Ok folks I've started a few characters on Adept and it was way to easy. So I've boosted up to Expert for most of my plays now. Going sword and board warrior.

First started off was challenging on fights especially boss fights, but still doable and fairly easy. Getting past level 10 now and starting to get my [censored] handed to me quite a bit. Having to chug potions quite a bit. Blocking helps but my life still goes down fast, and gods forbid I run into a mage or vampire.

Wearing steel armor and orcish sword. Try to block on most fights and do power attacks when I get an opening. Haven't started Smithing yet was putting it off until later. Is this normal? What am I doing wrong? Any tips or just buy more potions?

Training smithing/enchanting/alchemy really helps. Beefing up your gear and giving you new abilities. Are you also incorporating shouts, and if need be, range/magic? Like oak/stone/ebonyflesh for better armor? Or just straight warrior?

I've only ever played the game on master and learned the hard way. I never even tried lower difficulty setting. Here are my advice to play a warrior, but I've no pretention that it is the best or only way to succed.

First, you REALLY want to do smithing, and enchanting to some degree to protect yourself against magic. The increased damage and armor you get from smithing really help

Second : If you are really having trouble with mage, create a breton warrior. Might seem counter intuitive, but man, does that 25% resist magic save you lots of troubles.

Third : Use a follower. Trick the monster in aggroing your follower, then unleash hell. Your followers can take a much more severe beating than you. As warrior, I tend to use 2 handed weapons, letting my follower get the aggro, and THEN start hacking away.

Fourth : Do like my first character, when I was learning to play, and abuse sneak and the backstab perk. Ok scratch that one, you ain't a warrior no more

Doing pure warrior, no magic. Only have the first two dragon shouts so far. I'm also not really into using followers, prefer to do most things alone.

Was gonna put off smithing until later and powerlevel it, but I guess I'll go ahead and start now. That should help. Might even do some light enchaning.

Thanks for the advice.

You're doing well by blocking, but maybe consider blocking as not a defense so much as an offense -- bash the living crap outta the bad guys! Do not wait for an opening, my friend -- make an opening... bash, slice, slice, bash, slice, slice... be offensive until you run out of stamina, and then disengage for a moment to recharge. DO NOT stand in harm's way and expect your defense to keep you going -- move it! Consider your armor as backup for when you slip up and let yourself get hit.

-Loth

PS perking the block tree will help you tremendously. Get Quick Reflexes and both the left and right side of the tree ASAP when it becomes available. Once you have elemental protection, you will be able to tackle dragons and mages with much less worry. Also, another note about bashing: bashing with 2H weapons instead of shields does a bunch more damage. I know you are playing sword and board, but FYI.

I think a warrior on a high difficulty is challenging because you have to take things head on. If you're a ranger/lurker (like me) then you can outsmart the game. Keep at it though, and for the record going at a high difficulty at a low level is pretty Chuck Norris

With all if my higher difficulty characters the first 25 levels have always been rough. You just need to avoid certain places until you're strong enough to tackle them. Not like Adept where you can do anything at any time.

eat vegetable soup and shield bash foes to oblivion and back. you dont need any alchemy/smithing/enchanting even in master difficulty you just need to know important locations and items.

Ok cool, just making sure I wasn't doing it wrong.
Was having trouble finding stuff to fight, then went to main quest location and all the draug are level one? o.O Oh well free skillups!

I've got three characters running so far.

My first one is a Level 43 Dark Elf who is now sort of a jack-of-all trades, but started out focusing mainly on archery. The second is a Level 18 Breton mage, and the third is a Level 8 Orc warrior. One thing I've noticed with the first two is that the enemies take a big step up in their level when you hit 10 or 11 while you're still gradually grinding away. This results in hitting a hump at this level that continues until you start getting into the high teens, when you start to catch back up again. The next enemy leveling thresholds don't seem to be as steep a jump as that first one.

My mage had to start avoiding a fair number of battles once she hit Level 10 or 11, but now seems to be hitting her stride again and is engaging in more and more battles that she was running away from. My Orc warrior is getting near 10 and is starting to feel a bit cocky - I suspect he's going to get some of that attitude knocked out of him pretty soon.