Boosting skills ***Extreme Spoiler***

[yrthwyndandfyre]

I'm sure by now most people have discovered that you can boost your magical skill by creating an ineffective short-term spell that you can cast with a real effect over and over, and thus boost your magic skills more quickly.

I found a rather extreme version of that cheat. I created a Fortify Intelligence spell that wears off in the time it takes to cast it, and depletes my magica slower than my magica regenerates. Ergo, I can cast it continuously and forever, with no useful effect except boosting my Regenerative skill.

Good enough, but sitting there for hours with a finger on the 'C' key is a bore, so I went one step farther. I pinned down my 'C' key by wedging a retracted razor-knife sheath in between the 'C' and Spacebar keys and balancing it upright.

Yes, you get it. I can start my PC casting that spell, wedge the key, and go away. I can watch TV, have dinner, see a movie, sleep...whatever. The whole time, my Regeneration skill is building.

Like I said, Extreme Spoiler.

[Swingle007]

that's some serious ingenuity right there balancing an object to hold down the key....LOL I'm thinking that would be impossible on a xbox 360 controller however...

[Abuse]

I did the same with sneek

Found a corner of a room I could walk against while sneeking, and just left it there for a while.
Incredibly cheap, but hey I never use sneek anyway

[yrthwyndandfyre]

[QUOTE=Swingle007]that's some serious ingenuity right there balancing an object to hold down the key....LOL I'm thinking that would be impossible on a xbox 360 controller however... [/QUOTE]
Never having seen an XBox controller, I don't really know, but I'm betting that if you put a little thought into it, you could come up with some kind of mechanism that would do the job. I'm thinking of one of those two-armed jointed desk lamps. You know, the spring-loaded ones where you can move the light to where you want it, and it stays there? Take one of those, and crazy-glue a small stick to the bottom edge of it. Mount it so that it can reach your controller, and then move it so that the little stick is holding down whatever it is that you need held down. Cast the spell, and have a party.
Remember Homer Simpson, and his 'bobbing bird' solution? That's what you need - a 'bobbing bird' solution.

[kok_warlock]

Just use some tape Swingle, but yeah, those ways of boosting skills are already known, but next time, try using a folded piece of paper, instead of a knife, that way you don't risk damaging your keyboard, hehe

[darth sereda]

if u hold down the cast trigger it wont do anything u have to keep pressing it

[RavenBlackthorn]

For those of you that haven't played the 360 version, you can pretty much do the same thing with the 360. I have used it to boost Sneak and Athletics to some extent. (My sneak was horrible and I was getting caught left and right in the Dark Brotherhood Questline)
I basically used the Xbox 360 Microphone cord and wrapped it around my left thumbstick, and subsequently around my controller to maintain the position of the stick in the direction of forward movement. I did this during the "Scheduled for Execution" Dark Brotherhood quest and got my Sneak above 75. There is a guard at the end of the quest, just prior to opening the prison cell that NEVER and I mean NEVER turns around. Perfect opportunity to get your sneak up, manual or otherwise. You can basically sneak behind him for as long as it takes to get your sneak up to where you want it. I actually started out just manually sneaking around behind him and was like: "Hmmmm, I wonder" and thats when I started messing around with the mic cord.

You can also do this in any body of water to get your Athletics up. Those that play on Live, the mic works well, the tape idea is probably better though. Heheh. I wouldn't do this for most of my skills but I can see doing it some of the time intensive ones like Sneak and Athletics. ...Now if only I could figure out a way to do this for Mercantile... Hmmm. (those have have tried to increase theirs will know what I mean... Merc is incredibly slow to level up)

[vickstick]

a little problem on 360:
when you let your chracter swim angainst a way(using a rubber band around your stick) you have to baysit your controller and do something else as well because if you dont the controller will deactivate and the game will stop until you reactivate your controller. unfortunately, the button needed to reactivate the controller triggers a menu that will stop your game when its on. so players on xbox are out of luck, unless they watch tv or read a book while doing this. a nice tip: cast a spell all the time to keep the controller active, this way you can master the 'tougher' schools like destruction(a weakness spell on yourself is ideal) or restoration. i find that athletics is by far one of the hardest skills to increase as well as acrobatics, security and the worst is mercantile(i usually train it to 100 but it eats money away!! )
if anyone has some nice hints in leveling these skills, go ahead(and id rather not spend too much time doing these things )
u pc guys are sooooooooooo lucky!!

[vickstick]

i just found another nice way to train acrobatics:
find a house with a low ceiling and stand on a table(if possible)
jump against the ceiling, meaning you will land faster>you can jump more on a shorter time. im training speed and acrobatics at the same time now

[Belthan]

...Now if only I could figure out a way to do this for Mercantile...

It's actually easier to power level Mercantile on the 360 than the PC (OK, it's easier to use the console on the PC, but I'm talking about leveling skills by using them). First, get a whole bunch of lightweight items. You can go to the arena bloodworks and snatch infinite arrows from the guy who practices archery there, or clean out necromancer dens for a fair amount of scrolls, or fast travel to every rural farm and settlement on your map and collect all the ingredients from their gardens. Probably lots of other good ideas out there, or you can use the dupe trick. Once your inventory is full (you could easily have a few thousand items to sell, depending on your encumberance), go to a merchant. Pick an item and when it asks how many, hit the left bumper to only sell one, and hit the OK button. Once your fingers get the hang of the "select item/select quantity/ok" button sequence it goes pretty quickly. Repeat until you've sold everything. It's not as automatic as leveling sneak or athletics, but it's not much more tedious than power leveling magic skills.

Also, as with any skill Mercantile levels faster if you take it as a major skill, and it's fairly unlikely that it will accidentally level you up at an unexpected moment like combat skills can do.