Hi

I've created a Wood elf now lvl 5 going for a sneak build. So far i got 1 20% damage in one handed, bows and sneak. 1 fighting stance.
Anyone got some starter tips on what to use your first, say 20-30 points?

if you got a telling on how you do your starters and where you obtain the best gear possible at an early stage without going deep into faction quests.
I will focus on 1 handers and bows, alchemy for poison i guess. Should i do smithing? what would you start doing, i would be enlightened to hear.

I'd like a bow that will last for a good while, sword and some other things wouldnt hurt either.

Thanks!

Im on PC btw, if you got a mod in mind feel free to drop it in the "reply to this topic" box down beloW.

What skills are you going to be using? Light Armor? Smithing? etc List them all, and perhaps I can come up with a good build for you. Do you want to min/max, or what? It all depends.

I heard that Aela has an Elven Bow in her room in Jorrvaskr that you can steal. Elven bow is good enough to keep until the end of the game, although there are better bows.

How do you feel about getting your Archery to 50 quickly for free? If that does not bother you, you can go help Faendal in Riverwood and make him your follower. If a trainer is a follower, you can always ask for the money back after training.

Fastest and most painless way to boost sneak quickly is to backstab sleeping draugrs whenever you are at Nord ruins. If you dual wield and do double attack on the sleeping draugr, often you get sneak experience for both hits. At lower level, you can sometimes gain 2 levels in sneak at once doing this.

If you are going to wear light armor, Elven is very good in early game. Some people don't like elven armor because the Thalmor wear them. But it's very practical. It's the lightest of light armor and give you much better protection than leather. You can get Elven Light armor very early in the game if you go kill some Thalmor. Some people like going up north to Northwatch Keep to kill a few Thalmor and get Elven armor from there. Elven light armor is not as good as regular Elven armor but it's much better than leather armor because you can improve it twice as much with elven smithing perk.

My recommendations for perks:

One-Handed: Take all 5 perks in Armsman as soon as you are able to. Extra damage is good. Take Fighting stance and Savage Strike whenever you can. Take Dual Flurry and Dual Savagery if you plan on dual-wielding. I do not recommend Bone Breaker, Bladesman, or Hack and Slash, because they are generally thought to be underpowered and not a good deal.

Archery: Take all 5 perks in Overdraw as soon as you can. Take Eagle Eye, Powershot, and Quick shot as soon as you can. They are awesome. Many people like Steady Hand perk, but I'm not one of them. Don't take Critical Shot perk, because the extra damage you get is really small.

Sneak: Take only 1 perk in Stealth. but take everything else as you are able to. I love Backstab, Deadly Aim, and get them as soon as I can. Silent roll is also a lot of fun.

I'm asking for whatever tips or how you'd prefer to do it.

I'll fetch that elven bow now for sure, and check out the elven armor. I got myself a iron glove 20% dmg with one handed which seems to last for a while.
Thanks for the tips abacus, ill make sure to be more effective sneaking up on the draugrs.

Im not sure about the min/max, so far adept is a breeze, but i know for earlier experience that the scaling and diffcultymakes health pools dramatically large.
I'll lean more on doing sneak kills, while still do a great deal of damage.

No spells.

For me, the game is most challenging from level 15 to 30. It's a breeze in the beginning, and then things get tougher. Then things start to get easier after that.

Niamh is a Bosmer, archer, sneak.

When we found ourselves in Skyrim a second time, all of her skills were set to 1, she was basically as weak as a kitten and had to sneak everywhere to avoid being brutalised repeatedly.
This works because it means things like archery and sneak go up relatively quicker because she uses them more, but also much more naturally, again because she uses them more.

You could try that...

I really like using illusion and alteration along with one handed, archery for an assassin build.. Really fun with invisibility, fury, paralyze, back-stabbing and sniping.

That's my favorite, I have made a lot of different assassin builds, another good option is alchemy, you can make potions and avoid illusion and alteration.

Personally, I like Haeravon's Character Creation Guide, as seen over at GameFAQs.. slightly modified to suit my personal tastes, though.
Here's how I adapted Haeravon's guide for my own use.

The bad news is that there is some tedious grinding right away; however, once you're done with that, you're pretty clear for a bit. See, as soon as the game begins and you make your initial choice whether to follow the Empire loyalist or the Stormcloak, wait until your wrists are untied. Your character will be asked to grab some starter gear and then unlock a door. Instead, I picked up my weapon, dropped into stealth mode and immediately started attacking my "companion" from behind. Being attackable but not killable (for now), the first thing that happens is a reasonably quick collection of "Sneak" points (every three hits at first) plus a few bonus "One-Handed" points now and again (very rare - even early on, it seems to take forever to get combat skill points). The goal here is to keep stealth-backstabbing as long as it takes to get to 70 in Stealth, so that you can get the "Silence" perk.

As for how the perks go, what I did was put my first perks into the skills I know I will need very early in the game; that means Stealth, One-Handed, Archery, Light Armor and Block. Therefore, my first five perk points will go into a single point in each of those five skills. As I continue to grind my Sneak, being still in the first room, my sixth and seventh Perk points also go into the Sneak tree, grabbing "Backstab" and "Muffled Movement".

*Important* - While my intention is to get 5/5 for the Archery and One-Handed skills, the other three skills only need to be 1/5, as their points are meant mainly to get access to higher perks. Thus, Sneak, Block and Light Armor will only get 1/5 in their lowest level perk.

This is where it can get a little tricky. By now, your "One-Handed" skill should also be at least 20, so use your eighth Perk point to get 2/5 in "Armsman". Depending on what race you chose, you MIGHT have at least 20 iin Archery; if you do, go ahead and get "Overdraw" to 2/5.

At this point, you should have put 3 Perk points in Sneak (with only 1/5 in the "Stealth" skill itself), 2 points in One-Handed, possibly 2 points in Archery, and 1 point in each of Light Armor and Block. Keep on backstabbing Ralof or Hadvar until your Sneak score is 70 (or until your patience wears out and you just want to go on with the game.) While still in this room, the only skill that should get any new Perk choices is Sneak. Choose "Deadly Aim" and "Light Foot" when you get to Sneak 40, followed by "Silent Roll" and "Silence" at 50 and 70 respectiverly. You can ignore "Assassin's Blade" and "Shadow Warrior" (for now, anyways). Just save up all other Perk points you get until you can use them later.

Now you have a choice to make. Choice 1 is to risk insanity, stay in the opening room & use your unkillable ally to level your One-Handed skill. If you REALLY wanted to you could also level a skill you'll have noticed that I ignored: Destruction. (Personally, I prefer Melee. Besides, it seems that you don't get a Sneak bonus for attacking with spells. Since I'm a Sneak specialist, that means I ignore Destruction as a combat spell - for now.)

The alternative is to finally grant yourself and your companion relief by finally unlocking the door and getting on with the game. Not long after, you'll finally get a bow & some arrows from an enemy corpse. I'd recommend sticking to Archery as much as possible from this point on. You want to level it up so that you can start dropping more perks into the Archery tree. Also, keep an eye out for a shield; there's no guaranteed one this early, but it will help if you run out of arrows before you can get to the first town & its supplier.

You should be good for combat for now. Just follow Haeravon's "Character Builder" guide, especially the "Getting Started in SKyrim" section. It really does make the early game a lot easier. I'll just leave you with a few last minute tips...

* Early in the game, you will quickly reach your weight limit, and will have to start prioritizing what you can hang on to. This includes stuff that you don't want to use immediately, but want to hang on to for later (e.g. magical gear to be disenchanted or sold later. Until you manage to acquire yur first house, there are a few temporary options:
- When you reach the first village, you should be given access to a villager's home. While not entirely "safe", it can be a good stopgap measure
- Clear the Embershard Mine west of Riverwood. After you clear it, you can safely store gear in the chests there long enough to acquire a home
- As soon as you hit Riverwood the first time, there is a short quest that will allow you to acquire your first follower, either Sven or Faendal (I recommend the later). Talk to your companion and you can trade with them, giving them your extra gear to hold. Their weight capacity seems to be the same as yours, essentially allowing you to double what you can carry

* Extremely easy (if tedious) way to level Block: from Riverwood, take the bridge across the river and turn left. Follow the riverbank a short ways. You should find a Mudcrab nearby. Just plant yourself right in front of it and raise your Shield and wait... and wait... and wait. (Give the lil' guy credit - he keeps on attacking you, no matter how long it takes and despite an utter lack of progress on his part.)

As for getting good gear for this character... by doing the early grinding, you don't actually enter the Skyrim wilderness until you're already at least level 13 or so. I did the grind, got through the escape quest, made it to the first village and then cleared the local mine. Once there, I ran to Whiterun, got the "Bleak Falls Barrow" quest (there's a second quest for BFB that you pick up in Riverwood, btw) and went to do it. Now... I can't remember exactly where I picked it up, but I acquired a VERY lovely weapon by this point: a Dwarven bow with an innate "Soul Trap" enchantment! Talk about a rare drop!!! Also, if you've can get the gold early on, keep an eye on armor vendors; the Light Armor you'll be wanting in Elven, although Leather or Light Imperial armor may be what you'll have to settle for.

I hope this gives the help you were looking for regarding how to plan your early perks for your sneak-focussed character.

Here's my advice for anyone going for the rogue/assassin build:


Don't grind, just do missions. Spend your perks on armour,weapons and sneak, and don't waste time or energy skilling anything else. When you finish one mission, go to the next. Join the companions and get Skyforged Steel, then join the Dark Brotherhood for shrouded armour. Both are easily available very early on, and offer excellent rewards which should let you power up early, and avoid a messy death at the hands of some saber cat. It doesn't matter what your ultimate perk plan is, don't deviate from your core combat skills for the first 20 levels, and you'll do fine.

Here's my personal favourite perk plan: http://skyrimcalculator.com/#125283

This build presupposes I'll be wearing the Ancient Shrouded Armour, and using enchanted Skyforged Steel weapons. Alchemy/Enchanting/Smithing ensure I can stack the highest improvements on my armour and weapons. Ring and amulet will be +health/+magic resist. I use sword/dagger to get the fastest power attack flurry I can, and fighting stance and wind walker ensure I have lots of stamina to power my super-speed blade-blender.

Don't ignore silent roll unless you want to be crawling through dungeons at a snails pace.

In first person it has the effect of a quick little ninja-like dash rather than a roll, great for cover to cover and makes a sneak build feel agile and nimble.
Executing enemies from a roll is quite cool too and if you're rocking the dagger stealth multiplier perk you can clear a room of multiple enemies very quickly.

It does look a little lame in 3rd person constantly rolling round like a derp though., but it's an essential movement perk for any stealth build imo.

Ah, but if you've sneak-slaughtered everyone around you, who would be around to laugh?

If your on a console and want to lv up sneak. I find a easy way of doing that is to sneak through crypts with draugr. If you are sneaking and heavy hit kill them while they sleep in the walls. it will increase your sneak and one or two handed weapon skills.