You do something wrong. Died like 3-4 times trough the first 50 levels. Thou I might not count, since I played the last three episodes.
Answering the original question: If I get bored, I unload all loot for speed and buy a crapload of soulgems. After that I look for a nice undiscovered area on the map, and go hunting and gathering. Wandering around not aiming for anything specific makes me feel being back on the good old Vvardenfell. So as the presence of Enchanting.
By the way, since you can enchant a fortify alchemy gear, and brew fortify enchant potions, really disgusting things can be done with a combination of those skills once both raised to 100.
Well, not as disgusting as the repeated making and drinking fortify intelligence potions in Morrowind was. But still..