I started the game on expert but had to turn it up to master after about level 10 in order for the game to remain challenging.

played on expert AND didnt upgrade health (kept base level 100 health throughout, at lvl 30 now)

Yeah i am on expert as well.

I spent 110 hours on Expert with my Khajiit thief. Now playing a 2H Orc warrior on Master. Quite a step up.

I play on adept, I find some stuff easy and some challenging. Which I what I like, it feels more real if it's mix. I'm not into games where it's stupidly hard because that's no fun.

Expert.

Was challenging in the beginning, but then it got more and more easy even though I wasted a couple of perks on things I never used due to noobness.

Yes but he is only around level 20. Doing fine so far but have to drink more potions than I would like just to keep the spells going, while constantly running around the enemies. Perhaps it will get better after I use my enchanting skill (no I will not make 100% spell reduction.)

Expert is the perfect level of challenge. Adept is often unrewardingly easy on boss battles, and master is often frustratingly unrewarding on boss battles. Except for my wizard character that specializes in Destruction magic. I play on apprentice for characters that use Destruction for their main fighting style, otherwise they get torn apart, and it feels drastically harder on expert compared to a warrior or thief build.

I'm on Expert. Had it on Adept a while for my first character, but my most recent character has been on Expert the whole time.

Expert for me, been thinking about upping it though...

I started out on adept but have to bump down a north as I got my ass kicked, because I don't abuse smithing, enchanting, alchemy and don't use legendary daedric. Best armor used so far is Steel plate without improvement, and I can't use every hour in the day to play the game to become a god-gamer, as my biggest passion is outside with cars. So as a average gamer I use the lvl. under adept, and get a fine challenge with all my characters

My opinion is that to really be fulfilled by the game, play it on Master. Here's my breakdown:

1. Adept - no need for anything special in the likes of gear and perks for things like smithing/alchemy/enchanting....

2. Expert - you should be good to go if using a little of the above perks and actually consider upgrading your gear as well

3. Master - you can and probably should look for or make the best gear you can (within reason). I find this setting allows me to actually be able to participate in a healthy amount of the perks for creating/upgrading items. I enjoy this part of the game. You can go pretty far into it without feeling you are terrible overpowered. For me, the game isn't about rushing through it one-shotting everything in sight. Master mode allows me to pretty much keep a steady pace with the creating/upgrading perks to obtain a nice flow of the game.

I find myself getting pwned a majority of the time, but it makes it all that much better when i finally kill that necromancer whom killed me in two ice-spikes.

What a load of crap. You don't have to "abuse" aspects of the game to make expert playable. Expert is just a nice challenge, not ass-handed-to-you hard like Master. I did the first half of the starter dungeon on my most recent character on Master. I didn't even realize that it was significantly harder until I reached a mob, at which point I switched to Expert.

And jet so many people are whinnying over have easy they think the game is, so some abuses must make the game easy

About to change to Expert or Master or whatever the highest difficulty is. Getting tired of ridiculously easy fights. I've heard how easy Alduin is on Adept. When I get there, I want a LONG, HARD, GRUELING, and SATISFYING battle with that [censored] and when I beat him.

Edit* Woot! First star!

Master is ok if you're prepared to save/load spam, cheese things a bit with pathing and chug galons of potions.

Expert seems about right and would be perfect if potions were less easy to come by.

I play Expert because it give you a very good challenge but not to the point of it being frustrating like on Master, which I played on for the first 20 or so levels.

I could have kept playing on Master but some fights took me 30 min or so to learn and beat and it just get tedious, plus Im not one who abuses skill grinding with enchanting/alch, so the challenge remains real

94 hours into my first playthrough and I've been on Expert since i left the tutorial dungeon. I have found this difficulty to be the best for me as i can kill and be killed depending on the enemies. I've had times where i can go for ages without being challenged and i often think of bumping it up to master, but have decided to leave that for my second playthrough.

As an Orc warrior i really want to use smithing, but have refrained from doing so as i feel it makes the game a tad too easy for my taste.

I play on master with no fast travel while also limiting my self in gear for awhile.

Playing on expert here as well, although quite honestly I could easily handle master since I never get touched with My Dremora Lords, Paralyze, and Lydia.

I've been playing expert since the beginning with all my character builds so far, over 240 hours of gametime. On occasion if I let an enemy get too close, he/she will activate a kill animation on me even when at full health...idk if that's a bug or intended...

I too roll on Expert started on adept then went up to master first but found was a tad to hard for one shotting most enemies with my sneaky khajiit so i bumped it down to expert

Yeah I mostly played Adept to get used to the game feeling "Normal" in a sense as far as difficulty.

But lately I'm switching it up to Expert. It's actually QUITE more fun for my Nord. I don't run over literally everything in my path!

Plus, any Dragon under "Elder" was like PEH! PFFSHAW! basically.. (Frost, Blood, reg. Dragons, NOTHING to me).

But one I put it up on Expert they became much more fun to fight! Instead of like 5-6 hits dead. ^.^