What is the Max Level in Skyrim? Complete Leveling Guide

What is the max level in Skyrim? Let’s take a look at the level system in Skyrim and find out how leveling works in Skyrim, and what the level cap is!

Skyrim is a long game that features hundreds of quests and tons of locations for the players to visit. Since there is so much to do in the game, you can expect to reach a high level by the end of your journey with great stats and abilities. However, if you are curious to know what the max level is in Skyrim and how much you can level up your skills, worry not because we’ve answered that question for you.

Guide Contents

What is the Max Level in Skyrim?

After a few recent updates, there is no max level in Skyrim anymore. However, you will be about level 252 if you want to unlock every perk in each skill tree. Before all the new editions and DLCs, the base version of the game had level 81 as the max level.

If you want to know how leveling up works and what is the advantage of reaching level 252, continue reading to find out. We’ll also explain what happens if you make all your skills legendary to gain more perks. With that said, let’s dive right in and take a look at what is the max level in Skyrim.

What Does Leveling Up Do?

Leveling up plays an essential part in your journey since it makes your character stronger. Not only in terms of how much HP, stamina, or Magicka you have but also in terms of skills and stats. Players gain character experience by honing their skills such as stealth, melee, or ranged combat. You can do that by either training, performing the required actions, or reading the relevant books.

Once you gain enough experience to level up your skill, your character will automatically gain a predetermined amount of character experience. This is what causes you to level up. Once you do level up, you’ll gain the following stats:

Increased HP, stamina, and Magicka by 10 points.
1 perk point to level up your skills.

You do not have to spend your perk points as soon as you get them. If you want to save them up and spend them at a later time, that works perfectly fine as well. However, if you save your skill points, you need to level up your skills in succession. In short, you need to level up the skill that comes first before moving on to the higher level skills regardless of how many skill points you have.

Another thing to keep in mind is that there is no softcap. This allows you to level up freely without feeling like you hit a barrier that is stopping you from reaching your full potential like in Dark Souls. You can get to the max level just as easily as you hit level 10. However, the higher your level, the more experience points it will take. So, while it is quite easy to level up, you will need to wait longer and do a lot of tasks to level up later on.

Also, once you reach level 252, you will stop getting perk points because you’ll have upgraded all of your skills to the maximum amount. However, you will still continue to gain 10 points in your HP, stamina, and Magicka. If you want to become a warrior that cannot be killed, continue leveling up and raise your stats as much as you want (though, it’s not worth leveling up after that point.)

What is the Max Level In Skyrim?

As aforementioned, there is no max level after the 1.9 update. If you played Skyrim when it initially was released, you could only get to level 81 before you hit a level cap. Then, the game allowed you to reset your skill trees to make them “legendary”. This allows you to get to level 252 before you max out all of your skills and perks. While you can level up indefinitely, level 252 is a good stopping point and most players consider it to be the max level.

What Happens If You Make Your Skills Legendary?

If you have maxed out one of your skill trees to 100, you will get an option to reset them and make them legendary. This resets the specific skill tree all the way back to 15 points. While you might think this is a bad choice, it actually helps you out in the long run.

You can now gain more perks and level up that skill tree even further to gain additional perks that weren’t available before. While this makes your game easier, in the long run, you’ll face more difficulties right after resetting the skill tree. Since your enemies will still be strong and you won’t have the advantage of having a high-level skill tree, you will feel weaker until you level it up again.

Looking for more Skyrim content? Check out these guides:

The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim is available to play on Steam.