Skyrim: How to Reset Perks?
Perks are an important part of leveling in Skyrim. They allow you to unlock powerful new effects that compliment your skills. A single perk point is earned every time you level up and you can use it to unlock a perk of your choice provided that your skill is high enough to unlock the said perk. It’s a convenient way to develop skills you deem most important, but what if you suddenly change your playstyle and decide to focus on different skills? It would be useful to be able to reset all your perk points and somehow start from scratch without worrying about leveling or starting a new game. It is possible, and in this guide, we’re going to tell you how. Let’s see how to reset perks in Skyrim.
You can reset perks in Skyrim by using legendary skills or by using the Black Book “Waking Dreams”. Keep in mind that resetting your perks via Black Book requires Dragonborn DLC to be installed as well as completing the quest “At the Summit of Apocrypha”. Resetting your perks via Black Book consumers one Dragon Soul.
Now that you know that you can reset your perks in Skyrim. Let’s see how it’s done. If you’re interested keep reading!
Can you get all perks in Skyrim?
Yes, you can get all perks in Skyrim with the use of legendary skills. It wasn’t always like that though. Prior to patch 1.9 Skyrim still had leveling cap, it was set at 81. That meant that you could only acquire 81 perk points and as a result unlock 81 perks in Skyrim. After the patch 1.9 legendary skills were introduced.
Legendary skills allow you to reset certain skills after you’ve maxed them out (reached level 100). After you make a skill legendary, it’s set back to 15 and all perk points spent on that skill tree are refunded to you.
Legendary skills allow you to level infinitely. But realistically you can stop leveling after you’ve reached level 252 as that’s the number of perk points needed to unlock them all.
As you can see, getting all perks in Skyrim is possible, but you will have to grind for it and reset your skills multiple times.
Is there a way to reset your perks in Skyrim?
There are two ways to reset your perks in Skyrim. You can reset your perks by using legendary skills or by reading the Black Book “Waking Dreams”. Both ways require significant effort. Let’s see how to reset your perks.
1. Making a skill legendary will reset your perks
Once you’ve reached level 100 in a certain skill it is possible to make that skill “legendary”. Once you do that selected skill will be reverted back to level 15 and every perk point that you have invested into that skill will be refunded to you. You can make a skill legendary by following these steps:
- Open your skills menu
- navigate to the skill you want to make legendary
- press space, a prompt should appear to confirm your choice
- Your skill should be reset, your perk points refunded and a tiny Imperial Dragon icon should be underneath the skill signaling that the skill has been made legendary.
Keep in mind that if you make an important skill legendary, you might be significantly weaker and might not be able to deal with certain enemies in the game without the help of a follower.
2. Reading Black Book “Waking Dreams” will reset your perk points in Dragonborn
The option to reset your perk points by reading the Black Book became available with Dragonborn DLC, it goes without saying that it needs to be installed to take advantage of this. Perk reset is one of the rewards for completing the Dragonborn storyline.
The option becomes available after the quest “At the Summit of Apocrypha” during which you are tasked with defeating Miraak. You need to keep the Black Book “Waking Dreams” to access this feature so don’t get rid of it. Any other black book will not work as they have their own rewards.
Resetting perk points in Dragonborn will cost you one dragon soul and the process goes as follows:
- The main prerequisite is to obviously complete the quest “At the Summit of Apocrypha”.
- Locate the book in your inventory and activate it.
- You should find yourself in Apocrypha once again, in front of you, there are various animations of different skills in Skyrim.
- Locate the skill whose perk points you would like to reset.
- Press “E” and you should be prompted to confirm your selection.
- Confirm the selection and the message should appear in the upper left corner of your screen that x perk points have been refunded back to you.
- Read the Black Book “Waking Dreams” once again to leave Apocrypha.
Keep in mind that you need to be in Solstheim in order to access this power. You can only get teleported via Black Books to areas associated with them if you are currently on Solstheim. Reading the book in Skyrim will do nothing.
How to add and remove perks in Skyrim using commands?
You can remove perks by using removeperk <perk ID> command. This will not refund perk points to you, it will only deactivate a certain perk in your skill tree. You need to replace the perk ID with ID that you can find on this link. For example, if you want to remove the sneak perk Muffled Movement you should use removeperk 00058213.
To add perks with console commands you need to use player.addperk <perk ID>command. Please keep in mind that while adding perks with console commands you need to add them in order. If you plan on adding, for example, Augmented Flames rank 2 from destruction school, first you need to use commands to add rank 1 perk, followed by rank 2. If you go straight to rank 2 it will not work.
As you can see, resetting your perks in Skyrim requires quite a lot of work no matter which option you choose. But at least it’s possible. Of course, adding specific perks with console commands is always an option if you are still far away from maxing any of your skills or if you’re far from finishing Dragonborn Storyline.
