» Thu Jun 07, 2012 9:42 pm
Play a character that only uses one or none of the tradeskills and don't grind anything. Let your skills develop from playing. The game difficulty (master, expert, adept) is all relative by how overpowered you character is. If you have an overpowered character with full resists and daedric armor at level 25, then the game is going to be a cakewalk on any setting. On the other hand, if you play a challenging build, then the game can be difficult on expert.
I recently did a warrior playthrough and accidently made him overpowered by getting the glowing mineral veins mod which allowed me to get 100 smithing way too early. Even without much enchanting, nothing was a challenge on master and it almost made me stop playing the game.
I took a few days off and created a thief character. I said I wasn't going to save except for auto saves (I thought about trying a dead is dead, but didn't). I decided I was going to live with whatever happened to my character. If a follower died, tough luck. If I got caught pickpocketing, I dealt with it. I used wagons, but otherwise no fast travel (this prevents accumulating too much gold so you aren't selling every item in every dungeon). I haven't perked into any trade skill, although I do plan to put 2 points in smithing. Another thing that I do is that I don't get full perks in the stealth tree because I feel like it makes the game too easy. I avoid silence, shadow warrior and only put 3/5 in stealth. I may put more later, but at level 34 it feels balanced. I switch back and forth beween master and expert and the game is challenging as hell. I don't have much resist, I think I get 50% tops so magic users are still a problem. The game is a lot more fun if you can abide by some self-imposed rules like these.