Speech not gaining from buying and selling

[JarlofLeland]

I'm level 43, speech is at 66, and for the past week my speech hasn't gained at all. I've probably moved 30-40000 gold worth of goods. Has anybody encountered this with speech or any other skill? I finally gave up and went and found Ungrien.

[Norroen Dyrd]

Not quite sure, but I heard that the higher your level the harder it is to level up.

[Mefris Elmek]

Not quite sure, but I heard that the higher your level the harder it is to level up.

That is correct.

I'm level 43, speech is at 66, and for the past week my speech hasn't gained at all. I've probably moved 30-40000 gold worth of goods. Has anybody encountered this with speech or any other skill? I finally gave up and went and found Ungrien.

You can use Ungrien to level speech quickly if you are in a hurry.

[H8Ball]

For each of the 18 skills, the game uses some hidden numbers in the background to control the number of times you have to use that skill (experience, or Exp for short) before it will increase again...

Skill ;current skill value (e.g. Speech.Skill = 66)
Exp ;current experience amount gained towards next skill increase (starts at 0)
ExpPerUse ;amount of experience awarded per skill use (always >0)
ExpRequired ;amount of experience required to trigger next skill increase (always >ExpPerUse)

Each time you use a skill (for Speech, it's each sale transaction to a Merchant), the game does the following...

Exp = Exp + ExpPerUse
if Exp >= ExpRequired
. Skill = Skill + 1 ;increase the skill
. Exp = Exp - ExpRequired ;clamp back to low range (residual Exp carry-over if any)
. ExpRequired = some formula to make it greater so next skill increase will take more uses
endif

Basically, the higher the skill, the more uses required to increase it and the slower it increases. Some skills increase slower than others anyway, due to having a smaller ExpPerUse. For example, Restoration and Destruction skills increase very slowly, because Bethesda figured they'd be VERY commonly used skills and didn't want them increasing too fast, as this would result in the Player becoming overpowered too early.

I'm currently at Speech = 50, and making probably 20,000+ Gold from selling items before I see a Speech increase. It'll get worse as Speech increases.

I'm assuming Skyrim works much the same as Oblivion when it comes to Merchants. You gain NO Exp for buying, only for selling, and ExpPerUse is awarded PER sale transaction. So selling a stack of 10 items is ONE transaction (Exp = Exp + 1*ExpPerUse) whereas selling them singly is 10 transactions (Exp = Exp + 10*ExpPerUse). Selling 10 items singly will gain you 10x the Exp, and your next Speech increase will come correspondingly earlier.

In Oblivion, I used to buy a whole stack of say 100 Iron Arrows for 1 Gold each (1 buy transaction of 100 arrows, 1*100 = 100 Gold, no Exp gained for buying) then sell them back 1 at a time for 1 Gold each (100 sale transactions of 1 arrow, 100*1 = 100 Gold, Exp gained per sale). Very tedious, but no profit gain or loss and it increased my Mercantile skill faster.

The caveat with all the above is that the game enforces the rule "For more than 5 items, ask How Many. For 5 or less, sell/transfer them singly". If you keep waiting until you have more than 5 items, you'll be selling them in ONE transaction. If you have 5 items, you'll be selling them SINGLY and gaining 5x the Exp! So as with Oblivion, the more tedious way of selling is the best way.

Best suggestion for Skyrim is to repeatedly buy 5 items worth 1 Gold each and sell them back for 1 Gold each. That way, you don't gain or lose Gold and get 5 Exp gains per repeat so Speech will increase faster.

[JarlofLeland]

Gang, I appreciate your responses about it being harder to level up higher up and all that, but this is my third play through. Its not that it was taking a long time, it was not moving at all. When you go into the skills menu, the little bar under the speech skill was not moving no matter how much I had sold, it was stuck right under the "C" in Speech.

[Mefris Elmek]

Then go to the NPC i mentioned earlier and test it to be 100 sure.If that is the case and it won't budge then increase your other skills until you level up and it should be fixed.
I had this issue with the conjuration skill and levelling up resolved it.

[H8Ball]

Hmm. Probably yet another bug then. The skills progress system has gotten itself into a snit where Speech is concerned. Probably adding 0 progress to it, resulting in no change. As has been said, try using other skills to trigger a level-up. Hopefully, that will reset the skills progress system and Speech will resume progressing normally again.

Bethesda have a LONG history of prioritising eye candy over basic fundamental game mechanics. I have problems with Skyrim unexpectedly exiting to Desktop with NO error message, usually on accessing a container (which includes corpses and Merchants). I have to Quicksave before accessing ANY container just in case. This makes me think Bethesda's vision far exceeds their ability to achieve it. No matter how beautiful a building looks, if its foundations are built by cowboy builders, it's gonna be as rickety as hell and fall down. I'd happily settle for old-school blocky 2D graphics if the game mechanics were spot-on.

Heh heh. In fact I used to do EXACTLY that! My first RPG love was Dungeon Master (released 1987) on my Atari ST home computer. I have it for PC (it's abandonware, so dirt cheap) and still play through it occasionally even now, some 25 years later, just for the fun and nostalgia. It looks utterly primitive compared to today's modern 3D epics, but you can't fault the game mechanics. Not a game-breaking bug in sight!