absolutely agree.
i just meant that i still can mistakenly die due to the difficulty of knowing exactly how low my health is. but, i'm getting better at it, for sure.

edit: and, if we could just get rid of the red enemy marker and enemy music, along, with all the other optional gameplay toggles that should already be in place.

yep, i just have to keep practicing. it's definitely a very satisfying way to play and adds a lot to the game.

Well yes that would make it a little easier to die, what about your health and magic potions, do you just chug them like crazy or how do you check the how much h, m, s, you have?

I wish we could get rid of the enemy markers and I wish the music would activate after they hit you so you can get more of a jump there.

right now i'm only playing a nord warrior type and so magic isn't used at all and my stamina regenerates very fast.

i'm experimenting with different health potion types and getting a good idea of how much they each increase my health bar. this way i can better estimate my health during combat instead of checking all the time.

with endurance i'll experiment more based on TIME. to get a better idea of how much time needed to refill to 25/50/75/100% full. but, during combat i will just chug an endurance and not really worry.

i think in a few more hours i'll have it memorized pretty good.

i'll do the same when i eventually add a magic character.

This seems strange to not know how hurt I am, but I'll try it. And to add to the confusion of getting lost I play with fov 45.

it is, at first. but, with practice you get better.

you know when your about dead (blood/haze) and you know how many times you get hit and can estimate health drop to some extent.

practice the health potion increases to your health from the blood/haze point and you can reasonably get your health to full without a huge waste of potions.

stamina can be more time based.

How often do you check it out like every five levels when you get fifty points to put into your health, magic, and stamina pools.

I think I might try to estamate it as well, it will be a little bit difficult for me at first I have a spellsword.

i've only started recently, so i think every 50points would be a good time to re-check.

for magic, i'd definitely make sure to get a pretty precise answer to how long it takes to refill magicka to 25/50/75/100. then, get an estimate on how many 100 pt potions take to fill it to max, and just keep experimenting.

So, I spent all weekend playing no HUD. Awesome! I had given up the standard crosshair years ago (Morrowind/Oblivion) and had tried No HUD on Skyrim once before but got frustrated with the lack of health/magicka/stamina bars and gave up too soon.

Thanks to this thread, I stuck with it this time and now I don't planning on going back to using the HUD. No more compass icons! No more red dots! No more sneak crosshair!

I was playing a nightblade, so his skills were spread pretty thin, which makes the enemy spawns that much tougher. There were a couple of battles that gave me a little trouble on expert with no HUD, but once I figured out a better strategy to approach the battles, I didn't have too much trouble.

No-HUD really makes you focus on your surroundings more, since you have to remember where you came from so you don't get lost in the open world without a compass. At first I was doing a lot of map checks but after a very short while I was able to cover vast distances without compass or map check, just by following geographical features.

Battles of course are more challenging, and you never know whether an NPC you are sneaking up on is friendly or not. Every once and a while I misjudge how much health I have left and get killed as a result, but it does not happen that often. Magicka I found was easier to deal with than health because if you misjudge health, you die. If you midjudge magicka, you will know it pretty quick and you can do something else (staff, potion, weapon attack, run away, shout etc.)

I still wish there was an option to have the "invisible" health/magicka/stamina bars working without anything else cluttering the screen. Makes no sense that those were designed to be invisible to avoid screen clutter but they don't give the option to use them if you turn off HUD, but whatever. Just chalk that up to another classic Bethesda faux paus.

I still get killed unexpectedly every once in a while, but if I found I was getting killed too often, I think I would lower the difficulty to Adept rather than turn the HUD back on because no HUD is just too much fun.

Anyway, thanks to everyone on this thread for their insights on no HUD play!

I play with the compass turned off and the rest of the HUD extremely transparent and easy to ignore unless I'm looking for it.

I wish there were an option to turn the compass and sneak crosshair off on an Xbox or PS3.