I want to keep it challenging now that I've leveled up and have better equipments, and wanted the community's advice regarding that.
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'm a first time TES player, and I simply loved Skyrim the first time I tried it.