You gain experience per potion created. The higher the gold value of the potion, the more experience gained.
I have to be honest with you, this has to be the hardest skill to level in my opinion, it was the last skill I got to a 100. You have to begin collecting ingredients the instant you escape from Helgen...I'm not kidding.
The flowers by the side of the road, the butterflies hovering the wind, the mushrooms growing on the bark of a dead tree. Ingredients are everywhere.
Like Enchanting and Smithing, you need special equipment for Alchemy. An Alchemy Lab can be found in the Court Wizard's workplace in the Jarl's Residence of every Hold. You can have one in every home, and there are even in some dungeons.
Owning a home is best way to store you unused ingredients for the weight adds up fast. When you're making the potions, keep an Alchemy Guide from Gamefaqs.com open for quick reference.
Light Armor - Just like the Warrior's Heavy Armor, you gain experience by receiving damage while wearing Light Armor.
Like the Heavy Armor strategy, get yourself the best armor set you can: Hands, Head, Chest, and Feet. Surround yourself with some low-level enemies and just stand there. Always keep an eye on your health.
Lockpicking - This is one of the most useful skills in dungeon delving. As long as you have a single lockpick, you can pick the locks of gates and treasure chests. You gain experience from each successful lock picked and minute experience for each lockpick that breaks while doing so.
There is really no strategy for this skill. The best way is to explore every dungeon you can and pick every lock inside there. You can also pick open every door in a Hold late at night.
Pickpocketing - The skill of stealing items off a person...and not get caught. Experience is gained through each item stolen, not each person stolen from. So, you can steal every item off a person and get quite a bit of experience, but there's a chance of getting caught with each item.
The best time to pick pockets is when everyone is asleep. You can break into their home with Lockpicking and steal off their person. This allows for targetting an individual without prying eyes or guard involvement. Save the game before pickpocketing, you'll reload the game a lot, but eventually you'll take all the items you can from your mark.
Sneak - The Thief's bread and butter. This is the primary skill for the Thief. How can you pick pockets or locks, and sneak attack without Sneak? You gain experience from sneaking around undetected from nearby creatures, or if people are looking for you but failing to find you.
Sometimes, you can sneak behind a wall with an enemy on the other side. Just walking back-and-forth will gain you experience. That's the cheap way of learning sneak, but it works.
Speech - This skill deals with the somewhat vague social aspects of the game. You gain experience from buying/selling goods, and successful persuasions, bribes, intimidations.
The option to persuade, bribe, and intimidate are few and far between usually related to some quest. But selling off all your loot from a dungeon is an almost everyday occurrence in Skyrim as well as resupplying for future adventures. If you have the "Merchant" Perk (50 Speech), you can sell any item to any vendor with no restrictions to vendor type.
If you have the money, you can buy everything from a vendor and sell it back to them. Repeat the process over and over as much as you wish until your coin runs out or you're at a 100 Speech. If you have a surplus of precious gems, you can spend them with this strategy.
