I just made it to level 100 for archery and I am indecisive about whether or not to make it a legendary skill. What are the advantages? Do I keep gaining experience for my overall level as my archery gains levels? If that is the case I might just do it...

It resets your Archery skill to 15 and gives you back all the perks you spent on that tree. I would not do it if it's your main form of combat.

It is my main form but I am now leveling one handed up to Ian character level as well

If you rely on it often, do not reset it. Your choice though.

You gain no added on benefit to the skill once you return it to 100. You only gain the character level advantages - extra perks points (on top of the non-loss of your original ones), and an increase to your basic stats - health, magicka, stamina.

If you roll over various magic skills, you still have the expert and master level spells as well as your full supply of magicka so you can level back up quickly. Archery and melee skill don't work like that. I believe they are based on how many hits you make (not how much damage you inflict, but how many hits you make) so getting archery back up significantly will take tons of work. I believe my previous archer used around 2000 iron arrows with a vanilla hunting bow to get from 90 to 100. It didn't feel natural but this was before the 1.9 release so the only way to reach the maximum level of 81 (or was it 82?) was to grind everything to 100. I really wanted to reach the max otherwise I would have quit archery around 85 or so.

Thanks Shadow! I'll just level up one handed and two handed for now and reset them when I get to 100.

um... One handed and two handed?

Archery and melee skills level up by the amount of base damage they do.

So they will still take longer to level up again than magick skills but you still at least have the better weapons when you reset that skill.

Archery will level up faster the second time do to the better weapons inflicting more damage but it will still be slow.

Yea, gotta get as much experience as possible.

I am just starting to use magic, at level 40!

Every time you "Legendary" a skill, it becomes slightly harder to get it back up to Lv. 100 again. I got this from The Prima Official Game Guide.

Resetting you're main combat skill isn't actually that bad.

I play on Legendary Difficulty, and as level 83, I reset both of my two main combat skills (Destruction & Two-Handed).

As long as you got a Good Bow, you shouldn't have a problem. It also levels up pretty fast because of the amount of damage you do with the skill at level 15.

Not a bad idea... though it becomes nearly impossible too supply perks to all the skill trees at higher levels. what I do is power level alteration.

I stick with armor, archery, and speech.

This is basically Bethesda's imitation of Call Of Duty's "Prestige" levels. Theres really no real advantages to it, it just gives players an option to play endlessly if they want to, and continue to level up.

My first character re-leveled really quick after resetting the archery with legendary. I stopped playing that character due to so many quests that I could not complete due to bugs and whatnot.

There's no point to making skills legendary unless you want to go over the 81 level cap that you'd hit with all skills @100.

Going over gets you more levels and thus health/stamina/magicka and perks but post-81 it's all going to be overkill anyway. 80 perks is more than enough to get everything you should want for most characters considering how many duds fill the trees that you may as well avoid.

yeah but sometimes you have to get the dud's before you can get the good perks. Like in Stealth, the Assassin's Blade perk.

It can be useful even if you're not going over 81, because you don't want to level skills that are "out of character". (Although, if RP-ing is important, then you have to deal with explaining how your character has suddenly lost their proficiency in one of their main skills).