Skyrim's 18 Coolest Perks & Some That Are Missing

The Suddenbrain team is at a clear consensus that the new leveling system in Skyrim is a drastic improvement over that of Oblivion, which could easily hinder you more than help. One of our favorite aspects of the new system is that some of the coolest perks are available at lower levels. We at Suddenbrain have put together a list of our favorite perks from each of the 18 skill categories in Skyrim, as well as listing some that we feel are missing from the game. Check it out and let us know in the comments what perks you think are missing in Skyrim.

[strange1986]

I think twin souls is by far the coolest conjuration perk.

[snipes101]

Does anyone miss acrobatics as much as me? The joy I got from jumping onto a roof or into a hiding spot while sneaking cannot be measured. They could have found a better way to implement it instead of just taking it out.

[Suddenbrain]

Totally agree. They threw in little bits of athletics related skills into some of the existing skills, but they seem out of place/somewhat unrelated to that skill. I'd liked to have seen the athletics skill in Skyrim. There could have been some cool perks associated with it too.

[snipes101]

@sudden...
definitely. Hell I would have been content simply pressing the jump button over and over again. I never had a problem with that. I don't see why everyone else did. If you don't care for acrobatics...how about you just don't use them? You lose nothing and the people who enjoy them get to keep doing what they love. That being nailing someone with a nice sword with a bow until they die from the safety of a rooftop.

[jthamind]

some of his ideas are cool, others aren't as much.

i love the "missing" Light Armor perk that would let you run faster in Light Armor. it wouldn't have to be a massive speed boost, but something noticeable would be cool.

i also like the Energy Saver perk, but only for letting high level Enchanters use their charges more slowly.

the ones i don't like, though, are Heavy Hitter and Swing Away. to put it bluntly, i think those are horrible ideas. there are one-handed and two-handed weapons for a reason--because 1H ones are quicker but still have decent power, and 2H ones are slower with immense power. those two perks would blur the line between 1H and 2H weapons too much.

i also don't like the Honor Student one. it's just kinda contrived and unnecessary.

interesting article, though.

[schlanz]

Double enchantment is the best perk in the game

[D3mons0ul]

Bloody Mess!

[eak3]

One big flaw in this game is the inability to quick swap out weapon sets. Its such a distraction to have to pull up the fav menu, pausing the game, in a battle to swap from bow to melee weps.

[Xristo]

(For PC) When you have your favorites menu up, push 1-9 on any item to hotkey it.

Cannot speak for consoles :/

[DarkBlood]

then i'll help with that ( i think ) you can favourite the stuff you want on the menu then press the up D pad to pick whatever

sort of similiar to hotkey unless you already made that point then nvm

however there is the rest of the D pad buttons unused so thats something

[mynameisEvil]

Bubbled up for helpfulness. I thought they'd just gotten rid of hotkeys altogether.

This is gonna save me a lot of time, mein freund. Thank you!

[rdgneoz3]

I didn't realize it at first until I was checking out the help menu of the game, but when you're going through your favorites list using the D Pad, hold left to set one item to a left button and hold right to set an item to the right button on the D pad. I have left for my Nightingale Bow and right for my 1h weapons. And it'll swap the weapons or use what you have set to the buttons without the game being paused.

[Legion]

Kind of like they did with Two Worlds 2. They had the direction pad associated with 3 setups you could arrange for quick change up. I had one for Mage, Archer and Warrior. Each having specific armor and weapons for best class specific function.

[DFogz]

There are hotkeys in this game.

If you're on PC, bring up the favorites menu, select an item and press a number to assign it to.

If you're on consoles, bring up the favorites menu, select an item and press either the left or right directional.
(Unfortunately consoles only get 2 hotkeys, but it works for range/melee)

[Arnagrim]

The entire center path of enchantment is beast; you can pretty much enchant things to the point where you don't need to use perks for things; having a 181 damage Daedric bow because of full Archery enchants that's legendary because I have a set of armor with high enough smithing fortitude to allow me to improve things to max strength without the perk.

[Neko608]

Easy to level up and make a ton of gold too... trick is to find something with "banish" to disenchant.

[Arnagrim]

Yeah, it goes hand in hand with smithing too, just smith tons of iron daggers to raise smithing, trap or buy petty soul gems or higher (petty is better just for levelings sake) and sell them for almost 1k a piece or higher.