Need advice on difficulty mods

[Taedus]

I want my Skyrim to be an immersive and challenging experience, so I've tried Requiem. It's good for the most part but some enemies are just too powerful, like trolls with instant regeneration(hitting them with fire doesn't help) and steam centurions with 1000+hp(Madanach's men get crushed without help from console commands). I like that my character does higher damage but enemies also hit like a truck and you often get one-shotted, so I'm a bit worried that I won't manage against the tougher enemies, like draugr bosses, vampire bosses and dragons. Dragons are so powerful that you have to stall the main quest until the late 20's somewhere and the game becomes a grind much like an MMO. I don't mind if it takes some time to get there but I got bored from only killing bandits and forsworn until lvl 15 when I finally could take on draugr, but just barely. Then I will have to continue with only draugr until lvl 25 maybe when I can advance to falmer. It's a very linear experience that offers little variation.

 

So I made a new profile with Perkus Maximus, Morrowloot, Revenge of the enemies, Erso Enhanced Fauna, Ultimate Combat, Combat Evolved and Permazones to name a few. Permazones is meant to make dungeons harder by raising the minimum level of enemies and Ulimate Combat increases the overall damage with the hardcore setting. Great I thought. Now my game is almost like Requiem but without the extremely buffed enemies. I go to North Shriekwind Bastion with a lvl 1 character to test it, and kill the first lvl 1 vampire with an iron arrow. The rest of the dungeon is filled with boring lackluster skeletons, so I go to Bloodlet Throne, hoping for something a little more challenging but the hardest enemy is a lvl 20 Vampire Thrall! and the vampires in the same dungeon are lvl 1. The gargoyle is a pushover that dies in two hits. Come on! That's just not fun. It feels like poor game design and none of the mods I installed seem to have any effect, except that you can't just rush in, ignoring all damage like in vanilla. The enemies are still leveled with a few surprises here and there just to mock you and there is nothing wrong with my game. According to what I've read, encounter zones doesn't really do much except make some of the enemies tougher. It's all in the game's mechanics.

 

What I want is a mod setup that makes enemies tougher where they should be tougher, meaning draugr, vampires and dwarven machinery are no pushovers that die from an arrow, but animals like wolves and mudcrabs die from 1-2 hits like they should. Bandits should be lvl 5-20, with bandit bosses being slightly stronger than the average bandit and have better loot. To sum it up, loot should be deleveled and enemies deleveled across the board, not just here and there, but without insanely hard enemies that you have to bring an army to take down. I like playing without a companion but can consider bringing one for certain parts of the game. Is there a setup that can help me achieve this balance with some extent of realism and immersion, or should I grind myself through Requiem in the hopes that I can take on the tougher enemies some day? Is it even possible to kill a dragon priest in that mod without bringing an army or lowering the difficulty?

Edited April 19, 2017 by Taedus