I was wondering about my assassin character, is it wise to use daggers, bows or both? and does anyone have any tips on staying hidden?

i'd say use daggers because most dungeons are tight corridors, not much room to snipe. as for staying hidden, stay out of the light

Muffle spell or effect is all you need to stay hidden.

potion on invisability ftw. good thing about bows it is is generally pretty easy to get a sneak attack with them. If you dont have any invis potions, detect life is always insanely useful so you know where you can go to not be seen when you enter a room or turn a corner. Most enemies do not have an extreme field of view. I use sneak attacks for bows every time and I am rolling around in heavy armor and should be making more noise than a fire truck.

Honestly, if you spec into bows and sneak attacks for them, there is really no need to try anything else lol. If they are not dead in one hit you will finish the last sliver before they even get near you.

EDIT: very underrated trick, remove torches from walls and you can hide a lot easier when sneaking up on your prey

I use bows for picking enemies off from far, and dual daggers to finish it up. Also dual daggers for assassinating, because it looks really cool! Probably gonna replace the dual dagger with sword+dagger though...

Use daggers, sneak, and illusion. Those are all the skills you need to be a master assassin.

If you want to put archery into the mix, do it alongside alchemy so you can up your damage with poisons. Also become a vampire.

I use both Bow and duel Daggers, bow for range sneak attacks when the enemy is facing me and dagger when there's plenty of shadows. As for staying hidden most enemies will not notice you if you remain still in a shadow or behind a wall, you can use this tactic for sniping strong enemies that you can't kill with one arrow.

Why become a vampire exactly?

Sneak bonus, illusion spells more powerful,
and you'll get some pretty sweet spells

One-handed weapons do more damage than daggers in the long run.

Get into the Dark Brotherhood. Easy quest that takes all of 30 mins tops and you're rewarded with silenced boots + double critical damage gloves.

As for daggers vs. swords, here's my understanding:

- both benefit from Armsman perk
- daggers do not benefit much from any other perk in the one hand tree, but perks like Bladesman are pretty useless for swords too.
- you only need base of 100+ on a dagger to SA kill an ancient dragon with *30 multiplier. I've used elven daggers of 105 with dual wield power attacks (standard, no perks) to one shot a sleeping ancient dragon at Skyrim Altar.
- however in those moments when you mess up your SA, dual swords are life savers if your daggers aren't enchanted with dual elemental damage. Ditto for calm spells.
- daggers do not benefit from fortify one hand enchantment. It can be viewed as a positive as that means all your enchantment slots can be used for Archery + one school of magic free or resist magic/fire/frost/shock without switching gears.

Other things to note:

- Illusion is for RP purposes. It has 2 major drawbacks: i.) it requires a lot of perks to be useful and ii.) dragons are immune to it. For a sneaky character, it is rendered obsolete shortly if you SA often, as SAs level Sneak up fast. Illusion only works on undead, automations and deadra at Illusion 90 with Master of Mind taken. You will face lots of undead, some automations and rarely encounter deadra.
- A modest Sneak score (50+ and above) + DB boots will make you undetectable to most dungeon mobs, including the level 50 dragon priests. Thus, do not waste more than 1 perk point on the first Sneak perk.
- versus random dragons you need something more potent since Illusion won't work. While you can use Dragonrend to force it to land and score a SA with Shadow Warrior, Shadow Warrior's activation seems to be % based, or glitched. Either way it isn't a 100% guaranteed strategy to run up to an alerted dragon and expect an instant *30 damage multiplier. Consider leveling Destruction, Archery or Conjuration.
- Alchemy is awesome for stacking damage (Marksman potion, Fortify Destruction) and making poisoned arrows (weakness to magic/fire/frost/shock) that weaken dragons.
- a fully powered Marked For Death shout is an excellent way to debuff any enemy. Works on dragons too so you get more milage out of bows + arrows!