Optimal way to increase heavy armor skill?

Whether or not this is cheating, I don't know. But I wanted Conditioning also for my Warrior, and I also wanted to +100 weight carrier in Pickpocket perk.

What you are trying to do below is get 100 pickpocket, so you can steal back any gold from training.

Starting this I was about level 10 (now level 27 from an hour grinding).

Steps I took to get both:

  • I went to the Stone and took Thief (changing from Warrior).
  • I had about 15~ pickpocket if I remember correctly. I stole enough to get my pickpocketing up to about 20. Steal apples and stuff. Doesn't take too long.
  • I then went to Jorvasskar (the home of the Companions).
  • Speak with Farkas in there and train Heavy Armour once.
  • Steal back the 200 gold it costs. (And you will gain a level in pickpocket).
  • Train again, and repeat five times, stealing back every time.
  • At which point you can level up.
  • After you have leveled up repeat this process until you get to a point when your probabilty to pickocket is too low to succeed and start taking the perks in pickpocking in order to get a 20%+ change to pickpocket items. Once you can take the 50% gold pickpocking perk (this REALLY helps and keeps your change to pickpocket at 90% all the time).
  • Keep pickpocketing all the way up and you will easily get your heavy armour to 70.

You might want Blacksmithy Also... A really easy way is to do this: (You need Undead Flee enchant or something equally high quality).

  • Craft Daggers
  • Enchant with Undead Flee.. (using a petty soul gem which you can buy for 30g)
  • Sell the daggers back to Eorlund Gray-Mane the Blacksmith for like 300~ gold each.
  • Buy all of his Ores.
  • Pickpocket everything from him.
  • Repeat every 48 hours, or move to another Blacksmith.

Mudcrabs do very little damage. If you find a couple and sit in a corner letting them hit you that will raise your heavy armor skill without you taking much health. You can also use a shield to block their attacks raising your block and healing yourself with spells raising your restoration.


You can easily alleviate this problem by finding the stone in the Northwest quadrant of the map that not only makes your armor weigh NOTHING, but also makes you move unrestricted while ALSO adding 80 capacity. i think it's called the Horseback stone or something. It's a beautiful thing. I've kept it on the entire game thus far and have no plans to switch back. Also, I simply trained in Pickpocket every single level until 50 in order to get that amazing 100 capacity perk. I'm now sitting much happier at about 550 right now and loving it.


I went to the first dungeon in dragon armor and killed everything but one rat. I stood in the middle of the room, letting it hit me. It attacks once and runs around for a while, leaving plenty of time for my health to regenerate. I left it there overnight with the right analog stick taped down so my Xbox wouldn't turn off.

I did the same thing with a wolf to level up my block skill.


Have a mudcrab attack you while you are wearing a mix of light and heavy armor. Have a shield in one hand and a healing spell in the other.

The crab's attacks will raise light and heavy armor skill. Use fast healing to raise restoration and block once in a while to raise block.