Skyrim’s appeal lies in its versatility, letting players experiment with various playstyles, skills, and even mods to create a unique adventure every time. This flexibility makes it nearly impossible to play “wrong”—but one player, Reddit user u/Ok_Objective_5025, recently discovered they had been struggling unnecessarily for nearly ten years due to a misunderstanding of Skyrim’s leveling system. Their unexpected discovery revealed how a small oversight can drastically alter the experience of the game, particularly in combat.
Ok_Objective_5025 shared their story on the Skyrim subreddit, where they explained their frustration with the game’s combat, which felt overly difficult and exhausting. For years, they had found themselves dreading battles, as even routine encounters stretched on for absurdly long periods. They described situations where fighting an enemy would take real-life hours, a baffling experience for anyone familiar with Skyrim, where most enemies can be quickly defeated.
It turns out that their prolonged battles stemmed from Skyrim’s unique leveling mechanics, which scale enemy difficulty based on the player’s overall skill level. This scaling doesn’t just consider combat skills—non-combat skills like lockpicking and stealth also contribute to the player’s total level. As a fan of stealthy gameplay, Ok_Objective_5025 had spent their early game leveling up skills like lockpicking, pickpocketing, and stealth, inadvertently raising the difficulty of all enemies they encountered later on.
When they finally entered combat, they faced powerful enemies with underdeveloped combat skills, making encounters disproportionately hard. One example they shared was a 20-minute fight against a single mammoth, where they had to rely on tactics like shooting arrows and retreating repeatedly. The combat, which should have been manageable, was instead dragged out, making Skyrim feel grueling and frustrating for this player, all due to an unbalanced early-game focus on non-combat skills.
Upon discovering the cause of the issue, Ok_Objective_5025 began a new playthrough with a focus on combat, banning stealth and pickpocketing altogether. This fresh approach brought a revelation: they could finally enjoy Skyrim’s combat without fear, fighting enemies head-on. Their story serves as a lesson for others—balanced leveling is crucial in Skyrim, as over-investing in non-combat skills can unintentionally make combat far more challenging than it needs to be.
