Personally, I consider using frenzy to be killing, the same as intentionally leading them into one of their own traps. Killing is killing, whether by a blade, deceit, or mind control. On the other hand, draugr, being undead, might actually welcome finally being put to rest.

Deathlords dont flee because those restoration spells have very low level caps.They are useless.

If you play on PC and don't mind bending the rules a little, at the entrance of the dungeon open console and target Mercer, use "tai" command. This freezes him completely, and you're free to sneak trough the dungeon unhindered. When you reach the part where Mercer is required, use "moveto player" command and "tai" again to unfreeze him.

Alternatively, you can try using "tcai" command on him, this makes him unable to fight.

If you play on consoles, you'll have to think something smarter Haven't myself gotten illusion high enough for Necromage, but i doubt Deathlords and Death Overlords are effected, and there's bound to be atleast one guarding the boss chest. Atleast it's easy to sneak by it in the final chamber if you don't go for the Word or loot.

And i agree that quests are pretty poorly designed for thieves. Oblivion's Thieves Guild was better, i completed all of it's quests without killing anyone or being seen. Like a thief

Slighty off-topic: "Master Criminal: Have 1000 Bounty on each hold", sound more like a Master Screw-Up to me

You are the Dragonborn, who is destined by a profecy to kill a God... on top of that, you begin your journey bound for crimes that justify excecution... how and why on Earth would one expect Bethesda to make no-kill gameplay viable?

Oh, and if you wanted to avoid killing stuff, why would you join a criminal organisation like the Thieves' Guild? You know, TG is not against murder, they just avoid it when it's not as profitable as keeping the victims alive... better try merchant/crafter work, or just stay and do the random quests of TG...

As I recall, there's a room early on in that dungeon where you can lock Mercer up. I think it's one of the ones with a lever or chain and bars cover the enrty. Lock him up there, use illusion to make the Draugr kill each other, then release Mercer.

You can probably "lock him up" somewhere. If the dungeon you are running (haven't done that quest and won't on my current, please no more spoil like you put above) has one of those gates that lifts / drops with a lever, you could trap him outside it while you handle all the enemies. You could instead trap him inside some other dungeon with the needed gate type, but then when you come back to your current one, the enemies might be reset (though often in my experience its just the dungeon boss that resets).

Like you said, you only need him at the very end, so just go back and get him when you finally do need him and have all those "no kill enemies" dealt with.

your kind of screwed unless your on a pc then go with TojKa's thread

I don't understand why you are concerned. After all it is just a statistic in your menu, you don't have to look at it. I don't even notice it.

People the 0 kills on the stat sheet is a challenge the OP accepted after having seen someone else accomplish this feat. The OP is simply trying to recreate this feat as a challenge. So while this may seem ludicrous to most of us, it is a challenge to the OP and people need to quit insulting them. They know that it is possible, as they have already seen someone else accomplish this what part of that are you guys not getting. So get off you high horses and either try to come up with helpful hints or stop commenting. Why must some always insult what others do for fun.

I don't have a horse anymore. I jumped of a cliff that was a little too high.

honestly , you sound like a petty whiner. get over it. OP that is.

Just sneak past them if your good enough. If not, prepare for a fight and throw some sand in their eyes to make yourself feel better as a scoundrel.

I'm guessing by "no kills" you mean you've found a way to make sure that the character is never credited with a kill... in that case the statistics will never match your RP.

I'd say buck up and accept that some chains will just have an NPC as a requirement and as RP as this game is, it's still a "kill 'em all and let their gods sort them out" game... no matter how open world and dynamic it is... there's going to be killing whether you do it or not. Stick to the ideal that your character personally doesn't kill, maybe... and don't look at the statistics that you know aren't representative of your real play style.

I'mma get nailed for being a meta gamer again and honestly, if you're that dedicated to staying inside the box you created for your character you'd do really well to research the path you're going to put them on in the wiki or the game guide to be sure it fits in the box you made... more than 1/2 of the chain you chose is all about the killing of different things in dungeons... even all the way up to the conclusion. Even if you can sneak past 99% of them, there's some that aren't sleeping and you won't be able to avoid them all.

sorry you're bummin' and really... I can't think of a single chain in the game that doesn't include a dungeon or three or a barrow full of thugs or ten... so... yeah. svcks to be you on this one.

yeah you use sneak and calm its hardly an acheviement to get companions/summons to kill stuff for you, and away it adds to your kill count. i finished most of the game with no kills on my pasifist play through, you need to get creative somes times, run hide, poison of paralysis, calm, pickpocket. i try not to use fury, twice during the mages quests, i became arch mage with no kills and only a few falmer frenzyed, and only a couple of accidents...as frenzy is just a cheap tactic if u ask me and again not very no kills like, even tho they dont show up in menu like companion kills do.
Also this game is wasted on the peole that reply; why would you not kill every fink derp!

My recomended build for no kills:
Sneak, most enemys can just be by past.
Pickpocket, for those quest items npc have on them.
Illusion, needed for calm, occasionaly fear, also you can use frenzy to great effect but its not really no kills then as the frenzy leads to there death, (justifie your ideas within your rp tho when doimg the mages guild it wouldnt let me pickpocket falmer so i had to get one of then killed, so i noticed the room was tier and with weak falmer at the bottom and the boss at the top, my character sensed disadence within the group and ignighted that spark, one of the weaniers won leaving me free to take the item off the boss) muffle and invisability to supliment sneak is also a gud idea.
Speech, as not killing high speech helps you get more money from less loot and lets yoy pass dialogue checks to help you in certain quests.
Restoration, turn undead is usefull begore you get lvl 100 in illusion, sometimes when all fails you just need to heal, also later when you get more magica wards are ok. Healing hands for friendlys or enemys that get hurt or need tanking.
Block, maybe if you want to use shields.

Gear: no armour, its noicy and slows you. also the robes avaliable come with magic buffs. if you want armour stick to boots and gloves for i lil bit of protection. Staff of calming, for when you run out of magic. Staff of drain magica for those powerful enemys that need nerfing while you figure out what to do. staff of healing hands for tanking others. Non leathal poisons are great for helping you down enemys, i use a long bow and practise arrows or directly adminster some with pickpocket, runaway ect. Shields can be usefull early on untill you can cast wards well. No.1 thing is patients, save often, and keep an eye on the stats page to see if u screw up.

its great fun i really didnt think it was going to be but theres a great sence of power from the subversion than can be achieved with illusion. i love seeing prison pertrolls, calm everyone and release the prisonier. lol get the thalmor rillied up about talos, then calm. me 'i can worship any god i wish' /calm thalmor/ "you can worship any god you wish". lol master jedi. You dont even have to kill dragons simply being there gets you the soul just be a healer, and what self respecting jedi pasifist would be without force push. lol

As I recall, when you get the to final battle with Mercer, he somehow controls Brynjolf to attack Karliah, leaving you to have to face him alone. How are you planning to complete the quest without killing him?

Note: I don't know how long the control continues... when I did the quest, I went right after him, and put him down quickly, so I don't know if his control of Brynjolf wears off at some point.

i dont know havent tryed the theives guild my pasifist did the mages guild lots of odds and sods and some of the main quest(need to finish, got destracted with a black knight build) You maybe able to get him to fall to his death, itsnt that room tall with some staris going round the outside? its an rp after all if you rp you are just trying to subdue him and that parayisis made him fall to his death well accsidents happen. lol
My monk started as a exstream pasifist vigilant of stengrad i only banish deadra, usefull as the resulting boom, took put one character i had no way of killing as we were locked in a room together...so down went the deadra and so did she, oops. lol

Take note of the kills that aren't yours from followers, and subtract them whenever you look at the screen of stats.

While I think the OP is a bit crazy for wanting to do it in the first place, I'm not sure why it's so hard for people to understand "My defined goal is to make it through the game with all 0's on the 'kill statistic' page. The 'failure state' for my playthrough will be if any numbers aren't 0."

It's pretty straightforward and easy to understand.

It's not really an "RP" thing. It's (as the OP said) a "Self Imposed Challenge".

Best of luck to you.... friend of mine mentioned the guy on Kotaku, but said he thought the "evidence" was "managed". Though I would think Steam has proof - I didn't want to argue with him over it anyway since I don't spend any time on there....

I hope you get it figured out! It's always interesting to see how other people challenge themselves.

I see nothing wrong with this. If I break into a house with an accomplice in tow, and we're suddenly alerted to the presence of a resident whom we incorrectly assumed was not at home, and my accomplice's reaction is to kill the resident, well guess what? Doesn't matter that I didn't make the kill personally. I'm still going to get charged with the murder along with my accomplice.

These are really helpful replies to see on a help request thread and represent all that a forum COULD be. I probably won't try it but it's a good read even if it's not your thing. Thanks!

I don't think I'd have the skill or the patience to achieve this goal myself. I think Skyrim playthrough is a lot darker than many games unless you work really really hard and miss out a lot of interesting quests. You get forced to do a lot of stuff or miss out. Fair enough.

I choose the weaker path and say "To heck with it! I'm gonna drink werewolf blood, kill stuff and talk/make deals with creatures who have committed mass genocide throughout the game backstory. I'm not gonna miss out on the best gear or fighters ...ahem, ...I mean certain guild type quests if I refuse!"

Then I read threads like these that make my inner voice say... "There is another way to play..."

I think the main issue here is that you chose to play a game focused around killing, and chose not to kill anything.

Shame on you.

I think you're probably the only person in the world that cares. What in the hell is the point in playing a game that focuses on killing people while trying to not kill anyone? Then complain about how it doesn't work? Give me a break, seriously.

Also, you might want to find the right company to blame. This "Bathesda" that you speak of doesn't exist.

actully ppl have done non combat play through of bethesdas game for alomg time, at least read the thread before you spew ignorance. some ppl also play with more than one character insted of sledge hammer blowwing there was through the game being a master of all rp of nothing. I no the op whined a bit but theres no need to be rude about his intended play style, ive done it for beths last 3 games i aint stoppin now. Personnaly im less hung up on the stats and more the rp as i said the stats can lie as you can frenzy ypur way through the game get 0 kills and still have been a savage. Id rather have all my kill stats at zero except deadra and play as the character would have to play. At some point that those zero maybe come a 1 or 2 but when that happens i know in the rp my character wont take that lightly, he doesnt want to go back to his savage past but may have to save the world lol

True enough, but it's unreasonable to vent condemnation at Bethesda for failing to anticipate a "non-combat roleplaying" approach in a game that revolves primarily around combat. If you're going to RP against the grain of a game, then you need to accept beforehand that it might not play out as perfectly as you'd like it--- especially if you're obsessive about numbers that appear on stat pages.

There are a number of perfectly good reasons to rag on Bethesda. This isn't one of them.