A guide for killing enemies by stealth, even when there are lots of other NPCs nearby.
Sneak Attacks
Сrеdit gоеs to Greyscale !
Rogues can make a sneak attack – either melee or ranged – if they are hiding and not disadvantaged when attacking an enemy. These attacks do a lot of damage and can allow to silently dispatch an NPC without alerting others. Other classes also gain a bonus to attacks while hiding, but the impact is smaller.
To do this effectively you’ll need to watch the line of sight of your enemies and choose your targets carefully.
Hide
The Hide action is, by default, activate by pressing C. This will give you the status ‘Hiding’. However, if any NPCs can see you, you must immediately make a stealth check, and if you fail, you will lose hiding. If you’re in turn-based mode, you won’t be able to hide again that turn.
So – always check your position and sightlines before your activate hide.
If you hold shift and mouse over the Hide icon, you’ll see NPC sightlines.
Grouping
Stealth kills are usually easiest when your party is ungrouped, but nearby. You don’t want your other characters to wander in and spoil the surprise, but you want them nearby in case things go badly.
Position
You’ll need to find a place where a single NPC is isolated from others – and can’t be seen.
You can’t directly see where enemy sightlines overlap, so you’ll need to pay attention.
The NPCs may move, which can make things harder. If they NPC is moving, get in close, and switch to turn based mode, activate hide from a safe spot, and then do the sneak attack.
Moving NPCs
Sometimes you can’t get an NPC alone. There’s a few ways to ‘pull’ them towards you.
If you can play an instrument, you can use that to get NPCs to gather.
If you can’t play an instrument, you can try anyway, and it’ll scare them away – which can achieve the same thing.
Unfortunately, throwing items like food doesn’t seem to distract NPCs.
One way you can move them is by finding ‘red’ containers, like chests, and throwing them while in their vision.
They’ll be unhappy, and they’ll go to pick up the container and put it back where it was.
If you get to the container before them, you can repeat this several times, and move them quite a long way.
You can also ungroup your party, use one character to annoy the NPC by breaking a law, and then, as they chase after that character, activate turn based mode and send your rogue in for the kill.
This is a little bit unreliable, though! They can get into the ‘accusation’ dialogue from quite a long distance away. Damaging property by shooting arrows is one of the better ways to do this.
Lighting
If you’re having trouble getting a good spot to attack an enemy, snuff all the light sources.
If you can’t reach them directly, shoot them with an arrow (but note that some NPCs will not like this!). NPCs will not re-light light sources.
You can also use spells such as fog cloud but that’s likely to attract unwanted attention.
Damage
As much as possible, you’ll want to finish off the enemy with a single hit.
Use poisons or buffs to increase your damage.
Running for Help
If you can’t kill an enemy right away, it’s important to think about what they’ll do.
Your enemy may continue to fight where you are – they may yell out, or they may run for help.
This could be running to the nearest war drum, or the nearest enemy.
You don’t want that. So it’s a good idea to destroy war drums or equivalent items.
However it can be worth leaving some around – if your enemy runs towards one, it can take them away from their allies – and give you time to finish them off.
However you pull of your kill, you’ll want to leave the area, clean up the mess, or both.
Shove and Throw
Shove
If you have any big drops or chasms nearby, shove is a very satisfying way to simultaneously kill an NPC and also hide the body. Use a character with good athletics and strength.
The downside is, you’ll probably lose your opportunity to loot.
Throw
If you have the Sleep spell, and it’s a high enough level or the NPC has low enough hit points, you can use sleep, then throw the NPC.
Doing so will wake them up, but the fall can damage them or even kill them.
Even if you can’t throw them to a chasm, you might be able to repeat the process.
You may also be able to throw them far enough away from other NPCs that you can finish them off safely.
Clean Up
If you manage to pull of a stealth kill, unless you pushed or threw someone in a chasm, there’s likely both a pool of blood and a body. If another NPC sees either, they’ll suspect a murder, and if they spot you, you’re likely to be the suspect.
So, you’ll want to avoid this.
Avoiding Blood
You can avoid, or minimise blood by using non-lethal attacks.
Click ‘Passives’ and ‘Toggle Non-Lethal’.
Removing Bodies
If you have enough strength, you can pick up most bodies.
They’ll go to your inventory, and from there, your can throw them somewhere they won’t be found.
You can also put them inside containers. Open the container, then your inventory, and drag the body.
I haven’t yet seen how NPCs respond to bodies inside containers.
Cleaning Blood
You can also get rid of blood – the easiest way is to use a frost spell.
The blood will turn to ice. That’ll be enough, but you can also use a fire spell, and then the ice will turn to water.
Throwing bottles/barrels of water will also clean up blood. I haven’t tried with create water but I’m guessing it would.
you can store corpses in the camp to later use them as material for animate dead spell or for a chat
Answer to this: “I haven’t yet seen how NPCs respond to bodies inside containers.”
Well, at least if you drop the body in a container next to where your target was standing around, it is still discovered.
super helpful, I’ve been playing as a rogue and been having trouble with stealth kills and getting away unnoticed. Didn’t know about the blood stains and hadn’t considered the lighting aspect of things, thank you!
If there was an arrow which could KO an enemy vs kill them outright, that would be icing on the quiet+clean takedown cake.
Thunder Arrow knocks back anyone in a small area unless they pass a saving throw roll. not sure which stat off the top off my head but theres a few fights where i’ve had to just commit bodies tot he void and say bye to loot just to win the fight using these arrows to knock off 3-4 enemies at the same time. Just be warned if stealthily with it, it’s very loud. but if stealth is the game you can enter turn based which lets you use all actions on all party members before doing initiative checks on everyone. Use the shove action in your initiating turn to just knock off multiple guards.
I had no idea you could 1) clean blood, and 2) removing blood would make a difference in how nearby NPCs respond.
I figured hiding bodies would be helpful, but cleaning up the scene?
I’m glad I’m still fairly early into my first run – I have lots of opportunities to put this to use!
Also, the silence spell keeps enemies from being alerted by sounds of combat. It can aggro enemies in the area you cast it though.