The Speech skill increases player's efficiency on persuading people or bartering with shopkeepers. Speech skill allow players to get better deals with any merchant, and increase the chance of succeeding a persuasion or an intimidation. The Speech skill tree has a total of 9 perks and it requires a total of 13 perk points to complete. The skill of persuasion can be used to get better prices from merchants, and persuade others to do as you ask.
Speech in Skyrim
Skyrim Speech Guide
Using Speech in Skyrim
Along with the bonus to trading items, Speech also supports the additional dialogue options Persuasion, Intimidation and Bribe that players have access to when talking to characters in Skyrim. The difficulty of persuasion and intimidation are not shown to players when they select the option but bribe will show how much gold will be used to succeed in the bribery.
Persuasion challenges all have specific levels required for passing the check. Most skill checks require 25, 50, 75 or 100 levels in speech to succeed, with a few checks at 10 or less levels required . The levels required is reduced by the Persuasion perk.
Intimidation challenges also have hidden skill level requirements for the player to beat to succeed. With intimidation, the difference in player level to the target gives bonus towards helping to succeed on the check. Higher level players will find it easier to intimidate lower level NPCs. The Intimidation perk can also help increase the success rate.
Bribing is a feature unlocked by the Bribery perk at speech level 30. This gives the player a speech option to bribe, which displays the amount of money used for the bribe.
Skyrim Speech Skill Leveling
Skill experience can be gained through trading and also through successfully persuading, intimidating or bribing characters. Skill gain from trading is based on the base price of the item being bought or sold. Skill levels can also be increased through Trainers and through finding and using skill books.
Sell and buy expensive things one at a time to increase skill gain through trade as stacks of items do not count well for skill gain.
Skill is gained as long as a trade is done, so selling items without making money will still increase speech levels.
When committing a minor crime guards in the city can be bribed or persuaded to quickly level up the Speech skill. Each guard in the city can be persuaded or bribed once for the crime so players can look for multiple guards to bribe or persuade for a single minor crime.
Skyrim Speech skill Perks
Perk Points in Skyrim
Players gain 1 perk point every time they level up their character. A player will need 251 perk points to get every perk to the maximum level which is achieved at level 252.
Before spending perk points to get the bonuses from the perk, the player must first unlock the perk. Perks can be unlocked on their respective skill trees by having enough levels in the skill as well as the prerequisite perks leading to the perk. All skills have their base perks unlocked with perks further into the tree being unlocked as points are invested and levels gained.
Perks can have multiple levels to them giving increasing bonuses with more perk points invested in them. Different skill trees will need different number of perk points to fully unlock all the perks in each tree. Players may want to check and consider the number of perk points they need for their builds and at what level they will need to be to unlock everything they want to have.
Reclaiming Perk Points in Skyrim
There are 2 ways that players can reclaim the spent perk points in Skyrim that are quite difficult to get to so players do still want to be careful with their perk points. At level 100 players can set the skill to be Legendary. This will refund all perks invested into that tree as well as set the skill back to level 15. This will also allows players to increase the skill experience once again and gain new levels and more perk points.
Alternatively players who have completed the Dragonborn main questline will be able to reclaim points repeatedly by using the Black Book: Waking Dreams. This will require them to have a dragon's soul from hunting a dragon.
Click the header to sort the table.
| Perk | Rank | Skill LVL. | Perk Requirement | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Haggling (1) | 1 | - | - | Buying and selling prices are 10% better. |
| Haggling (2) | 2 | 20 | - | Buying and selling prices are 15% better. |
| Haggling (3) | 3 | 40 | - | Buying and selling prices are 20% better. |
| Haggling (4) | 4 | 60 | - | Buying and selling prices are 25% better. |
| Haggling (5) | 5 | 80 | - | Buying and selling prices are 30% better. |
| Bribery | - | 30 | Haggling | Can bribe guards to ignore crimes. |
| Persuasion | - | 50 | Bribery | Persuasion attempts are 30% easier. |
| Intimidation | - | 70 | Persuasion | Intimidation is twice as likely to be successful. |
| Allure | - | 30 | Haggling | 10% better prices with the opposite sex. |
| Merchant | - | 50 | Allure | Can sell any type of item to any kind of merchant. |
| Investor | - | 70 | Merchant | Can invest 500 gold with a shopkeeper to increase his available gold permanently. |
| Fence | - | 90 | Investor | Can barter stolen goods with any merchant you have invested in. |
| Master Trader | - | 100 | Fence | Every merchant in the world gains 1000 gold for bartering. |
