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For my current character that I'm obsessed with (I haven't played another character in like a month or something) I play on Expert because it seems like the happy medium, but I might have to put it up to Master now as the overpowered-ness of my 100 Sneak/100 Archery/100 One Handed starts to be more visible. I mean if I wanted to I could abuse the Level 100 Sneak perk that grants invisibility when sneaking in battle to one-hit everyone with a simple crouch-then-hit. Then again that does fit my character, as I imagine him to be very nimble and able to practically roll behind someone without them even knowing what was happening, and slitting their throat.

Anyways, what do you play on?

I used to play on expert/master, but then I found Karstagg, and well after him not much is a challenge any more, so novice now. he one-shotted my Altmeri main at level 81...

Even the Ebony warrior on master doesn't compare, he needed 3 hits to beat her...

Except for my first character, which I played on Adept, I always play on Master. Might give Legendary a shot if I can get myself to play again.

My first couple of playthroughs were on adept, since then I've gradually upped the difficulty. My last game (pure cloth mage) was started on master, but I switched to legendary somewhere in the level 20s. Currently playing with Requiem which disables the difficulty slider, so it's nominally adept but in fact much harder (all weapon damage x4, heavy armour offers much more protection than in vanilla but at massive penalties to speed and stamina without perks, arrows are deadly against light but not much use against heavy armour, undead immune to non-silver weapons etc.pp); you can adjust damage dealt and received in the MCM menu, but up to now (lvl 19) I've had no reason to do so.

Adept usually because anything higher just sucks the enjoyment out of things, it really shouldn't take like 4 or 5 expert level spells to bring down most average enemies its really dull. Sometimes I even move things down to apprentice especially in nordic ruins as the high level draugrs just have too much HP and feeling underpowered as a daedric armor wearing level 50 battlemage is really not the kind of experience I go for.

I played on Legendary so as to allow some of the stronger enemies to actually do damage to me. Of course it wasn't very difficult, but i at least had to pay a bit more attention.

Adept, but my aesthetic preferences make it harder. For example, my characters use underpowered equipment, and I don't like using potions/poisons after combat has started. I'd rather the character die once in a while than call time-out to drink a potion. I have tried playing on Expert at times, but find that without using potions during combat (or better equipment, presumably) my characters die too often for my taste, so I went back to Adept.

Normal. Used to play on Easy but normal gives me a challenge. Have died to those damn trolls and sabertooth cats at least once. Oh and many times due to the [&@%!] game going "Nope, you die now, trololo" when i've got enough health left to take another hit or two before being killed.

Snail's Pace wrote:Adept, but my aesthetic preferences make it harder. For example, my characters use underpowered equipment, and I don't like using potions/poisons after combat has started. I'd rather the character die once in a while than call time-out to drink a potion. I have tried playing on Expert at times, but find that without using potions during combat (or better equipment, presumably) my characters die too often for my taste, so I went back to Adept.

Yeah Me too, my characters often end up wearing clothes or not using smithing and I never exploit crafting loops so it makes harder difficulties needlessly difficult.

I actually miss difficulty sliders it was nice to be able to fine tune things abit more.

Master. Its go big or go home in my game.

I always play on adept, though I have several mods which make enemies (and especially dragons) much tougher, on top of SkyRe.

The way the difficulty setting works in Skyrim is incredibly arbitrary and throws off the game's balance. Since the damage changes only affect the player, summons and followers will needlessly become more or less useful based on the difficulty. I also question whether master is actually any "harder" than adept; the only difference for characters which rely on not getting hit in the first place is longer battles, and characters which do try to tank only need to exploit crafting to continue to plow through the game.

Dohvakiin2012 wrote:Master. Its go big or go home in my game.

Whilst downing half of Tamriel's Skooma supply.

Novice for me. I like to kick back, relax, and kick arse at my own pace. Plus let's me do a lil' roleplaying a little bit easier without having to worry about being to gimped.

I MIGHT consider boosting it to Apprentice on the PC. For some reason, it feels easier there, I don't know why. I don't have any mods that make things easier to fight or other things more powerful.

I've always been on Adept, and SkyRe is geared toward that level anyway. I still get killed for one reason or another.

I haven't tried legendary yet...but I probably will soon as my characters hit level 50.

I play on Adept, but use several mods to make it more difficult in specific areas. Deadly Dragons and its addon, Deadly Monsters, make dragons have twice as much health, and everything else 50% more. I capped damage reduction from armor and magic resistance at 50%, and slowed the progression for armor so that 567/667 was still required for the 50% cap.

Mostly I just want the fights to not be frustratingly hard, but still not super easy, and I dislike the idea of just decreasing the damage I do and increasing the damage others do. Leads to nonsense situations sometimes. I'm looking for interesting fights rather than hard ones.

Marelo wrote:I play on Adept, but use several mods to make it more difficult in specific areas. Deadly Dragons and its addon, Deadly Monsters, make dragons have twice as much health, and everything else 50% more. I capped damage reduction from armor and magic resistance at 50%, and slowed the progression for armor so that 567/667 was still required for the 50% cap.

Mostly I just want the fights to not be frustratingly hard, but still not super easy, and I dislike the idea of just decreasing the damage I do and increasing the damage others do. Leads to nonsense situations sometimes. I'm looking for interesting fights rather than hard ones.

I have my normal enemies and dragons both set to 75% more health/damage/etc. But Ajiran has over 2k health at level 81 (thanks to APSL) and is wearing full dragonplate armor, as well as having quite a few extra slots to enchant (six earrings, cloak, left-hand ring), so only the enemies added by Immersive Creatures really seem to be able to do anything to her. Was too tired to try legendary, so I'll probably end up doing that tomorrow.

Master, combined with Dead is Dead, since ever.
It might be hard for while, but once you get an idea how much hits you and the enemies can take, it becomes manageable.
Learning how to predict and dodge attacks is also a great help, especially at the beginning.

Raynil dralas wrote:

Snail's Pace wrote:Adept, but my aesthetic preferences make it harder. For example, my characters use underpowered equipment, and I don't like using potions/poisons after combat has started. I'd rather the character die once in a while than call time-out to drink a potion. I have tried playing on Expert at times, but find that without using potions during combat (or better equipment, presumably) my characters die too often for my taste, so I went back to Adept.

Yeah Me too, my characters often end up wearing clothes or not using smithing and I never exploit crafting loops so it makes harder difficulties needlessly difficult.

I actually miss difficulty sliders it was nice to be able to fine tune things abit more.

Same here. My first character wore fur armor combined with leather boots, gauntlets and helmet for most of the game (until she got access to Dawnguard armor). She also stuck with a hunting bow and a sword from the Skyforge for the entire game. The powerful weapons usually went to my followers

I also don't like my game to be too difficult, since dying tends to ruin my immersion into roleplaying. It's alright if every once in a while I run into a challenging fight that takes me a few trials to win, but usually my focus isn't on challenge but rather on experiencing my characters' lives in Skyrim.

Expert. I'm using SkyRe and Deadly Dragons, that's tough enough for me.

Adept. Started on Novice for my first character, which crept up to Apprentice as she gained levels. Now I start the game on Adept and leave it there. It's the right balance for me considering that I neither enjoy nor am particularly good at combat.

I'm playing on the default setting (adept, is it?) I don't always remember to change it, and since I'm still exploring Skyrim, I'm not ready to make it difficult - I want to experience the story, and like baratron, I'm not particularily good with combat. As I get more comfortable, I might adjust it up, but for now, I don't want the frustration.

I' e found that I can't do anything more than apprentice for any Mage characters, adept for stealth, and expert for melee. For some reason, I just can't do master on any character, never mind legendary. Just sucks the fun out of it, dying so many times.

I play on adept mostly as a pure mage. Any higher difficulty and I tend to get OHKO by some prat with a bow-and-arrow I didn't even have time to react to. (Stupid Forsworn, Odahviing will burn all your camps if I have anything to say about it!) If I ever play an actual armored character I would probably try harder settings.