I am getting annoyed at the difficulty settings of this game. I am around level 25ish, and I haven't pumped any skills above a "natural" level. So my smithing is on par with my 2 handed around 75 or so, and I'm using a glass armor I just have begun to enchant.

I have made a fun char, with light armor and two-handed and then ontop of that alot of magic. Eventualy gettting silent cast, and then using destruction for traps and the fire around your char, and as ranged to pull and when needed. Alteration for defense and restoration to heal. Illusion is at 50 just from muffled, and conjuration has gone up too just from soultrap.

Anyway, I am playing on expert, and it's a decent challenge, except when I get oneshotted out of the blue. It really annoys me, I breezed through a dungeon, then at the end a deadlord, and I think okay a good fight. The dude one shots me with his shout...! and almost kills me with an arrow.

I leave the cave, and I get killed by a scavenger.... A few bandits are very dangerous. And the opposite to this is bears and trolls that are a walk in the park, and some mobs that are a decent obstacle in the light of what and where they are. I use deadly dragons mod and dragons need to be adressed and taken serious, and thats fine. A couple falmers shooting arrows are a deathtrap too.

So it's either way easy or hard in a way thats no fun, and which it is is just arbitrary out of the blue I feel.

If I lower the difficulty to adept, it's numbingly easy, and I end running through dungeons and using my stamina on my altkey. No challenge anywhere.

So why is this, that the difficulty is so badly implemented? I end up jumping from adept to expert and back in a way that ruins all immersion.

I like it like this. I hated in Oblivion where every enemy you faced would be more or less the same difficulty. Now you get a nice range of weak and strong enemies. You could try only going to low level dungeons until you level up more and then take on the harder ones.

I completely agree with you. I feel like there should be another setting between adept and expert.

But the problem is that the hard mobs are the wrong ones. Falmers, bandits and scavengers are deadly lethal. While Draug Wights and such are on par and a good fight. I agree that an endboss owning you is to be expected if you went of on your own, and that you should come back later. But it is the riff raf that's borking the difficulty level.

Never had a problem with the lesser mobs owning me. Maybe because I play as a mage?

I think it`s down to how you play. I play Master and no one `owns` me unless I just go charging into everything. I do come across some really tough enemies, but nothing that can`t be dealt with with some brains and even then I`ll leave and come back later if it really is too hard.

Same here. My first char was a sneaky blacksmith archer (Smithing and Sneak in one char, it was so easy ) and I would just run through everything getting the sneak bonus from bows (and then daggers after that, up to 30x damage and then the power attack comes in. Seriously OP). Second was a two hander, used no smithing/alchemy/enchanting, and only Orcish armour (he was an Orc). Even like this, I never met an enemy I could not beat. (All of these are on Master, anything easier is dead boring for me). Third was a mage. It was the hardest of the lot, I had to use enchanting, though I didn't use the 0% spell cost abuse. Fourth (and current) is a duel wielding Argonian. Master difficulty, modded armour/weapons equivilant to Steel, with 50 smithing (to make those) and thats it, and I still haven't found an enemy that was impossible to beat on Master.

This game needs a higher difficulty setting. Or a hardcoe setting, where one shot kills you and one shot kills the enemy. That would be fun, even if archers and two-handers would be OP.

When you enter a new area or dungeon the enemies that spawn in that area are locked to your level. If something is too tough then just leave and come back after you increase your combat skills and grab some better gear, or just hire a mercenary to help you clear it.

It's a lot like Fallout 3 was, in some ways.

It didn't matter what your skills or equipment were, if you just got caught out or did it badly...anyone could get wasted if they weren't really careful. It's perhaps less apparent in Skyrim, but it is there.

The difficulty varies so much. The end-dungeon fights are extremely hard while everything leading up to it is extremely easy.

Wait for a mod to fix the game properly, that's what I'm doing currently. Vanilla is not for me, and the bugs are starting to annoy me as well - Especially the ones that involves quests.

This.

I've now played nearly 400 hours and you learn how to deal with any encounter, to the point where you impose limits on yourself, like my 100 health points guy gets one shotted by those ebony bows, not a problem I just conjure something up to distract the Draugr while I attack. Only thing I've found which my 100 hp guy couldn't handle was this Master Volkir Vampire, damn thing was absorbing my little bit of health in no time, I just changed strategy, went and bought paralyze spell and whacked him while he was out for the count.

An example is on my first play throughs I remember coming out of the cave at the start and getting totally munched on by that group of three or four bandits that have a camp over to the west a bit. That was on novice, the other day on master with my new Nord Warrior (who does use fire spells oddly enough) breezed through them all with just flames spell without them even landing a blow on me. I presume its because now I know how the enemies will behave, so I known when to back off, when to move in to attack, when they are lining up for there power attack. I think what also makes the game a lot easier now is I know how to get straight to me favourite stone and I know which perks are actually advantageous to my character now.

Honestly the difficulty is fine, I play on master. At this difficulty though you have to dump points into health no matter what character you play otherwise the further you get into the game the more you will get 1 shot by everything (this is if you don't play with companions or summons btw). It also prohibits you from going places until you are stronger which is a good thing.