Is It Worth Making Skills Legendary in Skyrim? Pros, Cons, Tips

Yes, making skills Legendary in Skyrim is worth it for most long-running characters, because it is the only built-in way to keep earning perk points after the old level cap of 81 and eventually unlock perks in every tree. It is not worth it on your main combat, defense or crafting skill unless you are deliberately changing your build, because the skill drops to 15 and you lose that tree’s perks until you re-spend points.

The rest of this guide explains exactly what happens, which skills are smart to reset, and which ones you will regret touching.

What “Legendary” actually does

Legendary skills arrived with the official 1.9 patch in 2013, as covered at the time by PCGamesN and Shacknews. The same patch added the separate Legendary difficulty setting, which is unrelated to skill resets. The feature carried over into Special Edition and Anniversary Edition and is still part of the game as of November 2026.

When a skill reaches 100, you can make it Legendary. According to the UESP perk documentation, that does three things:

• The skill level resets to its minimum of 15.
• Every perk point you spent in that skill’s tree is refunded, so you can spend those points anywhere.
• Gaining levels in that skill counts toward your character level again.

That last point is the key. Before 1.9, once all 18 skills hit 100, you stopped gaining character levels at 81. Bethesda’s changelog, as quoted in coverage of the patch, put it simply: “This effectively removes the overall level cap.”

What it does not do

• Your character level does not go down.
• There is no extra reward for doing it, such as faster skill gain afterward. A few low-quality sites claim permanent bonuses; reliable wiki documentation does not support that.
• Racial starting bonuses are not reapplied. The Elder Scrolls Wiki notes, for example, that an Orc’s Heavy Armor bonus or a Breton’s Alteration bonus will not be given again after a reset.

Why perk points are the real reason to do it

Skyrim has far more perks than a normal playthrough can buy. UESP notes that without Legendary skills a character can only unlock 80 of the 251 skill perks. To buy all of them, it estimates you need to reach roughly level 252, which for a level 81 character with every skill at 100 means making skills Legendary around 147 times and re-leveling each one. Other guides quote slightly different restart counts, mostly because of different assumptions about add-on perks and starting skills, so treat these as ballpark figures rather than exact targets.

UESP also flags an odd technical quirk: the unused perk point counter maxes out at 255, and points beyond that are reported to roll over to zero. You are very unlikely to hit this unless you hoard points for a very long time, but it is a good reason to spend points as you go.

When it is worth it, and when it is not

A note on zero-perk skills: as community guides point out, you can make any skill Legendary once it hits 100, even with no perks in it. You get no points back in that case, but the reset still lets that skill contribute to your character level again.

The trade-off people underestimate

Resetting a core skill is a difficulty spike. If you reset One-Handed on a sword build, your damage falls back to a level-15 baseline while your character level, and the content you are fighting, stays where it was. The same applies to Destruction on a mage. Many players get around this by resetting skills that are cheap to re-level or that do not keep them alive, and leaving their core combat skill for last.

Smithing has its own catch. Gear you already improved keeps its quality, but new items cannot be improved to the same tier until you climb back up and re-buy the relevant smithing perks.

How to make a skill Legendary

1. Raise the skill to 100.
2. Open the Skills menu and highlight that skill’s constellation.
3. Look for the Legendary prompt at the bottom of the screen and press the button it shows.
4. Confirm the reset when the game asks.
5. Spend the refunded perk points right away in other trees, or save them for later.

The exact button depends on your platform and key bindings, so go by the on-screen prompt. On PC, players in Steam discussions report that if the Legendary key (often Space) is also bound to another action, the prompt may not work until the conflict is fixed. Some players have also reported trouble triggering the prompt with a controller on PC and switching to keyboard as a workaround. That is community reporting, not an acknowledged bug, so your experience may differ.

A sensible Legendary strategy

1. Pick low-impact skills first. Skills you leveled by accident or for utility are the safest resets.
2. Spend refunded points on your weak spots. Trees you have wanted to dip into, such as Alchemy or a second magic school, are good targets.
3. Rotate resets. Rather than resetting your whole build at once, reset one skill, re-level it while playing normally, then reset the next.
4. Leave core skills for late game. By the time you reset your main weapon or armor skill, you will usually have enough gear and perks elsewhere to absorb the drop.
5. Re-buy key perks quickly. If you do reset a core skill, put the first refunded points back into its most important early perks.

What about the Dragonborn perk reset?

The Dragonborn add-on, included in Special and Anniversary Editions, has its own option to refund perks from a skill tree. Coverage is mixed on how it compares, and PC Gamer’s original patch write-up conflated it with Legendary resets. Player reports on Steam say it returns perk points without resetting the skill level, so it works as a respec but does not open up extra character levels the way Legendary does. Check the in-game description before you commit.

Bottom line

Making skills Legendary is worth it when you want more perks, a higher level cap, or a cheap respec of a tree you have outgrown. It is not worth it on the skill that keeps you alive unless you are ready for a tougher stretch while you re-level. Reset the low-impact skills first, spend the points as you go, and you get almost all of the benefit with very little downside.