I've found invisibility compliments stealth quite nicely, even with all sneak perks; no, especially with all sneak perks.

I'm a maxed out Assassin with focus in sneak and some perks in armor and spread thin elsewhere...and I had absolutely no problems with either. Alduin took me...49 seconds to beat. I know that because I put on epic music, and then stopped it 49 seconds in when the fight was over. There was no difficulty there despite being centered on sneaking <.<

I guess its a matter of personal taste. I like to see my character sneaking around without invisibillity, and I have close to never been detected yet and im in lvl 34. So I don't see the point with illusion magic, destruction magic on the other hand can be usefull if you are detected. Again this playstyle has worked great for me, but others may want to play an assassin in their own way

With a very good pickpocket skill (very easy to level, just train then steal your gold back one level at a time) you can pickpocket one off of Astrid during the DB questline, then get another from her near the end of the questline. Easy peasy. Also it upgrades without any additional materials and does more damage than daedric daggers.

go with the ancient dark brotherhood gloves (2x backstab, combined with the 15x sneak attack with daggers perk youre doing 30x sneak attack damage)
nightingale for everything else (because of the looks)

take a bow with you everywhere and some arrows, if you come into a situation where you can't backstab someone shoot off an arrow away from the enemies, the baddies will run to where the arrow landed and you can sneak up on them or past them if youre quick.

definitely grab the silent roll perk, its so helpful for rolling in behind someone and then quickly rolling back into the shadows before you're seen by other enemies.

Some dungeons have wall mounted torches that you can remove shrouding you in darkness.

Assess each situation, dungeons are more fun when you play them tactically, try to pick everyone off one by one, keep note of where the light ends and the darkness begins.

And be one with the shadows brother!

For those random non-human enemies you find along the quests, bring a bow with enchantment Soul Trap for 1 second. Sneak attack kills 'em in one hit, soul gem gets filled. Never gets old

Yes personal taste is a valid reason at least so play how you will.

You want to know the point of illusion though? Why fall back on having to fight something that will fight back if you're detected when you can simply go invisible, resume sneaking, and methodically slit the throats of an entire room full of people. There's no such thing as being detected, there is only "now you see me and now you don't" as you move from one body to the next.

Honestly it's practically cheating, I had to stop doing it for a while and confront everything head to head because I wanted to level my light armor and I never got hit, ever.

This^ . As I said earlier. HIPS (hide in plain sight) you can break combat immediately and at will at any time assuming you have the magic to cast the spell. Every hit is a 30x sneak, there is no window for retaliation, there is not "getting caught" there is no "oh crap they found me" There is no "too many enemies".

This style permits the use of blades only. range is irrelevant, which is why I forgo bow perks personally. Range? hah! You can just walk in close and while traveling just be shrouded in invisibility. Muffle boots are common, and permit you extra mobility, Sprinting while in combat with multiple foes and appearing whenever and wherever you want cannot be overstated. Without invisivible, you can manage a first strike, but conditions vary and you may have to "run and hide" and your position can become compromised. With, your position is wherever you want.

YOU never loose initiative- (DnD players will know what this means esp. to assassins) Basically using sneak/invisible, you never loose first strike advantages and move first opportunities.

here ya go. http://www.ign.com/builds/the-elder-scrolls-5-skyrim/create?

e: i didnt actually make a build. just sharing the link.

for some reason this sounds so sad, I mean where is the fun in that? where is the fun in not having to fear anything? I mean I use sneak allot and im not often im spottet, but I still have to use silent roll out of danger many times because they can nearly see me, this adds so much fun. I also goes straight into combat out of sneak sometimes to bring down someone, for me this is the ultimate assassin playstyle, more fun and more rewarding. But everyone has their own style

Yeah, I play on master so any missed timing, mistep, or misuse of magica can mean death. Dragons are a different matter, and yes to each their own. Since you want to dive into speculations on my playstyle - I also use no enchanting, no alchemy, and only steel-arcame for smithing. It isn't a cakewalk and I think my game is fun enough.

Depends on you Smithing, Alchemy and Enchanting Skills. With enchanting maxed out usually Dual Wielding Daedric Daggers is a very valid options since you will have a free choice of enchantmens. Blade of Woe has a slightly higher Damage though. (4 Poins iirc with one handed maxed out). On the other hand Dual Wielding Maces could be an option, too. You will only get 6x Backstab Multiplier but Maces will profit from Fortify One Handed Potions and Enchantments (Daggers won't).



Shrouded Gloves are a must-have due to the double Backstab Bonus giving you x45 Bonus whith Dual Savagery on a Sneak Power Attack. If you don't mind lacking Armor you could add the 3 pieces of the "Worn Shrouded" Set which can't be improved but can be enchanted.


There are a couple of factors for successful sneaking: Armor Weight, Weapons Drawn, Speed of Movement, Light, Opponent's facing direction and Sneak Level.

- Eliminate Armor weight by skilling into the "weightless" perks of either light or heavy armor
- Daggers ar for all matters considered "silent" so you should have no problems here
- Speed of Movement detection can be negated by the Sneak Perks
- Light/Facing: Get "Throw Voice" Shout and direct enemies to dark corners in case of doubt - or just shoot an arrow into a dark corner
- Max out sneak level (because the "Shadow Warrior" Perk will allow you sneak attacks infight. Incredibly overpowered)
- Enchant "Fortify Sneak" on one or two Items. (Careful though: It seems you can boost Sneak into regions where it creates kind of an "overflow" resulting in a worse sneak value than before. Possible this value is 255 but I can't confirm that for now).

In General maxing out Alchemy, Smithing and Enchanting would give you Access to the Strongest Weapons and Armor Enchants ingame, if you're up for that.

Do NOT enchant "Fortify One-Handed" when using Daggers. They will not benefit from it.

Usually you will one-shot pretty much anything with shrouded gloves, legendary Daedric Daggers and the Sneak/One Handed Perks. IIRC you can get to 15,000+ Damage attacks even without Orc Racial or Marksman Potion (the potion is bugged and boosts Dagger Skill as well).

Well once again if you are setup to do 30x stabs, then the dagger(s) you choose are irrelevant if you can do more than 50 base damage. 15k damage is very impressive, but nothing in the game has over 2k, so it is a big number and that's about it. I guess what I am saying here is that there is another thread dedicated to the obscene numbers for the sake of numbers, but numbers are =/= practicality.

It is a quick way to save yourself a ton of perks rather than being a blacksmith. It comes to a personal choice for the sneaker.

I've just completed my first Dark Brotherhood contract, dispatching Narfi. I wasn't seen in the act, but was seen near the body a short time afterwards and a guard was alerted. Does anyone know how long after the murder one can be seen near the body without a guard becoming alerted? Also, if the body has been turned to ash (I have the Disintegrate Perk) does this even matter? I had killed Narfi with a bound bow, but I will likely use my Quiet-Cast Thunderbolt if it removed habeas from the corpus.

if you REALLY wanna be a very effective assasin i have one piece of advice: increase your illusion skill(spam the MUFFLE SPAMM IT) then get the invisibility spell. once you get the hang of it and time your assassination attacks correctly(DOUBLE DAGGER 30X POWER ATTACK LOOOOL) then you can kill everything regardless of what armor you happen to be wearing and barely have to worry about people noticing you. Except when you dont have the mana to recast when you open a door. All armor becomes redundant at this point and you might as well be wearing al mage gear (use dark brotherhood mage gloves of course)