Bethesda are planning to release Skyrim's upcoming 1.9 update at the end of the month. The end of the month?! That's slightly under a month away! Fortunately, given that patience has never been among a Dragonborn's required skillset, you can test out the patch's beta version right now. With it you'll gain access to a new Legendary difficulty level, as well as Legendary Skills - a system that removes the level cap by using what sounds like a CoD-style Prestige system.

"Skills of 100 can be made Legendary," Bethesda explain on their blog . "This will reset the skill to 15, return its Perks and allow the skill to affect leveling again. This effectively removes the overall level cap."

A screenshot of the new system hints at how it will work. Plus side: the character is now at a previously unreachable Level 106. Downside: they've completely forgotten how to do Smithing twice . Presumably that playthrough's economy has nosedived in response to all the hastily crafted steel daggers that must be flooding the market.

To access the beta, you'll need to right-click Skyrim's entry in your Steam library, pop into the properties menu, skip over to the Beta tab and opt-in from the drop-down box.

You'll also gain access to this giant list of bug fixes: