Didnt see any guides on here so I figured I would help out anyone having a hard time leveling up
How to level Smithing Fast
The quickest way to level Smithing is to make Iron Daggers. Using the Blacksmith in Whiterun, purchase Iron Ingots and the leather too. You can then use these to create Iron Daggers over and over, sell them back to her and then rest 24 hours to repeat the same process. The reason you should use the blacksmith in whiterun is because she and her husband both sell iron ingots and leather and also have seperate inventories!
How to Level Enchantment Fast – Use your iron daggers from smithing for enchanting! It’s just hard to get the soul gems, the fastest way I discovered was checking all the traders (for lesser or petty) in Wintershold College, sleep 24/48h and do it again. Once you have you'r desired ammount of soul gems go find some wolves, foxes, or rabbits(any low level animals work nicely) soul trap them and kill, remember to loot the pelts for extra leather. I found that using the axe of whiterun from the main quest makes this alot quicker because you dont have to bother with soul trapping.
Now you may be wondering what enchantment to use for the best profit, I dont have experience with all the enchantments but i've found that absorb life works well and makes the daggers worth a little over 700 gold(merchants will only pay around half this depending on your speech perks and gear you use)
How to Level Speech Fast - This one is actually very easy, just take the daggers you enchanted and sell them to the various traders around skyrim, however there is one catch, you must sell them 1 at a time to maximise your experience gain because you gain experience per transaction at merchants and selling 100 of something still only counts as one transaction.
Well there you have it, hope this helps some of you, please leave some feedback if you see anything that should be changed or improved.
Oh, I forgot to mention that before doing any training you should find the lover stone, I wont say where to find it but it grants a 15% bonus experience to all skills you train, yes every skill in the game
Thanks for posting a Guide, Jason
It would be good to have a few different guides - by which I don't mean spoiler-filled walkthroughs, but this sort of thing - enchanting, crafting, jobs, side quest tips etc.
If we start getting a few guides, I'll make a special section for them
Also, don't forget to do your Alchemy...every potion counts toward leveling up.
To level up combat skills, just find a Stormcloak Encampment and fight fight fight. Leveled my Block about 10 times last night. It's good for leveling Destruction magic too, as the commander yields and then comes back with a full heath bar.
I'd like to add something. Ive just started my character again, but during the tutorial i chose to go with Ralof (stormcloaks) this time and during our first fight together with the Imperial i clocked old Ralof with a stray sword stroke and leveled up one handed, so i continued to slash away at him and continued boosting one handed skill. First room of the game, invincible NPC who wont attack back and i hold the key to his escape. One handed is a little cow to level so i think i may spend some time here...
Block skill is even easier, my fav method so far has been to head from riverwood to bleak falls, just as your rounding the first bend you should see a hollow log, position yourself in the log with your shield raised and healing on standby, the reason for the log is to prevent back attacks which would avoid your shield.
One wolf should appear and start trying to chew your leg off, wolfs attack rapidly and dont back off to taunt you like npc's do, you will almost definitely get rockjoint from this method but if you tie up your controller you can easily get max block (after level 30 - 40ish wolfs can no longer cause any damage) and the block perks are some of the best imo.
@Paul, sorry ning wont let me reply directly for some reason...
No, because if memory serves Hadvar leads the way, ie you cant keep him locked in the room he will continue to run through the tutorial the second you get close to him. I may be wrong, im sure someone will say...
I actually just started doing this and it works.
To get soul gems really fast though, you can go to Blackreach. There are tons of geode mines there with petty soul gems to grand soul gems.
Then what I do is enchant a bow with soul trap (you can go down to within 1 second and it always works) and instantly soul trap creatures. It even works if you dont kill it with the first arrow.
One thing everyone should know about the lover stone before you start saying it's the best hands down, is that it boosts everything because it gives you the Lover's Embrace effect, which you get from sleeping with your spouse. This means that you can no longer get the rested bonuses from sleeping. On the other hand, the rested bonus stacks with the bonus from the mage/warrior/thief stones, so you could actually end up with an experience bonus of 35%, for 8 hours anyway.