Hi

I'm currently on my first play through, and I'm a warrior. Thing is, in all games I've always been the warrior, so I'm used to enemies getting up close to me and beating me up, that's why I wear heavy armor

When I'm through, I'd like to try a thief/assassin, and after that, a mage (unless I get bored with the game). I have no idea how to play a thief/assassin, though. I'm primarily interested in the quests of the Thieves' Guild and the Dark Brotherhood, not really keen on crawling all dungeons again that my warrior has already cleared.

So what does the typical thief/assassin look like? I'd guess no armor, no melee weapons, swords, shields etc.? If I were a thief/assassin in real life (some hundreds of years ago, before guns), I'd probably wear normal clothes and use a dagger to stab my enemies from behind/at night. Is this possible in Skyrim? I ask because I will probably get attacked by enemies long before any sneak/stealth skills have progressed so far that the enemies won't see me. So will I have to start with the sword and shield I find in the intro and risk ending up as another warrior?

Sorry for these inexperienced questions, I've been a dumb warrior using brute force all my life

You will need armour always a bonus.
I take a bow and a shield and weapon as back up

There are ninja looking light armor all over the place wear that.
Pretty much you can snipe most people at level one and kill about half without them getting close.
You could always dual-wield daggers for when they get close and do a little slic slice.
that would fit with and assassin.

I'm doing the opposite - just finished my first playthrough as the thief/assassin that I always play, and am now starting over as a warrior.

There's plenty of leather armor in the game that looks really cool, so you'll want to wear some of that. For combat I usually start out with a bow at distance, always striking from stealth. As your stealth skill improves, you'll be able to sneak up behind quite a few enemies with your daggers and either get a one-hit kill or take a large chunk of health with your sneak attack and then finish them off.

Alchemy is also pretty useful for a thief, especially for the poisons. You'll also want to work on your lockpicking.

The main advice I would give is to think like a real thief. Pick battles that are in your favor, assassinate guards one at a time when their buddies are patrolling another part of the room, etc. Things won't go well for you if you end up with the whole building alerted to your presence and enemies swarming you.

Thief/Assasin is a very fun build, that consists mainly of

-Archery
-Light Armor
-Sneak
-Some 1-handed (it is mainly used for backstabs or if you end up in close fights, because archery is much better most of the time)
-2 points in Pickpocketing (only to get you started at ok-ish success rates, by the time you get those 2 points in you'll be getting the 90% success cap in most things anyway)
-Enchanting/Smithing/Alchemy can help a lot, though you don't necessarily need them.


Don't bother with lockpicking/speech perks, simply leveling these skills is enough to get locks to open easily and prices to be good.

Full classic thief ofc would probably be full sneak/pickpocket/speech/lockpicking with minimal 1-h.

- Light Armor: Besides looking cool some of them have enchantments that improve sneak, pickpocket and lockpicking. All of these are useful for thieves/assassins. Also there will be the odd occasion where an enemy will see you and attack you directly so if you are only wearing clothes the chance of dying before you can react is high.

- Archery: Obvious choice as the main point of being a sneaky character is killing without being seen. At low level you won't be able to insta-kill your enemies with bows. But when you level up and get better bows you kill every enemy except bosses with a single shot.

- One-hand: Always carry a dagger and get the 15x critical sneak perk asap. When you do that you will kill almost everything instantly if you manage to sneak behind them. Also always carry two swords for dual wielding when in a direct confrontation.

- Alchemy: A high level alchemy will let you make very potent poisons that will paralyze, slow or deal great amount of damage to your opponents.

Thief/Assassin is a fun archtype to play with.

Focus on One Handed, Sneak, Light Armor, Archery, and possibly Alchemy and pickpocket.

The perfect armor set for Thief/Assassin is a combination of the Nightingale and Dark Brotherhood armor set. It might not have as high of an armor rating if you equip the armor set but the bonuses are really good.

Why does any advice on thief/assassin on this forum include archery? I really don't get it, yes it's an option but why absolutely ALL suggestions include it? You have to carry a bow, doesn't look stealthy enough for me compared to 1h from a RP perspective. I play a stealthy character with stealth/light armor/1h (dual wield) all over 70 skill now and never fired a single arrow and I really enjoyed it. Yes using bows is easier but we are not power leveling in TES.
What I sayed was addressed to everyone. I agree that OP may want to use a bow cause he's looking for diversity coming from a warrior background...unless he's an fighter cause he doesn't like ranged combat in which case he should know that what I sayed is another option and might want to try it.

Because besides the obvious reason of allowing you to kill from a distance without being detected it's also a great way to make enemies go to whenever you want. Just shoot an arrow in the ground or in a wall and the nearby NPC will go there to check it up giving you an opportunity to pick them or sneak by.

Unless you a jack of all trades character, Thief is the best class. You won't feel like a tool forced to used lockpicks as a mage, Thief is obviously more natural when it comes to the lockpicking arts. Also the two best quest content, Thieves guild and Dark Brotherhood will yield you decent light armor, weapon rewards that fit yoir class type alongside having the highest quality content in terms of guild quest storyline.

Kill people + get paid = be an assassin. That's how easy it is. Join the Dark Brotherhood and you are an assassin.

OP, what you mean to ask is: "What TYPE of assassin should I be?" To which I answer: "Whatever type best suits you."

Stealth is probably the best type to play because if you can get commit the murder and not get caught, then you are saving yourself a lot of trouble. But with the right perks in Alchemy and Pickpocket, you don't need Stealth -- and you can do all but one of the murders without getting caught. That one murder, btw, is scripted for you to get caught and there's no way out of it no matter what "type" of assassin you play.

I've played all character types and every one of them has completed the Dark Brotherhood. Some of them have done it with a Stealth of ~20.


Steal stuff = be a thief. That's how easy it is. Join the Thieves Guild and then you can unload your stolen goods. Or ignore the Thieves Guild, perk up your Speech, and make every merchant in the world a fence. Just like with assassins, there are different types of thieves. The radiant jobs provided by the Thieves Guild have something for everyone.

It would seem to me that an assassin has 3 main objectives: 1 kill the target
2 not be seen
3 get away cleanly

IE a bow allows for all that. A stealthy backstab maybe the only option in some instances.

dual weild dagger's or 1h sword, bow, alchemy ( poisons come in handy ) light armor, sneak and lockpicking. At lower lvl's I have used a familar IF I was seen or surprised by more than 2 npc's in an area, won't work when the skill get's to high, they last to long and give away your position.

But everyone plays differently, that's just how I did it.

I'm not saying you should not use bows if you are a thief/assassin. Just saying that there are other ways too and I'm puzzled why I seem to be the only one around not using bows as a stealthy. For an assassin it would be more appropriate then for a thief...like for a sniping, hit and run scenario. As I sayed it would be a bit harder not using them, if you want to kill almost everything unseen by the rest of them then i agree bows are the only way but I personally don't think I'll enjoy that. I have a lot of fun observing the npcs from a distance, learning their path and trying to see which is the strongest to sneak to him (boss, archers, 2h) then finish the rest.
There was a dungeon in particular with some necromancers, one of them conducting some ritual near a body on an altar, the rest were moving around. I spent a good few minutes at the entrance trying to find for a pattern in their moves then all of a sudden all of them got sited on benches (like in a church). That was my moment. I had to sneak to the other end of the room and approach from there stealthy killed the boss. I could have taken them one by one with a bow but for me the way I did it was one of the most exciting moment in the game as far.
So again, just saying there are other ways and I don't see the bows so obvious choice. (I too sometime think of the character in the Thief series but it really doesn't have to be like that necessarily)

My perfect and most successful assassin character in the Skyrim wears enchanted clothes and is a master of illusion magic. Calm works on almost everything except dragons. You can cast calm on an enemy making them completely docile and sneak up behind them and backstab them with a dagger. Eventually you will find gear to make this a 30x base damage hit which kills practically everything. If that first hit doesn't kill them for some reason, you can simply calm them again which allows you to sneak up behind them for a second try.

Illusion also gives you access to silent casting and the frenzy spell line so you can hide in the shadows and frenzy groups of enemies into attacking each other until only one remains, which you then calm as above. Armor was rather pointless for this character as you will almost never engage in combat to be hit and even the small additional weight of it makes sneaking a bit more difficult.

Daggers or a bow or both is a must have. Light armour or clothes is a must have (rp elements with clothes i guess). Other choices are up to you, alchemy for example is a good thing if you want poisons for your weapons and pickpocket is also something nice for a thief.

My thief/assassin is now lvl 30 and has completed the Dark Brotherhood quests, so he's wearing their light armor gear, but he wore leather and hide armor before that. He was dual-wielding daggers very early, he loves the quick strikes. Archery and stealth is a big key, too, and is his main weapon in dungeons. Dual swords are also used against tougher enemies once detected. No shield, and the only spell he uses is healing.

Most of the points have gone into health, and the perks for him are: Sneaking, Archery, One-handed, and Light Armor. A couple have been put into Lockpicking and Smithing, as well.

Using a bow as a Skyrim assassin is for people who aren't good enough at the game to win with daggers. Stealth is too hard for a lot of people. Once you have the top sneak perk you just bow-kill someone and spam in and out of stealth while their buddies reset.


One of the more amusing parts of an assassin playstyle is when you get good enough to kill one of two people standing next to each other without the living one seeing you.

I play it like Conan. He was a Warrior,Thief and Assassin. I use a 2 handed sword, sword and shield when needed and a bow, also have a high sneak skill. There is enough room in this game to build your guy or gal the way you want without having to fall into conventional roles of role playing games.

I'm plenty good using daggers and love a good throat slicing. It's how most of the assassinations have been pulled off. I find the bow more fun, especially picking off several draugrs/goons in a dungeons before they know what's going on.

Some of us dont like using little steak knives. You ever backstab someone with a greatsword?

Ah, compensating. Got it.

i would say mainly due to the fact that using bows as a thief has been a mainstay throughout the centuries.

Thanks a lot for all your excellent advice everybody! I will heed it when I start my thief/assassin character, and I'm looking forward to it!