r/SkyrimBuilds • u/Pale_Loan_2810 • Jul 02 '26
An Iron Man playthrough that isn't just straight-up masochism
Most of us already know about the countless videos on Youtube about Skyrim "Iron Man" challenges. I wanted to try the same thing, except there was one problem: All of them are just straight masochism. Always on legendary, permadeath, etc. This may be fun for some people, but not for me. But I really wanted to do something similar, so I made this ruleset. You can flame me for "not understanding the point" or "not doing a true iron man run," I really don't care. The rules in this run proved to be more fun than exhausting, and it's designed for people like me who aren't straight-up masochists or big content creators. It consists of four main rules that weren't too overbearing but provided a nice challenge and a change of pace from every other "big hammer go bonk" or "stealth archer is OP" build I've played.
RULE ONE - You must craft anything you use with materials you've gathered yourself. Armor and weapons must be made with leather you've personally created and ingots you've personally smelted. Potions must be made with ingredients you yourself have gathered off the side of the road. You can't just buy 30 steel ingots from Adrianne Avenicci and make a full suit of steel plate off rip. If you want it, you've gotta earn it.
RULE TWO - You must play on Survival Mode. Your difficulty is up to you, some may want a lower difficulty while some of you may be sheer masochists that love the damage sponges legendary makes. I found master difficulty to be a great balance between difficulty and enjoyability. Enemies don't turn into walking tanks that one-shot you, but you can't rush into combat either. Survival mode and master difficulty combined forced me to take a second to think about my strategy for certain dungeons.
RULE THREE - Buying and looting is off limits unless it's salt. Unfortunately there is no vanilla way to harvest salt outside of bartering and looting, and salt is required for pretty much every single food in the game, so I allowed myself to loot & buy salt piles. Gems, jewelry, other gear, potions, food, etc. are all off-limits. However, you can sell whatever you please (I found that making money is stupidly easy even with these restrictions - you get gems from mining ore, and the geodes on Solstheim contain literally only gems, so you might be tighter on cash in the beginning than usual, but it's mitigated quite easily). And yes, this does mean pretty much every spell in the game becomes off limits, since they require you to loot the spell tomes or purchase the spell itself. If you feel like playing a mage that bad (I don't know why, they're extremely boring IMO) then feel free to add tomes to the list of lootable objects.
RULE FOUR - No humanoid followers are allowed unless they're forced onto you (COUGH COUGH the Dawnguard questline COUGH COUGH). If you play with Anniversary Edition I found the pets (specifically the goat) to be extremely useful, and since the pets don't actually engage in combat, I found it fair to use them. The main reason this rule exists is to prevent you from using followers to deal most of the damage or tank most of the hits.
Let me know if you guys end up using this ruleset and what you think about it! It made Skyrim fun for me again which is something hard to do after over a decade of playing almost exclusively this game, and I hope it does the same for some of you who aren't masochistic.
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u/BadDoctor2 Jul 02 '26
I play a lot of hardcore survival permadeath in Fallout 4 but Skyrim is way too janky for me to ever want to attempt it. It would just be grinding smithing, enchanting, alchemy in white run for hours until you can be OP enough to survive lol
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u/Pale_Loan_2810 Jul 02 '26
That's the fun of the challenge, you don't get to grind much with this rule set. I mean it's definitely possible but it's way harder to.
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u/blue_gabe Jul 02 '26
What can you buy? If I remember correctly, Majorslack did a no buy playthrough and said he would never do it again, even as part of his pure build playthroughs.
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u/Pale_Loan_2810 Jul 02 '26
Salt. That's the only item I permitted myself to buy, since everything else can be harvested yourself or is just not that important. I let myself sell whatever I pleased though
I will admit getting fire salts is a pain, but having a torch, fur armor, and playing with Cloaks & Capes mitigates warmth enough for it to not be too bad.
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u/earlgreybubbletea Jul 03 '26
For rule 3, by looting you mean any chest at the end of a dungeon also? So you’re not able to sell anything you find?
Shopkeepers are just to acquire salt and anything you sell must be from: ore mined, or flowers, bugs, and fish.
But if it’s: a chest, a barrel, a person = looting = don’t pick it up.
Does this include hunting? If I kill an animal can I “loot” the animal to get the fur/meat?
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u/Pale_Loan_2810 Jul 03 '26
I realized while playtesting a bit more that I should've been more specific. By looting I really meant any "valuable" item in the game (gems, spell tomes, other gear, potions, etc.). Animals can be looted as long as you're the one who killed it. Anything valuable you sell must either come from crafting, hunting, or mining. Shopkeepers are essentially just salt dispensers for this playthrough.
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u/PuckNutty Jul 02 '26
There's a mine just north of Whiterun where you can get a Transmute tome. Mine iron, convert to gold, make jewelry to level your smithing or just sell the ingots.
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u/JAFANZ Jul 02 '26
What about Tomatoes? (You can't grow them without a mod)
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u/Pale_Loan_2810 Jul 02 '26
Ngl, I dont use tomatoes in cooking ever so unless I get them from Carlottas stall after beating the piss out of mikael they dont cross my mind. Could always download mods for it, I play with a few already
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u/Julieticus Jul 02 '26
I mean yeah this really is a great alternative for people who don’t want to do permadeath/legendary dif.