Hi there all,


My apologies if this has already come up in conversation, searching forums is one of my downfalls.

Anyway, basically I rolled a new character to try out sneak, and now have him at level 49 with 100 sneak and all but the two last perks in the sneak tree.

I have smithing and enchanting at 100 and proceeded to craft and enchant my gear with 2 pieces of armour and both jewellery having 45% sneak on. The only problem is since equipping this 4 x 45% (180%) sneak gear, I seem to have the sneak abilities of a level 1, getting spotted at huge range from enemy mobs, and not being able to creep up close to any npc, even though I can pretty much one shot them with either bow or swords. I'm sure something fishy is going on, as before I crafted any of this uber gear, I could basically stand in front of an NPC at their feet and not be spotted.

Anyone else having this problem or know if it's a bug? I'm struggling to find any information showing the same situation but saw a comment on a thread about the possibility that any fortify sneak bonuses beyond 100 sneak actually cause sneak to be reduced. e.g. 100 sneak and a +25% fortify sneak would actually give you 75 sneak.

Any help will be most appreciated!

Lappy

I have heard that taking sneak beyond 255 causes it to reset at 1. I don't know if there is any proof though. If it is true then thats pethetic that they only used 1 bit for skill numbers.

Actually there is no way that can be true, since the only skill that seems to have this problem is sneak. Maybe it is a bug?

Sounds like a bug; however 80 sneak alone without any fortify sneak bonuses is enough to never be detected in the vanilla game.

I don't think the gear has anything to do with it. Having sneak at 100 suddenly seems to make it not work very well any longer. Its been that way since the beginning I believe.

Thanks for the quick replies, I had a play around with it, and when dropping 2 pieces of the gear, I could get close enough to melee the Bandit Chief, whereas when fully geared the chief comes searching for me when I'm not in the same room! Looks like I may have to get the console involved to reimburse all this gear and craft it again .

Is there any point in me fortifying sneak at all once it's 100? Or shall I just stack other enchants to make me a ruthless killer?

Smithing is the same way...

At 81 with 100 smithing, if I put on anything to improve smithed items it actually lowers the effectiveness.

The result of some cap, that when exceeded resets I imagine.

Hmmmm, seems that the whole going over cap scenario might be going on.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/538.325340-Skyrim-Sneaking-doesnt-work

It basically says there that in previous Bethesda games there has been a cap of 300%, and if you go over it, it loops back to 0%.

100 sneak, 100% + 180% (from gear) +40% (from tree) = 320% - 300% = 20% effective sneak.

Ah well at least I will be able to overpower my sword damage.

I will try out the situation with smithing and see what happens!

Thanks

Hmmm, just tried it out. Stood a few metres in front of a guard in Dragonsreach with all my gear on, sees me fine. Took 2 pieces off, and I'm hidden. Kept playing around with it and it seems that anything more than 90% extra sneak on gear resets the skill.

Thanks all.

Just tried something different. Stood right in front of the guard, at his feet. Took off all my gear and he couldn't see me. Put the 2 non sneak dragon scale armour pieces on, still couldn't see me. Put 1 piece of +45% sneak gear on and wolllahhhhh! he sees me.

Very weird, hope someone has a definitive answer to this, but looks like I'm dropping all sneak enchantments!

And lockpicking seems to be the same! I cannot get a novice lock open with 80 lockpicking and 3 x 45% fortify lockpicking (no perks though), but dropping the gear means I get it first attempt. Weird!

It seems that the easy answer for now, until there is a fix, would be don't enhance you skill with any gear once you hit 80 or so...

Has there been anything official from Bethesda on this? Is this an actual known bug and is it on an offiical list of fixes?

It's basically the same situation in Oblivion. Seems they use just a single byte for storing skills in, unlike Morrowind (where you could cheat and set yourself with as high a value for any of the attributes/skills).