» Sun Dec 11, 2011 9:17 pm
Level scaling is not nearly as ingrained in everything you do as it was in Oblivion. In my old game, I didn't run into snow saber cats until level 20. I'm running into snow saber cats at level 3 on the islands near Winterhold. (Fortunately, cats hate water, and I can just stand in waist-deep arctic water with ice flows floating by forever without getting hypothermia while summoning more fire atronachs.)
I wouldn't worry about not using magic that is actually useful in combat just because you don't want to level up. Maybe hold off on smithing or alchemy until you're ready to really use it, but go for the things that are actually useful in combat, and play how you like, not how you are worried will make you have the best stats. Pretty much everything is broken at the high-end, anyway, because Bethesda can't balance games to save its life.