How Does Making a Skill Legendary Affect Spells?
I'm at level 67 and I have a couple skills at 100, so I'm considering whether to make one legendary to improve leveling. But I'm not sure how making Alteration, Illusion or Destruction legendary would affect my spells. Will I lose my more powerful spells when my skill level resets?
For example, Fireball is an adept level Destruction spell, available at Destruction 40. If you reset Destruction to 15 after learning Fireball, do you:
- Forget Fireball and have to buy it again?
- Keep Fireball, but have to get back to Destruction 40 to use it?
- Use Fireball, but do less damage or pay a higher magicka cost?
- Use Fireball as normal?
One webpage I found suggested that casting master-level Destruction spells after making Destruction legendary allows fast leveling, which suggests that either #3 or #4 is true, but I couldn't find anything that definitely stated this was true. Can anyone confirm? Also, from the wiki descriptions and answers here on Arqade, I know I have to reassign perk points, and won't be able to buy high-level perks in legendary skills until I build my skill back up. So, I'm guessing I won't have the stagger effect of dual-cast Fireball and will have to pay more to cast it. Also true?
Should I just avoid making a crucial skill legendary and go with something safer, like Alteration or maybe Smithing, which is also 100?
Best Answer
Making any Skill Legendary does two things:
- Resets the levels of the skill itself to level 15, and
- Returns the Perk points to you.
You will not lose knowledge of any spells, however, they will cost more to cast again. You will not lose the knowledge of Fireball, or the Master spells you’ve learned, and you won’t have to do master quests after the first time.
Spells seem to crawl down in cost to about 60% of their original through leveling a skill to 100 alone. Perks further reduce these amounts as you know. Without either, the spells you’re use to casting will cost a little over 3x as much in magicka.
Casting them may not be wise unless you are sure you have enough resources to finish the mission (think beyond each fight).
For instance, sneak into enemy camp (Or Shout self ethereal), cast Mass Paralysis, followed by Firestorm. This could work, and would give a lot to xp, with minimal casting, however, unless you have gear that makes all this free, I wouldn’t recommend it.
It seems to be better to use the minimal spell needed to get by- as experience is relative to the spell’s cost vs damage rate. Other schools, cast your highest level spells, as the situation calls for, and as long as you have enough magicka to survive the fight.
This is however NOT the case with new spells added through the creation club. Those do more damage, ramp up exponentially with perks, and return much, much lower experience. They are like an, “Oh, no. This was a mistake, I need a way out or it’s over” spell. Terrible for leveling destruction.
One of the main benefits for making a skill legendary (especially if it’s a class/racial skill), is you get to keep the health, stamina, magicka already collected. This is why you don’t have to give up casting any spells, as long as you’ve made the correct choices along the way. It’s ok to use a lower spell. No less a wizard.
Pictures about "How Does Making a Skill Legendary Affect Spells?"
What happens if you make a skill legendary?
Once a skill has reached 100, it can be made "Legendary." This resets the skill back to level 15, and refunds any Perk points that were spent in that skill tree.Are legendary skills stronger?
A skill can be made legendary multiple times. While it doesn't make the skill any more powerful, it does mean that players can keep leveling up that skill, which counts towards their character level.Skyrim | Legendary Skills
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