How does everyone find the right difficulty balance on a play through. I have just got a new character to level 19 and am finding that Im very op now. I use bows almost exclusively and my level is now 60, I also have a very high sneak ( 63 I think ).

I am playing through on adept and am playing " when your dead your dead " and have obviously survived up to this point. Does anyone change their difficulty as they play? It just doesnt feel right to me to do that.

I want a challenge where I am afraid to tackle certain dungeons but I just seem to be progressing above the scaling at this point. Just did the Haldir dungeon and 3 shotted him with a dwarven bow and dwarven arrows.

Does anyone use any tips or tricks to combat the scaling?

I played a Master character up to 53, at which point they pretty much beat everything anyway. But when they were low level, I still had to avoid certain fights. Such as Thalmor patrols. It was frustrating, sneaking around Skyrim to avoid certain death.

Playing a new character @ Expert. I can at last (barely) kill DB Assassins while level is still single-digit, but Thalmor patrols are still a bit much.

Expert seems about right, for me. When I come along to wanting to explore questlines, I'm more interested in story than indulging damage-sponges.

In the wild, I don't mind having Bears being a bit tougher. I've actually eschewed encounters with many of them, so far.

Thats the other crazy thing. I get more of a challenge from a bear than I do from a dungeon full of bandits or Draugr, which seems rather silly.

It depends for roleplaying I usually go with expert but for epic battles with characters that I'm not really roleplaying to much then legendary. For pure mage characters then adept or maybe even lower,I would say that for a warrior character adept is to low a difficulty as you very soon become OP even without crafting.

Difficulty balance should really be aimedat the middle of the range of difficulties that you come up against. Challenges range from very easy to very difficult so getting somewhere in upper-middle ability, seems about right, if you can.

It's too easy to get too powerful, and like you say, it doesn't seem right that you need to readjust your strenght to keep the balance. I do though, for one I do not take potions during combat or any other easy measures to win, if it's not a challenge it gets boring. I just use modest weaponry as well, do not have a high health, but do have high stamina for sprinting and moving about which makes tactical play more interesting. I do not perk to gain fighting strength but rather the ability do do things. Level 58 on adept and I can still get some good challenges, not many though.

I'm not sure that I want to suddenly make lower challenges a lot more difficult, I'm really after an interesting play of any situation, rather than suddenly having a mud crab a real challenge. To me that would lose my interest. I like a more tactical play to keep it interesting. Have you tried using just sneak and noise distraction to reach your objective, it can be more of an interesting challenge, and quite amusing sometimes as well.

Humm high stamina low health sounds interesting and would fit better with roleplay I might give it a try.

I have to admit to using health potions during fights. Perhaps my challenge lies in not doing that very thing.

Yeah I stopped using health potions during combat quite some time ago as with enough of them a dagger and no armour you can take on and kill even the most badass boss with ease.

With regards to potions though, if you run from a fight and lose agro, I take it then you would allow yourself to use a potion?

Yeah if you can hide behind a rock then a swig on a potion is ok as is restoration ( if your character is a mage ) as that happens in real time. I don't really know why they didn't make potion swigging real time as it would of been so much better.

Difficulty is something you have to play around with to figure out where you're most comfortable on the spectrum. A lot of my characters have varied difficulties, mainly because I don't always like playing the uninformed novice, or the obscenely overpowered mage/warrior. It also depends largely on how you plan to play -- my warriors stopped improving armors and weapons via Smithing ages ago and find that there is still some challenge to be had at Expert/Master even at higher levels; likewise, my Destruction mages find Adept> to be perfectly fine for providing interesting confrontations with varied results.

Only two of my characters have tasted Legendary difficulty, both of which were level 60+ and could afford to undertake extreme challenges while still meeting success.

I have to agree, potions in real time would have been perfect.