Skyrim Steam update adds Legendary difficulty, raises level cap

An update for the Steam version of The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim adds a new Legendary difficulty setting to the game, which allows players to raise their characters' levels higher than ever before, Bethesda announced today.

The new difficulty setting, part of Skyrim's 1.9 update, allows players to reset their individual skills after they've reached level 100. After dropping the skills to the base level of 15, players can rank up through them again, re-unlocking the valuable perks in each tree — and, more importantly, allowing their characters to level up far beyond the game's original level cap, since players must rank up their skills a certain number of times before moving on to the next character level.

The update is only in its beta phase, meaning its PC only for now, but Bethesda hopes to launch the patch on consoles later this month.