A really interesting thread about dungeon crawling with a stealthy character got me thinking about trying my first stealth character ever. To those of you who've been through this many, many times, please indulge yet another stealth build!

I'll postpone the MQ in Skyrim indefinitely so no Shouts. I have the Dragonborn and Hearthfire DLCs only.

Base of operations will be Honeyside in Riften.

Build details for Master level of difficulty:

* Bosmer (archery +10, all the stealth skills +5)

* Armor limited to leather

* Bow limited to hunting but best available arrow is ok, buying arrows is ok

* Weapons limited to steel or Skyforge steel

* Melee limited to dual wield daggers only

* No shield

Perking skills in the following order of priority:

* Alchemy - Alchemist (5/5 eventually), Physician, Poisoner, ingredients can only be foraged or given by friendly merchants or from the CoW cache, no buying.

* Sneak - through Deadly Aim on the right, all the way to Shadow Warrior on the left

* Archery - Overdraw (5/5 eventually), through Power Shot on the left

* Illusion tree fully

* Light armor - all the way on the left up to Deft Movement

* One handed - Armsman (5/5 eventually), Dual Flurry, Dual Savagery, Fighting Stance, Savage Strike

* Smithing - one perk for basic ability only, but raw materials must be looted, no buying ingots, leather, leather strips etc.

* Enchanting - Enchanter (5/5 eventually), items to disenchant must be looted, no buying weapons or apparel from merchants etc.

* Restoration - 2/2 Recovery and Avoid Death eventually

* Alteration - Up through 3/3 Magic resistance only

Disallowed magic and skills:

* Destruction

* Conjuration (this could be tough, no help from atronachs!?)

* Alteration (allowed for Magic resistance perks)

* Block (gonna really miss this)

* Heavy Armor

* Two Handed

Thanks all.

You don't plan on using enchanted weapons? Other than that, that's a solid build there.

Might I suggest a 2-1-1 ratio?

I would stop your Magicka at 200. Your Stamina a bit higher, and the rest into Health. That might be debatable though.

Yes, enchanted weapons and gear: Enchanter 5/5.

Forgot to ask about health/magicka/stamina! Interesting strategy, build up magicak really quickly, then stamina followed by infinite health. This is totally different from my previous PCs, thanks.

hmmm - actually, I can't disallow alteration magic if I want to get to the Magic Resistance perks...

What about speech for selling more/stolen goods. I'd recommend 5/5 and full left side of Speech tree.

Some good stuff in http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1463844-how-do-stealthbased-characters-handle-dungeons/

Stealth is your armor. You don't really need to invest in magic resistance perks. Or stamina.

If you're to be a good stealth fighter, you won't need them.

You know, that's an interesting thought. Again, this is an area I've never paid much attention to. I don't think I'll have trouble making money though accessing a fence will be useful. Also, the bribery/persuasion/intimidation side of things is going to be handy. I'll have to work it into the perk priorities, thanks!

Right! That's the thread that got the wheels turning in my head, good stuff. I resort to magic resistance as a defense against dragons, mages etc. but I see your point about stealth. The dragons are particularly irrelevant since I don't know if I'll ever bother with the MQ and Alduin. Still gotta get my head around this type of PC...

I'd avoid using perks for magic resistance. Use enchanted equipment for that. Also, the Lord Stone will give you +25% magic resistance, and "Spread the Love" in Riften will give you a permanent +15% magic resistance. That's 40% magic resistance without the use of perks or equipment.

While I usually perk speech up to master trader, I wouldn't go 5/5 on haggling. You'll make plenty of money without it (ex. selling alchemy potions), and may often have more items to sell than merchants can buy from you. It's nice for merchants to have more money for selling (investor, master trader), while the haggling perks just help them run out of money faster.

At high levels of speech, I often pass persuade checks without any perks spent on persuade/intimidate.

You should definitely consider more perks than just that for enchanting. If I were you, I'd get the elemental enchanter perks and all the ones through the middle, including the perk that allows you to have two enchantments on each item.

There's nothing to wrap my head around on this build, it comes naturally: Sneaking through the shadows, reconning enemy positions and finding their weakness, the whisper of a bow string and an arrow from the dark, the sliced throat from behind and sleeping enemies (living and dead) finding their eternal rest intruding on their worldly affairs.

The Shadowcloak of Nocturnal and the Shadow Stone are givens for this character type but not completely necessary since once stealth reaches legendary status you are virtually invisible in the shadows and silent as the grave if you have advanced to silent movement on the left side of the perk tree.

Playing a stealth/archer is almost as cerebral as playing a mage character and just as much fun and your dungeon explorations slow to a crawl allowing you to savor the atmosphere, find those pesky traps lying in wait and manuever around or spring them before getting into danger. Heck I've sprung traps that I didn't even see that missed me because I was moving at such a slow pace.

Once you get the light feet perk half of the traps are defeated and you can cross them with impunity unless they're trip wires or wall trapped chests. You probably know where most of the lock trapped chests are by now but look around the chests and on the wall before picking them.

This is the type of character I started with and I've never had so much fun!

That's the way I see it and play it.

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It really depends on how you want to deal the damage. Granted my current character is running SkyRe so it's a little different approach than Vanilla... but not much as far as focused skills.

My Vanilla Assassin's end up looking like...

• 1H - 5/5 in Armsman and just enough to get Dual Savagery ( 7 perks )
• Archery - 5/5 in Overdraw and enough to get 1/2 in Steady Hand ( 7 perks )
• Sneak - 1/5 in Stealth and enough to get assassin's Blade ( 4 perks )
• Alchemy - 5/5 in Alchemist and enough to get Concentrated Poison ( 8 Perks )
• Smithing - Enough to craft Daedric Weapons and Arcane Blacksmith ( 6 perks )
• Enchanting - Enough to get Extra Effect ( 4 perks )
• Pickpocket - Enough to get Poisoned ( 3 perks )
• Illusion - Enough to get Expert and Quiet Casting ( 7 perks )
• Alteration - Enough to get Expert ( 4 perks )

I will split levels between Magicka and Health by a 1 : 2 or 3 ratio. Pending what the character needs at the moment. Expert perks in Illusion and Alteration depend on when they get the spells. You only need enough magicka to cast Invisibility and you basically just bump Detect Life for a split second. The skill level and enchanting an cover spell cost one can actually swap out those perks for an extra few in Enchanting. It all depends on the character at the time. But I plan for it anyway.

This character ends up in the mid 60's. Only because I use more skills for them than any other character. I try to make every kill as unique as the mark themselves.

Now, my current character ( with SkyRe ) is only a Stealth Archer.... for now. So far only perking Alchemy, Marksman, Wayfarer, Smithing and two in Sneak. She doesn't need to raise the 1H skill because the top end Stealth perk is Assassinate. It allows an instant kill if you remain undetected. I have a long way to go for that as the mechanics are a lot different. So she will be using a lot of arrows yet.

I've tried using enchanted equipment before, but the inventory got kind of cluttered and it was a hassle to switch stuff around. I'll keep it in mind though (especially because there's two distinct magic resistance enchantments which stack nicely).

Honestly, I'm trying to avoid becoming overpowered. Once you get all the enchanting perks, stuff really gets out of hand - especially with the double enchants. I am, however, pretty tempted to craft one super OP weapon (like a bow or dagger) for sticky situations where death looms. It's kind of cool to think of a stealthy archer thief suddenly confronted with overwhelming force or facing massive damage and wiping out that 'special' weapon to whoop everyone/everything and walk away to fight another day.

Actually if you keep your difficulty on Master or Legendary, you avoid being "OP". Even then the only real way for you to get truly stupidly powerful enchantments is to use alchemy with your enchanting. As long as you just use strictly enchanting, you're okay.

I don't find the combat in Skyrim all that alluring, well there isn't really much in Skyrim that I find alluring except for the exploration.

I used poisons, illusion, thievery and stealth on my last character.

Assuming you don't intend on doing the MQ, it's a fine role to play.

Didn't really need any specific melee or bow skills, though that might be an acquired taste.

Though without the combat the game might appear to have lack of depth, especially in terms of alternate ways of completing your objectives.

Everyone plays stealth differently so youre gonna get a lot of mixed answers. You have a plan, stick with it. Like others said, stealth is your armor so that should take priority over everything.