I was playing with my new breton battlemage and was attacked by thugs hired from some guy I had never heard of. The only way I survived was by going around this fallen tree and hitting them with flames. I was victorious at the 3rd attempt. Other than that the hardest parts have probably just been Dragon Priests, and I remember fighting a frost dragon and I kept slipping up with the potions and dying. I play on Elite.
Started a mage high elf and did the bleakfalls thang, etc. On my way back to Riverwood I came across that shack (don't remember the name) with the old mage lady. Well there's a secret door in there with enchantment and alchemy tables. I found this quite useful early in the game, so I killed her in order to not have to 'sneak' all the time. Anyway, some thugs came one time and I swear, I ran around that shack like 10 times avoiding their blows. I had no armor, but plenty of speed. It felt like I was in a Benny Hill movie with the music going while I was running, turn, blast with weak magic, rinse repeat; around this little shack with them chasing me!! I guess thats more funny. Tebow would have been impressed
I was playing a fairly low level character (c. 5?) on master with my own hardcore rules (dead = dead, no reload). I was on the ice fields, when suddenly I came face to face with a polar bear. We sorta suprised each other, and I took off running. The bear gave chase and hit me once (nearly killing me). As I approached a cliff I had no choice but to jump and hope for a ledge of some sort. Fortunately there was a vertical column just a few feet out and down. I managed to land on it. The bear decided not to make the leap, growled a few times, turned around and left. I decended by jumping down onto ledges.
I was level 20-30 odd and had just done a quest of Mara to reunite two ghosts who were in love when an Ancient Dragon comes out of the blue, frying me to a crisp after two seconds of exposure to the fire breath and kill-moving me when I had near full health. To make matters worse, Giants, Mammoths, Sabre Cats and even Thalmor goons saw fit that I was a bigger threat than the Ancient Dragon and decided to kill me for it. I had to call on Odahviing and Lightning Storm (both of which seemed more intent on a pack of wolves than the dragon), but after 45 minutes of painstakingly slow progress and cowardly cover taking I eventually survived (although not without committing the cardinal sin of Skyrim gameplay, turning it to novice! THE SHAME!) But I was new, forgive me!
I was playing on my level 24 Commander character on Expert, up to the part in the main quest where you meet the others at Karthspire. As many of you will know, Karthspire can easily turn into the biggest shitstorm you've ever seen with ice spikes and blizzards flying every which way while you're being charged by half a dozen melee Forsworn and Frost Atronachs. To make matters worse, an Elder Dragon (level 40) decided to turn up, and seemed intent on killing me (remember I'm only level 24 and playing on expert). It was able to kill me with about 2 seconds of breath and its melee attack brought me down to 1/3 health even while I was blocking. With some deft use of cover and wards I was able to dodge both the Forsworn and the dragon, while many of the Forsworns' ranged spells hit the dragon instead of me... if the 2 main quest characters whose names I care not to spoil weren't around it would've been much, much worse...
Early on with my Elf Mage I did the Alikr quests with the redguard women. I finally found the leader of the alikr in a cave with 5 bodyguards. I made the decision to kill the alikr. Knowing that my elf wasnt good with combat yet I decided to stand in the middle of all the alikr warriors. I then powered myself up and cast a scroll of guardian circle. As the ring light went out, I sent a fireball at the leader and drew my sword. Within seconds all six where on me and to be honest for a good 20 secs its was just limbs and swords and flame. I had no idea what was going on i just kept hacking away. All of a sudden the action switched to me finishing off an alikr with a head removal. It only turned out that the last standing was the leader who momentarily got his head chopped off. Left standing in the circle with my health still full and 6 dead bodies round me sweet
I was on the bridge to the college beating up Ancano again. I got up on the wall about to Fus Ro Dah him off when suddenly he hit me with a surprisingly powerful spell. If I had taken the time to shout at him, he would have surely killed me, if i had turned and ran he would still have killed me, so i jumped off. This was the first time i jumped from there and although i knew there was water below, it was a small amount and i didn't know how deep. I realised when i got out of the water how lucky that was.