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At the moment, I'm playing a level 8 Bosmer using bows. I spent a lot of time stealing at the beginning of the game, and managed to get to level 8 without much fighting. Now I'm too weak to fight most enemies. Does anyone know the best way to level up my markman (preferably without trainers) or just improve the amount of damage I do? The same for light armour would be useful as well.

Thank-you!

Fort Carmala between Chorrol and Skingrad has a room with 5 rats. Bring repair hammers and a way to heal and let them go to town on you to train light armour.

As for marksman, there's kinda no easy way other than fighting. Lower the difficulty and grind some dungeons, and don't level again until you feel semi-competent with a bow.

Yeah, I've been holding back from leveling for a while now, ever since I used up all of my health potions on two bandits.

Use a Damage Speed poison on an ogre to turn them into an immobile target dummy. Crank the Difficulty to max and use Iron weapons to maximize the number of hits you score (skill is raised by the quantity of hits, which means a large number of weak attacks will serve you better than powerful one-hit kills).

1) Trolls regenerate health, so you can shoot them with a weak bow until you run out of arrows. They are dangerous, but there is often a rock you can jump on to stay out of reach. The ruin of Veyond has two trolls down in a pit near the entrance and you can mindlessly lob arrows on them as they crowd a corner trying to get at you from below. Unfortunately, you have to get past several trolls to get to that location. Damage Speed potions let you avoid the danger. You can rack up a lot of points against Painted Trolls and the Horror of Dive Rock.
2) Turn the difficulty up (so arrows do 1/6 damage), jump up on rocks and lob arrows at mudcrabs along the shore near Vilverin. Lobbed arrows do 1/3 damage. There are around ten crabs along that stretch of shore guarding the 3-4 nirnroots.
3) Go to Rosentia Gellenus' house in Leyawiin and shoot everscamps.
4) Buy Benirus manor and shoot ghosts with a silver or depleated magic bow. Pick up the arrows after 12-14 shots and you can recover all of them before they dissolve. Go outside to the street and wait/rest for one hour and the ghosts will respawn.
5) Whenever you encounter a zombie, rush in and out at it lobbing an arrow each time you rush in. It is a pretty safe fighting style when you get the hang of it.

Chicken Slayer wrote:1) Trolls regenerate health, so you can shoot them with a weak bow until you run out of arrows. They are dangerous, but there is often a rock you can jump on to stay out of reach. The ruin of Veyond has two trolls down in a pit near the entrance and you can mindlessly lob arrows on them as they crowd a corner trying to get at you from below.

Thanks so much! I was sure that there would be a place like this where I could stay out of reach.

Chicken Slayer wrote:4) Buy Benirus manor and shoot ghosts with a silver or depleated magic bow.

Do you know where I could get a silver bow? I've looked in a bunch of shops, but no one seems to sell them. When I looked it up online, people suggested killing an Imperial Legion Forester, but that doesn't line up with the type of character I'm playing.

The two Imperial Legion Forestors near Bruma will fight each other to the death if one witnesses the other shooting a deer. You may actually find one or both already dead by the time you stumble upon them.

I couldn't find them, but maybe they're both dead already. I'll have to go back and check again when I can.

They're usually found on the hills between Bruma and Applewatch. It's pretty unlikely for both of them to be dead at that level.

The foresters respawn, so you can keep trying after leaving the area for several days. Nine time out of ten when I leave the bruma north gate to find them they are on the snowy open area near the bandit cave yelling insults at each other.

At your level, I would try vampire caves for a silver bow. Lipsand Tarn north of Chorrol and east of Cloud Top has several guranteed archers in it, some at the very beginning that are easy to kill with arrow poison because they can't get to you.

Ah, okay. Thanks!

I'm set on getting a silver bow, but out of curiosity, would silver arrows work as well?

You either need a silver bow or silver arrows to hurt ghosts, if I recall correctly. So if you have a silver bow, you can use whatever ammunition you like.

I do all of my training on a summoned skeleton. You must be at least an apprentice in Conjuration to cast this spell, but that's pretty easy to achieve by grinding a little with a novice spell. Volanaro in Bruma can sell you the summon skeleton spell. Then go to the lighthouse area in Anvil. Jump up on one of the larger boulders, summon a skeleton and fire away. The skeleton won't be able to get to your character up on top of the boulder. You can use the same set up with Destruction skill.

For light armor or any defense skill just hit your summoned skeleton 3 times and he will start hitting back. When you are low on health, summon a second passive skeleton. Wait a bit and your health will max out for free. Then start again. Good luck!

Due to the availability of magic/silver bows, silver arrows are really only practical/necesssary if you are playing a low level or level 1 game. There is a quiver full of a dozen or so in Kemen that let you kill the few ghosts around at that time, such as those in some of The Collector quest dungeons.