Forums » Elder Scrolls

What difficulty do you play Skyrim on?

  • May 24, 2014 5:05 PM EDT

    I play on adept. Why? Well on adept you inflict x1 damage and recieve x1 damage. The link below explains it all.

    http://Difficulty Level Summary TableDifficulty Player Damage Dealt...

    • 118 posts
    May 24, 2014 5:33 PM EDT

    For an embarrassingly long time I felt anything under Master difficulty was unacceptable.  I've come to a change of heart in the past 6 months and now am of the opinion that whatever difficulty gives the character you're using a challenge is the correct choice; there is no 'catch-all' difficulty that one should adhere to.  If that means cranking the difficulty down to Novice so you can play a goofy character that only uses wooden swords...there's nothing wrong with that!  I briefly had a character that relied on 'Marked for Death' and throwing junk at people with Telekinesis and it was actually somewhat viable on Novice!

    My change of heart came from my dislike of builds that become stupidly overpowered (typically from crafting) to the point where they 1-shot everything and there's no challenge.  It finally sunk in that all that matters is that there is a tangible challenge that makes the character engaging.

    I recently played a destruction mage for the first time ever (in Skyrim) and found that I needed to set the difficulty to Legendary just to find a decent challenge because Destruction is ridiculously overpowered.  Conversely I've started a new character that uses poison almost exclusively and I've set it to Adept (default difficulty) because poison damage is affected by the difficulty slider and just isn't viable at the highest settings. 

    • 1483 posts
    May 24, 2014 5:37 PM EDT

    I'm playing a poisoner now and I have to say, it's quite viable on Master  The trick is to apply Weakness to Poison as well, simple Lingering Damage/Damage Health doesn't cut it anymore. 

    I'm currently playing exclusively on Master, but I agree, so long as you're not OP any difficulty goes well. It's just that it is quite easier to become OP on Novice rather than on Legendary