Skyrim Ultimate Sneak Archer Guide (2024)

It struck me the other day that I’ve played The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim more than any other game, even though my Steam account may not reflect it, given that I played it before I was even on Steam and that I’ve played both the vanilla version, Special Edition, and Anniversary Edition on Steam. Combine the pirated copy I originally played in 2011 and the legitimate copies in my Steam library and you have hundreds upon hundreds of hours across multiple playthroughs. Despite it all though, I still find myself learning new things and exploring quests I’ve never done before.

It has given me a lot of time to master and perfect a particularly ferocious interpretation of arguably the most popular Skyrim build: the sneak archer. Today, I’m finally prepared to share that build with you in perhaps its final form but, then again, perhaps not. My ultimate sneak archer build is based on the Anniversary Edition of the game on PC with a total of only three mods that simply make the game more playable but don’t change in any substantial way the gameplay mechanics or the visuals. Those mods are SkyUI, Acquisitive Soul Gems, and Unread Books Glow.. Feel free to ask me about any of these mods and why I use that mod.

I’ve seen a variety of sneak archer builds on the Internet over the years and none come even close to the sheer devastation unleashed by own sneak archer build at legendary difficulty. Give it a whirl. Tell me if there is anything you think could be improved or any useful exploits I might be missing to give my build the edge. Until then, I’m pretty much convinced that this is the most obscenely overpowered build you’re liable to find, sneak archer or otherwise.

Most Skyrim sneak archer guides will suggest you choose Bosmer (aka Wood Elf) or Khajit. Others will go the politically correct route and suggest that race doesn’t matter at all. In Skyrim, race does matter, although perhaps not as much as some people seem to think. Bosmer and Khajit are often the default recommendations for this type of build because they have relevant skill bonuses, with the Bosmer receiving +10 to Archery and the Khajit +10 to Sneak. In truth, aside from making for a slightly smoother early game, racial skill bonuses are meaningless.

As it happens, while the Khajit can enjoy their head start in Sneak for a short time, the Bosmer bonus to Archery means nothing all because of one Wood Elf named Faendal, whom you will find at the lumber mill in Riverwood upon escaping Helgen. The first quest you should do as a sneak archer after escaping Helgen is A Lovely Letter, which you’ll receive from Faendal. Side with Faendal over Sven by delivering the fake letter to Camilla Valerius at the Riverwood Trader. Upon successful completion of the quest, Faendal can become a follower. Since he also happens to be an Adept-level Archery trainer, you can pay him to train you, access his inventory, and take back the gold. I just keep him as a follower until my Archery hits level 50. To be clear though, sneak-based builds are not for those who insist on having followers.



So if race matters but racial skill bonuses don’t, what is it that makes race so important? Well, in the late game, racial skill bonuses will have lost all meaning, but special abilities will still play a role in your build. Most races have one passive racial ability and one activated racial ability. The Bosmer, for example, get Command Animal. Like its name implies, Command Animal gives the Bosmer command of an animal for sixty seconds, which is virtually useless. Their passive ability is a bit more useful, granting 50% disease and poison resistance. The Khajit get Night Eye, which helps them see in the dark for sixty seconds and they get Claws, which increases their damage dealt with unarmed attacks. Night Eye is a quality of life ability (after all, any sneak archer worth his or her salt should be traveling at night). Claws is completely useless.

Between the Altmer, Argonians, Bosmer, Bretons, Dunmer, Imperials, Khajit, Nords, Orsimer, and Redguards, it can be difficult to know what to choose, but I’ve experimented heavily and have found two races to stand out as the best races for the sneak archer build. The first race is the Orsimer (aka Orc) and it’s all thanks to a little something called Berserker Rage. The Orsimer, you see, don’t have two special abilities like the other races. The Orsimer have only one and that’s because it’s the strongest racial ability in the game.

Berserker Rage doubles damage for sixty seconds, which does stack with Deadly Aim, a perk that grants triple damage from sneak attacks with bows. That means six times the damage dealt with this ability activated. I do love overkill, but I also tend to find that, if this build has one weakness, it’s not damage output.

The second race of choice—and my personal preference—is Breton. Bretons’ racial special passive ability gives them +25% resistance to magic, making for a more defensively-focused sneak archer build. Since you’re going to have a ton of armor and most mêlée targets will go down before they can arrive at your location, magic is one of the few threats, so having an extra 25% resistance is insanely powerful, especially combined with Agent of Mara for +40% resistance in total, making it very easy, with the help of a couple jewelry enchantments, to reach the game’s 85% Resist Magic cap. Forget everything you’ve heard about Bosmer and Khajit, Breton are where it’s at.

Something no one ever talks about with character creation is sex. You can choose male or female and there is actually a compelling reason to choose a female character for this build. Upon successful completion of The Heart of Dibella for the Temple of Dibella in Markarth, you will gain the Agent of Dibella passive ability that grants +10% damage to members of the opposite sex. Well, as it happens, most enemies in Skyrim that have a sex are male. Getting a permanent +10% damage buff is huge, so trust me and do as I say: Choose female. As a side note, The Heart of Dibella is also the quest you’ll need to do to gain access to the Master-level Enchanting trainer in the base game, Hamal.

You will get to a point in Skyrim where attributes are pretty meaningless. You’ll have an endless supply of stamina and enough health to stare down a pack of dragons. Still, I don’t like to be wasteful. That’s why I’m going to recommend you don’t invest any points into magicka. In previous iterations of this build, I spent three levels on magicka in order to be able to use the Muffle spell in the early and mid game, but you will eventually get a pair of boots that completely muffles your movement noise, rendering the spell version obsolete and leaving you with three wasted levels of magicka that could have gone into health or stamina. Just tough it out for the early game. You’ll gain access to the Dark Brotherhood gear as soon as you join and the boots will give you a muffle effect, albeit a weaker one than the spell. Wait until your character reaches level 32 before beginning Trinity Restored. This will guarantee you get the absolute best incarnation of the Nightingale Armor, which most notably includes the Nightingale Boots. These boots, acquired at level 32 or later, provide a 100% Muffle effect. Always keep an eye out for the enchantment itself, as it’s quite rare and provides the full Muffle effect when applied using Enchanting.

For health and stamina, I like to have at least twice as much health as stamina. I definitely recommend leaning a bit more into health in the early game so you won’t get your ass kicked. Stamina, it’s worth noting, also increases your carrying capacity by five points per level. For the sneak archer, stamina is going to determine how long one can hold one’s breath while drawing one’s bow with the Steady Hand perk.

Race, sex, and attributes matter, but perks are what make and break a build. It’s imperative to choose the right perks and choose them at the right time. Believe it or not, you will have to fight in this game, so you should always focus on your combat skills first. In the case of the sneak archer, this means Archery, Sneak, and Light Armor. In that order. Once your progression in these trees starts to slow down, you can start putting points into the trees you’ll be using to improve your gear. These include Smithing, Enchanting, and Alchemy. In that order.

Alteration, Block, Conjuration, Heavy Armor, Illusion, One-Handed, Restoration, and Two-Handed can all be disregarded entirely, though you’ll obviously gain some points in these skills from skill books. Lockpicking and Pickpocket both play a role in, frankly, any good build and building those trees up is important, but don’t waste any perk points on them. Lockpicking is rendered obsolete by the acquisition of the Skeleton Key, but it’s also the first skill (followed by Alchemy) one should make legendary once the aforementioned Skeleton Key has been acquired. Pickpocket is just a matter of learning to abuse quick saves, but it can also be a dangerous way to level up quickly while not making your character any more viable in increasingly difficult combat situations, so level this one with caution in the early and mid game.

Archery, Sneak, Light Armor, Smithing, Enchanting, and Alchemy are the core skill trees of the sneak archer build. Let’s discuss each individually.

ARCHERY (15)

The first and most important skill tree is going to be Archery. Like I said, you will have to actually fight in this game, so Archery, being your primary combat skill, is vital. This is a skill tree you will want to almost completely max out, which is to say you will want to invest in every perk in the tree except for Bullseye. Whenever a new perk opens up in the Archery tree, that is, more often than not, the perk you should be prioritizing (again, excluding Bullseye).

Don’t forget to use the aforementioned Faendal exploit to level Archery up to 50 at the very start of the game. When you Archery skill reaches 90, I recommend completing the Composure, Speed, and Precision quest, which you can do at Angi’s Camp in the Jerall Mountains south of Falkreath. Completing this unmarked quest will bequeath you six skill levels in Archery for a couple minutes of your time. The reason I recommend waiting until Archery level 90 or so is because skills become increasingly difficult to level, so you’ll get the most out of Composure, Speed, and Precision by having a bit of patience. 90 is also a good number because you can no longer gain skill points from trainers upon reaching level 90 in a skill tree.

SNEAK (3)

The build is called the sneak archer, so it should come as no surprise to anyone that Archery and Sneak will be the most central skill trees, with Sneak coming in second to Archery. In order to land those juicy critical hits though, it’s important to remain undetected. You do not need every perk in this tree; in fact, there are only two essential perks in the Sneak tree, with Backstab merely being a prerequisite for Deadly Aim.

There are two perks in the Sneak tree that should be your top priority when they become available. The first is the very first point you’ll be putting into Stealth. Subsequent points only make you +5% more difficult to detect, but the first makes you +20% more difficult to detect, which is why I only suggest putting a single point into Stealth. The second high priority perk in the Sneak tree is Deadly Aim. As a sneak archer, Deadly Aim is your bread and butter, especially for Orsimer sneak archers who can pump out six times the damage with Berserker Rage.

To level Sneak up, just use it. Sneak anywhere and everywhere you go until Sneak reaches 100.

LIGHT ARMOR (5)

Light Armor is a difficult tree to master with the sneak archer build because the way to gain points in Light Armor is to get hit. Sneak archers don’t get hit very much. In the early game, one of the best ways to gain a few points in Light Armor is to brawl. Don’t try to rush Light Armor in the early game though. It’s just a safeguard for when you do have to take a warhammer to the face from time to time, though you’ll be getting hit less and less as you progress through the build, especially if you start using the Paralyze enchantment on your bow, which I do not recommend because it makes it difficult to finish your opponents off when they fall into a horizontal position, making them a challenging target at range. This is the same reason I do not get Bullseye in the Archery tree.



Compared to Heavy Armor, Light Armor is the way to go because it allows for quieter sneaking, slows the wearer less, it weighs less, and because Skyrim has a maximum armor cap, meaning light armor will eventually offer just as much protection as heavy armor in the late game. The armor cap is also why you shouldn’t bother putting more than a single point into Agile Defender or putting a point into Matching Set.

SMITHING (6)

Ultimately, your goal with Smithing is to have a legendary set of studded dragonscale armor and a legendary dragonbone bow, but, for the early and mid game, you’re going to be relying chiefly on hide armor, leather armor, elven armor, scaled armor, and glass armor, so you’re going to want to work your way up the Light Armor side of the Smithing tree. Prioritize Smithing perks over Enchanting perks since Smithing levels up substantially slower than Enchanting and there’s no reason to bother wasting good soul gems on hide armor.



I strongly recommend completing Unfathomable Depths early on in your playthrough. The reward for completing Unfathomable Depths is Ancient Knowledge, which includes a +15% bonus to how quickly one learns Smithing. I find the best ways to level up Smithing once I’ve completed Unfathomable Depths is to craft massive numbers of iron daggers, which can subsequently be used to build up your Enchanting skill; craft jewelry; and craft arrows. As an archer, you’ll need arrows, so this is a great way to kill two birds with one stone. There is no better way to get large quantities of high quality arrows (e.g., glass arrows) than by manufacturing them yourself, which we’ll discuss more later.

ENCHANTING (11)

Assuming you have the Acquisitve Soul Gems mod, which any sane person should because the game is nigh unplayable without it, enchanting is the best skill tree in Skyrim. Whatever your build, Enchanting will make it better. While Enchanting won’t be your focus in the early game, it will be the cornerstone of the sneak archer build in the mid and late game. Paired with Smithing and Alchemy, you will be able to craft enchanted weapons, armor, and jewelry that can break the game. This is called power crafting, which we’ll discuss more later.

Begin your Enchanting career by completing the The Black Star as soon as possible. Toward the end of the quest, you’ll have the option of siding with Aranea or siding with Nelacar. If you side with Aranea, you’ll get Azura’s Star, which is good, but the reward for siding with Nelacar, the Black Star, is far greater. The Black Star is the essential tool for any aspiring enchanter. Soul gems are good for a single use, but the Black Star can be filled and refilled ad infinitum, assuming you have already learnt the Soul Trap or Fiery Soul Trap enchantment.

Enchanters should focus more of their questing on Dwemer ruins, where you’ll find a wealth of soul gems of all sizes by looting the Animunculi you’ll encounter therein. Only the Soul Cairn bests Dwemer ruins for soul gem harvesting. Visit giant camps throughout Skyrim with a (Fiery) Soul Trap bow to collect grand souls from mammoths and greater souls from the giants themselves. I use grand soul gems and black soul gems for my serious enchanting while greater soul gems, common soul gems, lesser soul gems, and petty soul gems are all used to enchant iron daggers for leveling purposes. I use my Black Star for serious enchanting too, but, because it’s so easy to refill, I primarily use it for recharging my enchanted bows, which I strongly recommend you enchant with Fiery Soul Trap.

Level up enchanting by first crafting iron daggers and then enchanting them with Banish. Banish gives the enchanted weapons a high monetary value, so you can then make some money back by selling your wares. Use the Paralyze enchantment as an alternative if you don’t have Banish yet or combine it with Banish if you already have Extra Effect and you’re just enchanting items for coin. Using the Black Star, you can also recharge your weapon, refill the Black Star, recharge your weapon again, and so forth. You gain some Enchanting experience each time you use the Black Star (or Azura’s Star) to recharge your enchanted weapon.



There are several enchantments to watch out for as you explore Skyrim, including Banish, Fiery Soul Trap, Fire Damage, Fortify Alchemy, Fortify Archery, Fortify Health, Fortify Smithing, Fortify Sneak, Fortify Stamina, Muffle, Resist Magic, and Waterbreathing. Find items with these enchantments and rush them to an Arcane Enchanter to be disenchanted, thus teaching you the enchantment. If you must, purchase these items from a vendor. Soul Trap is common, but you can only get Fiery Soul Trap by disenchanting the Steel Battleaxe of Fiery Souls found in Ironbind Barrow, so put that on your priority list, as Fiery Soul Trap provides more charges than the standard Soul Trap and also adds a bit of bonus fire damage. For bows, Fiery Soul Trap is my enchantment of choice, but, of course, you’ll have the option of adding a second enchantment to your items once you max out Enchanting and get the Extra Effect perk. Fire Damage has great synergy with Fiery Soul Trap.

For my main set of gear (i.e., excluding my dedicated smithing/alchemy gear used for power-crafting), these are what I use:

Bow: Fiery Soul Trap + Fire Damage
Headgear: Fortify Archery + Waterbreathing
Cuirass: Fortify Health + Fortify Stamina
Boots: Muffle + Fortify Sneak
Gauntlets: Fortify Archery + Fortify Sneak
Ring: Fortify Archery + Resist Magic
Amulet: Fortify Archery + Resist Magic

ALCHEMY (7)

Altogether, these encompass forty-seven points. All remaining perk points can be spent on various quality of life perks or small optimizations. Personally, I like putting a couple of points into Augmented Flames from the Destruction tree to further enhance fire-based weapon enchantments, which synergizes well with Fire Enchanter from the Enchanting tree. Extra Pockets from the Pickpocket tree is a phenomenal quality of life perk that means fewer stops at home between adventures. If you find you’re running dangerously low on perks from the six core skill trees, feel free to see a skill trainer to build up one of those trees and thus guide the development of your build.

Someone in the comments asked about the Standing Stones and I was remiss not to discuss them here. Standing Stones exist in Skyrim as a means of granting your character additional benefits, but you can only benefit from one standing stone at a time. For the sneak archer, there are two Standing Stones worth visiting. The first is the Thief Stone you’ll bump into just after fleeing Helgen, assuming you follow the path with either Hadvar or Ralof to Riverwood, which you should. There are actually three Standing Stones at the Guardian Stones: the Warrior Stone, the Mage Stone, and the aforementioned Thief Stone. Throughout the rest of Skyrim, Archery is considered a warrior skill, but, in this special exception, Archery falls under the Thief Stone, as does Sneak, Light Armor, and a host of other useful skills. As such, you’ll want to choose the Thief Stone at least until such time as you have maxed out your Archery and Sneak skills, as the Thief Stone grants a +20% increase to the speed at which your character learns the Archery, Alchemy, Light Armor, Lockpicking, Pickpocket, Sneak, and Speech skills.

Once Archery and Sneak are mastered, it’s time to consider switching to a new Standing Stone. I encourage you to choose the Lady Stone, which you’ll find on a small island in Lake Ilinalta. The Lady Stone increases health and stamina regeneration by 25%.

Some enchantments can be difficult to find. Sometimes you just need a particular type of crafting material and cannot be bothered to spend an indefinite amount of time seeking it out in Skyrim‘s vast open world. This is when the vendor exploit becomes key. Sadly, I didn’t know about it myself until I had already sunk hundreds of hours into the game.

Vendors’ inventories only refresh once every few days. I don’t know the exact period of time, but it takes awhile. On one hand, you could just travel all around Skyrim and visiting all the vendors. On the other, that sucks, so this is what you do. Save your game. Attack the vendor. You don’t need to kill him or her. I usually just fire a single shot from my bow, which, depending how far along I am in the game, will either injure or kill them. Then reload your save. Speak to the vendor again and they should have a refreshed inventory. Keep doing this until you find what you’re looking for. I recommend using quick save (F5) and quick load (F9) here to save yourself some time.

There is no shortage of arrows across Skyrim, but you don’t want to be stuck using iron arrows, Falmer arrows, or Forsworn arrows forever because the type of arrows you use will effect your overall damage output. So where do you get quality arrows and do so without breaking the bank buying them from vendors like a sucker? Well, you can find certain types of arrows in specific locations, such as the Ancient Nord Arrows you’ll be able to loot from the Draugr in Nordic tombs and those are, in fact, a slight upgrade from the iron arrows with which you’ll start, but that’s just a drop in the bucket. You’re going to need a lot more arrows than that, especially if you don’t yet have the Hunter’s Discipline perk.

There are two solutions. One primitive solution that I use quite a bit in the early game is Pickpocket. You can pickpocket large quantities of steel arrows from guards in every major settlement in Skyrim. Just be careful not to raise your Pickpocket skill too much too early or you’ll find yourself getting owned by Skeevers in the early game. The real and proper solution to arrows, however, is a pickaxe and a woodcutter’s axe. This solution does require that you have the Dawnguard add-on.

For those who have the Dawnguard add-on, grab a pickaxe and a woodcutter’s axe as early as you can and just keep them in your inventory at all times. This is going to eat up 20 weight in your inventory, but it’s well worth it. As you explore Skyrim, you’ll be able to mine ore veins using the pickaxe, which does not need to be equipped to be used. Whenever you see an ore vein, mine it. Take all that ore to a smelter that you’ll often find outside mines or near blacksmiths and smelt it into ingots. You cannot mine steel. There is no such thing as steel ore. To make steel ingots, you’ll need to combine iron ore and corundum ore. While gold ore, silver ore, and quicksilver ore are not used to craft arrows, I tend to mine those as well for other types of crafting. Gold ingots and silver ingots, for example, are used in jewelry crafting, which is also a great way to build up your Smithing skill while making some money in the process. Another way to build up your Smithing skill is to build one or more homesteads from the Hearthfire add-on, which, like ingredients for Alchemy, gives one a reason to begin harvesting building materials from the very start of one’s playthrough.



There are two ingredients needed when crafting arrows. One is the ingots. The other is firewood. Firewood is free. Just find a wood chopping block in one of the settlements, at a lumber mill, at some player houses, or any of the Hearthfire homesteads, click on it, and your woodcutter’s axe will magically equip itself. Each session yields six pieces of firewood. Each ingot and piece of firewood taken to a forge or anvil will yield twenty-four arrows, or 144 arrows per woodcutting session. In essence, each piece or ore will yield twelve arrows. Iron ingots will yield iron arrows, steel ingots steel arrows, refined moonstone elven arrows, and refined malachite glass arrows. Dragonbone arrows can also be crafted, but, instead of ingots, they require dragon bone, which can be harvested, naturally, from slain dragons without any need for the pickaxe.



Iron arrows can be crafted as soon as you have some iron ingots and firewood. To craft steel arrows, you first require Steel Smithing. To craft elven arrows, you first require Elven Smithing (available at Smithing level 30). To craft glass arrows, you first require Glass Smithing (available at Smithing level 70). To craft dragonbone arrows, you first require the Dragon Armor perk (available at Smithing level 100).



As a side note, some people, even if they’re not investing into the Heavy Armor tree, like to get Dwarven Smithing in order to craft Dwarven arrows. This is because Dwarven metal ingots are extremely common in Dwemer ruins and because they can be easily crafted by smelting a wide variety of Dwarven items, including bent Dwemer scrap metal, large Dwemer plate metal, small Dwemer plate metal, solid Dwemer metal, large Dwemer struts, and large decorative Dwemer struts. This is a very fast way to both level up Smithing and to get a superabundance of decent arrows. Personally though, I don’t do this because my sights are always set on the late game, when I don’t want to be stuck with Dwarven arrows and a perk I never use anymore.

Seeker of Might also increases Smithing by 10% while Seeker of Shadows increases Alchemy by 10%; what’s more there is no limit to how many times one can swap between these effects by simply opening the book again, though one must return to Solstheim any time one wishes to do so. For general adventuring, I stick to the Seeker of Might for the +10% to my Archery skill, but, when it’s crafting time, I find myself making many trips back to Solstheim. If I need to craft some potions, I switch to Seeker of Shadows. If I need to enchant some items, I switch to Seeker of Sorcery. If I need to improve some gear, it’s the Seeker of Might.


Power crafting is the most broken thing in the game and I do not hesitate to capitalize on that. Just remember that already enchanted gear can only be upgraded at a workbench or grindstone if you have the Arcane Blacksmith perk. In the early game, it’s best to upgrade your gear before taking said gear to an Arcane Enchanter.

Some may be tempted to travel around Skyrim on horseback. I recommend that you basically never use horses. As a sneak-based build, horses are just a bad idea. You can’t sneak while on horseback, so your location will be given away. Dismounting takes forever, so you’re liable to endure some damage. Moving around on horseback also prevents you from gathering Alchemy ingredients, which you should be doing at all times. The one and only advantage a horse gives you is that horses can climb steeper slopes. I won’t even give them speed as an advantage because that’s what fast travel is for.

After completing Unbound and A Lovely Letter, it is imperative that you quickly make your way to Whiterun. Seek out Jorrvaskr, mead hall of the Companions. Do this before any further questing. In the lower floor of Jorrvaskr, find Aela‘s bedroom. Within her bedroom, you will find a locked display case containing an Archery skill book and an elven bow. The elven bow makes for an incredible starting bow. By this point, you should have at least three or four lockpicks in your inventory. This should be an Expert-level lock, so it could be a tricky one at this level. Just be sure to pop a save before trying.