How to make Skyrim more challenging at higher character levels

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I'm a first time TES player, and I simply loved Skyrim the first time I tried it. I started playing on Adept (the default difficulty level), and while the first 80 – 95 hours were both challenging and fun to play, I'm seeing now that the game is becoming progressively easier once I've leveled up and used the appropriate perk trees for my style of game-play. I want to keep it challenging now that I've leveled up and have better equipments, and wanted the community's advice regarding that. Details of my (first) build:

  • Level 48, with 100 Smithing/Alchemy/Enchanting/Sneak, 70+ Archery, 40+ One-Handed, 40+
    Destruction (which I rarely use since the last 10 levels or so)

  • Armor rating of 565 (Dragonscale), using 4×28% Smithing clothing and 118% Smithing potion,

  • Daedric Bow with 320 damage (+29 pts of Fire/shock damage), made with the same smithing gear above and 31% fortify enchanting potion,

  • Jewellery double enchanted with fire/frost/magic/shock resistance (46% elemental, 23% for magic).

I've stayed completely away from using either the console, or exploits like the Falmer Helmet glitch (for boosting alchemy/smithing buffs), or the Fortify restoration glitch (for alchemy). I had heard that the AI leveled up the beasts/dragons according to the character level, but now I find I can take on Draugr Deathlords, Dragon Priests AND Elder Dragons without using a single potion/healing spell! This is becoming game breaking for me, and I've barely done half of the quest-lines (so far, finished only the College of Winterhold questline, completed the main quest up to Alduin's Bane, and the Thieves Guild quest till Blind-sighted – I've still to start the Companions, Dark Brotherhood, Civil War apart from the main quest!).

So far, I've turned on the difficulty to Master, and have started to actively hunt down tougher quests (like going after Dragon Priests), but I still don't seem to able to make it challenging enough. So, my question(s) are:

  1. Is there anything that I've done incorrectly for my build, in that I shouldn't have tried to get the best gear midway through the game?

  2. Are there any hard quests that I've completely missed, or do you think that now if I start new questlines with my increased stats, the game would level up the difficulty for me?

I understand that getting rid of my gear would be one-way to fix the issue, but would kind of break immersion for me (as I leveled up the 3 critical skills painstakingly, and am surprised that I'm getting penalized by the game for it!) – so, I'm looking for any advice as to how to bring back the challenge that was playing Skyrim.

Best Answer

Is there anything that I've done incorrectly for my build, in that I shouldn't have tried to get the best gear midway through the game?

This is very subjective - what is considered an "incorrect" build by one player, may be "optimal" for another. If you want to make the game harder, focus your skill points and perks on non-combat skills: Speech, Pickpocket, Lockpicking, etc. You can also put skill points and perks on combat skills that you won't be using in combat. This will level up your character (which will make enemy level difficulty scale to your level), while at the same time, not make your character stronger for combat.

With the Dragonborn DLC installed, perks may be undone and redistributed at the cost of one dragon soul per skill tree.

At the end of the At the Summit of Apocrypha quest, you will have access to different portals (one for each skill) which allows you to clear and regain any perks in that skill tree, at the cost of one dragon soul. You remove all perks from a single skill perk tree and can use these reclaimed perks on unlocking any perks you wish, including perks taken from said perk tree. By reading the Black Book, Waking Dreams, you can return to Apocrypha and alter the skill trees whenever you wish.

Are there any hard quests that I've completely missed, or do you think that now if I start new questlines with my increased stats, the game would level up the difficulty for me?

It is subjective to state which quests are "Hard quests". Just have a look here for a list of all quests and see which ones appear to be hard for you. As for the second part of your question, the unmodded game only checks your current level and the difficulty settings in the options to compute how difficult the enemies will be for you.

Excerpts from UESP wiki's "Leveling - Effects of Leveling" article:

Various aspects of the game are leveled. This means that as your character increases in level, some enemies become more challenging but also the quality of the items you find becomes better. However, the leveling system in Skyrim has been altered from that used in Oblivion, in response to criticisms of Oblivion's leveling system.

Different locations in Skyrim have different inherent difficulties. In other words, some dungeons are designed to be too difficult for low-level characters to enter. More challenging dungeons are generally located at higher elevations, meaning that early in the game players may want to avoid mountainous regions. However, more difficult dungeons contain better rewards. In addition, some high-quality items can be randomly found even early in the game.

... Bandit NPCs are always a fixed level for their name (Bandits are level 1, Bandit Thugs are level 9, Bandit Highwaymen are level 14, etc). The player's level affects the range of possible bandit types generated within a bandit dungeon, and probably the frequency, but does not seem to affect the resulting stats except in a few rare cases. Lower variant bandits remain reasonably common even when more dangerous bandits are available.

v1.9 Patch - 'Legendary' difficulty

Patch 1.9 adds a sixth difficulty level: Legendary. It reduces damage dealt by the player to x0.25 and increases damage taken by the player to x3.

Mods

If playing on the PC, you could also make the game harder with mods:

The mod, Pluto's Improved Skyrim Experience (PISE) has a "More Intense Level Scaling" component. It makes enemies more stronger relative to your level, compared to the vanilla enemy scaling. PISE also features harder sneaking, more enemy spawns, harder enemies and an overhauled enemy AI. The mod, Path of Shadows, a major stealth overhaul mod, also makes sneaking harder.

Other mods that may make the game harder:

  • DFB - Random Encounters - adds different random encounters from vanilla: Vampires, Falmers, Werewolves, Dwarven Spiders, Spheres, Centurion, etc.
  • High Level Enemies - has a feature that allows certain or all enemies to scale with your level
  • Deadly Dragons - overhauls dragons to make them more challenging to fight
  • Balanced Magic - designed to 'balance' the game's magic spells - make the spells do damage and consume mana appropriate to your magic perks, and lessens the effect of abusive perks like the 100% stagger change of the 'Impact' perk. It also affects enemy mage NPCs, making them more challenging
  • Auto-cast Racial Powers Plugin - "Auto-cast racial powers will activate for NPCs, both enemy and friendly, making fights much more interesting and adding a new element to prioritizing targets in larger fights!"

Creature mods that increase creature spawn points, number of spawns, and also improves creature AI:
(I recommend using only one creature mod, to avoid conflicts and other issues.)

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