Speech

Speech is Skyrim’s skill of silver tongues and sharp bargains. It makes merchants give you better prices and helps you persuade, intimidate or bribe people into doing what you want. It belongs to the Stealth category and is boosted by The Thief Stone. Despite the name, it has nothing to do with dragon shouts – a Thu’um is learned from word walls, not haggling.

For many characters, Speech is the skill that quietly decides how rich you get. Loot is only worth what a merchant will pay for it, and Speech governs both that price and which merchants will deal with you at all. The perks also unlock alternative dialogue options in many quests, letting a smooth talker skip a fight or a fetch errand. It pairs especially well with Smithing, Enchanting and Alchemy, whose products sell for serious money.

How Speech works

Bartering

Every time you buy or sell, the price you get depends on your Speech skill, perks and any Fortify Barter effects you have. Experience is based on the value of what changes hands, so selling a few expensive items does more for the skill than selling many cheap ones. Merchants also have a limited stock of gold that refills over time, which is why the later perks focus on giving them more.

Persuade, Intimidate and Bribe

Some conversations offer special options marked Persuade, Intimidate or Bribe. Persuasion depends on your Speech skill, Bribe costs gold, and Intimidation is influenced by how strong you are compared to the person you are threatening. Succeeding at these checks also raises the skill, and they often open an easier or cheaper way through a quest.

Selling stolen goods

Ordinary merchants refuse stolen items. You can sell them to fences, which you gain access to through the Thieves Guild, starting with Tonilia in the Ragged Flagon – or later, through the Fence perk.

Speech perk tree

The Speech tree has 9 perks with 13 ranks in total. Required levels are the Speech skill level needed for each rank.

Perk guide

The Speech tree is split into a trading line and a talking line, both growing from Haggling. Whether it is worth perks at all depends on how much you care about money; a character with strong crafting skills will feel the trading perks immediately.

Haggling is the root perk with five ranks at Speech 0, 20, 40, 60 and 80, improving buying and selling prices by 10%, 15%, 20%, 25% and finally 30%. One rank is needed to open the tree; further ranks are solid if you trade a lot.

Trading line. Allure (30) gives 10% better prices with the opposite sex. Merchant (50) is one of the most useful perks in the tree: you can sell any type of item to any kind of merchant, so the blacksmith suddenly wants your potions. Investor (70) lets you invest 500 gold with a shopkeeper to permanently increase their available gold – vital when you are trying to sell a cartful of enchanted gear. Fence (90) lets you barter stolen goods with any merchant you have invested in, and Master Trader (100) gives every merchant in the world an extra 1000 gold for bartering.

Talking line. Bribery (30) lets you pay guards to ignore crimes, which is great for thieves who do not want to sit in jail. Persuasion (50) makes Persuade attempts 30% easier, and Intimidation (70) makes intimidating people twice as successful.

Suggested order: one rank of Haggling, then Allure and Merchant, then Investor. Add Bribery and Persuasion if you play a thief or like dialogue solutions. Master Trader is the long-term goal for heavy sellers, while the extra Haggling ranks are good filler once the key perks are taken.

How to level Speech fast

• Sell expensive items. Experience scales with value, so offloading a handful of high-value weapons, armour or jewellery beats selling stacks of cheap loot.
• Craft for profit. Selling items you make with Smithing, Enchanting or Alchemy levels Speech and those skills at the same time.
• Buy and sell back. Each transaction counts, so buying something pricey and selling it back – then repeating – raises Speech steadily, at the cost of some gold.
• Take the dialogue checks. Use Persuade, Intimidate and Bribe options whenever they appear; successful checks give experience on top of the quest benefits.
• Use Fortify Barter. Potions and gear with Fortify Barter improve prices, letting you squeeze more out of each sale while you level.
• Train. Giraud Gemane at the Bards College in Solitude trains up to Master level, Ogmund to Expert, and Revyn Sadri covers the early levels.
• Read the skill books. Titles like The Buying Game and Biography of the Wolf Queen each give a free point.

Trainers

Each trainer can teach up to five levels per character level, and training costs more gold the higher your skill is.

Speech skill books

Reading each of these books for the first time raises Speech by one level:

• 2920, Second Seed, v5
• A Dance in Fire, v6
• A Dance in Fire, v7
• Biography of the Wolf Queen
• The Buying Game

Tips and notes

• Investor is a two-for-one: the invested merchant keeps the extra gold forever, and the Fence perk later relies on those same investments.
• Speech is one of the few skills that can be levelled without fighting anyone at all – a perfect side project during long crafting sessions.
• Fences that become available through Thieves Guild progression make Speech-based thieving profitable long before you reach the Fence perk.
• Belethor‘s general store in Whiterun buys almost anything, which makes it an early favourite for selling loot before you have the Merchant perk.

Perk tree, required levels and trainer levels from the Skyrim LE 1.9 master files (AVIF AVSpeechcraft, PERK and CLAS records).