Tip: At Level 100 Never ever make Archery legendary!

[Trespasser07]

do it with smithing or alchemy but never with skills you use in combat unless you wanna be a newbie combatant all over again.

[th]

Actually it is a relatively good idea to make combat skills legendary. Coz it is relatively easy to get them back at 100 coz you inevitably will use them often.

Much worse idea is to legendary skills like Pickpocket, Lockpicking or Speech. Well, Speech is possible but when you already have millions of septims and likely will not run out of money in any case.

[psychotron666]

Bad tip. I always make combat skills legendary. Unless you want to stop leveling up, or completely change your build mid game. (Because it's obviously your main combat skill, shooting people with 100 archery won't level you up at all, and your character stagnates).

By the time you legendary, you should have a really good weapon. You throw as many perks back into archery as you can, specifically the damage ones.
The more damage you do the faster it levels up. And the really good weapon you have will contribute to that.

It should only take about 20 minutes of dungeon crawling to get that skill up to 50+

[Senor Cinco]

In fact. You don't even need combat skills at all. Alchemy, Enchanting and Smithing can deal upwards of 300+ with a 1H sword and a skill of 15 with no perks.

EDIT:
Having said that... I've never made a skill Legendary. ..aside from a quick take for an achievement and reload a save.

[MortVent]

Originally posted by Señor Cinco:

In fact. You don't even need combat skills at all. Alchemy, Enchanting and Smithing can deal upwards of 300+ with a 1H sword and a skill of 15 with no perks.

EDIT:
Having said that... I've never made a skill Legendary. ..aside from a quick take for an achievement and reload a save.

The main reason most do it, is with an easily leveled skill to get more perk points to fill out other trees. I found a better way, by using a mod to give me perk poiints for the radient hold quests (kill dragon, clear bandit camp, etc) others use trade dragon souls for perk points (you can kill so many dragons that you've unlocked all shouts and have tons of them)

[psychotron666]

Originally posted by MortVent:

Originally posted by Señor Cinco:

In fact. You don't even need combat skills at all. Alchemy, Enchanting and Smithing can deal upwards of 300+ with a 1H sword and a skill of 15 with no perks.

EDIT:
Having said that... I've never made a skill Legendary. ..aside from a quick take for an achievement and reload a save.

The main reason most do it, is with an easily leveled skill to get more perk points to fill out other trees. I found a better way, by using a mod to give me perk poiints for the radient hold quests (kill dragon, clear bandit camp, etc) others use trade dragon souls for perk points (you can kill so many dragons that you've unlocked all shouts and have tons of them)

No, the reason most do it is to continue leveling up. It was brought in an update specifically to address people's concerns that their character stops leveling up and they have to start using skills they don't normally use for their build. Before the only people who got to level 81 were power gamers who used every skill and grinded them, now you can play the game organically and continue leveling.

If you wanted just the perks, you're better off just doing hermaus Mora's book to refund perks without resetting your skill.

[theyangman0]

...Yeah no, I'm gonna keep doing it. The combat skills are the easiest to grind If you're trying to gain levels and perks as quickly as possible. There's no slower method than legendarying a skill both difficult to grind and infrequently used. If you Legendaried your heavy/light armor or Alteration (if you rely on magic armor) that'd be another thing entirely, but you can definitely get by with a damage reset at high levels.

[Rez Elwin]

Originally posted by theyangman0:

...Yeah no, I'm gonna keep doing it. The combat skills are the easiest to grind If you're trying to gain levels and perks as quickly as possible. There's no slower method than legendarying a skill both difficult to grind and infrequently used. If you Legendaried your heavy/light armor or Alteration (if you rely on magic armor) that'd be another thing entirely, but you can definitely get by with a damage reset at high levels.

If you want the quickest levels and perks use Illusion. The Master Spell "Harmony" can max out Illusion in 2-3 casts.

[Senor Cinco]

Indeed. It is there to continue leveling with a skillset character. However, I never subscribed to doing that. Although, most all of my characters focus on 5 primary and maybe 2 secondary skills, if that.

The 5 primary skills get perks and the secondary skills do not. Lockpicking and Speech usually fill the secondary positions.

Once a character gets to 100 in those skills... that's it. No more leveling. Actual leveling isn't something that drives my characters. It's all about the story. That alone, dictates the entire experience.

It's about the character struggling at first and eventually becoming all they can be. I don't see them as stagnate, at that point. The reality is, they are now able to advance the game with impunity and wield all of the staves and shouts without me, as the player, having moments of...

"Hmmmm... maybe I shouldn't use that staff, although I want to, but my character really needs to let their skillset improve."

When I don't have to spend what few braincells I have left, among a plethora of different choices, the game just evolves on it's on and I'm at peace.

[alexander_dougherty]

I wouldn't say it's a bad tip, but it isn't a great tip....

It won't screw you over, like resetting Stealth will do, but it slows down your rate of progress.
I say feel free to make combat skills legendary, just be aware your damage will drop... so don't make archery legendary just before you go after a load of dragons, but it's ok to do so if you are going after a few hundred bandits....

[theyangman0]

Originally posted by Rez Elwin:

Originally posted by theyangman0:

...Yeah no, I'm gonna keep doing it. The combat skills are the easiest to grind If you're trying to gain levels and perks as quickly as possible. There's no slower method than legendarying a skill both difficult to grind and infrequently used. If you Legendaried your heavy/light armor or Alteration (if you rely on magic armor) that'd be another thing entirely, but you can definitely get by with a damage reset at high levels.

If you want the quickest levels and perks use Illusion. The Master Spell "Harmony" can max out Illusion in 2-3 casts.

Well yeah you could do that. But while I try to grind perks and levels at end-game, I try to avoid using exploits like that. I prefer a natural, if still forced, progression in leveling up over using an exploit like stated above.

[alexander_dougherty]

Originally posted by theyangman0:

Originally posted by Rez Elwin:

If you want the quickest levels and perks use Illusion. The Master Spell "Harmony" can max out Illusion in 2-3 casts.

Well yeah you could do that. But while I try to grind perks and levels at end-game, I try to avoid using exploits like that. I prefer a natural, if still forced, progression in leveling up over using an exploit like stated above.

It's not an exploit.
Illusion levels up by the number of people it affects, and Harmony is a powerful spell, and one you have to max out Illusion to learn, it's how Bethesda have chosen to set up Illusion.... Not an exploit which is when they didn't consider how it would work.

But fair enough if you don't want to use it.

[theyangman0]

Originally posted by alexander_dougherty:

Originally posted by theyangman0:

Well yeah you could do that. But while I try to grind perks and levels at end-game, I try to avoid using exploits like that. I prefer a natural, if still forced, progression in leveling up over using an exploit like stated above.

It's not an exploit.
Illusion levels up by the number of people it affects, and Harmony is a powerful spell, and one you have to max out Illusion to learn, it's how Bethesda have chosen to set up Illusion.... Not an exploit which is when they didn't consider how it would work.

But fair enough if you don't want to use it.

Thing is, since you'd have to go find a large number of people to use it on, likely people who you don't even have a reason to cast the spell on for, I consider it an exploit. It's the same reason I wouldn't go casting calm on every NPC in town, or cast muffle or invisibility every chance I get, or soul trap a corpse for an eternity either. I don't enjoy overly forcing a skill/level up. Especially since I'd probably get bored doing it. Leveling up's nice and all, but I still wanna naturally progress through the game.

[Rez Elwin]

It's not an exploit, but it's your choice to level how you want, however for the purpose of speed, that is by far the fastest way.

[theyangman0]

Originally posted by Rez Elwin:

It's not an exploit, but it's your choice to level how you want, however for the purpose of speed, that is by far the fastest way.

Yeah, exploit may have been the wrong word. It's probably more accurate to say I don't like cheesing through the level-up process.

[psychotron666]

Originally posted by theyangman0:

Originally posted by alexander_dougherty:

It's not an exploit.
Illusion levels up by the number of people it affects, and Harmony is a powerful spell, and one you have to max out Illusion to learn, it's how Bethesda have chosen to set up Illusion.... Not an exploit which is when they didn't consider how it would work.

But fair enough if you don't want to use it.

Thing is, since you'd have to go find a large number of people to use it on, likely people who you don't even have a reason to cast the spell on for, I consider it an exploit. It's the same reason I wouldn't go casting calm on every NPC in town, or cast muffle or invisibility every chance I get, or soul trap a corpse for an eternity either. I don't enjoy overly forcing a skill/level up. Especially since I'd probably get bored doing it. Leveling up's nice and all, but I still wanna naturally progress through the game.

Agree with this.

It's not an exploit, it's just meta game-ey. If the answer of why you're doing something is "for the experience" it's meta gaming, whether that means farming enemies or casting spells on townsfolk for no (in lore) reason.