I'm playing a Khajiit thief type dude, and I'm not sure how to use the sneak ability. Is it similar to Morrowind or Oblivion? I've mapped my "crouch" key to ctrl, as I assume that is similar to sneak. And I have stealth as a major ability. Thanks in advance for any help.

There's a key for sneaking, and it's not crouch. When using the Sneak key, your character will move much slowly. I *think* crouching and sneaking at the same time increases your success.

Got it, thank you! As a side note, how do I pick locks? I have the skill. Do I need lockpicks to do this? I am supposed to go into a house for a duel quest or something, but I can't get in due to the door being locked at all hours of the day. Thanks again in advance.

To pick a lock, you must activate the "Pickpocket" mode.
If you are playing in Cursor-Based Mode, click on the icon of your interface where you see fingers taking gold, then click on the door.

If you are playing in Mouse-View mode, press either F1, F2, F3 or F4. You should see a message telling you "Pickpocket Mode On" or something similar. The other Fs are for dialogue, grag and examine mode.

Happy thievery!

Lockpicking is actually a rather slow and difficult skill to get up. The Open spell is a good substitute.

Of course, you can also bash down doors, so if all else fails, try that. Of course, if you do that in town it will alert the guards before long!

The Daggerfall Chronicles have some great tips on sneaking. It's like it was already mentioned plus don't walk with your weapon equipped and wearing armor of quality above leather will give you a penalty for each piece. Plate armor gives you the biggest penalty on sneaking.

What is this fabled sneak key? The stuff I saw when I tried to look it up implied that stealth works passively, and I see nothing like that in the button config screen.

I found the sneak option on the lower right of the key input screen. I mapped it to caps lock, so that like Oblivion it works as a toggle as opposed to holding down the button.

Two questions about that.

One, not walking with your weapon out. Does walking with your weapon drawn give you a sneak penalty?

And two, is it the armor's weight or type that affects the penalty? My argonian has some enchanted plate that is of very low weight.

Sometimes the chronicles gets it wrong. Much of it was written based on what the game was supposed to be, not the game we got.

Armor does not affect spellcasting or stealth. It's just heavy so you'll move slower. It does, however, greatly affect your ability to run jump and especially swim. Having your weapon drawn only affects peoples' reaction to you, which doesn't matter if you plan on killing them. It does nothing for stealth.

It does work passively, the sneak key just makes you less detectable. At least I think so, since I have had my sneak skill raise when I never crouch or sneak.

My assassin had 25% lockpicking by endgame and I remember picking at least half of the locks. 60 luck must have helped too, but in any case it's a handy skill to have. Of course, it would be handier if the failure rate of the Open spell actually applied to locks in towns...

But yeah, if you're playing a thief class then you'd be well advised to sneak-run through dungeons with your bow equipped. If you're feeling lucky go for the melee backstab, sure. Just don't expect it to always work.