I ran into two extremely nasty situations today dungeon-crawling around that first major town. The first was when I was exploring the caves north of the city, which at first seemed to be the standard issue spiders but gradually got much more dangerous as this new goblin-type enemy started emerging. My conjured Bound Blades were effective at first, but that didn't last for long. Thankfully, I had invested in other Conjuring abilities such as Familiar and that fire demon thing, which helped out a great deal.
Actually, I'm gradually finding the Destruction magic not particularly helpful against the stronger enemies, so I've found myself really increasing my Conjuring skill.
I eventually found myself in an ancient dwarven ruins guarded by an intimidating-looking-but-not-particularly-tough Dwarven mechanical golem and another of those goblin things with an instant kill spell. Yeah, that was fun. I did eventually manage to kill the goblin using multiple fire demons to wear him down and draw his attention so I could slice at him up close with my Dwarven War Axe, but that took quite a few reloads to pull off. I picked up a lot of Dwarven junk in there, which I've stored in my newly-purchased house until I know what I can do with it all.
The second really nasty situation was when I found myself able on the map to fast-travel to a location in the mountains north of that 1st city that I'd never been to before. I don't know why I could travel to it, but I suddenly found myself in a confrontation with a dragon. The dragon was dispatched simply enough with arrows; magic; and my axe. However, I noticed a Word wall nearby and was ambushed walking up to it by what's apparently a "dragon priest" named Knosis. Yeah, that was a fun fight, considering he could control any creature I conjured and was fond of spamming a fireball attack that would wipe out my HP in 5 shots. Thankfully, using a piece of debris for cover I managed to get his AI stuck trying to figure out how to attack me. Meanwhile, I shot well over 100 arrows at him until he finally went down, raising my Archery a good 3-4 levels in the process and earning a level-up (and a nifty mask that ups several of my skills by 20% while worn). I got a full 3-word shout in the process as well, though I could only power it up to the second word.
As an aside, I ran into another dragon today as well back in Rivertown, as it came out of nowhere and suddenly started attacking the town. That was a fun fight.
I'm getting increasingly annoyed at how little it seems you can influence the Speech skill. There are several times I've tried to persuade someone, but the game doesn't tell you your odds and Speech can seemingly only be increased by shopping or those speech checks. I've yet to successfully persuade anyone, and it's getting annoying.