Drain skill in order to get cheaper level trains

Every time you level a skill you earn the level you earned in XP to level.

Skill level earned = XP gained toward next level

Example: You just earned level 26 in Smithing. This will give you 26 points of XP toward your next level.

The number of XP to level for a specific level is equal to the following:

25x(Current Level - 1)+100 = XP to level

Example: You are level 32 trying to level to 33.

25x(32-1)+100= 875 XP required

This would mean that you would require 875 XP from leveling skills to reach level 33. One thing to remember is you will probably almost never start a level at 0 XP because of XP earned from the last level. This means that while 875 XP would be required it will take slightly less than that to actually level.

Just a notice... I did not come up with this information but as far as I can tell it seems exactly correct. I found the information here:

Leveling information

Note: I am using the term XP arbitrarily seeing as there is not any place within the game (that I am aware of) that actually refers to XP.

Note 2: I think the difficulty with leveling over 50 is that 50 is not very far from being half way to earning the Max number of Skill levels earned. I think the number 50 was probably just a rough estimate (being a "nicer" number than say 53 or something like that). Also, considering if a player would normally focus on less than half of the skills than after maxing some you would begin leveling lower level skills around this point. This would amplify the perceived needed skill levels to level because you would be gaining less XP toward your next level from these lower level skills. All of these things combined would mean that to a player the perceived XP to level would seem higher. This perception could be offset a bit leveling all of the skills evenly while progressing through the game. Though... it is still only perception really and it could have other implications like some of your skills being to weak for the current progression point that the enemies are at.

As for leveling skills my guess it is probably the same type of linear increase for XP to level but that information would be much more difficult to derive. Now... if there were only a console command that would spit out these values.

Edit: MORE TESTING

Since this was not marked as an answer and rightly so... I decided to do some testing... actually reversing the entire calculation using my skill levels to which... in theory... should give me exactly what level and how far I am to the next level. Though I have no way of knowing exactly what percent I am to the next level... judging from how far the bar is... it seems exactly correct.

To get the the Total XP required to reach a level I came up with this additional formula (which I simplified as much as i could):

(n-2)(n-1)(12.5)+100(n-1)=Total XP to Level

n = Level

Also, to get the Base XP you start with in the game (because skill levels do not start at 0) I came up with the value 2815.

So... to test with your own character... calculate the acquired XP from every skill. Add them all together. Subtract the starting value (because this xp did not get earned and did not count toward level 2 (from starting at level 1).

(Skill XP Total - Base XP)

Calculate the amount of XP that was required to get to your current level... then calculate the next level. Your current XP value should fall between these 2 values. You can also easily calculate the percentage you are to the next level using what you have and compare your calculation to an approximation by looking at your bar in game. Just for notes I will also post my scrap notes from my calculations when I did it for my character.

1 skill at 25 325xp x 1 = 325xp

5 skills at 20 210xp x 5 = 1050xp

12 skills at 15 120xp x 12 = 1440xp

Base XP 2815

16 = 16x17x0.5 = 136
34 = 34x35x0.5 = 595
47 = 47x48x0.5 = 1128
20 = 20x21x0.5 = 210
30 = 30x31x0.5 = 465
16 = 16x17x0.5 = 136
100 = 100x101x0.5 = 5050
22 = 22x23x0.5 = 253
100 = 100x101x0.5 = 5050
100 = 100x101x0.5 = 5050
84 = 84x85x0.5 = 3570
19 = 19x20x0.5 = 190
18 = 18x19x0.5 = 171
74 = 74x75x0.5 = 2775
29 = 29x30x0.5 = 435
16 = 16x17x0.5 = 136
17 = 17x18x0.5 = 153
41 = 41x42x0.5 = 861
26364 total xp
26364-2815 = 23,549 Actual earned XP
(n-2)(n-1)(12.5)+100(n-1)=Total XP to Level
level 41 = 23500xp
level 42 = 24600xp

Another way to compute this : When you try to estimate how many XP you earned from a skill you just need to add each skill level above the starting skill level : Exemple : A skill started at 15 and now is 18 so :

18+17+16 = 51xp

So now if we consider that we have a skill at N level we have : 1+2+3...+N xp but we need to substract the "starting skill xp" 1+2+3...+15 xp = 120xp if we consider S the starting skill level we obtain : (1+2+3...+N) - (1+2+3...+S)

Now we know a math formula that will help us : Add the N firsts integers is equivalent to (1+2+3...+N) = (N+1)+((N-1)+2)+((N-2)+3)... = (N+1)*(N/2)

so we can replace the approximation formula (n-2)(n-1)(12.5)+100(n-1) by (N+1)(N/2)-(S+1)(S/2) which is the exact formula where N is current skill level and S is starting skill level.

You can't 'bank levels' like this. Once you hit that 'level up' button you must take all 14 levels at once.

Sorry, but you've blown 60 opportunities to train.

FYI: You'd have a lot more gold if you'd leveled up a few times as foes would have dropped better loot. This makes training more affordable, even for less kleptomaniacally inclined character archetypes.