How do I kill Anoriath without getting bounty?

[_MaZ_TeR_]

I'm doing Brotherhood of Darkness quests and I have to kill the Anoriath, but when I kill him in his sleep with a dagger, it still alerts others, though they can't see me and even when I go outside, they're my enemies. I want to be completely unseen and remain in good terms with Whiterun.

Edit: Already solved how I can kill him unseen, now the problem is not getting Elrindir becoming angry towards me even though there's no way of him knowing i killed his buddy.

[mister_lobos]

in theory the safest way to eliminate someone tho is the poison in the pocket trick, while they sleep, either with a poison that kills them before they can even get up, or use a frenzy potion in the pocket, those should work when the target is awake.

[alexander_dougherty]

Originally posted by HazakTheMad:

Remember that time a cow reported me for murdering Thalmor?
Cows are Thalmor sympathizers.

Steak time

[MF]

Originally posted by _MaZ_TeR_:

I'm doing Brotherhood of Darkness quests and I have to kill the Whiterun fletcher's assistant, but when I kill him in his sleep with a dagger, it still alerts others, though they can't see me and even when I go outside, they're my enemies. I want to be completely unseen and remain in good terms with Whiterun.

I always found it best to wait until dark, follow at a distance and pew pew from a distance.

[FauxFurry]

If you want to do it the meat headed way, you can just walk right up to him, threaten him and start a fight with him that way. Not only will you avoid a fine or imprisonment, the guards might kill him for you.

[Perplex]

Originally posted by FauxFurry:

If you want to do it the meat headed way, you can just walk right up to him, threaten him and start a fight with him that way. Not only will you avoid a fine or imprisonment, the guards might kill him for you.

This.

[_MaZ_TeR_]

I tried poisoning him and he just regens his health before it even goes nowhere near down low. Also tried multiple times giving him frenzy potions and magic and he always just goes down on his knees when other NPCs attack him and never actually finish him off. I ended up just killing him myself once and for all, but the store owner is now angry at me, not sure if he even sells anything to me anymore. Oh well. Just find it weird that the Elder Scrolls wiki says the frenzy potions work. Definitely not anymore.

[Hugh G. Rection]

Originally posted by _MaZ_TeR_:

I tried poisoning him and he just regens his health before it even goes nowhere near down low. Also tried multiple times giving him frenzy potions and magic and he always just goes down on his knees when other NPCs attack him and never actually finish him off. I ended up just killing him myself once and for all, but the store owner is now angry at me, not sure if he even sells anything to me anymore. Oh well. Just find it weird that the Elder Scrolls wiki says the frenzy potions work. Definitely not anymore.

So this has been annoying the piss out of me for the last few hours, so after a bunch of experimentation, it seems like a couple of things have either been broken or 'fixed' since the anniversary release that affect this quest,

When approaching the Anoriath contract for Nazir previously, if you wanted to kill him without incurring Elrindir's anger, you could:

-Reverse pickpocket a frenzy potion into his inventory and let guards/nearby npcs kill him when he turns hostile
**or**
-Speak with him and chose one of the Brotherhood dialogue options (ie not 'remain silent') where upon he would turn hostile, particularly with recruitable NPCs.

Ultimately these both result in the same effect, Anoriath turning hostile, allowing for neutral or friendly NPCs to attack and kill him. This doesn't work anymore for a number of reasons:

Firstly, when under the effect of the frenzy, NPCs will stop attacking him when he starts his 'injured' animation. Planting another frenzy on him will only result in the same thing happening. Previously, they would attack him until his death, or he fled, or the frenzy wore off.

Secondly, when confronting him about the contract to kill him, if you chose the dialogue options that aren't 'remain silent', he no longer flags as hostile. He uses his hostile dialogue, he even draws his weapon, but his behaviour is set to 'flee', and he'll just run away. This means in the past, where you could confront him and have the guards/followers or any potentially recruitable NPCs kill him for you, they won't anymore.

Thirdly, and this one is kinda weird, but you can't kill him via shooting him off a high cliff with unrelenting force, like from, say, Ironback Hideout or High Hrothgar. Pretty sure you could in the past, and pretty sure it counted against you, ie, Elrindir would know you were responsible. This still works for bandits, Thalmor scum, etc, but not for Anoriath (haven't tested this on other non-essential named NPCs)

HOWEVER

If for whatever reason you want to complete the job without Eldrindir forever calling you a miserable wretch, and/or you want the job done but without having to kill Anoriath, using setstage DBSideContract08 200 still works fine.

The Skyrim UESP and Skyrim fandom Wikis are still quite good (despite most fandom.com wikis being pretty garbage these days), however they haven't been updated much in the past 5 or 6 years, and they're still showing the old data/methods etc from before the AE release..