I ask for a simple reason, sometimes when i rush the quests i face 2 problems.

1-Since its easy in the beginning, you dont train some skills as much as you should (for example armor, because you kill everything easily) and later it becomes a problem

2- I end up killing cool enemies with uncool tactics (just power attacks all time, since i have no cool spells, or good bashes yet)

Do you train your char beforehand?

FOr example i tend to train sneak a bit, when i roll assasin. Else i dont feel very assassin, when i go kill the good guys and i have to run 5 minutes after every kill to regain stealth mode.

Or when i am tank but i dont have high level blocking + enchanting anti magic armor, it doesnt feel tanky.

Generally i take 10-20 levels before getting to game, by doing random quests and grinding.

What do you do?

Not generally, I prefer my characters to gain skills through use, if at a higher lvl I find that...say my archery is much lower than melee skill then that might get some training. It depends though, if they have a follower that is heavy in a skill they are light, then no, I don't bother to train at all. Except in on instance, IF my character is Dragonborn and will be playing through all the way to the end. The need all of their skills to be equally as good.

A lot does depend on the type of character and what their RP is, but I don't train their skills before an RP starts.. On 360 I often LvL'd the character before starting the RP with them, but still no training.

Yup most of the time I have a set routine I rush through before properly starting my character, I'm not a very 'hardcoe' roleplayer though.


Generally out of Helgen it goes:


Bandit camp down the hill

Embershard mine

Cross the river to the treasure chest

Though brittleshin pass (I think the one with the skeletons and Mage)

Redorans retreat

Silent Moons

Halted Stream

2nd treasure chest

Whiterun to sell stuff (usually close to encumbered at this point) and to see Amren if I'm using one handed or block.

White river watch

Valtheim towers.


At this point I'm usually around level 9 or so and have some pretty high combat skills so feel comfortable with most of the quests.


Occasionally I'll put a bit more effort in and try and make it all part of the story e.g. Help Alvor at his forge, become his apprentice - oh no his local mine has been taken over by bandits go clear it out. But most of the time I'm pretty lazy and just sprint through them all.

I do whatever is most appropriate to the character I am playing. This one rule governs all of my roleplaying, including matters of training.

I train as part of the roleplaying. Usually this involves crafting skills as I feel like those are things that should be learned from an expert as opposed to spamming things on the forge, for me anyway. For combat skills I use mods that allow me train by training so I will be in the yard as a companion on the training dummies and attending class as a member of the college in between quests. I might pay for a private lesson here and there as well.

Pretty well the only skill I get training in is Smithing, and that's also the only one I consciously grind up. My characters want specific weapons, typically before they're in random loot.

My path is pretty much like sulu's, though I use Skyrim Unbound, and depending where a given girl is going to have a house and a business (which all of mine do), I'll generally either start in that area, or go there shortly after running the "early route" of bandit extermination similar to what sulu listed. I don't buy training - I help Adrianne or one of the other smiths (depending again on girl and area), then craft my way up a bit in smithing and enchanting. I get plenty of "training" in one-hand just killing bandits - by the time I get through that route, one-hand is usually around 35, and by the time I get smithing up a bit, I can Superior my katanas, which lasts for a good long while.

I pick up all the books you can get training from - there's the one in the bandit camp down the back way from Helgen, that's Light Armor; the one at the first bandit camp the other way from Helgen is One-Hand. There's a few out in the plains beyond Fort Greymoor - one for conjuration I think, one for speech, one for.... hmm, not sure - illusion maybe? on a body on an altar guarded by skeletons, one in a chest under a puzzle-opened cover near standing stones - that one might be enchanting, again not sure (haven't done those on the current girl yet). After I get the books around, I mostly just quest and get skills as I kill during the quests. I don't use magic much so the books on magic just add a bit to make the first few levels or so a bit faster. If I get to level 15 or so and Light Armor's a bit low, I'll either hunt down other books for it, or just buy some training at that point. It's about the only thing I ever buy though - speech does itself as you sell stuff you don't need, as well as doing some of the speechified quests. I don't do alchemy, don't like it, the only points I ever have in it are from books I find - there's one in Dead Crone Rock, and one in Forsaken Cave for instance. And enchanting I level up just doing my own gear....

This is pretty much how I play, and I find myself training less and less. My current character is 38 lvl, and has only paid for training twice.

Quoting myself because I wanted to add that this only started when I found that I could use high-damage weapons as an alternative to armour. The "kill before you're killed" approach. I also realise that I may grind up enchanting a bit at early levels for the same purpose, but I've never taken training for that.


Before that, I was content to let everything progress naturally from use.

I view train h as part of roleplaying. So I let my character decided whether he needs to train.


I also use mods to enhance roleplaying, which includes Requiem. With Requiem installed you don't need to worry about the issue the OP raises it being "easy" in the beginning and later becoming harder and having that be a "problem" because you haven't increased important skills because of how easy it was in the beginning.


Requiem unleveles the world so it's not easy in the beginning and the world does not change as the character levels.

To begin with, when i want to run a good character, i do all the evil stuff to get trained at first. I do daedric quests and db for the loot. But when i think i am rdy, so i dont waste awesome quests with poor performance, i stop doing evil stuff and become the dragonborn

I don't train the way the OP describes, in part because most skills advance quickly enough for my tastes, and in part because I like to "hit the ground running" with my RP. That said, if I find some skills lagging that would make sense for my RP, I'll drop some gold on a trainer and pretend the character just doesn't have a knack for that particular skill.

However, in a perfect world, I'd have a lot more flexibility in my starting skill levels. Kind of irks me that those are solely determined by race, and that I can't make a character who starts fairly well-versed in one or two skills as opposed to having four or five mediocre skills. There's probably a mod for that, but I'm a little leery of adding another mod to the pile at the moment...

My characters are "people" from the moment they step into Skyrim. I try not to meta-game them. I know about leveling but they don't.

So my armored warrior characters might well work on their smithing, because they'd see that better armor and weapons would be advantageous. But it's always played out in the "flow" of the game. No long training sessions, nor any craft-spamming (like making tons of rings, enchanting them with tons of soul gems, and selling them for tons of money.)

I play for each moment as it happens, not for what will come later.

I typically follow sulu's routine, although I like to have an RP reason to do everything. Like the residents of Riverwood tell me about the bandits in the area, that kind of thing. I don't do much grinding or use the Helgen dungeon leveling tricks, though I sometimes use the bear to raise sneak a level or two. I prefer to level up within the RP. Sometimes that means joining a faction right away, sometimes it means running around the Rift killing wolves for 10-20 levels before I get on with the game.


I learned from Xbox not to grind, even though in real life that's exactly how you raise a skill. In the game it just causes leveling problems.