What combination of spells (invisibility, muffle) enchantments (muffle), perks (silent casting, stealth, muffled movement, silence), and potions (invisibility) can be used to remain undetectable?

Do I need essentially all of the above?

Is 5/5 stealth so much better than 1/5?

Could I just have muffle enchantment on a piece of clothing and drink an invisibility potion and not spend any perks?

If I am not wearing armor do I need to worry about any muffle effects at all?

Thank you in advance!

Yes.

Whether enemies can you detect you depends on several variables: (1) lighting; (2) sound; and (3) Sneak skill.

"Sound" is a product of the weight of your equipped armor and your movement speed. Muffle effects only deal with the weight aspect of sound; thus, if you're naked, wearing cloth, or have a Standing Stone/ perk that makes your equipped armor weigh nothing (Steed Stone, Unhindered, or Conditioning), then Muffle effects are pointless and unnecessary. By the same token, if you're wearing Elven armor, which has a total weight of 7 lbs, you don't need it either. You only "need" Muffle effects if your armor has significant weight and you haven't addressed it via the Steed Stone or Unhindered/ Conditioning. If that's the case, the Muffle spell takes care of it completely, or you can get Muffled Movement + the Muffle boot enchant to achieve the same effect without Illusion.

Invisibility + Muffle make you completely undetectable.


No. 1/5 is plenty.


As I mentioned, if you're naked or wearing cloth/ Elven armor, Muffle is unnecessary. If you're armor weight is significant though, you'll need more than simply a Muffle enchant on your boot, as that only reduces noise by 50%. Pair it with the Muffled Movement perk for total silence, or skip them both and rely on the Muffle spell.

It's been my experience that perking both Illusion and Sneak is overkill. 100 Sneak + Muffled Movement + Muffle boot enchant makes you virtually undetectable, while Invisibility + Muffle makes you completely undetectable. Pick one or other.

I used a cheat to make stealth 100 and give me all stealth perks as well as other skills to see what I wanted before I started putting perks into anything during the game. With stealth 100 and I'm guessing it's the 5/5 stealth perk at the beginning you can sneak right up into someones face and they won't notice you. although during combat I forgot to test that part but I'm guessing it will still be much harder and I didn't have any enchantments during the testing.

Remove premature posting.

thank you so much for the help!

Sound is the most important factor and easiest to mask. You can run right pass any hostile, as long as they are not looking at you, with muffler boots on. 0% audibility is cheap, invest here first.

Light is the second important factor. Standing in the fireplace in dragonsreach always opens the eye no matter what i used. It seems there there is no absolute 0% visibility. So you need to heavily invest in sneak or learn to make proper use of terrain, shadows and line-of-sight. The former is useful if you wish to get the shadow warrior perk for in combat deaggro and perform frontal-backstabs. The later makes investment in invisible spell or potions necessary to get pass some of the more alert enemies.

Lastly we have touch. Touching someone is instant alert but not necessary discovery. Powerful sneak seems to beat invisibility hands down in this regard. I have "burned" people to death using ebony mail by staying very close to them without them ever discovering me using high level sneak. Invisibility seems to break fairly easily on the other hand.