Legend difficulty in Where Winds Meet looks like the “true” way to play: red aura around your HP bar, a visible boss kill counter, and a reputation boost in co-op lobbies. It also comes with a hard lock-in and a lot of confusion about rewards.
Here’s how Legend really works, what you earn from it, and what you give up when you choose it.
How Legend difficulty works in Where Winds Meet
Where Winds Meet has five difficulty settings for solo play:
| Difficulty | Combat tuning | Assist features | Availability |
|---|---|---|---|
| Story | Weakest enemies, fastest kills. | Full time-stop and deflection prompts. | Selectable and changeable anytime. |
| Recommended | Baseline balance for most players. | Limited assist options; no heavy hand-holding by default. | Changeable anytime. |
| Expert | Big jump in enemy HP and damage. | No time-stop, no parry assist. | Changeable anytime. |
| Legend | Enemies have much higher health and damage. | No assist prompts at all. | Only pickable at character creation, one-way if you leave it. |
| Hardcore | Designed for one-death permadeath runs. | No assists; character is lost on death. | Listed in the menu but not available yet. |
Legend sits on top of Expert. Enemies use the same move sets and telegraphs across all difficulties; what changes is how hard they hit, how long they live, and whether the game slows time or flashes parry indicators to help you. On Legend, none of that safety net is available. You fight bosses with full damage and no Combat Assist.
Under the hood, Legend and Hardcore share the same combat tuning; the difference is that Hardcore will eventually layer permadeath on top, while Legend lets you keep dying and retrying.
How to select Legend difficulty (and why it’s easy to miss)
Legend can only be picked once, on the startup sequence when you create a new character. The difficulty screen has separate tabs; Legend sits under the Expert tab, not next to Story and Recommended, so it’s easy to click past if you’re mashing through setup.
Key constraints:
- You must choose Legend during character creation; you cannot upgrade an existing character to Legend later.
- There is no in-game way to delete a character right now. If you skipped Legend on your main, you’re effectively locked out of it on that account.
- Once you leave Legend on that character, you cannot ever go back to it on that same character.
Some players who realized this late have resorted to starting over on a different Steam account just to run a Legend-only playthrough. The decision is permanent.
What rewards you actually get for Legend difficulty
Legend difficulty is often misunderstood as a “better loot” mode. It isn’t. Bosses drop the same gear and materials on all difficulties. You don’t get stronger weapons, more currency, or increased drop rates for playing on Legend.
The real rewards are cosmetic and social:
| Legend-only reward type | Where it appears | What it tracks |
|---|---|---|
| Red aura on HP bar | In-combat UI | Marks that the character is in Legend and has cleared bosses there. |
| Boss kill count number | Next to your health bar | Increments for each major boss defeated while still on Legend. |
| Profile badge | Player profile / card | Displays how many bosses you’ve killed on Legend on that character. |
The game treats each eligible boss kill on Legend as a small prestige milestone. Your HP bar gets a distinctive red glow, and a number appears beside it to show how many major bosses you’ve taken down without ever dropping below Legend. The same count is mirrored on a badge you can equip on your profile card.
What you lose if you switch off Legend
Legend is marketed as adjustable — you can lower the difficulty later. That’s only half the story.
- You can lower Legend to Story, Recommended, or Expert in the settings at any time.
- Once you do, the character loses Legend status permanently.
- You cannot switch back up to Legend with that character, ever.
- Any further boss kills will not increase your Legend boss count or upgrade your HP-bar aura or profile badge.
If you’ve already cleared a handful of bosses on Legend and then decide to drop to Expert “just for one fight,” you keep whatever badge level you had earned up to that point, but your Legend run is effectively over. To continue progressing that legend badge, you would need to start again on a new Legend character.
For anyone who cares about the long-term flex — a fully maxed Legend badge and a high kill count next to the HP bar — the choice to lower difficulty carries a real cost.
How Legend compares to Expert and Recommended moment-to-moment
Legend, Expert, and Recommended all use the same boss patterns. What changes is how punishing mistakes are and how much help you get.
| Setting | Enemy stats | Learning curve | Who it suits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Recommended | Baseline HP/damage; fights are brisk. | Combat Assist can help on key attacks if you enable it. | Most players, first runs, story-focused play. |
| Expert | Enemies live longer and hit harder than Recommended. | No time-freeze or parry prompts; still forgiving compared to Legend. | Action RPG fans who want demanding but not brutal fights. |
| Legend | Enemy HP and damage are significantly increased again. | No Combat Assist at all; timing errors are heavily punished. | Soulslike veterans, parry enjoyers, prestige hunters. |
The open world itself doesn’t change much between these higher tiers. Regular mobs are survivable with decent gear and fundamentals. The difference is sharpest in major boss encounters, where higher damage and larger health pools turn small mistakes into wipes and stretch fights long enough that you need to internalize patterns, not just survive a short burst.
Some early bosses — like Qianye the Witch — become real walls on Legend, especially in later phases. Many players report clearing first phases solo but needing co-op help for later ones until they refine builds and mechanics.
Does Legend give a “Soulslike” experience?
Legend is the closest Where Winds Meet gets to a Soulslike feeling:
- No crutches: no parry-assist flickers, no scripted slow-mo when bosses wind up big moves.
- High punishment: bosses can delete huge chunks of your health with a single misread.
- Parry-centric: nearly everything that isn’t a specific “yellow” move can be deflected if you nail the timing, from melee chains to arrows and even shockwaves.
- Visible bragging rights: your boss count lives right on-screen and on your profile.
Veteran Souls and Sekiro players who are comfortable living on parry timing often describe Legend as easier than expected once they slot into the rhythm. The hardest spikes tend to be specific bosses and phases rather than the entire game being oppressive from start to finish.
For players coming from more traditional ARPGs, the lack of assist tools and the emphasis on deflection windows can feel like hitting a wall. That’s where co-op and gear optimization start to matter more.
Legend difficulty and loot, XP, and progression
Legend does not change core progression numbers:
- Bosses and mobs drop the same tiers of gear on all difficulties.
- XP and materials gained from kills stay aligned across modes.
- Weekly caps, dungeon rewards, and world drops are not scaled up for Legend.
Legend, therefore, isn’t a farming mode. In some way,s it’s the opposite: because fights take longer and errors are more expensive, farming materials and ingredients can actually be slower than on lower difficulties.
Where difficulty does intersect with progression is efficiency. Higher difficulties make consumables like crafted healing potions more important, especially until later-game builds come online. Burning through resources for every boss attempt can turn basic gathering into a grind if you’re not careful.
How co-op interacts with Legend difficulty
Legend applies to your character, not the host’s world. That has a few practical implications:
- If you play co-op in your own Legend world, bosses still use Legend tuning.
- You can be invited into a world on a lower difficulty setting. That makes bosses mechanically identical but numerically easier to survive.
- Joining easier worlds can help you practice patterns and farm some materials without sacrificing your own character’s Legend status.
Some players use this to “sandbag” tough bosses: they learn moves and tune builds in a friend’s easier world, then return to their own Legend save to finish the job for badge progress.
Should you start your first playthrough on Legend?
The answer depends less on raw mechanical skill and more on what you value.
| Player type | Legend makes sense if… | You’re better off skipping Legend if… |
|---|---|---|
| Souls/Sekiro veteran | You enjoy repeated boss attempts, pattern study, and parry-heavy combat; you care about visible prestige. | You’d rather experiment with builds and systems first, then commit later on a fresh save. |
| Open-world explorer | You mostly want the badge as a long-term project and don’t mind slower progress. | You prioritize exploration, story, and casual co-op, and don’t want bosses to be roadblocks. |
| New to timing-based combat | You’re okay treating Legend as a long, sometimes frustrating training ground. | You want Combat Assist at least for early bosses, and you don’t care about bragging rights. |
One important nuance: you can always drop from Legend to something easier later, but you can’t go back up or earn more Legend boss credit on that character. Starting on Legend “just to try it” only makes sense if you’re prepared to either:
- Stay on Legend for the long haul, or
- Accept that switching off it ends that character’s Legend run for good.
If you’re the kind of player who will always regret missing a prestige track, it’s safer to pick Legend on day one and live with the consequences — especially while Hardcore is still unavailable and you only have one serious “commitment” difficulty to worry about.
Legend difficulty in Where Winds Meet is less about better loot and more about drawing a visible line around your run. The game doesn’t secretly pay out more gear for it, and it won’t make you stronger in MMO-style content. It simply makes every major encounter mean more, and then puts that history right next to your health bar for everyone to see.
