I've been playing a sneak focused character as I usually do in Fallout and Bethesda games in general. And as always, I know how fairly ridiculous such an ability can get to the point of which it just takes all of the challenge in sneaking out of the game.

So far, in Fallout 4, I've only touched the first rank of the Sneak perk which only makes me 20% harder to detect. The experience has been fairly balanced. I can sneak, but not without at least alerting an enemy most of the time. Which can also get fairly annoying when it sometimes doesn't make sense when they do get alerted. So I want to bump some ranks up for the Sneak perk to improve on it but not too much to the point of which its just going to start breaking the game.

Can anyone who also has experience with sneaking and has leveled this perk up give me some insight as to how effective the ranks have been? Perhaps give me a good stopping point for one of the ranks? I'm already rather reluctant of getting rank 2 since it takes traps out of consideration entirely which I think svcks, but I want to have a better stealth experience so I'm willing to sacrifice it.

Sneaking close up at anything lower than rank 5 seemed ineffective to me. As soon as I hit 5 though, I was walking up to people in power armor and receiving a [CAUTION] notice.

I think I only took the first rank and the rest was given through the perk books. I can get fairly close to enemies before they realize that a hulking mass of metal is probably someone trying to kill them.

Yeah, so far I've been okay with just taking the Covert Ops books as it improves my ability to sneak without having to take one of the perks. But uh, I don't know. I'm not sure whether I've been sensing a difference from them or not, and I've gotten four of the books so far.

Equipped your power armor with the permanent stealth boy upgrade. Return of the chinese stealth suit.

It depends on your armor, weapon and light levels. I have the sneak perk at rank 3 and I can't sneak with the super sledge out around some enemies because it generates light, but at least that makes sense. I'd say 3 sneak is fairly easy if you use the walk key, but still pretty balanced. I've also picked up a few US spec ops magazines though, so I don't know how close my sneak level is to being equivalent to level 4.

I am currently at rank 4 in the sneak perk and I can't say it's not balanced, as when I shoot the first enemy it always alerts nearby enemies. It still feels challenging enough to sneak up on someone for melee or pickpocket attempts. So I don't think achieveing rank 5 in sneak will ruin the fun, as long as you don't mix that with stealth boy or have picked up any other stealth perks.

I have put nothing towards sneak and just 15(ish) minutes ago I was squatting down, shot a Feral Ghoul and he literally ran within 10 feet and didn't see me while searching even though he was RIGHT THERE in front of me! Nick squatting by my side. I then shot him in the head.

anolog controller+sneaking=pretty damned easy as far as I can tell.

I wonder if difficulty setting or level affects sneak difficulty? I shot a ghoul and killed it in one shot with a silenced sniper rifle that was on top of a roof in the distance and 5 other ghouls came down the stairs from that roof and ran to my location even though the detection indicator was only on [Caution]. I play on survival and I was level 36 at the time, but I don't know what level the ghouls were.

You know, this is something I've noticed as well. Even when it goes to [CAUTION] I've noticed enemies running around trying to find me and even when they're standing directly in front of my face they still can't spot me. Sometimes they'll actually touch me and they don't realize it until a second or two.

The issue I'm having may not be with how I am sneaking but perhaps when, be it a silenced weapon or not, shooting and killing an enemy seems to alert others almost all the time.

Maybe its not worth investing in higher ranks at all if this issue still continues regardless of rank, because that's what is annoying me the most.

Also, I'm level 33 on hard difficulty if that really does have an affect on it.

I'm level 14 on normal and I suspect you are right that difficulty settings plays a roll.

I've got 4 levels of sneak.. and while I like the way it works when you're outside, when you're in indoor areas it seems really overpowered. Outdoors, enemies still search for you, run around, take cover that sort of thing. Indoors they all remain in the rooms they are in and nothing I do outside of those room can get them out.. I can stand up and run around firing my guns wildly and if someone is in another room, they don't come out of there to try to find me or see what all that noise is... Now, raider dogs don't even come to check the noise. This makes planting explosives at doorways a non-existent game play element anymore. I have no idea why sneak would effect indoor areas in this manner or why they have it so that enemies only patrol one room and don't roam a whole complex.

I've found that sneak is absurdly overpowered at the rank that unlocks the silent-run effect. At that point you can stroll around normally and still be undetected.

Max Sneak plus the magazines has made it so easy to sneak that I've had enemies literally backpedal into me and not notice.

Welp, I'm hearing a variety of different experiences for the ranks. I think from most of what I'm getting, its best to stop at rank 3. That way the only thing that is noticeably affected is just the traps no longer going off and the rest is just a stat boost. Nothing as significant as being able to run around perfectly fine while sneaking or the obvious broken rank 5.

You can't go just by the level of the Sneak perk. Agility has to be factored in also.

Well, there's a Bobblehead and 10 Perk Magazines, so you really need to factor those in. I can't sneak up to people's faces in broad daylight if you're wondering. Line of sight and light level work as intended outside. Indoors seems a bit more fickle tbh.

Oh, and if you're sneak attacking a Deathclaw, be sure to hit the correct part. It has a massive effect on the damage output and that one hit kill animation is unfair imo.

I have level 4 in sneak and I certainly don't feel invulnerable. In any sort of lit area, raiders are still able to spot me fairly easily (and most raider areas, indoors at least, seem to be well-lit); indeed it sometimes seems like they have eyes in the backs of their heads. I play Fallout 3 with a mod that increases sneak difficulty and sneaking in this game feels a little harder than that. Mind you, my Agility is only 7 and I'm playing on "survival" difficulty, so that may also be a factor. I'm pleased that enemies now react to the deaths of their comrades, that was always a bit silly in the older games.

I have lvl 2 Snaek and find that I get noticed fairly often unless I'm in hiding or shadows. Walking instead of running seems to make a bigger difference than that extra perk lvl.

I'm lvl 18 and play on Hard difficulty.

What I find really annoying about sneaking is when you hear the enemies go "What was that?!" and it sounds like they're right next to you (I play with head phones). Then I look around and there's like one guy way up in a tower....Sound could use some improving too!

I've been using sneak a lot for artillery ambushes. I get up to a point where I know I can lob an artillery grenade into their encampment, and then watch the fireworks. Of course, this only works if you have the properly placed artillery in nearby settlements. Most of the northern part of my map is strewn with artillery at the point I'm at. It's pretty damn fun watching the place they're in get decimated.

you are correct about the sound issue. enemies several floors above sound like they are right behind you, full volume! keep spinning in circles trying to find them and they are nowhere near me.. I was also sneaking at lvl 2, no noise, no dog, and they seem to be reacting to line of sight thru cracks vs hearing me..

I'm at rank 3 and have not picked up a huge amount of the magazines. I wear light gear and i go undetected pretty much everywhere, unless it's really light out. Now since I use shotguns a lot, once gunfire happens I'm found since I'm loud.

Off subject a bit, but still on the subject of sneaking, wouldn't everyone like to see different discussions among the npc? If you kill some raider in a building and his buddies find the body I'd like them to say something different than "but I need to lay of the jet, it makes me jittery" They should be saying things that reflect they know I am there, or they know someone was there and killed their buddy. It's always been one of those little things in bethesda games I think about. They have a huge amount of us I believe who play sneaky characters, so we by default over hear a lot of bad guy conversations. I know I love when they discuss something that updates my map or gives story. I don't like that they don't acknowledge that someone is there when their friends head is missing. if they want to blame Jet, blame one of their fellow raiders..such as I knew Bob was doing too much jett he must of spooked and shot Jeff.. But acknowledge the death!

I've got Level 3 in Sneak, 10 Agility, like 4 magazines and two shadowed and two muffled clothing pieces. It's fairly easy for me to stay undetected while walking in sneak mode, both indoors and outdoors. Sometimes raiders even look at me while they're a few meters in front of me while I'm just sitting there in the shadow of a building and they don't see me, all at day. Then I just snipe their heads off.

Robots on the other hand can detect me quite easily, even in dark areas.

The sound issues do bother me, radio is very quiet if you're standing right next to it but look away from it, while you hear raiders three rooms away as if they were right behind you. Drives me insane sometimes.

I also agree with the dialogue, you do get the occasional "You killed him/her!" or "Don't die on me!" when they actually see their fellow buddy getting shot, but once he/she is dead it's always the jet.

Maybe they think their head just exploded on its own for some reason. I don't know...

In my experience sneaking is still pretty powerful, but it's definitely harder to avoid detection than in previous Beth games.

That's an issue in many games. I'm not sure I've ever played a game that managed to fix that. A kind of pseudo-fix for it is to make it fairly clear where enemies are because then the brain makes it sound like they're above you for the game, but that kind of ruins the sense of danger when walking into a new area.

The best game for sneaking around and killing is the Last of Us multiplayer. The enemy reactions to sneaking is realistic since there is a human behind it.

Streamlining the perks to where you can master it all, makes every character anyone builds not SPECIAL at all. Dumbing it down is why they are getting hate from every real fan of Fallout.