Been hooked on Dead is Dead playstyle for a while now. ive gone through so many different characters and the furthest ive been able to get was with a breton sneak archer/alchemist. was wondering what types of build you guys use for DiD to keep it challenging? but not too hard because ya know you can only die once. having a hard time trying ro decide...

I use real life. Pretty challenging. hardcoe mode, you have needs to sleep and eat, all that.

And you have only 1 life and no Saves,so you can't die.Most hardcoe game i'ver played i can tell you.

Yes, I can die. And will. That's the rule. Dead is Dead.

I used a Breton with Heavy Armor, a shield, a mace, and restoration magic. Get the perk that reduces the cost of Novice spells, and the one that increases healing done before you get any other perks. When you switch to healing, always switch out your weapon. Keeping your shield equipped is vital to defense.

You can make any build you want, some are just more effective than others but they are all effective in the end. I play 2h/conjuration/heavy armor/archery. I have a lot of options to deal with any situation. When you create your character I recommend keeping the following in mind:

1. Never leave town without healing potions, stamina potions, paralyze poison. I died when I had 3k gold and 0 potions. Not fun.
2. Build your character to handle magic users (resist/absorption/paralyze), dragons (restoration/potions), 2h and dual wield bosses (armor/health/potions)
3. Use a companion until you "got this".

When I play DiD I want to be "over powered" asap. Conjuration has saved me, fully perked archery is powerful, heavy armor is win. I also raise black smithing and enchanting and alchemy (bow + slow poison = dead giant at any level) at a steady rate. I only perk enchanting and black smithing though when it comes to the trade skills. There are some cool things you can make at the College (staff of summon storm/fire/frost atronach or scrolls) to help in a tight spot.

Focus your perks in the beginning for example you want a 1h/shield that can summon. Would look like this around level 15: http://skyrimcalculator.com/#40540. Notice how I focused on 1h/heavy armor/block and just put one perk in conjuration and a few in resto? In other words, some abilities are great support and I flesh those out as I get higher level. I focus my points on health at level up. Everyone has their playstyle, but they boil down to two or three abilities while the rest are there for support. Ex:

rogue: illusion/sneak/archer - support: 1h / light armor / trade skill
mage: destruction/alteration/archer - support: conjuration / enchanting / restoration
warrior: 2h/heavy armor - support: block/restoration/ trade skill

I think if you get in this mentality of what is main and what is support and don't go cheap on the healing potions / poisons you will have a blast.

I must tip my hat off to you guys. I`m a hardcoe player; I roleplay and never FT. I have quite a few mods that remove the compass and enemy health bars and even tougher modded dragons, but I`m still not brave enough to try dead is dead yet.

good ideas for sure

I typically go the sneaky archer route, and raise Archery, Smithing, and Sneak first, with side skills depending on which variant I'm playing (some use Conjuration, some Illusion, etc.). Light Armor in all cases, since the idea is to not get hit in the first place, although I eventually reach the armor cap as I also level Alchemy and Enchanting. Magic Resistance is vital (at least for me), and I either add Archery or Magic enchantments depending on the build.

Focusing skill increases and perk allocation are indeed very important early on; you want a high, well-developed combat skill and a couple of well-developed secondary skills (Sneak, Block, Smithing, etc.) ASAP, so that you can hold your own in a fight while building toward your end-game gear. I typically do as bcurdragonborn does and only put 1-2 perks in skills to be developed later (save Speech, which I perk whenever a new ability opens), usually just one in the opening perk and maybe one beyond that if I have the skill level for it (depends on the skill and why I'm delaying it).

If playing a sneaky sort you don't really need to perk armor skills unless wearing Heavy Armor, but as that perk needs 70 skill I don't recommend that route, since it will take ages to get there and in the interim the noise will tank your sneaking capability. Light Armor should only really be perked at all if you're going to cap it (which I do), and even then how much you do so depends on which crafting skills you are going to use and which armor type you are going to wear; as I use all three skills and wear Dragonscale once I can make it, I only need the first rank of the opening perk to cap.

Do not be afraid to make stupidly powerful weapons, even though they will trivialize most of the combat; against those opponents for whom this will not be the case (notably: Elder or Ancient Dragons, and Dragon Priests) you cannot afford a drawn-out battle, because the chances steadily increase that they will get a massive critical hit and kill you. These weapons will drastically shorten such fights, which will greatly reduce the number of chances they have to land such hits.

Many folks recommend Block for a 2H-user, and it's not a bad idea, but I tend to not use it and instead rely on abusing Stun-Lock via chained Power attacks. Then again I play them berzerker-style; I like the added risk during the initial stages of a fight, and it just feels 'right' to use them that way since part of a 2H weapon's effectiveness is the shock value from the impact of a massive chunk of metal, which you don't get while blocking with one. If you're not going to cap your armor Block becomes a lot more important, since you can't soak hits as well as someone who does.

If you're going to use Illusion or Conjuration you want to level them early on, as the early spells become utterly useless in short order, and in the former case you want to take the increased performance perks so that they will still work at high levels (you'll need to Dual Cast as well).