I made my first hybrid class a few days ago, and have been playing on him quite a bit. However, Restoration is much lower then my other skills already, and it irritates me . So, I was planning on simply leveling all my other skills that come naturally (blade, heavy armor, block, armorer, etc.) without sleeping so that I can accumulate levels to use to level restoration via a trainer. However, I don't want to do this if training it will cost a ton of money, so I was just wondering about how much it will cost to level my restoration skill solely from training. Thanks

tl;dr

About how much will it cost to level a skill from ~40-100.

Apologies if this is in the wrong section, I'm new here >.<

it costs your current skill level x 10 in gold to train one level in a skill. Example, to train restoration from 45 to 46 costs 45x10= 450 gold. I'm pretty sure training from 40-100 would cost 42000 gold (60x70x10). However I really doubt that you would need to train all of these levels unless you really don't use restoration ever. Restoration is the hardest magic to level but if you just heal instead of resting and use "absorb" spells as an attack at times it will level eventually. Also, I wouldn't call it a full on cheat, but you can make a custom spell that does drain restoration 100 points for 2 seconds on self and train restoration as if it were level 1 every time, saving you a lot of gold. This strategy is more useful for raising skills above 100 but it works either way. Don't worry about leveling up too much sometimes getting to max level makes a character less fun.

One more thing, casting on self spells give experience to that magic skill every time. This means you can walk around casting a spell that restores health 1 pt, or restores fatigue 1 pt, and it will give you the same experience as casting restore health 100 points. This works even if what you are restoring is full, like healing when you have full health.

Thank you very much

The important question with any skill is "what level do I need?" If you can use Restoration well enough, then you don't need any more skill, so don't bother training it.

There is a minimum level of Restoration required to use the "Fortify Magicka" effect in your spell-making (50, if I recall right), so getting there may be important if you need that ingredient in your spells. It will allow you to make spells that effectively restore your magicka level as long as you keep casting them, "chain" spells. Restoration past that depends on your specific needs. Potions frequently duplicate restoration spells, so Alchemy skill can substitute in many cases, especially if you only need to heal yourself.

Things are similar with a number of other skills, where a mastery perk unlocks an ability you need, such as Armorer 50 for repairing magical equipment, Illusion 50 for Chameleon, etc. In those cases you may want train or power-level until you reach the threshold, and then forget about further levels.

if you have access to a drain skill, you can have a trainer train you for free up to 100. simply cast 'drain restoration for 1 sec on self' before talking to the trainer. trainer sees that you have 0, charges you 0 to get to 1. spell wears off, and you've gone from n to n+1 for free.