I've been waiting for a bundled edition for a while now and tomorrow am going to get the game. Super excited! i played Morrowind and Oblivion and from what I read Skyrim is epic!

Anyways..... I had a couple of questions I wanted to put out there. First of, how is Skyrim compared to Oblivion in terms of level scaling? Did they do a better job this time around?

Secondly, I enjoy a good challenge. I find that many games, beyond a certain point, things start to get easy and unchallenging. Oblivion, however, was extremely difficult and you had to power game if you put the difficulty slider all the way to the right. I read various opinions but to my understanding, master difficulty is doable and one has to be patient. My impression of legendary is that you have to power game in order to progress. I don't mind spending time building my character up - it makes it more rewarding. However, if on legendary a sewer rat can instakill me, well, I guess legendary isn't for me then.

Thoughts/comments on these two questions?

P.S.

I would like to start playing master or legendary from the start to the very end.

Scaling is better. It's more a cross between Morrowind and Oblivion. Most enemies will scale with you till level ~ 50. Creatures don't. A troll met a level one will be the same as a troll met at level 81. If you're level 1 and see a troll, run as fast as your little legs can take you.

You don't need to power game at all, even on legendary. You'll get beat up a lot early on. End game is pretty smooth on legendary until you run into a particularly hard dungeon or get too sure of yourself. By then, the occasional death is quite refreshing.

I have yet to try Legendary, don't have Update 1.9 yet.

but I'm always on Master, and it's quite doable. you have to use tactics early on if you want to survive though, and make use of all your resources.

Thanks for the feedback. My playing style is warrior/archer with spell assist. I like to weaken enemies from afar and engage in melee when I have too.