Skyrim Perks Guide

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Arron Kluz

Arron is a featured team writer and lifelong Elder Scrolls fan. He started with Morrowind on his Dad's old PC and quickly worked his way back through the series before playing Skyrim and now keeping up with Elder Scrolls Online. Outside of the Elder Scrolls, he plays just about everything else and has written professionally about games for just over a year. He also enjoys running his own Dungeons & Dragons campaign, watching movies, playing anything on top of a table other than Monopoly, and writing fiction.

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Every player’s character in Skyrim is defined by their perks when they level up. Each of the 18 skills in the game can be leveled up to 100 and have a tree of associated perks that grant the player new abilities or increase their stats in meaningful ways. The perks that are taken differentiate a ranged-focused thief from a plate mail-clad knight with both hands gripping the hilt of a greatsword.

Players can also mix and match the skills and associated perks in any combination, allowing them to create their builds that navigate the perils of the province however they seem fit. With how significant the perks in Skyrim are, new players will want to ensure they know how they work before heading out on their adventure.

Key Info Up Front

Every skill you have in Skyrim is leveled up simply by using it as you play. Once you level up enough skills, your character will level up, and you will get a perk point to spend on any of the perks that you meet the prerequisites for.

There are a total of perks available is 251, and you can earn all of them in a single playthrough if you don’t mind using exploits or dozens of hours of grinding to level up.

Perks Overview

Every perk in Skyrim is divided into 18 different skills: Alteration, Archery, Alchemy, Block, Conjuration, Destruction, Enchanting, Heavy Armor, Illusion, Light Armor, Lockpicking, One-handed, Pickpocketing, Restoration, Smithing, Sneak, Speech, and Two-handed. Players can mix and match skills in any way and take perks from all or none of them throughout their playthrough.

Players can also switch between which skills they want to focus on freely at any time. You can always switch up your equipment or start brewing potions for a bit. Most builds, however, will just focus on a handful as leveling up and unlocking perks for more than that ends up taking a lot more time to do effectively.

Unlocking Perks

Whenever you level up in Skyrim, you can increase either your Health, Magicka, or Stamina as well as get one perk point. You can then spend that perk point to unlock any perk available.

Perks are made unavailable once you have their associated skill up to a certain level and have unlocked any previous perks that lead up to it on the tree. The number of possible perks in a tree varies considerably between all of them, although every single tree has a capstone perk only available when the skill is maxed out at 100.

Once skills reach 100, they can also be converted to a Legendary Skill. This resets the skill back to 15 regardless of any racial bonuses the player has that may affect it.

This allows you to continue using the skill to level up and return all of the skill points previously allotted to the tree back to you to be spent in other trees. Skills can also be made Legendary multiple times, making doing so one of the preferred ways to entirely unlock every perk in the game.

Perks Breakdown

For new or old players looking to build a character ahead of playing, it is vital to look at all the options available. You can always change your playstyle or approach as you progress through the game, but there are definite advantages to knowing what you want to do right away.

These include optimizing which skills you level up immediately and knowing what you want to level up between Health, Magicka, and Stamina as you go.

This can be very important as if you start not interested in using spells and invest heavily into health for a bulkier build and eventually discover you love destruction magic, you’ll be wishing you had spent some more points bumping up your Magicka.

Alteration

Alteration is a school of magic that revolves around manipulating the world and physical laws around the caster. These include spells that paralyze targets, increase the caster’s armor rating, light up the environment, or sense life forces through walls. It works particularly well to boost the defense of builds using light armor or as a secondary school in magic builds.

Archery

Archery is a combat skill that features heavily on specific character builds. It determines how effective a character is when using a bow or crossbow and features many perks that make those attacks more lethal or add some extra utility for players to take advantage of.

Alchemy

Alchemy is a crafting skill that allows you to take reagents gathered from across the province and distill them into potions with different effects. To do so, you have to learn what effects each ingredient can bestow upon a potion and match it with other ingredients with similar properties.

This allows you to mix ingredients to create potions that have multiple effects, such as increasing your light armor skill to take minor damage and heal you or increase your damage with bows. It also allows you to mix poisons that can be applied to your weapons to deal extra damage, drain an enemy’s Magicka, or even paralyze them.

Block

Block is another combat skill and one that can be crucial to mitigating damage for melee fighters. It allows the player to block incoming melee and ranged attacks with any shield, two-handed weapon, a torch, or a one-handed weapon and a free hand. It also helps keep you from staggering when hit with enemy attacks, which can be crucial when fighting groups.

Conjuration

Conjuration is a magic school focused on summoning different creatures to fight alongside you. You can summon creatures from the realms of Oblivion like scamps and atronachs or undead warriors.

The school also features spells that allow you to summon gear for yourself, allowing you to head into battle fully equipped without bogging down your inventory with various weapons and pieces of armor.

Destruction

The Destruction school is vital for magic characters that want to deal damage. It focuses on spells that deal with either Fire, Frost, or Shock damage. Fire spells have the lowest Magicka cost of the three but only damage the target’s health while dealing some damage over time.

Frost spells have Magicka costs in the middle while dealing damage to the target’s Health and Stamina and slowing them down to half speed. Shock spells cost the most but damage both Health and Magicka, making it an indispensable tool while facing other casters.

Enchanting

Enchanting is a crafting skill that can be useful for all builds and upgrade your equipment. To do so, you must first disenchant weapons and armor with the effects you want, such as boosting certain skills or increasing your damage.

Then, you have to have a filled Soul Gem that can either be purchased or harvested by having an empty Soul Gem in your inventory when you kill an enemy affected by the Soul Trap spell. Then, you need a compatible piece of equipment to place the enchantment on, and you’re set to go.

Heavy Armor

Heavy Armor focuses on keeping you on your feet for as long as possible. To level it up, players have to have heavy armor equipped when they take damage, meaning that this tree is primarily for melee fighters who don’t mind going a bit slower if it means that they don’t have to worry about every hit they take sending them to an early grave.

Illusion

Illusion is one of the harder of Skyrim’s magic schools. It focuses on controlling enemies with effects like pacify, fear and frenzy while also helping the caster sneak with effects like muffle and invisibility. This makes the school highly situational, so it is better suited as a secondary school rather than the main focus.

Light Armor

Light Armor works just like Heavy Armor but favors builds that focus on magic, speed, or ranged attacks with weapons such as bows. The speed that it allows players also makes light armor good for melee builds that use faster weapons like swords and daggers or that dual wield.

Lockpicking

Regardless of your build, you’re going to have to lockpick a lot during your playthrough. Skyrim has a mini-game that is unique to the series, so if you have trouble with it, this skill is very good to invest in.

One-Handed

One-handed is the skill that dictates any weapon wielded in one hand other than staves. These include daggers, maces, swords, and war axes. As the skill levels up, the base damage you deal with weapons of that class gradually increases. At the same time, its perks unlock additional damage and a variety of unique abilities to use in combat.

Pickpocket

Pickpocketing is a valuable stealth skill that allows you to take items straight from other characters, hopefully without them noticing. This can enable you to make easy money or even circumvent some quest objectives by stealing keys.

Restoration

Restoration is one of the most universally valuable schools of magic. Not only because it allows you to heal yourself, which is always helpful, but because players start with a Novice Restoration spell regardless of what kind of character they aim to build.

Smithing

The final crafting skill, smithing, allows players to make their armor and weapons and improve them to bolster their stats beyond what is ordinarily possible.

Sneak

Sneak allows players to sneak past enemies more effectively while also increasing the damage they deal with powerful sneak attacks. It is a highly specialized skill, so players who want to use it will generally wish to construct their entire build around it.

Speech

Speech is a skill that all players will inevitably raise by selling and buying with merchants throughout the game. Investing in perks in the tree is unnecessary for any build but can be extremely useful to make getting gold and crafting supplies easier.

Two-Handed

The final skill is Two-handed, which focuses on improving your abilities with weapons like battleaxes, greatswords, and warhammers. This includes increasing your base damage and granting you unique abilities to use in combat.

FAQs

Skyrim Perks Guide: Conclusion

The variability players have while making characters in Skyrim is one of its most substantial aspects. It allows you to experience the game in entirely different ways, and the various perks have many different ways to make your Dragonborn a force that even dragons will think twice about facing.