Hi!

I'm thinking of starting a second character to play on the side, just to take in that perspective aswell.
I want to go full-out assassin with lockpick, sneak, pickpocket and alchemy. And, I want to specialize in bows and swords.

I'm not that used to the perk system, and I have a hard time using it at all, since I'm too afraid to leave out other perks if I regret my choices.

Any good starting tips for a perk-noob, how to start out and where to go from there? =)


Also, playing on ps3, so I will backup my main save on a memory stick. Has this worked for anyone? I've read posts and topics about people losing their main saves on ps3 because of new character profiles.

Light Armor

And light armor, yes, forgot that.

go daggers
30x multi for sneak kills

assassin with sword seems silly ><. your sneak attacks won't be nearly as strong.
x6 sword vs
x15 dagger

If a dagger does 6 damage and a sword does 10 (these are base values for steel, yes?):
sneak attack with the dagger at x15 gives 90 damage.
sneak attack with the sword at x6 gives 60 damage.

Damn, keep forgetting those dagger bonuses.
Well, the dagger bonuses goes under sneak, right, but also one handed? So if I level up one handed by daggers, I'll still increase my efficiency with a sword?

^^ This. Though you need 50 sneak for that perk. So i used swords until 50 sneak then went to daggers. 15x dmg multiplier for sneak kills ftw.

Concentrate on spending skill points into Archery/Stealth and remember not to wear heavy armour or heavy boots....fur boots or barefoot is the way to go....the stealth in the game works a treat but it will help if you have good illusion skills to make yourself invisible too!!

Yes light armor, the game seems to follow the same sneak mechanics as oblivion, lighter armor means less noise, also be mindful of standing in direct light, hide in the dark if you are going to attack from range, i noticed they improved the sneak eye, enemies wont know exactly where you are if you are well hidden so you can kill one, hide and wait for them to de-aggro and return to what they where doing before. The sneak mechanics in oblivion where sad, i'm glad to see the much needed improvements in Skyrim.

I personally also would plan on putting all your talent points into your sneak tree before working on one hand weapons, if u look at the sneak tree you'll see it has all the needed damage modifiers.

Have to agree. I would do either light armor, 1h, bow and no sneak...

-or-

Light armor, sneak, daggers, bows

as well as random profesional perks like alchemy, smithing (dragon scale armor = amazing), etc.

I agree with everybody else. If you sneak, use daggers.

i^d rather take block instead of light armor - if your cover gets blown and you need to fight melee you rather want to have a good block - and there are some nice perks in the block tree...alteration is good too for additional armor and magic defense snd you will get the paralysis spell at one point...

you dont need to use daggers if you dont want to...daggers are more quiet then 1h weapons but it doesnt really matter once your sneak is 30+....

alchemy is fine in theory but it needs quite a lot of attention...

my assassin went for 1h, block, sneak, alteration, and some alchemy, very few light armor and some conjuration (if there are several bad guys in a room and killing the first gets the attention from the others, i revive that one and let em battle for me:-)

Thanks for all tips so far, reading them all.

So far I'm pretty certain I'll leave out the swords, if only to use them for good looks every now and then.
I love that you actually CAN level illusion and get invisibility without having to spend lots of levels raising THAT certain skill. Removal of the old skill system is pure win, it seems.

I'm just too afraid of having to few perks to put Want to max out sneak, lockpick, pickpocket, light armor, archery, alchemy and smithing, but.. I guess that's kind of hopeless.

Supposedly there is much discrepency about whether dagger is better than sword because supposedly some things don't affect dagger damage (+20% bonus to one-handed damage). However my suggestion is FIRST things first join the thieves guild. From there you will get all the practice for your playstyle you need, after going through all those quests you won't need any more advice, and your gear won't be hurting either.

I'm also wanting to make an assasin type, btu then become a vampire on top of that. Just was thinking that would be a sweet combination.

No armor, im gonna try it tonight when I make a new character.

Archery - sneak - dual daggers and alchemy and black smith. I might add in some magic on the side.
Gonna take the thief stone at the start and work mainly on sneak.

Light armor, yes but I've found that boots are most important. Even if you wear a metal armor of some sort, wearing "leather" boots or even plain shoes lowers your noise drastically.

Why do i keep seeing people post the 30x dagger stealth multiplier? I've yet to get the game (Damn you Amazon shipping), but i was under the impression the highest multiplier was 15x.

I was going to make a thread like this, asking about a stealth character. This basically answered most of my questions, except one. What race should I make my character. I'm torn between Bosmer, Dunmer, and Khajiit.

2 daggers?
I don't know I thought it was 15 as well.

Theres no way youre going to be able to kill everything in the game using stealth tactics (assuming a bow) so you need to pick something helping you out in close quarters (and dragons). That leaves either magic, armor, or weapons. The thing is, if youre mainly killing stuff as an assassin, then you're not going to be getting hit enough to raise your armor skill, not going to be using a close quarters weapon enough to raise its skill... Possibly go Alteration to give yourself AC boosts and such...

I'd go with what seems most visually appealing. It seems that after 10 levels or so it all comes down to what you focus on gameplay wise, not racials.

Meat shield follower, issue solved.
Nah I planned on not even wearing armor when I start my new character tonight, just fancy clothing.
Can you enchant clothing?
I figure archery for main killing, then dual daggers. I may pick up some illusion magic for hard times.

Damn, good point. Maybe I'll just bow to get aggro, accept a few swings at me, then fight back with some melee weaponry? Since the daggers go under stealth, it wouldn't hurt to level some one handed as well.

Oh, yeah, I know. The only reason I wasn't sure is because of the racial powers. I was leaning a bit towards Khajiit because they have Night Eye, which makes seeing in the dark much easier. But then, Bosmer are insanely good archers.

Well orc's zerker saved me a lot of times to be honest.


dagger are tired to one handed as far as I know, everything that affects one handed weapons (not the ones that state a type though) should affect daggers.