Skills

There are a total of 20 skill trees in Skyrim, each of (except for 2) which can be leveled up to level 100. After leveling a skill to level 100, you can then choose to keep it there and retain all the perks you have put into it or “legendary” the skill which resets it back to level 15 and refunds all of your perk points you have put into it. While it seems like resetting a skill doesn’t do anything but make you weaker, there are benefits to doing it. There are a total of 180 perks between the 18 skills that you can level up normally, and 251 if you count each rank to each perk. With this, you need to be level 252 to completely max out your skill tree. However, you only get experience points to your main level by leveling up your skills. With each skill at level 100 without ever resetting them, the highest level you can get to is 81.

The 18 normal skill trees are divided into 3 categories: Combat, Magic, and Stealth. In the Warrior category are Archery, Block, Heavy Armor, One-Handed, Smithing, and Two-Handed. In the Magic category are Alteration, Conjuration, Destruction, Enchanting, Illusion, and Restoration. In the Stealth category are Alchemy, Light Armor, Lockpicking, Pickpocket, Sneak, and Speech. The other 2 skill trees that don’t follow the conventional way of levelling up are the werewolf and vampire lord skill trees. Both skill trees have different ways to get perk points. Vampire lords get perk points by defeating enemies with either the Vampiric Drain spell or with a “power bite” attack. Werewolves, on the other hand, receive perk points by feeding on defeated enemies.