Sneak effects

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So, I decided that my latest character would become somewhat of an expert sneak-master. And results were rather good, to put it mildly.

Shortly put, mobs seemingly have two detection ranges, one for hearing and one for eyesight. In general those are rather similar in range, except that eyesight only covers a rather narrow cone straight ahead, when hearing covers the whole 360 degrees around. Some special mobs have exceedingly good hearing (especially Falmer), eyesight or both.. such as most children, for some reason.

Sneak effectively reduces these detection ranges, so that you can get closer before being detected. Due to its 360 degree arc, it's usually monster's/NPC's hearing ability that foils your sneaking, NOT your "poor" Sneak skill. There simply ain't enough boosts to Sneaking (apart from totally over-the-top cheating) that would overcome a slightest bit of noise caused by you, to put it into perspective. The only way to make sure you're quiet enough is by getting 100% Muffle somewhere. The Illusion spell does it all by itself, but self-crafted pair of boots with Muffle is just as good, and presumably the perk in the Sneak tree would do as well. Using Steed Stone or having either one of the perks to nullify the weight of worn armor helps tremendously, but it's not nearly as good as Muffle in this regard. However, none of these methods do squat against the noises created by stumbling over something, be it bones/twigs/other items on the ground or any one of the various noise traps that rattle as soon as you nudge them.

Once you've taken care of the noise alerting issues, the real fun can begin. Sneaking behind mobs is rather trivial task even at 15 skill, but you'll ultimately want to be able to sneak up the mob's nostrils. Well, technically not the whole you, but the weapon you'll want to shove into them.

So what does this require, then? 100 Sneak skill by itself is quite good already, but any moderately leveled mob/NPC will spot you quite a distance away (read: well beyond your melee weapon's reach) as soon as they look into your general direction. This obviously isn't adequate for any self-respecting stealth character. However, as soon as you add Sneak enchants, you can reach the threshold of being able to get close enough from any angle. I have two at the moment and only 93 in the skill itself, and I can prance around most mobs below level 40 or so unseen all day long. I'm clvl 71 myself, for the record. If I use a Fortify Sneaking potion (+130%), I can sneak past a level 60 Bandit Warlord Elite (courtesy of my Enhanced High-level Gameplay mod) in a narrowish corridor, in the same direction as they're going.

Finally, the best part. You know how you're detected as soon as you perform your initial Sneak attack if facing a group of mobs? It SEEMS like this is pretty much unavoidable using a bow, since the mobs manage to see the flying arrow and are alerted to your presence. If shooting a bit away, they'll probably still have trouble locating you, but the mobs will be running all around the place for a while anyway in search mode. BUT THIS DOESN'T SEEM TO APPLY TO MELEE. Just as long as you're outside the detection range of any other mob standing in the same group, you'll stay hidden even after the fact. Social mobs such as humans may well react to the fact that they just lost a comrade, walk to the corpse and curse your accomplishments, but as long as you don't actually enter any of their detection ranges, you'll be fine and ready to down another very shortly thereafter. Rinse and repeat!

TL;DR: Don't bash Sneaking until you've actually given it a fair chance by boosting it with a few enchants. That's just as stupid as trying any one of the boostable dps skills without their associated perks, Smithing boosts AND enchants and deeming them as 'worthless' on that experience alone.

 

I'm shocked that it has taken you as long as it has to incorporate what is, IMO, one of the most powerful gameplay niches in Skyrim. Yes, sneak does all those wonderful things. While melee sneak attacks do the most to level sneak, it's quite easy to level it immediately following a missile attack as well - provided you don't do something silly and stand in the same place where you just shot your arrow from. If there's a pack and you pick one off with a bow, as long as you move a bit away from the spot where you fired, you'll likely remain undetected. You can do that all day too. Simply retreating 10 feet away into a dark corner, and chances are - if you don't move at all - you won't be seen even by the enemies who are searching for you, even if they are only a couple feet away.

The passive leveling ability of sneak also means you don't have to train it, and as you pointed out, even a low sneak skill combined with muffle is typically enough to get the job done. (Although at low levels you'll need virtually your entire magicka bar to cast it. It's around 130 magicka IIRC.)

 

Oh, the actual power of Sneak was never in much doubt. It's the HOW part that can be severely confusing at first to new players, seeing that you seemingly always fail at the most awkward moments until you can do something about the noise issue.

Once you're past that hurdle, it's suddenly smooth sailing and becomes actually useful.

 

Problem I had with sneaking as a new player was I mastered it far too quickly (I blame the Thief series of games ) and as a result was levelling up quite swiftly but my combat skills were lagging so far behind it wasn't even funny. I had to restart the character to bump the combat skills up at the same level so it didn't become a case of being seen IS death no questions about it

 

I used to feel that way too, but once you find all of the trainers in the game, your problems are solved. While I agree that it can be problematic if your sneak skill up to 90, while your one handed skill is still 20, there's no practical reason it should ever get to that point. All you have to do is spend money to train one handed or archery with each level up, and your problems are solved.

Granted, on your first play through you wouldn't KNOW that, but there are easy fixes in the game to balance skills out relatively quickly. And it's not like you need to have one handed or archery in the 90s just because that's where your sneak skill is. Training both skills to 50 (which is the cheap portion of training) allows adequate use of the skills.

 

Depends how debilitating it gets - I very quickly got to the point that travelling about to find stuff to sell to train was simply tedious, especially as each new area had enemies impossible to kill even with a follower as a distracting snack

 

I usually do it by completing the thieves guild repeatable quests from Delvin and Vex - I mean, if you want to restore the guild you're going to have to do them anyway. Easy money, no chance of death, and easy levels for lockpicking, sneak, and (in the case of fishing missions) pickpocket.