One way to get the master criminal achievement easy guide.

[Skeleton Mage]

Seeing as my ability to post an 'official' guide is not working with no error message I'm going to post it here from anybody who cares to read it.

Note: You must be online and not using mods to earn achievements.

Step One: Increase sneak still until you can unlock the assassins blade perk and take it.

Step Two: Find yourself a pair of decent daggers - Ideally glass damage or better. Lower damage daggers will also work but may require follow up attacks and/or lowering the difficulty to finish the job.

Step Three: Join the dark brotherhood and get some shrouded gloves - these double the sneak attack melee damage.

Step Four: To speed things up make I suggest you get a horse and have unlocked all nine city's for fast travel.

Step Five: Enter the town / city, Equip the dark brotherhood gloves and pick a target to assassinate that's in view of another NPC. I suggest any generic unnamed guard as killing one of should not cause any bugs later.

Step Six: Kill your chosen target and move to the next town / city. Being at character level 20+ with some investment in health is an advantage here to prevent the player character being killed.

Step Seven: Repeat from step five for all nine towns / cities until the achievement pops.

Your character how has a minimum 1000 bounty in all nine holds but if your character is level 20+ and you have not been burning through gold then odds are you probably have over 10,000 gold to cover the fines.

You can also combine the escape from jail achievement with this when you are done with the master criminal one - just choose to serve your time in jail when confronted by a guard and escape form the cell, grab your gear on the way out and intentionally get caught again to pay of the fine ... some of the locks in the jail escape area tend to be difficult so I suggest quick saving and quick loading as needed to get through them, also I suggest doing the jail escape in whiterun as its one of the easier options.

Credit to Rez Elwin for pointing out that the console has zero effect on preventing earning achievements.

[Rez Elwin]

Why do you need sneak exactly? Killing a Guard is easy enough that you should not require a sneak attack to do so, as long as the crime is witnessed you have any easy 1000 gold bounty.

[4K_240hz_MLED]

Console commands do not disable achievements. I was able to get the achievement by just mindlessly slaughtering as many guards as I could.

[Skeleton Mage]

Originally posted by Rez Elwin:

Why do you need sneak exactly? Killing a Guard is easy enough that you should not require a sneak attack to do so, as long as the crime is witnessed you have any easy 1000 gold bounty.

A single dual wield sneak attack with the mentioned perk, equipment and weapon quality typically one shots the guard without needing to craft anything.

Nothing stopping you from spending a few hours grinding crafting skills if you want to do it with a different equipment setup or flat out smashing the guard into the ground with a high damage two handed weapon - There is multiple ways to get the achievement and the guide mentions one way that worked for me.

[Skeleton Mage]

Originally posted by <N/A>:

Console commands do not disable achievements. I was able to get the achievement by just mindlessly slaughtering as many guards as I could.

Specifically, what console commands where you using ?

My understanding is cheat commands - like god mode - disables achievements but some commands do not disable achievements.

[Riverdusk]

I just went into each town and transformed into a werewolf. Don't even have to kill anyone, automatic 1000 bounty.

[Rez Elwin]

Originally posted by Skeleton Mage:

Originally posted by <N/A>:

Console commands do not disable achievements. I was able to get the achievement by just mindlessly slaughtering as many guards as I could.

Specifically, what console commands where you using ?

My understanding is cheat commands - like god mode - disables achievements but some commands do not disable achievements.

No console commands disable achievements, doesn't matter which ones you use.

[Skeleton Mage]

Originally posted by Riverdusk:

I just went into each town and transformed into a werewolf. Don't even have to kill anyone, automatic 1000 bounty.

That's a one per day solution without a specific ring and also requires completing most of the companions quest line but it's undeniably a viable alternate option.

Originally posted by Rez Elwin:

Originally posted by Skeleton Mage:

Specifically, what console commands where you using ?

My understanding is cheat commands - like god mode - disables achievements but some commands do not disable achievements.

No console commands disable achievements, doesn't matter which ones you use.

That's news to me - I'll edit the original post and credit you for that.

[Rez Elwin]

Originally posted by Skeleton Mage:

Originally posted by Riverdusk:

I just went into each town and transformed into a werewolf. Don't even have to kill anyone, automatic 1000 bounty.

That's a one per day solution without a specific ring and also requires completing most of the companions quest line but it's undeniably a viable alternate option.

Actually to become a werewolf you only need to complete 4 quests, 2 of which are radiant quests which can be done in about 5 minutes, it does not take that long at all. And sure it does only work once a day but the wait feature exists. That takes even less time then either of our methods, I was also unaware the act of transforming was a 1000 bounty.

[Heimdall313]

Originally posted by Riverdusk:

I just went into each town and transformed into a werewolf. Don't even have to kill anyone, automatic 1000 bounty.

That is also what I did

[Skeleton Mage]

Post title edited to reflect the additional information proved by others.