Sneaking around in overland (outside of quests that require it) is generally pointless, unless you just want to skip all the "trash mobs" or you want to do it for RP purposes.

If you have the Blade of Woe then you can instakill the trashmobs from stealth, but that only gives you 1/4 of the EXP.
If the enemy is not alone (which is frequently the case), woeblading them will also immediately aggro any other nearby enemies, defeating the purpose.

You'd probably be much better off building for high damage and kill off the trash in 1-2 hits, this is faster than sneaking and gives you the full EXP for the kills.

Finally, if you really must sneak - use the Night's Silence set or another set which gives an equivalent bonus, letting you move at normal running speed while sneaking.

Do it only if you are bored of normal gameplay. As Major_Lag said above, you can blade of woe trash mobs, but its pointless if they are in a group (and usually they are), you can pick only alone target.
Sneaking is easy if you max out sneak detection radius reduction, with sets like Night Terror, Night's Mother Embrace or Darloc Brae, you can almost sneak right before their faces. To sneak past groups that dont wander around, you can always pop invis potion or use new vamp stage 4 sprint. Stage 1 sneaking passive also makes Night Silence obsolete, you will sneak-run as default.

Is it practical? No. Is it fun? Hell yes.

evolkerb14_ESO wrote: »

Is there an explanation anywhere of the sneak mechanics? Obviously a 2m reduction is better than none at all, but if the base detection radius is 200m, 2m doesn't make much difference.

Base radius is a few meters, don't remember the exact numbers.
I do know that stacking every possible reduction and being a Khajiit (for the racial passive) makes the radius go negative, NPCs can't detect you unless you are literally right up in their face.

Of course the usual stealth rules apply, the actual detection area is approximately an ellipse with the NPC near one of its ends.
They have maximum detection radius straight ahead of them, and it falls off rapidly as you move off to their side or back.

For maximum sneaking effectiveness (for heists or sacraments, for example) you want to wear 7 pieces medium and stack every possible reduction.
Try Night's Silence (5 pcs) + Night Terror (3 pcs) + Darloc's (4 pcs). If you are a vampire, switch Silence for another set that gives detection radius reduction.

doomette wrote: »

Major_Lag wrote: »

Try Night's Silence (5 pcs) + Night Terror (3 pcs) + Darloc's (4 pcs). If you are a vampire, switch Silence for another set that gives detection radius reduction.

That’s what I’m wearing to work on the fencing achievement on my main. I never really focused much on thievery but realized I’m only 100,000 away from getting it so I’ve just been committing a daily crime spree to fill my fence limit. Really handy for those safe boxes that are right behind people.

I use a modified version of this build now, with this setup on backbar but with 5pc Darloc's on frontbar (sacrificing 2pc Night's Silence) - this lets me have both Darloc's and Night's Silence 5 piece bonuses active at the same time, due to a long-since-unfixed bug in the game.

Thanks to the extra sustain from Darloc's, I can spam RAT and perma sneak at high speed without ever having to worry about running out of resources
The extra passive healing is also nice for when I blunder straight into a trap and take damage.

(EDIT: spelling)

doomette wrote: »

Major_Lag wrote: »

doomette wrote: »

Major_Lag wrote: »

Try Night's Silence (5 pcs) + Night Terror (3 pcs) + Darloc's (4 pcs). If you are a vampire, switch Silence for another set that gives detection radius reduction.

That’s what I’m wearing to work on the fencing achievement on my main. I never really focused much on thievery but realized I’m only 100,000 away from getting it so I’ve just been committing a daily crime spree to fill my fence limit. Really handy for those safe boxes that are right behind people.

I use a modified version of this build now, with this setup on backbar but with 5pc Darloc's on frontbar (sacrificing 2pc Night's Silence) - this lets me have both Darloc's and Night's Silence 5 piece bonuses active at the same time, due to a long-since-unfixed bug in the game.

Thanks to the extra sustain from Darloc's, I can spam RAT and perma sneak at high speed without ever having to worry about running out of resources
The extra passive healing is also nice for when I blunder straight into a trap and take damage.

(EDIT: spelling)

The extra damage would be nice, I ran into a hoarver the other day and it took an embarrassingly long time to kill it 😆

Yeah, my offensive stats are absolutely trash tier when using this setup.
Especially since most of my characters are set up for magicka - so I end up with something like under 20k max magicka, ~1k SD and some very low spell crit.

It does help to populate the backbar with damage abilities (and a selfheal) for this purpose - especially since you only need to switch to backbar when beginning to crouch, to get the Night's Silence 5pc bonus. Once that's active, you can stay on frontbar all the time when actually sneaking.

Of course I don't use this for any fighting if I can avoid it, and if I happen to run into anything that I don't need to kill I'll just spam RAT and run away, it's faster than trying to whittle the enemies down with a super low damage build.

doomette wrote: »

Major_Lag wrote: »

Of course I don't use this for any fighting if I can avoid it, and if I happen to run into anything that I don't need to kill I'll just spam RAT and run away, it's faster than trying to whittle the enemies down with a super low damage build.

Yeah, I avoid fights as well, but somehow that hoarver saw me from quite a ways off even though I can be practically right in an NPCs’s face and go unnoticed. And dagnabbit, I wanted that scuttlebloom 😆

You can lure enemies into the poison or shock damaging plants, they hurt NPCs and players alike, and it can be quite helpful in such situations.

evolkerb14_ESO wrote: »

...and that raises the question of 'sneak damage'. In single player Elder Scrolls games, attacking from stealth usually provides a damage bonus even without a high sneak/stealth skill. In Skyrim, for example, you get either a 2x or 3x bonus even if you don't take the 'assassin' perks. How does ESO handle this?

From the UESP wiki:

You perform a sneak attack when you physically strike someone who is unaware of your presence. Sneak attacks do up to 3 times the amount of damage of a normal attack.

The sneak multiplier is only applied to the physical damage done by a weapon, i.e. the damage shown for the weapon in your inventory.
Poison and enchantment-related damage enhancements are added to damage inflicted by power attacks, their effects are not increased by performing sneak attacks
Sneak damage applies to all attack types, including dual-wield weapons, bows, and skills.

Do note that this only applies to the first hit, since after you land the 1st hit you always become "detected" and bonus damage from stealth no longer applies.

So unless you are using a source of Empower to buff your weapon light attack (or using a heavy attack set to buff your HA damage), it's best to open up with a high damaging ability to get the biggest chunk of damage in that first hit. In other words, don't LA weave that opening ability.

Additionally, if you are a nightblade and use the invisibility morph of cloak, then you also get a guaranteed critical hit on that first strike from invisibility.

Asardes wrote: »

You can farm or get cheaply from guild stores the following BoE sets:
5 pieces of Night Mother's Embrace (overland, Deshaan)
4 pieces of Vesture of Darloc Brae (overland, Northern Elsweyr)
3 pieces of Night Terror (overland, Stormhaven)

All of those have bonuses for 5/4/3 pieces that reduce your sneak cost and detection radius. Basically you don't need to invest any skill points in sneak passives from Medium Armor or Ledgermain and still easily complete TG Heists and DB Sacraments for maximum rewards even on a magicka character.

It's better to use Night's Silence (craftable) instead of NME, and put the 2 skillpoints into the medium armor passive. Or be a vampire.
The extra speed (from negating the sneak speed penalty) really helps, since otherwise sneaking is really slow.

I also use RAT to speed things up even faster, as it doesn't break stealth. But with 3x swift on jewelry + RAT I'm going so fast that I frequently blunder straight into traps and enemy NPCs