How does increasing difficulty make the game harder?

[Drovak]

How Exactly? I know you deal less damage to enemies and enemies do more damage to you, right? But is there anything else like AI changes or does it become harder to level up skills? etc.

 

Also does the level of the magic skills I use to fight determine at the rate of which that skill levels? For example using Chain Lighting would grant me more EXP towards next level than casting lets say sparks or is it the same?

Edited November 19, 2011 by Drovak

[Tropxe]

Simply put, it does the most lazy and old-school thing imaginable and just gives the enemy more HP while making them do more damage. I play on Master, and until I got the x15 backstab (now x30 with the Dark Brotherhood gloves) it took me ages to kill anything but the weakest wildlife. Pretty much anything will kill me in only 3-5 hits, the tougher things tending to kill me in 1-2. If I put it down to Adept, things tend to die in 1-2 shots from my bow and I can soak up damage for a lot longer.

[Drovak]

Ok, fair enough then i think I'm safe to turn it to the highest difficulty, thanks and what about my second question anyone know the answer?

[Tropxe]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it does. Same as the level of the thing you're hitting with a weapon influences its level up speed too (and therefore the level of the thing you're hitting with magic probably matters along with the spell level itself). You can generally cast a lot magic on yourself, like just stand there and cast Muffle all day long, but Destruction stuff or things like enraging or calming magic has to be cast on something, like just casting Chain Lightning on nothing wouldn't do anything. A good trick is to summon atronachs (which raises Conjuration) and then cast Destruction magic on them. They'll eventually attack you, but you'll get them close to death before that happens.

[soot00]

Probably like any game, it ups the hitpoints and increases the damage value of npcs.

 

Personally I am keeping my first playthru at the default adept setting cause this was probably used in house at Bethesda during play tests. Want to get a toon at max level to see how it's balanced in end game. In addition to keep the challenge up at "Adept", I won't be maximizing and taking every self sufficient skill for EZ mode, as an example a maxed out destruction Mage throwing fire balls wearing full plate and wielding a 2 hand Axe when the enemy gets up close, lol

Edited November 19, 2011 by soot00

[TwiggySkyrim]

On master I found that dragons were a peice of cake end game. High level draugr can still give you a run for your money though.

[Tropxe]

The difficulty just seems very inconsistent in general. Dragons typically kill me on one breath attack if I get hit, but then the other day I managed to kill a frost dragon by sneaking up on it and backstabbing it after weakening it with arrows and retreating, then I killed a frost troll in close quarter combat with daggers, then I walked outside after getting to full health and got one-shotted by a bear.