You can be at lvl 10 after 10-15 minutes. After escaping to Riverwood make a quest with false letters. Take Fendal to companions, learn archery and take your money back from him. Firstly take 5 lessons and then accept new level. That way in 10 minutes you'll be at level 10 with archery level 50.
Actually this is sad. I hope devs will remove this glitch in next patch.

Yeah, but many people wouldn't really consider 40+ hours to be "low". Medium, maybe, but not low. :tongue:

OMG snowbears are insane
10 reloads
my best potion
and careful planning barely killed one
Othet bears are easy though

I am 28 with 90 hours...

It's not hard to level if you develop your skills and complete quests. In about 8-10 hours of playtime at Expert level on my newest character I'm level 16 and have only done the Main Quest as far as visiting the Greybeards at High Hrothgar. Mostly I just raid dungeons and make money with the occasional bit of smithing practice so I can level my armour up. Plus, I'm a werewolf so I don't get the well rested bonus.

EDIT: for fighting bears I would advise finding the 'slow time' shout. I can't remember where I found it, but I took out a Frost troll using it, which even in full armour usually kills me in a few hits.

Im level 31 on my second character, i got bored of my first character (stealth archer) at level 30

on both characters i've yet to do more than 5 main quests, i've done a few side quests but no more than 30 on either character.

I do how ever have fairly high skills. 69 1 hand, 60 enchant, 50 alchemy, 100 smithing, 65 block, (70 archery on archery dude).

Steam says i've played 68 hours, although i do pause the game and walk away now and then. I'd say i've done at least 55 hours played.

I will do a 100% complete with my warrior character (1 hand + shield) and then prob start a pure magic character and focus more on magic, speech and try to avoid smithing.



EDIT: im only just starting to craft daedric gear for my self and companion. Some creatures are 1 shotted with my orcish axe, others (non boss) nearly kill me + my companion, so its still fairly balanced (im on master lvl)

I have played for 36 hours and am level 25. This is probably because I spent a good couple hours leveling my smithing to 100. I know dual wield daedric swords and have dragonbone armor. I am also a high elf with 280 magicka. I am nearly unkillable. The game is very, very easy now.

I have been working a couple of different characters. My best one is lvl 20. It is gonna be slow going now.

I am pretty slow at this game though. I read the books often, I study stuff and explore. I have even barely touched the main quest.

Yeah I read all the books, inspect items, study the environment, watch the wildlife, listen to npc etc etc. Others run through the world hacking and slashing. Whatever floats your boat! It's all perfectly fine in Tes games.

Second character, 25hrs level 14.
Spent that entire time exploring whiterun hold. Still haven't found all the locations. Game is utterly massive, like nothing I've ever seen before.

I like to find books, read them, and then attempt to find the locations described in them, when applicable.

I'm 65 hours hours in and Level 42. I use a wide variety of skills, so I level up pretty quickly as I always have some low skills that are going up quickly.

If you just stick to a small set of skills then yeah you are going to level up slowly.

Personally, I find that I level up faster when not fast travelling there is always stuff to encounter and do while walking around to increase skills. In dungeons and quest areas, I take things an inch at a time to ensure that I don't miss anything, this slows down my leveling significantly. I'm also using my higher skills more in dungeons resulting in a slower increase in skills and thus levels. It's not uncommon for me to do an entire dungeon with zero skill increases now.

not true at all, i play adept and i get a real good challenge out of it. I die alot(no i don't svck at fighting, i'm quite good actually.)

lol Fair point. I meant just in general not specifically the lv 25/40h example from the OP. Lotta people have got 1 level for 1 hour of gameplay or less when they're level 30+.

doesn't it kind of make it less fun? Did you use the Iron Dagger exploit?

I din't fast travel either, it's kind of annoying sometimes, particularly when you have to climb up to the throat of the world again and again and again.

the sign bonuses, training and sidequests is probably what people are doing.

Some people lie too

I don't view it as an exploit.. more of a strategy. Especially since I spent 9k gold and 3 hours of my time I could have spent doing something else. When I get on later today I will turn the difficulty up

On default (middle) difficulty, playing character death real - I killed off several dozen of my characters.

Death by mud crab (one bite) at level 8.

Death by spider spit - lots of those.

Death by ice trolls.

Death by sliding off a mountain.

Heck, even got one killed by that swinging door in the first dungeon.

I suppose it's not as bad as the single attack wound from a common wolf killing off my level 50+ character in Oblivion ... but I do still get killed in Skyrim.

Current character is either level 14 or 16 (forgot which) and well over 40 hours in.

I don't really understand how its an exploit if you do nothing but smithing. I mean your level will sky rocket but you wont have any perks in combat skills. Sure the weapons will be better but probably only to the same degree as they would have with higher levels in combat skills.

Different route to the same destination.

Lol not true. Enemies do a ton of damage when they hit you; if you don't die it's because you played smart. I often use shouts and positioning to keep me alive (ie have them attacking me in single file up stairs) and have levelled smithing to lv50 to make exquisite plate armour, and I still die occasionally from being outnumbered or from exceptionally powerful mages.

Personally, I'm on normal difficulty (derp derp casual, I know) I'm using the warrior stone, I sleep regularly, and I have been working my ass off to build up blacksmithing. As well as playing at a steady pace. I am level 19 and only have like 20ish ours clocked in total. But I am a pro, ya dig? A [censored] PRO!

61 hours played, level 27. I blame the fact that I've leveled a lot of different skills (light armor, onehanded, destruction, illusion, archery, smithing, alchemy, lockpicking, sneaking) rather than focus my attention to a smaller selection.

If you advance a wider range of skills your level rises faster because skills are easier to advance in their early stages; the more advanced in your skills you are the more time they take to level so the slower your character levels up as well. If I were only to advance say 'light armor, sneaking, lockpicking, archery and onehanded' I'd only be level 17 as well.

:rolleyes:

On Topic: Just use standing stone, sleep bonus, etc.

40ish hours played, level 36. Playing on Expert. Pickpocket and Sneak, combined with the Thief Stone, have contributed for the speed - 98 in the former, 91 in the latter.

I don't understand why so many people care about how others go about leveling, and in some cases seem quite offended by it. It's not an online game so the way others play doesn't affect anyone else's enjoyment of the game. I thought the whole point of tes games is that you can play them however you want, so if you want to blast through the quests at speed, go for it, if you want to hardcoe roleplay as a hunter with only a cheap bow and arrow who only regains health by eating carrots then you do that too. Just enjoy the game for what it is and let others quite happily do the same in their own way.