This is just a hastily-assembled list of tricks for the gaming-system versions of Skyrim (not PC) that I’ve gathered from the general Skyrim community at large. I don’t take any credit for them — just wanted to compile a list of them for other adventurers out there =)
~ Infinite Gold Trick While You Sleep IRL ~
1. The easiest way to make gold without tricks is to chop wood. At most mills, there is a chopping block on the grass somewhere and a woodcutter’s axe lying around nearby. Take the axe, and walk up to the chopping block and activate it. You’ll go into a little animation to chop wood, and if you let it go (for about 30 seconds) when it’s done you’ll end up with 6 pieces of firewood. Take the firewood to the mill owner, and he/she’ll pay you for chopping them and take the wood. On average, the payment comes out to about 1 gold per second waiting for the animation to complete, or 60 gold per minute. The problem is that when the animation is over, you’ve got to look back down to restart the process — but not if you’ve got a companion with you. If you go into the command mode, you can order a companion like Lydia to chop wood for you, and your view never changes — you’ll just need something to press the button repeatedly. If you can figure out some kind of device that will press the button to order the character to chop wood repeatedly, and turn off the TV/monitor while you go to bed for the night, you could conceivably wake up in the morning and have one metric s#!t-ton of firewood to give to the mill owner. At 1-gold/1-second, if you were to sleep for 6 hours and no dragons were to attack or whatever system you set up to press the button didn’t get interrupted, you could have 21,600 gold worth of firewood when you wake up the next day.
~ Infinite Magicka ~
1. “After doing the College of Winterhold quest where you get the “Mystical Tuning Gloves” and purge the magicka reserves, keep the gloves and use the healing spell and equilibrium, while wearing the Archmage outfit and Savos Arens circlet, then switch to another spell, for some reason my magicka bar disappeared and i actually had infinite magicka, I then used telekenisis and rubberbanded my R1 and in 10 mins got Lvl 100 Alteration,” says one YouTube commenter. I haven’t tried this myself, as I’m not that far into the Winterhold quests, but looks promising. [via (from a comment)]
2. There’s at least one way you can essentially get infinite Magicka but requiring you to pause time for a few seconds, without needing to do some advanced quest first. You must have an item that increases your Magicka, such as a helmet that when equipped raises the number amount of total Magicka available to use. Once you cast all of it complete down to nothing, simply go to your menu, unequip it and then reequip it, and your magicka increases automatically (without having to wait for it to restore slowly). It’s easier to simply put the magicka-boosting item on Favorite, and from the favorite menu un/reequip while you’re in battle. The larger the Magicka boost you get from the item, the longer you’ll be able to cast without having to pause to un/reequip. [via]
~ Infinite Speech Leveling ~
1. In Riften, go to the Black-Briar Meadery and speak with Ungrien at the counter. Choose the option “Tell me about Maven Black-Briar” and after his response, you’ll get the option to Persuade. Select it, and you’ll get experience — but the option doesn’t disappear. You can go back and ask about Maven Black-Briar again, and persuade again, as often as you like. Continually pressing A will repeat the same conversation over and over, so you don’t need to switch conversation options to do it. Set up the controller on the floor with a book on the button under your foot while you’re at the computer surfing the web, and you can just tap your foot in the meantime, and change your perk options at each level up. I’m tapping my foot as I’m typing this very entry… [via]
~ Infinite Sprint ~
1. To sprint normally, you tap the left bumper (LB, above the left trigger), but doing so drains your Stamina. Instead, hold a torch in your left hand, and a sword in your right. Have the sword out and ready to fight, but sheath it and immediately begin sprinting by repeatedly tapping LB so that you run out of Stamina and it starts to flash. When it begins to flash, just hold down LB and you can sprint until you let off LB, regardless of whether you’re out of Stamina. [via]
~ Buy The Whiterun House Without Spending Gold ~
1. Although you’ll still need 5000 gold on hand for the trick to work, you’ll end up getting to keep it all. I must add, however, that when I tried this myself (which I saved first in case there was anything weird about it), I could not buy the decorations for the house afterward for some reason. The trick is to visit the man you buy the house from in the early hours of the night, say 3am or so, when he’s asleep. When he wakes up, he’ll be standing right next to a nightstand or wardrobe. When you agree to buy the house, back out of the conversation before the gold is deducted from you, and immediately put the gold in the nightstand or wardrobe nearby. He’ll still give you the key, but you can just get your gold back out of the place you put it, and keep it.
~ Infinite Destruction / Infinite One-Handed / Infinite Two-Handed Training ~
1. Near the very beginning as you’re being led out during the first dragon attack that saves you, try to trap the person leading you, such as by standing in front of him so he can’t move forward. We will never attack you, and you can used fire/weapons on him as much as you please.
~ Infinite Conjuration Training ~
1. Find a slaughterfish (a fish that attacks you) and step out onto the shore so that it is still in attack mode but can’t reach you. Cast a conjure weapon spell, and sheathe it back making it disappear, and repeat. As long as you’re in battle with something (also such as an archer that is far away but shooting arrows at you, or a chasing enemy that gets stuck in water similarly) then you can keep conjuring new weapons as much as you please and still get experience credit for it.
~ Infinite Restoration Training ~
1. Locate a dungeon trap that will be triggered indefinitely, such as the kind that shoots fire by stepping on a pressure plate or fires darts continuously. One example is a fire pressure plate in the cave where there Greybeards send you to locate the Horn, that shoots fire up continuously by standing on it. Simply stand on the plate or whatever device that causes damage, and continuously heal. If your magicka gets too low, just move off it and wait for it to restore, then repeat.
~ Infinite Illusion Training ~
1. Dual-cast Courage on any NPC. [via]
I am gradually updating this list, so if you find something concrete, please submit it to me at ablestmage@gmail.com and I’ll see about adding it =)