[blockquote][b][url=/profile/Mortiferous]Mortiferous[/url] said:[/b]

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. 

[/blockquote]

Oh yea... Unrelenting Force is a great tool for legendary melee players! Even just the first word gives you an extra stagger and cycling between that and shield bash is a fantastic way to manage your stamina while still avoiding damage.

[blockquote][b][url=/profile/ShinJin]ShinJin[/url] said:[/b]

Hey, really great discussion here, and just some solid advice for any level of player (but especially for you heroes who play on Legendary... hat's off to you all ;D).

FYI, this discussion is currently being featured on the TV Twitter and Facebook pages. Again, awesome advice coming out of here! :D

[/blockquote]

Oh cool. I mean... It's a terrible guide, but your right that it sparked some good conversation though. Lol.

I thought I'd chip in my 2 cents.

One thing that you can do to grab a lot of levels early in Legendary (if you're using crafting) is straight after Unbound swipe all the nordic barnacles from the sunken shipwreck and sunken barrow in Lake Ilinalta (the lake near the Guardian Stones). You can get a ton of garlic in Riverwood (befriending through his minor quest Sven means there's a load you can get even if you don't want to steal), and then you can get salmon roe from jumping salmon in the river heading up towards Whiterun (you have to catch them mid-air). If you use the Thief Stone, and a resting bonus from the house of whoever you sided with in Unbound, you can hit 50 Alchemy no problem in half an hour or so by combining these ingredients.

Alternately, what I do more often, is just collect the nordic barnacles and garlic (leaving the salmon, as it takes a while) and then wait for the first level of Unrelenting Force. You can then travel to Dawnstar and use this on groups of salmon to make them produce roe (I guess it knocks the eggs loose, who knows?). If you head east along the northern coast out of Dawnstar, you'll find loads of groups of these salmon as well as Hela's Folly which has even more nordic barnacles. By this time, the original nordic barnacle supplies in Lake Ilinalta have re-stocked, so you can get even more. If you need more of a third ingredient to combine them with, luna moths can be caught between 8pm and 11pm, with loads to be found around the fields outside of Whiterun - and are almost as good as garlic.

This will probably net you an Alchemy of 70, perks from which you can divide between crafting skills and whatever skills you need to stay alive - making you ready to take on some dungeons. The Hela's Folly and Lake Ilinalta nordic barnacles re-stock, as do the salmon shoals around Dawnstar, so repeat this periodically to take a lot of the pain out of levelling Alchemy - and you also make loads of cash from the potions.

As a generic tip, the Lord Stone helps to make you much more survivable early game, and is easily reached by taking a carriage to Dawnstar and heading south, and then up the mountain when you reach the Hall of the Vigilants. If you've levelled a bit and an ice wolf is on the way to the Lord Stone - run away from it! Same goes for the bandits around the stone if they are tough (you can activate the stone and then run down the mountain side, they won't keep up). It also helps if you invest in health for you first 20 or so levels, even if you distribute more evenly later.

Another generic tip is to try for the Sanguine Rose early. IIRC the teleporter in Morvunskar to the Misty Grove can be accessed by sneaking, so use an invisibility potion to get on it successfully. Once the quest completes you go back to the inn where you spoke to Sanguine in the first place, so you don't have to go back and face those pesky wizards.

A third generic tip is to use trainers who you can sell back to, e.g. Grelka, Eorlund, any of the College teachers, etc. If you have Merchant perk even better, but if not just find relevant things to sell to them. I find this a very straight forward way to recoup your training costs, without resorting to slightly cheesier tactics (getting a trainer as a follower and just taking the gold, using weird means to steal the huge sums of gold back, etc.).

In terms of doing Legendary without crafting (something which I'm currently trying unarmed!) Marked for Death is your friend. Get an Amulet of Talos (I often pickpocket the unequiped one on Borri and fence it) and get Talos' blessing often so you can spam it as much as possible (or whenever you feel like the damage they are taking is now appropriate). Additionally, the dragon guarding the Marked for Death shout at Autumnwatch Tower can be lured to the Rift Imperial Camp without too much hassle and then they will put in work to kill it, giving you both a free Dragon Soul as well as access to the shout itself.

They're about all the tactics I use. To be honest, if you're going the crafting route, once you have the ball rolling with crafting the game starts to become a lot easier anyway.

[blockquote][b][url=/profile/ShinJin]ShinJin[/url] said:[/b]

[blockquote][b][url=/profile/Tysoyaha]Tysoyaha[/url] said:[/b]

Oh cool. I mean... It's a terrible guide, but your right that it sparked some good conversation though. Lol.

[/blockquote]You're too modest! The discussion certainly is fantastic, and I have enjoyed following it, but the initial points you make are important ones--ones that you don't always focus on (or even occasionally ignore) when relying on some of the extra slack you get when you play at lower levels. Attack animations for example. On lower levels you may pick up on that sort of thing because you are observant, but only because you are observant. On legendary, however, you are severly punished if you can't make that distinction.

Yes, this may be pretty "duh" for Legendary players, but I'll bet there are people who've yet to play on Legendary that wind up saying, "You know, I hadn't realized that that was as important as it is."

[/blockquote]

Lol, thanks. That was my initial intention, to kind of expand on the importance of basics in legendary. I re-wrote this a lot and every time I started getting more specific I felt like I was stepping on the readers toes, telling them what build to make. I could have included the silent mace trick to make pre-assassin's blade stealth attacks viable, or blabed about how amazing the staff of chain lightnings group-stagger is for legendary...but then I'd just be telling people to play my builds. Lol. That wasn't the point, I wanted to set them up to be creative and figure out shit I would have never thought of. So yea, I guess describing the usefulness of basic tactics in legendary is what I ended up with.

[blockquote][b][url=/profile/jojobobo]Jojobobo[/url] said:[/b]

I thought I'd chip in my 2 cents.

One thing that you can do to grab a lot of levels early in Legendary (if you're using crafting) is straight after Unbound swipe all the nordic barnacles from the sunken shipwreck and sunken barrow in Lake Ilinalta (the lake near the Guardian Stones). You can get a ton of garlic in Riverwood (befriending through his minor quest Sven means there's a load you can get even if you don't want to steal), and then you can get salmon roe from jumping salmon in the river heading up towards Whiterun (you have to catch them mid-air). If you use the Thief Stone, and a resting bonus from the house of whoever you sided with in Unbound, you can hit 50 Alchemy no problem in half an hour or so by combining these ingredients.

Alternately, what I do more often, is just collect the nordic barnacles and garlic (leaving the salmon, as it takes a while) and then wait for the first level of Unrelenting Force. You can then travel to Dawnstar and use this on groups of salmon to make them produce roe (I guess it knocks the eggs loose, who knows?). If you head east along the northern coast out of Dawnstar, you'll find loads of groups of these salmon as well as Hela's Folly which has even more nordic barnacles. By this time, the original nordic barnacle supplies in Lake Ilinalta have re-stocked, so you can get even more. If you need more of a third ingredient to combine them with, luna moths can be caught between 8pm and 11pm, with loads to be found around the fields outside of Whiterun - and are almost as good as garlic.

This will probably net you an Alchemy of 70, perks from which you can divide between crafting skills and whatever skills you need to stay alive - making you ready to take on some dungeons. The Hela's Folly and Lake Ilinalta nordic barnacles re-stock, as do the salmon shoals around Dawnstar, so repeat this periodically to take a lot of the pain out of levelling Alchemy - and you also make loads of cash from the potions.

As a generic tip, the Lord Stone helps to make you much more survivable early game, and is easily reached by taking a carriage to Dawnstar and heading south, and then up the mountain when you reach the Hall of the Vigilants. If you've levelled a bit and an ice wolf is on the way to the Lord Stone - run away from it! Same goes for the bandits around the stone if they are tough (you can activate the stone and then run down the mountain side, they won't keep up). It also helps if you invest in health for you first 20 or so levels, even if you distribute more evenly later.

Another generic tip is to try for the Sanguine Rose early. IIRC the teleporter in Morvunskar to the Misty Grove can be accessed by sneaking, so use an invisibility potion to get on it successfully. Once the quest completes you go back to the inn where you spoke to Sanguine in the first place, so you don't have to go back and face those pesky wizards.

A third generic tip is to use trainers who you can sell back to, e.g. Grelka, Eorlund, any of the College teachers, etc. If you have Merchant perk even better, but if not just find relevant things to sell to them. I find this a very straight forward way to recoup your training costs, without resorting to slightly cheesier tactics (getting a trainer as a follower and just taking the gold, using weird means to steal the huge sums of gold back, etc.).

In terms of doing Legendary without crafting (something which I'm currently trying unarmed!) Marked for Death is your friend. Get an Amulet of Talos (I often pickpocket the unequiped one on Borri and fence it) and get Talos' blessing often so you can spam it as much as possible (or whenever you feel like the damage they are taking is now appropriate). Additionally, the dragon guarding the Marked for Death shout at Autumnwatch Tower can be lured to the Rift Imperial Camp without too much hassle and then they will put in work to kill it, giving you both a free Dragon Soul as well as access to the shout itself.

They're about all the tactics I use. To be honest, if you're going the crafting route, once you have the ball rolling with crafting the game starts to become a lot easier anyway.

[/blockquote]

Great advice man, thanks!

No problem - I've pretty much only ever played Legendary since it was patched in so I had to get used to the cheesy tactics pretty early!

[blockquote][b][url=/profile/jojobobo]Jojobobo[/url] said:[/b]

No problem - I've pretty much only ever played Legendary since it was patched in so I had to get used to the cheesy tactics pretty early!

[/blockquote]

Lol. Nice. There are definitely non-cheesy tactics for legendary though. I was hoping this thread would get people thinking about legendary as something where you don't always have to grind crafting. It's a more realistic and organic experience because you're quite frail. I like that you included the bit about running from the wolf on your way to the Lord Stone, because that's how I play legendary. If I was walking through the woods in real life and there was a bear further up the road, I wouldn't get a weapon out (no matter how skilled I was with it) I'd take the long way around. Lol.

For non-cheesy tactics, the main thing I can think of is getting free good full armor sets. Both the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves' Guild give good full light sets, and I guess you can get reasonable armor off dead Skjor with the companions (or an all-but-gauntlets orcish set from Largashbur, with Blood-Kin easily obtain from Ghorza in Markarth, with a unowned Last Scabbard obtainable up the hill near Black-Briar Lodge without any tricky fights).

On my current no-crafting Khajiit I managed to clear the Ratway at level 8 - using the Lord Stone and with some Light Armor investment, casting Fury on Drahff to get him to fight Hewnon as I ran past, using that to slip through to where Gian is. I then killed Gian with the log trap in the neighbouring room, and once I had Gloves of the Pugilist I could reasonably easily finish everyone else. Probably similarly easy with a Flame Atronach if playing a different race, castable using the magicka from the Atronach Stone and a Novice Hood.

Once you've joined the Thieves' Guild, getting a few levels through stealing off people in Riften (now that the guards will clear your bounty cheaply) becomes trivial, and then you can use the money off that to train.

If you went straight for the Dark Brotherhood, it's even easier to join and gives good pay-outs for several early contracts too - again allowing for training without too much hastle. Likewise with the Companions and their quests, if playing a warrior build.

One thing I never realised before is how simple it is to get the Blackguard Armor after joing the Thieves' Guild, as the recipe that Glover needs is right by the dungeon entrance so you don't have to fight any Reiklings in the Castle Karstaag Caverns. You can probably join the guild, do the main quest up and including the Way of the Voice (to unlock Solsteim) in 3 hours or so without many tricky fights - so it's definitely something to consider, I'm running around in it and I'm not even level 20.

As mentioned, Marked for Death spamming and getting the Sanguine Rose aren't too tricky either, and I don't personally consider them really that cheesy as tactics - though I suppose cheesy is a point of view!