Have you spotted the new Legendary Levels on the Duolingo app? Here’s exactly what you’ll need to do to earn the Legendary Level purple crowns on your Duolingo tree, including how many XP these levels earn, tips to earn them faster, and why Duolingo has added them.
What Are Duolingo Legendary Levels?
The Duolingo Legendary Level is a new feature on Duolingo that allows you to earn a purple crown after you’ve earned all 5 of the original golden crowns. Legendary Levels make it so a skill cracks less often and you have to restore the skill less often.
In order to earn a Legendary Level skill, you will need to complete 4 separate lessons with more questions than usual, plus with only 3 mistakes allowed per lesson.
P.S. Read here about how to restore skills that have broken!
How Much XP Do You Earn from a Legendary Level?
Each Legendary Level earns you 40 XP and there are 4 levels you have to complete to earn the purple crown. You’ll earn 160XP by completing all 4 Legendary Levels in one skill.
How Many Legendary Levels are There?
There are 4 Legendary Levels you must complete per skill in order to earn a purple crown for that skill.
Why Did Duolingo Add the Legendary Level?
It’s Duolingo’s answer to the problem of always restoring easy lessons instead of moving on to more difficult lessons. Not every user feels this way, but a lot feel like they need to restore the skills every time they break.
It definitely could be something that bothers you if the material in that skill is already very easy for you, but you want your tree to stay completely golden without any skills broken.
Instead of spending your time earning crowns later on in the tree, you could easily lose a ton of time on those first few skills.
So to solve this, Duolingo introduced the Legendary Level and the possibility to earn the ultimate crown: The Purple Legendary Crown!
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Do Legendary Levels Break or Crack?
Yes, Legendary Levels break, however, it takes longer for them to break than the normal lessons.
Not having to restore lessons seemed to be the reason Duolingo originally added Legendary Lessons. However, now it seems that Legendary Levels break just like normal levels do, it just takes longer for them to break.
This is a bit disappointing considering it defeats the purpose of not having to restore lessons that are super easy for you.
What is the Point of Duolingo Legendary Level?
Now that Legendary Levels break, the point now is just another crown to earn to keep you practicing old material on your Duolingo tree that you might have forgotten.
You also might be able to earn Legendary Level Duolingo Golden Owl if you have your whole tree completed up to the Legendary Level.
Besides that, since they break, there isn’t much of a point in doing them and they might be a waste of time for you since your time is probably better spent earning crowns further down the tree.
What Happens When Legendary Levels Break?
When a Legendary Level breaks, you have to restore the skill and earn 20XP. This is much easier than earning the Legendary Level in the first place, but you still have to restore it.
How to Earn a Legendary Level
In order to earn a Legendary Level, you’ll need to first earn all 5 crowns in a skill. This will turn the skill golden, then Duolingo will give you the option to reach the Legendary Level by completing 4 more lessons.
So first I found a skill that I hadn’t turned gold yet to make sure that it wasn’t necessary to wait until a skill needs to be restored to get the choice to reach Legendary Level.
If you already have skills that are gold or broken, you can click on those and try for Legendary Level right away. For those who don’t have any gold skills, you’ll need to do that first.
I found that it didn’t matter if I had just turned the skill golden (aka just earned all 5 crowns) it immediately gave me the option to try for Legendary Level.
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UPDATE: It has changed and now the Legendary Levels will give you 40XP for each of the four levels you complete.
Before the update:
After the Update:
Once you have a golden skill, you can click on “Legendary” and Duolingo will start you on the first of four lessons that you’ll need to complete.
You don’t need to complete all four at once. Once you complete a level, you can “x” out of the lesson. It will warn you that you are going to lose progress, but you won’t as long as you haven’t started a new level without finishing.
The catch with these lessons is that you can’t make a single mistake.
UPDATE: Duolingo has updated the Legendary Level Challenge and now you are allowed to make 3 mistakes for each level.
Before the Update:
After the Update:
The questions in these lessons are picked directly from the past lessons, just like the “restoring a skill” lessons are. They will get progressively harder as you progress through the 4 lessons.
Luckily, if you reach the “10” and then make a mistake, you will still have earned 10 XP. If you make a mistake before reaching the “10” then you earn nothing AND you have to start completely over again.
UPDATE: Earning the XP is still the same, but now you can make 3 mistakes so it is a lot easier to make it to the end without starting over.
These lessons also earn a lot more XP than a normal lesson! For the first 3 out of the 4 lessons, I earned 40 XP for the lesson plus 10 more XP for not making a mistake (even though I had to not make mistakes in order to finish the lesson! This isn’t the case anymore, thank goodness!)
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Each lesson after the first is the same, you will only be able to make 3 mistakes.
What Happens if You Make a Mistake in A Legendary Level Lesson
If you do happen to make a mistake (which I did 3 times, even with a super-easy lesson!!) then you will have to start the lesson over. Like I mentioned earlier, if you didn’t make it past the “10”, then you won’t even earn any XP for your work!
UPDATE: Now that you get 3 chances to make a mistake, it is a lot easier to earn the Legendary Level! And a lot less frustrating.
If you did make it to the 10 and then made a mistake, then Duo will show up and give you 10 XP but nothing more!
What Does a Legendary Level Look Like?
Once you completed the steps above for all four of the Legendary Lessons then you’ll finally have earned your Legendary Level! It says that this skill will never crack again and therefore you’ll never have to restore it again! Wohoo!!
On your tree, your skill will now be purple instead of gold! It’s a super pretty, lilac purple and it will look really beautiful when all your skills are that color! That’s a huge feat, but you’ll earn the Conqueror Achievement along the way!
Tips on How to Earn a Legendary Level Quicker
It was surprisingly more difficult than I thought it would be to not make any mistakes. I completed the Legendary Level for Spanish, a language I don’t usually study on Duolingo since I’m already fluent.
However, the mistakes would be more automatic. Like typing “pretty” when it was asking for “big” because every other question had asked for “pretty.”
Or a typo or answer that autocorrects and then gets marked wrong.
So for these lessons, even though the material is most likely very easy for you, you’ll want to complete these very slowly.
Re-read your answers before pressing “Check.”
Also, re-read the original question and make sure it says what you actually think it says!
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Liz
Wednesday 9th of November 2022
Now if you make a mistake you have to pay more gems to continue. Total bs but clearly done to force more people to subscribe.
Bruce
Tuesday 8th of March 2022
Another good way to get points faster is to use the fifteen minute double boost in legendary....80 points per lesson
Bruce
Tuesday 8th of March 2022
I have legendary levels that crack every so often.
Basler Biker
Wednesday 9th of February 2022
Legendary isn't required at all to progress in the three. At any time a maximum of 3 skills may appear cracked, but you can simply leave them like that. You don't gain anything by trying to restore them over and over again. Simply go on with the non-cracked and the cracked as if nothing happened.
So rather than "inventing" a new feature, better had been that DL explains WHY they crack, and A REAL FEATURE would have been to offer a good (read: working) "aging" algorythm for words to be rehearsed. THAT is what users were looking for, and isn't there AT ALL. (the current "aging" indicator on "word list" ISN'T working)
Trixie
Monday 10th of January 2022
Legendary (purple) levels crack. 🤷♀️ I haven't found a reason they benefit other than further practice. But since I have the gems to do it free, I often do.