How to be an Assassin !

This is a excellent guide for those who wanna be the best assassin in Tamriel !

Raise your Sneak skill

• The higher your Sneak skill, the harder you are to detect and the more useful perks you can acquire. Sneaking without being detected raises the skill level, so practice often.

• Use invisibility spells or potions to help you sneak successfully. For example, the Shadow Stone grants a 60 second spell of invisibility that can be used once a day.

• You could also use the Thief Stone, southwest of Riverwood, which increases the speed of learning stealth skills by 20%.

• Try sneaking around people who are sleeping - you're less likely to be detected!

• The Sneak skill trainers are Khayla (Adept) who can be found with the travelling Khajiit Caravans, Garvey (Expert) in Markarth and Delvin Mallory (Master) at the Thieves Guild, Riften.

Use Light armors

• Light armor (Hide, Leather, Elven, Scale and Glass armor) is less noisy than heavy armor, making sneaking easier. Some of the best armor sets in the game for assassins are given to the Dragonborn at various stages in the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves' Guild quest lines, for example, the Nightingale Armor.

• Raise your light armor skill, which increases the armor's effectiveness. You can do this by receiving damage while wearing light armor, or by using trainers or skill books.

Make use of sneak attacks

• If you're undetected, these can cause much more damage than regular attacks. Perks in the Sneak tree, for example, Deadly Aim or Assassin's Blade, can raise the damage multiplier even higher. A bow, as a ranged weapon, is perhaps the best choice for a sneak attack. Poison your weapon for even higher damage.

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

• Always be prepared for open combat with a decent melee weapon (daggers are a great choice, as they can be used for effective stealth kills and close-up combat; swords are also useful, as is destruction magic). Always have extra potions and poisons handy.

Establish an escape route.

• If you're about to attempt a kill that will have overwhelming consequences, find the quickest way to get out of the area before you kill your target.

Keep an eye on your surroundings.

• Guards or witnesses could turn around corners at any second, and certain pathways or hard-to-reach areas may be helpful. Know who and what is around your character, and take advantage of things like high rock outcroppings above your target or access to a rooftop.

Invest in various perks.

• The Sneak, Light Armor, Archery, One-Handed, Lockpicking, and optionally some schools of magic should be your main skills. Perks for these skills will be very useful.

Stay undetected if you don't want to get caught.

• If you see the eye icon (which indicates whether NPCs are aware of you) open slowly, freeze. When the eye stops opening, quietly sneak into the shadows.

Join the Dark Brotherhood or The Thieves Guild.

• The quests will allow you to practice your skills and technique and the rewards are well-suited for an assassin character build.

How to join The Thieves Guild:

How to join Dark Brotherhood:

The Assassin's Blade is also quite useful, and when using it, you can also a make cool death animation.

• Seriously, it's pretty cool.

The Thieves Guild rewards

• Complete the quests of The Thieves Guild, as you will earn the aforementioned Nightingale Armor, the Thieves Guild Armor and the Guild Master Armor.

Nightingales Armor

Guild Master Armor

Thieves Guild Armor

• You can also get a pretty cool daedric artifact called Skeleton Key.

[OBS.:] The Skeleton Key can be used like a regular lockpick and can be kept indefinitely, provided it's never returned to the Twilight Sepulcher. In addition, the Lockpicking skill will still increase when a lock is opened (removed in patch 1.4, back by 1.9). Keeping the key effectively renders the Lockpicking perk Unbreakable entirely obsolete, as well as most of that skill tree.

The Three Nightingales Upgrades

• At the end of the penultimate quest of The Thieves Guild, you will have a choice between three very interesting upgrades, you can change whenever you want!

Nocturnal

Tips

• The power of the Voice of the Emperor, calms all human in the direction you are facing. You can use this power for a quick getaway if you are in poor health and has no chance of surviving after.

• Illusion spells are very useful. Invoke a spell called Fear for guards run around your target (or use it on target!) For a short period of time. Invoke a spell called Invisibility to not be detected (if paired with a spell or equipment to muffle). The Mayhem calls spells can cause enough confusion for you to escape undetected, or kill people as they try to destroy anyone nearby.

• Make your stock of poisons before a murder, especially those who inflict slow and paralysis, or spells with similar effects. Weapons that absorb health and stamina can also be extremely useful, therefore, earn levels for the enchanting skill or save some gold.

• An arc can be useful for long-range attacks, if your target is around various guards or other NPCs, as in quest of the Dark Brotherhood, Bound Until Death. Find a good location, poison their arrows for extra damage, and shoot.

• Another great skill for a killer is pickpocketing. With a high enough level of pickpocket skill, you can steal weapons for someone to let them unable to fight with you if your assassination attempt fails, and you can also steal houses keys, allowing you to then invade and kill the target while he sleeps.

[steelpantherx]

just cast invisibility and invest in de illusion skill tree. If you have have enough magicka regen, you can stab people in the back, cast invisibility again before detection. If there are too many enemies, cast rage. It will make the npc's kill each other.

If you are a vampire you will also gain extra sneaking boost. Dark elves have 50% resistance to fire, while varmpire have 50% weakness to it. The dark elf boost, compensates for the vampire liability. Enchant weapons and clothes for magicka regen, and sneak boosting. Without using exploits, you are the strongest character in the game, while not even needing armor.

[Sumatris]

I was kinda expecting a simple "play as a stealth archer" line to be the whole guide. Mildly surprised to be proven wrong ^^.

[Sorodon]

@danger: Dragonbone weapons. For one handed goldbrand is actually stronger, but thats it.

[Eloung]

ale

[Yokarasu]

SKOOOOMA

[Lickspittle]

skoooma

[Duke_44]

skoooooooooooma

[Daggerfield]

skooma

[Spoomer]

I dunno I dunno I dunno I dunno I dunno I dunno

[BIALaF]

@Skrub I dunno about that, but just make and upgrade your own. Or just look it up.