I have smithing 100, I have only around 60 in alchemy and 50 in enchanting.
Before I left whiterun I was wearing legendary dragon scale armor, heavy armor.

Now I am lvl 30, have a legendary daedric sword in main hand and an ebony legendary in my off hand, but made also by using enchanted gear to increase stats by 20% AND drinking a potion to increase stats further by 30%.
So they are not super, but they are like 50% better then normal legendary gear. Both weapons and armor.

I have done actually only like 5 quests in the main line, I have done companions, some of the Mage guild qust line, and am now on the Stormcloaks.
I have explored a TON and done a lot of random quests.

Now:

I play since around 20, genereally on Expert, but at times I need to, MUST, go down to adept.
I have a good level now at 30, nice perks, 70 in one handed and 60 in heavy armor, I have 45 in restoration and have 3 perks in it for the good stuff.
In one handed I have all the necessary perks. Im a dual wielder and have the +50% dual wield power attack perk.

Even on Expert I 1 shot alot of mobs. But once in a while, I come across bandit leaders that just completely anihilate me, on Expert, I manage to take them anyway after an extremly tough fight.
Doing this on Mastery, not a clue how.

But now is the big how the heck:

Have you guys on Mastery EVER faced an Elder Dragon?

I faced one. And I can tell you, that on Expert, this is the scenario:
I have 200 hitpoints. I drank a 25% fire resist potion (they breathe fire or frost), luckily he did fire, AND I went into berzerker rage, so I take 50% damage and do twice as much damage, for 1 minute.

The first time I did this, he one shotted me, through fire resist and above all, my zerker rage. Roughly calculated, he did a fire breath and hit me for over 500 damage in 1 second.
Thats only on expert.
Now, I tried him again after a load...I managed to get onhim, IN zerker rage...looool..with my damage I generally 1 shot most things, I kill blood dragons in 2 hits on expert in zerker rage.
I hit the Elder Dragon. His Hitpoints bar..........It moved. But thats it...It moved, a little.

I have also met humanoids in random dungouns that is putting even frost dragons to the utter test.

To all the kids out there that is playing on mastery and complaining this game is too easy.
You are either low level or simply have not faced any hard enemies.
OR, you are archers abusing the OP ranged archery damage and not needing to go toe to toe with some of the tough opponents in this game.
I have had bandit bosses do more then 400 damage to me in 1 hit on Expert.


On Adept. At my lvl, just lvl 30. Elder dragons and Frost dragons will do roughly 150 hp per breath. Thats on Adept.
Some of the tougher bandit bosses, ON Adept, will hit you for around 100-120 hp per swing.

This game when you face some of its tougher encounters is far from too easy.
And Im a rather overpowered character, I just have not invested much in enchantment, but I have a stockpile of potions and I have insane armor and weapons for my level. (70+ base damage on my 1h swords, at lvl 30 I think is pretty good. Add in power attack perks from dual wield. My power attacks add another 75% damage to that mix, 50% from dual wield last perk).

I love skyrim, its the best RPG ever made, and I thought Dark Souls was to be that, but thats the 2nd one. I have played every RPG out there, but Skyrim with its athmosphere, musing and pulse, is amazing.
Above all, you must play it again to check the other classes. Not to speak of, there is no way you will explore all content with one character unless you want to spend 500 hours playing, not to mention, you CANT....for those quests where you choose sides.

There is so much content in there.

For those new, I would say though, that Adept is a perfect difficulty setting for new players and those not spending time for secondary skills.
But for those semi power leveling their skills such as smithing etc, but keeping combat arts farily up to date, Expert is perfect for the easy and mediocre encounters. But even Expert is close to impossible as melee for the very tough encounters.
Adept can kick your [censored] to moon sometimes, and I just love that fact.

All the kids saying Master is too easy must play another game, or abuse archery, or just spam 0 mana cost destruction spells and kiting for 15 minutes. Nothing is hard there.
But when you meat just frost casters in the wild that hits with the frost lances for 150 hp per hit on Expert....

I tried on Mastery earlier but normal bandids can 1 shoot you and its just redicilous. Expert is perfect but again, too hard vs some encounters unless you are ranged.

Im playing on Master and I'm level 23 havent met any real challenge at all. FYI not abusing enchanting,smithing,alchemy or ranged. The game is just not that hard nor that easy for me at the moment, but in the middle.

PS: It is Master not Mastery

lvl 50, played on mastery the whole game. No challenge except for a randomly overpowered forsworn guy who did a powerattack and i died instantly. Im a warrior and the only difficult thing to fight is an ancient dragon.

I have 500 health and an ancient dragons full breath attack does 300 and their bite does like 50 because my armor is like 900

Is this how you talk to people in real life? O'doyle rules,...

-100% magicka cost to destruction school = Elder Dragons on master difficulty annihilated
mages are sooo underpowered

Pretty sure most of the people playing on Master have cheated in some way to get uber stuff. If not, then I have a right to assume they are lying and nothing else.

Playing as a Mage on adept at the moment, and unless I'm getting attacked with magic I have to make sure I don't get hit by anything that is on the boss monster level. But that's how mages should be.

I don't see how you can kill ancient or elder dragons on master unless you are purely tank built.

lol himntor you're a laugh riot you know that. i started on Master and have played Master the entire time, it is difficult, but not impossible for my assassin. and no i havn't cheated once.

Greatest use of an Adam Sandler film quote of the week. :laugh:

I'm on adept personally, I die quite a bit, think I'd get too frustrated if I had it any harder.

Lvl 51, maxed out restoration, heavy armor, one handed and alteration as 'combat skills'.
I havent exploited the armor crafting at all so just running with legendary dragon plate (i refuse to buy mats for daedric armor to have something to look forward to and im gathering mats 'old school style')
So i have 577 armor and still using a ebonic legendary sword that does 69 dmg with no enchants.
And 110% magic resistance (otar + breton + lord stone + alteration perks) , even without being a breton and the alteration perks it's easy to obtain it with random resist gear + potions that u find.

Recently fought dragonpriest and elder dragon (and later two elder dragons) at the same time and it was a joke, ofc elder dragons bite's are quite nasty but u can totally avoid them hence making the dragon breath instead of bite and for me that's awesome since it barely does any dmg.

So your point being ?
Yes im playing on master, and yes it's easy..
Now thou shall bow before me as i am your master.

I wonder who's gonna take that last sentence seriously, but anyway im getting tired of ppl thinking so highly of themselfs that no one can possibly be better at gaming then them so they must create post that 'people playing on master are lying or exploiting'. :facepalm:

It's the internet, so I estimate:

20% of the guys "playing on master its easy lulz" have in actual fact never changed the difficulty from adept.

15% of the people stating "lol master is easy I'm OP" are playing on master, and have a stock of 50 potions which they use in between quick saving, taking a swing, quick saving, dying and reloading.

5% of the lads "lol @ master difficulty I play dead is dead" are legit, but since they're used to 360 noscopeing, knifing and teabagging everyone online Skyrim is geniunly easy by comparison.

50% of posters stating master difficulty is a joke exploit crafting proffessions, failing that they abuse the AI.

The remaining 10% just exploit shadow warrior and let Shadowmere/summons/companions do the work while they sit back and either pincushion targets with arrows or smash in 30x sneak attacks with flawless mehrunes razors.

People saying that master is easy are just boasting really... i tried it, with not item abuse, you get murdered right from the start.

Armor does not effect breaths, at all, so then you have enchanting apart from your 100 black smithing.
Of course you have 100 enchanting and 100 smithing and have the best enchants and thinking its not hard.

You cant get 900 armor unless you have 100 smithing, and you need super enchanted gear to make better smiths, and you need an extremly potent potion to give you better, and even then, getting 900 armor is almost impossible.

So, you have powereleveled your character to oblivian and destroyed the game through abuse of secondary skills.
Of course its easy.

You have what, a permanent 50% fire and frost resistance? You forgot to mention that.

The game is easy for every one that have maxed out 2 or more of the secondary skills.
I have smithing maxed out, but I will NOT use enchanting too much and alchemy mainly for health pots.
Or you destroy the game, just like you.

Don't be stupid ... if you can't handle master all you have to do is take a companion with you and the game suddenly became adept, no reason to change the difficulty itself. As for the op ... war at level 30 with 200 hp ... nothing more to say.

Cause the clowns bragging about "Master level" never leave the Riverwood/Whiterun area where the bunny enemies are at.

if you power leveled blacksmith and other crafting skills up so fast, you are probably facing scaling problems. had you invested in armor skills and weapon skills as well, you might have an easier time

It's not easy ... but you don't have to exploit anything to do master.

But he is absolutely right.

Only way to play on mastery is 3 ways:

Play destruction mage with 90 to 100% less mana cost on spells.

Play a stealthy archer with max archery perks but still requires you to have smithing and enchanting.

Play a malee with max smithing, max enchanting and a ton in alchemy, or find the black smith potions.

Anyone that abuses the heck out of the system can come out there.

Playing on Mastery with just 1 or 2 semi decent secondary skills and not fully enchanted etc, and you will not survive. Simple as.

So stop sending these false messages around and if its so eays, list your skills and your level, and from that we can figure out how you play.

Personally, the Gamebryo engine just makes for a genuinely simple and easy combat system (Does that make me a 5% for skill, or a 50% for AI exploits? I mean, the AI practically exploits itself).

I play the game on novice because games should not be frustrating.

Still it's pretty anoying getting 1-shoted by death animations even from normal ennemies e.e i mean come on now...

Yar! We be lurkin in a sinking thread!

There is such a thing as "player skill" which a lot of people don't seem to take into account. I'm probably a bit OP for my level combat wise but since I'm a rubbish player I still get a challenge from adept.

first : the armor "exploit" how some call it does not give you ANY advantage if wearing deadric already. it only buffs your dmg up there is no exploit in it. what is overpowered is ENTCHANTING this is the strongest skill three out of ALL even without smithing/alchemey AT ALL you can have ZERO manacost cap armor cap resist and 160% more weapon dmg ALL with ONLY this ONE PERK THREE there is no exploit in it. entchanting is just to strong in itself. it does not matter if the weapon you wear deals 300 dmg or 500 dmg. both will have the same result : one shots even on master.

second : if bethesda does not patch this with the next update IT IS ITENDED.

third : to the OP : go get yourself 85% magic resist and LAUGH at elder dragons EVEN on master. the reason he killed you is because 25% fire resist and only 200 hitpoints is NOTHING.

fourth : with 500 dmg per weapon (dw dmg over 1000) cap armor rating (anything above 600 will do.) and 85% magic resist you are pretty much invisible even on master diff. this game is even easier than oblivion was. people who say skyrim is hard have no clue about the series that is all. stop wanting even more ezmode this only leads to game dumping down.

I don't get one shotted by normal, but yeah ... some one shots are a bit ridiculous. The statement however holds ... you can play master without exploits or companions. It can be very flustrating sometimes, but it is doable. Ppl who say it is not simply don't have the patience to learn how to do it.