I am not sure im getting this straight.

In the skyrim character leveling system how do u progress through levels?

with every level u gain u get 10 points to put in strength (is that health, power of strikes or both?!), magicka and stamina and one perk to use anywhere?
i see in the constellation map that u get specialties like blocking or one handed weapons etc and they have perks of their own. how do we unlock these?
are THESE the perks?
i see in the vids that certain abilities upgrade as u use them (like one handed or blocking, for example) but how does that work into getting perks?
if i improve certain specialties (like, say, one haded) how does that effect all the inner perks of that specialty?

are perks connected to specialties like one handed, destruction magic, blocking etc? or are these specialties get leveled up as u play and u can upgrade the specialties separately from getting new perks?

im a little confused :unsure2:

I was wondering the very same since i am still unfamiliar with perks myself!

You work "up" a talent tree, 1 talent point per level(kinda like WoW)
Ofc its called perks but its the same

Right, then. It seems you're getting muddled with terminology. I'll try to explain by separating the different stats.

SKILLS: These are your character's abilities. There are 18, including One-handed weapons, Alteration, Alchemy, Sneak, Pickpocketing, Heavy Armour and others. These skills increase as you use them. This means that every time you hit an enemy with a one-handed mace, your One-handed weapons skill gains experience. Hit enough enemies and the skill goes up by one point.

Every skill increase contributes towards your overall levelling experience. If you level up a skill from 70->71, it will contribute more to your levelling experience than increasing a skill from 1->2.

LEVELLING: Once you have increased enough skills, you will level up. It's not confirmed yet how many skill increases are needed in order to level up; it was 10 in Oblivion, but as mentioned above higher-level skill increases contribute more than low-level ones.

When you level up, my understanding is that you gain an automatic boost to health, magicka and stamina, plus 10 points to assign to one of health, magicka or stamina. You also gain 1 perk point when you level up.

PERKS: Perks are "additional" abilities you can buy with perk points - as you gain 1 perk point per level, you can gain 1 perk per level, exactly as in Fallout. Perks are linked to skills, in that each skill has its own set of associated perks. That is to say, there are a number of perks associated with One-handed weapons, there are a number of perks associated with Destruction magic, and so on.

Some perks have ranks - so there are 5 degrees of effectiveness for that perk. You'd need to spend 5 perk points in order to unlock all 5 ranks.

It also seems likely that there are prerequisites you must meet in order to be able to buy a perk. Some perks are on "perk trees", meaning that you must buy a prior perk in order to buy the next one. Some perks appear to require the associated skill to be at a certain level before you can buy the perk. For example, the 1st rank of the Hack and Slash perk - Attacks with war axes cause extra bleeding damage - requires the One-handed skill to be at least 30.



Hope that helps.

Every time you use a skill, you get a few experience points for that skill alone. When you get enough, you go up one in that skill.

The higher the skill, the more exp. you need to go up one.

When you have gone up enough levels in any skills you gain a 'proper' level.

Lower skills raise more quickly, less exp, needed, so lower skills contribute less to a character level.

This means if you only use a few skills, which will obviously eventually always be your highest ones, you level up more quickly.

Use a wide range of skills, you will be using lower skills and level more slowly.

My estimate (very roughly), about 22 skill increases per level, on average. About 10 for higher skills, 30 for lower skills, pure guesswork on my part, of course.

When you go up a level after enough skills, you get more health, and a choice of 10 points to either health, stamina, or magicka.

You also choose one perk. You can choose it now, or later.

You can take a perk in any skill, but there are restrictions :
You will sometimes need to have taken previous perks on the a branch of the perk tree for that skill, e.g. you can't take disarm bash for shield blocking, without taking bash to start with, and :
Some perks have skill requirements, e.g. 'block skill of 20 required'.

If you want a particular perk, but don't have quite enough skill, remember you can save taking a perk until it suits you.

You get a perk every level up until maximum level, somewhere between 70 and 80, when all your skills are at 100.

It does me, thank ye!

Sammuthegreat and zen1966 - these were really helpful and detailed posts. thank u very much! it seems real clear to me now

zem1966, what makes u guess it'll take roughly 30 to 10 skill points to gain one level? how did u get to that number?