I was given a quest to stealthily kill every enemy in Knifepoint Ridge (the first phase of the quest was incredibly broken and took me over twenty tries and a look at the "bugs" section of the UESP, but that's another story). Easy enough, I have 100 level sneak and cleared out larger camps than that. It's what I do.

So, I use the Shadow Stone ability to make my way to the back of the camp (aka the least guarded area). I work my way back toward the front of the camp, slitting throats one by one. No problems, done it a thousand times before. When it finally whittled down to four bandits, I had to change tactics.

Bandit 1 was on lookout at a watchtower, bandit 2 was practicing her swordplay (direct line-of-sight to bandit 3), bandit 3 was smithing (with direct line-of-sight to bandit 2, and bandit 4 was sleeping.

Theoretically, I could take down bandit 1 from a distance with a bow, move position to the watchtower, take out bandit 2, then switch targets to bandit 3 before the detection "eye" fully opens. That's how I've done it in the past. However, I think the latest patch did something to bows. I was crouched in the shadows at night a great distance away from all three bandits and all had their back to me. Took aim, fired. Literally as soon as the arrow was released, I hear "What was that?! You're dead!" All three bandits immediately went to full alert. By the time the arrow hit its mark it just dealt regular damage. In the time it took for an arrow to release and cross the distance to the target, all three bandits were at full alert and locked onto my position. I thought it was a fluke, but it happened over and over again, regardless of distance and cover. Even if I moved to a different spot much further away (where the only way to see the bandits is to zoom in so they fade into view) it still happened. You'd think I was firing off a 50 caliber rifle! It made the quest nearly impossible. I had to finally resort to quick use of invisibility potions and backstab.

That, combined with the absolutely broken first phase, was the most frustrating time I've ever had in this game. What should have taken me fifteen minutes lasted nearly an hour and a half (Edit: Holy [censored], both phases combined was close to three hours).
I've now noticed this outside of the quest, too. I can pretty much no longer get a critical stealth bonus with a bow.

Sure, enemies weren't very bright before whatever patched this. You didn't need to make them hyper-alert super-hearing monstrosities, though. A happy medium will suffice.


DL;DR: After spending two hours figuring out a broken quest, the second phase was equally broken. Enemies can hear bowstrings releasing at incredible distances and instantaneously lock on to your position.

I remember doing the quest unstealthily and it worked don't know if patch 1.3 did anything

Slightly unrelated, what does the "Shadow Warrior" perk even do? I've noticed no change in stealth since I've activated it. It seems like that and the "walking and running does not affect detection" perk doesn't actually work. The speed at which I move while crouched still has a significant effect on detection and crouching does not "stop combat for a moment and force distant opponents to search for a target." In fact, as stated in my post, it seems to allow opponents to lock onto my position faster from a greater distance.

Momentum

Bow strings are pretty dam loud IRL

It gives you a weird mini invisibility. Best use for it is to cheese fights imo. If you are already detected by an enemy, just crouch, attack repeatedly until it registers a sneak attack.

The game adjusts the volume of sounds based on how near or far away the camera is to the source of the sound. The camera is very close to bow strings so bow strings tend to be loud.

You can test this by toggling between third and first person while an NPC is talking. The sound of the voice will be noticeably louder in first person.

yep my brother is a bow hunter irl and I recently taken an interest and he is teaching me and the bow he has is outfitted with plenty of noise reduction accessories and it can still be noisy.

Doesn't do that for me. I guess I'm having one of those days.


Yea, but if I'm a football field away they shouldn't be able to instantaneously know my exact position as soon as I fire an arrow. How can someone with their back turned to me at night know that an arrow that far away is currently headed toward their skull, become fully alerted, turn around, tank the arrow, then charge straight toward the shadowy ledge I was standing on? Why include a critical stealth bonus for bows if the act of firing an arrow alerts everyone within a half mile radius, thus losing the bonus before the arrow can even leave the bow? Why does Aura whisper alert all nearby enemies? I just want it to be like Oblivion where I can snipe a single opponent from a distance without sending out a signal flare. By alert, I don't mean they say "what was that" and hunt around. I mean full blown "stealth eye" open, charge your position alert. It makes no sense.

And no, I'm not talking about shooting a member of a group of bandits and having their buddies become alert and aware of you. That's "realistic." I'm talking about a single opponent who somehow always fully detects you the moment you fire an arrow regardless of distance, cover, etc, before the arrow intended for him even gets close.

I can see where you are coming from there. There is plenty of wonky stuff that happens in the game either through bugs or just game design. Now in the game when I fire a bow I can often get 2 to 3 more attacks giving me a stealth bonus so im not sure what is up in your game, but the fact they know what direction the arrow flew from does show that every NPC has a good sense of direction and tend to process split second visual feed back very effectively.

I rarely get to sneak-attack with daggers any more. I'll be fully undetected, directly behind the enemy - but the eye goes from a slit to fully open in the split second DURING THE SWING, and I do not get any sneak-attack damage. I save before the attack, reload the save multiple times to try again and again, and I'm always detected. It's been a while since I've seen the throat-slit animation.

You should see a short animation of shadowy tendrils that obscure your character briefly if you sneak while already detected and enemies lose you for a moment. Like summons, Shadow Warrior can be impeded by high spell absorption though which cause the ability to fail from time to time.

If you have over 100 sneak through items there is a bug that makes sneak broken like its at lvl 1 again, so maybe that's what happening? ( Don't think this is fixed, sorry if i'm wrong)

I guess we have flipped problems. I've had that happen to me a few times, but not as frequently as this bow and arrow BS.



I don't think I have any items equipped, but it feels like sneak hasn't improved since the "lightfoot" level for me. It's as if the perks aren't registering.

I just think it's strange that I can slit a bandit's throat and his buddy two feet away won't bat an eye, but if I fire an arrow everyone charges my position before the arrow even hits anything.

I'm probably more frustrated than I should be on this issue because I spent the previous two hours listening to the quest giver repeat the same line over and over again without giving me the quest. The only solution was to fight a crowd of NPCs capable of killing me in one hit (somehow) while my screen was tripping out.

Huh that's weird, I always thought the Dragon battle Music was the loudest sound in the game.