Speech

The skill of persuasion can be used to get better prices from merchants and persuade others to do as you ask. "Heard about you and your honeyed words..."

- Guard

Speech is a skill in and is one of the six skills that falls under The Thief play-style.

Description
This skill is a combination of both Speechcraft and Mercantile skills of previous Elder Scrolls and replaces them. Speech may also help you in quests by helping you unlock special dialogue when interacting with NPCs.

Speech directly affects the prices paid when buying from and selling to merchants, even without the assorted perks. At 0 speech, merchants will sell items for 3 times their base price, and buy for a third of their base price. At 100 speech, merchants will sell items for twice their base price and buy for half.

The speech skill increase depends on the base value of the item. However, the skill increase only occurs once per transaction. In order to optimize leveling sell valuable items individually.

Governing Guardian Stone: The Thief

Books and Quests
The following are a list of books that increase the Speech Skill:
 * Biography of the Wolf Queen - Found in Belethor's General Goods in Whiterun.
 * 2920, Second Seed, v5 - Found in Sadri's Used Wares in Windhelm. Also inside Shriekwind Bastion on the pulpit by the Volkihar Master Vampire.
 * A Dance in Fire, v6
 * A Dance in Fire, v7
 * The Buying Game

The following Miscellaneous Quest increases the Speech Skill:
 * Steal the Staff of Arcane Authority for Malur Seloth in Winterhold.
 * Collect a Mammoth Tusk for Ysolda from Whiterun.
 * Jumping from Bard's Leap Summit at Lost Valley Redoubt south of Roriksted and surviving will raise your Speech when you talk to the Bard's Ghost at the bottom.
 * Retrieve Finn's Lute for Inge Six Fingers at the Bard's College in Solitude (note: also increases the Light Armor, Sneak, Lockpicking, Pickpocket, and Alchemy skills)

Perks
The following are the perks that become available to select as the skill is leveled up: Note: The way Investor seems to work is that the 500 gold ends up in the shopkeeper's personal inventory rather than the store inventory, also, it seems like any gold in the shopkeeper's personal inventory is added to the store gold when calculating how much they can buy. This means two things:


 * 1) You can pickpocket the gold off of them. This means the store won't have 500 more gold when their inventory refreshes. It still makes them like you however.
 * 2) You can reverse-pickpocket more gold on to them to increase the investment effect. Also, placing gold is much easier than taking it. This can create shopkeepers with a very high amount of gold and can actually be a worthy investment.

Ways to Persuade

 * Admire
 * Intimidate
 * Mock
 * Brawl
 * Bribe 10
 * Bribe 100

Trainers

 * Revyn Sadri (Common): Sadri's Used Wears, east Windhelm
 * Dro'marash (Adept): Khajiit Caravans
 * Ogmund (Expert): Markarth
 * Giraud Gemane (up to 90 - Master): Bards College, Solitude
 * Azzadal of the Bards College will increase the Speech skill by one after being spoken to twice (Not located in Bards College)

Prices
Prices are computed by the following:


 * price factor = (3.3 - 1.3 * skill/100) / (1 + Haggling + Allure + Fortify Barter)
 * sell price = value / price factor
 * buy value = value * price factor

Skills over 100 have no effect.
 * At 0 skill and no perks the price factor is 3.3
 * At 100 skill and no perks the price factor is 2
 * At 100 skill and all perks the price factor is 1.42857.

Additional ways of improving your prices can be found on the page Fortify Barter.

Power Leveling/Exploits
WARNING!

'Power leveling any skill can unbalance your character, especially at lower levels. This is because the creatures level with your character. Therefore, it is ill-advised to power level any skill before your character reaches level 30. Even after level 30 Powerleveling non-combat skills should be limited to one skill every 10 levels.'

Method 1: (Requires minimum speech level 25): At the Black-Briar Meadery in Riften, the Dragonborn can, through a Persuasion check, enter an infinite dialogue loop with Ungrien regarding Maven Black-Briar. Once at the Meadery, speak to Ungrien and ask him to tell you what he thinks about Maven Black-Briar. Then, choose the Persuade option "Come on, get the truth off your chest". If you are under the 25 Speech required, simply give a coin to one of the local beggars and you will receive the Gift of Charity. (+10 Speech for an hour, so even with base Speech is 15, you can use this exploit.)

If you wish to avoid tresspassing (bounty of 5), which forces you to split this method into 2 trips, make sure you enter the meadery before noon. With a speech level of 33, I entered the meadery around 11 AM and reached level 100 at 7:40 PM.

An alternative to this in order to level both Speech and Pickpocket is to bribe him instead of persuade him, then pickpocket the money you gave him.

This method has gotten a lot of attention as an easy way to level and is seen in videos such as:
 * "Skyrim - Level Up Conjuration & Speech EASY/FAST" (YouTube)

Method 2:


 * If you have membership in the Thieves Guild, you gain the ability to bribe guards (Bribery perk not required; may be a bug). If you have a tiny bounty (say, 25 gold from pickpocketing) then convincing the guards to look the other way is pretty cheaply priced in comparison to the effort of searching out a speech trainer and then paying gold for the same effect. Succeeding at skill checks raises your speech rapidly, and bribery counts as a success. By repeatedly bribing guards you will raise your speech at a prodigious rate, as long as you still have gold to spend.

Method 3:


 * If your Pickpocketing is high enough, you can always take the money you bribed the guard with once he turns around, for that it is recommended to bribe the solo patroling guard outside of town.


 * During the Dark Brotherhood quest, Recipe For Disaster, when questioning Anton Virane you can intimidate him over and over to raise your speech.


 * Follow the steps below to gain speech levels quickly. (Suggested that you save before you start talking with him just incase you mess up.)


 * 1) Begin Talking with him. After you say "For the Dark Brotherhood, that can be easily arranged. (Intimidate)",
 * 2) He will respond "The Dark Brotherhood?".
 * 3) Immediately exit the conversation.
 * 4) You can then begin to talk to him again and quickly skip through most of the conversation.
 * 5) Exit the converstation at the same time as before.
 * 6) You can do this over and over until you get bored.


 * This method is not quite as effective as the first method.

Items
Some items increase the Speech skill. These include:
 * Amulet of Dibella
 * Amulet of Articulation
 * Masque of Clavicus Vile
 * Potion of Glibness (+20 for 60 sec)

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Skills

 * See: Skill (Skyrim)