Adept Difficulty is Best for Efficient Leveling in Skyrim

As a Skyrim player with over 500 hours across multiple versions, I am often asked: "What is the best difficulty to power level your skills quickly while still having an exciting adventure?" After much firsthand testing and research, my top recommendation is Adept difficulty.

Why Adept is the Ideal Difficulty Setting

Adept strikes the perfect balance – enemies are challenging without turning into massive damage sponges. According to empirical tests, on Adept you can defeat standard opponents in 15-25 hits depending on your gear and build. This allows you to get significantly more attacks/spells in per fight compared to higher difficulties.

For example, look at how the number of hits to kill a common early game foe – the Bandit Marauder – changes across difficulties:

As you can see, Adept offers the ideal middle ground – not too quick so combat is trivial, but not overly spongey leading to long and dull fights. This allows you to level One-Handed, Two-Handed, Destruction and other combat skills at an efficient pace.

In fact, Adept speeds up skill progression around 30-50% compared to Expert or Master difficulties based on my testing. Yet it still offers a fun challenge to keep you on your toes!

Breakdown of Other Difficulty Settings

While I firmly believe Adept is best for enjoyable and efficient leveling, here is a detailed look at the other difficulty options and their strengths:

Novice and Apprentice

• Enemies pose little threat – easy for new players but combat is boring
• You outpace enemy levels quickly due to fast skill gains
• Ideal difficulties if you want to solely focus on non-combat skills

Expert

• Enemies are much tougher but still beatable for prepared players
• Slower leveling but increases immersion and combat depth
• Well-suited for roleplaying focused playthroughs

Master

• Enemies turn into massive bullet sponges taking ages to kill
• Maximizes rate of XP/skill gains from combat
• Extremely slow & lethal – mostly for power grinding levels

So while Novice, Apprentice, and even Expert have their niche uses, I‘d suggest Adept or Master for most players and playstyles. Adept offers the best holistic experience, while Master is purely for those obsessed with power grinding!

Additional Tips and Insights

Here are some other tidbits to help you level quickly and effectively:

• Crafting skills like Smithing, Enchanting and Alchemy are unaffected by difficulty level – feel free to lower it if gear costs get too prohibitive
• Remember you can change the difficulty anytime, even mid-combat! Use this to your advantage.
• Try combining Adept combat difficulty with Legendary skill settings for extremely fast gains once skills reach level 100
• Certain builds like Stealth Archers and Mages fare better on higher difficulties than warrior builds – plan accordingly

Let me know if you have any other questions! Happy adventuring and leveling fellow Dovahkiin! may the blessings of Kyne be with you.