Some people think grinding ruins the game, but being new to Skyrim I prefer to grind it like it's coffee in order to make monsters easier to kill.

Here are some of the methods I've used:

Money: Chopping wood is the easiest (but most incredibly tedious) way to get piles of gold. Once you get your hands on the Transmute Ore spell, though, you can convert iron and silver into gold, smith it into jewellery and sell it for mad bank.

Smithing: Leather armour, iron armour and the aforementioned jewellery can rack up smithing XP faster than anything.

Alchemy: Pick ingredients from the roadside, dungeons and houses, then empty out the local apothecary's stock for good measure and go hogwild on the alchemy labtop. That can really rack up alchemy points, especially if you know a lot of recipes. Eating ingredients has its perils and can be rather wasteful, plus you can sell any mixtures you don't need back to the vendor for a surprisingly large profit.

One-Handed/Two-Handed/Destruction + Conjuration: You will need the Summon Flame Atronach and Ice Spike spells, a one-handed weapon and a two-handed weapon. Basically just keep summoning atronachs and slaying them with an ice spike or your weapons. It takes a bit of time, but your XP in those four skills should climb fairly rapidly even at level 40+. Even just using a sword and a familiar over and over will have the same effect.

Lockpicking: People will argue that deliberately snapping lockpicks only grants a small amount of XP per pick, but the fact is picks are cheap and plentiful and those little amounts add up.

Alteration: Transmuting. Waterbreathing. Need I say more?

Illusion: This one is harder to grind since higher level monsters are immune to most illusion spells and Sneak works better for avoiding them. If you have Clairvoyance, though, that helps. HAHAHA DISREGARD THAT, I svck MOON SUGAR. According to UESP, casting Muffle grinds well.

Restoration + Light Armor/Heavy Armor: Continually dual-casting Healing while letting a monster hit you levels up both the relevant armour skill along with restoration due to the player constantly regenerating on the fly after each hit. You don't have to hit back, just let it hit you while you heal.

Archery: Sneak attacks with high-grade fire-enchanted ebony bows = double damage + base fire damage + burn damage + ebony bow damage

Using a Bound Bow inflicts base daedric bow damage. Believe me, it's very satisfying to one-shot a Forsworn with something I just pulled out of the aether.

Have you ever had to resort to grinding, and how did you get the XP?

For Alteration, just cast Telekinesis and/with Detect Life/Dead.

Conjugation, spam Soul Trap on a dead body.

Restoration...ugh. You neee to spam those Turn Undead spells. Then use Circle of Protection when you havw it.

Recommend getting this moved to the Cheats forum.
I find grinding boring, but I did a bit to get Zoe to level 80. Fastest is Alteration, telekinisis and fast travel while wearing full spell reduction cost gear.

Any magic training you do, I'd max out enchanting first, so you can spam spells with 0 cost. Continuous casting for your grinding needs.

What I did for my warrior to get him to 79 recently (stopped there so Ebony warrior wouldn't show up yet for rp reasons) was I enchanted four pieces of equipment with fortify heavy armor, so the rating would be much higher than what I could make it. Then I went to the giants camp in Whiterun and let them wail on my shield. I also had four pieces of stuff on me that reduced restoration costs by 100 percent to simultaneously help with restoration and to heal me while the giants do their thing.

Leveled block up 11 times.

its not about the destination its about the journey. I always tried to get my skills up the fastest way but when I finally got what I wanted it wasn't as fun as I thought it be. so now I actually take my time and enjoy the journey.

I agree. For a character I usually have a set of prefered skills and I level them through natural use. However, sometimes there is a perk I want that with restricting myself to a certain skill-set I won't be able to get or only late in the game. For that I found legendary skill-reset to be really handy, I just train alteration via detect life or telekenesis. On non-mages it is a dump skill without any perks in it. I have no trouble with that particular bit of grinding, if it gets my character closer to the ideal I have in mind.

oh i hear you. there are some perks that i want but most of the time they don't belong to my set of chosen skills I'm thankfull for legendary reset.

If you have Legendary and want levels then the Restoration loop is your best friend.

Make a high powered enchanting potion. With the enchanting potion, make a piece of gear with a high powered Smithing enchantment. Head to a smith and buy all the steel and iron base weapons, along with all the iron and steel ingots they have. Smith one item, raising Smithing to 100 in one shot. Reset Smithing. Repeat until you run out of items to smith. Save. Punch smithy in nose. Load save. Repeat. Player level whatever you want in no time.

For Sneak I just level it up in the beginning by sneak attacking Hadvor or Ralof at the beginning.

With Hearthfire installed, just visit Lake Illinalta and the White River. Salmon Roe + Nordic Barnacle = 1 level/ potion up untill about Alchemy skill level ~10.

16+ Nordic Barnacles: Sunken Boat NW of Half-Moon Mill in Lake Illinalta

16+ Salmon Roe: Salmon jumping up the rapids in the White River. Must be caught mid-air. Tricky but the technique will come fast.

You can also substitute chicken eggs instead of Nordic Barnacle. You can find the eggs around the farms outside of Whiterun. When you get the ability to shout, you can also just shout at the salmon and they will turn belly-up with the roe on them. They will not have the roe on them when alive, but some other accounts advise you can shoot at them with arrows or spells and they will produce the roe. I have not been able to replicate this on my Xbox with all DLC and current Legendary updates. Shouting will only produce the roe for me.

Once you level alchemy to ~25/30 and 2 or 3 perks in Alchemist, and 1 in Benefactor and Physician repectively, you can complete the http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Forum:Skyrim:Alchemy/Enchanting_Loop as another poster mentioned above. Trying the loop too early without the above perks will plateau the % gain on the Alchemy Enchatment on the pieces your're wearting, thus stifling the impact and potency of potions you wish to create with this loop. Once you place very high Alchemy enchantments on a single or multiple articles of clothing, you basically unlock god-mode via insanely strong potions.

This will immediately increase your Alchemy skill to 100. You can boost your smithing to 100 with a single fortify smithing potion while crafting an iron dagger or hunting bow capable of one-shotting any dragon. You can create a completely bogus potion worth 1,000,000 gold and sell it...*boom* speech =100.You can do this to just give your charachter an edge with slight boosts, or just create ridiculous items with magic cost reduction to 0, health/ stamina regen to 1000%....you name it. For me and my fellow xbox users who cannot use console commands, this is the next best thing to improve your dragonborn.

Some individuals lambast the Resto-Loop, wich I completely understand, however I love it. It acts as a mini-game in gathering the equipment, ingredients and planning the way your charachter will be.

those giants are always my go-to for skill grinding.

The enchantment will be increased by the potion when put back on. For instance, if each item's enchantment was 50% when the last potion was made, it might be 88% when that potion is consumed and the gear put back on - making your next potion even stronger, which will make the enchantment stronger, which will make the next potion stronger, which will......

the way i got a lot of one-handed skill in the beginning, after escaping i followed ralof and kept hitting him towards a wall after 20minutes i had my one handed at like 40 lol

There's also the quest 'Discerning the Trandsmundane'. It's not really grinding, but it'll get you five points in each skill in one of the three schools (magic, combat or stealth). Once you get to 90 or so, it's tough to make fast progress so this quest is one of my favorite ways to get over the top.

As for grinding Smithing - jewelry is good, but throw in an enchantment (I think banish is the best with carry weight second) and the value/experience per item increases tremendously.

Run [or sneak] through the woods conjuring Atronachs everywhere you go. Builds your skill[s] [Conjuration/...and if you choose, Sneak] and diverts enemies. When one times out, conjure another.

It works, though it feels like it worked better in Oblivion. I could sprint though anywhere and conjuring a simple skeleton would keep the pests off my tail. Skyrim enemies seem to be a bit more picky.

Ha-ha, you had me at "mad bank" Sir.

wow the title of this thread is misleading...