I love a challenge in my games, but Master can be pretty damn tough, I reload countless times on certain bosses... now im wondering if I should tone it down to Expert !

I play a 1h + shield orc with conjuration and it's not easy and im starting to wonder if its worth the trouble

How do you get by ?!

I think expert is a good difficulty. Not too easy, but still challenging. Master is just insane, to the point where it frustrates me.

getting more armor, magic resist, and decent dmg also playing 1h+shield paladin style

Master difficulty is a horrible setting that's really only for people who like getting one shot or people who use crafting exploits.

A Bethesda employee confirmed they did no testing of the difficulty whatsoever.

It doesn't really make the game a better challenge, just ups the damage and health to ridiculous levels, which makes certain tactics(stealth, ranged, illusion) far superior to melee unless you maximize mitigation and DPS through questionable means. I played it for awhile as a sneaking archer/conjurer/illusionist, and it just takes a long time and a lot of pathing abuse or hit and run/hide sneak attacks to kill things. Frenzying enemies and having them kill eachother is just as easy on master as as on novice.

Really, Hermit? Really? Then what do you have to say to the dude i watched live last night who played on master with no smithing or enchanting or magic(other than restoration), huh? What about when he beat the inside of Azura's star, hmm? And he was playing, i [censored] you not, DiD.

After watching it, I seriously wanted to try it...but my computer can only pull 8-12 frames per second, which isn't good enough to play on master difficulty >.>

Still, it was crazy, and now everything I do seems paltry and easy in comparison.

Master is about right for my character..maybe on the hard side, but I enjoy that.

Basic sneak perks, none of the 15x damage though, went very far into the 1h tree. No smithing or anything, just thieves guild armor mostly. Basically stealth, combined with high stam for power attacks, and judicious use of unrelenting force as a stun. I imagine it would be really difficult without the stealth opener though, I've come across a couple guys that could one shot me with their 2h weapon that I only beat by the cheezy run and hide tactic.

It may not be the most balanced game ever in terms of difficulty, but it's light years ahead of Oblivion in that sense, if you ever tried playing Oblivion with the slider all the way up you know what I mean.

Really.
An anecdote is not a good argument. Certainly, there are ways to succeed on master. But it's not really fun, just a lot of tedium.

This just isn't true, if you have the right build master can be very fun, i'm finding that often with the harder fights it's down to they can kill me in two hits, and I can kill them in three.

That's much better than what you could do in the previous games, and keeps the fighting fairly exciting. And this is only certain fights..lots of stuff is still just stupidly easy, you still one shot plenty of bandits and stuff, you just have to really pull out all the stops with the boss guys.

I have to say this is the first ES game where i've felt like I had to use tactics on higher difficulty, and it REALLY adds to the experience in a big way.

Haven't really tried Master myself, but I'm very content with Expert myself. It provides challenging battles, but not ridiculously difficult ones. I have no personal need to try out Master, at least not at the moment.

Personally I prefer Adept from about 1-30 and expert after that(or I would increase it to expert if the magic/elemental resistance weren't bugged. Makes mage near impossible without high magica absorbtion).

That might be your opinion, but watching this guy play it was actually NAIL BITINGLY exciting. Enemies took a great deal of tactics to kill, and potions and poisons were incredibly important. The funny thing was, BECAUSE it was so intense, it was actually entertaining to watch him gather potion ingredients, because we knew they were going to be damn NECESSARY in just a few minutes.

Potions will make any difficulty trivial.

Y'know, I find that fighting back makes the game trivial, we should start a game where you can't do that. Oh, and moving, that makes the game waaay too easy! Let's axe that, as well!

You said that enchanting and smithing makes the game broken. I pointed out a way to do it without, and you proceeded to continue to complain. Maybe you're SUPPOSED to use certain parts of the game, huh?

You're probably just a troll...

Don't listen to hermit..

I seriously recommend everyone try out master, I am not any kind of awesome gamer yet i'm doing fine on it with no enchanted weapons and no smithing. It just depends on your build..I found that having a ton of perks in 1h makes it appropriate, otherwise everything dies so fast it's no challenge. Keep in mind that the biggest factor affecting whether it works for you fighting wise is probably just going to be the damage output of your main weapon, if that is too low it will seem imbalanced, if it's too high it'll be imbalanced in the other direction.

I can't imagine playing master DiD though lol.....I die a fair amount on some of the boss fights. I think after playing through Gothic 2 a number of times dying just doesn't bother me that much.

Expert is good enough best of all sides Master is just way too spongy

expert is perfect if you dont cheat and make super armor and weapons.
If you play the game right, expert gives you a good challenge.

If you can accept the fact that enemies will recieve less damage from you and do more damage to you, then by all means. Have you ever had a poison that damaged stamina regeneration or magic and never used it? Ever killed a bandit wearing fur armor and carrying an iron greatsword and never thought twice about it? Have you ever came across an enemy called "Wood Elf" and even though he wasnt a push over you continued to melt his face and or chop him to pieces? On master you will have to use things that maybe were useless to you before, like certain poisons. You will have to fear/respect that bandit pillager with fur armor and an iron great sword or brace yourself for a quick death. That dorky wood elf will rain arrows on you and chain summon lightning atronarchs and you will have to run away or prepare for an epic fight.

It helps if you know your way around the game first so you can build a character well and it doesnt hurt to know a few tricks or mines/stones/word walls before you start.

Expert is perfect for me. Very challenging!

Alchemy is just as broken as enchanting/smithing, that's like saying meth is a good alternative to heroin. Being able to instantly heal yourself while time is stopped, with no limit whatsoever, makes it basically just spam to victory. You're near invincible until you're out of potions, as long as you don't get one shot - which fortify health potions can generally prevent.

Why would you ever use these on any difficulty? NPC magicka and stamina are high enough that you'll kill them sooner than you'll ever run them out of stamina or magicka. And NPCs on master will hit hard even without stamina.

I like master difficulty, it gives me a reason to use my paralysis, mass paralysis, dragonflesh, ebonyflesh, invisability, close wounds, telekenisis, water-breathing magic.

And makes the whirlwind sprint shout and my racial power of High Born useful instead of a convenience.

Also gives me a reason to take perks like extra bleeding damage or ignore armor for weapons.

Ooops and here I was enjoying myself.

Crafting exploits? You're right we really out smarted the Bethesda team by discovering all these "exploits." I can't believe they didn't notice them before the game came out.

Master is great fun I say.

Play the game the way you want to play it. Hard or easy, choose the balance yourself.

I totally get the bullet-sponge crowd, but I can't play a normal difficulty unless I add mods + heavy roleplaying that make the game ridiculously harder. And I really don't want to mod the game, I like it the way it is....I've seen noob mods where people add 5,000 or 10,000 gold to a vendor, which pretty much cheats and makes speech and speech perks a useless skill and is not lore-correct.

But I'm one of those people that like to feel I have to struggle for a victory.

Some people really need to TRY it before saying it only changes the numbers.

It DOES change the AI, guys. Especially in melee, and even more for enemies who can block and bash. you will NOT be able to power-attack them unless you stagger them first. And that makes one HELL of a difference