I won't be too disappointed if I can't figure out how to keep my char alive, but if there is any way to do it, I just want to give it a shot and find out if there IS.

I have a save game on tap somewhere with sneak already at 100 at the Imperial sewer exit gate. I bet that's going to be the least of what it will take.

And yeah - this is in the cheats and tips forum because I betcha it will take some kind of major exploits to do this at all.

Golden Sinner plays on max difficulty. Strategies he uses include efficient leveling, sneak (recon), weakness spells, particularly weakness to poison, and lots of poison.

As far as grinding skills in the tutorial, there are quite a few you can run to 100, including sneak, athletics, acrobatics, illusion, alteration, mysticism, and conjuration. You can also change your class as much as you want, so you could take illusion as a major to get access to the spell you need to level it and then switch it to a minor before you leave. Not sure how that will help efficient leveling though since there is no bed to sleep in until after you leave the sewer.

If you play a mage specializing in Conjuration and Illusion, the "difficulty setting" hardly matters at all. This is because allies, conjured creatures, and illusion-forced "allies" are not affected by the slider's setting. Something to think about, anyway.

Yeah, well right now I'm not even to the part of the sewers (tunnels?) where the guy re-joins the emperor and his escort - and I've had to re-load about eight times just because of the rats!

I'm gradually getting there, and seeing a lot level up, but I think I had it dead on about the sneak skill being vital.

I need to find my notes from the last playthrough I did...

Right now I wonder if that first Goblin is going to be as fixated on his rat-roast as he normally is. I got up to level 15 sneak in the jail cell!!!

If I can get him the rest of the way I can work with it.

But I still don't want to level much for the sake of efficient leveling once I have dude out in the open.

Oh and: his name is "Alain of Lindar" if that rings any bells with anyone...

(HINT: I could also have named him "Alvin")

I need to be thinking about what leveling PATH I want to run him through.

That's interesting about the NPC's and conjurateds. I'll have to use that until I get this guy on his own two feet.

Fortunately, there are a lot of skills that can be leveled without combat. This game works much different than Skyrim

** I ran the level slider up as soon as I named the guy, instead of using a char that was already through the sewers