Skyrim Tips and Tricks » Discussions


Surviving Legendary

Tags: #Guide 
  • Member
    January 22, 2018

    Some things I'd like to point out is that courier quests and skill trainers are a GODSEND on Legendary difficulty. What I do on Legendary runs is go with Alchemy to make money at first, then, when my skills get better, I use them to augment my combat (mage in heavy armor works wonders with Health/Magicka enchantments to boot!) You can then scoot to your trainer of choice and use the coin to level yourself up until you're able to handle basic bandits and wolves. Chopping wood also lets you work up money for training and ingredients like Giant's Toes that you're not likely to get at low levels. Restoration and Sneak can be wonderful abilities to augment your early game prowess, and you can max out sneak before you even leave Helgen (the level scaling in Vanillarim  for enemies doesn't really matter since everything will kick your arse on Legendary anyways.) 

    Sadly, Enchanting, Smithing and Alchemy are nigh-on mandatory in Legendary, making the grind incredibly strenuous until you max out at least one of them. I normally play modded adept now, and thanks to Morrowloot almost every area is unleveled so I don't need to be on Legendary for stuff to kick my arse into next thursday. 

  • January 23, 2018

    I think its good to get a good kicking on Legendary difficulty, it certainly brings its problems, and with the endless grinds for smithing and Enchanting can also be somewhat tedious.  I tried Legendary difficulty once but didn't enjoy it very much, I put a lot of perks into Illusion with the view to dominating enemies from the off, big mistake it was very boring after a short time and totally defeated the object of playing on such a high difficulty, so my advice? don't include illusion, have fun guys. 

  • January 23, 2018

    Mortiferous said:

    ,Sadly Enchanting, Smithing and Alchemy are nigh-on mandatory in Legendary.

     

    They're not though, and that's what I intend to show once this is complete. Everything you mentioned is a valid way of playing the game. However, all legendary does is change the damage values, so I wouldn't recommend using it if you just plan to grind a crafting skill and buy training until it sets those values back. Just play on adept and skip the grind.

     

    Also, I agree that it's a bit more fun to play with AI mods than just ramping the difficulty up to 11, but I didn't have mods until recently and a lot of people still don't. So I figured I'd share what I did to really challenge myself in vanilla in case any modless members were interested.

     

  • January 23, 2018

    Bonelord said:

    I think its good to get a good kicking on Legendary difficulty, it certainly brings its problems, and with the endless grinds for smithing and Enchanting can also be somewhat tedious.  I tried Legendary difficulty once but didn't enjoy it very much, I put a lot of perks into Illusion with the view to dominating enemies from the off, big mistake it was very boring after a short time and totally defeated the object of playing on such a high difficulty, so my advice? don't include illusion, have fun guys. 

     

    Agreed. Some of the most useful skills in legendary also make it the most boring. Followers, summons and frenzied enemies all scale with difficulty so using them kind of negates the fact that you've changed the difficulty...for them at least. You're still much weaker, meaning you end up relying on them and it takes you out of the action. If you want to use the "distraction" technique then I'd recommend giving it some kind of limitation that keeps you actively involved in your own combat scenarios (I.e. it's still just a distraction) Use a low defense, high offence follower that requires protection and healing, make a Glass cannon who uses necromancy instead of summons so that you're vulnerable between zombies until you kill someone else to raise. Balance illusion with low MP so that you have to use it sparingly and more strategically, ect...

     

    Same goes for crafting. I honestly don't think they're required at all on legendary, but if you use them, don't abuse them. There's no point to setting the difficulty to legendary just to grind until it feels like adept again. Like Mortiferous said, ai mods are make for a much more exciting challenge than grinding on legendary.

     

  • Member
    January 23, 2018

    Enchanting, Smithing and Alchemy are nigh-on mandatory in Legendary

    No, they are not. Grinding them is just the easy (but boring) way.

    I've beaten the game (kill Alduin, Harkon, Miraak) on Legendary without touching a single crafting skill. At one point it even became easy.

    Legendary difficulty is more about planning your way across the game, which, of course, requires an in depth knowledge of game aspects - quests, rewards, items, spawns, mechanics, abilities, etc.

     

  • Member
    January 23, 2018

    I guess you're right, but the grind makes legendary... Well, playable to me. Skyrim's combat is far too clunky to reliably be able to avoid attacks and keep track of the battlefield, the only way I can see anyone playing Legendary without the crafting skills is using sneak, since Legendary laughs at any AR under 400 so melee and magic are out of the window until the middish-late game. Being one-shotted by everything when I play melee (my favorite) just isn't fun to me.

     

    So yeah, mods for me honestly, although deathlord archers (there's an old Morti meme for you there) spawning at Level 1 is less than desirable.

  • Member
    January 23, 2018

    Well, not exactly.

    My character that beat the game was Conjuration, Archery, Restoration. No sneaking involved. What I needed to do was just to get Bound Bow early (from Fort Amol), get the Atronach Stone for the extra protection and extra magicka (although it screws with the conjuring a bit), get Teldryn Sero to tank for me until I can get to the Conjure Dremora Lord spell. Of course, there are some quest and locations where you can't take a follower so you need a strategy for there too. For example, in Skuldafn there is a way to skip most of the dungeon by climbing the mountain, you can kill the draugr deathlords at the top by Unrelenting Force-ing them out of the platform and then you just need to kill the dragon priest. If you have Marked for Death at this point it is even easy.

    If you want melee, getting Marked for Death early is a must. Also, a quick way to equip yourself with good quality heavy armor is: get the Steel Plate chest from the guards at Black-Briar Lodge, get the Steel Plate gloves and boots from Vigilant Tolan (you have to start the Dawnguard questline a bit but it's close to BB Lodge) and at last you can get the Helm of Yngol from Yngol Barrow - there are no enemies but the boss there and the boss is easy if you have a tanky follower. You can use the Atronach Forge early on to create a Staff of X Atronach (recipes can be found online), which you can use for tanking, fire support, etc.

  • Member
    January 23, 2018

    You've given me a few ideas now, I might ditch some mods to see what I can do with vanilla legendary with melee. Beating Uthgerd, using her as a follower until after Unrelenting Force is obtained and then forcing her off a cliff for her set is another way to get Steel Plate too. And yeah, Atronach Stone has always been a babe in any playthrough. 

  • January 23, 2018

    Mortiferous said:

    I guess you're right, but the grind makes legendary... Well, playable to me. Skyrim's combat is far too clunky to reliably be able to avoid attacks and keep track of the battlefield, the only way I can see anyone playing Legendary without the crafting skills is using sneak, since Legendary laughs at any AR under 400 so melee and magic are out of the window until the middish-late game. Being one-shotted by everything when I play melee (my favorite) just isn't fun to me.

     

    So yeah, mods for me honestly, although deathlord archers (there's an old Morti meme for you there) spawning at Level 1 is less than desirable.

     

    Yea, a lot of people feel that way about legendary. If I had access to combat enhancing mods a while ago then I probably would have used that and a more balanced difficultly. But for vanilla players the brokenness of it presents its own challenge that, like Overhate said, requires a lot of forethought and build-planning. It's a unique challenge for some and just a stupid way to play game for others. Lol.

     

    Btw, melee is plenty viable in legendary, you just need to manage your stamina well and stagger a lot. Paladin's are great for this, especially once you get respite. Though I played as a dodging/backpedaling mage up until adept destruction (which is pretty fast on legendary) and just made myself a staff of chain lighting that could stagger entire groups of enemies at once. It doesn't do a ton of damage, but it made switching to a spellsword really fun.

  • January 23, 2018

    Overhate said:

    Legendary difficulty is more about planning your way across the game, which, of course, requires an in depth knowledge of game aspects - quests, rewards, items, spawns, mechanics, abilities, etc.

    Exactly! Yea, I honestly don't think playing legendary really proves much about your skill as a player, but it does present a unique challenge for builders that I find compelling.