So my sneaky hunter is now 53, kicking some serious ass. I dont even have points in daggers. If something comes up point blank, I still stab him with arrows. Got my full dragon scale, but waiting to get my enchanting and alch to 100 before I try upgrading the armour or putting enchants on. I am thinking of doing a combination of bow damage, sneaking and stamina regen.
A few tips for the budding archer assassin that I have found out/come across. (Some tips may help other classes too)
1) When leveling smithing go the heavy armour route instead of the light armour route for perks. That way you go through Deadric armour to get to dragonscale. The deadric is not used for the armour but for the weapons. They are the strongest crafted weapons in the game. If you go the light armour route, you still get the dragonscale, but you dont get the strong weapons. Or the ability to upgrade the second strongest which are Ebony bows, with the double power that perks give.
1.1) The other advantage is that you can also make the best heavy armour for your tank companion, making them really powerful and once you get your enchanting up, you simply enchant them with 2 resists. Fire and frost on everything that you can. That makes them a dragon slaying tank of note. While you simply turn the beat into a dragon shaped pincushion.
2) Dont bother with one handed weapons except for the cool assassination kill moves. Once you get 50% chance to stagger with your arrows, and increased movement speed with your bow drawn, you will be doing just fine in melee with your bow. Later with 30% draw speed and 15% chance to paralyze you will seriously not do better with one handed weapons. Considering that your enchants should be 40% bow damage on 4 items, one handed cannot match that. Save the points to invest elsewhere, or one handed much much later once you have your base character fully perked out.
3) Use soul trap enchant on your bow, with the black star to get some easy enchanting leveling without sitting on the enchanting table. You simply recharge your bow after every humanoid kill that stores the soul in the black star. Gets you levels while still out and killing things, which is more fun. Also buy lots of petty/lesser/common/great/grand soul gems to capture white souls of all sizes with ease. Use them to enchant weapons and armour that you craft or find to make more profit and level enchanting more.
3.1) Dont listen to anyone that says you should use the soul trap spell. Only mages should consider using that spell as they are usually going to be in combat and have spells on their hands anyway. Warriors and assassins, especially assassins cannot use this spell effectively. For assassins you will put yourself into combat by casting the spell and no longer be hidden, so sneak attacks are impossible. Enchant with a grand soulgem onto a daedric bow, the soul trap enchant. With max duration, minimum charges.
4) Weapon enchants net a much higher profit than armour enchants when enchanting for selling purposes. So when leveling smithing/enchanting, do the iron daggers and leather bracers together. Sell all the leather bracers directly. But save up all your iron daggers to enchant with: Banish/Paralyse/Stamina Absorb/Magica absorb etc.... The elemental damages are not that high, but still higher than armour enchants so any will do really.
With 100 speech, you will net around 150 gold profit per dagger if you buy the petty soul gem with the soul trapped already. 200 gold+ if you buy the petty soul and fill it yourself (which is easy with the soul trap enchant)
If I come across or think of others I will post em up.
