How Difficult is Legendary Difficulty in Skyrim?
Legendary difficulty completely transforms the Skyrim experience. Enemies hit with the force of a truck while you wield weapons made of foam. Nearly everything in the game becomes lethal. You‘ll need masterful gameplay, strategic preparation and extremely optimized builds to stand a chance.
What Does Legendary Difficulty Actually Change?
On legendary, you deal only 25% of your normal damage. Meanwhile, enemies deal 300% more damage to you.
For example, on adept difficulty you might deal 100 points of damage per attack. But on legendary, that‘s reduced to just 25 points.
However, enemy attacks get multiplied as well. A bandit‘s sword swing that normally hits for 100 points now devastates you for 300.
This applies equally to both you and enemies. On legendary even simple foes become threats. Expect brutal one-shot kills if you aren‘t careful.
Gameplay Changes – Planning and Caution Above All
Legendary difficulty forces you to completely change how you play:
- Stealth preferred – avoiding open confrontation critical
- Follower essential – meat shields and extra DPS
- Max resistances – armor cap + resist magic/elements
- Extreme caution – every fight potential death trap
Gone is the carefree adventuring of lower difficulties. On legendary you methodically plan every action lest you suffer instant death.
Optimal Builds and Gear Sets Become Vital
With your power weakened enemies enhanced, legendary difficulty mandates min-maxed builds, optimal gear choices and smart gameplay.
Some top builds include:
- Pure mage – devastate enemies from safety
- Sneak archer – avoid being detected, pick off enemies
- Heavy armor tank – boost armor rating and magic/elemental resistances to the cap
Gear enchantments and potions also grow in importance:
- Fortify health – massive HP pools needed
- Resist magic/elements – supplement armor caps
- Fortify one-handed/marksman – boost damaged lowered by difficulty
Without powerful builds you‘ll struggle even against weaker foes. Legendary renders suboptimal choices brutally ineffective.
Most Players Avoid Legendary – And Often for Good Reason
In my experience playing and discussing Skyrim with other passionate fans, a majority of players do not enable legendary difficulty.
There are a few factors behind this:
- Extremely frustrating – huge damage and healing disparity enrages players
- Punishing – a few mistakes means many reloads or dead characters
- Slow pace – emphasis on caution makes game slower
- Build limiting – heavily incentivizes min-maxed builds
For these reasons and more, many players find legendary to be simply not an enjoyable way to play Skyrim – the increased challenge comes more from artificially inflated numbers rather than deeper combat systems.
Yet Legendary Provides a Fresh Experience for Series Veterans
However, legendary clearly isn’t designed for first-time or casual Skyrim players. Instead, it aims to reinvigorate the game for veterans on their 4th, 5th or 10th playthrough.
By significantly increasing difficulty via raw damage numbers, legendary forces you to relearn and rethink how you play. It puts importance back into smaller gameplay elements you likely long overlooked:
- Actually using potions, poisons and buffs
- Managing gear and build synergy
- Carefully clearing areas room-by-room
- Separating and drawing away lethal enemies
- Perfectly timing power attacks and blocks
In this way, legendary shakes up the gameplay and provides a challenging, risky new way to experience Skyrim even after hundreds of hours for veterans.
Conclusion
Legendary difficulty turns up numbers to transform Skyrim into a slow, deadly, extremely punishing experience requiring mastery of builds, gear and combat tactics. Most players avoid it – and for good reason according to many fans. Yet legendary still rewards veterans with a tense, risky fresh take after countless vanilla playthroughs.
In the end, while certainly not for everyone, legendary represents the ultimate challenge for the most hardened Dragonborn among us – if you truly wish to master Skyrim’s combat, there is no better test.
