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There are a lot of other actions you can do in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim besides combat and world exploration. Some of them can be complicated, such as backstabbing, waiting, and sprinting.
Like most action role-playing games, you’ll need to reach a certain skill level or keep stats in mind to perform a specific action. Thankfully, they aren’t difficult to achieve.
These actions, especially waiting, are necessary to learn if you decide to play Skyrim. Most stores and houses on the map aren’t open at certain times, and you’ll get framed as an intruder or thief if you lockpick any of these buildings.
So, without further ado, here’s a guide on how you can Backstab, Wait, and Sprint in Skyrim!
How to Backstab in Skyrim
Being sneaky in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim can be extremely tricky. Jumping, drawing your weapon, and knocking over things can alert nearby enemies and make them aggressive.
Staying invisible is almost impossible as interacting with your environment by opening doors wears off the spell and enemies can still hear your footsteps. Sometimes you’ll have to take ridiculous measures to not get caught committing crimes such as placing a bucket over your target’s head.
Another stealth action that can be quite hard to pull off is the Backstab. If you’re starting out in Skyrim, you’ll find that there is no way to sneak attack, someone.
Attacking someone from behind doesn’t kill them immediately (unless you’ve increased your damage enough to eliminate lower-level enemies), and instead triggers everyone around you into combat mode.
However, you can perform sneak attacks. All you need is to invest in your Sneak skill tree, which can be found in the character menu.
To get the Backstab perk, you’ll have to reach level 30 Sneak. You can also backstab enemies using the Assassin’s Blade perk, which deals 15x more damage with daggers, but it requires you to be at least level 50 on Sneak.
To level up on Sneak, you can get training from NPCs who teach Sneak such as Khayla, Garvey, and Delvin Mallory. Reading these books can also increase your Sneak skill:
- Three Thieves
- 2920, Last Seed, v8
- Sacred Witness
- Legend of Krately House
- The Red Kitchen Reader
- Oghma Infinium (choose the Path of the Shadow).
Completing these quests will also increase your Sneak skills:
- Return Noster Eagle-Eye’s helmet in Solitude.
- Retrieve double-distilled skooma for Stands-In-Shallows in Windhelm.
- Retrieve Finn’s Lute for Inge Six Fingers at the Bards College.
Other ways of leveling up on Sneak are crouching around NPCs, lockpicking, and pickpocketing while staying undetected, which are easy to do. This can also be achieved by being a stealth archer.
Some people have tried to hack this by sneaking up behind a praying Greybeard, slashing them with a dagger, and hiding behind the pillar. They don’t die and there are plenty of them to attack. Just don’t get caught otherwise you’ll get shouted to death.
Once you’ve finally reached level 30 Sneak, it’s time to teach you how to Backstab someone in Skyrim. It’s simple – sneak behind an enemy and attack them with a one-handed weapon. Normally, a killcam animation will be triggered. Backstab attacks deal six times the damage of one-handed weapons.
If you don’t have time to level up on Sneak, you can still equip these gloves with the Backstab enchantment to perform the action:
- Ancient Shrouded Gloves
- Cicero’s Gloves
- Jester’s Gloves
- Shrouded Gloves
- Shrouded Hand Wraps.
Keep in mind that you cannot disenchant these items to learn the enchantment.
How to Wait in Skyrim
One of the good things about Skyrim is that you can time skip in the game. Some characters and areas can only be accessed during certain hours, and the main method of time skipping is by sleeping in a bed. Resting comes with perks, especially if you’re playing in survival mode.
However, sleeping at inns can be expensive if you don’t own a house in that city. Luckily, waiting is free.
Make sure you aren’t surrounded by hostile enemies because you can only wait if you aren’t in combat, If you’re on PC, press T to wait (Back button on Xbox One or Xbox 360, Select button on the PS3, the touchpad on the PS4, and the – button on the left Joy-Con for Switch).
You can choose how many hours (up to 24 hours only) you wish to wait, and a timelapse animation will happen.
How to Sprint in Skyrim
Sprinting is pretty straightforward, all you need to do is press the sprint button. This is useful when you’re trying to evade enemies or incoming attacks.
However, you might find that your stamina bar (the green bar in the lower right corner of the screen) runs out pretty quickly. To increase your stamina bar, you’ll have to level up by completing quests.
When you level up, you’ll be given the option of upgrading your magicka, health, and stamina. The more you upgrade your stamina, the longer you can sprint.
To sprint faster, you can also wear light armor instead of heavy armor, which makes you 10% slower. You can also drink potions and consume food or beverages to restore your stamina.
Conclusion
And that’s how you backstab, wait, and sprint in Skyrim! It wasn’t so hard, was it? Now that you know about these actions, you can save even more time in the game.
You can also unleash your inner assassin with the Backstab perk and eventually earn the Assassin’s Blade perk to deal more damage and kill enemies instantly. If you want to learn more Skyrim tricks, we have a bunch of other Skyrim-related guides for you to read!
