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I'm trying to fast track my heavy armor skill, mostly so I can get the Conditioning perk (since my armor takes up such a ridiculous portion of my overall carrying capacity).

So far, I've only found two ways to increase my heavy armor skill: paying for training (which gets pretty expensive!), or actually getting hit by enemies.

The problem with the first option is that it will quickly bankrupt me, the problem with the second option is that it tends to kill me.

Has anyone found a good way to "farm" up your heavy armor skill?

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8 Answers 8

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Whether or not this is cheating, I don't know. But I wanted Conditioning also for my Warrior, and I also wanted to +100 weight carrier in Pickpocket perk.

What you are trying to do below is get 100 pickpocket, so you can steal back any gold from training.

Starting this I was about level 10 (now level 27 from an hour grinding).

Steps I took to get both:

  • I went to the Stone and took Thief (changing from Warrior).
  • I had about 15~ pickpocket if I remember correctly. I stole enough to get my pickpocketing up to about 20. Steal apples and stuff. Doesn't take too long.
  • I then went to Jorvasskar (the home of the Companions).
  • Speak with Farkas in there and train Heavy Armour once.
  • Steal back the 200 gold it costs. (And you will gain a level in pickpocket).
  • Train again, and repeat five times, stealing back every time.
  • At which point you can level up.
  • After you have leveled up repeat this process until you get to a point when your probabilty to pickocket is too low to succeed and start taking the perks in pickpocking in order to get a 20%+ change to pickpocket items. Once you can take the 50% gold pickpocking perk (this REALLY helps and keeps your change to pickpocket at 90% all the time).
  • Keep pickpocketing all the way up and you will easily get your heavy armour to 70.

You might want Blacksmithy Also... A really easy way is to do this: (You need Undead Flee enchant or something equally high quality).

  • Craft Daggers
  • Enchant with Undead Flee.. (using a petty soul gem which you can buy for 30g)
  • Sell the daggers back to Eorlund Gray-Mane the Blacksmith for like 300~ gold each.
  • Buy all of his Ores.
  • Pickpocket everything from him.
  • Repeat every 48 hours, or move to another Blacksmith.
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    Haha, that's ingenious. I'd call that a creative use of game mechanics instead of cheating.
    – user3389
    Commented Nov 15, 2011 at 20:53
  • I think this got patched. My gold isn't in his inventory when I pay him to train me :(
    – Richard de Wit
    Commented Jan 23, 2015 at 6:01
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Mudcrabs do very little damage. If you find a couple and sit in a corner letting them hit you that will raise your heavy armor skill without you taking much health. You can also use a shield to block their attacks raising your block and healing yourself with spells raising your restoration.

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  • 3
    And you don't have to worry about oblivion-style durability!
    – Arkive
    Commented Nov 15, 2011 at 19:12
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    The one gotcha here is that unlike in Oblivion, where skillups were based on number of times hit, in Skyrim, skillups are based on damage taken - meaning that while you can grind on mudcrabs or other weak foes, it will take a very long time. Figure out what the hardest hitting enemy you can sustainably heal yourself through is to speed things up a bit.
    – LessPop_MoreFizz
    Commented Nov 15, 2011 at 21:52
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    Raising your block and effectively blocking will increase your block skill and not the heavy armor skill.
    – DrFish
    Commented Dec 2, 2011 at 15:53
  • The fish that attack you (slaughterfish) are a good way to go for this. You can control how much damage you take by simply walking out of the water. You can also raise your restoration magic if you like by healing this damage.
    – Red_Tractor
    Commented Dec 13, 2011 at 17:52
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You can easily alleviate this problem by finding the stone in the Northwest quadrant of the map that not only makes your armor weigh NOTHING, but also makes you move unrestricted while ALSO adding 80 capacity. i think it's called the Horseback stone or something. It's a beautiful thing. I've kept it on the entire game thus far and have no plans to switch back. Also, I simply trained in Pickpocket every single level until 50 in order to get that amazing 100 capacity perk. I'm now sitting much happier at about 550 right now and loving it.

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  • It's the Steed Stone, which adds 100 carrying.
    – PrettyPrincessKitty FS
    Commented Nov 15, 2011 at 20:53
  • +1 thanks for the tip! I looked it up here: elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/The_Steed_Stone It's a bummer to lose the 20% skill up bonus, but this does seems incredibly useful if you wear heavy armor.
    – TM.
    Commented Nov 15, 2011 at 20:57
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I went to the first dungeon in dragon armor and killed everything but one rat. I stood in the middle of the room, letting it hit me. It attacks once and runs around for a while, leaving plenty of time for my health to regenerate. I left it there overnight with the right analog stick taped down so my Xbox wouldn't turn off.

I did the same thing with a wolf to level up my block skill.

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Have a mudcrab attack you while you are wearing a mix of light and heavy armor. Have a shield in one hand and a healing spell in the other.

The crab's attacks will raise light and heavy armor skill. Use fast healing to raise restoration and block once in a while to raise block.

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A good, easy and safe way is to go north east of Dawnstar (it's on your fast travel map at the beginning of game at north center of map). Go northeast until you find the ship wreck called Hela's Folly.

You'll find a camp here with precious stones and other bonuses. Just northeast of this camp is the beach. Wade in and swim under water to like 35 ft out north or so, then head back to the beach because you should now have 2 slaughter fish on ur ass :P

To improve blocking equip your shield, go into sneak mode, then rubber band your left trigger to be depressed... BOOYA happy 100 blocking-for armor either heavey or light.

Just don't use the shield... this is an automatic leveling trick I use, you just need to check on your controller around once every 15 minutes to ensure your controller doesn't go into power saving mode.

I just watch TV, and when I see the light go out - or don't hear it vibrate anymore - I just hit the B button then back out to fight again. The trick with the shield is to point yourself at both fish at once until they both hit your shield.

Hope this helps :)

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go to the menu and look for game settings, and set it to easier; experiment and see. Alternatively, there's +heavy (knight) enchants, health pots, get hit by arrows (tiny damage) and the resto you have at the start.

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For whatever reason, I wanted my last three points in Heavy Armor. I went to Windhelm and picked a fight with the racist outside the bar. I backed into a corner and let him pummel me for 35 minutes while I did the dishes and cleaned the stove.

If you had less skill in heavy, you might need to pay attention. At 97 skil from just playing normally, he wasn't able to outdamage my regen.

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