I'm another that likes alot of stamina,I don't see why poeple think it's worthless.
At early levels being able sprint away from an angry sabre cat during your travels can keep you from reloading.

Alchemy is cool go for it, Don't get me wrong- I love alchemy. If you are on a PC, you can modify both the potion rarity problem and the instant effect/unlimited chug problem. Have fun.

In the early game you end up packing around a lot of potions. Poisons to augment weak attacks and health and stamina potions to keep yourself alive. Not really necessary at higher levels. I carry a few healing potions, a few +barter and +smith, etc, then my favorite poisons. Frenzy + dmg health, Paralyze + dmg health, etc. These are useful at lower levels on your bow. On higher levels, you'll be one or two shotting with your bow so poison is less important. That's where drop pocketing comes in. Get the 'Poisoned' perk and you can kill bandits and unsuspecting townsfolk in a most satisfying way: let their friends kill them. Also, I sometimes bungle the backstab so a little paralyze on the blade can be handy.

See, I think it would be cool if the game didn't pause when you open the inventory. Then you would be forced to either hotkey intelligently or plan your battles better. Skyrim's transparent menus are perfect for real time inventory. It would be tough for console players, though.

Agreed, many of the perks along the branch to it are mostly pointless. Light foot probably being the one I regret having to waste a perk on the most. I have almost never been surprised by a pressure plate. If you're watching your path closely and paying attention to the detail, it's easy enough to see them in every variation I've come across.

Silent roll is also a waste of perk being largely for show. It gives a slight boost in speed you can reach the same spot moving to normally. That said, I've noticed it can get you further than you would normally be able to up a "borderline" slope. This is a factor of some use in what I call mountain goat hopping (anyone that uses this to good effect knows what I'm talking about). There are those perfect gradient paths that you can hop hop your way along and then there are those spots that are just a bit too steep, but some of those can be surpassed with the silent roll.


This however, I could not disagree with more strongly. Stealth and illusion compliment each other so well it's hard to imagine a situation where either would be useful that some combination of both wouldn't be even better. They both share in the nature of their central purpose, deception. It is hardly surprising they work so very well together.

Getting from point A to B without an enemy seeing is a very basic deception that can be made to serve you in many tactical purposes. But sneak is just a tip of a much larger iceberg. Direct manipulation of the mind of an enemy into freaking out and attacking friends or running scared is not exactly the same, but both aims are achieved through deceipt.

You cannot do everything possible in Illusion with Sneak (no such thing as firing into an enemy from near another to make it think itself attacked). You can go invisible and silent with illusion, but you cannot backstab out of sneak mode, and whatever your skill, you are using sneak then. Thus Illusion cannot completely replace sneak.

With the exception of role play reasons (pure thief or mage), there is no reason to not perk up what you want from both trees. At least not for any more reason than the typical trying to skimp as much on perks you don't intend to use reasons that the same choices are made between any other two trees. Until you are able to buy expert level spells, alchemy would give you invisibility far sooner while muffle requires no perks. So if you wanted Illusion for no more than to cover for a not well developed or consistent sneak, I'd say save any perks you might've thought to spend in illusion, mix invisibility potions (muffle requires none), get to 30 in sneak and spend only two for backstab x6.

I actually don't know. My chick has Alchemy 99 and my dude is high 80s so I packrat every ingredient I come across and often even dismount when riding by them. If I had no intention of doing any kind of Alchemy I might only gather the most valuable stuff to sell since most of it doesn't weigh too much. Now, I don't carry the Fortify Alchemy gear on me if that's what you're asking - it stays in the satchel in Breezehome. There are so many Alchemy tables in the hostile areas I guess in large quantities it would make more sense to carry the ingredients and make stuff as needed.

Yeah, I can barely keep enough healing ones on me early on. I always forget to use poisons. However, my Archery is so weak that I can't one-shot stuff (maybe with Daedric arrows) so I may start carrying some to mess with enemies from the shadows with like Forsworn or Steel arrows. Frenzy would be f-ing hilarious.

This thread has made good progress. I believe I made some perk mistakes after this debate.

Left side sneak tree can be replaced by illusion (if you use spells and have a free hand) saving 4-5 perks (assuming you had both trees before.) That is my conclusion so far.
Cool beans. - and great news for perk starved spellswords in earlier levels.

Retroedit:

http://skyrimcalculator.com/#89392

http://skyrimcalculator.com/#47679

2 choices. The first can cast invisibility and expert level casting with silent spells. 11 perks

the second has all sneak perks. 9 perks.

The first costs a mana investment, the second does not. But 2 more perks seems to provide a compelling argument for utility IMO.

QFT.

I'm thinking I'll put 4 of my 7 points into Illusion right side (Novice, Animage, Kindred, and Quiet Casting) just so I can F with people with Invisibility.

Does anyone know what the combined effects of Kindred Mage and Hypnotic Gaze are on people? They seem to do the same thing, but Hypnotic Gaze is only for Calm? ...or do they stack?

Were you 'lurking' in here reading what the little $*** was posting? ...the other little $***...not me.

The perks (relative to the type of spell and creatures effected) stack.

Yep, I was. The topic issue isn't anything I know about. But I read pretty much everything - because you never know what you'll need.... or what you can point someone else to.

I've had "meetings" with someone like him numerous times on various game fora. I would not be surprised to find out it was all the same person.

I am particulary proud of my restraint- I did not feed the troll- and boy- it was a bad troll..

Yep, most of the people in this thread were VERY "grace under pressure" - and I also would like to extend my great appreciation to the moderators. They respond extremely fast, and that's appreciated. (I say this, having been elsewhere that sort of response didn't happen....)

Interesting. I'll probably go with the 4 for now and think about the Hypnotic Gaze. I can kill anything in the game with relative ease if I start getting attacked (especially with Shadow Warrior ), but Calm may be a fun RP tool for Assassinations. "Nothing." *yoink*

I'll fire a few shots at the trolls, but won't engage them for any long exchange. I can usually 'say' just a few things and then they continue to prove my point(s) for me.

Soooo, have we enticed you into starting an Assassin "toon"?

I'm sure it's someone who's still here. Judging from the fact that 'his' only 4 or 5 posts were the ones in this thread I'm sure it's a still current member who just made that troll account.

Sorry, buckom.... no assasin toon for me. It's just not ever going to be my sort of thing. (And if it was a current member posting on an alt account, wouldn't the mods know that? And act accordingly? I don't know how that works around here myself....)

Yes...no...kinda'. I'll try not to bore you too much, but most people have dynamic IP addresses (they automatically change every 24 or 48 hours, but you can force a change by restarting your modem) so if they banned his IP address he could just restart the modem and get a new address. They can also ban a range of IP addresses, but then other people with the same provider would be blocked (like multiple people on Comcast or AT&T, etc).

Oh yes, I know that sort of stuff (I've had my own web-based management business for nearly 15 years). I was meaning like Blizzard's CSF folks know each person's entire account history - all accounts, all toons, etc.

Well, if I remember from registration the email address was the only thing verified and the only way they could tie it all together would be by email address or IP address; we're not even linked to our gamer accounts. Names can't be verified because we can put anything we want in those blocks so email address and IP address would be the only things that are verifiable and even the email address can be faked because there are so many free ones out there.

Yup, it's pretty tough to ban someone permanently if they are persistent. Even if they had a static IP they could just log in through Tor.
Maybe in the future, access to forums like these will be tied to your game or a service like Steam. That's how it is for Xbox Live... but that's a dark thought. Let's not go there.

Some additional thoughts on combat oriented Shadow Warrior characters:

It seems that the one thing that prevents Shadow Warrior from working 100% of the time (assuming all the other requirements are already met) is if an enemy is in the middle of an attack and this interrupts your brief invisibility. One potential way to overcome this would be to first stagger the enemy. I've been thinking on it, and I think I might have found a way to accomodate most combat playstyles.

Dual Wielders:

Windshear. Since Windshear always causes the enemy to stagger, you could set up your insta-kill with an off-hand attack from Windshear. Crouch, kill, repeat.

Sword and Boarders:

Shield Bash. With the appropriate perks you should be able to stagger most enemies, crouch kill and repeat.

One-Handers:

Same principle should apply for weapon bashing as with shield bashing, I just don't know if the weapon bash perks (right side of the tree) apply to daggers. Anyone care to clarify?

All of the above:

Fus Ro Dah. Well, minus the Ro and Dah. With just the first word you can minimalize recharge time while getting the appropriate level of stagger.

This is all entirely theoretical, as I haven't had a chance to test any of it, but it seems like a perfect set up. It could turn out that the stagger animation prevents the throat slit animation, but I figured I'd put it out there anyway.

Edit: Yeahhh, so I playtested this with Fus Ro Dah and the dagger bash. Not so much. Seems much easier to sit and slit than it is to try and work stagger into the equation. Was worth a shot...

Yes...let's not:

See if you can pay more attention to this in the future. That could be something because mine fail sometimes, but I've noticed a difficulty when the target has a shield. It's usually Thalmor Justiciers so it could be from lag (because there are multiples and outdoors), but they usu have shields so I'm not sure which it might be.

AFAIK the Perks in the 1-H tree (Fighting Stance, Savage Strike, Dual Flurry, and Dual Savagry) and the Backstab abilities in the Stealth tree are the only ones that apply to Daggers. I'm not completely sure to which tree you're referring, but I've never bashed with a dagger that I know of - it always does a standard Power Attack. Sometimes she seems to smack their shields with her fist (with a Dagger in it) and the sound is more of thump than a clink, but it's not very effective and might just be a standard block on the part of the target.

You can bash with 1H weapons by having your left hand empty, holding the left hand button to block, then pressing the right hand button. The bashing perks in the Block tree do apply to this for all weapon types.

Ooooo, I'll have to try that.

You don't need an assassin to play stealth,just a skinny Bosmer or some one who maybe grew up on the streets.
He or she learned to stay in the shadows to avoid the town bully's.
Maybe later in life he or she learned to put that stealth they learned as a kid to good use in adventuring or helping others such as quest's for the jarls.Maybe even the temple quest's?Who knows?

Now I don't have any experience with the shadow warrior perk yet since I haven't taken it yet.
But it seems to me you might be able to use just for an escape if your stealth gets broken.I imagine you could certainly use illusion for an escape if things go bad.

Anyhow just adding some thoughts for you.

Thing is, calm is a valid way to achieve multiple backstabs (if one doesn't take an enemy out) or to get one when already detected. And while it does take perking up of illusion to keep those spells effective at higher levels, you can use calm right out of Helgen. Of course alchemy always gives invisibility potions with no perk that don't depend on rage, animage, or hypnotic gaze. It is irrelevant if the invisibility from potion can be argued inferior to the casted spell (a point that could easily be disputed), because for purpose of breaking combat to gain a backstab, more than a couple seconds is unnecessary. Of course it is ineffective on the three things illusion effects don't work on without master of the mind, but there are ways to achieve the same effect of the shadow warrior perk long before you get it.