Several hundred of the most important Skyrim tips and tricks for beginners and pros.

2 canis root + impstool + river betty = damage health + paralysis 7 years old

1 Get the lovers stone as early as possible, it gains all skills 15% faster. You can also get blessings from shrines and well-rested bonuses from inns. 7 years old

1 Get a house as early as possible. 7 years old

1 SAVE AS OFTEN AS POSSIBLE: F5 is quick save. F9 is quick load. 7 years old

1 Most items that you put inside your home will stay there, so you can safely decorate it however you like 7 years old

1 You can buy a dog form a breeder outside Markath for a small price 7 years old

1 If you are playing a stealthy character, ask your nearest innkeeper about rumors.. 7 years old

1 Here's how to rock Destruction without even caring about your mana bar: Buy the half casting cost perks for Novice through Master as available. Get Dual-Casting and most important, Impact as fast as possible. Choose one (your favorite) branch of Fire/Ice/Shock to follow. 7 years old

1 Grelka appears in Riften after joining the thieves guild. She has over 3300 gold and will buy everything you want to sell 7 years old

1 Dragon claws, have the code to open doors on the back of the item look at it in your inventory by zooming in. 7 years old

1 Atronachs are completely immune to spells of their own type, so if you are mainly a fire spell user, the best atronach to use is the fire one, as you can use your spells without needing to worry about damaging your minion. 7 years old

0 Waiting instantly refills health/stamina/magicka. Just hit 't' then enter. Wait 42 hours for shop keepers to replenish gold (24 + 18). 7 years old

0 Hit twice 'r' to sheath then yield bow so you don't waste an arrow if it's drawn. 7 years old

0 Do not kill the chicken. Resist all urges. Take a hint from Zelda. You will be mobbed. But in this case, instead of being mobbed by chickens, you will be mobbed by villagers, who do not accept yields (sheathing your weapon). 7 years old

0 Dungeons and chests scale to your level. If you only level single damage abilities the game is pretty easy. Mages only need destruction and followers. Coming back to chests gives good loot if you leave them to higher levels. You could play as level 1 khajiit with no armor and go through several quests without problem. Claws have bonus attack and make level one enemies easy to beat but don't give XP. Leveling gives better gear but also harder enemies. 7 years old

0 You can equip a pickaxe and "hit" the ore vein to start mining, likewise you can dualweild them to mine faster 7 years old

0 Waiting (Press T) will fill up your Magika/Health/Stamina bar instantly 7 years old

0 Try reading every book you see, the bigger the value of it, the more likely it has a free skill up or a quest inside waiting for you 7 years old

0 To hide your UI while taking screenshots type in tm in console (~), then type it again to bring it back 7 years old

0 Sometimes if a dragon is not landing for a long time try moving to more clear surroundings 7 years old

0 You can take torches off the wall to make the room more dark if you are trying to sneak 7 years old

0 When attacking with bow from far away press the sneak button to do double damage, even if you are not a sneaky character 7 years old

0 Using Unrelenting force will stop any enemy casting/channeling 7 years old

0 Every major city stables has a wagon which you can use to fastravel to other cities you've never been to 7 years old

0 In most major holds there is a map with little flags on it that you can use to mark new places on your map 7 years old

0 Your horse can climb up mountains that you couldn't on foot. 7 years old

0 You can take keys from your companions to have access to their house 7 years old

0 If the NPCs are asking you about your health ("feeling sick?" or "You feeling alright?") that means you have a disease, use a shrine to cleanse it, or craft a disease curing potion and drink it 7 years old

0 Don't sell all of your magical weapons since you can disenchant them and level up your enchanting skill that way 7 years old

0 You can place baskets on peoples head and then steal their stuff without them noticing -LINK 7 years old

0 Fire does the most raw damage,Frost and Shock do the same amount of damage, but ice drains stamina and slows the enemy, and Lightning drains magicka. 7 years old

0 You can revive every living creature except dragons with the Reanimate spells in the Conjuration tree 7 years old

0 Making Iron daggers and Leather Bracers is a quick way to level up early smithing, use them for enchanting skill ups or sell them to a vendor for speech skill ups 7 years old

0 When you increase your stamina you also increase your maximum carry capacity by 5 7 years old

0 By holding the "Use" key you can move items around. 7 years old

0 When you trade armor to your companions they automatically equip it if its better then what they currently have. 7 years old

0 Resting in a bed will give you rested status, allowing for bonus XP gain, resting in your own bed (inside your house or one you purchased at the inn) will give you a well rested status allowing for even more bonus XP 7 years old

0 By wearing Amulet of Mara (which you can buy in Riften for 200g) you have an option to marry people, marriage provides all sorts of benefits for you. For more info on marriage and list of spouses SEE HERE 7 years old

0 To see locations of quests on your map select them in your journal and hit M 7 years old

0 To discover new dragon shout words talk to the Argenier the Greybeard leader in the High Hrothgar and he will give you a small side quest and direct you to a new world wall one a time. 7 years old

0 You can fast travel while over encumbered with a horse 7 years old

0 If you are completely outmatched against a mage (as in, an enemy that uses ONLY magic), try to get behind cover. If you can stay behind cover long enough while the enemy is shooting at you, their magicka will eventually drain, and you can then use a weapon/spell that drains magicka to finish them off while they sit there, helpless 7 years old

0 If you are a mage or archer who is outmatched by a melee-only enemy, you can use the terrain to your advantage. If you see a cliff, jump on top of it and your enemy usually won't be able to follow you, giving you precious time to deal damage while avoiding the enemy. 7 years old

0 If you are playing a mage character, make sure you check out the Mage College in Winterhold. Just be ready for a very challenging quest chain. 7 years old

0 Best way to skill up Sneak is preforming sneak attacks 7 years old

0 instead of stealing things directly and risk getting caught, pick them up and move them to a secluded room. Then steal the item, hidden from sight. 7 years old

0 a good way to level up alteration and rake in some gold coin is by buying/mining iron ore and using the transmute spell to silver and then gold, smelting into bars crafting into jewelry and selling them to vendors 7 years old

0 If you make a trainer your companion you can train from them and then take all of your gold right back 7 years old

0 Shooting a fireball directly at a mage with a active ward will render the fireball harmless, but a fireball to the ground close to the mage ignores the ward and does full damage. 7 years old

0 If you are being attacked by the guards you can yield by sheathing your weapon and they will stop attacking and try to arrest you instead 7 years old

0 After serving time in jail/paying off the bounty you can go back in side the jail and retrieve your stolen items. They are usually in chests some where, marked as Prisoner Evidence. 7 years old

0 If enemy preforms a summon while fighting you killing the summoner 1st will automatically kill off the summoned creature 7 years old

0 Swords swing faster then axes and axes swing faster then maces. 7 years old

0 Fire spells do great damage, but the travel time of the bolts is slow enough to make it prone to missing the target if you fight at range. Fireball is great for aoe on multiple targets. Frost is also great on multiple targets but has even slower movement time. This is sometimes handy as enemies who don't move out of it will get hit multiple times and take even more damage. Frost is aces for close quarters combat with multiple foes. 7 years old

0 Eating an ingredient will only unlock its first effect, to discover more effects you need to start crafting potions 7 years old

0 You can pickpocket the gold back after you spent it on training 7 years old

0 Giving gold to a beggar will put a blessing on you that increases your speech skill by 10 7 years old

0 Map with all skyrim locations 7 years old

0 When you break a pick or turn the lock when it's in the wrong position, the pick will "flick" towards the correct position. Paying attention to that should save a lot of picks. 7 years old

0 The experience towards speechcraft you gain from trading with merchants is based on the value. However, you only gain experience for that one unit. 7 years old

0 Summoned creatures ( through spells or scrolls) are very powerful and can be a great help in some of the tough boss fights, dragon priests come to mind. 7 years old

0 Saving enchanted weapons and disenchanting them will let you level enchanting extremely fast and make good profit out of it since enchanted items are worth more 7 years old

0 If you are completely outmatched against a mage (as in, an enemy that uses ONLY magic), try to get behind cover. If you can stay behind cover long enough while the enemy is shooting at you, their magicka will eventually drain, and you can then use a weapon/spell that drains magicka to finish them off while they sit there, helpless. I was able to finish one of the major Mage College quest line bosses this way at only level 7, with a shock staff and a bow and arrows :P 7 years old

0 If you are a mage or archer who is outmatched by a melee-only enemy, you can use the terrain to your advantage. If you see a cliff, jump on top of it and your enemy usually won't be able to follow you, giving you precious time to deal damage while avoiding the enemy. You can easily take down giants and mammoths this way with the spells you start off with if you have enough patience and skill at kiting. 7 years old

0 There is a mine with a pickaxe right in between the three Guardian Stones and Riverwood. Just walk towards Riverwood from the Guardian Stones and you will see a pickaxe and hammer icon on your "radar", and enter. Beware - there are some bandits inside, but you can use this mine for iron ore once you've cleared it out. This is a great location to hit if you plan on picking up the smithing skill. 7 years old

0 The clairvoyance spell is extremely useful if you are just starting out, and you can pick up the spellbook for it in the mine mentioned above, on a table behind a locked door. When you use it, a purple trail will show you how to get to your current objective. If you have no quest objectives set, it will even lead you to the map marker you set on the map. 7 years old

0 People who can usually be found around smithing equipment can help you get started with the smithing skill. They will show you how to use each type of equipment (except for the forge), and even let you keep the equipment you make. Again, a great way to start off a smithing character. The earliest you can do this is in Riverwood (I forget the guy who runs their smith). 7 years old

0 You can hotkey spells and equipment on the Xbox (and probably the PS3, someone will have to check) by favoriting an item/spell, then holding left or right on the d-pad in the favorites menu with the item/spell you want to hotkey selected. After you close the favorites menu, you will then be able to switch to whatever you hotkeyed by hitting left or right 7 years old

0 Lightning is my favorite because it will instantly strike your targets at good distance, making it the easiest to snipe with if you like to stay hidden. Even arrows have a flight time - lightning does not. There's no better way to get a dragon's attention than blasting it out of the air with ease. For some reason lightning doesn't break sneak unless the targets are rather close to you - with a good sneak and Muffle, you can snipe with lightning from surprisingly large distances without worrying about the targets finding you. 7 years old

0 Your companion can carry an unlimited number and weight of stuff, but only if you tell them to pick them up in command mode. 7 years old

0 f5 = quicksave. f9 = quickload. You can make quick save middle mouse click. middle mouse click is also great alternatively for shouts. 7 years old

0 Use explosive spells in the ground in front of magical shields. They will take full damage. 7 years old

0 Always dual cast after you've gotten Impact. The staggering effect will stun your opponent (even a dragon) long enough for you to cast again - you can effectively chain cast Thunderbolt this way and chew through any opponent at a great distance - giants never even get the chance to close with me at L18. 7 years old

0 Everything outdoors is pretty easy. Find a steep ledge or rock and attack the creature with magick or arrows. Lightning is instant hit, has long range and needs no distance calculation. 7 years old

0 You can fast travel on a horse while over encumbered and they can also climb mountains much easier. Alt to sprint also works for them. 7 years old

0 Roaming around whiterun there's a lot of blue mountain flowers, wheat and blue butterflies. That's a very expensive combination to use in alchemy. 7 years old

0 Put a bucket over a shop keepers head. You can steal all their items and level sneak. In the beginning of the game you can repeatedly sneak attack the NPC that helps you through the dungeon. 7 years old

0 You can carry things holding down e and moving your mouse. You can carry things to other rooms and steal them easier. 7 years old

0 Give items a hotkey by clicking a number key in the favorites menu. 7 years old

0 Cooking is over powered. There's no point in putting points in stamina. 7 years old

0 Potion of regen stamina is much better and stronger than using potions to restore X points of stamina. 7 years old

0 Don't let your stamina completely run out. It will not regenerate for a few seconds if it does. 7 years old

0 Torches make lockpicking easier and followers can automatically equip them when it gets dark. 7 years old

0 Followers can carry infinite weight if you tell them to pick things up 7 years old

0 Console commands. Infinite carry weight, revive your horse and followers. Teleport anywhere. Sometimes the game glitches and you need the console. Sometimes you just want to walk through walls to see if you're missing something ;). 7 years old

0 Followers will equip things you give them and use healing potions. 7 years old

0 Calm spell makes for easy sneak attacks 7 years old

0 Guardian Stones! There are 13 of them across Skyrim. You can have 1 active at a time, but you can change them at will. The Warrior Stone - Combat skills increase 20% faster. The Thief Stone - Stealth skills increase 20% faster. The Mage Stone - Magic skills improve 20% faster. The Lover Stone - All skills improve 15% faster. The Apprentice Stone - Recover Magicka twice as fast; twice as vulnerable to magic. The Atronach Stone - 50 extra points of Magicka, 50% Absorb spells, -50% Magicka regen. The Lady Stone - Regenerate Health and Stamina 25% Faster. The Lord Stone - 50 points of damage resistance, 25% magic resistance. The Ritual Stone - Raises all the dead around you to fight for you once per day. The Serpent Stone - Paralyze the target for 5 seconds, and do 25 points of damage once per day. The Shadow Stone - Invisibility for 60 seconds once per day. The Steed Stone - Carry weight +100, no movement penalty from armor. The Tower Stone - Unlock any expert level lock (or lower) once per day. 7 years old

0 there is a mod that increases skyrims framerate. "TESV Acceleration Layer offers CPU optimization, massive possible performance increases, now in SKSE plugin format". 7 years old

0 Wild life run from you. Frenzy spell will make deer and elk attack you. 7 years old

0 If over encumbered you can put things in skeletons and carry a lootable bone. 7 years old

0 You can get an attack dog from Markath. You can have a follower and a dog at once. You can use carriages for easy travel to cities. 7 years old

0 You can use shouts in town and towns people will tell you were to find more. 7 years old

0 Don't forget to shout at mages as it will stop their spells. Shouting can knock people off cliffs and make things easier to steal. 7 years old

0 You can steal letters from the courier to find new locations. 7 years old

0 You can equip the pickaxe to mine faster. The color of the ore indicates the gems. 7 years old

0 Banish daedra enchantment is worth the most money so buy it if you can afford it 7 years old

0 You can kill anyone without consequence if you make them frenzy and attack you first. 7 years old

0 silverside perch + skeever tail + salt pile = damage health + ravage health + damage stamina regen 7 years old

0 deathbell + pine thrush egg + salt pile = slow + weakness to poison 7 years old

0 You don't need the best performing poison, just make a lot and favorite it. Something like deathbell + red mountain flower is easy to come by. 7 years old

0 Sell only one item at once if you have many expensive items stacked otherwise it doesn't count towards speech. 7 years old

0 If you are playing a mage character, make sure you check out the Mage College in Winterhold. Just be ready for a very challenging quest chain. You can complete the chain at a very low level (I completed it at level 9, starting at like level 4), but it gets extremely challenging towards the end, so beware. 7 years old

0 If you are playing a stealthy character, ask your nearest innkeeper about rumors.. 7 years old

0 If you don't mind "taking the easy way out", you can level your sneak skill by making your character sneak into a corner for an infinite amount of time by a person that never moves from one spot. Riverwood's Inn is a great place to do this. Just grab a rubber band or something to force the joystick/key to make your character continue moving for as long as you'd like. This takes a very long time, so beware. An even better way to increase your sneak skill is to perform sneak attacks. It is the fastest way to level the skill that I know of. 7 years old

0 Don't underestimate the usefulness of summoned creatures. Even if they only do a little bit of damage, at least it's their health being thrown away and not yours. This is a great way to kill off tough enemies that you normally wouldn't be able to at a lower level, as they can pull the aggro while you get to safety. Beware that some enemies are able to steal your summoned creature from you. 7 years old

0 As others have said, save those enchanted items for disenchanting. Also, pick up all soul gems you find, as they are used when enchanting gear. Spells and enchantments that trap your enemies' souls are used to fill soul gems, so be on the look out for those, as well. 7 years old

0 Planning on making a mage character? Make sure you pick the lock on the cage in the Helgen torture room, as you can get robes that increase your magicka and magicka regeneration rate. Lockpicks can be found in the sack on the table in the middle of the room, next to the Dragonborn book. 7 years old

0 Not only do fire spells do the most damage, they seem to also cost less than frost and shock spells. I suggest only using fire spells unless you're up against a caster, in which case use shock. 7 years old

0 You can hotkey spells and equipment on the Xbox (and probably the PS3, someone will have to check) by favoriting an item/spell, then holding left or right on the d-pad in the favorites menu with the item/spell you want to hotkey selected. After you close the favorites menu, you will then be able to switch to whatever you hotkeyed by hitting left or right. 7 years old

0 Atronachs are completely immune to spells of their own type, so if you are mainly a fire spell user, the best atronach to use is the fire one, as you can use your spells without needing to worry about damaging your minion. 7 years old

0 You can enter the College of Winterhold through the Midden by jumping on the rocks beneath the Midden exit. Useful when role-playing. 6 years old

0 Beside the Alchemist shop in Solitude you can jump on barrels to find a hidden area with potions, a desecrated corpse, and entrance to the sewers. 6 years old

-1 You can press Y or N in "Do you want to..." dialogue boxes instead of clicking. 7 years old

-1 Whirlwind Sprint can be used as a long-jump. There are some areas you can only reach this way! 7 years old

-1 You don't have to spend time catching butterflies and picking flowers to get easy alchemy money. You can buy all the inexpensive ingredients merchants sell. Save the game. Kill the merchant. Reload the game. There will be a new set of items for sale! You can also wait 42 hours or fast travel to different cities' alchemists. Alchemy is easy money and can provide powerful bonuses to any other skill in the game. 7 years old

-1 Poisons are powerful; the effects stack if you hit multiple times with lingering damage health! Paralysis poison is over powered. Slow poisons make being an archer easy. Weakness to magic poisons are great for mages. Add them to favorites for faster use. 7 years old

-1 You can have two weapons poisoned at once. Equip and poison one at a time then equip them both. 7 years old

-1 Use invisibility to get close easy. Drink a fortify one handed to hit hard. Sneak attack. 7 years old

-1 Use poison of weakness to poison as first hit so all other poison hits are more effective. 7 years old

-1 Use frenzy poison to make non killable NPCs attack you. You can fight them forever and gain XP. 7 years old

-1 At level 40 Pickpocket there is a perk that lets you reverse pickpocket and give people poisons. They will use them and either die or run out. 7 years old

-1 Each poison lasts one hit but there's a perk to make them last two hits. 7 years old

-1 You can sprint by holding alt in PC 7 years old

-1 hold 'c' to autowalk. 7 years old

-1 You can hit 'y' when prompted to hit yes or no. Useful for when you're smithing 10,000 iron daggers. 7 years old

-1 Map with all skyrim locations 7 years old

-1 If you marry, your spouse gives you money from their shop. 7 years old

-1 You can play without killing anyone. 7 years old

-1 Your house can also get robbed, at least the house in Whiterun. It's best to make sure your housecarl is there, but even then you're not entirely safe. 7 years old

-1 Look for Nirnroot at night. It radiates quite a bit of light even from a distance. 7 years old

-1 Giving money to (non-drunken) beggars gives you a very good temporary bonus to speech. Give your local bum a dollar before buying and selling those high priced items. 7 years old

-1 THE SPRINT BUTTONS ARE: PC=Alt, Xbox=LB, PS3=L2, you can also sprint on a horse 7 years old

-1 Quick save before you start picking a lock. 7 years old

-1 After experiencing a dozen or so crashes I hotkeyed quicksave to my middle mouse button 7 years old

-1 You can rebind all of your keys in the control menu 7 years old

-1 If you give your companion a torch they will use it at night-LINK 7 years old

-1 If you want to keep sprinting don't let your stamina run out fully as it takes a few seconds to starts regenerating 7 years old

-1 If you see oil on the ground there is usually a lamp you can knock on the ground to set the oil on fire 7 years old

-1 You can dismount a horse in the water and then mount it again to have regular speed-LINK 7 years old

-1 You can hotkey your favorite items by opening the favorite menu (Q), highlighting the item and click 1-8 buttons on your keyboard 7 years old

-1 READ THIS IF UR PLAYING A MAGE Tons of great stuff on destruction, too long to post them all so just read through this. Thanks evilnight! 7 years old

-2 SAVE AS OFTEN AS POSSIBLE F5 IS THE QUICK SAVE KEY 7 years old