


If you level up, and haven’t used up your 5 chances, do not go to the level up menu. Since he trains you up to 50 archery skill, and you need 500 gold for that, that is why you need the 500 gold. You still need the gold to initiate the training. Since he also happens to be an archery trainer, that means you can trade your money back, essentially getting the training for free. Upon completing his quest, you will be able to have him as a follower. Talk to Faendal, and help him on his quest (not Sven!). If you don’t have enough, chop some firewood until you do. When you get to Riverwood, get everything that is offered to you and sell whatever of it and what you got in Helgen that you don’t need. On the way to Riverwood, stop at the zodiac stones, and choose the Warrior stone. Doesn’t really matter who you choose to escape with, although the imperial guy gets you more smithing stuff.

Gather as much stuff as you can carry so you can sell it at Riverwood. May need to heal yourself and pay a little more attention, but it is really not that bad. Although you can become pretty impervious to magic, things that physically hit hard can really hurt. And even at endgame with godly gear, thanks to the 80% armor cap, you can’t fall asleep either. To me, it seems like Legendary difficulty is intended more for bored high leveled characters rather than to start from scratch. Always have companion(s) until then! Since your companions do not suffer the 0.25X/3X penalties that you do, they become critical to survive and to advance quests, and you’ll have to run from many situations as well. For the most part, until you get your endgame gear, you feel like a wimp. Situations that for me were doable on master became impossible on legendary. I have done master difficulty playthroughs before, and the increase in legendary is pretty significant, especially on earlier levels.

It also enables you to reset skills that have reached 100, thus removing the level cap, which was at 81. By comparison, master difficulty is 0.5X/2X. Legendary difficulty reduces your damage done to 0.25X and increases damage taken to 3X vs. While I try to keep spoilers at a minimum, this guide may contain some, although I would expect most people reading this to have played the game at least once in lower difficulties. Notes: This guide does not take into account any gameplay-affecting PC mods, and it assumes that you have all DLC (Dawnguard, Hearthfire, and Dragonborn), as well as patch 1.9.
