... not at least without abusing the blacksmithing, alchemy and enchanting skills. I tried a new game for the ps4 telling myself I'd do one more completionist run but this time on legendary.


And 5 hours into the game I switched to master. It got frustrating to pump a quiver full of arrows into someone's face but die from a single swing from their weapon. This leads me to conclude that legendary difficulty was designed in mind for high level players who want a challenge and not for newbs like my character, who is level 15. I think this is because the difficulty mode was added with the Dragon Born DLC patch and thus many players have already completed most of the non DB content by now.

I never play on anything but default difficulty. Bethesda's implementation of difficulty sliders is idiotic. When I want to increase difficulty I use mods.

I don't disagree. I wish Bethesda could increase the AI with each difficulty slider and not just damage taken. Survival mode in Fallout 4 was a poor attempt at this.

I played on default difficulty untill I was hopelessly stuck at the final boss fight of a quest. Then I switched to novice in order to beat her, later I forgot to change it back to normal. I played the whole game in novice difficulty LOL I don't care since I like exploring and the fights being harder doesn't entertain me. It's a waste of time dying several times, trying the same scene again and again. That's just me though.

Play on whatever level you enjoy. Its a single player game. People get weirdly hung up on the whole difficulty thing. like Pserson, when I want to increase difficulty I use mods. I often disagree about which creature should be tougher than which also and use mods

I also use mods to make everything smarter not have a zillion hit points.

I got off track here. Play however you like. A fluid stance on difficulty suits some play styles, including mine, vert well. There is no competition jut fun.

You can't abuse blacksmithing....or any crafts, because....It is not an abuse to make proper use of a provided facility!


However...essentially imo....the crafting abilities were designed deliberately to make high difficulty play (initially master) feasible whilst providing a greater flexibilty in armour and weapon outputs.


Expecting to romp through the game on Legendary with little to no crafting SHOULD be nigh on impossible....otherwise it would show that the difficulty is in fact not very difficult at all.....therefore pointless!


My advice is......If you begin your game from the getgo on Legendary and craft up your gear as you go (which we do)....it will provide sufficuent challenge to remain alive and as your foes get stronger your gear will be rising to aid you.....but be warned....the increase in gear protection does not rise nicely in perfect step with foe advancement and there will be times when foes make a step change up and your gear feels inadequate for a while.


Example.....as a warrior type....on Legendary...by level forty you should have armour of at least 600.....and you will need it ! You will also need that enchanting and/or alchemy for magic protection or mages and dragons will fry your butt in seconds.


Others have said....you could use mods to increase difficulty of play...or stay un-crafted on Adept....but since your question (or statement) is aimed at Legendary difficulty, it seems only fair to provide an answer based upon that decision.

It's possible to play from level one on legendary, it just takes a little more thought and a lot more running away until you get your skills up. And unless you plan on really abusing the crafting system you cant really focus that until you have pretty good combat levels you gotta find a balance otherwise the enemies outlevel you and then you're screwed.

There are different builds...

Some are cool from a role-playing-aspect, but won't work on Legendary.

Others work on any difficultly.

Legendary is not that hard, compared to Dark-Souls. If you find a paralyze-poison, that does not mean that behind the next door is a giant-spider who can only be killed with usage of the paralyze-portion. It is just good to keep in mind that you can do it.

If you use illusion to make the enemies attack themselves and run away from you, it does not matter how hard they punch.

If you use conjuration and necromancy to let others do the attacks for you, it does not matter how weak you are.

And of course you are free to just play an alcoholic who simply goes to the Sleeping-Giant-Inn and keeps at the bar. Works fine on every difficult...

On the other side, even at the lowest difficult, you should not try to tank the giant at a low level...

I like Legendary Difficulty once I max out the following skills. Smithing, Heavy Armor, One Handed, Block, Enchanting, Archery, and Restoration. Than once I have those and can overly fortify one handed and Archery another 100 points. I can do one hit kills on the strongest enemies. Restoration is just in case I run out of potions.

Legendary is absolutely playable without hiking the crafts (if you′re not playing DiD), your build only needs to be efficient and you need to dodge. Up until Master, you don′t really have to dodge, it just makes things a little easier and less relying on potions. On legendary, you cannot be hit unless you′re on heavy armor and shield and you get to block most of it. Surviving becomes more important than killing fast, which is the opposite of most games. You can′t kill fast on Legendary (unless you hike crafts), so anytime you engage in combat, you need to have in your mind what you′re going to do with those surroundings in order to survive for as long as you need to.

So you like to hike it to legendary difficulty once there's no point in hiking it to legendary difficulty? why not just play on novice and one hit everything anyway?

Because Legendary is hard core. Novice and all of the lower levels just svck and pose no more fun.

You take more damage and it works you a little harder. Once you combine Smithing with Enchanting, you're unbeatable. You can use Alchemy to boost your enchanting and they do have Smithing enchants to fortify and this is how you smith your armor over the hill.

Your weapons do triple damage and your armor blocks 3 times more damage than what they were normally meant for. There is no armor cap in the game like other people say there is. Armor can cap up to 1,000 and over.

Alduin is a puny little dragon that dies after a few hits. Legendary Dragons are stronger and it makes you wonder how Alduin was in charge to begin with.

It's more of a reminder that you in a way conquered the game itself. You sit there and play a game that came out in 2011 for a long time, you begin to learn that there are easy ways to exploit it.

1st off...each to their own...

I generally play on Adept or Expert, with very very minimal crafting, for Role Play characters ( unless it's part of their story).. DiD, yes I craft and the best that they can.. umm it's DiD...

I prefer to add mod's to make the game harder.. not make the Bandit chief into a sponge that can one hit kill my character.. OBIS, ASIS, Enemy Enhancer.. all make sure that my "bad guys" are smarter and better than vanilla.. OBIS on Master can be suicide, unless one craft's really well. ASIS allows enemy mages to use spells from the mod I use ( Grimoire) even when my character isn't a mage, it's still in my load order. Legendary those.. sure, but to much grinding of craft's for me to do that and not die every time a mudcrab sneezed.

Legendary IS playable.. DiD... watch some of Sah and Adella's vid's in http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1615612-did-thunderdome-the-competition/page-1 << this thread.. there is more than one... yes they DO craft and craft heavy, but it IS needed... if you don't think so.. try it.. That's all I can say.

There is a cap, at around 550. At that point, you have 80% damage resistance (which is the max the game will allow), and outside of a few nonmagical attacks that ignore a certain amount of armor, any armor rating above that is mechanically useless. 2200 or so is the ultimate cap, as it guarantees 80% damage resistance against the few nonmagical things that normally bypass it at 567 armor.

I just like normal/Adept, but boost dragons in one way or another. I don't mind cutting through bandits, but dragon difficulty is just insulting.

Maybe I misunderstood you. Do you start from the beginning at Legendary and only start liking it once you've hit the higher tier or do you play on a lower difficulty and then switch it to a higher tier? Cause if it's the second its not really hardcoe if you're only starting it once you're already at god levels... That'd be like a College football team taking on a pewee league and then switching them out for a NFL team at the last second except in this case by beating the pewee team you've gotten mech suits that make it seem like you're still playing a pewee league. Might as well just stick with the pewee league if that's the case.

Once I did the resto potion route to make decent gear, it was pretty easy to play even legendary difficulty.

hmmm might as well just ~TGM....

I agree with this but my only problem with Legendary is it just scales. So your initial start is rough. So its definitely harder, but you get to a point, more quickly then not in my opinion that it feels like Master difficulty without crafting. I mean this is my opinion, and it depends on what build your playing. My point I guess is Legendary over all is more hardcoe, and more difficult. However its also more of a time sink. Which is great, I love Skyrim, I do, but they REALLY should have put Legendary difficulty in sooner. I just can't be bothered anymore to mess with crafting in the game. I like to setup my game to be challenging and yes DiD, but avoiding any crafting, personally. Its definitely a easier road initially, but you guys might enjoy no crafting on Master to still have that challenging experience without the time sink.

Then again you guys might hate it, my thing is, once I get to a certain point on Legendary with crafting, I am playing on Master with no crafting, if you know what I mean. Initially its a mother [censored], which is great for competitions like you guys do, but man you guys are like at this point that, honestly one of you is going to haft to make a really dumb decision to die, but that is my opinion. Over all having to build up crafting in Legendary is part of the difficulty as well, I feel like you guys beat the game though already, you tied with each other. If someone dies now someone was doing something really dumb.

Then again, there are powerful enchanted items throughout the game, you can set rules around it, but anyway, I was just giving my perspective on your all's competition. Its at a point in my opinion that you guys both won, level 45 on Legendary with your all's rules, that is winning. You guys keep doing your thing though, its all about fun, and maybe you guys are trying to hit level 81 for all I know without dying.

On a related note, I made a little mod for myself that reduces NPC damage to dragons and boosts dragon damage. And now it's too damn hard, on Adept. I wonder how long this will last (NPCs do 1/4 and Dragons get a 50% boost to both attacks and spells). I've never played Legendary before. Is it this bad?

Speaking of that, I really need Deadly Dragons, among some other difficulty mods that do not seem to be on SE yet. Now with SKSE out, I am hoping things kick into gear.

This one I made is pretty easy, if you have the CK handy. I just modified the dragon's built in perk "crDragonsResistNPCs". It doesn't have the features of Deadly Dragons, of course, but definitely made it harder.

I might be exaggerating just how hard. I died like 5 times on the Whiterun dragon. I've heard of people truly suffering through Deadly Dragons.

I also have World Eater Beater installed, but that just modifies Alduin, I think. I hope this makes it to SE more than anything else.

I also have more fun on Master because I rarely craft for real. I make potions for lydia, some paralyzing for difficult situations, disenchant stuff to get some levels, sharpen whatever non-enchanted blade with some smithing necklace i find, but I′ll rarely use ~legendary equipment with a complete and chosen set of enchantments, unless that char is really on a "legendary" level 60+.


I see Legendary difficulty just as an attempt at making Skyrim "realist". If you don′t hike the crafts, your deadliest poisons won′t take out a fully grown and healthy soldier in one shot, you will not be able to withstand dragonsbreath or an enraged wizard head on (unless that′s like your thing), and you′ll certainly not survive the full blow of an enchanted warhammer to your head. One should play Legendary if that′s what they′re seeking. Otherwise, I think it won′t be very fun.

Yeah, what you did to your game would be more difficult then I probably would like. Unless you wait to go talk to the Jarl until your character is leveled up, have you tried that?

lol.. I actually played through all of Bleak Falls without leveling up (but acquired a ton of skill boosts, as I went wandering after the dungeon). So I returned the Dragonstone, but it was still only level 4 to fight the dragon.

Needless to say, it was pretty tough.

I did it this way because I like the Axe of Whiterun to be Steel. Silly reason, I know