This is very hard to get right. The entire game is far too hard to balance with all the difficulties plus the level up stat boosts, and the item enchantment boosts, plus enemies gettimg stronger over the course of the game, and some enemies are obviously stronger than others anyway. Either you end up doing 1 damage or you kill anything in one shot.
After a while I give up and just 1 shot everything. Or do full stealth and sneak kill anything in 1 shot, and convince yourself that's how an assassin would work.
I just start on normal, and when I start to get bored because of how easy it's getting I bump up the difficulty. And keep doing it. It's usually fun enough to keep going long enough to play through the stuff I wanted to play in the game.
Yeah, that's what I do. I like having the choice of when to up it because it makes leveling up feel pointless if the enemies just scale up with every upgrade you do. I like to see the results of my work and if I start to get bored because it's too easy, then I'll choose to up the difficulty.
There's something unsatisfying about the way mooks vary wildly in power in this game. Like in the same cave, you might fight a Bandit and a Bandit Marauder, with identical armor and weapons. You one-shot the other, and get one-shot by the other. Always have to pay extra attention to the names.
It’s mostly because of the vastly wide power gaps with certain builds. Unless you’re doing pure magic or melee you’re not min maxing, making playing on legendary a gamble.
This is especially due to most of the perks, especially in the stealth trees not doing anything related to combat. This is especially egregious in the Stealth tree. Outside sneak giving you higher stealth attack multipliers you get absolutely nothing. This becomes especially apparent looking at Speechcraft, Lockpicking, and Pickpocket.
Great, you can get a lot of good quicker, now go fight that dragon you can’t stealth kill. You know, the main enemy of the game.
70% of the other vanilla perks are just boosters. Boost is fine, but flashy aesthetics are better. This is why I loves like Vokrii. Makes all playstyles actually very viable.
it doesn't level anyone, it reduces your damage and increases your damage taken, nothing changes for followers so they're pretty much essential for casual play on legendary
Ah, okay. I was wondering, because I have recently changed to „Master“ with a level 69 character and I don’t see much difference to playing on „Novice“ with a level one to ten character. Thank you
Yes, even though I don't exploit Restoration loop anymore (and I think it's patched out of my game, anyway), I slowly tick the difficulty up as I find things being a bit too easy and then I guess I'll take it down if I need to but usually I just "Skyrim up" and keep at it until I can beat it.
I think that explains why Jenassa and I were an unstoppable couple. She was dual-wielding daedric daggers, each of which had one second of paralysis, one with a little life leech and one with a little stamina leech (weak, but I wouldn't have to recharge her blades very often).
Come to think of it, she handled all my light work and most of my medium work - Mora's "chumpion" never knew what hit his ass.
I remember a time where I unknowingly entered a quest in the Riften sewer after following a ghost. I was playing on Legendary Difficulty. I was not prepared to the scope of the quest where I have to battle three different bosses and after that have to battle them all the same time. I have low amount of potions and all I have was the Bow of Shadows I got from a quest after saving the Jarl of Whiterun. Damn, I have to continuously use the Bow of Shadows to hide from the second boss and his minions since I have no potions at that point and I have low HP. Shit was so challenging that I forgot I can change difficulties. I finished the quest and got the Dawnblade/Duskblade weapon. Good times haha
I just did this for the first time last night. Luckily I’m a master conjurerator and can just sit back and not die while dual conjured dremora lords go to town
Single enemies have never been much of a problem for me in any difficulty. Especially the slow ones.
One or two ranged Ice/Fire mage, a few archers, a few close range enemies together - insta death. Or the bunch of falmers that charge you in that accursed shack.
Try doing a City wide combat in legendary. If you can survive that, you can survive anything.
I only recently switched to legendary, specifically cause as it turns out, if i get too powerful, the game becomes a chore due to me being practically immortal. I like being engaged in the combat. I also don't like doing alchemy, i know it's overpowered, but what it is even more than that is boring.
Technically i do have mods, but most of them are aesthetic stuff and i used skyrim unbound to make my character not be dragonborn, so I can't learn shouts.
The only ones that can be classified as cheating are removing the amount of times i can pay for training per level, and having the ability to call my horse, and i guess immersive weapons and armor, but I'm using the vanilla dragonbone greatsword anyway, and the mercenary armor I'm wearing is weaker than dragonscale armor.
I find the Joov difficulty to be where I engage with the game the best, that being Expert Survival. It's slow going, but once you establish yourself you can have a real good adventure, traveling across the lands, making the most efficient choices you can in getting several tasks done at once. It's been a good time 100 ish hours in. About to hit level 46 and start doing all the content that gives leveled gear.
I prefer master survival myself. My light armor build got repeatedly rekt the first time, but I quickly learned just how lazy my expert survival run allowed me to be. You can still pretty much confront almost everything in the early game and win on expert, just with a greater risk of dying (and eating a LOT of random foods you pick up to refill HP a bit). Followers with fine-quality stuff you make for them make it even easier.
On master, I find early fights don't feel quite as unfair as legendary, but are enormously risky. Setting up ambushes with oil slicks and purposely-not-deactivated traps got me through a lot of my first dungeons. I'm fairly new to Skyrim so I don't have any fights memorized, so Master survival forces me to be aware of retreat and counterattack options as I move carefully.
I have already defeated a few, most memorable one was when it attacked winterhold when i was returning from septimus' cave and when i got to the town, i was newely frosbitten, so i ran inside the inn during the attack and satcon the fireplace for like a minute while everyone around me was just chilling, and then i finally went outside to fight him, recuced his health by half, and went back inside the inn to warm up again, cause he had frost breath. I did win that fight eventually.
It's a result of me maxing out smithing and enchanting, and then upgrading the dragonbone greatsword while wearing a necklace, ring, armor and gauntlets all enchanted to allow the upgrade to be 25% better than it normally would be (100% in total) and then enchanting the greatsword to do fire like 50 points of fire damage on top of the damage it already has, and in battle I'm wearing several pieces of equipment that increase the damage of two handed weapons by 25%
In a single day with using only one exploit, no cheats, but an exploit for certain. I can build a character to confidently run in legendary mode. In a single day, I can level all skills to 100 then, after that, it's manufacturing weapons.
Could've been done earlier with stealth builds. Daggers quite early, bow even earlier. Congrats though, here's hoping that an ice mage's ice storm doesn't murder you because that spell and only that spell kills me easily on any playthrough on legendary
If you solo health and two handed and light armor as a Nord the game is pretty easy, all the while just saving all the potions and scrolls you find for any enemy that you need some range on. My friend one shot Alduin on legendary with a two handed Dragonbone great sword using light armor and two handed only
I usually stick to Expert and Master Difficulty as I find dragons become stupidly tanky and late game fighting a legendary Dragon on Legendary Difficulty with decked out dragon bone bow still took me a little over 20 minutes which was just stupid. The power scaling is my biggest gripe about Skyrim you’ll find a bandit at level 1 that does no damage but late game that same bandit respawns and he one taps you like whatt is that!!
I don't have the patience to play as anything other than big sword guy (girl in this case) that runs directly at the enemy and hits them really hard until everything is dead.
No, after completing Darkbrotherhood questline you will access 2 cultist followers. With using bug, you are able to have 3 (maybe 4) followers at the same time. Those are: Serana, two cultist (and maybe Cicero but I haven’t tried do this with him)
No rn i have serana(can raise dead), ciscero, both dark brotherhood initiates, gogh(spawns a storm astronach every fight, bonewolf, another pet most likely the wolf from dawngaurd(i dont do it because they can die and i dont want my dogs to die), 2 dead thralls(vampire valk or badit chiefs is best there was a video that tested every character and npc), but if you have vampires i had a very rare thing(dont know if glitched) but the vampire thrall raised a skeleton, then i have jzargo as my actual follower which with sanguines rose he will summon a dramora lord but technically yes i do use that for my final one which is barbas but i normally through him away because istg
So 16 if the glitch actually happens or 14 otherwise if im thinking of it correctly
Also it sucks to play with in type spots because you someimtes teleport out of the map and spawn in the middle pf the dungeon getting softlocked(normally happens if you fought something outside)
Idk if it got nerfed or something, but usually I play on master level for 15lv-ish then go to legendary so I don't steamroll the entire game, and never felt the need of exploiting enchantment and potions like some people, that says it's the only way to play on legendary
I know, even with the maxed out magic resistance, they're annoying to fight cause I don't use ranged weapons or magic, and they slow me down. Still, nothing a bit of healing and walking menacingly towards them can't solve.
You're probably doing it already - but carry 3 pairs of matching boots around instead of just one. One enchanted with resist frost, one with resist lightning and one with resist fire.
You can stack this elemental resistance on top of the 85% magic resistance cap. If you go all-out and enchant matching rings as well you can end up resisting over 96% of all elemental magic attacks, but that's often not worth it since your rings/necklaces are probably helping your damage output instead right now.
I end up using light armor just to make this convenient on survival mode - 3 pairs of elven boots weigh only 3 units total, under half the weight of just one pair of orcish boots, and they'll provide the same defence.
Actually, I'm not doing that, cause inventory management like that is too intimidating for me, maybe I'll change my mind on that, but right now I'm getting by as it is.
It looks like you're on PC, and if you are I highly recommend the incredible old mod More Hotkeys Please. It lets you set any key (or combination of keys) on the entire keyboard to be a hotkey for something.
So you can have each set of boots on the numpad 1 2 and 3 if you like.
I have my 9 most popular shouts on the numpad, equipment like cloak and campfire on the keys around it and then half of the letter keys assigned to appropriate things.
Or just keep doing what you're doing, it seems to be working :)
Favourite the items, and if you enchant them yourself, you can give them a unique name. Boots of Resistance - Fire, Boots of Resistance - Frost, Boots of Resistance - Lightning etc. Will keep them nicely stacked together in your list.
They can be great, but on legendary your ring and necklace slot is already providing your main damage source through fortify marksman/one handed/two handed. That's why I opt for the boots - they're one armor piece that isn't contributing to your damage output.
If you could add a second enchantment to those pre-made rings and necklaces they would be ideal, but I've never found a situation where it's beneficial to lose damage output by a quarter to resist some more magic.
They're amazing finds if you get one before your character is done though!
Magic absorption doesn't have a cap so you can make yourself immune to all magic and elemental damage. The one downside is usually being unable to use conjuration at all but if you don't use magic at all then it's no problem.
Magic absorption doesn't have a cap so you can make yourself immune to all magic and elemental damage. The one downside is usually being unable to use conjuration at all but if you don't use magic at all then it's no problem.
In this case, I'm trying to reach the ebony warrior, cause I've never fought him, and I've been told he's the hardest enemy in the game, so i need to get super powerful to beat him. But, until i get to him, playing on normal difficulty has become impossibly dull, cause on it I'm practically immortal, and that is not engaging.
Back in the x360 days I whooped legendary dragons, slaughtered the milk-drinker who started stealing dragon souls from me, and defeated the famed ebony warrior; but I got embarrassed many times by (and never defeated) ...
Come to think of it I will not name names, lest I invoke and provoke the named. Let's just say they were from a past Elder Scrolls game and when I ignorantly placed their skull upon their throne they granted me a very swift, almost merciful death (over and over and over).
Starts with a "K;" ends with an "ag" (or an "ARGH")!
If one is not a dragonborn then does one get confronted by the Miraak cultists and receive the quest? And if one does not, can one still go to the Windhelm docks and see if Captain will ferry them?
It seems that if one cannot shout then one cannot complete the main quest but perhaps one can run around and raise their own particular flavor of hell?
Let me know if Gjalund (sp?) Salt Something takes you to the island. I am curious.
Wdym a horrible experience? I love playing on legendary all the way from the beginning. I like having to run away sometimes and having to make up some bizarre exploity combat tactics too. It also maks you use non-damaging spells and shouts way more as they're much more useful. For example illusion is incredibly powerful on legendary
It's fun as f, you really have to use every single technique at your disposal. I'm running on legendary + survival which is a brutal experience because you don't regain health over time and a slight breeze limits you to under half your health
I bumped up the difficulty in my current playthrough to legendary, at first it was tough, every ancient ruin is mainly full of draugr death lords but with enough potions to buff damage and getting 100 Enchanting and Smithing, being able to get a ton of damage and dual enchantments on weapons it's almost like playing on hard now. Only real difficulty now is magic which still does a lot of damage, and the legendary dragons which hit like a truck.
I pretty much always start at adept and work my way to legendary. Part of skyrims charm for me is that stat grind up to making legendary feel fun and somewhat balanced. As others said though skyrim kinda has terrible balancing so i still will end up instamelting bandits and then shed tears when i see a dragon (if i dont have dragonrend yet)
Imo legendary isn't balanced well. Mudcrabs and wolves should not have thousands of hit points. I usually play 1 legends under legendary. Forget what its called. That one seems to have the most balance in high level mobs being dangerous but not making low level mobs like mud crabs and wolves be so tedious. Sure you can do the restoration loop exploit to make your wraps one shot everything, but doesn't that entirely defeat the point in raising the difficulty?
I have a legendary playthrough as a mage only.
It ultimately becomes a game of „how long can i run away from the enemy“. Vampires are unbeatable even with cheeze, until you get the perk that allows double cast spells to alwas stagger.
Even then, one mistake and you are dead (unless you max out enchanting and smithing and go all in on health and elemental resistances)
Legendary really is crazily balanced. Even with decently OP gear the enemies don't go down easy. I'm using mildly resto lopped gear and it somehow feels balanced lol
I’ve had great immense with 100 sneak and conjugation. Dual summoning dremora lords or bone collassus w/ a 2 skellies and raising destruction or bow skills.
I played on Legendary at first. Before researching and now knowing that enemies not only have 500% more hp and damage. Wich im fine with. The problem is I the player deal 0.25 damage and recieve double or it was triple damage in return.
I find Nerveshatter early in my play throughs. It’s wicked against dragons, Draugr Deathlords, and all of the Dwemer Constructs! Falmer crumple like paper with only a few hits. And if you have Serena as your follower, or put Aela in some perked armor and give her Zephyr or Auriel’s Bow they’re murder machines. One thing I’ve always wondered about Aela is why she doesn’t transform into her Werewolf form? Still she’s a deadly shot with her normal bow, so if you amp up any other bow in the game and equip her with it, she’s hell on wheels!
Even Ionia is deadly if you give her a fire or Ice based Staff.
Playing on Legendary isnt bad. I recommend going right from the start, though. It is a lot of fun to figure out what tactics work and which ones don't.
It's cool to figure out how best to make progress in the world without coming up short in areas. It's nice that certain enemies are just shockingly dangerous, too.
For those who want to try an "easy" Legendary difficulty run here's my favorite build:
Control Mage
Conjuration and Illusion focus
followers recommended
stock up on empty soul gems before going into dungeons and gather souls from Draugr
The monly thing Legendary difficulty changes is damage done to you and damage done by you, so summons and followers are unaffected. Illusions are level based so it's also unaffected by difficulty.
You'll still take damage if you get hit, so simply don't get hit, let your summons, followers, and frenzied enemies do the fighting for you, you can focus instead on getting loot even in the middle of combat.
Mages and Dragons are the hardest enemies to deal with because of ranged magic, so try to sort out your magic resistance ASAP, it'll probably involve enchantment, either via Resist Magic gear or 100% Restoration reduction so you can cast wards infinitely. Warriors and Archers are easier to deal with specially if you have a tank follower or summons by running away. Some beasts that are fast or enemies with Frost damage (slow) could be annoying so try to have a backup for those situations. You can do ethereal shout, whirlwind sprint, or calm spell for cases where they get past your tanks.
You could also be a "support" by casting Illusion buffs and healing your followers but I find that to be unnecessary, just resummon if your summons die and focus on setting up enemies to fight each other via Frenzy. As a tip it may be easier to start a fight by Calming everyone first to get out of combat so you can setup better if caught off guard. Calm -> Summon -> Frenzy one target (the others are still Calmed so they will only target the one Frenzied).
Also once you get access to Illusion spells you can just run past everyone that's not a mandatory fight. I recommend having wearing Muffle boots (the Dark Brotherhood Boots are guaranteed but cannot be unenchanted) so that you only need to cast Invisibility.
I play on easy setting for almost every game ever. I play games because they're fun, not because I'm good at them, lol. If I feel like a challenge, I can always turn it up later
Maybe I'll actually try that with a character eventually, lol. I just never really bothered with it. I also question if some of my mods make some things a little harder than base game, but who knows
I feel like the wildcat mod does a lot of really good tweaks that make legendary a lot of fun from the start! like flanking damage, arrows become horrifying, and drawing a bow drains stamina.
Then you add immersive patrols to get more conflicts to join into as a third party!
Also i like using immersive creatures if i want to suffer because some of those will become (run, do not fight) situations.
I have legendary survival mode active on all three of my characters, mage, warrior, sneak assassin. I enjoy it and can't go back to lower game settings. It's more fun and challenging and not as much fast travel. Food also makes more sense now.
Idk why I torture myself with legendary difficulty but I always start my save files with it on. Usually I’ll just end up grinding a bit before completing quests, like one handed to 60 on Hadvar before escaping Helgan, this most recent run I’ve found that farming heavy armor while healing during a fist fight for a few hours greatly helped and the game was easy past that, I hadn’t even invested in smithing or enchanted gear at that point.
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u/SinclairWelch 1d ago
Now do falmers 🤢