Sneak marksman kill (bow) gave me light armor experience

[Dedalo]

Hello,

What the title says. I guess that's not normal at all? I just killed a male deer in Ivarstead with a successful shot with a bow while sneaking and to my surprise my light armor skill increased one level. Not my sneak, not my archery either... My light armor. I'm confused.

I'm playing the complete STEP v2.3 build with several additional mods. You can see them in the attached screenshot

[z929669]

1 hour ago, Dedalo said:

Hello,

What the title says. I guess that's not normal at all? I just killed a male deer in Ivarstead with a successful shot with a bow while sneaking and to my surprise my light armor skill increased one level. Not my sneak, not my archery either... My light armor. I'm confused.

I'm playing the complete STEP v2.3 build with several additional mods. You can see them in the attached screenshot

Probably a combination of Vokrii and sneak. You were in combat with the deer momentarily, and when you snuck successfully, you exited combat, yielding the XP for light armor. Vokrii provides some enhanced early leveling for light armor, I think. I'm guessing you were wearing ≥ 2 pieces of light armor? Vokrii actually overhauls the perk tree to be more cohesive and to give stealth/mage/weaponless characters more opportunity to level relative to the vanilla tree, which makes it more practical to play such classes.

A couple of those mods might touch leveling indirectly, but I can't speak to them.

[Dedalo]

17 minutes ago, z929669 said:

Probably a combination of Vokrii and sneak. You were in combat with the deer momentarily, and when you snuck successfully, you exited combat, yielding the XP for light armor. Vokrii provides some enhanced early leveling for light armor, I think. I'm guessing you were wearing ≥ 2 pieces of light armor? Vokrii actually overhauls the perk tree to be more cohesive and to give stealth/mage/weaponless characters more opportunity to level relative to the vanilla tree, which makes it more practical to play such classes.

A couple of those mods might touch leveling indirectly, but I can't speak to them.

I see, thanks. You are right. My character was wearing all four pieces of the Dark Brotherhood light armor set. I'm glad to know that what's happened here makes sense. That was actually my only worry: that maybe my mod setup was "malfunctioning" somehow. And yes, you're also right: I've noticed that my light armor skill gained several levels early in the game. It felt like I was slowly gaining XP just for wearing light armor, which again, kinda makes sense.

I'm having a blast with the modded STEP setup, by the way. It also runs fine and so far I haven't experienced a single CTD. It feels so good replaying the game after these last few years.

Edited September 28, 2025 by Dedalo