I have been playing a sneak archer and due to how poor combat is once your opponent actually engages you I have been playing on Adept and for some fights even drop it to apprentice. I'm thinking of trying a play through on Master the whole way for fun, I just finished the thieves guild and darkbrotherhood quest lines, hardly sure If I wan't to keep playing this character now because I don't know what to perk into next I guess I will have to go into blacksmith to get dragon scale armor, and start enchanting which I thought I would avoid

Once you play master you wont go back down

Master for a sneaky type is all about not getting hit. You just have to maximize your sneak attack criticals and use poisons, and if they get too close you weren't being sneaky enough. With a dagger you can do 30x damage if you have the 15x Sneak perk and the 15x gloves from the brotherhood, and double that still if you have all five of the extra damage perks in one handed weapons.

With a mage it's all about keeping them at a distance with spells and staggering. Bows can also stagger 50% of the time with a perk, so that's useful too.

With warriors it's all about drinking potions like mad.

I posted my thoughts on various difficulties from the limited I played them...so take it with a grain of sand. As things supposedly change mid-levels...in any case, I play on master but if it gets unbearable I'll drop it to expert. But I'm not really playing until the next patch, so I haven't had more time to test it out, outside of one cave.

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1287273-too-easy-on-adept-or-should-i-move/

I'm thinking of just turning this current characters difficulty up to master also and sticking with it I'm level 22 and have 38k gold, do you guys think I should start investing in blacksmith to get dragon armor or is it still game breaking at this point?

If you don't have resistances you can still run into master mages that kill you in 1-2 spells even on Adept. Physical damage enemies will pretty much just tickle you if you have the top tier armor on lower difficulties, though.

38k gold what the hell. I'm level 22 and just bought myself a house, albeit I haven't spent any time actively chasing wealth.

Dont forget that the astronach stone can really help you with those mages. Unless you yourself are a mage, then i deff do not suggest picking the astronach stone

Thieves guild and darkbrother hood quest give a decent amount plus I can sell all the stuff i steal now too

I'm playing on Adept. It's plenty challenging. People saying it's too easy must be far better at video games than me, because I die constantly. I've even thought about bringing the difficulty down a little. Not so much now at much later levels (level 43 now) but from 15-35 or so I was having a [censored] of a time. I think that was partly because I had evenly split my efforts between destruction, one handed, and archery with no alteration or illusion, but I just couldn't do enough damage to most enemies to keep up. Now I have them all at high numbers and stuff is no where near as hard. That said, it still takes 3 or 4 tries to solo an Elder Dragon. They can bring me from max health to zero health faster than I can cast a heal spell if they're on the ground and I'm standing in front of them.

IMO if you die more than a couple times an hour it's not fun anymore. You should be concerned about dying, but spending more time replaying already played segments than playing new ones is not the way it's supposed to be.

Been playing on default.. which is Adept if I'm not mistaken.

During my first playthrough I changed the difficulty down and up ALOT

Now I'm playing the game locked at Expert

I'm playing at Master and enjoying it quite a bit. My character is level 7 and has no perks in combat, archery, magic, or stealth. I have the first perk for speech, picking pockets, picking locks, alchemy, smithing, and enchanting. I'm not having any difficulty at all yet but I wouldn't be able to do it without Lydia, who is a tank. Just went to High Hrothgar. Was a bit of a challenge, but not impossible by any stretch.

Archery on Master gets a lot easier once you get a few perks, specifically Power Shot to stagger enemies and Ranger to move out of the way faster once they start hitting you. If you're using sneak you can also slowly wither down the enemy by shooting him once or twice from stealth, retreating and waiting until he calms down and then repeat the process.

I played on Master from the get go.

I struggled initially as a Sword and Shield style character. Couldn't land power attacks for the life of me, and 1 handed damage was too low. I didn't use a companion either, which makes a huge difference.

The other critical mistake I made was trying to split between to many skills. In the beginning if you focus on 2 combat oriented skills early and hard, Master becomes a lot easier to manage. My current character (two handed, heavy armor) flies through encounters my older characters struggled on. At level 18, his minor skills are now coming up to scratch just fine despite the later focus.

Stamina is a lot more important on higher difficulties then Health as well, at least initially. Health is nice to provide you a cushion for the weaker mobs, but stronger mobs will seemingly 1 or 2 shot you with power attacks no matter how much health you have. Stamina is needed for power attacks in order to stagger opponents which if you get the knack for it makes melee combat a lot easier. 50/50 or 60/40 health/stamina split seems best.

I'm looking forward to trying other characters now that I've learned the above, it was soooo frustrating intially.