Hello,

I thought I would go back to Skyrim, since I am out of new games to play. After playing for an hour or two yesterday, I remember what I didn't like about it. I die too easy!

My guy is level 18 -- but it seems like all the quests I have are way too overpowered for him, I die really easily and have to use a lot of heal potions just to make it through fights that seem like they are supposed to be like 'entry-level'.

Is there an overall difficulty level I should set to make it easier? Or do I just need to spend more time leveling up in lesser-difficulty dungeons?

If I was going to do the latter, is there any way to tell how easy or hard a particular quest is going to be? It's just not any fun trekking all over the world to get to these places only to have my ass kicked as soon as I walk in the door.

Thanks for any advice,

B

You need better weapons, better armor, decent magic resistance, better strategy.

Or lowering the difficulty works too...

I would explore the world first and do a lot of quest free adventuring in dungeons etc to build up your skills. You could also try hiring on a companion or helping out a npc who in turn might become available as a companion.

I find that I had more trouble with a caster type than I did an assassin, which I suppose that is obviously going to be the case since assassins sneak around. As a caster, I found it made the fights easier in the beginning rather than to dual cast destruction spells, to always keep a restoration spell handy.

If you're not a magic wielding class, carry around plenty of health potions.

I've finally reached level 35 on my assassin and 28ish on my caster, one thing I can say is the fights get tougher the more you progress, at least in my experience.

It shouldn't matter what dungeon you go down (which is kind of lame, it should) the world basically levels with you. You must have it on a hard difficulty, I play on the default difficulty and I one hit kill practically everyone and rarely go close to dieing despite not wearing armour and never levelling up health. This isn't a brag there's just no way we're talking about the same difficulty setting.

I don't mind the one hit kills since it adds realism for me but I do have to turn up the difficulty when fighting the Draugr. They are just too bad a** looking not to be dangerous at any level. I still find plenty of things that will kill me on the default settings so some times I will just leave the slider alone and enjoy seeing things get tough. Saber cats are a heart leaping fright from the get go. I usually have to apply some poisons on my weapons and drink down a health potion or two as I do my best to make the battle end quickly.

How did you get to Level 18? Making potions and enchantments? Fighting and Exploring? Buying and Selling? If you did some grinding on Crafting and non combat skills, then the game will level up beyond what you can handle.

Otherwise, you need tactics, move around during combat, get in close to strike, move back to block. Go side to side to dodge.

Thanks for the replies -- so there is a difficulty setting? Where do you set that, on Xbox 360?

I didn't really do any crafting or making anything, buying or selling. Just fighting and exploring. But I think probably at some point I started just going after the main storyline quests. Maybe I was meant to do more screwing around and non-story stuff.

B

Changing the difficulty should be a last resort, though there's no shame in it if you need to ease into the mechanics or haven't developed the motor reflexes that come with two decades worth of gaming-related muscle memory. The latter is something most veteran gamers take for granted, but think of it in the same terms as when you learn how to type. You know what you should be doing, you know what you need to do, but it still takes a ton of practice.

In the options menu probably under gameplay.

Im on PS3 so dont know the keys for xbox, but if you google it, you can find ti.
Which skills is your character focusing on?
These are my suggestions, but bear in mind that there is no one right way to play. It is a good idea to focus on less than 6 skills. General advice is that a magic using character is more difficult. For this reason, i went with an archer who sneaks and uses light armor and 1 handed (if the enemies get close) as my first character and I increased almost all in health. Focus on combat skills first - dont do alot of crafting early on or you level up with out the skills to fight enemies. Pick light OR heavy armour, then wear the highest rating gear you find of the type you chose. I'm not a good melee fighter (in any game), but being a sneak archer is arguably over powered so that is a good choice if you don't like melee fighting. After getting combat skills up, I brought in smithing and enchanting to bring up the protection of my armour and weapon power.
A follower is a great help (invaluable I found). The guy who teaches you archery in Riverwood was good for a start. Then I had Marcurio, the mercinary in the Bee and Bard in Riften - best 500 septims I ever spent. I died a lot to start with. Just remember to save often enough that if you do die, it won't be too annoying losing all the progress made. Now I hardly ever die. So just keep trying!

Why should it be the last resort? It should be the first option. In fact he should set it to the absolute easiest difficulty, and then feel where to go from there. You say there's no shame in it, which there ofcourse definitely isn't, but you seem to deep down think there is shame in it. The way the difficulty settings are in this game there's no connection between the difficulty you play on and your motor reflexes or how good you are at the game at all. It's simply a matter of how you prefer the game to play. I'm great at cod and fifa and etc etc, when I play online I rarely lose and I think that says a lot about my reflexes with a control pad, and it makes sense since I've been playing games since the 80s as a 3 year old. I remember for the tony hawk 2 demo on ps1 there was a big competition to get high scores, I never entered into but I remember when the winners were announced I would have easily won for my country (australia) and been up amongst the best in the world. I remember the record for australia was something like 3.5 million and the world's best was 7 million and I frequently got between 5 and 6 million. So my motor reflexes on the control pad are extremely good. However, in skyrim I prefer the game on adept or apprentice, and I'd sooner go novice than higher than adept, simply because I believe the game is silly at higher difficulties, not because I'll die but because I'll be slugging away on some nobody bandit for way too long for someone who is supposed to be a legendary hero. How tough am I if I can bash someone of the head with a warhammer and they're seemingly unaffected? To me that just spoils the immersion and the roleplay, the game doesn't call on better motor reflexes at higher difficulty, it calls on more grinding and less regard for realism.

It should be the last resort because changing the difficulty to easy allows players to make repeated tactical and logistical errors without consequence. You won't learn if everything falls over as soon as you touch it. You will learn if storming into a camp gets you killed promptly and you're forced to come up with a different plan.

First off welcome to the forums

Now to your problem.What kind of character are you playing?What are the skills you use most?What perks are you taking?And are you putting any points into health when you level up?

Any kind of character can work in Skyrim but some are a little harder to get going than others.

Without knowing anything about your play style or your character then lowering the difficulty level is the best answer I can give.

Enemies level up with your character in Skyrim,this means you have to level up with them as you level.

Warriors need to level up and perk there main weapon type and there main defense type.

Mages should stick with just a few primary magick skills at first until they can start to hold there own.

Stealth characters need to get good at sneaking and there primary means of attack.

Warriors are the easiest in my opinion because they tend to have a very good defense where as mages and stealth characters can have devastating attacks but little defense.

Stay away from two-handed bandit chiefs they are bad asses at that level.Enemy mages can also be very powerfull enemies without some sort of magick defense such as the Lord or Atronach standing stones.

You said you have been mostly adventuring but one of the crafting skills can be very helpful.

Smithing helps a warrior make and improve there weapons and armor.

Enchanting can help mages cast more spells with less magick.

And alchemy is my favorite and potentially the most powerfull,it can help a stealth character kill with not only powerfull poisons but with fortify skill potions as well.

But the most important thing is if its not fun then your doing something wrong.Lowering the difficulty is allways a good thing to do in that case.

I was about to type something about it being easy unless you're playing on legendary, but you're right, over two decades of gaming makes a lot of games easy for me with a little practice.

OP, What kind of enemies are causing problems? melee or magic? average bandits or their leaders? dragons and giants? Each type is different. Also, smithing your own weapons and armor help tremendously (understatement of the year eh?).

http://t3ak.roblox.com/c5f60a5d46d0ffeb636deec73d204009

But anyway, I would suggest getting better stuff, fighting more often to level up and lowering the difficulty a little to make sure the deaths aren't overwhelming.

Because the game is designed to be played on adept. Once you lower the difficulty, you compromise the design of the game.

Like I said, there's no shame in it but defaulting to an easier difficulty exists only if there's no other way for you to enjoy yourself. The first option should be "Learn the game"...

I'm guessing bsabiston made the mistake of spreading, focusing on too many skills, wasting perks instead of building a focused build. Try this. Say you are building a warrior. Main skills are one handed, block, heavy armor with minor skills smithing and archery.

Just throwing my opinion out there...

I'm also relatively new to Skyrim, and yes I had difficult battles as well on earlier levels. I had one helluva time in this cave/dungeon area called Ansilvund (southeast of Kynesgrove, I believe). I won't go into too much detail and ruin it for the original poster, but lets just say there were 3 tough enemies at the end. I was at about a Level 7 with my Argonian character. Not sure if race matters, but I was focusing on archery, had little to no magic spells, and my weapons literally couldn't have been stronger than an Ancient Nord or Steel Battleaxe. I also didnt have many Health potions at the time. It took me about 15 different tries to defeat this L'uah woman and her minions! I was so frustrated after about the 10th try that I went back and got my follower, Annekke Crag-Jumper, who I had left outside.

I agree with kami12--changing difficulties should be a last resort. So far I've kept my difficulty on adept and I haven't once lowered the difficulty (although a few times I was tempted to).

Hey bsabiston, do you have Xbox LIVE? If you do you should send me a friends request! We could play some Skyrim. I'm an Argonian character on level 29. I will send you a private message.

You do realize that Skyrim has no multiplayer right?

Well yeah of course Skyrim has no multiplayer...I'm referring to CHATTING through XBox LIVE while we play our own individual games.

That makes more sense. Your "We could play Skyrim" is what got me.