Hi. I have 30+ hours on this file of mine. I have the mods Stutter Remover and Darnified UI.

I had Drop Lit Torches, Capes and Cloaks, Love Your Horse, and Anywhere Sittable but removed them.

Can removing mods make the game easier or something? I'm trying to think what I've changed, but I haven't done anything.

I installed BOSS and Wrye Bash, that's all. I made a "Bashed Patch" as well.

I just went into the Arena and I was one (or two) steps away from Gladiator, and was fighting the spell casting wood elf. She only took a few hits...

Ok, there's one explanation, maybe. I just went up to level 14 and I made sure I got 5 more Strength, 5 more Endurance and 1 more luck by using certain skills(Don't worry, I don't power level, this was just once to make sure my Endurance was high enough... I was scared of it being unbalanced/too hard like I've heard it gets.).

Would Raising my Strength by 5 (to 80) make this much of a difference? Note: My Blade is about 85ish I think.

Thanks for any answers.

I want to do the game completely Vanilla and don't want to accidentally cheat/unbalance.

Increasing your Strength will increase the damage done during a melee attack, Removing the type of mods you did should not change anything.

If you just want it 100% vanilla, reinstall the game but make sure to backup all your saves. When you enter the game again you may get some error messages but once you′ve gotten through those you should be fine. The important thing is your save files

Perhaps you could use Xbox or PS3 for vanilla and leave the PC mods the way that they are?

Sorry, I must have said it wrong. I'm doing Vanilla but with those minor tweaks, Darnified UI and Stutter Remover.

Also, the reason not to do it on my Xbox is I might put in some mods once I've beat it with this character.

Anyway as long as I didn't somehow make it easier or unbalance it, that's fine. Raising Strength SHOULD do something after all.
I just noticed it 'cause I fought my next Arena fight and it had been quite hard before but this time wasn't at all.