Has anyone else noticed that playing on Master difficulty levels you up really fast? I'm barely halfway through my second dungeon (Bleak Falls Barrow-- my first was that bandit mine on the way to Riverwood from Helgen) and I'm already level 9.

Twas the same in New Vegas. If you play on a higher difficulty you get more xp so to speak.

Another useless hidden feature should it be true. Master is supposed to be more difficult. Why does it need to be more rewarding?

I'm not sure I level faster, but I definitely level differently. My main weapon skill rises much faster (enemies have more health so I use it more), while Block/HA are slower (I die too quickly if I don't interrupt attacks so I use get hit/block a lot less).

It makes perfect sense, things are harder to kill thus you have to swing a weapon at it more, fire more arrows or cast more magic at it in order to kill it.

It makes sense that you would level up faster. Level ups, with combat in mind, is based on how many times you hit an opponent and how many times you are hit. So, Armor and Attack Skills will level up more for any given combat at Master vs say Adept.

I even do this in a different way by equiping a weak weapon so I have to hit the enemy more. It is about the only way to level up from 90/95 to 100 for say Two Handed in a reasonable amount of time.

The difficulty in the game doesn't make it harder. All it does is give enemies more health and do more damage. Thus they take longer to kill so you get more points for using your skills. It's not like it makes the NPC's smarter or anything. Personally I prefer easier modes then master, expert depending on the class.

^This- AFAIK there is not a hidden modifier, and empirical evidence doesn't lead me to believe there is one either.
Spider on normal takes 3 fireballs- skill increase 3. Spider on master takes 10 fireballs- skill increase 10.

In fallout there was a modifier, but it wasn't hidden and we could see it giving us extra exp. In that game it is true hard difficulty quickly made things easier cuz you could grab levels quickly.

This does not make sense to me. It is like 2 steps forward and one step back when you could have gone just one step.

From an immersion point of view can I argue that someone who is a master has got a lot more experience and more knowledge, and therefore less to learn and consequently will learn less. It is why skills increase slower the higher they get. So why an opposite logic here?

Makes no sense.

Remember, in Fallout, you got experience for doing quests, not for doing things.

I don't know myself if there should be a modifier for the difficulty levels or not. Then again, I never change my difficulty globally. I change it by character choice and role, which makes more sense to me as this is a Role Playing Game.

I added a mod that makes sneaking harder, by established LOS basically nullifying any previous stealth bonus, so I had to be really sneaky, which meant Sneak was up to 100 by level 15, I wasn't even doing the TGQ!

That's because in Master you're generally obliged to land more hits and take more hits than on any other difficulty. As with all previous Bethesda titles: difficulty just changes the numbers.

Yeah I myself havent done that much on master and im level 20.

No idea since i never tryed expert and adept. Master is most fun difficulty to play especially if you play without overpowered abilities like conjuration/ench/smith. But leveling in Skyrim is ALOT faster compare to Oblivion, and i like because i have more then 5 characters

People say Conjuration is most powerful, but this one knows that not one, nor many can stand up to a Master of Illusion!

I find that Offensive skills level up much faster because of the 50% damage penalty the player suffers from on Master (As opposed to Adept)

On the flip side, Defensive (Particularly Armor and block skills) level up slower, because each hit, especially by near-level enemies is incredibly dangerous. A Marauder's Warhammer power attack at Level 24 is Liable to one-shot a player who had selected Health for 75% (280Health) of their level-up bonuses.



Amen, I'm taking my Nightblade through Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood right now, I finally got expert spells and it's a little sad. About the only creatures that stand a chance are Falmer and some Automatons (Master class Centurions and Spheres) since they are too high level to frenzy or fear without Vampirism and/or Alchemy abuse.

And whatever I can't use Illusion on, I can sneak attack. Though, when my cover is blown (Particularly against falmer which don't respond to Invisibility) it can get pretty nasty. Good thing the Nightingale blade has that absorb HP effect.

You'll level up faster at lower levels regardless of difficulty. In the beginning, it's the skill increases that really boost your main level. Once you've mastered, or gotten more skills up to 100, then the speed of your level-ups will slow. The more skills mastered, the slower the blue bar will move.

As to beastie toughness, I just didn't see any difference, whether on Adept, or Master. I switched from Adept to Master around lvl 20, and am currently halfway to lvl 67. Not tougher per say, but a whole lot more of them. Falmer fights used to see 1-3 of them. Now, you may have 10-12 coming at you. Same with Cave Bears--1-2 has been swapped out for 6 or more at one time. One on one however, they die just as fast.