You've increased how much moisturizer you use, richer formulas, more often, and the dryness hasn't budged. The instinct to use more may be treating the wrong problem.
Two Different Problems That Look the Same
"Dry skin" can mean two different things: a genuine lack of oil, or an inability to retain moisture because of a compromised barrier, which can affect any skin type regardless of oil production. Moisturizer, particularly richer, oil-based formulas, handles the first cause reasonably well. It doesn't necessarily touch the second, because the problem was never a lack of product. It's that skin can't hold onto what it's given.
Why Barrier-Related Dryness Ignores "More"
If your barrier has gaps, from over-exfoliation, harsh products, or environmental stress, moisture escapes through them almost as fast as it's applied, no matter how much or how often you moisturize. That's why some people describe skin that "drinks" moisturizer immediately and is dry again within hours. The moisturizer isn't failing. It's leaving through gaps in the barrier nearly as fast as it goes in.
Piling on more product doesn't close those gaps. It just keeps supplying moisture to a system that can't hold it, which is exactly why the dryness persists despite what looks, from the outside, like a thorough routine.
What Needs to Happen Instead
For barrier-related dryness, support the actual structure, the lipids and cells that hold moisture in, rather than just adding more moisture on top of a structure that can't retain it. That usually means reducing whatever's damaging the barrier in the first place, often over-exfoliation or harsh actives, alongside formulations aimed specifically at rebuilding barrier structure.
How to Tell Which Kind You're Dealing With
If moisturizing genuinely helps and holds for a reasonable stretch, that's normal dryness responding as expected. If relief is brief before dryness returns, or skin feels dry despite objectively thorough moisturizing, that pattern points to a barrier issue that more product alone won't fix.