Is there any info about what changes in the various difficulty levels? i just started a game on expert level and it's no where even near as hard as master. I wouldn't mind seeing what's going on when the difficulty slider is moved.

Play on adept it's fair dificulty.And when you move slider it just increases enemy damage and decreases yours...

There are games that you must play on hardest dificulty Deus Ex for example but Skyrim is not such game your a bloody dragonborn.

Novice - Very Easy
Apprentice - Easy
Adept - Normal
Expert - Hard
Master - Very Hard

I assumed I wasn't the only one to figure that out...

I suspect that like all games higher difficulty levels only means they're stronger and you're weaker...and often times higher difficulty means more enemies in the groups.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Combat#Difficulty_Level

It does seem like master is much more extreme than expert but technically it's the same increase in damage taken and decrease in damage ealth as adept to expert is.

I think it's mainly the nature of health. Sometimes the 2x increase is going to mean more than just a +.5x the number of hits required to down a master enemy.
Effectively an enemy on master has 20 health vs. expert's 15. What if you deal 10 damage though? That means it can take twice the number of hits.

Same can be applied to your health, let's say an enemy deals 10 damage, 15 on master. You've got 15 health. 1 shot on master, vs. 2 shot on expert.

Obviously it won't line up like that every time, but I'm guessing that's what makes master feel like a more significant increase in (effective) enemy damage and health.

For the most part, enemies at your level will kill you in 3-4 unblocked hits on master. So the game becomes a combination of damage mitigation in the form of strafing and blocking (and investing everything in health) as well as combat control in the form of shield bashing and power attacks. I cant imagine how you would get through the earlier parts of the game as a pure mage outside of running around like a headless chicken when ever your magicka depletes.

Yes, it makes single hit to kill harder, you also takes double damage. so if you attack three bandits on normal, you manages to snipe two, and kill the other with two hits.
Now on master your sniping just wound one bandit serious so you need an seconds shot to get him down, the two other attacks you and you need four hits to kill each of them.
This setting is much more than twice as hard.

Thanks, that's what I wanted to know. Yeah the jump to master from extreme feels way more than what this says. I tried on master and could barely kill anything and no matter how much armor on put on my guy, he would die in 2-3 hits...and sometimes in 1 hit to 2H enemies. I'm thinking master level is only for after you've maxed out your skills because I really don't see how you can play at this level normally.

it doesnt have anything to do with treasure or gold you find? For some reason I thought it did.