Destruction Magic leveling in LEGENDARY difficulty

[llocke1127]

I've hit a wall here that I'm not finding a fix for in the mod lists for Destruction magic. The problem is very simple, the solution may or may not be simple.

 

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Destruction skills level based on the damage dealt by the spell.

 

So in legendary difficulty, dealing 8 damage with Flames cut to 1/4 effectiveness means you could spend half your life roasting Shadowmere and you would still get very little experience. Using destruction in the field offers much the same result, where clearing a full dungeon full of Draugr will yeild 1 or 2 skill levels of destruction magic at very low levels, and none at high levels.

 

TL;DR: Destruction magic growth is crippled in Legendary difficutly due to being based on damage.

 

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Weapon skills level based on how many times you thump your enemies with your weapon.

 

Dual wielding in Legendary difficulty, you can find it still takes 2 dozen hits to kill a plain Draugr with your swords. Every time you strike a Draugr, you gain experience regardless of the damage you deal. This means you could walk through the same dungeons mentioned above and gain 4-8 levels in your one-handed skills at low levels per dungeon clear, and 1-2 levels for higher level one-handed.

 

TL;DR: Weapon growth is highly elevated in Legendary difficulty due to being based on number of hits.

 

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This leaves pure mage-type characters even further behind in the legendary difficulty curve. Destruction magic is lacking as is, but trying to level it in Legendary difficulty is just adding insult to injury.

 

Is there any mod that increases leveling speed of Destruction skills in legendary to be more reasonable? Is it possible to mod it to be based on hits rather than damage?

[chanchan05]

I've played Legendary difficulty before and it's annoying. It's not more difficult, it just makes the game longer and more annoying. You're better off getting a difficulty mod and playing with that mod's recommended settings for vanilla difficulty.

[kleinstaff]

it is a better idea to crank up the difficulty by using mods than setting your vanillagame difficulty higher

it is absolute silly when you do hardsly any damage to a bandit with a two handed daedric waehammer while he instant kills you with his iron spoon

 

same goes for magic

Edited March 4, 2014 by kleinstaff

[llocke1127]

I agree its stupid hard early in the game, which isn't all bad - it forces you to think outside the box, using things like illusion magic that you would never be bothered with in a typical playthough. But even legendary difficulty gets easy when you get 100 in all crafts. Swinging a pair of 280 damage swords will kill even a level 50 ancient dragon on legendary difficulty in 20 seconds or less.

 

The only thing that doesn't add up in legendary difficulty is destruction magic. I just dual cast fire runes on varkas for 30 minutes straight (100% cost reduction), and my destruction magic went from 28 to 33. Imagine how long that would take to gain the levels "legitimately" in regular gameplay.

 

Failing that, what mods do you guys recommend for higher difficulty levels? The best I can find are complete revamp change-the-game forever mods. Any mods in particular that make the game more challenging?

[chanchan05]

No. Even in late game it's stupid easy. It's only stupid hard early on because they deal too much damage. You can still pay to level up Destruction Magic.

 

Anyway, try this: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/12452

 

Depending on your mod build, but it's pretty stable, just a bit resource intensive. I used to be able to play Skyrim Redone on Master, but after I installed this, I was forced to go down to Adept just to survive, and even then I'm still dying a lot if I'm not too careful. Getting ambushed by 16 bandits while picking flowers in the Whiterun Plains isn't a cake walk.