The 15 Best Skyrim Legendary Skills, Ranked

If you’ve played Skyrim, you’re probably familiar with Legendary Skills. Once you reach level 100 on any of your skills, you can choose to make them Legendary. This brings that specific skill back to level 15 and gives back all the perk points used on that skill tree. The skills are also marked with a Dragon symbol.

You can repeat this cycle indefinitely, allowing your character to level up infinitely. The downside is you downgrade your abilities when turning them Legendary. There are pros and cons to this process. Here are 15 skills that usually will benefit you when you make them Legendary.

15

Sneak

If you prefer the stealthy thief route, this is an excellent skill to turn Legendary. Even if you’re a mage or a warrior, the Sneak skill is generally a great way to grind some experience points, even if it can be a bit time-consuming. Luckily, there are a few tricks to level up your Sneak quickly.

During the game’s tutorial, you come across the bear inside the cave. You can actually continuously attack your companion here to level up your sneak skill. Make sure your game difficulty is at Legendary, though, otherwise they will die. Alternatively, Sneak attacking the Greybeards while unseen is another great way to grind this skill.

14

Respective Combat Skills

It’s not a good idea at all to turn your combat skills Legendary. You’ll be at a disadvantage at your current level against strong enemies. Imagine fighting someone at level 80, with your combat skills at level 15. It sounds like a nightmare, right? Depending on how good you are at the game, it can work, somewhat.

If you have faith in your skills, you can turn your primary combat and armor skills Legendary. If you use Block a lot, that’s another skill that you can turn. This approach focuses on skills that you’ll use a lot and will level up anyway. The downside is you’ll be really weak and bad early in your current level.

13

Pickpocketing

Pickpocketing is a skill that anyone can level up. It has no bearing on your survival in combat or your armor rating, so it’s great to turn Legendary. However, getting this skill to 100 can be a monumental task. If you’re a thief, simply pickpocketing constantly might be your ideal method.

However, if you want to be efficient, you can simply go to almost any major city and find the horse carriage outside. Whiterun is an ideal location for this. Wait until nighttime and crouch next to the carriage driver. By placing gold into his pockets and then pickpocketing it you can level up fast and somehow get more gold out than you put in.

12

Lockpicking

Lockpicking is a skill everyone uses in Skyrim. Tons of doors and chests require lockpicking to open. Therefore, it’s an excellent skill to turn Legendary. Your survival probably won’t depend on it and you’ll be using this skill constantly. But again, it might take more time than you’re willing to spare.

A fast way to get to level 100 is to make sure you haven’t completed the Thieves Guild questline and still have the Skeleton Key. It’s basically an unbreakable lockpick, so you won’t waste any picks on failed attempts. At nighttime, you can go to almost any city and pick all the locks, then come back a day later to do it again. The Dwemer Museum or any display cases are also great targets for Lockpicking.

11

Destruction

Destruction is one of the many schools of magic in Skyrim. It’s definitely recommended to turn Destruction into a Legendary school. Leveling up Destruction is fairly simple. You rely on the Well-Rested status boost after sleeping in a bed and activate the Mage Stone for an extra boost in leveling magic skills.

Like most skills that need leveling, there are tricks to speed things up. Find a horse, and cast Destruction on the horse. However, please make sure that your game is at Adept level and keep an eye on your horse’s health so you don’t actually kill it. You could also do this on Legendary, but you’ll see much faster results on Adept.

10

Illusion

Illusion is a more obscure school of magic and isn’t always the most used one. It’s ideal for a mage to turn it Legendary, however. It’s a bit of a niche school and can be power-leveled easily, provided you have gear that allows fast Magicka regeneration. If not, you might want to buy some gear that boosts Illusions from Farengar in Dragonsreach.

The best way to power-level is to use the Harmony spell. Head over to Whiterun’s marketplace and cast Harmony. You should see a ton of leveling. If you run out of Magicka, you can just wait for one hour and do it all over again. This works so well because of the spell’s area of effect boosting experience gain.

9

Alteration

Alteration is another great school for mages to turn Legendary, because of a handy little trick that allows you to level up this skill incredibly fast. All you need is to get your hands on the Telekinesis spellbook. Then, you can cast the spell on pretty much any inanimate object, although it will spend your Magicka within seconds.

In order to fix this, one of the DLCs, Dragonborn, offers a solution. In the Black Book quest, activating the Secret of Arcana will let you cast spells for 30 seconds without draining any Magicka. You can now use Telekinesis, and as you’re holding an object midair, open your map and fast travel to a faraway location. You should level up your Alteration significantly through this maneuver.

8

Enchanting

Enchanting is a super useful skill to have, and great to turn Legendary as it doesn’t affect your general ability to survive in combat. In order to level this skill up fast, you’ll need to also use a technique that boosts your Smithing. This kills two birds with one stone easily and is without a doubt one of the best level grinders in the game.

After you’ve crafted a bunch of small gold trinkets like rings and such, you can enchant them and then sell them for more gold. You can use the gold to buy your Soul Gems. The simplest place to do this is Whiterun, where everything’s easily available and close by.

7

Alchemy

Alchemy is an underrated but surprisingly powerful skill due to how much money it can make and save you in the long run. It’s also highly versatile, meaning any character of any build can take up Alchemy and easily turn it into a Legendary skill. Leveling it up again is also simple

In Whiterun, pay a visit to Arcadia. She can train you in Alchemy five times for every level, which costs money. However, you can easily pay and then pickpocket the money from her after. After you level up, she can train you again five more times. If you struggle to pickpocket Arcadia, you can also wait until she’s asleep. If you actually want to do some Alchemy, the best potion to create is one that combines Creep Cluster, Wheat, and Giant’s Toe into a Potion of Fortify Health, which will get you a lot of money, too.

6

Smithing

Smithing allows you to craft some of the most amazing armor in the game, which is why it’s worthwhile. However, turning it Legendary is an even better idea considering how fast you can improve it. While the good old dagger exploit was patched out from the game, there’s one other trick that will also boost your Enchanting that can help you.

First, get yourself the Transmute spell and buy all the Iron you can find from blacksmiths or go mining. Then, after turning it all into gold, make sure you smelt it to get gold ingots. You can then turn these ingots into gold rings, which you can either enchant to boost your Enchanting skill or just sell for profit. To find the Transmute spell, head north from Whiterun to Halted Stream Camp, and you’ll find it inside the mines after the final boss.

5

Speech

Buying and selling your looted treasures at the local merchants’ store is a sure-fire way to make some gold and you level up your speech skill a little bit every time you do so. That fact combined with every persuasion, bribe, or threat you utter towards Skyrim’s citizenry will have you back up to 100 in Speech before you can shout Fus Ro Dah!

The only concern is losing the discounts you get with a higher Speech level, but enchanted clothing and potions can make up for any lost benefits you had.

4

Light Armor

Those proficient in stealth or magic are often skilled in the ways of Light Armor, making it a perfect skill to reset back to 15 for legendary status. More than likely by the time you have your Light Armor skill up to 100 you will already have nice sets of armor that can make up for the loss in skill.

Leveling up with Light Armor is a simple enough task as long as you can find the balance between taking hits and staying alive to wipe out your enemies. Just make sure you have a few health potions handy before you venture off the roads.

3

Restoration

As the school of healing, restoration is probably the most efficient skill to make legendary for non-magic users since everyone benefits from the effects of healing. Every time you heal yourself or your companions, your skill will go up.

Not only will your restoration skill go up quickly, but you will also have a few extra septims jingling around your packers since you won’t have to buy or make as many health potions. The only drawback for this skill is making sure you have a large enough Magicka reserve for the extra spells you will be casting.

2

Conjuration

Conjuration is another magic-based skill that is excellent to reset back to 15 as summoning and binding creatures from Oblivion is quite a handy skill to practice in battle since you’ll have help in destroying your foes. However, be warned that this school of magic does drain your Magicka reserves quickly.

This skill is fairly easy to level up, you just have to remember to continuously practice it in battle. The only drawback is having to start with beginner spells and work your way up to summoning the more powerful deities.

1

Archery

Archery, while a difficult skill to reset back to 15, can be a worthwhile skill to make legendary. Not only will it force you to master your aiming skills, but if you primarily use your bow in combat it will force you to switch up your combat techniques.

This can make for a more interesting game as clearing a dungeon and not relying on the element of surprise can add more suspense to any playthrough. Moreover, having to remaster the archery skill will force you to become more aware of your surroundings since you won’t be able to rely on the zoom or slow time features.