Well, I’m still only like level 18, so the enemies themselves are fairly weak. So that would explain it. 
Oh hahaha I see.
Sometimes I forget that most people probably haven’t played… one second lemme find it…
Oh.
784 hours like me. 
To be fair, I’ve logged around 30 hours so far myself, and that’s only because I have virtually no time to play it.
I play exactly the same character as I have since the very first time I fired up Oblivion: A sneaky Argonian called ‘A Valid Name.’.
I have a hundred sneak and pickpocket, so I mostly spend my time fucking about town stealing the clothes from guards, it’s actually very rare that I get out and do quests, but when I do I just sneak-attack-one-hit everything on melee. I’ve put a bunch in archery as well, but there aren’t quite as many sneak bonuses for that, so it’s not quite as effective.
What are you talking about? Archery is the best for sneaking. You just one-shot everyone and they never even notice.
Yeah, well, depends on skills and such. What I meant was that with perks and equipments and whatnots I get something like 30x sneak-bonus with melee, but only like 4x on ranged, if I keep leveling my archery I’ll probably be just as effective there.
Also, it depends on who I’m fighting, level and such, I do still one-hit a lot of enemies with my bow, but with melee it’s absolutely everything I come across.
I wanted to go with a stealth/archery build, since it gives me a valid excuse to play a Khajiit, among other things, but my rather poor performance (lag, that is) made my first attempt rather tricky. In the end I just went with a fire mage, and also eventually went back to wearing (appropriately enchanted) light armor.
I like how they have nice-looking and properly enchanted mage robes, though; in Oblivion there really wasn’t much reason to actually wear robes, and they all looked very bland.
Serana in Dawnguard is a good follower, or atleast better than Lydia. And she’s an essential character at all times so she can never die in combat. 
I never really bothered with followers at all in the Bethesda games, anyway. Mostly they’re just cramping my style in regards to the sneaky approach.
Right now Shadowmere is constantly running head first into combat when I don’t want her to, though, quite annoying.
Shadowmere died!
Did they patch it to make him mortal? When I played it way back on release on my brother’s computer Shadowmere wouldn’t die no matter what hit him. But on my version he was taken down by some crappy stormcloak grunts.
I don’t think Shadowmere has ever been invincible, but he DOES have a fucklot of health which kept him to near-invincibility.
I think Shadowmere eventually respawns where you get him. Not sure, I haven’t done those quests yet.
In fact, I don’t have a horse at all. I haven’t seen the need for one yet.
I have an ethereal horse; I can conjure him up whenever he is needed, and vanishes when I’m done riding around. Really useful
Started this game before steam workshop was around but never finished it. I think I’ll probably restart because I can’t remember anything about where I am in the story or my character.
With Steam workshop what are some, if any, ESSENTIAL mods. Not your favorites or cool ones, but a few that will make the game better and not change how it was meant to be played. For example maybe like enhanced menus, etc.
Definitely SkyUI, couldn’t possibly make do without it.
There are some more I might recommend, but I don’t have time to find them right now. I’ll get on it when I get home.
Arvak I guess? He’s a good horse but the model is fugly and looks like plastic.
I recommend this mod to make him look much better.
Actually, no, that’s not the horse I’m using. It’s thisone, with the ‘ice’ style.
Also, super late:
I found this mod is really useful to keep followers close by. Not that I use followers anymore, but still 
I recently started playing on my original account again. Never actually finished the main questline, so I’m back at it. My game has something like 70 mods loaded, all meant to make the game more realistic, have better graphics, houses, etc. All lore-friendly, all balanced fairly (I even modded it to make it harder for high level characters).
And the hypothermia mod, coupled with a lack of fast travel, makes traveling at night in northern Skyrim really harrowing. I can’t tell you how many times since I’ve started playing again that I’ve been caught in a tremendous blizzard only to be saved by a random camp with beds and a fire.
how the fuq did you get that?