I don't know about anyone else on the forum, but I stopped playing dead is dead because whenever one of my characters reaches say, level 6, he or she gets oneshotted by pretty much every enemy that he encounters, and can't oneshot anything else back.

He'll wade through all the very low level enemies like nothing, but then once he encounters a higher level enemy he dies. And he doesn't just die once, he'll die again and again and again and again with the same enemy.

Can anyone give me any pointers as to how to avoid this so I can go back to playing Dead is Dead without gimping myself?

NB: No crafting please. I have tried that once, and it did not work. If anything, it made the problem worse.

Difficulty : Novice.

Put basically, if you think thats bad, you should see it when you hit the lv 15 wall.
My only pointer is, try to specialise. Being a battlemage or crusader in my experience is quite difficult,(a.k.a, you are going to die a bit) but rewarding at late game, due to how your perks spread out. However, if you only used 3 skills, for example, two handed, smithing and heavy armour you are going to be very powerful, very quickly.

def don't speed raise any of your crafting skills either because your combat skills won't match any of the world enemies... something i learned after my first playthrough

Theres a wall at level 5, then by level 20 its evened out again. It's still no walk in the park, but generally my character only gets steamrolled if I play stupid.

Put some points into illusion, will help you a lot against dangerous beasts that can often kill you quickly while travelling.

Go for the easiest diffculty setting for starters. But other than that I don't know if there's a magic key to an effective character. They're all effective. Sure at the lower levels a fighter has more survivability than a mage but no one class is singulalry more 'effective' compared to the others. Just find one that suits your play style and there are plenty of variations in perks and skill set.

Enjoy the fact that you can die. My 65 Nord is just untouchable, which occasionally can be fun, but it's just not a contest.

Just choose a combat style (one handed, two handed or archery) and then smithing. Focus mainly on these two.

It's simply too easy when you make the best armor possible and all your points are in combat, nothing can touch you. That's why I stopped smithing my own gear.

If you are playing dead is dead I guess you have to be as tricky as possible. The problem with crafting is that it would increase your leveling speed, of course, and while it might be nice for damage, the defense part is not so useful since you don't want to get hit. I would tend to play sneak+archery+illusion+become ethereal, and spend a lot of time making money and scouring the shops for good equipment.

Just remember that the more DIFFERENT skills you level will increase your character level (and thus the levels of the enemies you face) higher. If almost all of your character level is the result of just a few combat skills, then you should have no problems. If it is spread among many skills, and some of them aren't combat skills, you're going to have problems.

You should concentrate only on those skills that help you survive battles, and you should choose one single combat style at first, to limit how many combat skills are increasing.

This is a build I have found very successful on master without heavily smithing/crafting.

• Heavy armor
  
• Block
  
• 1h
  
• Restoration
  
• Conjuration

You have the most defensive build and you're using conjuration to sponge damage for you. I haven't died yet on master with this build (not playing DiD though), level 60 ish. I leveled smithing naturally, and took the steel and arcane smithing perks, only improving the basic steel armor/armor I find or buy. I was breton (magic resist+absorption) as well, I prefer them over any other race.

I have died 8 Times to level 27. 5 due to my companions starting a fight before I was ready. Mt char is dual swords with illusion, smithing,sneak,light armor,enchanting and archery. At level 5 to 6 , I learned to enchant my swords. Each sword has a different damage. Also I use potions, like 25% weakness to fire when using my sword with fire damage. Illusion is a great weapon. Rarely do I have a fight with more than 2 npcs because of Frenzy,calm, and fear eliminating the competition. I always travel with calm spell at the ready. I plan on trying dead is dead soon. Also start the dark brother just for the enchanted armor you get for just joining. I play standard diff. Hope this helps.

this this and more this.

Im having this problem aswell, but im not playing dead = dead... So many times i died today, at full health, with 400+ health, and i get one shotted like i have 10 health and NO defence..... Something is telling me that defence isnt working in this game so well it's been happening alot more since the last patch.

My build: Now level 20

Imperial

one-handed
block
heavy armor
smithing

Uses very few potions, only magic is a poison imunity amulet (purchased)

Exquisite Orcish Armor
Exquisite Dwarven Sword

Level your crafting at the same rate as your other skills,
you will not lack combat skills & you will have a nice equipment bonus;

Just shy of 400 armor
poison imunity
85% spell resist (elemental protection, lord stone, agent of mara)

Dragons, Giants, Mobs of Falmer, Mobs of Stormcloaks,
doesn't matter.

By the time I hit level 30-35 I will move on to deadric gear.
Keep everything in balance and play smart; you won't have problems
standard dif bty.

Even if you actually ever played that way, which you don't and never have, it would invariably ruin dozens or hundreds of hours of game at some point, if not cause a level of stress that ruined the game anyway.

well I never understood how people could stand dead is dead play-throughs with the balance being so bad I mean occasionally a random bandit will one hit you not to mention enemy mages I mean there are dungeons full of them

....? My first half a dozen characters were dead is dead, expert difficulty? Gimping myself is changing the difficulty down to novice to survive?