5 replies to this topic

[David]

I covered this in my guide The Fastest Ways to Level in Skyrim.

Heavy Armor
Leveling heavy armor is best done in conjunction with the restoration skill (if you're interested in leveling it), as the amount of experience you gain is related to how much damage you're taking. A hit from a giant, for example, will give much more experience than multiple hits from a skeever. As a result, you're going to be healing. A lot.

Methods

[*]Let your character be a punching bag! Find an enemy, and let them beat the hell out of you; the harder you're being hit, the better. As a result, you're going to want to be restoring your health at the same time (using either potions or restoration spells).

[*]The trick is finding an NPC that you're capable of sustaining a few attacks against. For example, Giants do massive amounts of damage and would be a good idea for high leveled players. However, low level players will die in one hit from these NPC's, and this should try something else.
[/list]If leveling alongside restoration, you may want to wait until you have armor enchanted to give the Restoration school of magic zero spell cost. This requires 100 enchanting (and at that point probably 100 smithing), but it will make increasing Heavy Armor a walk in the park. If this seems like a long path to take to max Heavy Armor - just do it without. It's still an easy skill to level.

[David]

If you have the Skeleton key you can go for Master locks. There's really no "good" way to level lockpicking. It's also covered in the guide, along with the other skills.

Lockpicking
There's really no fun or extremely fast way to level this skill, so hopefully you enjoy the lockpicking mini-game. If not, well, you're in for a bit of work. The main thing to take away from lockpicking is that you gain more experience the more difficult the lock is (obviously), although some experience is granted even if you fail.

Methods

[*]Some people just purposefully fail at the lockpicking game repeatedly, reasoning that it's easier just to get mass numbers of lockpicks and fail than successfully open high level locks. This isn't a completely awful idea if you're sitting on thousands of lock picks. Just find a lock that doesn't open at the default position and repeatedly break your picks.
[*]The Dwemer Museum, which is in Markarth's UnderStone Keep, is a fantastic place to legitimately train as it contains hundreds of locks to pick.
[*]The Skeleton Key, the Daedric artifact obtained during the Thieves Guild quest line, never breaks. It's a good idea to hold onto it if you're going to attempt to train by opening master locks.
[/list]Note: Picking a lock that you have already successfully opened will not grant you more experience. Good examples being house doors, which lock every night.

[David]

You can check to see if he's still following you by trying to get a different follower. It will either say that Faendal will return home now or won't allows you to take a new companion because "you already have a follower."Faendal's house is in Riverwood. If it's been 3 or so days, you can check there and see if he's returned. There's also a large section on his daily schedule on his wiki page.Generally if NPC's die you'll be able to find them in the Hall's of the Dead in their home cities. Since Riverwood isn't a city and doesn't have one, you might be able to check Whiterun's to see if he's deceased. I'm not positive that minor towns send the "remains" to the nearest city, though.Note that sometimes followers are known to disappear permanently from the game. If this is the case you'll either have to move on or reload a previous save before he disappeared. Faendal isn't a great follower anyway imo.