Skyrim VR... Day 9

So last night I continued my adventures through the mountains. I met a hunter along the way, sold him some venison I had acquired in my journey.

I continued along and some guards marched past escorting some prisoners. I minded my own business this time.

Then I found a grisly pile of stones with a skeleton on top and a cave entrance nearby, and being the plucky young adventurer I am, I figured that looked like my kind of cave.

I went inside, down a long tunnel and was spotted by a level 1 vampire thrall. I burninated that peasant and looted some gear then feeling pretty good about myself, headed on deeper into the cave system.

That's where it got messy. I think the next group was 3 level 6 vampires and 3 level 1-5 thralls. A fair chunk of save-scumming later, I managed to beat them but I didn't have a good time. At that point I dropped the difficulty to novice and continued deeper into the caves.

The next area the vampires were spread out enough that they didn't all agro the second one of them got stuck with an arrow. It was a similar makeup of vampires and thralls, tho I think one of the thralls was level 9 at that stage, same as me.

I managed to clean them up without dying and earned a level up, then headed on deeper still. There was a solitary thrall hanging out in an underground river who didn't stand a chance.

And then around the corner and up a steep tunnel was the final boss.

I think a level 14 master vampire, 4 level 6 vampires, and assorted thralls.

It was a shitshow. I must have been save scumming for at least an hour and a half. Got a hell of a workout. Sore legs from crouching to try bow shenanigans. Sweaty from waving my axe around. Learned how to hook up a shout to a gesture which was a win, but in the end didn't help either.

I did finally deal with them, by cheaty shadows archery, but it didn't feel good. IDK, I feel I was level appropriate and still the dungeon was super impossible, so I dunno what to tweak next, if I'm already novice...

I know one of the FUS mods was to make dungeons more difficult, so maybe it has some settings I can tweak.