1. You may or may not have discovered this yet - I have just come by it in the past day or so. Anyway, it's rather simple - you can fire an arrow out of your bow (obviously) at the floor/wall/an object when enemies are nearby to draw them to it, and distract them. Honestly, it's SO useful for getting past bandit guards, or for making archers look the other way, allowing you to get past unhindered.

2. The second thing is to do with daggers. This may be more obvious to you stealth players, but if you backstab with a dagger, you usually get x6 damage am I right? However, heres the twist - if you get the perk in the sneak tree that states it will give you x6 damage with one handed weapons, the damage multiplyers stack. eg. If you now use a dagger, you will get a x12 multiplyer instead of x6.

So yeah, I thought I'd share my findings with you - sorry if you already know!(Which most of you probably will.)

Discuss?

Nice one. (or two )

I'm not quite up to backstabbing levels, but the distraction one I can definitely use

I didn't knew the 2nd one eventhough my only character is a stealth type. So thanks for that!

I found out the first one myself, not because I was testing but because I svck with a bow and overshot some enemies... And they ran off down the hallway.

The 1H thing and backstab is one of the reasons why there are so many threads complaining about how weak mage / destruction skill is.

and if you wear the dark brotherhood armor, it doubles your sneak attack. Right now I'm getting x30 multiplier on backstabbing. I have yet to encounter an enemy who can survive that and yes, I've one-hit backstabbed a dragon to death.

Haha, I have to admit that the distraction arrow technique is amazing. I'm finding myself constantly using it now - this game is actually amazing!

You also get the perk to give you 15x sneak attack damage with daggers.
And there are certain items in the game that double the sneak attack damage.

That's 30x damage with daggers.

An Ebony dagger with me at the moment gives 20 damage normally, with the 30x damage it deals 600 damage. I can one-hit just about any normal enemy now.

At later levels, a dragon will survive it. I tested (it had like 10% HP left). 24 x 30 damage +10 absorb HP wasn't enough. My one-handed is very low though.

Now all I need is a water arrow to put out those pesky torches

I'm level 15 at the moment with dual elven daggers - what type of daggers should I aim for next? I can pretty much 1 hit backstab anything at the moment, I just fancy a change in looks though.

That 19238102321083012812903129031289 damage from Daggers is cool and all that, but I have a hard time getting behind people :/

I'm enjoying stealth a lot better in this game than in Oblivion. I'm level 14, and focused on archery and sneak, and I'm able to sneak past guards I wouldn't normally be able to kill to ransack chests. Its very satisfying to run into enemies that are out of your league if you were to fight them, but you can rely on your other skills to get what you want.

A stupid question a bit related to this topic, even if I think I know the answer already. Is dagger the only weapon you can backstab with? I think it is. I've only managed to do one backstab so far in Skyrim. I killed a certain cheery orphanage woman when she was sitting in her chair! >: D

I have to agree, the stealth of this game is a huge upgrade from oblivion. The whole playstyle is now much deeper, and just feels so much more satisfying with the cinematic kills.

You can also use arrows to set off pressure plates for traps. Hilarity ensues.

The damage multiplier in the sneak perk tree only applies to daggers.

30 times damage?????

Doesn't it says 'with one handed weapons'? I'm sure it might include swords and axes, etc - but you will only get a x6 multiplyer.

Yep... Knew about this stuff.

I mean the 15x multiplier. I'm pretty sure (but I can't check right now) that it says it's for daggers.

With 1h weapons you get a x6 bonus or maybe even x12 as suggested by the op.
Further into the perk tree is a x15 multiplier specifically for daggers.

And its called a 'sneak attack'. You can perform this with any weapon including a bow. I have killed a few bosses using only the bow and maybe even the dagger to finish them off and they never saw me once!

Takes a while cause you have to keep moving behind cover ie circling around a pillar opposite to your target. Here the ai really shines. The amount of times that we'll be circling clockwise and he will stop or go the other way seems so natural when he is looking for me

((sigh...)) I miss the Thief series........

I was impressed to see that you can actually take some torches, though, thus extinguishing them and making the area darker.... but it would have been nice, being the same person worked on the Thief series and the last few Elder Scrolls games, to see more stuff cross over.

Damn, didn't know about that, cool! Thanks! ^^

Much appreciated I am a noob and I am leveling a sneaky assassin so this helps a lot. Now I have a question that may sound really stupid but.....

What armor should I be wearing? Light or medium?

Yes, I know dumb noob is dumb but you don't know until you ask!

Light would make less noise? Not sure if fur or leather make less noise than glass or elven plate though..