Is there an easier way to level up speech now that the riften speech loop is gone?

I find this skill takes toooooooooooooooooooooooooo long to level normally

If you have Hearthfire, Salmoe Roe waterbreathing potions are a good option. Even if you sell them for 0 Gold because the vendor has run out, you still gain Speech Skill.

That said, it'll still take a long time, my advice is just to not worry about it. The best way to "Skill Up" in Skyrim, is to completely forget about skills and just play naturally, at least until you've mastered your primary skills. (This is actually true of all the ES games since Morrowind)

I just do the Bards' quests and pay for training (it's not as though they are much use for anything else after the three fetch quests).

Speech is useless anyway so why bother.

Its extremely useful especially for a Alchemist player- access to very rare ingredients.

I want to make a dedicated alcemist ranger type

Speech / Mercentile has always been a pain to level... All the way since Morrowind.

That's why I never choose it.

In oblivion i just used Mercentile as a major skill and sold iron arrows individually to merchants. It leveled up at a nice steady rate actually.

I remember when I first played oblivion and I was selling everything in bulk and wondering why mercantile was taking forever to level, until a friend told me otherwise
In skyrim, it's all about value (I think lol).

If you consider saving heafty amounts of gold at times useless then i guess it is :/

The only two ways of leveling up speech now is either pay for training, or sell everything you come across.

Draugr Deathlords and their ebony weapons are great for this.

Seriously the game gives you too much gold as it is not many people are going to care if they lose money unless they are at a low level and want a house

Exactly, but even normal enemies will do. I sell all the bog standard bandits gear, you don't get much gold but every little helps

Some of us are cheap

You also gotta remember that I'm an Imperial and we love us some gold.

The speech gain from sales even if mercant is out of money is true for all items but you notice it more on very expensive things.

An agree with the play naturaly in Skyrim not in Oblivion.

Best way to level speech... Buy and sell. The more valuable the transaction, the more experience you get.

Speech has nothing to do with this, though. The overall level of the player will dictate if the shop carries those rarer ingredients, and it makes sense since most enemies that carry them don't show up until the appropriate level is attained.

Moreso, you've also uncovered your own solution, alchemist.

Don't lug heavy armor and weapons around to sell. Make poisons, and lots of them. They're lighter and you can sell them in more places than you can other gear, especially helpful if you don't have the perk to allow shops to buy everything.

In addition, you can walk into any potion shop, buy the cheap ingredients, craft them into potions/poisons in their own shop, and sell them back. If you do this well enough, you should be able to cycle their entire inventory, walk away with some gold in your pocket, as well as improve the Speech level.

For shops that buy potions, you may have to run about to an alchemist table, but it's the price you'll pay to game the Speech level.

I concur with others: Speech is a pointless skill in this game. If you're an alchemist looking for rare ingredients, best get out there and kill for them, because that's still the best way to acquire them. Shop inventory is far too random to be reliable.

Actually speech can open up some extra dialogue in a few quests but I do wish it did more.

If I have room, I always pick up food to sell to the inn-keepers and shop owners.

Considering how you get enough gold that you could bribe Al to postpone his apocalypse, yes it is

Though i have a mod that includes shout perks in the speech tree, which makes it pretty useful

Use the fortify restoration glitch to make a potion that is worth several hundred thousand gold and then sell it. That will get your speech up really quick. A value of 1.5 million gold will instantly raise it to 100.

can you remind me what the resto glitch is again please?

and will it work with this latest patch?

Actually, it does due to a bug:

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Speech#Skill_Perks

I think certain alchemy ingredients were missing the proper keyword to allow them to be bought and/or sold by alchemy vendors, despite the fact that they appear on the leveled lists that the vendors draw their inventory from.

Yes this!

My old character has 20 powdered mammoth tusks and 28 daedra hearts bought legitimately (amongst other very rare ingrediaents) with 'merchant' perk via speechcraft tree. I have firsthand exp. that speechcraft tree is very useful for my playstyle.

I want to level up my speechcraft again for my new character but riften loop has been patched

It was never patched by official patches. Link explaining how to perform it http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Glitches#Infinitely_Powerful_Items.