Daggers, bows and stealth

[Subterranean Homesick Walrus]

Second playthrough, I'm rolling a Khajiit. I will use Bows and dual wield daggers, so a few quickies:

1. What is the best bow? I know that more weight equals more drawing time, I want a balance between power and speed (DPS, I guess?)

2. Dual wield daggers - are they worth it? Any benefit? Is it faster to attack with first, then second?

3. I do a bit of alchemy on side - is it worth putting perks in it earlier so I can make better poisons?

4. Best enchantments for the stealthy Khajiit?


That's all.

[Brandybuck]

Bows only ever get x3 sneak damage, so more damage is important for those one shot kills. Best bow in the game (without a DLC) is either the Nightingale Bow or one you craft yourself.

Dual wield does not work well with backstabs (assuming you're an assassin and not a thief). But if you don't have anything in your left hand, you might as well.

Assassins use poison, thieves make sure they never have to get into a fight. So if you're an assassin get the Alchemy to make poisons. What you'll found as loot will typically be better than what you can make, however, but Alchemy will also net you lots of other potions. For any kind of non-illusionist sneaking, the invisibility potions alone are worth it.

[peppermint hollows]

It may be in your interest to specialize in a little bit of magic as well. A sneak mage can be very powerful. If you do choose to, Illusion and Conjuration magic is a good way to go. With Conjuration, you can conjure a Bound Bow, which is equivalent to a Daedric Bow in base damage (and can go higher with the Mystic Binding Perk). Along with the Bound Bow you summon 100 Bound Arrows, which are equivalent to Daedric Arrows in base damage. These are the most powerful arrows in the base game, and the 2nd most powerful arrows if you have the Dawnguard DLC installed.

Illusion magic allows you to manipulate the minds of others, as well as cast spells useful to sneak type characters like Muffle and Invisibility, and the skill tree has perks like Quiet Casting that makes all spells silent to others. Pacifying an enemy can also be useful if something goes wrong and you get detected. However, once you get Invisiblity and Muffle spells, you can become completely undetectable.

As for enchanting, you may not need it as much if you become a good alchemist because your posions will take care of a lot of damage. Still, you may want to enchant your armor for other stuff too. In this case, Conjuration, as I mentioned earlier, will come in handy. You can get a perk in the Conjuration skill tree that makes Bound weapons cast Soul Trap on enemies. You need souls for soul gems, of course. I'm sure you already know that much though.

[Subterranean Homesick Walrus]

Thank you for your replies.


I wanted a pure assassin class, but I guess a bit of Conjuration wouldn't hurt. I am mostly interested in Muffle spell, since my previous warrior build had the Ebony Mail from Boethiah quest. Is there some kind of light armor with Muffle in vanilla?

Of course, assassin and thief are a bit different so I am pretty much worried about "roleplay" more. I will sometimes pickpocket and stuff like that, ofcourse. Add up the TG and DB guilds, I aim to start as a thief and work my way up to DB. I just entered Riften.

And the most important question I forgot to ask - how do you deal with dragons as a stealth char?

[peppermint hollows]

Unless the dragon is sitting on a word wall (which is usually only at a dragon lair, the symbols on the maps that are the dragon heads) I don't think they ever just sit idly landed somewhere. So only the really way to face them is head on. Of course, if you specialize in a little Conjuration you can have your summons take care of them for you.

As for muffle, I'm not sure if there's an enchantment you can get and put on light armor, but the spell can be obtained fairly early on in Illusion. Unfortunately, I believe invisiblity is a master level spell. You could always make invisibility potions in the mean time if you choose to work on alchemy of course.

[The Shadow of Death]

I HAVE Snuck up behind a sleeping dragon by a word wall and killed him with two power attacks. The huge sneak bonus damage nearly obliterated it with just the first power attack. If you're going the dual-wield daggers route, you might want to equip Valdr's Lucky Dagger to your second hand. It gives you a 25% chance of critical damage to your main hand too, and it doesn't count as an enchanted weapon, so although you can't disenchant it, you CAN boost your attack speed with the Elemental Fury shout.

You can find a Muffle Enchantment. My current character has one. It's one of the more valuable enchantments, actually.

[Brandybuck]

Originally posted by Chevap666:

And the most important question I forgot to ask - how do you deal with dragons as a stealth char?

On my last thief character I did the following: RUN!!!

Seriously, if you have a bow they should not be a huge problem unless you're lower level and alone. All you need is for something to distract the dragon while you pepper it with arrows.

[Savick]

I'm all about the archery in this game. Because of that, I perk up Marksman pretty fast. Once you have all the archery perks the best bow is the one your hand. Enchantment and smithing are also good with bows. My personal favorite is a legendary dragonbone bow with two enchantments; absorb health and paralyze.

[stuw23]

Originally posted by Chevap666:

And the most important question I forgot to ask - how do you deal with dragons as a stealth char?

My stealth character was often saved by her potions in dragon fights. Being able to nullify most of their breath damage by using the right "resist" potion makes a huge difference. As for killing it, well, having good archery skills and equipment always helps there! You can sometimes sneak up on a dragon at a world wall and get a stealth attack or two in, but don't count on it.

[zeromaveric]

in regards to the muffle enchantment, it's real easy to find. just land yourself in the thieves guild or dark brotherhood, and pretty much every boot item you get comes with a muffled effect. even more so if you do the sidequest to get the Ancient Shrouded Armor set which provides muffled and sneak bonus with the boots

[gnewna]

I like the idea of being an assassin with no physical weapons, just Conjured ones. Good for getting in and out of places undetected (all the blades my current swordswoman is carrying around for different purposes must clank dreadfully...) and being able to feign innocence if someone sees you somewhere you shouldn't be... (Admittedly there's probably no specific in-game mechanic for any of that, but for roleplay's sake.)

Illusion also allows the silent casting perk a little further up the tree, which would be even more useful for conjuring weapons while sneaking about - I have never really tried out conjured weapons beyond a bit of a backup for a mage character who wasn't particularly sneaky, so I dunno if it tends to alert people?

Gah, another one for the List Of Future Characters To Try...

[Solomon Hawk]

Besides the Nightingale bow, an ebony bow has the same damage rating, but you'll have to be a higher level to get your hands on one as a loot from a draugur or chest. Unlike the Nightingale bow, the ebony bow can be enchanted with your own preferences if you have the skills for enchaning weapons. Firey soul trap, absorb health, fire damage, chaos damage, lightning damage are the better enchantments you can place on one.
Daggers, "Blade of Woe" is one fine dagger that absorbs health (courtesy of Astrid's corpse). A daedric dagger can be enchanted the same as an ebony bow. When those two are weilded together, they're extremely deadly especially with something like 30x damage on a successful sneak attack.

[Zefram Cochrane]

You can certainly enchant items, usually boots, with the muffle enchantment. You can acquire them with the enchantment already applied either from vendors or as loot, I believe. I have a couple pairs of ebony boots myself acquired that way.

There are also thieve's caches with deadric daggers with paralyze enchantment on them in Windhelm in my game, or maybe thats just a levelled item (level 81)

Originally posted by gnewna:

I like the idea of being an assassin with no physical weapons, just Conjured ones.

sounds like you need the bound bow and bound sword...

[Rafael Freeman]

Invest in enchanting. You can improve both sneaking and archery with enchanted apparel and create a character that is almost impossible to detect and deadly with a bow.

Of course this takes some time, but before I had enchanting maxed out and could put a double enchantment on apparel, I simply chose high point for sneak attacks with the bow. An added benefit is that this needs a lot of sneaking which will help gain experience.

Personally I didn’t bother with the muffle spell since there is a perk in the sneaking tree that reduces sound. Also I killed the recruiter from the Dark Brotherhood and took his stuff, including his pearl that muffles.

With the Dawnguard DLC the best bow is the Dragonbone bow that you have to craft yourself, I slowly upgraded from the Imperial bow, to Dwarven bow, Elven bow, Ebony bow to Dragonbone bow.

[Ilja]

Alchemy is actually really cool skill. You can find and buy better single effect potions, but you can't find or buy multieffect potions. That is where the skill shines. It is especially useful with higher tier poisons.

While your local alchemy store might sell you pretty heavy single effect poisons, multieffect poisons have a much larger damage potential. Your selfmade poison may not deal as much damage than one bought from Anglenina's Aromatics, but it can burden your enemy with effects that you (depending on your character build and playstyle) can attack against.

While you are speaking about Muffle, here are statistic about it. I put it between spoilers, because not all wish to see technical stats around this page.

Muffle: Highest level that is recognized by the game: 1.0 (equals 100%) armor noise reduction.

- Perk Muffled Movement: 0.5
- Perk Silence: 1.0
- Found enchantment: 0.5
- Bought enchantment: 0.5
- Self enchanted: 1.0 (soul size does not matter)
- Spell: 1.0
- Scroll: 1.0
- DB shoes: 0.5
- Nightingale boots. 1.0

[Skyrimnut]

Once you have your archery perks, it really doesn't matter how good or bad your bow is. If you have the Dawnguard DLC, I actually love using Zephyr. It's fast. Crossbows are great too, but unless you are really on top of things, they are very slow to reload. You can make it work if you know how to back away while reloading to buy you some distance. Zephyr + half draw firing technique = interesting mid-range weapon. Conjured weapons are also pretty good and underated, IMO.

+1 for alchemy. It makes some great stuff.