I just came out of helgen with 100 sneak, and even with 5/5 stealth, i can't dagger for the life of me. As soon as I come within 10-20 or so feet of the small bandit tent camp down the road from the helgen exit, they see me. And there's 3 of them looking in different locations. I just don't see how I could assassinate an actual dungeon with daggers, much less a fort like fort greymoor or a larger bandit camp like knifepoint ridge. I can assassinate proficiently with bows, but I want to learn how to use daggers, as it seems, judging from what Ive read on various forums, daggers>bows.

What you get for exploiting that. Enemies will likely see you out in the open.

Don't do it during broad daylight, always make sure it's dark as it limits the enemy's visibility. Also, did you get the "Muffled movement" perk yet? It helps a great deal when you approach enemies whilst sneaking in any sense.

And lastly, you could invest in illusion magic to make yourself invisible. It's pretty much a standard for assassin type characters, however, I personally don't didnt do it because I like the challenge of sneaking around enemies and taking them out from behind.

You don't need 5/5 to be effective. A skill level of 75 and 1/5 is good enough.

Detection has three variables that play into a successful attack. Line if Sight, Light and Sound form weight of equipped armor clothing and/or jewelry.

Stay in the shadows, approach from behind and either get a muffle spell, muffle boots or being at the start of the game... get naked. You will be silent.

You can also fire arrows as a distraction to break up packs of enemies. Just shoot a wall, they'll run to the point of impact, look around a bit, then saunter back to their post. If you shoot something in front of you, and you're a sufficient distance away, it's not unusual for an enemy to run towards you, lose track in the process, and present their back to you as they walk away.

Out in the open, during the day, good luck daggering everyone silently. Occasionally the cover is there, but usually they'll alert first.

It's great fun slitting throats with absolutely none of your victims aware of your presence first. I had an assassin character that did one-hit kills whenever possible. Took a lot of patience, some F5 and F9, but it was awesome playing Tenchu: Tamriel. Should've named her Ayame actually.

"I've stabbed Hadvar in the back a thousand times, watch out Skyrim HERE I COME"

I've built a dagger assassin up to level 54. The thing is, is that you have to learn that you can't take everyone out stealthily with ONLY a dagger. With this build you need archery. For those bandits that lean against walls etc. archery is a must must have.

I'm still fairly new to the game, but i'm not a nub. =P

I know some of these have been mentioned but i do them too:

-day/light vs night/darkness

-attack from behind or even drop down from above when possible

-you can thin out the herd from afar with your bow

Use roll > slit throat if somebody is coming right at you. You may be able to close the distance quickly with roll and execute You can also use roll to close the gap quickly between your first dagger target and your second dagger target. Or if you are able kill one target then roll out of LOS of anything else.

When taking out two that are standing right next to each other use regular swings and try not to trigger the kill animation. This also works good if you are rolling between kill targets. With perks and the Dark Brotherhood gloves you can get up to 30x bonus sneak damage with daggers.

Use your shout "Throw Voice", preferably 3/3 because the full shout makes your shout cooldown only 5 seconds whereas a 1/3 Throw Voice shout sets your shout CD to 30 seconds. This distraction is useful for when cannot get to a target but you want to lure them away from their post. Once they investigate the noise and find nothing they will walk back to their post with their back towards you (if you plan it right).

Pack of 3-5 with 'boss' type in the middle. I dont know about harder dungeons, i've only done up to 35 on adept. But when i know that i cant take on that many mobs at once i will use an invis potion (i'm a non majicka assassin) and get right up on the boss and take them out first. The rest of them should be easy since the heavily armored bad guy with the 2 hander is dead. Which brings me to my next one...

Have a plan for what to do when you are discovered. If you are up on a ledge or edge of a cliff you can Fus Ro Dah people off..of course you will have to chase the corpse down if you want their loot. What i like to do though is pop my Elemental Fury shout which increases weapon speed by a lot. If you have like 2-4 weak mobs coming down on you, pop Elem Fury and just slash them all to bits. If the mobs are easy to kill i will stick with my daggers and Elem Fury. If the mobs are a bit stronger i will bust out my Swords first and then pop Elem fury.

YMMV, but this makes the dagger assassin build way too OP for my tastes, especially if you're also an alchemist. The ingredients to make invisibility potions are fairly common and plentiful. With a high enough sneak level, you'll be undetectable by sight and sound. You can one shot nearly everything in the game, and you won't take any hits.

Not necessarily. My second character was a throat cutter for the entire game. Asibe form critters, but even they eventually subcome to sneak attacks with a dagger. On adept a damn Dragon can be stabbed in his sleep.

The bandits just need to be coerced out. When they give up the search and meander back to their post, you slip up behind them. No archery skill whatsoever.

Get SkyTweaks or Deadly Monsters Mod, increase NPCs health by 100-1000%. Voila, problem solved. People should start playing on the superior platform, it makes an already good game truely amazing.

While we would all like to be able to afford to buy another platform to buy the same game twice, I don't think adding health to NPCs solves the problem. If you don't one-shot a tough enemy, no worries---just use another invisibility potion. What makes this invisibility + sneak build so deadly is the ease with which you can remain undetected, and the fact that you can continue to get 15x damage attacks in because enemies "reset" their alertness.

If the amount o invisibility potions needed to repeat--backstab anything in the games goes up by 300-1000%, I doubt one will keep on "spamming" them.

From level 1-35 i only used 2 maybe 3 invis potions, one was a "lol this is cool look at me" and the other two were for killing the hard mob that was surrounded by 3-4 others. I didnt level alchemy so the only potions i use were from drops. Just like the saying goes "just because you can, doesnt mean you should". This isnt an MMO where other people will QQ if you arent doing 100% while killing mobs. If you want to impose a few restrictions to your gameplay to make it a bit harder, there's nothing stopping you. I play as a non-majicka assassin, so thats one example...not relying heavily on alchy is another. If you dont like the idea of one shotting mobs then sneak up to them and pickpocket (and pray it fails) or pop out of sneak so that they become aware. I dont know something weird like that, and then there are also adjusted difficulty levels or mods.

did you take the good Sneak perks? I never get more than 1 level of Stealth (or any of the basic 1-5 level perks for each skill...they seem like a waste most of the time, and even potentially game-breaking, except for One and Two-Handed and Archery--I like to take 2/5 of Barbarian, Armsmen, and Overdraw, but no more), but Silent Roll and Assassin's Blade -- ESPECIALLY ASSASSIN'S BLADE -- are mandatory IMO. Especially for what you're talking about doing. Silent Roll lets you zip out of places when you're about to be spotted or an enemy is about to plain walk into you, and Assassin's Blade makes your character the sort of bad ass that's killed more people than Bubonic Plague. 15x damage with a decent or high level dagger, especially smithed to Legendary, will kill just about everything in one hit, except for those evil Falmer, certain bandits, and a few other enemies (they take 2-3, and occasionally more, but it's actually fun to just hack away at them while they try to spot you).