These tweaks are best used in a new game. But, should offer a good challenge for those who think Skyrim is too easy. This is mostly for PC users, however.

The details of the challenge are below;

-Expert Difficulty (no changing it)

Then...

-Enter these into the console"

player.forceav healrate 0 (this makes health act like how it does in Oblivion (and Morrowind? Don't remember. No more regeneration)
player.forceav magickarate 2
player.forceav staminarate 4

player.forceav health 50
player.forceav magicka 80
player.forceav stamina 50

-No fast travel, but you may use the caravan service located out of major towns

-No "Waiting", but you may sleep.

-You cannot buy materials for crafting, if you do decide to craft- you must gather everything yourself. This also means you cannot buy soul gems.

-When you die. You're dead.

But yes, this makes it rather fun and challenging. Makes dragon fights way harder, too...feel more like dragon fights. Of course, I know this won't be suited for everyone...cause everyone likes to play different

And if you want a couple immersion/roleplay rules...which will end up coming as a mod for PC, but till then...

1. Must eat and drink in the morning, afternoon and evening. Take food and drink(s) with you into caves/dungeons! This makes food quite a bit more useful
2. 6 hours of sleep a day, one day a week can be missed. This won't count in caves/dungeons, but your character will be very tired after a dungeon experience and will need his sleep.

One Day without to eat anything (or 2) is okay.

50 hp? Any 2-h wielding bandit will 1 hit you... Tbh thats not alot of fun

Most people complaining about it being easy are either A. Abusing crafting or B. Abusing sneak and/or summoning mechanics.

The most disappointing thing about master for me is that summons and NPC companions get the HP buff from master and don't take extra damage on master, so any build that relies on them for tanking is essentially playing the game on adept.

I'm level 15 and 100 Health. Almost everything oneshots me.

No fast travel just adds lots of boring travel, due to how many quests have you go back and forth large distances. They designed the quests under the assumption players would have and use fast travel, pretty obviously.

Also health regeneration doesn't seem to have a significant effect on combat difficulty. Although I suppose I use restoration so I've always had a superior method of restoring health.

Honestly this wouldn't make the game harder than Master though, I play on expert with no armor, no smithing, no alchemy, currently no enchanting and haven't died yet @ level 25 right now. Obviously it'll favor certain skills and spells w/no death though. Getting invisibility(and calm/pacify), become ethereal, and avoid death for example would be obvious choices. So would using summons. Going melee would be inadvisable.

The problem with the game's challenge is so many things can be exploited, the AI is so easy to abuse, and you really have to self impose a great number of limits and it just doesn't feel like you're playing the game naturally. It's not something that can be fixed with things like "Master difficulty+dead is dead+no fast travel" and so on.

Hehe nice, I actually play like this except for the console commands. I find 50HP would make you get one shotted by many many things.

The console commands are probably too much for most people, but they still add a lot of challenge if you find the game too easy. I find it requires a bit more thought before combat, but I can see why most wouldn't like that playstyle. It does make it so a lot of things kill you really quick.

As for Master, while adding challenge too...it felt it made things more tedious than anything. But that is just personal. I found expert to be a nice medium of adept and master. Though yeah, if you abuse the crafting features...it kind of takes out the challenge completely. Which is a shame, as I personally love crafting and stealth and what not.

i actually do alot of that already. thanks tons for the console commands to stop health regen ive been wanting to disable those forever. until a decent hunger/thirst/sleep mod is released im forced to "pretend" that i need to do that stuff. im not sadistic enough to lower my stats to your levels though. LOL i like the carriages alot and im planning on adding them to more locations once the CK is released.

@gomer. i completely agree with summons and followers turning into bulletsponges on higher difficulty levels if you get them at a high level. i wish they had adjustments for companions because even if i give them middle range armor such as orcish or dwarven they still do much better than a similarly equipped bandit or thief mob, atronachs die pretty easily though. this assumes that i get them at higher levels though, whenever ive gotten them at lower levels i end up having to constantly babysit them cause they have a tendency to run right into the middle of a battle and get themselves surrounded. as for playstyles though i have to disagree. even if i dont use invisie, summons or followers i can still wreak havoc with my dual wielding builds which is why i know longer using them at least until a mod comes out that nerfs it a bit.

im not sure how you abuse sneak? sneak is alot harder than in oblivion by far. i dont see it get really good until at least it hits 80 and above. any lower than that and im just as likely to get spotted as not.

50hp? Dumb. In a dead is dead game u would be restarting every 10-20mins.

It does make you die fast, that is for sure...at least till you get some levels. I didn't find it too bad, but that is just me. I think the biggest thing is dragon fights are actually challenging with this (at least for me they are), otherwise they feel too easy.

Not like ALL the rules here need to be followed. A lot of this is mostly for those who complain the game is too easy...but some of that is probably due to if the person has max crafting or not.

Of course, if anything like OOO comes out...these are kind of nulled. But that won't be for a while, and the creation kit isn't even out until next year.

In any case, it feels like difficulty isn't really balanced I feel...adept feels too easy (with my test level 20 char, some crafting, mostly magic), and suddenly it feels too hard in one battle. Expert seems well, normal to me and master isn't for me.

Of course, everyones experiences are different...but until OOO (or something similar) comes out, it feels like difficulty fluctuates a lot and not balanced at all (even without crafting of any sort). I think really the biggest problem and why I made these changes is that dragons felt way too easy and not really the "big bad boss" that all the NPCs make them out to be...but yeah, normal battles become a lot harder too. I personally would rather have actually challenging dragons. But that is just my experience.

Of course, it is a lot better than Oblivion...Oblivion on default difficulty I pwned the entire oblivion gates at level 1 (due to how scaling worked) and never even leveled. OOO did change that, but Skyrim difficulty compared to Oblivion difficulty (both without gameplay mods or any changes) is still much improved.

Again, like I said in original post...I expect most people won't like these changes. But I put this up for those "few" or how many do or at least want to try it out. Or at least try some of these "rules".

I ended up staying with health 100, but lowered magicka and stamina like mentioned. Actually a nice challenge on expert and not frustrating...I soon realized 50 health with a dead is dead character...doesn't last long but at a 100 health with the other two attributes lowered, its actually a lot better. Along with the other rulesets.

50 health?

Riiight.. So when a bandit 1-hits you with an iron sword, what do you do against a dragon?

Well it was fine on my test character. But for a dead is dead character or just a main or even a new character in general, it was actually rather...I remade really quick So like I mentioned shortly before you posted, I kept health at 100 (but lowered the other two stats) and going with the other rule sets I came up with.