Skyrim Skill Perks & Racial Bonuses Revealed [Figure Out Your Character's Race & Abilities Before Skyrim Releases With This Handy New List From Bethesda]

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We’re all super excited for Skyrim to launch next month, but that excitement comes along with the knowledge that once we boot up the game, we’re going to spend a fair amount of time creating our character. It’s pretty much inevitable – they’re so much to pick from in Elder Scrolls games that you need to put a considerable amount of time into character creation or risk creating a crappy chracter. This is just the nature of the beast.

Fortunately, Bethesda has released a ton of details on Skyrim‘s racial abilities and skill perks have been released, so you can figure out your character now and jump right into the game when you finally get your hands on it. For me, I already knew what kind of character I was going to create before this list was released: a High Elf Mage. They kicked a lot of ass in Oblivion, and now that we’ll have the ability to dual wield spells, they’ll kick even more ass. Anyway, here’s the full list of racial bonuses and skill perks:

Racial Bonuses

• ORCS: Beserker
• REDGUARDS: Adrenaline Rush
• WOOD ELF: Resist poison, resisit disease, command animals
• NORD: Battlecry
• KHAJIIT: Night-eye, claw attacks
• IMPERIAL: Voice of the Emperor, find more coins when looting
• HIGH ELF: Regenerate Magicka more quickly
• DARK ELF: Ancestor’s Wrath (surround self in fire), resist fire
• BRETON: Dragonskin (absorb spells), resist shock
• ARGONIANS: Histskin (regenerate health quickly), resist disease, breathe underwater

Skill Perks

Speech

• Buying and selling price 10% better (5 ranks)
• 10% price buying from opposite sex
• Invest in shops and increase available gold permanently in invested stores
• Master Trader – every merchant in world gains 1000 gold for bartering
• Buy and sell from any merchant regardless of what they normally buy and sell
• Intimidation attempts twice as successful
• Persuasion attempts more likely successful

Alchemy

• Potions 20% stronger (5 ranks)
• Potions for restore health, magicka or stamina are 25% more powerful (maybe ranked)
• Poisons 25% more effective (maybe ranked)
• Poisons last for twice as many hits
• Two ingredients are gathered from plants
• 50% resistance to all poisons
• All negative effects removed from potions and all positive removed from poisons
• 2 effects of an ingredient are revealed when testing it for the first time (instead of just one)

Illusion

• Dual casting overcharges effect for more powerful spell
• Cast Novice spells for 50% less magicka
• Cast Apprentice spells for 50% less magicka
• Cast Adept, Expert, Master etc spells for 50% less magicka (more levels this time around)
• Spells work on higher level animals
• Spells work on higher level people
• All spellcasting (from ANY school) is done silently
• Spells work on undead, daedra and automatons
• Fear spells work on higher level enemies

Conjuration

• Novice for 50% magicka etc (up to Master)
• Dual casting overcharges –> greater spell effect
• Bound weapons do more damage
• Bound weapons cast Soul Trap on target
• Bound weapons banish certain creatures (and I think summon creature in their place, not 100% on that though, dodgy recording)
• Reanimate undead with 100 more health
• Summon 2 Atronachs or reanimated zombies
• Summon Atronachs at twice the distance
• Summoned Atronachs twice as strong

Destruction

• More damage for each school (fire, frost and shock) – ranked
• Novice for 50% magicka etc.
• Shock damage chance to disintegrate targets if their health is under 10%
• Frost damage chance to paralyse targets if health low
• Fire damage chance to make low health enemies flee
• Place runes 5x farther away

Restoration

• Healing spells also restore stamina
• Novice for 50% less magicka etc
• Healing spells do 50% more healing
• Recharging healing spells
• More is recharged with each hit with healing spells (unclear)
• Spells more effective against undead
• Once a day chance to autocast 250HP restoration when health drops low
• Magicka regenerates 25% faster

Alteration

• Novice for 50% less etc
• Alteration spells have greater duration (ranked)
• Absorb 30% magicka that hits you

Enchanting

• Enchants are 20% stronger (ranked)
• Enchanted armour 25% stronger
• “Soul gems provide extra magicka for recharging” – again, dodgy recording but that’s what I heard, even if it doesn’t make much sense
• Death blows to creatures but not people trap souls for weapon recharge
• Health, magicka and stamina enchants stronger
• Extra effect on already-enchanted weapon can be applied
• Shock, Frost and Fire enchants 25% stronger (individual perks for each element)

Heavy Armor

• Increase armor rating 20% (5 ranks)
• Unarmed attacks with heavy armor gauntlets – damage increased by gauntlets’ armor rating
• Half fall damage if all in heavy armor
• Heavy armor weighs nothing and doesn’t slow you at all
• Additional 25% armor if in matching set
• 25% armor bonus if all in heavy armor (not necessarily matching)
• 50% less stagger if all in heavy armor
• 10% damage reflected back to enemy if all in heavy armor

Two-Handed Weapons

• 2h weapons do 20% more damage (5 ranks)
• Attacks with warhammers ignore 25% armour (ranked)
• Attacks with battleaxes do extra bleeding damage (ranked)
• Attacks with greatswords do extra critical damage (ranked)
• Power attacks cost 25% less stamina
• Standing power attacks do 25% bonus damage, chance to decapitate
• Sprinting power attacks do double (critical) damage
• Sideways power attacks hit all targets
• Backwards power attacks have 25% chance of paralysis

Archery

• Bows do 25% more damage
• Zoom in
• Zooming slows time
• 10% crit chance
• Move faster with drawn bow
• Recover twice as many arrows from dead bodies
• 50% chance of paralysing for few seconds (might be 15%, can’t really hear…)
• Draw bow 30% faster

Sneak

• 20% harder to detect (ranked)
• Sneak attacks do 6x damage with 1h weapons
• Sneak attacks with bows do 3x damage
• Sneak attacks with daggers do 15x damage (end perk on skill tree)
• Noise from armor reduced 50%
• No longer activate pressure plates
• Sprinting while sneaking performs silent forward roll
• Running does not affect detection chance
• Crouching can make hostile enemies lose sight of you and search for a target

So there you have it. While we don’t have the entire list of skills and their perks at the moment, this should give you a pretty good idea of what kind of character you’d like to create. Personally, I like seeing the perks in the Heavy Armor skill tree since in Oblivion it felt like there wasn’t much of a reason to choose Heavy Armor over Light Armor. There also seems to be some really nice bonuses for pursuing the Speechcraft tree, which could lead to some really interesting characters.

Now that you’ve seen the list, head down to the comments section and tell us what kind of character you’re going to create when The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim launches on November 11! Will it be a rough and tumble warrior housed behind a wall of armor, a rogue that fights from the shadows with bows and daggers, or a mage that lets his fire balls and conjured minions do the talking? Perhaps you’d rather opt for some sort of hybrid? Post a comment and let us know your plans for Skyrim!

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