Bethesda Details Skyrim's "Legendary" 1.9 Patch

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

To put it more simply, improving your sword fighting skills beyond that 100 point limit is now possible, but will only increase the amount of damage that particular skill is capable of generating and won't offer you new skills or any special attack animations.

This doesn't make sense to me...from what I've read on this Legendary skills thing, it simply resets a skill to 15, permitting it to be raised to 100 again and with those potential extra 85 skill ups per skill, increases the level cap. It doesn't mention going above 100 or even "increasing the amount of damage". One would assume that the same skill re-raised to 100 will be no more powerful than non-legendary 100.

Unless the Legendary status comes with a bonus of some sort. And though the level is significantly higher, there is still a cap present, though I have no idea what it could be. I believe raising every skill to 100 as standard results in partway between levels 81-82. Another 85 skill ups for all 18 "legendary" skills...I'd be interested to test this out of curiosity.

Still, it's largely pointless. On a normal playthru, one can realistically get as high as mid-40s by which point most things aren't threats. I made it to 60s on my last (sorta current) playthru with Dawnguard added in. Legendary Dragons (I think lvl 60+) are the only thing I've found that can kill me without genuine effort for my part. Most things simply stop scaling well before this point. I think the highest levelled, scaled enemy is about 50ish. The highest lvl summon I know is lvl 38 (perma storm atronach).

 

[Kahani]

The real excitement(or whatever other positive emotion you want to use) comes from the knowledge that Bethesda is still willing to patch the game instead of simply abandoning it as is more often the case these days.

Very much this. It's a free patch over a year after the game was released. Why the hell would anyone be disappointed that it only adds a little bit to your character's capabilities? You should be happy they're even fixing bugs at this point, let alone actually adding to the game.

Edit: Well crisis averted. Found out that leveling skills to legendary is thankfully optional. Good.

Found out? It says it right there in the article. Perhaps you should have tried reading it before going off on a pointless rant?

 

[F'Angus]

Those are some really great bug fixes. I can finally do the Totems of Hircine quest. But I wish they'd fixed the Nightingale Blade so I could improve it.

 

[Your Gaffer]

Skyrim ended up being a major disappointment for me. The complete lack of any defining characteristics, i.e. Intelligence, Endurance, Strength, etc., the crappy customization features, the lack of vibrancy in the world. This series has well and truly been streamlined and consolized to death, for me at least.

I know plenty of people love the game, and I will probably get a ton of responses saying how great it is, but I won't be buying the next one if it is more of the same as Skyrim.

 

[Ranorak]

Wait, does this mean I could, potentially, get every perk in every tree?

Or am I missing something here?

 

[Kieve]

This morning Bethesda Softworks debuted the beta version of the upcoming 1.9 patch for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim on Valve Software's ubiquitous Steam digital distribution platform.

That explains why I couldn't find release notes (or indeed, any notes) on 1.9. Somehow, my game got this patch almost a week ago, which of course broke SKSE and half my mods with it. Had to get a friend to send me the older 1.8 exe, and run in backup mode so Steam would stop trying to download the new update.
The best part? Skyrim was already set in "Do not update" mode in Steam, and I don't opt in for betas. Ever.
How the hell it got on my computer a week prior to this I have no idea.

Guess it's time to wave goodbye to that uncapper mod...

 

[Aetrion]

I don't see how else they could have raised the level cap, since all leveling in Skyrim happens by increasing skills, and the levelcap already existed only because all your skills max out.

You will be able to get a lot of extra perks this way, so your character will still get way more powerful than what it could be before.

 

[BramblinTheGnome]

To find out that now through mortal means he can never ever make his skills be perfect and stop leveling up which is what drove him to Mora long before even Dragonborn got announced to be able to continue his search for power via forbidden knowledge.
His goals now sadly can no longer be possible @ least upon the next patch because of Bethesda's dumbass decision with the leveling.

If your roleplaying decisions are based on game mechanics you have already failed at roleplaying anyway, so I really wouldn't feel bad for you even if this wasn't optional. Your character doesn't know he is 'maxed' at a skill, because skills don't work that way. Do you really see any power thirsty person stopping at a certain fairly arbitrary point of skill and knowledge to go "Well, I'll just assume I know everything about that now, no need to continue learning or testing myself there." There is no such thing as perfect skill, yet he strives for it and will search for it for all eternity... and that one sentence now makes your character so much cooler than "He has 100 in this skill so he's perfect" ever could.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Bethesda actually doing their fucking job and patching a game...
Now that IS a rare occasion.

 

[Ranorak]

Bethesda actually doing their fucking job and patching a game...
Now that IS a rare occasion.

Yeah!
Gods knows they never do that!
Besides the fact that in the 16 months it's been out now they've released about 9 patches already.

But you're right, they're just not doing their fucking job, at all, and just never try and solve anything.
Fallout 3 is also running on it's 1.7 version, but that doesn't mean they actually patch, right?

Oh, you mean the game still has a few bugs left?
Why just say that instead of sounding like you just sprout nonsense without looking into it.

 

[grigjd3]

Actually, this is the most dramatic patch I have ever seen from Bethesda. For the most part, their patches are pure bug fixes. Generally, Bethesda hasn't been interested in the idea of "power gaming" having unabashedly made their rules systems broken to begin with. In Oblivion, without cheating and without abusing any bugs what-so-ever, you could give your character equipment which give him or her 100% magic resistance and 100% damage reflection, meaning that the only way to hurt your character was to fall off a really tall mountain or get hit with an arrow. In Morrowind, a disease you got during the main quest could be combined with an exploit using shrines to raise your physical stats to any level you want, and in those rules extremely high stats had an effect. Even in Skyrim, if your magic resistance is high enough and you are equipped well, there isn't a real challenge offered in the game's combat. Given this, that Bethesda is giving a nod to power gaming in order to enable you to gather more feats is a major change for the company. I guess it came about with Fallout 3 and the increases to the level cap offered there. I'm not so sure I am a fan of this decision. At any rate, it's a clear departure from their previous rules philosophy.

I think it's a good thing. The way it's being described by the PC testers is the level cap is completely removed. You can continue to re-roll skills to Legendary indefinitely. This can allow those who prefer "pure" classes (like me) without having to level undesired skills to actually get all the perks in skills we do want. **I 'unno, there are always those who will abuse systems to the breaking point just to be "OP, but there are a lot of us who like to play by the rules. And we should get to have the same benefits that the rule breakers do, and this kinda sounds like BethSoft is throwing us a bone.**

Anyways, I'm happy about it. At least I can get back into the game when the patch hits the 360. I got bored with having to metagame all my playthroughs just to mitigate all the glitches I encountered (almost all of them listed).

-----------

** I know TES is all about player freedom when designing their own class, but BethSoft could've avoided all this if they had just stuck with classic arch-type classes. Or at the very least, took a page out of Guild Wars' playbook and combine any two classes. But, that's just me.

To be fair, this is something I can ignore without issue. In this game itself, this doesn't bother me. It's the trend that bothers me. One thing that attracted me to the Elder Scrolls games in the first place was that they weren't like playing a more "standard" rpg. One did not simply earn levels and distribute points. One increased abilities by their usage. Now, as a gameplay mechanic, this has always had issues, as no doubt one can learn by looking at the talk pages at uesp. On the other hand, it added a dramatic sense of realism to character development. I couldn't just pick a bunch of locks and somehow use that to raise my long blade skill. More over though, it was a fundamentally different take on the idea of an rpg, and the character development was just the beginning. Bethesda basically defined what it meant to have a truly open world. I mean, I can spend hours just experimenting with what I can get away with in an Elder Scrolls game.

To be honest, I wasn't terribly excited by the feats as they were handled in Skyrim. What they created was an absolute need to focus feats within a few skills to remain competitive with the monsters. I can have a 100 skill in one-handed but if I haven't been spending feats in that skill, I might as well not use it except against the easier monsters. Effectively that makes the 100 skill level worthless. However, I get it: they are trying to make players specialize. Well, now they've decided they don't want that. It doesn't bother me so much on this particular issue, but as a trend, this bothers me. Bethesda seems to be trying to make their primary games series more like all the others. The problem I have with it is that I don't really like playing Dragon Age. The rules of Dragon Age are 95% the same as DnD and that really poses very little flavor.

I know Bethesda wants their games to sell to the widest audience possible and that's perfectly reasonable. I just wish they'd stop trying to be so conventional. It's not like Skyrim as it is has been anything but a spectacular success with everything that makes it unique. Honestly, I think this sort of genericism will do more harm than good both for their games and their sales.

 

[Tom_green_day]

Fighting a legendary dragon with 15 one-handed, sounds fun.

Wait, does this mean I could, potentially, get every perk in every tree?

Or am I missing something here?

It resets your perks when you legendary-ise.
Barney Stinson themed patch, it's legen...

...dary

 

[RobfromtheGulag]

This seems extremely superficial (besides the bug fixes). I'd question anyone playing Skryim for the difficulty or level. It's free though, so thanks Bethesda.

-edit
It almost seems like.... they're leading in to the MMORPG mindset.

 

[Krantos]

Making a leveling system that didn't rely entirely on grinding in the first place would have been nice...

You're missing the point of the system, I'm afraid. The system is actually in place, in part, because it discourages grinding. Sure, you can do still do it, but it's hardly enjoyable.

The idea with TES leveling is that it's supposed to happen as you do things. The focus should not be on leveling, but on actually doing things in the world. The system is designed that however you decided to play your character, they get better at that style. You don't go into it thinking "I want to level my One-handed first, then my destruction, etc." If you do, you're going to be really bored, because the skills level slowly and large chunks of the game don't give you a chance to use them.

In these games, leveling should never be a priority, it's just something that happens in the background. The problem is +90% of other RPGs don't handle it that way, so a lot of people have a hard time adjusting to the different mindset the game relies upon.

I'll say it now: If you go into ANY TES game with the intention to level up quickly or grind levels, w/e you are going to hate it. If you just go out, play your character the way you want to, and that feels natural to you, it tends to be much more rewarding. However, the more you try to game the system, and break the mechanics, the more frustrated and bored you're going to get, because the game is not designed for metagaming.

Personally, I think this legendary system sounds interesting. However, I'm going to have to test drive it a bit before coming to a decision on it. What I like most, is it means you can continue leveling once you max out the skills you actually care about. You no longer have to be a master at everything to start unlocking the higher level enemies.

 

[Proverbial Jon]

I don't understand this level cap removal thing. My character is at level 50 and my main skills of Archery, Light Armour, Sneak and Speech are all at 100. Plus I leveled Smithing and Enchanting to 100 as well just to get certain perks.

From a role playing perspective, my character does not NEED to level any more.

-Fixed rare instance in "Fetch me that Book" where books found before getting the quest would not be properly recognized

Finally! I've got three copies of Souls: Black and White and Urag gro-Shub just won't accept them!

It's been over a year past release...and Blood on the Ice still hasn't been fixed.

I've finished that quest multiple times over different patches and there is always a way [http://uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Blood_on_the_Ice#Bugs] to make it advance properly.

Not when your playing on a console and the quest doesn't even trigger. You can't advance a quest that won't start.

 

[hentropy]

Making a leveling system that didn't rely entirely on grinding in the first place would have been nice...

You're missing the point of the system, I'm afraid. The system is actually in place, in part, because it discourages grinding. Sure, you can do still do it, but it's hardly enjoyable.

I understand the point, but when most quests have the same basic formula and even the more interesting ones feel same-y. You can't really deny, however, that in order to improve a lot of skills, you have to grind. Smithing and enchanting are just the most obvious. For many other skills, like Persuade for example, basically have to be improved via training, which costs money. So, you go through very similar crypts, kill very similar and level-scaled draugr, and get to the end and then get the mediocre item that you might be able to pawn off for something at the end, so you can afford to level-up and get more abilities that will make the game a bit easier for you (even if it doesn't because of the level-scaling). I would say the opposite, if you're playing it just for "experiences", you'll get bored quickly, because there are only a few notable quests that are actually half-way interesting to complete, and the rest of it is just... repetitive grinding. It has good qualities of course, the qualities of the landscape and atmosphere, but it's hard for me to think that it's a game that prides itself on the variety and originality of its quests.

I see no problem with something like the way New Vegas, which not only had more interesting quests, but also had a leveling up system that didn't make you grind even a little. You could go out, enjoy the game, the quests, and play the game you want to, with no cheap level-scaling in most cases and quests that actually tie into the main overall path you take in the game, rather than just random crap on the side that's really hard to care about when DRAGONS THREATEN TO DESTROY THE WORLD.

 

[Atmos Duality]

*condescension*

I put up with their "fan-patch only" bullshit for over a decade, so yes, I *am* surprised that they are finally supporting their fucking game.

Consider that before you start preaching again.

 

[Varrdy]

I like that they keep on releasing these patches and fixes but still no mention of the Hearthfire mannequins. Shame.

Still - I can use the console to manually fix them I suppose...

 

[The White Hunter]

-Placing an unread Oghma Infinium on a bookshelf in the player's house no longer allows the book to be reused again

Aww, that was fun -_-

Otherwise, this level cap thingy is strange, but I can't say its a bad idea.

Means I can stop using light armour and 2 handed weapons on my main character to level up!

As a result of that it's GENIUS!