Let us just say that it makes master difficulty seem like child's play. I made a brand new character, a brave Nord named Tyrfingur son of Igneel, and am in the process of doing a legendary playthrough. It so far has been very, very difficult. After being tossed around by Alduin and his mighty unrelenting force, I finally entered the fort with the imperial. Well the first room that we entered, the one with the stormcloaks anyway, I charged in yelling "hi ho tonto!" and I died. Almost instantaniously. Then I let the imperial go in and attack them, get their attention, while I stayed in the back scratching them(the damage you do is pathetic, it takes two hits to kills a rabbit). It was rough getting through it, and don't even try and deal with the bear, just sneak by it will save you a massive amount of time. Let's just say, you're going to need a follower the entire time, or you will die. I almost got killed by a single bandit, when I was by myself.

In Bleak Falls Barrow, it's pretty rough in there as well, it's rough everywhere(I only got through it because of Faendel, go wood elves!) The wounded frostbite spider killed me in one hit, with it's poison. Faendel, however, took so many hits I thought he was an inch away from death, turns out, the tens of hits that he took didn't do anything. If it wasn't for him, I would've never gotten through it.

Interestingly enough, dragons, are finally a challenge. The first dragon fight that everyone goes through, was hard and long. My first attempt at fighting it, I was like " I'm going to be a boss and fight it head on!" Don't do that, ever. It landed, and I died. The second time around I was a bit smarter. I decided to stay at the top of the tower and try to pepper it with arrows. It picked me up, mid-air, and I died, in mid-air. Third time's the charm, right? It is. After having a strategy of going down the steps whenever the dragon flew over, or tried to rain it's merciless fire upon me, it took 20 minutes and hundreds of arrows, to make it crash land on the ground(I always love seeing that happen.) I went down there with a sword and shield in hand, and it took 5 minutes to kill the beast like that, but it was so worth the trouble, it felt good to finally kill a dragon again.

After all this, I decided to just mess around a little with some giants, I went up slashed a giant's toe. It took a step forward, and I collapsed dead on the ground. Then the auto-save came along, and I respawned at Whiterun's City Gate. There were three hired thugs. I thought "Dude, I just killed a dragon, you don't have a THING on me!" Once again, I was wrong. They murdered me and Faendel. The second time around, I tried to run, they caught up to me, and bashed the back of my head in with a war hammer. Once again, third time's the charm. I ran, with them still in pursuit, thinking I had lost Faendel, to the giant's camp. They weren't pleased to see me, or my guests of honor. At first the giants were only after me, and I ran away like a little baby scared to death. But the giants finally took the offensive towards the leader of the thugs. He actually put up a fight, against two giants. It scared the mess out of me. No wonder I couldn't kill him. I thought the giants had taken care of the other two, but they decided to hide behind some rocks and ambush me. Which, didn't end well because they were smashed to bits by the giants in hot pursuit behind me. Still, the giants were after me, and I'm thinking, "Oh, the 10 Whiterun guards at the city's gate would help tremendously." So I brought the giants into the gate of Whiterun. They attacked citizens, the Kajhiit traders, everyone, except the guards. The guards, just stood there doing nothing! I facepalmed and went inside.

That is where the story ends for me right now, level 12, in Whiterun. It is definantly hard. But, it is a lot of fun! Thank you, Bethesda.

without reading any of that original post, legendary is hardly a challenge, if someone wants real challenge from this game they have to do a "PAIN+" play

I play the game on the highest difficulty after I get all my gear set.

I can't imagine playing from the start on Master or Legendary.

It is not easy.

seriously? dude, it's ridiculously easy, even on the highest settings...and that's not even me trying to brag..that's just experience and knowing how the game works

And it aint hard either. You need to modify your strategy a little bit and gear up faster than on lower dificulties.

It gets easier with strategy. But, that doesn't make it easy.

I have gone at things differently.
After two playthroughs on Master difficulty, I have installed Duel Combat Realism.
Now I am back on Adept - but it's just as you describe!

Since the Restoration Potion exploit has been fixed on PC, Legendary difficulty would be no fun at all.
And Duel rebalances things so you're toast on Adept... if you don't keep your wits about you.

You have to think more realistically. The higher difficulties favor stealth. The element of surprise is perhaps the greatest advantage in all forms of combat, if you get the first hit you can dictate the terms of the battle. If it were actually you about to enter a mine filled with bandits or worse, would you wear heavy, clunky armor that gave away your position? Would you charge straight in yelling and waving your sword like an idiot? Or would you use caution and scope the place out first? Would you get those idiots to serve as cannon fodder (speech & followers)? Would you value the ability to deceive and manipulate your opponent's will (illusion)? Get what I'm saying?

Am i the only one who was having little to no difficulty on legendary ? I found the new enemy toughness quite refreshing.

I'm loving legendary difficulty dragons are actually dangerous and an elder dragon can kill me with one shout.

legendary dragons are the ONLY challenge....and that's only if I can't catch them by surprise, even then, it's more of a nuisance than a challenge.

It is if you know how to get wheat and blisterwort in abundance. Master anyway. Legendary from the beginning is...legendary.

Some would say cheap even, myself included. But of course, once you reach level 50 and you're on roids you still wreck stuff.

Yeah, illusion isn't really affected be adjusting the difficulty setting. Neither is conjuration.

I have yet to play from the start on Legendary - OP: what do you think of the folks that describe Legendary as 'easy' given the right tactics and potions?

Personally, I can't believe the right tactics and potions (brewed with alchemy skill at pretty much nothing) could make such a difference in the game at the point you're in Helgen. Stealth only gets you so much when you're level 3 or 4. Eventually, you're 130 health, 56 AC, and one-handed/dual-handed attacks dishing out 35 points of damage have to reconcile against an opponent with over a thousand health who's hitting you for 200 points of damage. Don't see the 'easy' way through that - unless there are mods or command-line tricks involved.

So assuming you start with Conjure Familiar, do the familiar's stats scale with the game's difficulty level? In other words, is my familiar at level 1 on Legendary way tougher and more dangerous than the same familiar at level 1 on Adept?

What's that?

I stick with Adept whenever I first start a new character, and when I get one of my Armors up, One-Handed/Archery/Two-Handed, and Smithing up, I gradually raise the difficulty. Rarely any school of magic, though.

The difficulty slider only affects the damage the PC deals and takes. It doesn't affect enemy or follower health or damage directly. So a familiar will do the same damage to a bandit (and the bandit will have the same health) on adept as legendary. If you only use illusion and conjuration, you won't notice a change in the difficulty slider, provided you don't get hit. its only when you start dealing damage directly through weapons, hand attacks or destruction spells or the PC takes damage that difficulty comes into play. The slider does not affect enemy health or how much damage an enemy does to a follower.

Moving the slider to the right increases the amount of damage the PC takes by a certain factor and reduces the amount of damage the PC deals by a certain factor, depending on the position of the slider. The slider does not actually increase the amount of enemy health or change the amount of damage enemies do to each other or to followers.

Im a newb to elder scrolls I coulnt imagine doing that level of difficulty

Changing the difficulty doesn't change enemy health? Really? Are you sure? I'm on Master, level 30. I hit a bear with a dual cast fireball that did 144 points of damage. His health barely decreased. I had to deal around 1000 points of damage to kill it. Bears at Adept level aren't that hard to kill.

So this applies to my situation with the fireball - sorry, should have read your response more carefully. Hmmm, makes me feel like the damage numbers for spells and weapons are kind of misleading as the difficulty increases.

You always train one handed/two handed/archery?

On master, player damage dealt is one half and player damage taken is doubled, so it will seem like the bear has twice the health as on adept and hits twice as hard, but the slider won't affect the damage your flame atronach does with it's fireballs because it does not affect enemy health directly. The difficulty multiplier is only applied to the damage done by and to the player.

At level 30, a snow bear will have 550 health but on master it will seem like 1,100. But not to your flame atronach. To your flame atronach it will be a 550 health bear no matter where the slider is. The slider does not actually increase enemy health, it just decreases the amount of damage the player does.